Central to UK Conservative and Brexiteer criticism of the European Union over the years was the latter’s attempts to raise social standards, wages and conditions. Far better, the British public were told, to let the market dictate such things, to unshackle business from European red tape, to free Britain to thrive. And, by implication, to pay lower wages.
Today the Tory Party, the "friend of business", is singing from a different hymn sheet. British prime minister Boris Johnson casts himself as a revolutionary, bolder than all his predecessors. In a speech notably short of policy, he told the party's conference in Manchester yesterday he is determined that "this reforming government, this can-do government" will tackle the long-term structural weaknesses in the UK economy, which he blamed on industries such as haulage for not properly investing in better wages or conditions.
“We are not going back to the same old broken model with low wages, low growth, low skills and low productivity, all of it enabled and assisted by uncontrolled immigration,” he told delegates. “Yes, it will take time, and sometimes it will be difficult, but that is the change that people voted for in 2016.”
Brexit and its unspoken justification were the subtext – its benefits were just around the corner. With patience all would be well, despite the unfortunate fallout of labour shortages, higher taxes and benefit cuts. There would be pain, but as he said on Tuesday: “It’s not the job of government to come in and try and fix every problem in business and industry”.
When it came to the unfinished Brexit business – the implementation of the Northern Ireland protocol – the conference rhetoric was as belligerentas ever. Chief negotiator David Frost warned of a "robust" response, including the invoking of article 16 to suspend parts of the protocol, if the EU does not show itself sufficiently flexible in the talks expected to resume shortly. EU officials are understood to be preparing retaliation in the form of tariffs or other barriers to trade flow between the UK and the union should talks fail.
Frost also launched a new, and very dubious line of attack, complaining that the strong increase in North-South and South-North trade as a result of controls on the Irish Sea was “weakening the links” between the North and Britain.
Some unionists appear to believe that the well-predicted changes in the patterns of trading on the island post-Brexit will lead to a greater long-term dependency of the Northern economy on the Republic and the EU. That reality, they fear, may feed arguments for unity.
But Northern Irish business-owners of all persuasions, benefiting as they do from the new cross-Border trade, will not thank Frost or the unionist leaders should they attempt to curtail such trade.