The original article was published on the Times.
Brexit was not a revolution, it was a restoration. After decades of subservience to Brussels we finally got back the powers Edward Heath gave away. Some think that these powers won’t change anything. I don’t share that belief. But powers are only as good as our will to use them. Otherwise we’ll be back in the EU sooner than you think.
Brexit was shorthand for a widespread dissatisfaction with the Blairite “consensus”: the obsession with university education, however poor; the explosion of rights litigation; the gimmicky treatment of regional growth; and the lazy preference for cheap foreign labour, corrosive to productivity and resilience. These must all be tackled — but some policies are already obvious.
The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill needs to be changed so that it actually solves the problem. That means VAT, excise and medicines should be under UK law from day one — currently they are not. The bill’s “dual regulatory regime” lets EU law flow into Northern Ireland in perpetuity. We need to sunset that and provide a mechanism for moving to Mutual Enforcement. Otherwise we’re giving Brussels a legislative blank cheque. These are all changes I’ve been fighting for while in government. Without them, the bill treats people living in Northern Ireland as second-class citizens.
To get our borders under control — a manifesto promise — we need to break the trafficking incentive model. The Rwanda plan can work but we’ll have to leave the ECHR to do it. We simply can’t have Strasbourg deciding who can stay in our country. With a similar policy, Australia radically cut illegal migration. But they did not have a foreign court controlling their immigration policy.
It is a common misconception that leaving the ECHR would imperil the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement, the devolution settlement, and the EU trade deal. The Belfast Agreement stipulates that rights should be embedded in law — that was achieved by the Human Rights Act, strengthened in Raab’s British Bill of Rights. Likewise, devolution legislation refers to the rights scheduled to the HRA itself. Lord Frost was very careful not to bind us to the ECHR in his Brussels negotiations. We would keep the HRA and make a special regime for Channel crossings, setting out eligibility rules for transfer. It boils down to this: either you trust your own institutions of parliament and the courts, or you don’t.
Legacy EU law has to be cut back. We need to set a deadline and a test: does this EU rule support UK growth? Working groups of industry experts can draft better regulations. EU law is often written for the lowest common denominator — it’s over-prescriptive and behind the times due to ponderous Brussels processes. Its customs rules, for example, took so long to agree they’re premised on pen-and-ink forms. We can and should be more nimble than that.
Tax policy has sunk into the mud of a Blairite big state consensus. Conservatives have forgotten that cutting taxes stimulates growth. Halt the planned corporation tax rises and reverse the increases in national insurance and the investment-stalling windfall tax. We should reduce demand on the state in the long term by encouraging stronger families and communities. We need to break through the bottlenecks in our economy, like housing and energy generation. Taxes are not just too high — they’re too complicated, encouraging evasion and discouraging investment. Expert-led tax simplification will make life easier for businesses big and small.
This Conservative government must cut VAT on energy — including in Northern Ireland — and curb spending. The Bank of England must be held to sound monetary policy. Like reserve banks in other countries we should consider a more binding inflation target. We should be seriously looking at whether it is sensible to retain tariffs on imported food — that makes everyone’s weekly supermarket bill more expensive.
Winning the struggle against identity politics is critical. When people disparage the “culture wars” as pointless, they ignore the fact that these policies are actually causing bad outcomes — in education, productivity — and stoking divisions in society.
We’re tying ourselves in knots over problems and vocabulary no one had even heard of a decade ago. Let’s rediscover common sense. Countless reports warn of the seriousness of “socially transitioning” children. Parents have a right to know what is happening. Head teachers should have a right to create single-sex spaces such as changing rooms. No one should lose their job over pronouns. The Online Harms Bill and the Equality Act need a serious rethink. We must curb the growth of law’s empire into everyday life.
A government I lead will safeguard Brexit, take on the Blairite liberal consensus and get this country back on track.
Suella Braverman is attorney-general and a candidate for the leadership of the Conservative Party