Nothing else has worked – so Starmer and Reeves are finally telling the truth about Brexit | Rafael Behr

The UK government is trying out a new Brexit stance, not to be mistaken for a change in policy. The shift is tonal.

Previously, Keir Starmer and Rachel Reeves talked about Britain’s detachment from the rest of Europe as a feature of the natural landscape, awkward to navigate perhaps, but nobody’s fault. Now they are prepared to say it is an affliction.

Speaking at a regional investment conference on Tuesday, the chancellor listed Brexit alongside the pandemic and austerity as causes of persistent economic lethargy. She made the same point at a meeting of the International Monetary Fund in Washington last weekend, observing that the country’s “productivity challenge has been compounded by the way in which the UK left the European Union”.

It was a careful formula, diagnosing harm not in Brexit itself, but in the manner of its implementation; blaming the politicians who did it, not the ordinary people who willed it. Reeves needs that distinction to be clear when she delivers her budget next month. She wants to attribute some of her grim fiscal predicament to a bad deal that Boris Johnson negotiated, without appearing to denigrate the aspirations of leave voters.

The economic argument is settled in the eyes of people who care about evidence. The Office for Budget Responsibility calculates that Britain’s long-term productivity is 4% lower than it would have been if the country had retained EU membership.

Alongside the cost of new trade friction, there was a sustained hit to business investment caused by political tumult and regulatory uncertainty. There was also the opportunity cost incurred by all the government’s energy being spent on a task for which no one was prepared because none of the people who thought it was a good idea had seriously considered what might be involved in making it happen.

When the facts are incontrovertible, officials struggle to affect political neutrality. Andrew Bailey, the governor of the Bank of England, told last week’s IMF gathering that he took “no position per se” on Brexit before giving his judgment that its impact on growth will be negative “for the foreseeable future”.

He anticipated a mild corrective rebalancing in the longer term, which isn’t much use to a chancellor who needs to plug a huge revenue shortfall before Christmas. Taxes are going up, and Reeves wants everyone to know that Brexit is one of the reasons.

The point is worth making because it is true. That doesn’t mean there will be much political benefit for saying it. The same truth was available when Reeves delivered last autumn’s tax-raising budget and in last summer’s general election campaign, which Labour fought in wilful denial of the certainty that taxes would go up.

At this stage, when the government is neither new nor popular, exposition of the causes of economic pain sounds to most voters like making excuses for failure. There might be more mileage in blaming the Tories for everything if the Conservatives were the only alternative to the government and a halfway credible threat. “We’re clearing up the other lot’s mess, don’t let them back in” is the classic incumbent campaign in a two-party contest. The rise of Reform UK complicates the picture.

There isn’t much difference between the policy agendas of the two parties, but voters don’t notice ideological affinity as much as personal rivalry. People who are drawn to Nigel Farage because they have lost faith in the system, especially when it comes to immigration control, don’t recognise Reform and the Tories as sibling parties. One has a proven record of letting millions of foreigners into the country, and the other doesn’t – a difference Farage will not tire of pointing out.

He is less eager to talk about Brexit, partly because it is a legacy he has to share with Conservatives and partly because there is nothing positive to show for his role in it. If pressed, the Reform leader will argue that the heroic liberation dream was traduced by cowardice in the implementation, but even that defence puts him in complicity with disappointment. Simpler to change the subject.

This is why Labour feels more confident raising it. Starmer’s party conference speech last month was a turning point. The prime minister had previously talked about Britain and Europe only in the driest, technocratic terms. He had a project to “reset” the relationship, but its focus was uncontroversial barriers to trade – customs checks on food imports, for example – steering well clear of the fissile cultural matter at the radioactive core of Britain’s post-referendum meltdown.

Starmer didn’t exactly replay old remainer anthems to his activist audience in Liverpool, but he hinted that he remembers the words. He referred to “Brexit lies on the side of that bus” – a reference to leave campaign claims about reallocating Brussels budget payments to the NHS – in the context of “snake oil” peddled by politicians whose simplistic solutions exacerbate the nation’s problems.

Departure from the EU was ranked alongside Covid as traumas the ordinary folk have had to endure in recent years. Comparing Brexit to a horrible disease indicates a stiffening of rhetorical posture, even if the economic remedies currently being negotiated in Brussels haven’t changed.

The goal is to connect Farage to a famous case of political mis-selling, from which it follows that he cannot be trusted; that he exploits discontent and sows division, but hasn’t a clue how to govern effectively.

This week’s suspension of four Kent county councillors from Reform’s local government flagship reinforces that message. Leaked footage of a video conference showcased all the squabbling and recrimination that might be expected from a bunch of amateurs learning the hard way that delivering public services on wafer-thin budgets is harder than posting leaflets about slashing waste and clamping down on foreigners.

This is a fruitful line of attack for Labour, but it requires the government’s own service delivery to be good enough that the prospect of giving Reform a go feels like a dangerous gamble. Also, it is a message for deployment in a campaign that probably won’t happen before 2029. If Starmer and Reeves want to reach that point looking like antidotes to Faragism, they need to show it in the meantime with an agenda of their own that is positively defined.

There are limits to what can be achieved with a change in tone, and it is later than they think. How much easier would they find it to argue now that Brexit is an affliction and Farage a fraud if they had said so all along? How many more options might they have? Do they deserve credit for saying it now, when other excuses are spent? Sure. But the problem with arriving at the obvious place by the most circuitous route is that people wonder what took you so long. Starting from the truth is quicker.