The Brexit advice Andy Burnham should throw in the bin

To the latter there is surely no greater example than a letter sent to Burnham by what very silly media outlets have called “a group of leading business figures, economists and former Brexit negotiators” warning against any attempt to dilute Brexit by his new administration. The letter demands Burnham “remain steadfast in protecting the sovereignty, freedoms and opportunities that Brexit has delivered and which the British people have consistently voted for” (once, 10 years ago).

It was organised by something called the Independent Business Network, who you can be forgiven for never having heard of. According to its very sparse website, it “speaks for the overwhelming majority of the business community to seize the opportunities Brexit provides” as opposed to the CBI, which is “working to undermine the democratic will of the British people” (the CBI indirectly speaks for more than 150,000 businesses across the UK; the IBN does not publicly disclose a count of registered member businesses).

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The letter, you may not be gobsmacked to learn, is a mixture of dated Brexit rhetoric and outright mistruths. For instance, it demands that “we must have the freedom to set our own interest rates and a have a dependent [sic] currency”, when the UK never lost the freedom to set its own interest rates or control its currency while in the EU and the Bank of England retained full, independent control over monetary policy. The Brexiteers might not like this last bit – the Bank being, of course, as much a haven of wokery as the EU itself – but it’s true.

“We must be free of the tariff barriers to competition that the Customs Union would require, itself a major source of inflation adding to the cost of living,” the letter goes on, flipping reality on its head. Being a member of the EU customs union meant zero tariffs and border friction on goods moving between the UK and its largest trading partner. The new border frictions resulting from Brexit actually increased the cost of food and imported goods, thereby fueling inflation rather than reducing it.

The letter boasts of “the ongoing negotiations with the United States” over a trade deal – talks which have been stalled, presumed dead, since 2021 – and claims that the sector-by-sector deals being pursued by Keir Starmer before his defenestration “would apply to all British business, domestic and those who export around the globe, not just those few that export to the EU”. This simply isn’t true – any such rules selectively target specific sectors trading with the EU (like agri-food).

And it claims that “across England, Wales and significant portions of every other nation of the United Kingdom” people supported Brexit. Using a meaningless phrase like “significant portions” masks the fact that two of the UK’s four nations –  Scotland (62%) and  Northern Ireland (55.8%) voted overwhelmingly to Remain.

So who are these “leading business figures, economists and former Brexit negotiators” who have penned the letter of advice to Burnham?

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Well, there’s Tim Martin, Wetherspoons chief and purveyor of the 10am pint, who cheerled for Brexit until it happened and he was moaning about the loss of EU bar staff. There’s also Rocco Forte, the hotelier who gave Vote Leave hundreds of thousands of pounds and then went mad about then-chancellor Rishi Sunak’s decision to scrap tax-free shopping for international visitors.

Then there’s, er, John Redwood, the oddball former Tory minister last politically relevant when Kula Shaker were in the charts, Daniel Moylan, the Tory peer who suggested retirees should fill post-Brexit labour shortage (good luck picking cabbages, octogenarians!), Peter Cruddas, another Tory peer who fought to keep Boris Johnson in Downing Street, and Suzanne Evans, who managed to lose a UKIP leadership election to Paul Nuttall.

Oh, and those “former Brexit negotiators”? It’s just one – inevitably, David ‘Frosty’ Frost, the hapless former whisky salesman who so utterly bodged said negotiation that he went on to become the only person ever to quit the Cabinet in protest at a deal he himself had negotiated and signed.

In short, the usual brigade of the mad, bad and the Japanese soldiers still in the bushes of Lubang Island two decades after the end of the second world war. It is entirely possible Burnham may get offered some worse advice by some even more muddle-headed people over the next few weeks – but it is very unlikely indeed.