Labour needs to rediscover that EU membership works

Tony Blair's famous justification for his policy decisions was that, above all, he believed in “what works”.

This guiding principle served him well, with the unfortunate exception of his backing for president George W Bush’s decision to invade Iraq.

The Blair-Brown governments of 1997 to 2010 were overshadowed by the difficulties of their personal relationship, but much of what they achieved domestically “worked”. Unfortunately, Blair’s decision to “hug them close” – “them” being US presidents – permanently damaged his reputation.

It was the difficulty of the Blair-Brown relationship that persuaded David Cameron and George Osborne to avoid any such public disputes. To my mind, this was why Osborne went along with Cameron’s decision to hold the Brexit referendum, although the Treasury knew Brexit would be an economic disaster.

Another former chancellor to have changed course (after some unfortunate revelations about his personal tax affairs) is Nadhim Zahawi, who has now defected from the Conservatives to Reform.

Zahawi says he is defecting because in this country “nothing works”. Funnily enough, this is a common expression these days, usually in exasperation with all manner of minor hitches in everyday life. The truth is that most things work, but in many cases not as well as they used to.

One wonders if Reform’s latest recruit has reflected whether those problems have anything to do with the Conservative policy of deliberately imposing a period of austerity on parts of the public sector that used to work better.

One wonders also if Mr Zahawi really believes that Nigel Farage’s Reform party has the solutions. The most obvious reason why things seem to have got worse is the damage wreaked by Brexit, a crisis prompted by then-prime minister Cameron’s desire to appease Farage and Tory eurosceptics or “septics” as Sir Ted Heath wonderfully jibed.

As the Commons business and trade committee points out, our goods trade is 18% down on five years ago, with food and drink trade some 24% lower. Liam Byrne, the committee chairman, points out that extra red tape is costing the country an extra £8.5bn. There are many Brexit-induced transport problems in Kent on the way to the ports. Incidentally, the Reform-controlled Kent county council is proving seriously incompetent, and has had to renege on its promise to cut council tax. Welcome, Reform, to the real world.

But there are even more indications of the threat posed by Reform. Its admiration for president Trump, his sidekick JD Vance, and Maga in general is deeply disturbing.

As if Maga has learned nothing from the consequences of the rise of the extreme right in Europe between the wars, Vance and co seem to worship the rise of these parties in Germany, France and – especially – Hungary. What became the EU was set up in the hope there would never be another war in Europe. The UK did not join at the start, but eventually learned the error of its ways. We benefited economically, and then threw in the towel in the most ignorant way with the referendum.

It’s good that Sir Keir Starmer has finally let it be known that he wants a “closer realignment” with the single market (the level of ignorance in the Conservative cabinet in 2016 was such that our former ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, had to explain to the Brexiters the difference between the customs union – mainly about tariffs – and the single market, aimed at dismantling non-tariff barriers and regulating the freer flow of trade).

We are economically and culturally closer to the EU than we are to Trump’s America, where a theoretical democracy risks turning into a nasty and vengeful autocracy. Trump’s latest intervention in the economic field is his attempted assault on the independence of the widely admired Federal Reserve, the US central bank.

Some people say the EU “doesn’t want us back”. But this is not the impression of a correspondent friend of mine who often travels in France and reports that the French are all too aware of the way Brexit has damaged not only us, but them too.

Despite Farage’s success in the polls, I still regard Britain as a civilised country. It would be a blessed relief if the Labour party got over its internecine quarrels and devoted its attention once more to “what works” – or “what should work”.

Photograph by Chris J Ratcliffe/Bloomberg via Getty Images