What is Andrew Rawnsley smoking?

By Pete North - January 25, 2021

Says Andrew Rawnsley in The Observer:

“Remainers struggled to find ways to make technical-sounding issues matter to the public. Among many voters and many politicians, the great benefits of being inside the single market were taken for granted right up until the moment when they vanished.”

This I find quite astonishing. It’s certainly not as I recall it. They never had even the slightest grasp of those “technical-sounding issues” and there was scant discussion of them anywhere outside of a small claque of intellectually incestuous trade wonks. The best remainers could muster was “super gonorrhoea” scares, and witless prattle about the customs union without even knowing what it was.

Moreover, form the very beginning, remainers had conflated the single market with EU membership, and having voted to leave, the suggestion that we should remain in it was seen akin with overturning the referendum. Play stupid games, win stupid prizes. We also note that when given the opportunity, remainers voted emphatically against staying in the single market. The most vociferous advocates of EEA Efta were leavers.

The only remain inclined types to seriously grapple with the issues on any technical level was the FT whose coverage was so slanted (the bits that weren’t plagiarised) and littered with error that they were largely talking to themselves. Apart from one lowly BBC reporter covering Northern Ireland, virtually nobody in the media, or on the remain side ever took the time to find out what that “red tape” was likely to be.

Even as we approached Christmas, not knowing if there would even be a deal, it was still couched in terms of no deal bad, trade deal good – despite FTAs having no provisions for “frictionless trade”. The media never acquired its own expertise and instead preferred to rely on the trade Twitterati for the odd pull quote, which would often be no more sophisticated than the Friends of the Earth media spokesman.

Before being summarily banned from Twitter I produced a number of “technical-sounding” threads, many of which went viral, on the functioning of the single market and the necessity to stay in it. The only vessel to pick up on any of it was the Farmer’s Guardian – mostly because they were looking for free copy.

But then as much as the media never made a serious go of it, business didn’t either. Business was as much unprepared as the government, and had exaggerated expectations of Johnson’s deal. Largely, they took him at face value and were overly anxious not to rock the boat. You do wonder how hard-headed businessmen (supposedly) could be so naïve and ignorant.

Ultimately they took the concept of a trade deal at face value. The average munter doesn’t know what an FTA is, nor that they vary in breadth and depth. The average person, to a point, is entitled to be that ignorant. Businessmen are not – not if they want to stay in business. And ultimately the first rule of business, the first order of business, is to stay in business.

But then these are busy men who have trade associations to do this work for them. They badly dropped the ball – and the bigger they are, the worse they are. And I know why.

The one thing they all have in common, like think tanks, is the need for media exposure. It doesn’t matter if they have nothing of value to say, if there is airtime going, they’re all over it. And the one secret weapon you need is a telegenic twentysomething PR girlie – and it doesn’t matter if they know the square root of f*ck all about trade or even the industry they represent. That which they did know was gleaned from joining the (remainer) trade Twitter circle jerk.

Thus there was an inherent remainer bias to the “expertise” on offer, thus could be ignored with ease. Experts do like to whine that they were ignored, but having cosied up to the EU (and the British government) in the hope of a cushy sinecure after Brexit, they can’t be remotely surprised that they weren’t taken seriously. Thus the trade expertise in circulation largely amounted to embittered former civil servants. Notwithstanding the very excellent Ivan Rogers.

If anything, those remainers and alleged experts did more to destroy the single market option then even the ERG. They did all they could to promote the “rule taker” mythology, ignoring the nuances and distinctions of the EEA Efta system. That was repeatedly retailed by politicians of all stripes – largely because they’re the only people left who still get their information from newspapers and the last people alive to care what they think.

It was never the case that our departure from the EU necessarily involved the evisceration of our exports. Parliament had the numbers to assert their sovereignty, and the media had the opportunity, if not the will, to inform the debate. That the watchdogs didn’t bark is not a fault of Brexit.

There is no question that Brexit, so far as business is concerned, is the most monumental mess in living memory. It is hard to see how it could have been more badly handled at all levels. But neither politicians, the media nor business walk away from this looking good – and maybe, just maybe, we’d have had the far reaching public debate we needed had we not been refighting the referendum and successive attempts to overthrow the vote.

A final point I would make is that remainers in the media were adept at idiot laundering. It was in their interests to ensure that leavers were always portrayed as jingoistic imbeciles and were keen to ensure moderates never got a look in. Thus the leave side was increasingly represented by the mouth-foamer wing which ironically became a self-fulfilling prophecy. All the while, hacks cosied up to Shanker Singham knowing damn well he was a fraud thereby legitimising his “professional” opinion. He then become the go-to guy when Tories wanted their delusions validated.

From my corner of the internet, it’s difficult to have any sympathy at all. Efta EEA advocates had very little exposure primarily because the likes of Rawnsley and others in the media insist on presenting the issues in a binary context. It was not in their interests to have people coming forward with viable solutions to complex problems because it undermined the TINA narrative – and certainly not people who knew more than they did. Ultimately the arrogance and vanity of the media establishment has delivered what it feared the most. Cry us all a river why don’t you?