WESTMINSTER (Labour Buzz) - Keir Starmer has been conspicuously quiet on Brexit so far. However, with talks at a crisis point, it was more or less unavoidable. He unloaded with both barrels. Johnson was left making it up as he went along.
How’s Brexit going?
Speaking from isolation Starmer started by welcoming the sight of the first people receiving the COVID 19 vaccine before moving on to the nitty-gritty.
A year ago, he said, “the Prime Minister stood on the steps of Downing Street and promised a permanent break from talking about Brexit. Can he tell us how it’s going?”
Johnson looked around for something to bluff with and came up with Starmer’s constituency. He mockingly said that he welcomed the leader of the opposition from his spiritual home in Islington. Johnson momentarily seemed to forget that he had spent many years living in Islington before he decided to leave his wife while she was suffering from cancer.
“He’s distracting,” Starmer snapped back who added he was in Camden. He recalls Johnson’s promise that the chances of a no-deal were absolutely zero. Many took him at his word including the man who now sits in Number 11. He quoted Rishi Sunak at the time who said: “We don’t need to plan for no-deal because we have a deal.’
A year on from that Starmer asked why should anyone, including his chancellor, trust a word he says?
Johnson took issue with Starmer apparently ‘misleading’ people, which is, of course, Johnson’s remit. He waffled on about low tax, environmental protections, free ports and doing lots of trade deals. In other words, no deal would be an outstanding opportunity to drive down protections on standards, worker rights and safety protections to make the UK as attractive as possible to firms from overseas.
Failure of leadership
Starmer continued his tactic of bashing the Prime Minister with his own words when he recalled a statement from September. Failing to get a deal, he’d said, would be a ‘failure of leadership.’ That, suggested Starmer, is exactly what we have here.
He asked Johnson if he agreed with the Office of Budgetary Responsibility, which said the cost of no-deal would be higher unemployment, higher inflation and a smaller economy.
Johnson geared up into peak waffle. He hyped the ‘good deal’ Britain secured this time last year which he then tore up. He also tried to liken it to an Australian type of deal forgetting that Australia does not currently have a deal with the EU, and he challenged Starmer’s failure to say if he’d vote for a deal which doesn’t currently exist.
“He’s absolutely stuck and dithering between the deal he knows he needs and the compromise his backbenchers won’t let him do,” said Starmer before expressing his hope that a deal ‘like his newspaper columns’ somehow appears at the last minute.
Ineos quits Britain
He then turned his attention to the news that Ineos is moving production of its new version of the Land Rover Defender from Wales to France. The company is run by one of the few businessmen who had vocally supported Brexit.
Brexiter Sir Jim Ratcliff had promised to keep at least part of the production in Bridgend. Like most promises from Brexiters it didn’t materialise and he has announced instead he’s off to base himself in Europe.
“How many British jobs have to go overseas before he gets on with delivering the Brexit deal he promised?” Starmer asked.
Johnson regurgitated more of the same fluff and again challenged Starmer to say which way he’d vote on a deal.
Starmer replied that he couldn’t say which way he’d vote on a deal which doesn’t exist. However, he promised that, if there is a deal, his party will vote in the national interest, not along party lines.
Of course, David Cameron’s decision to put party squabbles above the national interest is what got us into this mess in the first place.
Listening to business
Starmer tried seeing if Johnson would listen to the words of business. He quoted the CBI and the Farmer’s Union both of which were calling for a quick deal. The farmer’s union said time was running out to make preparations.
He asked if Johnson would listen to business and if he had any news of the 50,000 customs agents that will be needed after Brexit.
Johnson waffled some more so Starmer translated for the rest of us. “I take it the answer is he has no idea if they will be in place. He either doesn’t know or doesn’t care.”
Brexit battles
This was the turf Johnson has wanted to fight all along. He used his opponent’s absence to play to the galleries. But while it played well to the waifs and strays in the benches behind him he misjudged the mood of the nation.
This is a country which has been lied to time and time again. It has been promised deals which never materialised. It has been assured that warnings which are not all too real were just project fear. Most of all this is a country of people who will have to live and work in the country Johnson is shaping. Whether Brexiter or remainer both need clarity about the world they are moving into. Both are being equally let down regardless of how they voted.
Johnson is allergic to detail at the best of times, but on Brexit where things are very publicly going wrong in front of our eyes, he’s even more exposed. Reality has come back to bite him and the country now faces a best-case scenario in which the choice is a bad deal versus no deal at all.
He tried to equate Canada deal with the Australian deal. However, they are different. Canada does have a free trade deal with the EU, Australia does not. It’s a way to say no deal without sounding like a complete failure. He also omits to mention that Australia would like few things more than a deal with the EU.
Starmer is right. When it gets down to detail it’s a case of Johnson doesn’t know, doesn’t care or both.
(Written by Tom Cropper, Edited by Klaudia Fior)