This is not one of those situations where there is room for legitimate debate. It is just flat-out false to equate the Freeports with Charter Cities. It’s not a matter of semantics. They are substantively and significantly different things.

All this is part of a wider mystery about Sunak and what motivates him. That is especially obvious in relation to Brexit. He has, apparently, always been in favour of it, although I don’t recall him taking any part in the referendum campaign, and he has never given any real explanation of what it is about Brexit that he supports. For that matter, as the Brexiters have observed, the impression he gives – his whole ‘vibe’– is far more ‘remainerish’, if there is such a thing. And it’s the same with other things that he is supposedly motivated by, such as the possibilities of technology on which, for all that he is endlessly described as a ‘tech bro’, he never says anything except bland platitudes, such as that AI presents opportunities and dangers. This is not exactly evidence of a deep interest, still less of deep thinking.

All that is for the future. More immediately, the Windsor Framework vote could be a sign that, as I put it in a recent post, Britain’s Brexit fever has broken. However, there are several questions to be asked about that. One is what now happens about the operation of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which of course is in no way resolved by the vote, even though a new opinion poll shows not just strong support amongst the people of Northern Ireland for the WF (overall 45% support, 16.9% oppose), but that even within the unionist community only 15.7% (though 22.8% of DUP voters) are opposed to it (and 45.8% support it, though only 36% of DUP voters). Wrapped up in that is whether, regardless of whether the Assembly is restored, the Protocol will go on being not just a running sore for some unionist politicians, but also, in being so, will function as a rallying point for Brexiters generally. As expected, the UK-EU Joint Committee overseeing the Withdrawal Agreement formally approved the Windsor Framework at its meeting last Friday. There is a palpable sense that this is a defining moment in the Brexit process and that, with caveats, a new chapter within it is about to start.

Yet the omnipresent Rees-Mogg was at pains to represent the hearing as the work of “the haters of Brexit”, despite the Committee containing four Tory MPs of whom at least one, Bernard Jenkin, is one of the most Ultra of Brexit Ultras. Indeed it turned out, as Martin Kettle noted, that “the unexpected star turn here was Sir Bernard Jenkin, a Conservative MP whose Brexit credentials are unchallengeable, who quietly carved Johnson’s evidence into pieces, leaving him spluttering and humiliated”. Perhaps Jenkin will now join Baker in the ranks of ‘crypto-remainers’, Jacobins turned Girondins.The BCG report also rightly highlights that the impact of Brexit has varied between sectors, identifying pharmaceutical and automotive industries as amongst those where Brexit “is likely to have been a major factor in reducing trade”. Perhaps the most important distinction to be drawn is between large and very large businesses, on the one hand, and small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on the other. The reasons are fairly obvious. Larger firms had the resources to plan for and implement the changes that Brexit brought, and were often more likely to already be familiar with procedures for trading outside the single market. Perhaps we should be relieved that, even gifted this moment of opportunity, the capacity of the far right to put much of a presence on the street proved quite limited. It seems they could only muster a few hundred yobs, and many of those were, apparently, addled by drink and drugs. They are frightening and intimidating, without question, but we are not – not yet, anyway – at the point of having uncontainable political street-violence. For the Tories, the embarrassment is the result of having been the architects of Brexit. For Labour, it is because, otherwise, they would be forced to explain why they don’t propose to seek to reverse it, even to the extent of seeking single market membership. The political reasons for that, both domestic and as regards the EU, are understandable and, in my view, justifiable. But, whether justifiable or not, they don’t change the basic fact that the country is accepting – or being forced to accept – that, year after year, it is going to get poorer and poorer than it would otherwise have been. The second proposition is more easily discredited. The UK’s new Freeports are nothing like Charter Cities. The only connection between them is that both are a kind of SEZ. But they are of totally different sorts. It has been known for some time that the ERG’s membership has fallen, and the group is much less organized than in its 2018-19 heyday. Its members, or ex-members, are also split, and some of those in government, especially Chris Heaton-Harris and Steve Baker, were closely involved in, and became advocates of, the WF. Indeed, in Baker’s case, that led to the one-time ‘Brexit hard man’ being thrown out of the ERG’s WhatsApp group whilst being described as a “little weasel” by Nigel Farage. As Robert Shrimsley, Chief UK Political Commentator of the Financial Times, observed, “the revolution eats its own children”. Perhaps more to the point, it is the latest example of the difference between taking responsibility for the realities of delivering Brexit and the luxury of espousing Brexit purity from the sidelines.

These and similar claims can all demonstrably be shown to be untrue simply by reading the terms under which bids to operate Freeports were made. There is nothing in them which would allow any of these claims to be true, and no legal basis for them to be true. Nor is there any way that Freeports can ‘morph into’ Charter Cities. If Charter Cities ever became a policy, they would need a whole new legal basis just as they would if Freeports had never existed.

Because for the purposes of this post I am splicing together different parts of testimony to Hallett it may be confusing as to what jobs Simon Case was doing at different times. In May 2020 he was appointed as Downing Street Permanent Secretary, a role that had been unfilled since being vacated by Sir Jeremy Heywood in 2012 (it had in any case only been created in 2010), who became Cabinet Secretary until his retirement in 2018, when he was succeeded by Mark Sedwill. Then, in September 2020, Case was appointed Cabinet Secretary, replacing Sedwill. If all that comes to pass, then it will be the prelude to the next chapter in which it will be possible for a future government, and political culture generally, to take the logical next step and ask the question: why doesn’t the UK join the EU? Secondly, it distracts from and discredits the genuine criticisms and concerns about Freeports. These include issues of economic effectiveness, governance and accountability, value for money, planning laxity, tax evasion, and corruption. It’s absolutely necessary to monitor these and also to monitor whether government promises are kept that no environmental or labour standards will be reduced, whether within Freeports or more widely. None of this is aided by nonsensical claims about Charter Cities. Brexit Unfoldedis a must-read for anyone who cares about what happened following the momentous decision Britain took in the 2016 referendum. Grey is not a neutral observer, but his analysis is scholarly and balanced. He writes with engaging clarity as he navigates through toxic headlines and political slogans. It will be a long time before this illuminating account is rivalled.” Jonathan Dimbleby, broadcaster and author