As more and more people become aware of the catastrophe that is Brexit, with – as I reported last time – even former chancellor George Osborne suggesting re-entry to the customs union, the dilatory nature of the government’s “realignment” efforts is becoming embarrassing.
Last week, it was reported that official sluggishness in implementing the recent agreement to cut red tape by realigning customs and excise procedures for food and drink trade with those of the European Union is costing the country £100m a week. This comes after the publication of a thorough study by a group of economists under the aegis of Stanford University, covering the macroeconomic hit and micro bureaucratic time-wasting costs, put the cumulative loss of UK output at between 6% and 8% a year.
Apart from anything else, the implied loss of tens of billions in potential tax revenue helps to explain why chancellor Rachel Reeves has been scraping the bottom of the barrel with a series of unpopular tax measures, some of which have had to be reversed.
Brexit has sullied the achievement of so many worthy goals. Growth and investment were early watchwords of this government, but it appears that in the third quarter of last year the UK was bottom of the G7 for total public and private sector investment.
But back to Osborne. It is widely thought that one of the reasons for the referendum result was that it was less to do with serious consideration of our relations with what was then the rest of the EU than with dissatisfaction with the state of the nation. A protest vote. And an important part of the reason for that dissatisfaction was the austerity programme inaugurated by, er, chancellor Osborne.
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But there is another charge against Osborne. I have heard over the years from both Conservative and Labour chancellors that a necessary condition of harmonious government is that there should be a good relationship between prime minister and chancellor.
For instance, the Labour government had an arduous time dealing with the crisis of 1976, when it had to go cap in hand to the International Monetary Fund to restore confidence in the pound. During this nervous period the government held together, and one of the reasons was a good relationship between the prime minister, James Callaghan, and chancellor Denis Healey.
The relationship between Margaret Thatcher and Nigel Lawson in the mid- to late-1980s was so bad that it ended in Lawson’s resignation and Thatcher’s eventual fall.
David Cameron and Osborne were determined to stick together. Not only did they want to learn the lesson of Thatcher and Lawson but they also wished to avoid the semi-warfare that characterised relations between Tony Blair and Gordon Brown between 1997 and 2007.
Here we come to, what I regard as, an underestimated aspect of the Brexit catastrophe. One will, of course, never know, but it is perfectly possible that if Osborne had stood up to Cameron and had threatened to resign if he went ahead with calling a referendum, we should never have experienced the grim consquences that even former Brexiters now acknowledge.
If Osborne had stood up to Cameron over a referendum, we should never have suffered the grim consequences
The chaotic way in which Cameron went about appeasing Nigel Farage and Tory Eurosceptics is analysed impressively in a new book by David Marsh, former Financial Times Germany correspondent and now chairman of the OMFIF economic research group. In Can Europe Survive? The Story of a Continent in a Fractured World, Marsh explains the many misunderstandings between Cameron and EU political leaders and officials in the runup to the referendum .
In one telling passage, Marsh quotes the former top official at the Foreign Office, Lord McDonald: “Cameron didn’t think that Remain would lose, and that confidence conveyed itself to Europeans who saw no need to make concessions.”
Ironically, when announcing in 2013 the date of the (2016) referendum, Cameron said “it will be a relationship with the single market at its heart”. (Or not, as the case may be.)
Anyway, here we are. Unfortunately, the government seems to be playing a game of grandmother’s footsteps in its “realignment” approach. It seems to believe the EU does not want us back for fear that other countries might leave believing they can return if the British do.
But having seen the damage caused by Brexit, no EU governmment in its right mind would want to leave.
Photograph by Christopher Furlong/Getty Images