From Boris Johnson and Michael Gove in the Leave campaign, through to Iain Duncan Smith and David Davis today, they convinced 17 million or so voters that BMW would ensure we could have our cake and eat it too. “The first calling point of the UK’s negotiator immediately after #Brexit will not be Brussels, it will be Berlin, to strike a deal,” announced Davis in May 2016. German car manufacturers would want access to the British market. The German government would listen and grant us privileged access to the single market in return.
As it has turned out, economics has not trumped politics. And although I am instinctively a materialist, I have to admit it rarely does. Try to find an economic explanation for nationalism or religious fanaticism, or for middle-class professionals supporting left-wing parties or working-class voters support for rightwing parties, and your arguments rapidly lose conviction. Economics did not trump politics when Britain voted to leave the EU. It does not trump politics now that 27 countries are determined to preserve the union. And not only as a defence against a return of fascism and communism.
Other countries have their national interests too. The supposedly omnipotent German car manufacturers did not stop Angela Merkel imposing sanctions on Russia after the invasion of Ukraine, even though sanctions hurt sales. Germany, like the rest of Europe, like Britain itself, had an interest in stopping the rebirth of Russian imperialism and that came first. In any case, defending the single market will have long-term economic benefits for every large company in Europe, their workers and the old, the sick and the young who rely on their tax revenues. As German industrialists make clear, they would rather lose British sales than see the world’s richest market undermined.
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