Labour Wants A New Brexit Deal... But Brussels Doesn't

That shadow chancellor Rachel Reeves has finally chosen to talk about Europe – about breaking down EU trade barriers, regulatory alignment with the continent, and negotiating a better deal than Boris Johnson managed – is a clear indication that Labour thinks it is all but home and hosed as far as the general election is concerned.

- JAMES MOORE

This had been one of those subjects the party was desperate not to mention for fear of frightening the horses. Now, we’re once again talking about revisiting Johnson’s trade & cooperation agreement (TCA) and admitting that this would inevitably mean agreeing to align with EU standards.

A Labour government is only too well aware that it needs to boost economic growth if it is ever to make its shaky-looking numbers add up. The trade barrier erected along the English Channel is one of the biggest impediments to that. How big of an impediment has been made clear by the Office for Budgetary Responsibility, which updated its Brexit analysis at the beginning of last month.

It expects that the TCA will result in a reduction in desperately needed long-run productivity by 4 per cent when compared to remaining in the EU, citing “the increase in non-tariff barriers on UK-EU trade”. These include multiple forms, red tape, customs checks, and lots of unproductive waiting around while the slow wheels of bureaucracy turn. It thinks that both exports and imports will be around 15 per cent lower in the long run, and that new deals with non-EU countries “will not have a material impact” on this.