It has been a complicated week for Brexit news. If there is a unifying thread that runs through it, it is of the consequences not just of Brexit but of the particular way that Brexit was done becoming clearer. In parallel, there is a concerted attempt by Brexiters to ignore, deny, disown, obscure or distract from these consequences and the decisions they made.
Brexit and trade update
There can be no serious doubt now that Brexit is inflicting significant damage on UK trade with the EU, the only debate is about how great that damage is which won’t be known for a while. Last Friday, just as I was posting, the Office for National Statistics reported a massive fall of 40.7% in UK exports to the EU in January 2021, the first month after the transition period ended, with imports from the EU falling by 28.8% compared with December 2020. Some sectors’ exports have been devastated, most notably food and live animals which fell by 54%.
The ONS report allows some wriggle-room for Brexiters (which they are taking full advantage of) to downplay, if not deny, the extent to which Brexit is the cause, rather than the pandemic. This, of course, was to be expected not least because, even before the pandemic struck, they ascribed any piece of Brexit bad news to some other factor. In effect, they have set up a circular - or more accurately ‘unfalsifiable’ – argument. When the effects of Brexit were predicted they were dismissed as Project Fear because no one could ‘prove’ they would happen. Now the effects are happening they are dismissed as having another cause because no one can ‘prove’ they are down to Brexit. Thus, happily for them, no evaluation of Brexit is deemed possible.
However, detailed analysis by John Springford of the Centre for European Reform, which corrects for pandemic effects, and uses a sophisticated ‘doppelganger’ method to model Brexit against the counterfactual of no Brexit, finds a 22% fall in total goods trade with the EU in January. There is still scope to argue that some of this is explained by anticipatory stockpiling of traded goods and it remains to be seen the extent to which that was a factor, but some supply chain experts suggest it will not have had a major impact. The 22% fall comes on top of a 10% fall in UK-EU goods trade since the 2016 Referendum. These figures all relate to goods trade. The picture for services trade is more difficult to establish yet, and more difficult to separate from pandemic effects, but it is not going to be good (£).
Whatever emerges in the longer-term, there are two particular points that stand out. One is that, given that the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) established zero tariffs in UK-EU trade it follows that what we are seeing, and will see, are the effects of non-tariff barriers, including customs formalities, as well as of tariffs due to rules of origin in some cases. This is important, because going right back to the Referendum campaign, Brexiters continually failed to understand the difference between a ‘free trade deal’ and single market and customs union membership and, in tandem with that, focused far too much on tariff barriers to trade and, even within that, ignoring what rules of origin would mean for international supply chains. That was a conceptual failure, and one which is now beginning to be quantified. In turn, this shows the deep flaw in David Frost’s claim, mentioned in my previous post, that economic models over-stated the significance of non-tariff barriers.
The second point of note is that exports have been much harder hit than imports so far. The most obvious reason for that is that the UK has not yet introduced import controls and, indeed, announced last week that their introduction would be delayed by a further six months. That will be welcome news for importers, but creates a quite extraordinary situation, especially when viewed from a Brexiter perspective, since it means that British exporters face controls which EU exporters to the UK are spared, a disparity not lost on farmers, for example. I’m not sure that this was what Brexiters had in mind when they argued that German car makers would ensure that a good deal was assured, but it is certainly a good deal for them. It will also be handy for those minded to offload substandard or dangerous products into Britain’s welcoming arms. Again, I’m not sure if this is what Brexiters meant by taking back control of our borders.
The legacy of stupidity and arrogance
Why has this happened? The answer is in part, again, because Brexiters didn’t understand or accept what leaving the single market, even with a free trade agreement, would mean. Indeed it was not until February 2020 that any government minster formally and publicly admitted that it would mean border controls on imports. Beneath that lies an astonishing mixture of stupidity and arrogance. Even before Article 50 was triggered, Brexiters were agitating against the idea of any transition period to implement the terms of a future trade deal, and both the principle and the length of a transition were the subject of ongoing rows within the Tory Party throughout the Brexit negotiations.
In November 2016 the then Brexit Secretary, David Davis, of whom it is almost no exaggeration to say that every word he ever uttered about Brexit has been wrong, languidly opined (£) that he “wasn’t really interested” in a transition but might consider one to “be kind” to the EU. By July 2017 he said that the practicalities would be ‘doable’ for the UK without transition but countries like France, Belgium and the Netherlands wouldn’t be ready and would need extra time.
In the event, the original Theresa May exit deal set a transition period that was to have lasted from the then planned Brexit day of March 29 2019 until the end of 2020. Even then, she and other ministers insisted that this was an ‘implementation period’, when in fact there would be nothing to implement until a trade deal was struck (this also reflected persistent failures to understand that the trade deal and the exit deal were separate things). That would have given some twenty-one months to negotiate the deal and ‘implement’ it but of course Brexit day didn’t happen until January 31 2020. Yet the original end of transition date was not changed, and Johnson refused to extend the period, when it was possible to do so, even though the pandemic had already started.
Thus, now that it is exposed that the EU was, in fact, ready in time but the UK was not, the government is reduced to prolonging the one-sided introduction of border controls. Doing so is not a violation of any of the agreements with the EU and although, conceivably, it could violate WTO non-discrimination rules with respect to non-EU countries it is highly unlikely that this will lead to any action against the UK. Apart from anything else, these are still temporary measures and it would take far too long for a dispute to be raised – and in any case the WTO dispute settlement process is still in chaos.
The drive to ditch the Northern Ireland Protocol
What is much more serious is violating the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) by unilaterally extending the ‘grace periods’. This led to the EU this week beginning legal action against the UK for breaching the NIP, as well as a political letter complaining of bad faith. In normal times this would be a big news story, and perhaps a scandal. The combination of Covid, Brexit fatigue, and a lack of political opposition and public interest means that, now, it hardly registers - but the damage being done to the UK’s international standing is considerable. That damage is not just to relations with the EU but, potentially, the US.
It has been suggested by one influential Conservative commentator this week (£) that the politics of US involvement might move things in the direction of the EU accepting much softer arrangements for the Irish Sea border than those entailed by the NIP. The rationale for this argument is the claim, long made by unionists but now being adopted by the British government, that the NIP is itself a violation of the Good Friday (Belfast) Agreement (GFA). Since the Biden administration is committed to upholding that agreement then, the idea goes, it will support the UK against the EU in flexing or even dropping the NIP.
This argument was tested in a speech in the US this week by Dominic Raab, and explains his bizarre claim that the EU is erecting an Irish Sea border (when in fact this is what the UK and the EU agreed). He then sought to present this, or at the very least the way that it is being implemented, as a violation of the GFA. Presumably the same argument is being made by the senior official the UK has sent to Washington. Meanwhile, the EU and Ireland have recently made representations to Biden about the need to uphold the Protocol, with the St Patrick’s Day (virtual) meeting between the US President and the Irish Taoiseach providing a potently symbolic focus.
It is already clear that Biden’s administration is not going to accept the UK’s line. To his existing statements of support for the GFA, this week he went further in articulating his support for the NIP and, by clear implication, for the Irish Sea border which it sets in place. The most obvious issue in all this is, indeed, the fact the UK signed up to the NIP, and Johnson hailed it as a great triumph of his negotiation to have ‘ditched the backstop’ that had been in Theresa May’s deal. The government did so knowing full well what its effects would be, yet from the outset has pretended otherwise. Thus having, like Boris Johnson, denied that it meant an Irish Sea border, Brandon Lewis, the Northern Ireland Secretary, is now engaged in a new pretence, which is being echoed in the wider phalanx of Brexiter ideologues.
This pretence has two prongs. One is to suggest that the whole thing is just a triviality, almost a joke. So Lewis talks lightly of just wanting “the great British banger” to be enjoyed in Northern Ireland, as if checks on processed and chilled meats did not have a serious purpose. Lower down the Brexiter food chain the same dismissive sentiment is found, for example in suggestions that the EU is prioritizing “the inspection of lettuce before peace in Northern Ireland”.
The other prong, which also relates to the claims about the GFA, is that the NIP was, somehow, provisional and a step towards, as Lewis calls it, a “permanent solution”. Down the food chain that appears in the false claim from Iain Duncan Smith (£) that the Protocol “was originally not intended to be permanent … the Withdrawal Agreement was very clear that the Protocol would be ‘superseded’”. In fact, the Protocol allows for the possibility that it (or parts of it) may be superseded by subsequent agreement, not that it “would be”. That could happen were the UK to align with EU SPS rules, for example, but not simply by ignoring them. (Smith also, wrongly, says that “the EU still hasn’t ratified” the Protocol which is, at best, a misunderstanding: it has, it’s the TCA which hasn’t yet been ratified.)
Whether Biden’s slowly hardening stance will make a difference remains to be seen, but as things stand it is clear that the UK is toying with the idea of not just violating the NIP but of trying to completely revise or even abandon it. That may only be the beginning, if the Brexit Ultras get their way. Already some are agitating (£) for the UK to renege on the financial settlement payments. It is easy to dismiss such calls as coming from fringe and peculiar figures – and few merit that description better than Mark ‘World War Two’ Francois, the culprit in this case – but the Brexit process has showed over and over again that what starts with such figures ends up being government policy.
Global Britain?
The irony that this should be happening even as the government trumpets its commitment to leadership in shaping global rules could hardly be more glaring. This commitment was part of this week’s Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy which ostensibly sets the strategic direction for Britain’s international role for years to come or, perhaps more candidly, articulates an overblown version of that role to appeal to voters’ nationalism and Johnson’s predilection for boosterish phrase-making. In effect, it reverses the British decision in the 1960s to retreat from ‘East of Suez’. Some argue that there is a logic to that, but political historian Professor Robert Saunders points out that the strategic and financial reasons for the 1960s decision still exist, and to an even greater extent.
This isn’t the place to discuss the review in detail, but from a Brexit perspective three things stand out. One is just that Brexit is what frames it – both because this is what Britain’s post-Brexit place in the world is meant to be and also because of the central emphasis placed on the Brexiters’ buzz word of sovereignty. The second thing is that, whatever its merits or otherwise, there is very little in it which could not have been done without Brexit and much in it that would have been done had Brexit not happened. The third is that it says relatively little about the EU, as opposed to bi-lateral relations with some EU members, as if to suggest that ‘Global Britain’ is above such parochialism.
That was certainly the implication of Johnson’s dismissive reference, when presenting the review to the House of Commons, to “the cramped horizons of a regional foreign policy”. But it makes little sense. On the one hand, the UK’s foreign policy has never been constrained by, or limited to, the EU. On the other, in relation to many of its objectives the review will entail collaboration with the EU, for example over climate change, or would benefit from closer and more harmonious relations with the EU, for example over security. An ‘Indo-Pacific tilt’ is all very well if you like that sort of thing – though whether Britain has the money and resources to make it more than tilting at windmills seems questionable – but, as the Brexiters used to say, we are leaving the EU, not leaving Europe. So Johnson’s words might best be interpreted as showing a preference for grand gestures over mundane practicalities (indeed that also characterises his entire approach to politics, including Brexit), as well as an attempt to cock a snook at the EU.
Yet, in fact, the UK’s most pressing foreign policy and security need is to regularise its relations with the EU, not least as this is a prerequisite for improving relations with the US which, as the review affirms, remain the cornerstone of UK policy. Lurking beneath this is the recurring Brexiter idea that defence and security are primarily, or even solely, linked to NATO with the EU a near irrelevance. This is, at best, deeply out-dated, as the recent statement by NATO shows, and in relation to some of the cutting edge issues of cyber-security simply false. It is also hard not to raise an eyebrow at the recognition that Russia is the most acute threat to UK security, given that it is not necessary to posit Russian interference in the 2016 Referendum to recognize that Brexit was a huge gift to Putin.
The ingrained antagonism towards the EU is vividly illustrated by this week’s absurd accusations (in the headlines, even if the stories don’t sustain them) that it is suspending use of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine as some kind of anti-Brexit statement. Everything about that is nonsense. The EU is not suspending the vaccines use – and the EMA, the EU’s medicines regulator, has and continues to approve its use – but rather some individual states, not all of them even EU members. It may very well be that these suspensions are unnecessary, and it seems that many of them will be lifted very soon, but the idea that national regulators are animated by, or even remotely interested in, Brexit is preposterous. If this story shows anything about the EU it is that its individual members have, and can exercise, sovereignty in the same way as non-members. But, absurd as it is, it has taken root in the fertile soil of post-Brexit bellicosity in which, as per my last post, Brexiters remain obsessed with the EU and assume that the EU and all its members are obsessed with Brexit, so that in the UK the entire vaccine mess is seen through the lens of Brexit.
At first sight these two things - the vaccine rows and the Integrated Review - may seem very different, but they come from the same mentality, which is also evident in relation to trade. At the end of my previous post, I used the metaphor of a stroppy teenager storming out of the family home and it applies here, because that mentality licences both an imagination of the EU as malevolently tyrannical and a fantasy that ‘we don’t need them anyway’. The crucial link is that both responses are supposedly assertions of independence but remain bound by, and defined through, that from which independence is sought. If Global Britain is supposed to be a mature, self-confident, sovereign state exercising international leadership – though that is hardly how post-Brexit Britain appears to the bemused world - then Brexiters need first to lose that adolescent mentality.
Bodged Brexit
As these various post-Brexit realities play out, it’s worth separating out those things which arose inevitably as a consequence of Brexit, or of hard Brexit, such as the introduction of non-tariff barriers, from those which have arisen from the incompetent and dogmatic way in which (hard) Brexit has been undertaken. The timescale and preparedness issues are undoubtedly of the latter sort, as is the relentless antagonism towards the EU. Given that Brexit was, on any account, a major change in national strategy and, on the Brexiters’ account, a vital one, then it was entirely unnecessary to do it with such haste and with such ill-grace. That happened partly because the Brexiters didn’t know what they were doing but, more, because their hatred of the EU and, perhaps, the political calculations of the Conservatives about the threat from Farage led them to do a rushed, botched, bodged job of both the Withdrawal Agreement, including the NIP, and the TCA.
The consequences of that bodge job are becoming more and more evident with every day that passes. But just as their lies, ignorance and incompetence brought us to this situation so do the Brexiters now seek to address it with more lies, ignorance and incompetence. Almost everything that is happening now was warned of. The Brexiters were told over and over again what the consequences would be for trade, for Northern Ireland, for international relations. Every single time they did not just ignore the warnings but ridiculed them, and traduced those who gave them as misguided at best and treacherous at worst.
Now everything that they promised is coming unstitched but there is no contrition, and not even any recognition. Just more lies, and new lies about the lies they told before. No amount of grandstanding about Global Britain can conceal the squalid mess Johnson and his cronies have made back at home.
Showing posts with label David Davis. Show all posts
Showing posts with label David Davis. Show all posts
Friday, 19 March 2021
Friday, 12 June 2020
Brexit Britain risks heading to international pariahdom
The irritation in Michel Barnier’s press statement at the end of last week’s negotiations was palpable. “Things cannot go on like this”, he despairingly warned, and his particular concern was the UK “backtracking on the Political Declaration”. It was a strong indication that any remaining trust in the negotiations has all but disappeared, and that hasn’t just happened in the last few weeks. Rather, it has been in the making for years.
If not earlier, it perhaps began when the Brexiters, including Boris Johnson, denied the legitimacy of any financial settlement – something I will come back to. It became entrenched when David Davis and Theresa May immediately disowned the backstop they had agreed to end of the phase 1 of the Article 50 negotiations in December 2017. Many other examples could be given.
Distrust is now endemic
Under Johnson’s premiership that lack of trust has become endemic. That’s partly because EU leaders recall the long years of lies he told whilst a Telegraph columnist, and have disdain for his role in the Referendum. It’s not difficult to imagine that he is one of those whom Donald Tusk was referring to as warranting a “special place in hell” for having advocated Brexit with no plan. But it is more because of the way in which, since coming to power, Johnson has seemed to resile from what he agreed, especially as regards Northern Ireland.
In a post last month, following the Frost letter, I lamented that the bitter truth is that the UK can no longer be trusted. Yet the Brexit ‘patriots’ feel no shame and, worse, no realism. Their response to Barnier’s press statement was to crow that he was ‘rattled’ by Britain’s ‘tough stance’ – yet apparently not so cowed as to stop him being ‘rude’ and ‘insulting’! The more ‘cerebral’ and, indeed, the official response was to point out, echoing Davis’ comments about the phase 1 agreement, that the Political Declaration (PD) is not legally binding.
The Political Declaration isn’t irrelevant
That is perfectly true, but it is a very long and dangerous jump from that to treating it as totally irrelevant. It was signed by Boris Johnson as a commitment of ‘good faith’ to the agreed framework for the future. As Simon Usherwood, Professor of Politics at Surrey University, points out reneging on it has damaging reputational consequences. It’s not just dishonest but, perhaps worse, naïve, for Johnson to treat as if it were one of his throwaway newspaper columns. You simply can’t conduct international relations that way and expect it just to be laughed off, or forgiven and forgotten, by other countries.
It’s clearly the case that, as a framework, it does not address the detailed provisions of the future agreement. Equally clearly, within negotiation there will legitimately be ‘maximalist’ and ‘minimalist’ interpretations of how to operationalize the framework. But that is not at all the same as simply treating it as totally irrelevant (as, indeed, Brexiters used to realise).
For example, on one of the key areas of contention referred to by Barnier, Level Playing Field (LPF) provisions, paragraph 77 of the PD is very explicit about how economic interdependence and geographical proximity mean there must be robust commitments on state aid, competition law and so on. So, yes, there is legitimate negotiation space around what ‘robust’ means in practical terms, but it is simply dishonest for Brexiters, including Johnson, to pretend that these issues have been newly introduced by the EU (£)*. If Johnson objected, the time to do so was before signing the document off.
Ominous signs
But more ominous than the ongoing disavowal of the PD was a report in the Brexiters’ house journal, The Express, that the government regards the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) as having “unfair defects” that must be remedied. That marks a significant escalation because it is not based on any claim that it is legally non-binding: there is no dispute that the WA was signed as a legally binding international treaty. Reneging on it would go beyond reputational damage.
The justification for this stance is telling. On the one hand, the report refers to an unnamed ‘government source’ (does that mean Dominic Cummings?) as linking the ‘defects’ to what was agreed by Theresa May and Olly Robbins, and the constraints of the May parliament. This reflects something which has been swirling around Brexiter circles for months now – a sense that, despite Johnson signing it, it was in some way not legitimate because of those antecedents including what they regard as a ‘remainer’ parliament. It is dangerous nonsense for whilst, as they are wont to say, no parliament can bind its successor, that does not mean that international treaties negotiated during one parliament become irrelevant afterwards. International relations would scarcely be possible if that were so. And, in any case, it’s an absurdity as Johnson didn’t sign the WA and PD until January 2020 - after the election. He owns them.
This relates to the other aspect of the supposed justification for re-opening the WA, namely that the government did not have time to deal with all the “defects” of May’s deal, just to replace the Northern Ireland backstop. But not only is the government now resiling from the frontstop that replaced it, it was the government that insisted – against much warning – that the whole thing had to be rushed through with scarcely any scrutiny to meet the deadline of 31 January. Moreover, we now know – courtesy of Steve Baker – that the ERG hardliners were persuaded by Dominic Cummings to support the WA, without needing to read it, on the basis that Michael Gove said it could be changed later.
As with Brexit in general, the easiest way to understand the outrageousness of this is to think about it the other way round, and imagine how the UK, and Brexiters especially, would react if the EU said that with Juncker, Tusk et al now gone, the EU no longer felt bound by the WA and PD. Or if the states and MEPs who had voted to ratify the WA now said that they had done so without bothering to read it as they had been told it could all be re-written afterwards. The shrieks of anger would be deafening, and the opprobrium heaped on the EU vitriolic.
The deal formerly known as ‘oven-ready’
Of course it’s not just the trust of the EU which is being betrayed by this deepening farrago of lies. It’s also the British electorate. For don’t forget that this near-discarded PD and this ‘defective’ WA used to go under a very different name: together, they were the “oven-ready deal” that Johnson promised would “get Brexit done” during the 2019 General Election campaign. This was “the great new deal”, not in any way to be confused with May’s despised efforts. In vain did I and countless others warn that it would just be the beginning of a new process of negotiation. Still, at least it might have been assumed that those negotiations would go forward on the basis of the WA and PD, not backwards to try to re-write them.
Such an assumption was always going to be naïve, though. And this goes to the heart of why the EU is right to distrust Johnson. Again and again as Prime Minister (never mind about beforehand) he has shown not just dishonesty but a palpable scorn for law and the normal political process. The doyen of law and policy commentators, David Allen Green, who invariably uses words with great precision, last year wrote of Johnson “going rogue” (£) over the question of whether he would obey the law requiring him to seek an extension to the Article 50 period. It was, Green said, “unprecedented” for a Prime Minister even to be contemplating not doing so. This was also in the context of the illegal prorogation of parliament and these and other examples provide ample evidence of the subfusc authoritarianism that Johnson’s jokey persona increasingly fails to cloak. No doubt it is echoed, amplified, and incited by Cummings’ infamous contempt for ‘playing by the rules’.
This makes Johnson a difficult character for the EU to deal with, but that character is only one manifestation of the problem. As noted above, the UK government’s behaviour since Brexit has been repeatedly untrustworthy, even under the leadership of May, whose character was very different. The underlying issue is neither of them, but the now near comprehensive ‘ERG-ification’ of the Tory Party and, hence, government. Perhaps because the old familiar trappings of the political spectacle persist, it’s easy to miss how hollowed-out Britain’s political institutions have become during these Brexit years.
Government by cult
Indeed, the EU’s bewilderment – like that of many commentators including, at times, myself – stems from a failure to appreciate quite how far and deep that process has gone. The ERG is rather like the Terminator which “can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop ever …”. So the hope that, at some point, rationality will assert itself – for example over the damage of no deal or extending the transition period – keeps being dashed. Similarly, the idea that some ‘compromise’ from the EU would unlock things, even if such compromise was possible, is flawed. Really, one could imagine that if the EU conceded on every single UK demand the Brexit Ultras would still denounce it as insultingly inadequate.
We’ve arrived here step by step because every demand made by the Ultras has been conceded – the Referendum, then the row about the question to be asked, then the franchise. And each demand met has led to a still harder one, from ‘we just want to be like Norway’ right up to the point that we are just about at which is that any deal and any form of relationship with the EU is intolerable. That’s totally unrealistic, of course, since the EU will still be there (although the hardcore of the Ultras always believes it will collapse) but realism isn’t part of the story here. Indeed, realistically, it’s far more likely that Brexit will lead to the break up of the United Kingdom.
That an entire government should be in hock to an effectively nihilistic cult is partly to do with the internal history of the modern Conservative Party, the ruthlessness of the ERG, and their parliamentary numbers which are enough to pose a threat even when the government has a large majority. But it requires that those who are far from membership of the cult – and, still, there are plenty of Tory MPs in that category – for one reason or another go along with it. At the present moment, that means buying into the narrative that all that is happening is a tough negotiating stance which will yield an eleventh hour ‘blink’ from the EU and, for this reason, no transition extension should be sought.
Beyond that, it requires a much larger number of people within the electorate to accept the situation – either being themselves cultists, or buying in to the strategy as described or, and here the numbers are probably very large, thinking that it is all a lot of noise and that in the end ‘they’ (whoever that might be) will ‘sort things out’. There is much danger in that. It rests upon the complacent assumption that ‘things are bound to go on much as always’. Yet few realise the complex web of systems and regulations that create what they take for granted, and they may very well not forgive the ‘disruptors’ for ripping those systems up.
The idea floating around that any damage from there being no trade deal will be ascribed to the wider coronavirus crisis is unlikely to be correct when specific consequences – food shortages being the most obvious, but Bloomberg have compiled an extensive and alarming list – kick in overnight, making causation very obvious. If anything, coming on top of all the pain of coronavirus, public tolerance is likely to be less forthcoming, and much of the disruption will occur even with a trade deal.
So far, with the exception of the immediate sharp fall in sterling after the Referendum, Brexiters have been able to provide alibis for the damaging effects of Brexit (what one might call the ‘diesel decoy’). I’m not sure that will be so as people begin to experience what Tom Hayes calls ‘the Brexit of small things’, the things that affect their daily lives. On the other hand, that currency collapse of 2016, which would in any other context have led to a political crisis, was almost shrugged off - so who knows?
The road to pariahdom
But even if the government ride out the domestic economic and political consequences of no deal, the damage to Britain’s international reputation will be substantial. That will matter in relation to the EU and also in relation to other countries, who will see Britain as untrustworthy and irrational but also as desperate to do trade deals on any terms it is given.
For example, it’s already the case that Japan regards Brexit as a betrayal of the trust upon which basis its companies invested so heavily in the UK, and already the case that it is set to make tough demands in trade talks, which have just begun. Their outcome, says Michito Tsuruoka of Keio University writing in the Japan Times, is crucially bound up with the progress and outcome of the UK-EU talks. Indeed, he says, “no country wants to conclude a definitive trade deal with the UK without knowing the final shape of the EU-UK partnership”.
More generally, writing about the ‘original’ no deal scenario, Dr Nicholas Westcott of SOAS argued starkly that it would be “a heavy international defeat for Britain … we would have proven unable to negotiate – with our nearest friends – a deal that protected our economic interests. And the world will see this. They – the US, China, India, Russia, the Gulf States, African and Latin American countries, Spain, Mauritius, Argentina - all will say to themselves that Britain is now weak, it needs our support, and we can ask for whatever we want”. In short, no deal with the EU has a much wider import: it, or any other outcome of the negotiations, will directly impact upon the UK’s global standing and upon global relationships as well as those with our nearest neighbours.
And the thing about no deal is that that won’t be an end to the matter. That’s not simply because – as Tom Hayes, again, points out and as I did , in a different way, last week – all the unresolved issues will still be in need of resolution. It’s also because of the implications of the analysis of the ERG, above. For if it is correct that whatever they get they always want more, then what ‘more’ would they ask for having achieved the no trade deal scenario that many of them advocate?
The answer to that is already clear, even before it has happened, in what is already being said about the defects in the WA. That claim will intensify, because the Ultras have never accepted the idea of a financial settlement being made in the absence of a trade deal, and have always argued that any such settlement should be contingent upon a trade deal. Indeed Johnson, during his leadership campaign, threatened just that, whether in order to pander them or from conviction hardly matters.
So if there is no trade deal come next January they will unquestionably try to force the government to break the WA by reneging on the financial settlement and, very likely, as the signs are already there, the Northern Ireland Protocol, with all that will mean for relations with both Ireland and the US, though probably not, I think and hope, the Citizens’ Rights agreement. We will then be well beyond the current damage to trust and reputation, and headed down the road to pariahdom. We’re not quite on that road yet, but we’ve had glimpses recently of the signposts to it and if, as seems increasingly likely, there is no deal it’s the one the Ultras will be urging us down.
If so, it’s worth recalling that they haven’t, so far, failed to get their own way.
*Actually, on social media at least, it is more common to see Brexiters claim that the EU has reneged not so much on the PD but on the Barnier staircase. On this account, that staircase promised a Canada deal, denoted by the Canadian flag. However, apart from the ludicrousness of regarding a signed agreement as non-binding but a PowerPoint slide as a promise, and as a promise of a deal on the same terms as Canada (when more stringent LPF conditions had been set in more formal documents), it is a misreading of that slide. What actually appears are the Canadian and South Korean flags – an indication of the general category of such a deal (FTA) and also of the fact that within that category there are different variants: not all FTAs are the same.
If not earlier, it perhaps began when the Brexiters, including Boris Johnson, denied the legitimacy of any financial settlement – something I will come back to. It became entrenched when David Davis and Theresa May immediately disowned the backstop they had agreed to end of the phase 1 of the Article 50 negotiations in December 2017. Many other examples could be given.
Distrust is now endemic
Under Johnson’s premiership that lack of trust has become endemic. That’s partly because EU leaders recall the long years of lies he told whilst a Telegraph columnist, and have disdain for his role in the Referendum. It’s not difficult to imagine that he is one of those whom Donald Tusk was referring to as warranting a “special place in hell” for having advocated Brexit with no plan. But it is more because of the way in which, since coming to power, Johnson has seemed to resile from what he agreed, especially as regards Northern Ireland.
In a post last month, following the Frost letter, I lamented that the bitter truth is that the UK can no longer be trusted. Yet the Brexit ‘patriots’ feel no shame and, worse, no realism. Their response to Barnier’s press statement was to crow that he was ‘rattled’ by Britain’s ‘tough stance’ – yet apparently not so cowed as to stop him being ‘rude’ and ‘insulting’! The more ‘cerebral’ and, indeed, the official response was to point out, echoing Davis’ comments about the phase 1 agreement, that the Political Declaration (PD) is not legally binding.
The Political Declaration isn’t irrelevant
That is perfectly true, but it is a very long and dangerous jump from that to treating it as totally irrelevant. It was signed by Boris Johnson as a commitment of ‘good faith’ to the agreed framework for the future. As Simon Usherwood, Professor of Politics at Surrey University, points out reneging on it has damaging reputational consequences. It’s not just dishonest but, perhaps worse, naïve, for Johnson to treat as if it were one of his throwaway newspaper columns. You simply can’t conduct international relations that way and expect it just to be laughed off, or forgiven and forgotten, by other countries.
It’s clearly the case that, as a framework, it does not address the detailed provisions of the future agreement. Equally clearly, within negotiation there will legitimately be ‘maximalist’ and ‘minimalist’ interpretations of how to operationalize the framework. But that is not at all the same as simply treating it as totally irrelevant (as, indeed, Brexiters used to realise).
For example, on one of the key areas of contention referred to by Barnier, Level Playing Field (LPF) provisions, paragraph 77 of the PD is very explicit about how economic interdependence and geographical proximity mean there must be robust commitments on state aid, competition law and so on. So, yes, there is legitimate negotiation space around what ‘robust’ means in practical terms, but it is simply dishonest for Brexiters, including Johnson, to pretend that these issues have been newly introduced by the EU (£)*. If Johnson objected, the time to do so was before signing the document off.
Ominous signs
But more ominous than the ongoing disavowal of the PD was a report in the Brexiters’ house journal, The Express, that the government regards the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) as having “unfair defects” that must be remedied. That marks a significant escalation because it is not based on any claim that it is legally non-binding: there is no dispute that the WA was signed as a legally binding international treaty. Reneging on it would go beyond reputational damage.
The justification for this stance is telling. On the one hand, the report refers to an unnamed ‘government source’ (does that mean Dominic Cummings?) as linking the ‘defects’ to what was agreed by Theresa May and Olly Robbins, and the constraints of the May parliament. This reflects something which has been swirling around Brexiter circles for months now – a sense that, despite Johnson signing it, it was in some way not legitimate because of those antecedents including what they regard as a ‘remainer’ parliament. It is dangerous nonsense for whilst, as they are wont to say, no parliament can bind its successor, that does not mean that international treaties negotiated during one parliament become irrelevant afterwards. International relations would scarcely be possible if that were so. And, in any case, it’s an absurdity as Johnson didn’t sign the WA and PD until January 2020 - after the election. He owns them.
This relates to the other aspect of the supposed justification for re-opening the WA, namely that the government did not have time to deal with all the “defects” of May’s deal, just to replace the Northern Ireland backstop. But not only is the government now resiling from the frontstop that replaced it, it was the government that insisted – against much warning – that the whole thing had to be rushed through with scarcely any scrutiny to meet the deadline of 31 January. Moreover, we now know – courtesy of Steve Baker – that the ERG hardliners were persuaded by Dominic Cummings to support the WA, without needing to read it, on the basis that Michael Gove said it could be changed later.
As with Brexit in general, the easiest way to understand the outrageousness of this is to think about it the other way round, and imagine how the UK, and Brexiters especially, would react if the EU said that with Juncker, Tusk et al now gone, the EU no longer felt bound by the WA and PD. Or if the states and MEPs who had voted to ratify the WA now said that they had done so without bothering to read it as they had been told it could all be re-written afterwards. The shrieks of anger would be deafening, and the opprobrium heaped on the EU vitriolic.
The deal formerly known as ‘oven-ready’
Of course it’s not just the trust of the EU which is being betrayed by this deepening farrago of lies. It’s also the British electorate. For don’t forget that this near-discarded PD and this ‘defective’ WA used to go under a very different name: together, they were the “oven-ready deal” that Johnson promised would “get Brexit done” during the 2019 General Election campaign. This was “the great new deal”, not in any way to be confused with May’s despised efforts. In vain did I and countless others warn that it would just be the beginning of a new process of negotiation. Still, at least it might have been assumed that those negotiations would go forward on the basis of the WA and PD, not backwards to try to re-write them.
Such an assumption was always going to be naïve, though. And this goes to the heart of why the EU is right to distrust Johnson. Again and again as Prime Minister (never mind about beforehand) he has shown not just dishonesty but a palpable scorn for law and the normal political process. The doyen of law and policy commentators, David Allen Green, who invariably uses words with great precision, last year wrote of Johnson “going rogue” (£) over the question of whether he would obey the law requiring him to seek an extension to the Article 50 period. It was, Green said, “unprecedented” for a Prime Minister even to be contemplating not doing so. This was also in the context of the illegal prorogation of parliament and these and other examples provide ample evidence of the subfusc authoritarianism that Johnson’s jokey persona increasingly fails to cloak. No doubt it is echoed, amplified, and incited by Cummings’ infamous contempt for ‘playing by the rules’.
This makes Johnson a difficult character for the EU to deal with, but that character is only one manifestation of the problem. As noted above, the UK government’s behaviour since Brexit has been repeatedly untrustworthy, even under the leadership of May, whose character was very different. The underlying issue is neither of them, but the now near comprehensive ‘ERG-ification’ of the Tory Party and, hence, government. Perhaps because the old familiar trappings of the political spectacle persist, it’s easy to miss how hollowed-out Britain’s political institutions have become during these Brexit years.
Government by cult
Indeed, the EU’s bewilderment – like that of many commentators including, at times, myself – stems from a failure to appreciate quite how far and deep that process has gone. The ERG is rather like the Terminator which “can’t be bargained with, it can’t be reasoned with, it doesn’t feel pity or remorse or fear and it absolutely will not stop ever …”. So the hope that, at some point, rationality will assert itself – for example over the damage of no deal or extending the transition period – keeps being dashed. Similarly, the idea that some ‘compromise’ from the EU would unlock things, even if such compromise was possible, is flawed. Really, one could imagine that if the EU conceded on every single UK demand the Brexit Ultras would still denounce it as insultingly inadequate.
We’ve arrived here step by step because every demand made by the Ultras has been conceded – the Referendum, then the row about the question to be asked, then the franchise. And each demand met has led to a still harder one, from ‘we just want to be like Norway’ right up to the point that we are just about at which is that any deal and any form of relationship with the EU is intolerable. That’s totally unrealistic, of course, since the EU will still be there (although the hardcore of the Ultras always believes it will collapse) but realism isn’t part of the story here. Indeed, realistically, it’s far more likely that Brexit will lead to the break up of the United Kingdom.
That an entire government should be in hock to an effectively nihilistic cult is partly to do with the internal history of the modern Conservative Party, the ruthlessness of the ERG, and their parliamentary numbers which are enough to pose a threat even when the government has a large majority. But it requires that those who are far from membership of the cult – and, still, there are plenty of Tory MPs in that category – for one reason or another go along with it. At the present moment, that means buying into the narrative that all that is happening is a tough negotiating stance which will yield an eleventh hour ‘blink’ from the EU and, for this reason, no transition extension should be sought.
Beyond that, it requires a much larger number of people within the electorate to accept the situation – either being themselves cultists, or buying in to the strategy as described or, and here the numbers are probably very large, thinking that it is all a lot of noise and that in the end ‘they’ (whoever that might be) will ‘sort things out’. There is much danger in that. It rests upon the complacent assumption that ‘things are bound to go on much as always’. Yet few realise the complex web of systems and regulations that create what they take for granted, and they may very well not forgive the ‘disruptors’ for ripping those systems up.
The idea floating around that any damage from there being no trade deal will be ascribed to the wider coronavirus crisis is unlikely to be correct when specific consequences – food shortages being the most obvious, but Bloomberg have compiled an extensive and alarming list – kick in overnight, making causation very obvious. If anything, coming on top of all the pain of coronavirus, public tolerance is likely to be less forthcoming, and much of the disruption will occur even with a trade deal.
So far, with the exception of the immediate sharp fall in sterling after the Referendum, Brexiters have been able to provide alibis for the damaging effects of Brexit (what one might call the ‘diesel decoy’). I’m not sure that will be so as people begin to experience what Tom Hayes calls ‘the Brexit of small things’, the things that affect their daily lives. On the other hand, that currency collapse of 2016, which would in any other context have led to a political crisis, was almost shrugged off - so who knows?
The road to pariahdom
But even if the government ride out the domestic economic and political consequences of no deal, the damage to Britain’s international reputation will be substantial. That will matter in relation to the EU and also in relation to other countries, who will see Britain as untrustworthy and irrational but also as desperate to do trade deals on any terms it is given.
For example, it’s already the case that Japan regards Brexit as a betrayal of the trust upon which basis its companies invested so heavily in the UK, and already the case that it is set to make tough demands in trade talks, which have just begun. Their outcome, says Michito Tsuruoka of Keio University writing in the Japan Times, is crucially bound up with the progress and outcome of the UK-EU talks. Indeed, he says, “no country wants to conclude a definitive trade deal with the UK without knowing the final shape of the EU-UK partnership”.
More generally, writing about the ‘original’ no deal scenario, Dr Nicholas Westcott of SOAS argued starkly that it would be “a heavy international defeat for Britain … we would have proven unable to negotiate – with our nearest friends – a deal that protected our economic interests. And the world will see this. They – the US, China, India, Russia, the Gulf States, African and Latin American countries, Spain, Mauritius, Argentina - all will say to themselves that Britain is now weak, it needs our support, and we can ask for whatever we want”. In short, no deal with the EU has a much wider import: it, or any other outcome of the negotiations, will directly impact upon the UK’s global standing and upon global relationships as well as those with our nearest neighbours.
And the thing about no deal is that that won’t be an end to the matter. That’s not simply because – as Tom Hayes, again, points out and as I did , in a different way, last week – all the unresolved issues will still be in need of resolution. It’s also because of the implications of the analysis of the ERG, above. For if it is correct that whatever they get they always want more, then what ‘more’ would they ask for having achieved the no trade deal scenario that many of them advocate?
The answer to that is already clear, even before it has happened, in what is already being said about the defects in the WA. That claim will intensify, because the Ultras have never accepted the idea of a financial settlement being made in the absence of a trade deal, and have always argued that any such settlement should be contingent upon a trade deal. Indeed Johnson, during his leadership campaign, threatened just that, whether in order to pander them or from conviction hardly matters.
So if there is no trade deal come next January they will unquestionably try to force the government to break the WA by reneging on the financial settlement and, very likely, as the signs are already there, the Northern Ireland Protocol, with all that will mean for relations with both Ireland and the US, though probably not, I think and hope, the Citizens’ Rights agreement. We will then be well beyond the current damage to trust and reputation, and headed down the road to pariahdom. We’re not quite on that road yet, but we’ve had glimpses recently of the signposts to it and if, as seems increasingly likely, there is no deal it’s the one the Ultras will be urging us down.
If so, it’s worth recalling that they haven’t, so far, failed to get their own way.
*Actually, on social media at least, it is more common to see Brexiters claim that the EU has reneged not so much on the PD but on the Barnier staircase. On this account, that staircase promised a Canada deal, denoted by the Canadian flag. However, apart from the ludicrousness of regarding a signed agreement as non-binding but a PowerPoint slide as a promise, and as a promise of a deal on the same terms as Canada (when more stringent LPF conditions had been set in more formal documents), it is a misreading of that slide. What actually appears are the Canadian and South Korean flags – an indication of the general category of such a deal (FTA) and also of the fact that within that category there are different variants: not all FTAs are the same.
Friday, 21 February 2020
Zersetzung Brexit
During the Cold War, the Stasi perfected techniques of psychological warfare known as Zersetzung, sometimes translated as ‘disintegration’. Targeted at individuals and dissident groups, it involved “a systematic degradation of reputation, image, and prestige on the basis of true, verifiable and discrediting information together with untrue, credible, irrefutable, and thus also discrediting information; a systematic engineering of social and professional failures to undermine the self-confidence of individuals; ... engendering of doubts regarding future prospects; engendering of mistrust and mutual suspicion within groups …”.
I’m extremely wary of invoking comparisons between Brexit and totalitarianism, because they almost invariably exaggerate what is happening with Brexit, whilst insultingly and irresponsibly downplaying the horrors of totalitarianism. Even so, it’s not entirely fanciful to draw at least metaphorical parallels between Zersetzung and the gaslighting which characterises the government’s approach to Brexit. In particular, there is a comparison in the way that it is becoming almost impossible to separate out what is true from what is false, what is intended from what is accidental, what is incompetent from what is malevolent.
The Irish Sea border
Take the remarks made last Friday by the new Northern Ireland Secretary, Brandon Lewis, saying that there will be no Irish Sea border, despite the fact that this is precisely what the government signed up to in the Withdrawal Agreement.
There are multiple ways of interpreting what Lewis said. Perhaps he is simply ignorant of the facts. That isn’t altogether unbelievable. Yet he claimed to be saying what the government’s policy is, and, indeed, he is saying exactly what Boris Johnson has said. Perhaps he, and Johnson, are lying. That too, doesn’t exactly strain credulity. Yet, if so, to what end? If they are taken at their word, then how can preparations be made for the arrangements which need to be in place in just ten months’ time. As Jess Sergeant of the Institute for Government writes, “until the prime minister acknowledges the extent – or even the existence – of new checks, this work cannot begin in earnest”.
Or perhaps Lewis was engaging in the kind of linguistic sleight of hand referred to in my previous post, and was glossing over the truth that there will be a border for goods by reference to the fact that there will be no border for people, which is also true? Perhaps he was trying to assuage unionist sentiment in Northern Ireland? Perhaps he was trying to pander to Brexiters in his own party and the country? Perhaps he actually means that the government are going to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement?
No one really knows, and that matters not least because of its impact on negotiations with the EU. There, there is growing alarm not so much because of Brandon Lewis’s comments but because of Boris Johnson’s, for they betoken sharply divergent understandings of what the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement means. That in turn calls into question the possibility of achieving a deal on future trade and other terms, and at the very least erodes trust in those negotiations, making it more likely that the EU will want watertight guarantees on everything. It also, of course, has profound potential consequences for the people of Northern Ireland.
Again, there’s no way of knowing what Johnson is really up to. Perhaps he wants to collapse the talks and never had any intention of honouring the Northern Ireland Protocol. For what it is worth I think the truth is more prosaic. It seems more likely to me that Johnson, with his usual arrogance, ambition, and sloppiness simply had no real idea what he was agreeing to and didn’t care. His MPs, including the ERG, and indeed some Labour MPs, just voted it through (I am referring to the pre-election vote on Johnson’s revised Withdrawal Agreement) without paying much attention to what it meant and very possibly without even reading it, and, then, when it came to the election, he proclaimed that he had an ‘oven ready deal’.
The Level Playing Field
Exactly the same thing seems to have happened with the Level Playing Field (LPF) conditions. Having agreed to these at least as the intended direction of travel in the Political Declaration (PD, paragraph 77 on p.14-15 of the link), there is now a concerted attempt to disown them. This began earlier this year and was most recently and forcefully articulated by David Frost in a speech in Brussels last Monday.
Frost, the government’s lead negotiator for the talks with the EU, argued that the UK wants a Canada-style trade deal, and bemoaned the fact that the EU had supposedly previously offered this but was now “experiencing some doubts” (implying the requirement of substantial LPF conditions). These conditions, he argued, would mean that Britain was not an independent country and that to comply with them would negate the very purpose of Brexit and threaten a crisis of democracy.
Again, there are multiple possible interpretations of this. It could, despite his denials that this was so, be some kind of negotiating ploy (if so, it just makes the UK look untrustworthy). It could be a message to the Brexiters that Frost is ‘one of them’, and notably he spent much time burnishing his Eurosceptic credentials, thus hoping to avoid the fate of his predecessor Olly Robbins (good luck with that, as the Ultras will turn on him if he does any kind of deal).
It could have been an attempt to get the EU to understand the constraints of UK politics (in which case, think again – the days when the EU was willing to bend over backwards to accommodate those is long gone). It could mean that the government is now determined to leave without a trade deal, or one of the most minimal sort. It could be that the government didn’t understand what it had signed up to. Or it could mean that the government honestly believes that a good deal can be done without agreeing to LPF.
The substance of Frost’s argument was nugatory. It rests on a wholly naïve notion of what ‘independence’ means, namely freedom from any form of regulation that does not derive solely from UK law. But all sorts of international agreements, including trade agreements, involve some form of dilution of independence in this very crude sense. Many sorts of regulation, including ‘WTO rules’, involve adherence to decisions made on a transnational basis. Individual countries can influence them, but they can’t fully control them. For that matter, the EU itself often adopts rules set by other bodies, for example as regards automotive standards, and the UK is very likely to do the same.
With Brexit, Britain has chosen to lose all influence as regards EU rules. But it can certainly exert ‘independence’ in the sense Frost means simply by not agreeing substantially to the EU’s terms for a future deal – if it’s willing to accept the consequences, economically and politically. Independence, for countries as for individuals, is not just about the freedom to make your own choices, but also taking responsibility for what those choices mean. To be fair to Frost, he seemed to accept that, although only by dismissing (without evidence) almost all the economic forecasts, including those of the government itself, so as to conclude that these consequences will be largely benign.
The war of the slides
Frost’s position was echoed later in the week by the bizarre ‘war of the slides’ (£) which began when the Prime Minister’s press office released a rather whiny tweet showing the Barnier staircase with its indication that a Canada deal was an option for the UK, consistent with the latter’s red lines. Apart from being slightly embarrassing (as if, rather than roaring, the British Lion was grizzling because he’d been promised a trip to the circus), everything about this showed what Peter Foster, Europe Editor of the Daily Telegraph, called “brazen disingenuousness”.
Why? (This list overlaps with but isn’t the same as Foster’s reasons). Because from the outset the EU position has been that LPF provisions would be necessary by virtue of the size, proximity and interconnectedness of the UK and EU economies (a point underlined by its own contribution to the war of the slides). Because, again, this was what Johnson agreed to in the Political Declaration. Because what has changed is that the UK has now introduced a new red line, in addition to those which Theresa May had set and which were incorporated into the staircase. And because Brexiters have for years been saying that they wanted a Canada +++ or Super-Canada deal, and in that sense had always wanted more than to be treated ‘just like Canada’, but either did not understand or concealed the implications of that.
Once again, multiple interpretations are possible. Does the government think that this stance will make the EU suddenly drop LPF? If so, that is not just an absurd hope but also has had the opposite effect by making the EU even more suspicious of Johnson’s mendacity. Is it that the government genuinely still fails to understand what Brexit means, and what it has signed up to in the Political Declaration? Is it a domestic signal to Brexiters, in preparation for quietly accepting EU demands? Or Is it preparation for leaving without a deal and noisily setting the EU up to take the blame?
If it is the latter (what I have been calling no deal 2.0, because it is different to no Withdrawal Agreement and, also, refers to more than trade but, alas, it hasn’t caught on) then the real democratic crisis is this. It would not be remotely what was promised during the Referendum (nor, for that matter, would a bare-bones or even Canada-style deal). And it would certainly not be what was promised at the general election. For that was fought on the basis of what Johnson had agreed with the EU, including the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement and including LPF in the Political Declaration.
It’s true that the Political Declaration is not legally binding with respect to the EU, but it is part of the basis on which Johnson was elected in the UK. This was part of the ‘oven ready deal’ he offered. Going back on what was agreed may also face legal hurdles in the UK, although these probably aren’t insuperable given the size of Johnson’s majority. At all events doing so would do massive damage to Britain’s international credibility, just as it was seeking to make new deals with other countries. However, it certainly can’t be assumed that no deal 2.0 is now inevitable, and the respected trade expert Dmitry Grozoubinski has outlined the space in which a deal could, in principle, occur.
What’s going on?
The truth is that no one actually knows what Johnson’s government is planning, or even if it has a plan. At every new development, whichever direction it takes, there are always some who confidently say that ‘this was the plan all along’. Some are as certain that Brexit is a well worked out neo-liberal plot as others are that the EU and remainers are part of a nefarious neo-liberal conspiracy. Some rush breathlessly from their latest ‘insider’ (aka PR) briefing to announce with X% confidence what the latest central scenario is, whilst others ‘have a friend’ who is very high up and has revealed all but of course the ‘mainstream media’ won’t report it. Some are convinced that the hardest of Brexits is inevitable, others equally sure that Brexit in name only (BRINO) is the only possible outcome.
Having now alienated probably half of the readers of this blog, I’ll see if I can do the same for the other half. I certainly have no more idea than anyone else as to what will happen. But in terms of the underlying process, my thoughts for what they’re worth are these. On the one hand, what we are witnessing is to a degree intentional. It’s now a cliché to talk about ‘the alt-right playbook’ and its connections with the kind of psychological warfare techniques with which I began this post. But it doesn’t need any great conspiracy theory or felt-penned sociograms to see how these techniques have spread or indeed to see how they have developed from more familiar approaches to media management.
The generation of constant uncertainty, the endless revisions of even very recent history, the half-truths and lies, the divisiveness and the distractions are all plain to see and they are intended to have the effect of confusing and manipulating the public. It is disturbing, destabilising, and exhausting to be exposed to it. That is partly what I meant by the comparison with Zersetzung and why several serious analysts are describing these developments as Orwellian. It is also the reason why, as I’ve often written on this blog, it is important to keep attempting to hold on to recorded facts and rationality as the only antidote to these dangerous and shameless tactics.
But, on the other hand, if the implication is that these tactics are being used to disguise the government’s ‘true agenda’ for Brexit then I am not at all convinced. It’s important not to over-estimate the competence of our leaders and their advisers, or the coherence of what they do. In particular, over the last four years what has been astounding is that almost all Brexiters have virtually no idea what they really want or how to achieve it, make constant errors about quite basic facts, and have made endless unnecessary mistakes in their attempts to deliver it. Whilst the latter are now blamed upon ‘Theresa the remainer’, it shouldn’t be forgotten that originally she was their idol nor that she gave government roles to Brexiters like Johnson, Fox, Davis, Grayling, Patel and Truss.
Brexiters haven’t suddenly become competent
So with the Brexiters now totally in control of government, it is as to easy to believe that they think that, say, by playing hardball in threatening no trade deal they will achieve a deal scarcely any different to EU membership as to believe that they are completely uninterested in a deal and have always wanted to leave without one. Or that they are divided amongst themselves on this and everything else and the outcome will depend upon which view wins out. Or that the outcome will be entirely accidental, born of complete incompetence.
That could arise if, for example, having agreed to something he did not bother to understand, Johnson now mulishly doubles down on his mistakes. At all events, Brexiters do not suddenly become competent or well-informed just because they have red boxes to open, as David Davis’s career attests. They may be inflicting a swirl of confusions, lies, half-truths and disinformation upon the country, but they are also themselves lost within that same miasmic fog.
Of course, on either account the outlook for the country is not at all good. The government seems to have simply no idea what it is doing and, especially since last week’s reshuffle, to be populated by subservient nonentities in the grip of group think. If so, there is every chance that it will unintentionally lead us to disaster. Alternatively, it knows exactly what it is doing, the cluelessness is a smokescreen, and disaster is actually the plan. It’s difficult to know which is the more alarming prospect.
From this point of view, the metaphorical comparison with Zersetzung is not, as might be thought, so much to say that psychological warfare is being unleashed upon individuals and groups in order to effect their disintegration. Rather, with Brexit we have a country unleashing a kind of Zersetzung upon itself.
I’m extremely wary of invoking comparisons between Brexit and totalitarianism, because they almost invariably exaggerate what is happening with Brexit, whilst insultingly and irresponsibly downplaying the horrors of totalitarianism. Even so, it’s not entirely fanciful to draw at least metaphorical parallels between Zersetzung and the gaslighting which characterises the government’s approach to Brexit. In particular, there is a comparison in the way that it is becoming almost impossible to separate out what is true from what is false, what is intended from what is accidental, what is incompetent from what is malevolent.
The Irish Sea border
Take the remarks made last Friday by the new Northern Ireland Secretary, Brandon Lewis, saying that there will be no Irish Sea border, despite the fact that this is precisely what the government signed up to in the Withdrawal Agreement.
There are multiple ways of interpreting what Lewis said. Perhaps he is simply ignorant of the facts. That isn’t altogether unbelievable. Yet he claimed to be saying what the government’s policy is, and, indeed, he is saying exactly what Boris Johnson has said. Perhaps he, and Johnson, are lying. That too, doesn’t exactly strain credulity. Yet, if so, to what end? If they are taken at their word, then how can preparations be made for the arrangements which need to be in place in just ten months’ time. As Jess Sergeant of the Institute for Government writes, “until the prime minister acknowledges the extent – or even the existence – of new checks, this work cannot begin in earnest”.
Or perhaps Lewis was engaging in the kind of linguistic sleight of hand referred to in my previous post, and was glossing over the truth that there will be a border for goods by reference to the fact that there will be no border for people, which is also true? Perhaps he was trying to assuage unionist sentiment in Northern Ireland? Perhaps he was trying to pander to Brexiters in his own party and the country? Perhaps he actually means that the government are going to renege on the Withdrawal Agreement?
No one really knows, and that matters not least because of its impact on negotiations with the EU. There, there is growing alarm not so much because of Brandon Lewis’s comments but because of Boris Johnson’s, for they betoken sharply divergent understandings of what the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement means. That in turn calls into question the possibility of achieving a deal on future trade and other terms, and at the very least erodes trust in those negotiations, making it more likely that the EU will want watertight guarantees on everything. It also, of course, has profound potential consequences for the people of Northern Ireland.
Again, there’s no way of knowing what Johnson is really up to. Perhaps he wants to collapse the talks and never had any intention of honouring the Northern Ireland Protocol. For what it is worth I think the truth is more prosaic. It seems more likely to me that Johnson, with his usual arrogance, ambition, and sloppiness simply had no real idea what he was agreeing to and didn’t care. His MPs, including the ERG, and indeed some Labour MPs, just voted it through (I am referring to the pre-election vote on Johnson’s revised Withdrawal Agreement) without paying much attention to what it meant and very possibly without even reading it, and, then, when it came to the election, he proclaimed that he had an ‘oven ready deal’.
The Level Playing Field
Exactly the same thing seems to have happened with the Level Playing Field (LPF) conditions. Having agreed to these at least as the intended direction of travel in the Political Declaration (PD, paragraph 77 on p.14-15 of the link), there is now a concerted attempt to disown them. This began earlier this year and was most recently and forcefully articulated by David Frost in a speech in Brussels last Monday.
Frost, the government’s lead negotiator for the talks with the EU, argued that the UK wants a Canada-style trade deal, and bemoaned the fact that the EU had supposedly previously offered this but was now “experiencing some doubts” (implying the requirement of substantial LPF conditions). These conditions, he argued, would mean that Britain was not an independent country and that to comply with them would negate the very purpose of Brexit and threaten a crisis of democracy.
Again, there are multiple possible interpretations of this. It could, despite his denials that this was so, be some kind of negotiating ploy (if so, it just makes the UK look untrustworthy). It could be a message to the Brexiters that Frost is ‘one of them’, and notably he spent much time burnishing his Eurosceptic credentials, thus hoping to avoid the fate of his predecessor Olly Robbins (good luck with that, as the Ultras will turn on him if he does any kind of deal).
It could have been an attempt to get the EU to understand the constraints of UK politics (in which case, think again – the days when the EU was willing to bend over backwards to accommodate those is long gone). It could mean that the government is now determined to leave without a trade deal, or one of the most minimal sort. It could be that the government didn’t understand what it had signed up to. Or it could mean that the government honestly believes that a good deal can be done without agreeing to LPF.
The substance of Frost’s argument was nugatory. It rests on a wholly naïve notion of what ‘independence’ means, namely freedom from any form of regulation that does not derive solely from UK law. But all sorts of international agreements, including trade agreements, involve some form of dilution of independence in this very crude sense. Many sorts of regulation, including ‘WTO rules’, involve adherence to decisions made on a transnational basis. Individual countries can influence them, but they can’t fully control them. For that matter, the EU itself often adopts rules set by other bodies, for example as regards automotive standards, and the UK is very likely to do the same.
With Brexit, Britain has chosen to lose all influence as regards EU rules. But it can certainly exert ‘independence’ in the sense Frost means simply by not agreeing substantially to the EU’s terms for a future deal – if it’s willing to accept the consequences, economically and politically. Independence, for countries as for individuals, is not just about the freedom to make your own choices, but also taking responsibility for what those choices mean. To be fair to Frost, he seemed to accept that, although only by dismissing (without evidence) almost all the economic forecasts, including those of the government itself, so as to conclude that these consequences will be largely benign.
The war of the slides
Frost’s position was echoed later in the week by the bizarre ‘war of the slides’ (£) which began when the Prime Minister’s press office released a rather whiny tweet showing the Barnier staircase with its indication that a Canada deal was an option for the UK, consistent with the latter’s red lines. Apart from being slightly embarrassing (as if, rather than roaring, the British Lion was grizzling because he’d been promised a trip to the circus), everything about this showed what Peter Foster, Europe Editor of the Daily Telegraph, called “brazen disingenuousness”.
Why? (This list overlaps with but isn’t the same as Foster’s reasons). Because from the outset the EU position has been that LPF provisions would be necessary by virtue of the size, proximity and interconnectedness of the UK and EU economies (a point underlined by its own contribution to the war of the slides). Because, again, this was what Johnson agreed to in the Political Declaration. Because what has changed is that the UK has now introduced a new red line, in addition to those which Theresa May had set and which were incorporated into the staircase. And because Brexiters have for years been saying that they wanted a Canada +++ or Super-Canada deal, and in that sense had always wanted more than to be treated ‘just like Canada’, but either did not understand or concealed the implications of that.
Once again, multiple interpretations are possible. Does the government think that this stance will make the EU suddenly drop LPF? If so, that is not just an absurd hope but also has had the opposite effect by making the EU even more suspicious of Johnson’s mendacity. Is it that the government genuinely still fails to understand what Brexit means, and what it has signed up to in the Political Declaration? Is it a domestic signal to Brexiters, in preparation for quietly accepting EU demands? Or Is it preparation for leaving without a deal and noisily setting the EU up to take the blame?
If it is the latter (what I have been calling no deal 2.0, because it is different to no Withdrawal Agreement and, also, refers to more than trade but, alas, it hasn’t caught on) then the real democratic crisis is this. It would not be remotely what was promised during the Referendum (nor, for that matter, would a bare-bones or even Canada-style deal). And it would certainly not be what was promised at the general election. For that was fought on the basis of what Johnson had agreed with the EU, including the Northern Ireland Protocol in the Withdrawal Agreement and including LPF in the Political Declaration.
It’s true that the Political Declaration is not legally binding with respect to the EU, but it is part of the basis on which Johnson was elected in the UK. This was part of the ‘oven ready deal’ he offered. Going back on what was agreed may also face legal hurdles in the UK, although these probably aren’t insuperable given the size of Johnson’s majority. At all events doing so would do massive damage to Britain’s international credibility, just as it was seeking to make new deals with other countries. However, it certainly can’t be assumed that no deal 2.0 is now inevitable, and the respected trade expert Dmitry Grozoubinski has outlined the space in which a deal could, in principle, occur.
What’s going on?
The truth is that no one actually knows what Johnson’s government is planning, or even if it has a plan. At every new development, whichever direction it takes, there are always some who confidently say that ‘this was the plan all along’. Some are as certain that Brexit is a well worked out neo-liberal plot as others are that the EU and remainers are part of a nefarious neo-liberal conspiracy. Some rush breathlessly from their latest ‘insider’ (aka PR) briefing to announce with X% confidence what the latest central scenario is, whilst others ‘have a friend’ who is very high up and has revealed all but of course the ‘mainstream media’ won’t report it. Some are convinced that the hardest of Brexits is inevitable, others equally sure that Brexit in name only (BRINO) is the only possible outcome.
Having now alienated probably half of the readers of this blog, I’ll see if I can do the same for the other half. I certainly have no more idea than anyone else as to what will happen. But in terms of the underlying process, my thoughts for what they’re worth are these. On the one hand, what we are witnessing is to a degree intentional. It’s now a cliché to talk about ‘the alt-right playbook’ and its connections with the kind of psychological warfare techniques with which I began this post. But it doesn’t need any great conspiracy theory or felt-penned sociograms to see how these techniques have spread or indeed to see how they have developed from more familiar approaches to media management.
The generation of constant uncertainty, the endless revisions of even very recent history, the half-truths and lies, the divisiveness and the distractions are all plain to see and they are intended to have the effect of confusing and manipulating the public. It is disturbing, destabilising, and exhausting to be exposed to it. That is partly what I meant by the comparison with Zersetzung and why several serious analysts are describing these developments as Orwellian. It is also the reason why, as I’ve often written on this blog, it is important to keep attempting to hold on to recorded facts and rationality as the only antidote to these dangerous and shameless tactics.
But, on the other hand, if the implication is that these tactics are being used to disguise the government’s ‘true agenda’ for Brexit then I am not at all convinced. It’s important not to over-estimate the competence of our leaders and their advisers, or the coherence of what they do. In particular, over the last four years what has been astounding is that almost all Brexiters have virtually no idea what they really want or how to achieve it, make constant errors about quite basic facts, and have made endless unnecessary mistakes in their attempts to deliver it. Whilst the latter are now blamed upon ‘Theresa the remainer’, it shouldn’t be forgotten that originally she was their idol nor that she gave government roles to Brexiters like Johnson, Fox, Davis, Grayling, Patel and Truss.
Brexiters haven’t suddenly become competent
So with the Brexiters now totally in control of government, it is as to easy to believe that they think that, say, by playing hardball in threatening no trade deal they will achieve a deal scarcely any different to EU membership as to believe that they are completely uninterested in a deal and have always wanted to leave without one. Or that they are divided amongst themselves on this and everything else and the outcome will depend upon which view wins out. Or that the outcome will be entirely accidental, born of complete incompetence.
That could arise if, for example, having agreed to something he did not bother to understand, Johnson now mulishly doubles down on his mistakes. At all events, Brexiters do not suddenly become competent or well-informed just because they have red boxes to open, as David Davis’s career attests. They may be inflicting a swirl of confusions, lies, half-truths and disinformation upon the country, but they are also themselves lost within that same miasmic fog.
Of course, on either account the outlook for the country is not at all good. The government seems to have simply no idea what it is doing and, especially since last week’s reshuffle, to be populated by subservient nonentities in the grip of group think. If so, there is every chance that it will unintentionally lead us to disaster. Alternatively, it knows exactly what it is doing, the cluelessness is a smokescreen, and disaster is actually the plan. It’s difficult to know which is the more alarming prospect.
From this point of view, the metaphorical comparison with Zersetzung is not, as might be thought, so much to say that psychological warfare is being unleashed upon individuals and groups in order to effect their disintegration. Rather, with Brexit we have a country unleashing a kind of Zersetzung upon itself.
Friday, 7 February 2020
Brexiters need to stop campaigning and start governing
Brexit day has come and gone. But as has been widely remarked, though apparently not universally understood, nothing really changes in the Transition Period, so there is no radical rupture in daily life.
The big question is whether that also means that nothing really changes in the way that Britain approaches Brexit. For last Friday did mark a rupture in one, crucial, way. Brexit, in the formal sense of Britain leaving the EU has happened, and a new phase has begun.
The issue now is not so much whether remainers accept that (£) – they don’t have much choice anyway - it’s whether Brexiters do. In particular, the issue is whether Brexiters – who now, unequivocally, form the government – are able to shift from campaigning to, indeed, governing.
What would this mean?
Stopping the lies
The first and most important thing that would have to change is for Boris Johnson, his government, and all the Brexiter commentators and advisers to stop lying. If they are serious about Brexit they need to face up to the realities of what it entails and that means telling the truth to themselves and others.
To take an example from this week. Hardly had the celebrations ended than Johnson was reported to be “infuriated” that the EU had “reneged” on its commitments to strike a ‘Canada- style’ free trade deal by now insisting on ‘Level Playing Field’ (LPF) commitments in terms of state aid, workers’ rights, environmental standards and so on. But that this was the EU’s position has been clear for at least a year and, more importantly, was set out in the text of the Political Declaration (paragraph 77) that Johnson himself signed. It’s this kind of constant gaslighting that would need to stop.
There’s more to it than that, though. Suppose that it were true that the EU had hardened its position, or suppose that it does, indeed, harden position in the coming months. In that case: welcome to the real world – there’s no point in having a foot-stamping, ‘it’s not fair’ tantrum. This is what Brexit means. This is what you wanted. The UK is now a third country with respect to the EU, which will pursue what it judges to be its own interests and those of its member states. Britain is no longer a member state, and the EU will, quite properly, have no regard for our interests.
It seems strange to have to remind Brexiters that the EU is not some cuddly, kind uncle, showering largesse upon the world. It is ruthless in pursuit and protection of its own interests. So too will be the US, or Japan, or China, or India, or any other country with which the UK seeks to made trade deals, including ‘cosy’ Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Nor is this confined to matters of trade, and trade itself is linked with other issues. That is evident in the row over Huawei 5G with the US (£) and the report that Spain will have a veto over the application of any UK-EU deal to Gibraltar. The latter caused much pearl-clutching from Brexiters but, again, there is nothing new here. It was the subject of one of the earliest rows in the Brexit process, back in April 2017. And as I wrote at the time, this row contained several lessons for how Brexit would proceed.
These lessons included, again, the need for realism. Just as the UK used Spain’s accession to the EU in 1986 to garner EU support for the UK’s rights over Gibraltar (in that case, to have an open border with Spain), so the converse applies now that the UK is leaving. Another lesson was that the UK needed to drop the idea that only France and Germany mattered in terms of negotiating with the EU. As the pivotal influence that Ireland has had over the last three years should have demonstrated, that simply isn’t true. The EU will negotiate as a bloc, on the basis of a mandate from the Council, and with regard to the (various) interests of all its members.
Getting real
If Brexiters are going to get serious about governing, what also has to end is responding to these and similar things through the victimhood narrative of being punished by the EU or the bullish assertion that it all proves that Britain is right to leave. These are campaigning stances – arguments, if you believe them, for leaving the EU. But Britain has left the EU. The campaign is over. It’s time to get real.
That ‘getting real’ also includes being honest about the economic and political effects of what is being done. A trade deal, of any sort, with the EU is going to do little for services. A minimal trade deal will do relatively little even for goods. If the approach is to be de-alignment then recognize, as Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform explains, that “flexibility does not come for free”.
All reputable economic forecasts show that, whatever the trade deal, we will be somewhat poorer and if there is no trade deal we will be much poorer. There’s no longer any need to try to rubbish those forecasts (or forecasts in general, although in fact, with one notable exception namely that of ‘Economists for Brexit’, these have been fairly accurate). If they turn out to be wrong then they will turn out to be wrong, but admit that, at the moment, that’s the most likely outcome. So plan on that basis.
Trade deals with those countries with which the EU has deals are not all going to roll over on identical terms, and even where they do this will only put the UK back to the position it would have been without Brexit. Trade deals with new countries, even the US, will not make a huge difference and will not off-set the loss of trade with the EU. Be honest and realistic about the priorities and possibilities for global trade policy as Sam Lowe (again, but in a different article) suggests.
There are going to be border checks and other formalities between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so stop pretending otherwise. Recognize that in due course that may lead to Irish reunification. Also recognize that Brexit has made the case for another independence referendum in Scotland all but unanswerable, or at all events ensured that calls for it will be increasingly vociferous. It will surely happen eventually. So accept that and, with it, the possibility that Scotland will leave the UK.
Almost all of these things are, in my view, damaging. But that argument is over. Now that they are going to happen what matters is, again, for Brexiters to stop trying to win a campaign argument and start being realistic. If they think they are a price worth paying then so be it, but admit the price and start working out how to go about paying it.
And getting real means dropping all the tired old lines – still being wheeled out by the likes of David Davis - about how Britain’s trade deficit with the EU, and the needs of German car makers, guarantee a great trade deal. They helped win the campaign, but the campaign is over. They were lies but they’re no longer needed. Or, for those who want to insist they are true, they are still redundant as we’ll soon get that great trade deal anyway.
Developing a serious strategy
The second big change that would be needed is also about truthfulness and realism, but on a bigger canvas. I’ve several times argued that Brexit is not just a strategic error but, actually, a strategic absence. Again, that’s linked to its having been a campaign and protest movement. The historian Professor Robert Saunders has provided a more developed version of that argument in a truly superb essay on his blog.
It’s well worth reading in full but, in brief, Saunders argues that Britain joining the EU was a belated strategic response to its changed economic and geo-political situation in the aftermath of the Second World War. It may, he says although he does not agree, have been the wrong response, as Brexiters believe. But that does not mean that the challenges it responded to have gone away.
Moreover, he argues that the British Euroscepticism that ultimately gave rise to Brexit has its roots in a 1990s analysis of the world order which, in 2020, is redundant. Therefore we need, in his words, to get “serious about the choices in front of us” which “will require more imagination, more humility and a more clear-eyed appreciation of the options than anyone has yet offered in Britain’s tortured Brexit debate”.
It is a proposal in line with Sam Lowe’s analysis of post-Brexit trade priorities, referred to earlier, in which he argues that a long-term trade strategy must have a coherent economic or geo-political purpose rather than being a search for “political trophies”, although of course trade strategy is only one aspect of the wider point.
All this I agree with. Developing such a strategy will be difficult and the more so because it needs to be done quickly. It needs a big public conversation which should have preceded the Referendum or, at least, been developed once the result was known. ‘Global Britain’ is not such a strategy but rather, as the Foreign Affairs Select Committee put it in 2018, a slogan in need of substance.
Showing competence
Given the current time pressure and all the operational things that will need to be done – for example in developing new customs procedures – there is probably not the political or administrative bandwidth to achieve it in the next eleven months. But it is important to at least begin, and not just because such a strategy is needed in itself. Rather, along with being truthful and realistic about what Brexit means, doing so would at least send a signal of competence. That would do something to repair the battering Brexit has given to the UK’s image abroad, but it would also be an important domestic signal.
There is much talk of the need to reach out to those who voted for Brexit because they had been ‘left behind’ (though that could and should have been done long ago, without Brexit). But there is also a need to reach out to remainers, and perhaps to a particular group amongst them. Call them ‘the Establishment’ if you must, but like it or not the many business people, professionals, administrators and so on who, as the demographics of the Referendum voting suggest, largely did not want Brexit are going to have to deal with its effects.
In my previous post I argued at length how dangerous it is that we are embarking on a complete change of direction whilst being so internally divided. That would be true even if Brexit was the most wonderful idea there had ever been. Any such policy needs some minimal level of buy-in from those who have to deliver it.
Having failed for three years to provide the consensus-building leadership that might have created that, the government now has a final chance to at least demonstrate that it will approach Brexit in a realistic way, being truthful about its actual effects and challenges. I don’t suggest that this would win over many remainers, but it might at least persuade some that Brexit has moved from unicorn fantasies to a deliverable, if still to them undesirable, project.
Getting out of the echo chamber
A final part of the shift from campaigning to governing would be for government ministers to look beyond the advisors who – I assume – they most closely rely on. Many of them, including Dominic Cummings but not limited to him, have their background in, precisely, the Leave campaign. Relatedly, the whole shady network sometimes known as the Tufton Street mafia is a big part of the problem, because it is from this that so much of the misinformation has flowed. Again, this would be the case even if Brexit were the most wonderful of ideas. It’s always a problem to confine advice to ‘true believers’ as it is a recipe for groupthink and poor decision making.
For Brexiters to recognize this involves dropping the idea – born both of being in campaign mode but also of a victim mentality – that they face a ‘remainer conspiracy’, whose lack of positivity will put a brake on Brexit. Yet if Brexit is supposed to be a realistic project, rather than an act of faith-healing, it requires that ministers get technically competent advice rather than just the soothing balm of being told what they want to hear.
Equally, if the government is really serious about ‘bringing the country back together’ then it would start engaging with people outside of the doctrinaire Brexiter camp. Instead, this week has seen journalists excluded from briefings and business groups not invited to Johnson’s speech on his Brexit ‘plans’. Echo chambers are bad enough on social media, and they’re certainly no basis for effective government.
Will any of this happen?
The short answer, of course, is ‘no’. The very nature of last weekend’s celebrations gives a clue as to why. It showed how, for many who were celebrating, the pleasure comes from triumphing over remainers rather than leaving the EU. That triumph can be endlessly relived, but doing so won’t deliver Brexit. Some, burning EU flags, are more concerned with hatred for the EU than with what Britain outside the EU would be. If Brexit leaders continue to pander to these two sentiments then, as for the last three years, Brexit will continue to be entirely focussed on the campaign, not on governing.
Still others were pro-Brexit but were protesting against Johnson’s Brexit for not being the real thing. That betrayalism, which no doubt Farage and some in the ERG will continue to articulate, means that Johnson is likely to continue to approach Brexit as a tactical party management device rather than as a matter of policy delivery. In any case he is an unlikely person to lead a shift from campaigning, given that it entails both being honest and also giving attention to practical detail and delivery. These things are hardly his most obvious strengths, and were he minded to try he would have started immediately after Brexit day, if not indeed when he became Prime Minister.
Instead, we’ve already seen in this first week we that nothing’s going to change. Apart from the bogus claims about the EU having suddenly invented its LPF requirements, we had the equally bogus idea that the UK could prosper with an ‘Australian-style deal’. In trade terms, since there is no EU-Australia free trade agreement, that just means no trade deal i.e. WTO terms (plus a few bits and pieces). Presumably Johnson’s advisors have suggested his formulation sounds more palatable.
So, still no honesty and, given the devastating effects it would have, still no realism and still no strategy. Johnson’s Brexit speech, according to politics Professor Tim Bale, was “of little substance” and did not have “a whole lot of realism”. Childishly, but in line with government policy (£), he refused to use the word ‘Brexit’. Unsurprisingly, the pound fell by about 1% against both the dollar and the euro as he spoke.
To the victor the spoils
That is one small example of the fact that Brexiters, led by Johnson, will now have to confront reality even if they refuse to be realistic. Slogans and rhetoric won the campaign, but neither they nor ‘true belief’ will make a difference to that reality. Strangely, those on the free-market Right, many of whom are such ardent Brexiters, used to know that ‘you can’t buck the market’.
So whatever kind of deal gets agreed with the EU it will have real consequences on business locations and investments, on growth, on the pound, on prices and on employment. They will happen even if Brexiters deny them, or discount them as ‘remainer negativity’, as if they were still campaigning rather than governing, still trying to win the argument rather than delivering their promises.
Brexiters are no longer, if they ever were, the victims they portray themselves to be. As Nigel Farage said at last week’s celebrations, “the war is over, we have won” (£). To the victor, go the spoils. They are now ‘the elite’ and ‘the Establishment’ but with that power comes responsibility and accountability. Like it or not, they can no longer run away from the consequences, but there’s no sign that they are going to stop trying.
The big question is whether that also means that nothing really changes in the way that Britain approaches Brexit. For last Friday did mark a rupture in one, crucial, way. Brexit, in the formal sense of Britain leaving the EU has happened, and a new phase has begun.
The issue now is not so much whether remainers accept that (£) – they don’t have much choice anyway - it’s whether Brexiters do. In particular, the issue is whether Brexiters – who now, unequivocally, form the government – are able to shift from campaigning to, indeed, governing.
What would this mean?
Stopping the lies
The first and most important thing that would have to change is for Boris Johnson, his government, and all the Brexiter commentators and advisers to stop lying. If they are serious about Brexit they need to face up to the realities of what it entails and that means telling the truth to themselves and others.
To take an example from this week. Hardly had the celebrations ended than Johnson was reported to be “infuriated” that the EU had “reneged” on its commitments to strike a ‘Canada- style’ free trade deal by now insisting on ‘Level Playing Field’ (LPF) commitments in terms of state aid, workers’ rights, environmental standards and so on. But that this was the EU’s position has been clear for at least a year and, more importantly, was set out in the text of the Political Declaration (paragraph 77) that Johnson himself signed. It’s this kind of constant gaslighting that would need to stop.
There’s more to it than that, though. Suppose that it were true that the EU had hardened its position, or suppose that it does, indeed, harden position in the coming months. In that case: welcome to the real world – there’s no point in having a foot-stamping, ‘it’s not fair’ tantrum. This is what Brexit means. This is what you wanted. The UK is now a third country with respect to the EU, which will pursue what it judges to be its own interests and those of its member states. Britain is no longer a member state, and the EU will, quite properly, have no regard for our interests.
It seems strange to have to remind Brexiters that the EU is not some cuddly, kind uncle, showering largesse upon the world. It is ruthless in pursuit and protection of its own interests. So too will be the US, or Japan, or China, or India, or any other country with which the UK seeks to made trade deals, including ‘cosy’ Australia, New Zealand and Canada.
Nor is this confined to matters of trade, and trade itself is linked with other issues. That is evident in the row over Huawei 5G with the US (£) and the report that Spain will have a veto over the application of any UK-EU deal to Gibraltar. The latter caused much pearl-clutching from Brexiters but, again, there is nothing new here. It was the subject of one of the earliest rows in the Brexit process, back in April 2017. And as I wrote at the time, this row contained several lessons for how Brexit would proceed.
These lessons included, again, the need for realism. Just as the UK used Spain’s accession to the EU in 1986 to garner EU support for the UK’s rights over Gibraltar (in that case, to have an open border with Spain), so the converse applies now that the UK is leaving. Another lesson was that the UK needed to drop the idea that only France and Germany mattered in terms of negotiating with the EU. As the pivotal influence that Ireland has had over the last three years should have demonstrated, that simply isn’t true. The EU will negotiate as a bloc, on the basis of a mandate from the Council, and with regard to the (various) interests of all its members.
Getting real
If Brexiters are going to get serious about governing, what also has to end is responding to these and similar things through the victimhood narrative of being punished by the EU or the bullish assertion that it all proves that Britain is right to leave. These are campaigning stances – arguments, if you believe them, for leaving the EU. But Britain has left the EU. The campaign is over. It’s time to get real.
That ‘getting real’ also includes being honest about the economic and political effects of what is being done. A trade deal, of any sort, with the EU is going to do little for services. A minimal trade deal will do relatively little even for goods. If the approach is to be de-alignment then recognize, as Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform explains, that “flexibility does not come for free”.
All reputable economic forecasts show that, whatever the trade deal, we will be somewhat poorer and if there is no trade deal we will be much poorer. There’s no longer any need to try to rubbish those forecasts (or forecasts in general, although in fact, with one notable exception namely that of ‘Economists for Brexit’, these have been fairly accurate). If they turn out to be wrong then they will turn out to be wrong, but admit that, at the moment, that’s the most likely outcome. So plan on that basis.
Trade deals with those countries with which the EU has deals are not all going to roll over on identical terms, and even where they do this will only put the UK back to the position it would have been without Brexit. Trade deals with new countries, even the US, will not make a huge difference and will not off-set the loss of trade with the EU. Be honest and realistic about the priorities and possibilities for global trade policy as Sam Lowe (again, but in a different article) suggests.
There are going to be border checks and other formalities between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, so stop pretending otherwise. Recognize that in due course that may lead to Irish reunification. Also recognize that Brexit has made the case for another independence referendum in Scotland all but unanswerable, or at all events ensured that calls for it will be increasingly vociferous. It will surely happen eventually. So accept that and, with it, the possibility that Scotland will leave the UK.
Almost all of these things are, in my view, damaging. But that argument is over. Now that they are going to happen what matters is, again, for Brexiters to stop trying to win a campaign argument and start being realistic. If they think they are a price worth paying then so be it, but admit the price and start working out how to go about paying it.
And getting real means dropping all the tired old lines – still being wheeled out by the likes of David Davis - about how Britain’s trade deficit with the EU, and the needs of German car makers, guarantee a great trade deal. They helped win the campaign, but the campaign is over. They were lies but they’re no longer needed. Or, for those who want to insist they are true, they are still redundant as we’ll soon get that great trade deal anyway.
Developing a serious strategy
The second big change that would be needed is also about truthfulness and realism, but on a bigger canvas. I’ve several times argued that Brexit is not just a strategic error but, actually, a strategic absence. Again, that’s linked to its having been a campaign and protest movement. The historian Professor Robert Saunders has provided a more developed version of that argument in a truly superb essay on his blog.
It’s well worth reading in full but, in brief, Saunders argues that Britain joining the EU was a belated strategic response to its changed economic and geo-political situation in the aftermath of the Second World War. It may, he says although he does not agree, have been the wrong response, as Brexiters believe. But that does not mean that the challenges it responded to have gone away.
Moreover, he argues that the British Euroscepticism that ultimately gave rise to Brexit has its roots in a 1990s analysis of the world order which, in 2020, is redundant. Therefore we need, in his words, to get “serious about the choices in front of us” which “will require more imagination, more humility and a more clear-eyed appreciation of the options than anyone has yet offered in Britain’s tortured Brexit debate”.
It is a proposal in line with Sam Lowe’s analysis of post-Brexit trade priorities, referred to earlier, in which he argues that a long-term trade strategy must have a coherent economic or geo-political purpose rather than being a search for “political trophies”, although of course trade strategy is only one aspect of the wider point.
All this I agree with. Developing such a strategy will be difficult and the more so because it needs to be done quickly. It needs a big public conversation which should have preceded the Referendum or, at least, been developed once the result was known. ‘Global Britain’ is not such a strategy but rather, as the Foreign Affairs Select Committee put it in 2018, a slogan in need of substance.
Showing competence
Given the current time pressure and all the operational things that will need to be done – for example in developing new customs procedures – there is probably not the political or administrative bandwidth to achieve it in the next eleven months. But it is important to at least begin, and not just because such a strategy is needed in itself. Rather, along with being truthful and realistic about what Brexit means, doing so would at least send a signal of competence. That would do something to repair the battering Brexit has given to the UK’s image abroad, but it would also be an important domestic signal.
There is much talk of the need to reach out to those who voted for Brexit because they had been ‘left behind’ (though that could and should have been done long ago, without Brexit). But there is also a need to reach out to remainers, and perhaps to a particular group amongst them. Call them ‘the Establishment’ if you must, but like it or not the many business people, professionals, administrators and so on who, as the demographics of the Referendum voting suggest, largely did not want Brexit are going to have to deal with its effects.
In my previous post I argued at length how dangerous it is that we are embarking on a complete change of direction whilst being so internally divided. That would be true even if Brexit was the most wonderful idea there had ever been. Any such policy needs some minimal level of buy-in from those who have to deliver it.
Having failed for three years to provide the consensus-building leadership that might have created that, the government now has a final chance to at least demonstrate that it will approach Brexit in a realistic way, being truthful about its actual effects and challenges. I don’t suggest that this would win over many remainers, but it might at least persuade some that Brexit has moved from unicorn fantasies to a deliverable, if still to them undesirable, project.
Getting out of the echo chamber
A final part of the shift from campaigning to governing would be for government ministers to look beyond the advisors who – I assume – they most closely rely on. Many of them, including Dominic Cummings but not limited to him, have their background in, precisely, the Leave campaign. Relatedly, the whole shady network sometimes known as the Tufton Street mafia is a big part of the problem, because it is from this that so much of the misinformation has flowed. Again, this would be the case even if Brexit were the most wonderful of ideas. It’s always a problem to confine advice to ‘true believers’ as it is a recipe for groupthink and poor decision making.
For Brexiters to recognize this involves dropping the idea – born both of being in campaign mode but also of a victim mentality – that they face a ‘remainer conspiracy’, whose lack of positivity will put a brake on Brexit. Yet if Brexit is supposed to be a realistic project, rather than an act of faith-healing, it requires that ministers get technically competent advice rather than just the soothing balm of being told what they want to hear.
Equally, if the government is really serious about ‘bringing the country back together’ then it would start engaging with people outside of the doctrinaire Brexiter camp. Instead, this week has seen journalists excluded from briefings and business groups not invited to Johnson’s speech on his Brexit ‘plans’. Echo chambers are bad enough on social media, and they’re certainly no basis for effective government.
Will any of this happen?
The short answer, of course, is ‘no’. The very nature of last weekend’s celebrations gives a clue as to why. It showed how, for many who were celebrating, the pleasure comes from triumphing over remainers rather than leaving the EU. That triumph can be endlessly relived, but doing so won’t deliver Brexit. Some, burning EU flags, are more concerned with hatred for the EU than with what Britain outside the EU would be. If Brexit leaders continue to pander to these two sentiments then, as for the last three years, Brexit will continue to be entirely focussed on the campaign, not on governing.
Still others were pro-Brexit but were protesting against Johnson’s Brexit for not being the real thing. That betrayalism, which no doubt Farage and some in the ERG will continue to articulate, means that Johnson is likely to continue to approach Brexit as a tactical party management device rather than as a matter of policy delivery. In any case he is an unlikely person to lead a shift from campaigning, given that it entails both being honest and also giving attention to practical detail and delivery. These things are hardly his most obvious strengths, and were he minded to try he would have started immediately after Brexit day, if not indeed when he became Prime Minister.
Instead, we’ve already seen in this first week we that nothing’s going to change. Apart from the bogus claims about the EU having suddenly invented its LPF requirements, we had the equally bogus idea that the UK could prosper with an ‘Australian-style deal’. In trade terms, since there is no EU-Australia free trade agreement, that just means no trade deal i.e. WTO terms (plus a few bits and pieces). Presumably Johnson’s advisors have suggested his formulation sounds more palatable.
So, still no honesty and, given the devastating effects it would have, still no realism and still no strategy. Johnson’s Brexit speech, according to politics Professor Tim Bale, was “of little substance” and did not have “a whole lot of realism”. Childishly, but in line with government policy (£), he refused to use the word ‘Brexit’. Unsurprisingly, the pound fell by about 1% against both the dollar and the euro as he spoke.
To the victor the spoils
That is one small example of the fact that Brexiters, led by Johnson, will now have to confront reality even if they refuse to be realistic. Slogans and rhetoric won the campaign, but neither they nor ‘true belief’ will make a difference to that reality. Strangely, those on the free-market Right, many of whom are such ardent Brexiters, used to know that ‘you can’t buck the market’.
So whatever kind of deal gets agreed with the EU it will have real consequences on business locations and investments, on growth, on the pound, on prices and on employment. They will happen even if Brexiters deny them, or discount them as ‘remainer negativity’, as if they were still campaigning rather than governing, still trying to win the argument rather than delivering their promises.
Brexiters are no longer, if they ever were, the victims they portray themselves to be. As Nigel Farage said at last week’s celebrations, “the war is over, we have won” (£). To the victor, go the spoils. They are now ‘the elite’ and ‘the Establishment’ but with that power comes responsibility and accountability. Like it or not, they can no longer run away from the consequences, but there’s no sign that they are going to stop trying.
Thursday, 11 April 2019
The EU is protecting itself from Brexiter dishonesty and delusion - and throwing Britain a lifeline
We now know
the conditions under which, for the second time in a fortnight, the EU-27 are
willing to allow us to avoid, for now, the catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit. The
British Prime Minister was sent out of the room whilst the other countries,
each of whom had a veto, argued for hours over our fate and now they have decided.
Brexiters often talk of EU discussions ‘going to the wire’, imagining this to mean that at the last minute Britain will be given its unicorn cake. But these early morning talks were about whether to give the thin gruel of a short extension or the humble pie of a long extension with onerous conditions attached. In the event, the outcome was somewhere in the middle. Thus Britain has been granted an extension until the end of October, with a progress review in June. The offer comes with a pointed reminder that, as a departing member, the UK must not behave in an obstructive manner, and that the Withdrawal Agreement will not be reopened.
There is much talk of the humiliation of the UK having to ‘go cap in hand’ to the EU in search of an extension. This captures a certain truth – and one which I first wrote about on this blog in October 2017 – although it’s important to understand that it is a self-inflicted humiliation, visited on the UK by Brexiters rather than the EU.
But it also conceals a deeper and more shaming truth which is revealed by the conversations around the decision, and in particular concerns over how a lingering British membership might, intentionally or not, damage the EU. As Georgina Wright of the Institute for Government put it, the “EU gave up pressing UK for a ‘plan’ and focussed instead on making sure Brexit does not hamper EU work elsewhere”.
There are at least four dimensions to this, and as well as informing the EU’s decision making on the extension they also explain why an extension is needed at all.
Dishonesty
The most obvious is dishonesty. The entire Brexiter prospectus was a dishonest one, as becomes clearer each day, both about Britain’s membership of the EU and about what would await it afterwards. That dishonesty has spread from a small coterie of fanatics to infect the entire body politic of the UK. Thus even those who know it to be nonsense must ritualistically incant their ‘respect for the will of the people’. So in a general way there’s an understandable desire for the EU to place a kind of fire break between itself and this outbreak of pathological, incontinent lying.
This general sense of the danger of Brexiter dishonesty is personified in Boris Johnson. Perhaps more than anyone else he is rightly seen in the EU as the figure who, for years before the referendum, deliberately promulgated lies. Thus there is a specific sense in which the EU is concerned to protect itself from the possibility of a Johnson premiership (£) during the extension and (if it comes to that) transition periods. There is probably no politician in modern times who has done such comprehensive damage to British national reputation.
Untrustworthiness
But even if it were not Boris Johnson who became the next Prime Minister, many of the other likely candidates present a similarly distasteful prospect precisely because of the spread of the Brexit toxin within British politics. Even those ERG-ers who have belatedly come round to May’s deal are open in saying that they expect it to be ripped up once she is gone.
As regards the extension, comments from prominent Brexiter politicians – even those with few leadership credentials – compound the sense that the EU needs to protect itself. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s call for the extension to be used to wreck EU decision making might be seen as the worst example were it not for the onanistic Mark Francois making even more bellicose remarks. Apparently, we in the UK have to accept these ludicrous mediocrities playing a part in our public life. It’s not hard to understand why the EU are not enthusiastic about doing the same.
These people probably neither know nor care what terrible damage they are doing to the reputation of the UK as a trustworthy partner. And, in fairness, they only play a bit part in that. Far more damage was done, in a single sentence, when the then Brexit Secretary David Davis opined, after the conclusion of phase 1 of the Brexit talks, that what had been agreed was not binding. Perhaps more than anything else that poisoned trust in the negotiations.
It was compounded by Theresa May who, for all that she may appear more ‘reasonable’, followed Davis in disowning what had been agreed about the backstop at that time, saying that no British Prime Minister could agree to … what she had just agreed to. Indeed, the Article 50 talks never really progressed to phase 2 as a result, because the Conservative Party fell into a bitter internal battle about the backstop that ended up with the repeated rejection of May’s deal.
Incompetence
That was not the only reason why there was no substantive phase 2 (and, as a result, such an anaemic Political Declaration). It was also because the government couldn’t agree what it wanted from phase 2, and at the first attempt to do so, the Chequers’ Proposal, fell apart and has never recovered. This is the third strand which underlies how the EU have approached the extension. Britain is now seen, almost universally, as having descended into political chaos and incompetence.
At first, the EU thought that Britain had some ‘cunning plan’ about Brexit but this quickly evaporated. It was visually symbolised by the photo, at the beginning of the Article 50 negotiations, of the EU side having folders full of documents and the UK side nothing but David Davis’ inane grin. Symbolism aside, the substance told the same story. Throughout the process, the repeated EU call to the UK has been to ‘tell us what you want’ and to put forward a coherent plan. But, as the leaked conversation of her talks with Angela Merkel revealed, May’s approach has been to ‘ask for an offer’ which was revealing of a bigger truth: that the UK expected the EU to provide the answers to Brexit.
The incompetence inherent in Brexit was starkly illustrated this week by the comments of Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney-General and a committed Brexiter: “I feel we have under-estimated its complexity. We are unpicking 45 years of in-depth integration. This needed to be done with very great care, in a phased and graduated way. It needs a hard-headed understanding of realities”. True enough – but, to say the least, it’s a bit late in the day to be realising that.
Incompetence is not the same as dishonesty, but in this case it arises from it. For the biggest lie of the Leave campaign was precisely that it would be quick and easy, and that the UK held all the cards. That the EU now see a longer than requested extension as necessary is, in effect, saying that the UK needs to have time to deal with its internal political chaos, recognize the complexity of Brexit, and develop a competent approach to it. The diagnosis is right, but thinking that six months is enough to reach that state calls for a degree of optimism that not only cynics might think misplaced.
Delusionary thinking
Alongside dishonesty and incompetence, and closely related to them, is something slightly different: persistent delusionary thinking. The ‘quick, easy deal’ fantasy is a part of that (remember when Boris Johnson said that eighteen months were more than enough to get the entire deal, including future terms, agreed, and David Davis said that the UK was “not really interested” in a transition period but might agree one to “be kind” the EU), but it runs much deeper.
It would take far too much space to catalogue the delusions – many posts on this blog have done just that – but in recent times an obvious example is the repeated nonsense of the Malthouse Compromise and (relatedly) ‘managed no deal’. The minimal version is that the EU would agree to rip the backstop out of the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) and substitute it with acceptance of non-existent ‘alternative arrangements’. The maximal version is that the UK could ditch the WA altogether, but still have a transitional period and also proceed to negotiating a future terms deal without any WA.
None of this is realistic at the most basic level of understanding. It’s not just that the EU will not agree to it, but that they could not agree to it. But – reflecting the general point about how Brexiter poison has infected British politics – this idea is persistently floated not just by maverick figures but by leading politicians. In the last week or so ‘Malthouse’ was put forward yet again, whilst Andrea Leadsom combined the non-starter of taking the backstop out of the WA with the longstanding myth that Angela Merkel alone could and would set the terms of Brexit in Britain’s favour.
A slender lifeline for the UK
So the humiliation for Britain is not, primarily, in having had to ask the EU for an extension. It is that both the need for the extension and the way the EU approached the decision to grant it reflect the fact that Brexiters have made Britain dishonest, untrustworthy, chaotic, incompetent, and delusional.
But it’s actually even more humiliating than that. The ultimate truth of what the EU have decided is that – far from needing to ‘punish’ us – they are willing to be kind to us. We have been given the chance – carefully managed, in case we abuse it – to get our act together and to drop all the lies and fantasies.
It remains to be seen whether we are able to take that chance. Even today, the morning after the extension was agreed with the reaffirmation that the WA is closed, David Davis was on Radio 4 fantasising that with the right leader Britain could simply go back to the EU and renegotiate the WA and if not that no-deal is just fine. There will undoubtedly be plenty of other Tory MPs who will think that pursuing this fantasy will be the best use of the next six months.
Nevertheless, this new, longer delay presents remainers with a real opportunity and they should plan for the possibilities created. Assuming the European Parliament elections go ahead, there is a chance for anti-Brexit candidates to flourish on higher than usual turnout. The campaign for another referendum or for revocation will surely intensify, the more so precisely if the Tory Party decides to waste the time by intensifying its civil war. And, despite everything, there are still many in the EU who hope for and would welcome Britain deciding to reject (£) the course Brexiters have set for us and so conspicuously failed to deliver to deliver upon.
Brexiters often talk of EU discussions ‘going to the wire’, imagining this to mean that at the last minute Britain will be given its unicorn cake. But these early morning talks were about whether to give the thin gruel of a short extension or the humble pie of a long extension with onerous conditions attached. In the event, the outcome was somewhere in the middle. Thus Britain has been granted an extension until the end of October, with a progress review in June. The offer comes with a pointed reminder that, as a departing member, the UK must not behave in an obstructive manner, and that the Withdrawal Agreement will not be reopened.
There is much talk of the humiliation of the UK having to ‘go cap in hand’ to the EU in search of an extension. This captures a certain truth – and one which I first wrote about on this blog in October 2017 – although it’s important to understand that it is a self-inflicted humiliation, visited on the UK by Brexiters rather than the EU.
But it also conceals a deeper and more shaming truth which is revealed by the conversations around the decision, and in particular concerns over how a lingering British membership might, intentionally or not, damage the EU. As Georgina Wright of the Institute for Government put it, the “EU gave up pressing UK for a ‘plan’ and focussed instead on making sure Brexit does not hamper EU work elsewhere”.
There are at least four dimensions to this, and as well as informing the EU’s decision making on the extension they also explain why an extension is needed at all.
Dishonesty
The most obvious is dishonesty. The entire Brexiter prospectus was a dishonest one, as becomes clearer each day, both about Britain’s membership of the EU and about what would await it afterwards. That dishonesty has spread from a small coterie of fanatics to infect the entire body politic of the UK. Thus even those who know it to be nonsense must ritualistically incant their ‘respect for the will of the people’. So in a general way there’s an understandable desire for the EU to place a kind of fire break between itself and this outbreak of pathological, incontinent lying.
This general sense of the danger of Brexiter dishonesty is personified in Boris Johnson. Perhaps more than anyone else he is rightly seen in the EU as the figure who, for years before the referendum, deliberately promulgated lies. Thus there is a specific sense in which the EU is concerned to protect itself from the possibility of a Johnson premiership (£) during the extension and (if it comes to that) transition periods. There is probably no politician in modern times who has done such comprehensive damage to British national reputation.
Untrustworthiness
But even if it were not Boris Johnson who became the next Prime Minister, many of the other likely candidates present a similarly distasteful prospect precisely because of the spread of the Brexit toxin within British politics. Even those ERG-ers who have belatedly come round to May’s deal are open in saying that they expect it to be ripped up once she is gone.
As regards the extension, comments from prominent Brexiter politicians – even those with few leadership credentials – compound the sense that the EU needs to protect itself. Jacob Rees-Mogg’s call for the extension to be used to wreck EU decision making might be seen as the worst example were it not for the onanistic Mark Francois making even more bellicose remarks. Apparently, we in the UK have to accept these ludicrous mediocrities playing a part in our public life. It’s not hard to understand why the EU are not enthusiastic about doing the same.
These people probably neither know nor care what terrible damage they are doing to the reputation of the UK as a trustworthy partner. And, in fairness, they only play a bit part in that. Far more damage was done, in a single sentence, when the then Brexit Secretary David Davis opined, after the conclusion of phase 1 of the Brexit talks, that what had been agreed was not binding. Perhaps more than anything else that poisoned trust in the negotiations.
It was compounded by Theresa May who, for all that she may appear more ‘reasonable’, followed Davis in disowning what had been agreed about the backstop at that time, saying that no British Prime Minister could agree to … what she had just agreed to. Indeed, the Article 50 talks never really progressed to phase 2 as a result, because the Conservative Party fell into a bitter internal battle about the backstop that ended up with the repeated rejection of May’s deal.
Incompetence
That was not the only reason why there was no substantive phase 2 (and, as a result, such an anaemic Political Declaration). It was also because the government couldn’t agree what it wanted from phase 2, and at the first attempt to do so, the Chequers’ Proposal, fell apart and has never recovered. This is the third strand which underlies how the EU have approached the extension. Britain is now seen, almost universally, as having descended into political chaos and incompetence.
At first, the EU thought that Britain had some ‘cunning plan’ about Brexit but this quickly evaporated. It was visually symbolised by the photo, at the beginning of the Article 50 negotiations, of the EU side having folders full of documents and the UK side nothing but David Davis’ inane grin. Symbolism aside, the substance told the same story. Throughout the process, the repeated EU call to the UK has been to ‘tell us what you want’ and to put forward a coherent plan. But, as the leaked conversation of her talks with Angela Merkel revealed, May’s approach has been to ‘ask for an offer’ which was revealing of a bigger truth: that the UK expected the EU to provide the answers to Brexit.
The incompetence inherent in Brexit was starkly illustrated this week by the comments of Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney-General and a committed Brexiter: “I feel we have under-estimated its complexity. We are unpicking 45 years of in-depth integration. This needed to be done with very great care, in a phased and graduated way. It needs a hard-headed understanding of realities”. True enough – but, to say the least, it’s a bit late in the day to be realising that.
Incompetence is not the same as dishonesty, but in this case it arises from it. For the biggest lie of the Leave campaign was precisely that it would be quick and easy, and that the UK held all the cards. That the EU now see a longer than requested extension as necessary is, in effect, saying that the UK needs to have time to deal with its internal political chaos, recognize the complexity of Brexit, and develop a competent approach to it. The diagnosis is right, but thinking that six months is enough to reach that state calls for a degree of optimism that not only cynics might think misplaced.
Delusionary thinking
Alongside dishonesty and incompetence, and closely related to them, is something slightly different: persistent delusionary thinking. The ‘quick, easy deal’ fantasy is a part of that (remember when Boris Johnson said that eighteen months were more than enough to get the entire deal, including future terms, agreed, and David Davis said that the UK was “not really interested” in a transition period but might agree one to “be kind” the EU), but it runs much deeper.
It would take far too much space to catalogue the delusions – many posts on this blog have done just that – but in recent times an obvious example is the repeated nonsense of the Malthouse Compromise and (relatedly) ‘managed no deal’. The minimal version is that the EU would agree to rip the backstop out of the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) and substitute it with acceptance of non-existent ‘alternative arrangements’. The maximal version is that the UK could ditch the WA altogether, but still have a transitional period and also proceed to negotiating a future terms deal without any WA.
None of this is realistic at the most basic level of understanding. It’s not just that the EU will not agree to it, but that they could not agree to it. But – reflecting the general point about how Brexiter poison has infected British politics – this idea is persistently floated not just by maverick figures but by leading politicians. In the last week or so ‘Malthouse’ was put forward yet again, whilst Andrea Leadsom combined the non-starter of taking the backstop out of the WA with the longstanding myth that Angela Merkel alone could and would set the terms of Brexit in Britain’s favour.
A slender lifeline for the UK
So the humiliation for Britain is not, primarily, in having had to ask the EU for an extension. It is that both the need for the extension and the way the EU approached the decision to grant it reflect the fact that Brexiters have made Britain dishonest, untrustworthy, chaotic, incompetent, and delusional.
But it’s actually even more humiliating than that. The ultimate truth of what the EU have decided is that – far from needing to ‘punish’ us – they are willing to be kind to us. We have been given the chance – carefully managed, in case we abuse it – to get our act together and to drop all the lies and fantasies.
It remains to be seen whether we are able to take that chance. Even today, the morning after the extension was agreed with the reaffirmation that the WA is closed, David Davis was on Radio 4 fantasising that with the right leader Britain could simply go back to the EU and renegotiate the WA and if not that no-deal is just fine. There will undoubtedly be plenty of other Tory MPs who will think that pursuing this fantasy will be the best use of the next six months.
Nevertheless, this new, longer delay presents remainers with a real opportunity and they should plan for the possibilities created. Assuming the European Parliament elections go ahead, there is a chance for anti-Brexit candidates to flourish on higher than usual turnout. The campaign for another referendum or for revocation will surely intensify, the more so precisely if the Tory Party decides to waste the time by intensifying its civil war. And, despite everything, there are still many in the EU who hope for and would welcome Britain deciding to reject (£) the course Brexiters have set for us and so conspicuously failed to deliver to deliver upon.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)