James Starkie is Founding Partner at communications consultancy 5654 & Co. He worked on Vote Leave in 2016 and was a Special Adviser in Government.
The deal is either an epic sell out of Brexit or one giant nothing-burger, depending on which social media clip you happen to be watching.
The Tories were quick out the blocks – a week before details of the deal were known – to denounce Keir Starmer’s EU reset as a ‘surrender summit’. Meanwhile Vote Leave veteran, Oliver Lewis, a man well placed to evaluate the deal, describes it as ‘more a like a glorified press release than a treaty’.
The government, for its part, claims it will lead to a modest but real boost to GDP.
The point many seem to be missing is that Brexit meant our politicians can no longer hide behind Brussels. We have taken back control, and the success or failure of this deal will have immediate consequences at the ballot box.
As someone who worked on the successful Vote Leave campaign, it was the incessant blame game between Westminster and Brussels that struck me as not just anti-democratic but corrosive to our politics. With diffuse power structures, politicians were too often able to hide behind others when issues such as immigration were raised. This is no longer the case. The contents of this deal – and the further agreements that will surely follow – rest at the door of one man, one party.
The British public will be able to pass judgment on this at the next election and beyond.
If the next government doesn’t like the deal they can no longer say, there is nothing that can be done. The demand will be to leave the deal or renegotiate. If they claim a better one can be struck, as Labour did, and win power, then the public will again judge them on both their words and actions.
Pollster Luke Tryl highlights the ‘public exhaustion’ with a return to Brexit rows, perhaps best exemplified with the 2019 election results when Brits roundly told the political class to just get on with it.
This is why framing any debate around the deal as a ‘Brexit betrayal’ will likely appeal to only a small slice of the electorate. As would, by the way, a campaign to fully rejoin the EU.
The public can see both for what they are: a continuation of a time in our politics that provided little else than continual rows while avoiding major issues like growing the economy, fixing a broken NHS and generally improving what much of the public see as a country that isn’t quite working.
Voters want to see more focus on the day-to-day problems they face and care little for international summits and accords.
Oliver Lewis highlights more eloquently than I could some of the issues with the deal that may unravel overtime – specifically accepting a set of principles that will skew any future talks to the EU’s advantage. However, that judgement can now be held more directly to account at the ballot box. Politicians will be forced to explain on the morning media rounds why they gave away 12 years of fishing rights, account for any rise in immigration numbers due to a youth mobility -sorry, ‘experience’- scheme, and why they can’t use an e-gate on their trip to Corfu.
In short, this deal is further proof that will have taken back control. It will be in the years ahead that the success or failure of this deal will be felt in our politics. The polls tell us the public isn’t currently very happy with the start of Labour’s tenure.
If this deal is oversold and doesn’t deliver, it will be the original Brexit warrior, Nigel Farage, who is left smiling in four years’ time.
