Rafael Behr
Thank you everyone for so many great questions, each one leading into so many issues and not enough time to cover them all. I’ve written a column for tomorrow that looks at the extent to which Starmer’s failure can be connected to the legacy of the referendum, whether there is a Brexit curse that brings UK prime ministers’ tenures to a premature end and whether Burnham can beat the trend. I hope you enjoy that. (‘Enjoy’ maybe not the word in this context.) Anyway, thanks for reading. See you next time.
Key events
Is rejoining the EU inevitable?
appealforsanity asks: Given the clear demographic evolution of the UK electorate – simplified as younger Europhiles replacing moribund Brexit voters from 2016 – isn’t rejoin inevitable? Isn’t it now just a case of patience as ever more Brexiters die off, then scheduling, sequencing, titrating reintegration into the EU in slow, steady increments? What could Andy Burnham do to catalyse this process, and prevent further Brexit damage to Britain’s prospects? Has the UK reached peak Farage?
double quotation mark Raf: I’m wary of any argument based on demographic destiny. There are too many other variables in politics. Charismatic leaders, wars and economic crises can shift the dials in ways we can’t foresee even if we know that, on balance, young people currently tend to be more pro-EU. That said, I do think the ground is shifting and, not to put too fine a point on it, the replacement of dead leavers with enfranchised young remainer/rejoiners is a big part of that. One thing I would recommend to catalyse/expedite the process – whether to Burnham or anyone else – is not to frame the argument as a correction of past error or return to the prelapsarian world of May 2016. The pro-EU cause is not served by nostalgia, not least because that is an inherently conservative idiom, which too easily shades into fantasy and denial of present-day problems. (The Eurosceptic cause illustrates that tendency all too well.) Also, a lesson worth learning from the Eurosceptics – don’t get bogged down in specific scenarios and models. They didn’t and it served them well in making the case for leave.We don’t know what kind of an EU we would be joining or on what terms. But I think it is reasonable to make the case that Britain’s strategic and economic interests are self-evidently served in pursuit of a much closer alliance with the European Project. Burnham (or whoever) should be talking about national pride and destiny, reclaiming our place as one of the great leading nations of our home continent. Nudge the dial in those terms without getting drawn on whether we’d get the rebate back or have to sign up to Schengen etc.
Have we reached peak Farage? I hope so. He is starting to look a bit spent, and he has failed to finish off the Tories, which was quite an important part of his strategic ambition to become the only repository for right-of-centre votes. He also now has a problem with even more extreme parties challenging him on the right flank of Reform. For a long time Farage has been able to play a clever game of toggling between respectability and outrage. He plants his feet in the mainstream, and leans over towards the extreme. But he’s always been careful not to step right over the line where explicit racism and neo-fascism are unmistakable. It is a craft and he has been good at it, but it relies on the more fanatical far-far right being beyond the pale and him being able to tactically distance himself. That is no longer so easy, especially in the X/Twitter milieu where nothing is too extreme. I can see a scenario where Farage feels he has to court a more aggressively far-right online crowd and so loses the claim to respectability that has earned him poll ratings nudging into the 30s. That opens the door to a bit of a Tory fight back as the “genuinely” respectable part of the right. And a fragmented radical nationalist vote will make Burnham’s job a bit easier. But as a rule, betting against the resilience of Farage is a good way to lose money.
Was Starmer right to support Johnson’s Brexit deal?
JackCustard asks: Do you think it was right for Starmer to whip Labour to support Boris Johnson’s Brexit dea or should he have abstained and said this is your bad deal, you carry it?
double quotation mark Raf:So many counterfactuals we don’t have. In hindsight, maybe yes, Starmer should have had the confidence to say “you broke it, you own it.” But it’s easy to forget how thoroughly the national mood seemed to be in favour of just moving on, putting the divisions of 2016-19 behind us and talking about something else for a change. It’s a bit like the question of whether Starmer should have had the confidence to keep more options open in the 2024 manifesto; not hem himself behind the red lines. We don’t know how that election would have played out.As with the tax straitjacket Labour wore for that campaign, it all comes down to a lack of confidence in making and winning arguments. It was a revealing sign. Would it have been better for Labour to enter government with a more flexible mandate on fiscal and European policy? Yes. Was the manifesto the right one if you wanted to win power with a leader who really isn’t comfortable as an orator and lacks the charisma needed to change the weather in a political debate, maybe also yes.
Can Ukraine, Turkey and Iceland be brought into future pro-Europe plans?
DrVanNostram asks: Is there any greater scope for an outer ring / second tier of looser EU commitment outside of membership? Been talked about for a long time but now offers the chance to bring UK, Ukraine, Turkey, Iceland into the tent. Accelerated Defence integration, and regulation while Schengen and Euro membership on a ten year delay?
double quotation mark Raf: Yes, I think there is. The most effective pathway I see for a pro-EU position in UK politics is along these lines. The case should be made in macro terms for strategic alignment with the European project. We should very much be mobilising solidarity with Ukraine in this context. Cast Ukraine and UK as partners in a new defence relationship that is intimately connected to European institutions.As you say, there has been a lot of this chat over the years – variable geometry is the jargon term. And at some point the legal, technical treaty complexity makes it hard to describe what some outer tier of associate members would really look like. (Also Kyiv won’t like anything that feels like being dragged to the periphery by Britain when what Zelenskyy wants is full membership.) But certainly a conversation about innovative models of future partnership should be part of the process that gets us beyond endless rehashing of 2016-2019 vocabulary.
What difficult conversations does society need to have?
Palantiri asks: Some pundits say that there are “hard truths” that the public need to understand. If you subscribe to that view, in your opinion, what is one of the hard truths that you wish people would understand?
double quotation mark Raf:Hmm. I think there are hard issues about which politics is collectively in denial. The looming cost of social care in an ageing population is a very big one. But I wouldn’t frame these as “hard truths” for the public to be made to understand so much as “hard conversations” that our political culture doesn’t know how to begin. I think a lot of people do know about the problem of social care, because they are afraid of what it means for them and their families.The same applies in many areas – AI and the future of work; climate emergency. We know the hard truths, what we don’t have are enough national institutions or forums where long, hard conversations can be had in good faith between people who are committed to really hammering out the solutions and building consensus for their implementation.
Should the rich be taxed to help the majority?
GabeScharner asks:What’s your view on wealth taxes and do you think they are the solution to the erosion of quality of life most people seem to be feeling?
Raf says: Wealth taxes covers a lot of different fiscal instruments. I’m not an economist and there is some variance in opinions on what actually works in terms of earning revenue, as opposed to merely symbolising egalitarian intent. I’m not against symbols – tax policy can be about expressing values and signalling the kind of society we want to be – but that shouldn’t be their main function. The big problem with a lot of wealth taxes, as I understand it, is that they target money that is easily moved, so even if you get a windfall one year, you don’t get it year-on-year, which is a problem when you are building revenue streams to fund public services. (Some very expensive assets are immovable. Land, for example.)
Overall, I’m not against raising money from people who seem to find ways to pay less tax than the rest of us most of the time. My main concern in this argument, though, is that wealth tax becomes a device that the left uses to avoid harder arguments about wider general contribution and the fact that a lot of people on middle incomes already feel very heavily taxed (at least when measured against the quality of services they experience.)
The deep-tissue problem in the British body politic here is a feeling that we should have continental European-style services on American levels of tax. And we can’t. Also, the debate about how to get best value out of public services was corrupted by the years of austerity, so it is almost impossible to have a healthy discussion of what “reform” of, say, the benefits system should actually look like without it polarising around a left position that says any budget savings are cruel/vindictive and a right position that sees all current expenditure as a subsidy to idleness.
Ultimately we need a big picture argument about what the state does well, what it needs to do more of, where less, where it has created perverse incentives and how – given the ageing population, rising costs of healthcare, need to build a military deterrent less reliant on the US – the whole tax base has to be reconfigured. Basically, I’m waiting for a persuasive charismatic reforming social democrat to come along and upgrade the British state to make it fit for the 21st Century, and persuade a majority of British people that they don’t mind paying a bit more tax because the dividend they get in a more cohesive, secure and healthy society is worth it. Not holding my breath.
Favourite book on Brexit?
IscoBusquet asks: What is your favourite book about Brexit?
Simmsy asks: Rafael, you express yourself with such clarity, style and eloquence. Can you recommend any books on the art of writing that had a particular influence on you? Thanks.
double quotation mark Raf: I read a lot of Brexit and Brexit-related books when writing my own book (which doesn’t count because it’s about other things too, and also too self-regarding to cite as my favourite.) The one that really stood out, partly because of the insight and partly because of the quality of writing, is Fintan O’Toole’sHeroic Failure: Brexit and the Politics of Pain. It was published in 2019, so before the final deal was even done, which makes the perspicacity all the more impressive. O’Toole is an Irish journalist and his perspective on the imperial delusions and cultural neuroses of the English eurosceptic elites – especially the character of Boris Johnson – are coloured by a healthy outsider’s scorn for age-old Albionish perfidy. Strongly recommended.As for my writing, I don’t deserve the compliment but I’ll take it anyway. I haven’t read much about the craft of writing. The strongest influence I can cite, in the sense of someone whose prose I would read simply to get into a frame of mind to express myself clearly, is the late Clive James. He once said that his ambition was to turn a phrase until it catches the light. You can’t really beat that, can you. His collection of short essays, each dedicated to a significant cultural or historical figure of the 20thcentury, Cultural Amnesia, is brilliant. It contains a lot of judgments about other writers, from which a consistent theme emerges: lucid prose and coherence of thought are intimately fused. If a passage is convoluted and hard to understand, it is often a sign that the underlying argument contains some awkward contortion. That doesn’t necessarily prove it is wrong, but a demand on the reader to work hard to decrypt the meaning should never be taken as a proxy for profundity or intelligence. It can be the opposite. Outside the realms of quantum mechanics and higher mathematics, I don’t think there are many ideas so complex as to defy any prospect of accessible articulation.
How important is the issue of government centralisation?
Kurwenal asks: The election of Andy Burnham has raised again the question of the over-centralised nature of government. To what extent is this “whinging” by those outside London and parts of the south-east (I am one such whinger) or do the roots of much that has happened with the fragmentation of our politics lie with the reality of the imbalance?
double quotation mark Raf: I’m pretty much persuaded that this really is a big problem. I recommend Sam Freedman’s bookFailed State on this (among other) topics. We really need devolved government to acquire some of the status and, crucially, the accountability of national government so local administrations can innovate with policy, experiment. Then we’ll start incubating new ideas and discovering what works. The problem is that this involves the Treasury letting go of some purse strings, which nochancellor wants to do because, understandably, they think ultimately central government will get the blame when things go wrong. Devolution can feel a bit lose-lose for Downing Street. You empower rivals when it works and get it in the neck from voters when it doesn’t. It’s also something governments only tend to do at the start of their time in office, when they think they have more political capital than they do. Pretty quickly the idea of devolving power so your enemies can win in local elections and then torment you starts to feel like a rubbish plan.But somehow we need to break the vicious cycle by which central government doesn’t trust local politics, withholds power, making local government more dependent on performative opposition to the centre and less able to make a real difference, which leads serious capable people to despair of politics and not want to get involved at a local level.
There’s a separate issue around the way Downing Street itself works and a compelling argument that the centre is weirdly weak, given how much constitutional power it has. Compared to a US or French president, or even an Australian federal leader, a UK prime minister has an under-powered apparatus around him/her to drive her/his agenda. Again Freedman is good on this and the Institute for Government has done some good work in this area. Short version: we need major constitutional reform that seriously federalises power, but with a quid pro quo in making the prime minister’s office much more of a serious institution.
What does Burnham really think about immigration?
Shauny79 asks: Do you believe Andy Burnham really supports the anti-migrant measures proposed by the current home secretary or was he just speaking with the people of Makerfield in mind?
double quotation mark Raf: I don’t have any special insight, but my instinct here is that he recognises the need for any government to have a robust policy of asserting control over the nation’s borders and didn’t want to get into a fight over the details in the middle of a byelection campaign. He will (or should) want to recalibrate the position to strip out some of the egregiously Reform-coded bits of the current immigration policy – the retrospective rug-pull on entitlement to indefinite leave to remain, for example – and I think there is a way to do that without making himself overly vulnerable to the charge of having gone hugely soft on migration.If he really is the superior communicator he’s cracked up to be, he should be able to reframe the argument as a kind of muscular liberalism, saying Britain has been made stronger by immigration; that Labour policy is about fairness, control and compassion and that Farage opposes it because he actually wants the system to fail. He needs chaos and disorder because that’s his happy place, whereas the decent mainstream of the country can see through him. Or something along those lines.
Does the special relationship with the US prevent the UK from identifying itself as a European country?
sherpa_10 asks: I remember a Kenneth Tynan essay in which he complained that British theatre was far more obsessed with American drama than European drama. Does the special relationship prevent the UK from identifying itself as a European country?
double quotation mark Raf: It certainly has done in the past. I think that is now finally changing. The UK will always have certain distinctive ambivalence towards continental Europe and a particular cultural attachment to the US – these are functions of history, island geography, culture, language etc. But I don’t think anyone should underestimate how seismic the effect of Trump’s marauding behaviour has been in this context. The incineration of trust and the perception that the US is no longer a reliable ally has cut deep. There is good polling evidence to support this and, while Whitehall and Westminster might be a bit slow to catch up, the geostrategic imperative of getting closer to Europe is undeniable. As one (now former) adviser at the Foreign Office put it recently (bit of a paraphrase here as I don’t have a verbatim note): “when I landed in Washington I was a committed Atlanticist. When I saw the way we were treated by the Trump administration, I became a British Gaullist.”I think British Gaullism, paradoxical though it sounds, is not a bad account of where our foreign policy is heading. Also worth noting the irony that British politics generally looks a lot more European since Brexit with support fragmenting over many parties, a diminished pro-business centre right failing to fend off a threatening far right, a small but stubborn liberal party, a haggard and lost-looking social democrat party and a more radical left/Green party. (There are all kinds of complications once you factor in Wales, Scotland, NI but you get the idea.)
How could a Burnham government tackle Reform?
Davroskemp asks: Why has it been so difficult for Labour to weaken Farage when so much of the Brexit disaster can be laid at his feet? How should a Burnham government tackle this to convince the electorate to ignore Farage and Reform?
double quotation mark Raf: It is extraordinary when you pause to think about it. The single most momentous decision in UK public policy for a generation is a decision that is very firmly connected to one man’s personal ambition for as long as he has been in public life, which is decades. He called for it, he campaigned for it, he got it. It turns out to be an unalloyed disaster, and yet somehow this is not the most salient issue when the question then arises as to whether or not he is qualified to be prime minister? Some of this is down to his talents as a politician. A lot of it is about the intensity of political and cognitive bias in the Brexit-supporting part of Westminster that meant no-one wants to own their portion of the blame. And then there’s the 2024 general election campaign in which Labour pursued a strategy of driving down the salience of Europe as the price for winning an audience in so-called “red wall” seats. (Whether or not that was a price worth paying is a different debate; no room for it here.)To an extent, pro-European politicians have been too squeamish about pinning the blame for Brexit in Farage for fear of sounding as if they are accusing leave voters of being stupid – the spectre of the arrogant, metropolitan liberal elitist saying “I told you so” does haunt the debate a little bit. It wouldn’t be a good look. But I think nearly everyone has moved on a bit from that framing of it. The polling is very clear that a majority can see that Brexit hasn’t worked. In the last 6-12 months, Starmer and Reeves have been pushing on the anti-Brexit button a bit more, especially in the context of economic re-integration with Europe and mindful that Trump is a one-man beacon advertising the need for closer relations with our continental allies. But Burnham can and should go much further.
Hanging Brexit around Farage’s neck is a vital part of the process of pricking his pseudo-insurgent bubble. The idea that he is some kind of outsider is absurd. You don’t want the new prime minister to sound as if he is patronising leave voters, but there must be a way for a half-decent communicator to land the argument that says “this guy peddles nothing but division, he turned us against each other once before, we’ve been living in Farageland for 10 long years and guess what? It isn’t working. We’ve already tried it his way. Man, we have tried and tried and tried. But it’s a dud. Now let’s try it the other way.”
UKIP came and went but is Reform here to stay?
JamesValencia asks:Is Reform going to fade away, like the BNP and like UKIP before it? Or is it a reflection of the global wave of authoritarian movements, and will we, collectively, have to live through the consequences before we re-learn the hard lessons of the past “do not listen to authoritarians, right or left” ?
double quotation mark Raf: I think a radical nationalist party is here for some time to come. These are the times we live in. That party might end up being a hybrid of the current Conservatives and Reform – it depends on Farage’s longevity, frankly. But I don’t think the likelihood of Faragism becoming a fixture of the UK political spectrum (which has happened already, let’s face it) means it is inevitable he will be prime minister. The number of people who don’t want that to happen vastly outnumbers those who do. To overcome that arithmetic disadvantage, Farage has to get lucky with the electoral system (sadly all too plausible) and probably do a deal with the Tories (sadly also conceivable, but not automatic).
Has the neoliberal ship run aground?
thegreatfatsby asks:How difficult do you think it will be to pull the centrist neoliberal ship off the reef its foundering on and reverse course?
double quotation mark Raf: My instinct is that the era where the policies generally clustered as “neoliberal” enjoyed broad consensus and supremacy is over. Core aspects of liberal market economics will, of course, endure and liberal politics should, I hope, prove similarly resilient. But it is important to disaggregate the constitutional and rights-based principles of liberalism from the more Hayekian arguments about economic freedom as the essential countervailing force to state control that puts us on the “road to serfdom.” The bundling of economic liberalism, tending to libertarianism, with political liberalism as one conjoined doctrine was a consequence of the end of the cold war and the total defeat of Marxist shades of left political organisation. That bred the pro-globalisation “neoliberal” consensus from the late 90s through to around 2016. And it was a disaster for moderate,politically liberal social democrats.But now you have nationalists and populists who combine market libertarianism when it suits them (crypto grift, for example) with incredibly statist policies when it is a question of authoritarian control. Trump has flirted with nationalising parts or all of the frontier AI sector for example.
The natural tendency of the radical right, since it despises social freedoms and liberal permissiveness (“woke” degeneracy as they see it), is to combine very conservative social policies, authoritarian statecraft, especially regarding immigration, with commercial favours in the market to enrich themselves and their friends. A kind of corporate national socialism, in other words.
I’m not sure what it even means to be a “centrist” in this context. It’s a complex term which assumes a certain amount of equivalence and equidistance between left and right positions. That kind of geometry made some sense in the 20thcentury and first decade of this one, but less so now. I find it more useful to think in terms of constitutional liberalism in political norms and structures; social democracy in the ambition to harness market forces to egalitarian ends.
