Labour Prepares To Retreat on Brexit

The prospects for British Independence, as vindicated by the Brexit referendum of 2016, are darkening. Feature Prime Minister Andy Burnham’s comments today during the Labour Party Conference at Liverpool. “Brexit has done more harm than good,” he sniffed. “We will not give Britain the clear path we need into the rest of this century until we decide on a long-term relationship with what is still our largest market,” he added, British voters be damned.Mr. Burnham reckons that this potential retreat on the kingdom’s sovereignty is needed “to restore a high level of growth and prosperity for Britain.” Yet the suggestion that tethering Britain’s economic future to the European superstate overlooks the missed opportunities offered by Brexit. The premier’s “emotional speech,” as the Times described it, ignored, too, how lower taxes, along with less regulation and spending, could reignite growth in Britain.“The British right talk about taking back control,” Mr. Burnham said, in a reference to one of the key rationales for Brexit. “Never let them forget, they are the ones that gave it away in the first place.” In Mr. Burnham’s blinkered appraisal, the right erred by “selling off essentials,” in other words, denationalization. He decried “political control corroded by the hollowing out of councils” and “immigration control weakened by Brexit.”It is misleading to suggest that Britain’s freedom of initiative, on migration policy or any other sphere, is impaired by Brexit. Feature, say, how the European Union has made it harder for Britain to expel phony asylum seekers to the Continent. Britain seeks the ability to return these migrants, but the EU has so far blocked London’s efforts to forge an agreement to facilitate this process — even as the continental superstate tightens its own asylum policies.It’s hard to disagree with Mr. Burnham when he says of Britain that “I cannot say to you truthfully that where we are is good enough.” Yet Britain’s troubles, such as they are, can hardly be pinned on Brexit. As a former chancellor of the exchequer, Jeremy Hunt, and a former premier, Liz Truss, among others, have averred, Britain’s economic woes can be more accurately traced to the failure to take advantage of the opportunities offered by British Independence.Viewed through that lens, Mr. Burnham’s talk of reorienting toward the EU suggests a wrong turn. The premier vows to “lay out to the country” what he believes are the “different options for Britain’s long-term relationship with our European partners.” This follows a recent push from Britain’s left to reverse Brexit. The former premier, Tony Blair, has called for Britain, per the Guardian to “work towards rejoining the EU in the next decade.”The leader of Britain’s Liberal Democrats, Ed Davey, is suggesting that his party is ready to place Britain “back at the centre of Europe.” This vision of Britain again subsuming its sovereignty under the EU umbrella is at odds with Ms. Truss’s vision of “a much bolder economic model” for Britain — “more like Singapore on steroids than a Norway on valium.” Thwarting progress, she warns, is a “powerful bureaucracy” that “has resisted change.”The EU, though, as Margaret Thatcher warned, is in effect a government in the form of a bureaucracy, whose stifling regulations spurred the Brexit vote. The goal, as Prime Minister Boris Johnson put it, was to return to the “sunlit uplands” of national sovereignty. Mr. Burnham urges a rapprochement with Brussels that he claims “will allow us to rise again.” It is an illusion to think that national revival can be achieved at the cost of British Independence.

Labour Prepares To Retreat on Brexit

Labour Prepares To Retreat on Brexit

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