Now that Jacob Rees-Mogg is minister for Brexit opportunities – what are they?

Natalie Elphicke, the Conservative MP for Dover, prompted a minor uproar in Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) on Wednesday when she complained that her constituency was “again beset by miles of traffic jams along the motorways…” She paused. “... Not because of Brexit, but because of Brussels bureaucracy and red tape.”

In fact, according to Kent Online, the six-mile queues of lorries that formed last month have eased somewhat, although the Road Haulage Association (RHA) say that delays of three or four hours are still to be expected on busy days. “What we have got is friction because there’s a check, but it’s not disastrous,” said Rod McKenzie of the RHA.

Perhaps that should have been the prime minister’s answer to Ms Elphicke: the point of Brexit is that we are now subject to “Brussels bureaucracy and red tape”, in the form of the customs checks that are required on trade between the EU and a non-member state. Being a member of the EU allowed such checks to be abolished; now that we have left, they have to be reimposed. They can be made as hi-tech and as un-disruptive as possible, but there is going to be some friction and therefore some delay.

This is the fundamental problem of Brexit that affects Northern Ireland and which has not yet been solved. So far it has caused the partial collapse of the devolved government in Belfast, with no sign that Liz Truss, the foreign secretary, will be any more successful in renegotiating the border agreement than David Frost, who resigned as Brexit minister in December. Boris Johnson was reduced yesterday to repeating that, “if our friends do not show the requisite common sense, we will of course trigger article 16”, the emergency procedure for suspending the Brexit withdrawal agreement.

None of this should come as any surprise. It should be obvious that leaving the EU single market and customs union will impose some costs. What is surprising is how high that cost has been in the first year after the end of the Brexit transition period in January 2021, and how disruptive the next stage of checks, introduced on 1 January this year, have been. This week, as James Moore reports, figures showed that UK trade with Germany had declined while other countries were able to share in German growth.

It looks as if Jacob Rees-Mogg, appointed to a new cabinet post of minister for Brexit opportunities and government efficiency, has his work cut out identifying what those opportunities might be. He himself once said that it may take 50 years for the economic benefits of Brexit to become apparent – his argument being that the minor costs of greater friction of trade with the EU would eventually be exceeded by trading opportunities around the world.

Of course, not all the effects of Brexit are economic. At PMQs, Johnson once again rehearsed the argument that Britain rolled out vaccines faster than EU nations, and once again said that Labour leader Keir Starmer would have kept the UK in the European Medicines Agency (EMA). The end of free movement of people is also popular, although the prime minister tends not to dwell on it, possibly because of the government’s failure to get a grip on the problem of small boats crossing the Channel.

If Rees-Mogg can wave away the queues of lorries in Kent, solve the insoluble Northern Ireland border issue and magically close the sea in the Channel, he will succeed in his new job. Otherwise, he has been given the Brexit equivalent of Mission: Impossible.