Meeting with Baroness Jan Royall of Blaisdon

8 November 2023

We were very pleased to welcome Baroness Jan Royall of Blaisdon to a meeting which we co-hosted with the Cheltenham Labour Party.

Julie Farmer, Chair CLP, introduced Jan and welcomed everyone to the meeting following which Jan spoke and answered questions. The meeting was closed by Flo Clucas, Chair of Cheltenham for Europe, who thanked Jan and attendees for coming, as well as inspiring us to keep fighting for our European ideals and regaining our place in the EU.

Jan has very kindly sent a transcript of her talk which is below.

I don’t think I have spoken at a meeting in Cheltenham since 1984 when I was Labour’s candidate in the European elections. I loved the campaign but of course I lost. It was a time when so many in the Labour Party were anti-European. I remember going to canvass in Stratford one day, turned up at the appointed place, and no-one else was there. It certainly wouldn’t be like that today. Those were the wilderness years.

At that time I also marched here in support of trade unions at GCHQ, the campaign led by the wonderful Mike Grindley. What a man of principle. Many of you will remember that GCHQ trade unions were banned by the Thatcher Government which claimed that it undermined national security. The ban lasted from 1984 until Labour came to power and restored the membership in May 1997, one of the first things that we did when we got to power. A small but important example of the difference that a Labour government makes.

Remember Sure Start, the introductions of the national minimum wage, the Good Friday Agreement, the introduction of the Human Rights Act, half a million children lifted out of poverty, the expansion of LGBTQ rights and the fact that the waiting list went down from 18 months to 18 weeks – and now the NHS is on its knees with nearly 8 million people waiting for treatment.

It’s strange that I am now at Somerville, Margaret Thatcher’s College, where we have the Margaret Thatcher Scholarship Trust which in ten years has fully funded more than 50 students. That’s a very good initiative in her name. As you may know, she studied chemistry and her tutor was Dorothy Hodgkin, still the only British woman scientist to have received a noble prize for science. Dorothy was a left-wing peace activist who was awarded the Order of Lenin and apparently she used to visit Downing Street from time to time and prior to every visit, Mrs Thatcher used to do hours of homework.

Somerville was also the College of Shirley Williams who as part of the Gang of Four caused the schism in our Party because of Europe. In later years when we were both in the Lords we worked together on various issues, including Europe and we became close when I went to Somerville. She was a brilliant woman who never stopped fighting for the Europe that we both loved.

It is now nearly seven and a half years since the Referendum. Since that fateful day we have had five Prime Ministers, one who lasted fewer days than a lettuce but who wreaked unbelievable havoc on our country.

Of the 52% who voted to Leave, it is clear that some wanted to get out of the EU at any cost, but a much larger number were convinced that departure could and would come at little or no cost.

It’s now three and a half years since a Government was elected with the cardinal commitment to “Get Brexit done” and 3 years since the Trade and Cooperation Agreement to achieve that came into effect. Since then, arrangements to complete controls on imports into the UK from the EU have (thankfully) been unilaterally postponed 4 times by the Government because of complexities and lack of capacity. So they haven’t “Got Brexit done”.

But, meanwhile, Brexit will not be “done” for some years yet. Under the TCA and Withdrawal Agreement, between now and 2027, there will be expiries and deadlines, innovations, increases and decreases in areas including financial services, regulation of electric vehicle components, personal data, chemicals, fisheries and energy cooperation. And, in 2025, the TCA can be reviewed. That will be an opportunity for change.

At the moment we suffer huge bills as a consequences of Brexit, political as well as economic, cultural as well as commercial. Identifying them is not “Remoaning or “Bregretting,” it is public interest.

The blame for the costs, losses, disadvantages and disruption must lie where it belongs – NOT on the voters who I would suggest were in large part alienated by deteriorated economic and social changes and who had been subjected to decades of untruths, half-truths and myths about Europe as the source of many woes. They had been assaulted by the lie that everything would be better managed, more prosperous and secure when we were “free” of the bureaucracy and bullying of the EU “centralising super-State”. The great majority who voted Leave weren’t stupid or racist, they were resentful and hopeful.

The blame must lie on the Prime Ministers who have been appeasing their most obsessive Europhobes and the populist nationalists in their Party. They have sabotaged, not served the national interest.

That’s why we have suffered a “hard” Brexit from the EU rather than one – such as re-joining EFTA – which could have substantially mitigated the economic and political, social and cultural effects of leaving the Union.

A few deplorable facts:

Devaluation of the £ since June 2016 by as much as 18% against the US $ (the World’s Energy currency) and 13% against the Euro (source of 58% of UK fruit and veg, 23% of all food imports and 42% of all imports).

The Office for Budget Responsibility (OBR) reports that imports from the EU are down by 18% BUT exports to the EU are down by 9%.

Both figures have been affected by huge new administrative impediments including border controls, customs checks, import duty, and health inspections on plant and animal products made even more problematic by shortages of vets and truck drivers who have gone home to the EU. Meanwhile “Global Britain’s” imports from NON-EU countries are up by 10% but exports to those countries are DOWN by 18%.

Some of those changes could, of course, be attributed to the disruptions of the Coronavirus pandemic. BUT that hit the WHOLE World – and yet the UK is the ONLY major economy which has failed to recover trade and economic growth since that global paralysis. (OECD, ONS Nov ’22). Part of that failure to recover can clearly be related to two other items on the “real Brexit bill”:

First, the LSE Centre for Economic Performance calculates that, since Brexit, UK/EU trade RELATIONSHIPS are down by 33%, mainly affecting SME’s – the “backbone of the UK economy” – with much of that reduction caused by new administrative burdens and delays. As a result, some traders have given up, some from the UK have set up operations in the EU, taking jobs and enterprise with them.

Second, according to the OBR, since early 2017 Foreign Direct Investment in the UK has fallen from 4% of Gross Domestic Product to 1% as investors who used to use the UK to enter the Single Market of 500million people have gone elsewhere.

That’s what “Global” capitalism means. Strangely Brexiters seem not to understand that elementary reality. That loss of trade and Inward Investment also helps to explain why the OBR has had to forecast a reduction in potential growth by 4% and in productivity by a similar proportion, all resulting from Brexit.

Since every 1% of growth generates about £10 billion of tax revenues, Brexit results in about £40 billion loss in available funding for the NHS and other vital public services. That’s a huge item on the bill for a Brexit that was promised to gain £350 million a week for the NHS.

Obviously, INFLATION – post-Covid, and pumped up by energy costs in the wake of Putin’s criminal war on Ukraine – has infected every economy. But the UK has the added burden of Brexit – and that certainly inhibits the ability of the UK to achieve inflation rates that are lower than comparable countries.

I don’t know if any of you read ‘The New Statesman’ but every week I compulsively look at the back page to see ‘How Britain compares to the rest of the world’. It is so depressing. With regards to GDP forecast growth we are lowest of the 10 countries cited; only Russia, Brazil and the US have higher interest rates; and we have the highest inflation forecast for 2024.

Whilst Brexit is not the single cause of this, and of the cost-of-living crisis it has hugely exacerbated the problems. We have a country in which the fabric of our society has been torn apart and millions of people are suffering. Like other analysts, the Institute for International Economics says “Brexit is the primary driver of the inflation differential” and Sussex University Centre for Trade Policy says Brexit is “the most plausible reason why Britain is doing comparably worse than comparable countries”.

None of what we were promised with Brexit has been realized. Quite the contrary. For example, rather than radically reducing immigration, the issue that was shamefully used to stoke up fears, immigration this year will be more than 600,000 thousand and, in the year ending December 2022, EU net migration was negative.

As for sovereignty, it is a fine word invoking feelings of independence, self determination and self-reliance. But for countries, especially democracies, stand-alone sovereignty hasn’t been a reality for a very long time.

In the World now, and for many decades past, the REALITY has not been splendid sovereignty in its pomp and circumstance – it’s been INTERdependence: alliance, co-operation, accord, mutuality.

For a medium sized trading country in Northern Europe, the best means of enjoying the power and influence to advance and protect national interests – to exercise MEANINGFUL sovereignty – is to mutually share agreed parts of it with other democracies in a community of jointly determined Laws. Withdrawal from that doesn’t bring autonomy, it brings insecurity.

Much has changed here and in our Continent even in the seven and a half years since June 2016. Those changes will continue and the challenges and opportunities will shift too.

Recognising that, we have to INSIST that a new relationship with the EU is forged through ACHIEVABLE agreements on security, veterinary arrangements, science, energy, Northern Ireland, mobility visas for business and school pupils, professional qualifications, biometric passport checks and much else.

Separately, they are steps. Together they are strides towards the security, prosperity, creativity, amity and liberty of being part of a Continent of fellow-Europeans.

They all emphasise practicality.

They all provide MUTUAL advantage.

They all offer assurance, dependability.

They all foster TRUST in place of the wariness, suspicion, DIStrust that now marks relations between the EU and the UK.

My abiding hope is that such a course will be followed by a new Government because it will not be pursued with effective vigour by the current paralysed administration.

By the time that advance can start, we will have endured over 8 lean years of Brexit and it is implausible to believe that efforts to establish a productive new relationship with the EU can inaugurate years of plenty.

It would, however, be a good start on the route back to normality and – in the longer term – back to the utility, security, and opportunity of Union.