Brexit after Coronavirus

A frightful ghoul stalks my nightmares. Boris Johnson makes a complete hash of the Coronavirus crisis, which is what he's presently doing (despite what the polls think), and he then screws up the subsequent peace with austerity 2.0. After all, we have to pay for all those bail outs. Yet, even then, despite a smooth new Labour leader at the helm we still lose. Because with everything else gone to pot, the Tories decide on replaying the 2019 general election. And Labour hasn't drawn a single bloody lesson from December's catastrophe and lose because significant chunks of the party can't stop banging on about Brexit.

A portent of siren calls to come hails this time from Rafael Behr, who uses the occasion of unprecedented crisis to moan about Brexit. Padding out his piece, we are pointed to the tomb of Tory orthodoxy, wherein lies the mouldering bones of laissez faire and small statism. If these can be interred in the ossuary in the first throes of the crisis, he muses, then further down the track surely a Brexit delay and an extension to the transition period - lobbied for by the European Union, but so far resisted by Johnson - could be pulled off after a few more weeks of lock down. His second argument is against the very real threat Coronavirus poses, Brexit seems like a petty, trivial, and small-minded affair which this crisis could confirm and then write off as a bad idea. Unfortunately, this sounds very much like Coronavirus-conditioned wishful thinking.

Politically, the pandemic has changed a lot. But that doesn't mean we're in Year Zero. A number of leftist writers have argued, including yours truly, how the government have skipped the most expeditious means of addressing employment and welfare problems (i.e. the payment of a flat, relatively generous basic income) in favour of measures designed to protect the wage relation, keep punitive social security arrangements in place, and guard against the principle of income deriving from anything but work. Like duh, capitalist states are going to protect capitalist economies, and that's true of any mainstream party regardless of political colours. In this sense, the Tories are ensuring that, at least where the fundamentals of political economy are concerned, there will be no great reset. Their pre-Corona budget set out a strategy for big spending, and the (intentionally blank) manifesto gives them plenty of room to liberally raid Labour's discarded document and do whatever they see fit.

And doing whatever they see fit has the dual project of preserving class relationships, which is to be achieved by their continuing political dominance. And, yes, that means carrying on with Brexit. As Rafael observes, Johnson does have wiggle room here as some two thirds of voters, or thereabouts, are chill with delaying the negotiations and having an extension to the transition period. And it's probable Johnson will take it up in time once the practicalities assert themselves. Yet, seeing as his winning formula of sticking to Brexit made his political fortune, for as long as possible he will stick with the rhetoric of getting it done. The problem then comes with what happens next. One extension is fine, but given this crisis is with us for at least six months and rolling lock downs could be a feature of everyday life for the next year, the danger lies in the number of times the talks are extended and/or its length. The longer this goes on, the politics of old, the angry impatience with delay and Brexit thwarted will find ingress back into political life, and the greater the potential cost to Johnson.

This is where the danger to Labour presents itself. Considering who we're about to make our party leader, Keir Starmer's base is, to put it euphemistically, enthusiastically pro-EU. And despite prior promises of Brexit being a settled issue, fools could easily rush in where Rafael happily treads. Coronavirus-induced Brexit delays are going to be seized upon to reopen the arguments we've enjoyed these last four years. I don't think it's going to be particularly helpful for Labour to enter into the politics of reconstruction and recovery with a prominent and vocal strand calling for a reassessment of Brexit, up to and including rejoining the EU as full members. What it would do, however, is throw Johnson and the Tories a life line when they most need it. Don't let them deflect attention from their reckless necropolitics and general incompetence, but this is precisely what reopening the Brexit debate on remain terms will do. It will then be Labour who'll be accused of exploiting a serious crisis to thwart a democratic vote, and Labour who'll be seen to disrespect the memory of those voters who didn't make it through the pandemic. And the result? The same polarisation, and the same outcome.

If the new leadership has any sense it will abandon the Coronavirus timidity evidenced by Keir Starmer's candidacy, and ignore the temptation to bang the remain drum as Johnson founders in the Brexit negotiations. If we are to believe the forensically forensic hype, surely we're not about to lose focus as the task as the politics of recovery looms over everything?