Brexit may be a bust but British carpets will have never been cleaner

On Monday night, just before the Conservative Party’s vote of no confidence in UK prime minister Boris Johnson, Jacob Rees-Mogg suggested the attempted mutiny was due to a plot “to undermine the Brexit referendum”.

Given the profile of Johnson’s detractors, this is a ludicrous suggestion. But unfortunately for Rees-Mogg, pandering to Brexiteer’s psychological obsession with Remainer infidelity is what pays the bills. And in the spirit of charity we should consider the lot he has been handed from on high: Is there a less appealing job title in Britain right now than Minister for Brexit Opportunities?

His task in theory is simple: reform regulation in a way the United Kingdom could not do while subject to the laws of the European Union. Regaining this sort of control over domestic policy was supposed to be one of Brexit’s great appeals. In reality Rees-Mogg is scrambling around seeking anything to justify his position on the government payroll. If there are no opportunities there need be no minister.

Some Brexiteers have claimed they are happy to accept a rocky period post-Brexit in pursuit of long-term, almost spiritual aims

It is an unenviable position for even the most hardened Eurosceptic, like peering into a cupboard to find an old tin of sardines, some cranberry relish and a dusty bottle of brandy and being tasked with turning it into a meal.

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Out of ideas and staring into a sparse pantry, Rees-Mogg has decided to outsource some duties. The Brexit Opportunities Unit reached out to the general public seeking ideas on how the UK could benefit from Brexit, and indirectly revive a spluttering administration. “The government is not the centre of all knowledge and wisdom” the minister explained with a touch of English understatement.

The government received thousands of responses and published its top nine. Among them are suggestions to encourage fracking to ameliorate the energy crisis; to simplify the calculation of holiday pay; to abolish EU regulation that restricts the power of vacuum cleaners. Hardly totems of a triumphant bid for national sovereignty. But British carpets will have never been cleaner.

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Jack Horgan-Jones is one of many parents paying through the nose for childcare. The Government wants to take some of the financial pain out of early years education and care - will its plan work? Harry McGee plugs his new podcast GUBU, a seven-part thriller about a series of grisly murders in the 1980s and how they impacted the government of Charles Haughey. And Denis Staunton has the latest from London where PM Boris Johnson lives to fight another day after winning a confidence vote.

There are certainly benefits to be reaped with regulatory reform. But those benefits — whatever they are — will probably not offset any impending economic doom. Britain is not the only country awaiting the full heft of the cost-of-living crisis to assert itself, but Brexit is set to deepen it. The Office for Budget Responsibility finds Brexit is reducing GDP by 4 per cent. It calculated Covid to have had a 1.5 per cent impact. It is harder to think of a more damning indictment of Brexit as an economic project than this, outperforming a pandemic in sheer destructive nature.

Exports to Europe have shrunk by €23 billion (£20 billion). Producers face reams of paperwork. Selling goods to the European Union is becoming so complicated some businesses are saying it is not worth the hassle. The uncertain future of the protocol has Northern Ireland hanging in the balance without an executive.

Perhaps there is a silver bullet. And it is one radical idea unsurprisingly absent from the Brexit Opportunities Unit playbook. Conservative MP Tobias Ellwood suggested that Britain — having asserted its psychological and political difference from the European Union — should rejoin the single market. “Given the gargantuan economic challenges ahead,” he explains, “we must dare to assess how Brexit ... is faring.”

The argument for leaving the single market in the first place was to strip Britain of pesky Brussels red tape and herald the new era of Britannia unchained. That case somewhat loses its potency when we realise that Britain has not exactly stripped itself of EU red tape, but simply replaced it with stickier, patriotic, and British red tape.

The single market would ease all those problems exporters face. And though it is unlikely to fully redress the political damage Brexit has imposed on Northern Ireland, it is the most obvious solution to the border.

Johnson’s version of Brexit depended on swagger: he rid himself of any commitment to unpicking the serious economic puzzle and instead relied on the hope he had the moxie to pull off the big stunts

All of this makes perfect technical sense, but believing that to be important would misunderstand what Brexit is about. The single market would see the UK having to accept EU regulations. Such a bogeyman has been made out of Brussels in recent years it is hard to see how that would be politically tenable for any Brexiteer to suggest. And we shouldn’t forget, the instinct to avoid embarrassment by displaying buyer’s remorse is strong.

Some Brexiteers have claimed they are happy to accept a rocky period post-Brexit in pursuit of long-term, almost spiritual aims. For Boris it was a cultural revolution with minor details that tend to work themselves out on their own.

That is, of course, until they don’t. And now Johnson, just like Theresa May, has run into an intractable problem at the border. And he is now staring down the barrel of a cost-of-living crisis.

Johnson’s version of Brexit depended on swagger: he rid himself of any commitment to unpicking the serious economic puzzle and instead relied on the hope he had the moxie to pull off the big stunts. But that swashbuckling confidence is gone, and with it the esprit de corps of the entire administration.

And what is there to show now? Super vacuums. A touted return to imperial measures that no one can actually take seriously. And the second UK prime minister who has failed to make sense of it all.