A pocket full of mumbles such are promises

Well, Boris Johnson, or rather people with far more intelligence than him, finally got Brexit done. Having left the EU last January, we now leave the transition period with a wafer-thin deal in which we have succeeded in negotiating away most of the benefits of EU membership. You know the arguments by now, or facts as I call them. We’ve chosen to give away our freedom to live, love, study, work and retire anywhere in the EU27 for a pocket full of mumbles such are promises, or the English nationalist myth of sovereignty. At least we avoid the disastrous and immediate rupture of a no deal Brexit and instead our future becomes one of a more gentle decline and a loss of soft power. There is literally nothing that will benefit anyone except the wealthy illiberal elite like Farage and Johnson who convinced us their gain would be ours, too. Spoiler alert: it won’t be our gain. But what’s done is done.

Parliament has been recalled next week to vote on the future trade deal, and whilst it is undoubtedly what us economists call crap and hugely damaging in the long term, I am about to express a view that will have my fellow remoaners groaning with anguish. Labour should vote for it.

Yes, I realise that none of us have actually read it yet, but I have come to one very simple conclusion: a piss poor trade agreement is better than no agreement at all. Labour has faffed around for years, oohing and aahing on the subject of Brexit. Led, if that’s the right word, by a cranky old backbencher who had always been a Eurosceptic throughout his mediocre political career, Labour had tied itself up in knots. I don’t blame Jeremy Corbyn solely for Brexit, but his half-hearted ‘support’ for remain would have been laughable if it hadn’t been so damaging. Labour never convinced its own supporters that staying in the EU would benefit them and without them voting remain the forces of populism and English nationalism and exceptionalism would prevail. And so they did.

The political impasse was finally broken a year ago when Boris Johnson won a landslide election victory. Dominic Cummings, the hero of Barnard Castle, masterminded his usual brilliant campaign based on populism and lies and Brexit was effectively done.

When Corbyn was finally replaced and returned to the political obscurity he so richly deserves, Labour’s new leader, the pro remain, pro EU Keir Starmer immediately accepted the game was up for remain. Brexit should now go ahead. The only thing left would be to achieve an at best satisfactory post Brexit trade agreement that maintained many of the rights and freedoms we enjoyed as EU members. The alternatives were a hard no deal crash out or a minimalist deal.

The Brexit headbangers who decide Tory policy forced Johnson to go for the latter option and, quite deliberately, he dragged out negotiations until the last possible moment, leaving little time over the Christmas period for MPs to examine the new trading arrangements. For all that, this is, for now, the end game. Johnson will put the deal to parliament and he would win the vote even if Labour opposed or abstained. Keir Starmer could urge abstention or opposition, calling on Labour to ensure Johnson and the Tory wreckers would own the slow puncture of Brexit. I have argued this point myself in the past and as the consequences play out over time we will all see that Brexit damaged our country. In supporting this threadbare agreement, Starmer must acknowledge that.

In my view, Labour’s new leader must kick away from the anchor of Brexit. He must say that this deal is, to say the least, far from perfect and that in the coming years Labour should seek to improve it and seek a future relationship with the EU such as that enjoyed by Norway. I see no point in calling to rejoin the EU, much as I would love to at the earliest opportunity. That will be a decision for future generations, not this one.

Brexit has divided and nearly broken this country. It has damaged relationships within families and ended friendships. And the only reason it happened at all was because David Cameron called a referendum in order to shut up the head-banging Brexiters once and for all. That went well and it is why Cameron, along with May and now especially Johnson, will always be regarded as the worst prime ministers in history.

But we must, somehow, try to move on and our political leaders must lead the way. I largely kept my gob shut after Brexit when my personal view was that we should have accepted the result of the EU referendum and not seek a second referendum, despite the lies of the English nationalist right, and we should seek to come to a Norway + future arrangement with Europe. That might have settled matters years ago, but instead we had over four years of political chaos and now we are where we are.

Johnson’s Brexit deal is not a good one by any stretch of the imagination but it is the only one that’s available. Labour should call it out for what it is and point out its shortfalls which government should seek to improve on in the coming years and on that qualified basis, vote it through. When things go Pete Tong, as they surely will, doubtless Johnson’s successor will answer Labour criticism with “But you voted for it, too”. So be it. And Labour will be able to explain simply and clearly that it was either that or the hardest of ruptures.

Crap deal or not, it’s the deal we have. And Labour’s Brexit supporters will never be convinced by a party that appears to be locked in the past. I truly believe Labour should support the government’s heavily flawed trade agreement. It’s the best of a very bad deal and arguing otherwise is, I’m afraid, mere posturing.