Simon Jenkins, writing in the Guardian, says “The evidence is all around us: life outside the single market is an utter disaster”. He goes on to cite a number of examples but opens with the following:

A massacre is occurring. More than 35,000 healthy British pigs have been slaughtered and buried on farms since September, with an estimated 200,000 languishing in a backlog. The reason is that abattoirs lack the staff to process them, largely due to Britain’s exit from the pan-European labour market. In October, the environment department offered 800 six-month visas for foreign butchers. But it insisted they go through its laborious scheme for seasonal workers: barely 100 turned up. Whitehall also refuses to curb imports of European pork – which now makes up 60% of the UK market and rising. To the National Pig Association, Brexit means buy from Europe.

This is not evidence that life outside the single market is a disaster. It’s evidence that trying to maintain a food production system along he lines of the single market model having left it is a disaster. Part of the reason slaughterhouses can’t find the staff is because highly centralised slaughterhouses (themselves a product of the single market) have been found to be Covid incubators nobody wants to work in, with poor pay and conditions for what is a skilled trade. The industry failed to adapt, and the government failed to prepare for the fallout of leaving the single market.

Though I was opposed leaving European Economic Area, largely anticipating a giant mess like this, leaving the single market allowed us to leave the EU food production system and restore localised smaller scale slaughterhouses which not only reduce stress for animals, but results in fewer food miles and a better quality product. There is a major opportunity here, not least dumping the EU’s insane and wasteful veterinary system. That the industry has sat on its hands and expected to be bailed out by government is not the fault of Brexit.

Jenkins goes on to say “For pig farmers, we can read apple growers, flower producers, fishing fleets, road hauliers, house builders, medicine suppliers, care home managers – a whole range of workers on the frontline of Britain’s economy. All have benefited in the past from the open market in European labour. All must now lobby Whitehall for permits, visas, waivers and, if not, compensation. Hundred-page documents must accompany every food convoy to and from Dover and Belfast, where hours of tailbacks quietly rot produce”.

What he fails to note is that a number of sectors were already turning to third countries for their supply of exploitable labour. Poles in particular were turning down low pay work in food and hospitality. So the question is how much immigration is Jenkins prepared to stomach to prop up his consumption habits? And why should that override the majority demand to get a grip on immigration?

Businesses have been quick to complain about labour shortages, but a cursory glance shows that the farming sector has done little to up its recruitment game or improve pay. The haulage sector has improved pay and training and it comes as no surprise that the situation is, albeit slowly, improving.

Jenkins concludes by saying “Britain’s position as an island has to be one that trades openly with the mainland. Sooner or later, the free movement of goods, services, capital and labour will have to be restored, however painfully. It would greatly help if Labour’s Keir Starmer stopped vacillating and committed himself to that objective, as should candidates for Johnson’s succession. No, this is not revoking Brexit or rejoining the EU. It is just embracing sanity.”

He forgets, though, that the point of Brexit was to take back control of our own laws. Nobody is particularly against the free movement of goods and services, but there is no middle way between an FTA and full blown single market membership, which involves the adoption of whole swathes of the EU body of law.

It made sense to retain much of it for the purposes of transitioning out of the EU, but now we’re out, we have a real opportunity to rethink everything from government procurement through to labour rights, to bring about a more responsive state, reversing some of the centralising trends Jenkins himself famously rails about.

It’s certainly true that Lord Frost was not forced to cut short the transition and we could have arrived at a more comprehensive trade deal, but it would have fallen well short of the levels of cooperation required for a seamless Brexit as imagined by Jenkins. At the time, the EU was resolute in its insistence that further cooperation could not happen without free movement of people, and for many, that was a significant motivator for voting to leave.

Guardian columnists and Labour centrists are presently infatuated with the idea of re-joining the single market and Rachel Reeves has called for a new veterinary agreement. They speak as though these are ready made options we can put in our shopping trolley and take to the checkout. That might have been true during the Article 50 era, but not it’s not so simple for a third country outside the EEA. It would involve lengthy technical negotiations and it is not a given it would restore trade. Once supply chains are broken, they don’t automatically reconnect. All this mealy-mouthed jargon is precisely what it looks like. It’s re-join by stealth campaign.

There is certainly a case for further developing the TCA, filling in the gaps left by a rushed negotiation, but the EU does not have a ready made solution for the UK. Ultimately it is for the EU to realise it cannot treat the UK as one of its satellite states. An island of 65m people simply cannot offshore its regulatory functions the way small states do. Meanwhile it says everything about the state of our political class that they’re in such a rush to hand it all back over, showing no interest whatsoever in governing, not even slightly inspired by what could be achieved. Britain voted for change yet nobody seems interested in delivering it.

That Brexit thus far is failing to yield significant returns (not that it ever was an economic venture) is less to do with Brexit as it is the lame duck PM in charge of delivering it. Instead of diverging we’re locked into EU climate policies as the basis for all future endeavours, and the nexus of international treaties stands in the way of fundamental reform. To get the best from Brexit we need a government with the political will to reinvent the state, and rethink our democracy. Until then, there is no way we can say that Brexit is done.

Instead of trying to drag us back a piece at a time, the establishment parties need to accept that what is done is done. They had ample opportunity to shape Brexit but at every turn they were more interested in stopping Brexit than shaping it. They are as much responsible for the the current shape of UK-EU relations as the ERG. It is for them to take responsibility and live with their choices, and start delivering what the public demanded.