Good morning. One of the sillier pledges made in recent times was Rishi Sunak’s commitment to repeal or replace all retained EU law (Reul) by the end of the year. That pledge was never going to be carried out, and it was always going to be a tricky political assignment for whichever Tory minister was left holding the bag.
One intriguing subplot of Sunak’s last reshuffle is that he made Kemi Badenoch, currently the frontrunner in the next leadership election, the minister responsible for implementing, or more accurately, abandoning his Reul pledge. And the big political story in today’s papers is how Badenoch is finessing that without damaging her own prospects. Some thoughts on that below.
Everybody wants to Reul the Conservative party
Rishi Sunak’s abandonment of his commitment to repeal or replace all remaining EU-derived law on the UK statute book by the end of the year is sensible and inevitable. There are almost 4,000 pieces, and, as is the way of things, some of it is good, some of it is bad, some of it is bang-average.
But the biggest and most important thing about it is that there is an awful lot of it, and there is no serious prospect of any British government being able to both scope out the extent of the legislation and to adequately replace, repeal or reform any of it.
There were many untruths and partial truths in the Brexit campaign, but the most damaging one to the project, I think, was this one: that the UK’s membership of the EU was a big deal for our economic model, how we govern ourselves and the policies we pursue (unquestionably correct), but that leaving the bloc was a small thing that could be done and dusted without much energy or effort (palpably false).
That lie has done a lot of harm to the British economy, but it has done even more harm to the Brexit project because Brexiters are caught between having to promise big change and minimal disruption. Every big public policy change brings with it disruption and hard work. You can’t busk through 4,000 pieces of retained EU law without serious time and effort.
But Sunak’s abandonment of the pledge creates a real political problem for his business secretary, Kemi Badenoch. Badenoch has a good chance of becoming the next Conservative leader: she is consistently one of the highest performers in the ConservativeHome membership survey, a consistently good measure of the Tory grassroots. (And for what it’s worth, my anecdotal impression when I meet Conservative members is also that Badenoch is in a strong position.)
But among Tory MPs, her position is strong and also highly vulnerable. It is strong because there are two ways to get to the membership round of the Conservative leadership election, and both are open to Badenoch. You can prevail as the choice of the party’s establishment or as the candidate of the party’s right. Some politicians manage to do both, which is why Theresa May held such a strong position among MPs in 2016.
But the risk of being able to go both ways is that you can end up being nobody’s candidate: neither rightwing enough for the party’s right or establishment enough for the party’s elders.
Being saddled with the difficult job of explaining to the Conservative party’s Brexit ultras that Sunak’s pledge to remove or replace all retained EU law is a good example of that challenge. Badenoch has set out her reasoning with an opinion column for the Telegraph, still the most important daily newspaper as far as the next Conservative leadership election goes (though my read of the party membership is that the most important media outlets will be The Spectator, the BBC and GB News).
Her piece’s argument is pretty sensible: the deadline was forcing officials to focus on identifying which bits of EU law they needed to maintain, and that abandoning the target frees up ministers and officials to focus on the laws they want to change rather than scrambling to hit an arbitrary target.
But the accompanying Telegraph news story is pretty mad: “Whitehall blob thwarts bonfire of Brexit laws” is their take.
The risk for Badenoch is that she ends ups looking unreliable to her establishment supporters, who read the Telegraph’s headline and think it represents her argument, and weak to allies on the Brexiter right. She still starts out as a well-placed candidate in the next leadership race, but today is a good day for Suella Braverman.
Now try this
I adored Return to Seoul, one of the best films I’ve seen this year. It tells the story of Freddie, a French adoptee who returns to South Korea in search of answers about her biological parents. It’s an exquisite film about language barriers, transnational adoption, finding yourself and growing up. I cannot recommend it highly enough.
Top stories today
-
Migration bill | Legislation aimed at deterring asylum seekers from crossing the Channel is “isolationist” and has elements that are ‘morally unacceptable and politically impractical’, says archbishop Justin Welby.
-
Visa curbs | Ministers are drawing up plans to stop family members from joining overseas master’s students at British universities, as Rishi Sunak braces himself for figures showing record net migration to the UK.
-
Export exasperation | Time is running out to implement the British government’s post-Brexit plans to require all meat and dairy products sold in Northern Ireland to be labelled “Not for EU” consumption, retail and trade lobby groups warned.
-
Culture wars | US-style conservatism offers only a dead end for British Tories, writes Robert Shrimsley.