Opinion: ‘We are entering a campaign season unlike any other: you are about to be bombarded with messages’

Try the following thought experiment. You have two stores. They have a product you want.

One of them is around the corner, the other is twenty miles away. Your natural inclination is to go to the closer store unless the more distant store has some extraordinary bargain.

This admittedly simple example illustrates why we need to find some way forward with the EU. Yes, the government is presently selling us the benefits of joining the Asia-Pacific CPTPP trade pact. However, the nearest other member of the pact is 3,000 miles away. There may be some limited benefit associated with joining, as it removes tariffs: however, as many businesses in Peterborough have discovered in the post-Brexit period, tariffs and quotas only represent part of the barriers to trade. One of the biggest is paperwork: everything from procurement rules to customs forms add to business’s burdens.

I do not intend to exonerate the European Union from its behaviour regarding the shipment of vaccines and the Northern Irish border. I think even they would admit that they have shot themselves in the foot. However, we shouldn’t kid ourselves: the EU is still the shop around the corner. We will still want drinks from France and washing machines from Germany. In turn, they want pharmaceuticals and services from us. The Brexit negotiations have been difficult and acrimonious: but it is time the government stopped selling the fantasy that deals with countries 3,000 miles away are a means by which we can avoid having to build bridges with our neighbours. Both sides will have to find a way to live together; we desperately need a reset which escapes the rhetoric that has prevailed since 2016.

I am not sure that our present administration is capable of this. I see the Conservative Administration on both a local and national level re-playing what they consider their greatest hits: it is rather like a one-hit wonder band playing the same song 20 years after it reached number 1. The inclination of the audience is at best to indulge it, say “that’s nice”, but look for something new. We need to move on into a new era: it’s no longer 2016, it’s 2021. The challenges facing us now are vastly different. Do we really want Boris Johnson and his Lonely Brexit Band to keep on singing the same tune? The EU’s blunder did make it briefly relevant again: I doubt they will repeat the mistake.

We are entering a campaign season unlike any other: you are about to be bombarded with messages from the current Administration, which has been in charge of Peterborough for nearly twenty years. These messages will be stale, old, tired. They will try and campaign against the past instead of talking about plans for our future. They are still locked in 2016, as if looking in the rear-view mirror is the best way to steer ahead. Our MP is sending letters and calling the Lib Dems ‘left-wing’ and the Greens ‘unworldly’. He ought to talk to them.

That will help him form a more accurate view of the people he is inaccurately labelling. He is also making claims that he will help clean up our city, crack down on crime and rebuild roads and pavements. But again, his party has been in power locally for two decades. This begs the question why they haven’t done what he claims they will do. They’ve had their chance; it’s time to move on. We’ve reached a point where for our own sake, we need to put in a new Administration, for a freshness of vision, and to deal with the fact that time has left the Conservatives behind.