Negotiating events

With Britain having left the EU, this week saw the beginning of the negotiations about the future terms of UK-EU trade and other relationships. That anodyne sentence ought to anger leave voters as it is not what they were assured by the Vote Leave campaign which stated that “we will negotiate the terms of a new deal before we start any legal process to leave “ (p.11 of link). Given that we are constantly told that the government is enacting what people voted for it is perfectly reasonable to continue to record that what is happening is very far from that.

The talks begin in an atmosphere of deep distrust (£). Many believe that they will collapse with no deal being done, and some believe that this is actually the government’s plan. By contrast, the respected trade expert Sam Lowe of the Centre for European Reform makes the ‘relatively’ optimistic argument that a deal is still possible. But this, he says, is “largely due the UK’s lack of ambition”. In other words, a quite limited zero tariffs, zero quotas deal is conceivable although, as Lowe notes, even this will entail compromises to be made by both sides.

Here, too, we are a long way from what was promised. Not only was a deal supposed to be easy, but it was supposedly going to be a deep and special relationship, going well beyond a basic Free Trade Agreement. The flaws in that claim have been widely remarked upon, but the more fundamental – though related - issue is, indeed, that of the distrustful atmosphere, since it is this which now makes an extensive deal so unlikely and no deal at all quite possible.

The consequences of Brexiter negativity

There was no inevitability about that. I’m not by any means someone who imagines the EU to be perfect or faultless. But very little of this is down to them. The Referendum result was greeted with sadness and some bemusement, and subject to reasonable conditions as extensive a relationship as the UK wants has been on offer. The EU has been remarkably consistent about this, and has behaved very much as the UK would have wanted it to had it been another country leaving and the UK remaining a member. It has certainly been fairly rigid in its approach, but that’s an inevitable feature of being a multilateral rules-based entity. If it were not, Brexiters would be the first to denounce it for doing shabby back-room deals without regard for the consent of its members and the rules that bind them.

Rather, it has arisen because, from the beginning, Brexiters have reacted to their victory not with happiness but with anger, and this infected first Theresa May’s approach to Brexit and now Boris Johnson’s. Immediately, there was talk of not paying the divorce settlement, suspicion about the EU’s motives, disparaging comparisons with the USSR or Nazi Germany, and bellicose sabre-rattling.

Ridiculous expectations of what the UK could have as an ex-member were held even as the red lines ruling these out became harder and harder, and as it became clear these expectations would not be met the invariable reaction was to treat this as punishment. And when agreements were made, as at the end of phase 1 of the Article 50 talks, the UK immediately repudiated them as non-binding. This has developed to the current situation where radically different claims about what the Northern Ireland Protocol means threaten to derail the negotiations entirely. Here again we should recall that this only arises because of the false claim of the Leave campaign that Brexit would have no implications at all for the Irish border.

This is not ‘remainer negativity’. It is about, precisely, ‘Brexiter negativity’. Had they approached Brexit in a confident, positive, generous even joyful fashion then the outcome might have been very different. But instead the story has been one of hostility and dog-in-the-manger resentment, stoked up by a vitriolic media. Moreover, the onus was on Britain, as the initiator of the divorce, to set a magnanimous tone. Only at brief moments, such as May’s Florence speech, has there been such a tone, and that speech sounded more like a case for Britain joining the EU than for leaving. Johnson’s passive-aggressive references to ‘our European friends’ certainly lack any such magnanimity, whilst the childishly insulting antics of Farage and other Brexit Party MEPs in the European Parliament have undoubtedly done much damage to UK-EU relations. No such discourtesy has been evident from the EU.

Brexit beyond logic and reason

So we have now arrived at a point where out of sheer, dogmatic, remorseless antipathy to anything and everything remotely connected with the EU the UK is ripping up almost every form of co-operation, regardless of the costs. Examples include the Galileo Global Navigation Satellite System programme. This is a complicated story, involving two different aspects, the first being British companies’ rights to bid for certain sorts of contracts and the second being British access to its full military capabilities. In both these respects, what was offered to Britain, as a third country, was very limited. Still, negotiations were ongoing, and there was potential scope for an agreement, but in 2018 Theresa May pulled out of the talks and announced that the UK would develop its own system at massive expense, initially estimated to be £3-4 billion. This week, it emerged (£) that this system was delayed, over-budget, and mired in disputes.

Needless to say, Galileo did not even figure in the Referendum campaign, any more than did Euratom which the UK is also leaving in order to replicate its functions at national level at huge cost. Even Dominic Cummings has described that decision as “near-retarded” and, far from being the will of the people, only 10% of the public support it.

Certainly no one knew Brexit meant, or wanted it to mean, the latest government decision to pull out of the Unified Patent Court (UPC) – having ratified membership well after the Referendum, in 2018 - which is not even an EU body. This decision will have major consequences for knowledge-intensive businesses, in particular. Nor, especially now, is it likely to be a public priority to leave EWRS, the EU’s pandemic warning system, but that is what the government have just decided to do along with also deciding not to pursue participation in the European Arrest Warrant. Needless to say, again, none of this was set out even during the recent election campaign.

These last three examples all show a hardening of the UK’s position under Johnson even compared with May, and, along with other cases, they flow from two things. On the one hand, an almost pathological aversion to even the most minimal and peripheral roles for the ECJ. On the other hand, an idea that anything sought in the non-trade arena that is outside of a ‘Canada-style’ relationship will give the EU a negotiating advantage in the trade arena by conceding that the UK wants more from Brexit than such a relationship.

This assumes that the EU would drop its Level Playing Field (LPF) conditions for a trade deal since, on non-trade issues, the UK demonstrably ‘only wanted to be like Canada’. But that is a non sequitur, as the LPF demand is connected to the size and proximity of the UK economy to the EU – and hence to the trading relationship – and will exist quite independently of the non-trade considerations.

So, on either of these rationales, all that is achieved is a quite spectacular British cutting off of its nose to spite its face. And this is where, certainly, there is a distinction to be drawn between the EU and the UK in their approaches to Brexit. For the EU has been both rigid and, yes, ruthless in pursuit of its interests. There’s nothing wrong with that, and nothing wrong with the UK doing the same. But the UK is doing things which can in no conceivable sense be in its interests. That isn’t the same as saying that Brexit is not in the national interest – I think that is so, but clearly the government and a large part of the population disagree – it is saying that Brexit can be pursued without this attempt to totally eviscerate even the most limited and benign forms of mutually advantageous administrative cooperation.

Of course, some will say, that is because the Conservative Party is just acting in its own interests. But there are few votes in leaving the EWRS, for example. Of course, others will say, but it’s all about their shadowy hedge fund backers. But there is little money to be made from leaving the UPC, for example. And neither the EWRS nor the UPC will do much to stoke up the culture war, and are certainly not needed to do so.

In the absence of any discernible logic it’s difficult, therefore, to overstate the total insanity with which Britain is now approaching Brexit. It goes way beyond anything that is remotely necessary to ‘respect the 2016 vote’ and way beyond what any but a tiny handful of voters ever imagined Brexit to mean. It is certainly way beyond even the hard Brexit that Theresa May embraced for all that, as noted, some of it roots back to that time.

A question of loyalty

In these circumstances, it is hardly surprising that the conflict between the government and civil servants is intensifying, as discussed in my previous post. As if in confirmation of that analysis, almost immediately after that post came the dramatic resignation of Sir Philip Rutnam. In the post I alluded to the conflicts in the Home Office and also said that we could expect further push back from the civil service against the position in which it has been put by Brexit. These conflicts certainly shouldn’t be complacently downplayed as just the familiar fights between ministers and civil servants that have long occurred.

Whilst the issues about Priti Patel’s alleged behavior go beyond Brexit, it does lie at their heart in that the clashes with Rutnam began over the workload entailed by Brexit, and the risks entailed by seeking to deliver that work in the very short time frame the government is insisting upon in order to meet its self-imposed refusal to seek an extension to the transition period. Certainly the media and social media debate that followed Rutnam’s resignation demonstrated that it split along remainer versus leaver lines. Perhaps the most dangerous aspect of that debate was the suggestion that since Patel is pursuing ‘the will of the people’ any behavior would be justified.

It is also hard to resist the conclusion that the resignation, and its manner, were part of a much wider battle in which, in the words of Sir Mark Sedwill, Head of the Civil Service, in a statement the week before, the civil service is asserting its “enduring work to protect and promote the interests of our citizens, communities and country”. The wording is crucial here, since this work is posited as something additional to (and therefore different from) serving the government and, unlike the government, is “enduring”. That is a direct contrast with the convention articulated in the 1985 Armstrong Memorandum that “the Civil Service as such has no constitutional personality or responsibility separate from the duly constituted government of the day”.

Senior civil servants use language with great precision: Sedwill’s message was clear and intended, and it makes sense precisely in the context of a significant gap opening up between serving the government and serving the national interest. It’s a complicated distinction (for who is to say what is in the national interest, and why should civil servants have any particular role in defining it), but it does differ from simply disagreeing with policy.

Perhaps it is more akin to whistle-blowing in organizational contexts. Some may condemn particular instances of it, but most will agree that, in principle, there is a point at which individual conscience and professional values take precedence over organizational loyalties and legal undertakings. We don’t nowadays think much of the ethics of those German military officers who served the Nazi regime whilst not subscribing to it, because they treated their oath of loyalty as sacred (and, no, I’m not comparing the government to the Nazis, just making a point about the principle).

Not that the issue is necessarily, at least not yet, one of a complete divergence between politicians and civil servants. But the latter clearly have to be able to tell ministers if – as seems to have happened – the work needed for Brexit cannot be done in time. There’s no disloyalty in that, nor is there even necessarily any disagreement with Brexit. The problem arises if, as discussed in my previous post, stating such facts is taken to connote such disloyalty, and arise from a lack of true faith and belief. It is the importation of the Brexiter culture war into the corridors of power, bringing with it precisely the distrust and toxicity which has infected the negotiations with the EU, not to mention the entire country.

The power of events

So that brings us back to this first week of negotiations. As they ended, Michel Barnier spoke of the “serious divergences” between the two sides, with the expected issues being named – fishing, LPF, governance – but also security. In the past, the latter might not have figured in the list, and might have been seen as a potentially less contentious area, but the UK has decided not to open this chapter of the talks yet and the reasoning must presumably be that the government sees this as an area of leverage given Britain’s greater resources in this area, especially as regards intelligence capacity.

That has been hovering as an idea since Theresa May’s Article 50 notification letter, but then seemed to be softened in her Munich speech. Now it seems to have been weaponised again.  Even so, the overall sense of the first week’s talks was that they were less confrontational than might have been expected.

It is clearly far too early to predict how things are going to develop, but for what it is worth I am beginning to think that the government is going to become less bellicose and more flexible in its Brexit approach than has so far been the case. The reason for this is not so much Brexit itself but that, having started office in a very gung-ho manner, thinking that its parliamentary majority and disruptor ideology would enable it to sweep all before it, the experience of governing has already been chastening. The resignation of Sajid Javid, the flooding emergency, the court judgment about Heathrow expansion, the now growing row over Priti Patel, the Flybe collapse and, especially, the developing Coronavirus crisis have all played their part.

Suddenly, this feels like a beleaguered administration. The hubris I wrote about just last week is, already, looking just a little faded. In particular, Coronavirus has forced Johnson to bow to pressure to appear in public, forced ministers to appear on shows they had been boycotting, forced politicians and the public to recognize the need for experts and technocratic planning, and demonstrated the power of unexpected events to derail economic and political plans.

This analysis may be premature and flawed – over-reacting to what may be ephemeral news - but if it is right then it could lead to a limited, partial deal being struck in Brussels, under cover of the Coronavirus causing postponement of meetings (£), and this then used to justify some extension of the transition period under a different name in order to resolve outstanding issues. There are already a few speculations to that effect, as the links given show.

That’s not to say that this would be an especially desirable outcome. It might avert a new cliff edge next January, but would mean a continued slow burn of economic damage, deferred investment and so on. And that would further bolster the denialism about the adverse effects of Brexit, as these would be more gradual and more difficult to disentangle from other factors such as, indeed, the economic impact of the Coronavirus as well as all the other expected and unexpected things which will occur. Indeed, one reason to think that this scenario might have some appeal to the government is that it would be consistent with the attempt to lose all talk of Brexit and have it merge with the wider swirl of events.

Conference without Brexit

In the next few months, starting in the next few days, a series of decisions are going to be made which will shape Britain’s future for the next few decades. Yet you would hardly have thought that from the Conservative – or for that matter the Labour – conference. For, rather like the 2017 General Election, whilst Brexit dominated the event almost nothing of substance was actually said about it. In particular, no compelling, strategic reason was given for why it’s being done, why it’s a good thing to do, and what Britain will look like as a result.

Tactics without strategy

That’s partly because of Theresa May’s familiar preference for the tactical rather than the strategic. It’s just a matter of ‘getting through’ the next few days, in the case of the conference, without disaster. Apart from vague talk about the country’s best days being ahead of it, for May the purpose of the exercise seems to be simply ‘delivering what the people voted for’, which is really only to say that the purpose of Brexit is Brexit rather than saying it has anything to commend it. It’s rather like the way soldiers used to sing, to the tune of Auld Lang Syne, ‘we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here, because we’re here’.  The only time the Prime Minister has ever talked in strategic terms about Brexit was in her Florence speech – and that, as I remarked at the time, sounded far more like a case for joining the EU than for leaving it.

Her defenders might say that the promise to end freedom of movement was one of the prizes she held up. But for many voters – including many Conservative voters – that is an announcement of a right they will lose, not a benefit they will gain. In any case, the key strategic demographic challenge facing Britain isn’t immigration, it’s our ageing population, with all its economic and cultural implications. About that neither May – nor, to be fair, any other leading politician – has much to say at all.

As for ending austerity, there’s no form of Brexit that will make that more likely and research from the Centre for European Reform published this week showed that even before Brexit has occurred it is costing the public finances £26 billion per annum. That might have been in Philip Hammond’s mind when, in one of the few pragmatic comments about Brexit, he reminded his colleagues that geography could not be bucked when it comes to trade and that this made the economic relationship with the EU of paramount importance. An argument for damage limitation, not for Brexit.

Those looking for something more ebullient might have listened to Liam Fox setting out the stall for global trade post-Brexit. Within it, he highlighted Mexico, South Korea and Canada as three countries to be singled out for especially intensive effort to secure trade deals. But this was just another argument for damage limitation since Britain already has, via the EU, comprehensive Free Trade Agreements with these countries. So, even assuming these could be replicated – something highly questionable according to analysis by LSE experts of, for example, the South Korea case – all that is promised is that at some unspecified point in the future we might undo the damage done to trade with those countries by Brexit.

Power without responsibility

Of course it is precisely the failure by May and others to provide a compelling, positive narrative for Brexit that Boris Johnson rails against. But for all the adulation he received at the conference for his speech he, too, only articulates this narrative in the vaguest of terms about future greatness. For all his pretensions, it’s actually a remarkably thin vision, which is perhaps not noticed given the more obvious fact that it's even thinner on the practicalities of how to achieve it. If May eschews strategy for tactics, Johnson does so in favour of campaigning.

What he is campaigning for now (apart from his own ever-present ambitions) is for the Ultras to vote down any deal that the government strike with the EU; to ‘chuck Chequers’ or anything like it. The most significant part of his speech was to encourage them to ignore Michael Gove’s ‘get over the line and then change direction’ message. But Johnson seems to have no idea as to what would actually happen if his version of events plays out. So his is not a strategy but a kind of anarchy. Often with Johnson there is the sense that what drives him is the thrill of being able to wreck things just to see what happens. As with many bullies, the ultimate answer to why he does what he does is ‘because I can’.

Victory without pleasure

In Johnson’s case, his flip of a coin decision to campaign for Brexit has contributed a great deal to the polarisation that has followed. Another of May’s speech lines was on the need for “a politics that unites us not divides us”. It is too late for that, not least because of the way that she has chosen to interpret the referendum vote. But even if it is now her sincere desire that message has not reached parts of her party. In a fringe meeting entitled ‘Brexit means Brexit’, MPs, former ministers and other members held what sounds almost like a faith rally in which the name of Olly Robbins, the Civil Servant leading the Brexit process, was repeatedly booed, a list of European treaties was read out and booed, and remainers were traduced as traitors.

These are, supposedly, responsible politicians – some of the them senior figures in their party. What’s even more striking, though, is that this is how they behave having won the Brexit vote. You might expect from them, at least, much excited talk of the wonderful prospects awaiting us, rather than so graceless a display. But Brexiters have always been happiest when denouncing their enemies. Indeed much of the story of what has happened since 2016 is captured by the way that they would have been much happier had they lost the vote.

In some perverse way, secret even from themselves, their unacknowledged dream may be that those at another fringe meeting at the conference, calling for a second referendum, are successful. For this would return Brexiters to the comfort zone of protest. May in her speech warned that those who pursue their own visions of a pure Brexit may end up with no Brexit. What she meant was that if they follow Johnson’s call to vote down any deal that she strikes then what could follow, at least in one permutation of events, is just that. Maybe they will care less than she thinks.

The other way May sought to counter Johnson’s call to ‘chuck Chequers’ was to simply not mention Chequers at all and instead to just talk vaguely of a ‘trade deal’. That seemed to be enough to persuade some Brexiters, such as Iain Duncan Smith in a Channel 4 news interview, that she had come round to a Canada (or ’super-Canada’) model. Given that Chequers, or any future trade terms, will be subject only to a political declaration that might suggest that we will see the Withdrawal Agreement go through, perhaps with a fudged formulation about the Irish border, with only the vaguest of statements about future terms, allowing all sides to think it means what they want.

Brexit without end

If – and it’s a big if – that is what happens, it will be both an irony and a tragedy that the long-term strategic future of the country will be set, first, by a referendum in which the meaning of Brexit was not specified and, then, by a parliamentary vote on an equally unclear agreement. It will also come as a desperate and astonishing disappointment to those who ‘just want to get on with it’ that the meaning of Brexit continues to be a matter of both dispute and continuing negotiation for years to come.

For in such a scenario, within moments of the Withdrawal Agreement being ratified – which, something to which little British attention has been paid, will also require approval by the European Council and the Parliament – all the talk of different models, no deal, extending transition, and cliff edges will resume. And with it the on-going haemorrhage of companies and investment.

In other words, even if having ‘got through’ the conference, May’s government find the tactics to ‘get through’ the vote, there will still be no meaningful Brexit strategy. That will be a consequence of a governing party which, even now, is unable to decide what Brexit means or to explain why Britain is doing it.

A dangerous void where government should be

It would be a silly season story, but Brexit is now a year round silly story so when Dominic Raab pronounced that the UK might withhold paying its outstanding debts to the EU if there was no trade deal agreement it has to be taken seriously. Raab, bear in mind, is a hardcore Brexiter who has just been made Brexit Secretary and this was one of his first public statements in the role.

Raab’s threat and the phase 1 agreement

The folly of it can hardly be overstated. This is a payment that Britain has already undertaken, in the phase 1 agreement, to make. Many commentators are pointing out that the Article 50 talks are sequenced, with phase 2 being about trade and the phase 1 agreement is not contingent on the second phase. But there is more to it than this. The Article 50 process will not and cannot yield a trade deal. It can yield a broad agreement about a future trade deal but that deal itself will take much longer and would be completed (if at all) under a different process.

Thus Raab’s threat is, in a sense, meaningless. But that does not mean it will have no effect. Its effect is to further undermine trust, just when it is most needed. Just as his predecessor David Davis’s airy dismissal of the phase 1 agreement on the Irish border backstop made it vital to the EU to nail that down in a legal text in the Withdrawal Agreement, so will Raab’s statement strengthen the case to make the agreement on the payment watertight.

After all, this payment will not be made in one lump sum but over many years into the future. It is absurd to think that the EU would leave any wriggle room on it, especially with all the noises off from the Ultras that, once over the March 2019 line, anything agreed is up for grabs again. Raab’s threat is all of a piece with this, and takes us back to the very early days after the Referendum when Brexiters were denying that any payment at all needed to be made, and that the EU could ‘go whistle’ for the money owed. It is a posture which damages not just negotiations with the EU but to Britain’s more general credibility as a reliable negotiating partner. And trust matters in international negotiations.

It’s worth recalling how the phase 1 agreement came about. At the time, the government were desperate for it to happen both in order to show progress and to indicate to businesses and individuals that there could be a transition period. It was for this reason that it agreed not just the financial settlement, but provisions for citizens’ rights and for the Northern Ireland backstop. Subsequently, ministers crowed that they had defied the nay-sayers who doubted a phase 1 deal was possible. Now, they have all but disowned what they agreed to.

Brexiter anger and aggression

This latest episode is illustrative of the entire way that Brexiters and the government have approached the process. Apart from some generous and emollient comments from Theresa May, especially in the Florence speech, the tone has been unrelentingly sour, grudging and, often, aggressive and hectoring; the ubiquitous references to the Brexit ‘war cabinet’ being one example. As I’ve remarked before, Brexiters often act as if the EU were forcing Britain to leave.

The irony is that Brexiters urge remainers to embrace the positive, even glorious, opportunities that they claim Brexit brings. Imagine if they had approached the exit process in that way. Then, it would have been open and generous-minded. We are entering a great and prosperous future: a few billion over many years to settle our liabilities is nothing by comparison. An immediate, unilateral guarantee to EU citizens would be no problem. A long-tapered role for the ECJ in relation to those citizens would be a minor matter. What can such trivialities matter now that we rejoice in being free! At the same time, a realistic proposal for the future could have been proposed, which either did not begin from rigid red lines or which accepted the implications of those red lines for what could be achieved.

But of course nothing remotely like that has happened. That is partly because the Brexit Ultras are so suffused with hatred of the EU that it has permeated the entire approach to leaving. Talks had barely started before some Ultras were calling for Britain to walk out of them. It’s also because of their anger at finding that – as they were warned – there was never going to be an agreement to allow Britain to effectively stay in the single market but without budget payments, ECJ and freedom of movement. Indeed it is that which has meant that although phase 1 was concluded last December, nothing has really happened since because the government still can’t seem to understand it.

So, now, the Brexiters are ramping up the anger levels and talking in ever wilder terms about leaving without any deal at all. This takes us from the realm of silliness to that of real danger. Apart from the many economic calamities, we now have a senior business leader talking of the possibility of civil disorder (£), and level-headed legal experts discussing as a genuine prospect the use of government emergency powers. This is a million miles from what leave campaigners told voters that Brexit would be like which makes a mockery of their perpetual, robotic grinding out of the absurd line that whatever happens now is the sacred and unchallengeable ‘will of the people’.

A void where government should be

A responsible government would not have allowed things to get to this point. But it is no exaggeration to say that, as regards Brexit policy, Britain doesn’t actually have a functioning government. It seems to be the omnipresent Rees-Mogg more than the cabinet which is determining that policy, to the extent that it is not even clear any more whether the Chequers’ proposal – hopeless as it is – is actually the government’s current negotiating position or not. Likewise with Raab’s threat: is this now government policy? Or is he speaking for himself? No one knows.

Similarly, a responsible government would have tried to lead and shape public discourse about the EU which has long been degraded, in the last couple of years been toxic, and is now in danger of becoming completely unhinged. Having refused to disown the tabloid assault on ‘enemies of the people’ and ‘saboteurs’, the government itself now stands accused of ‘treachery’.

Meanwhile, the ever-growing EU punishment narrative is given succour not just by the out-and-out headbangers but by the new Foreign Secretary. His message that the British public would blame the EU for a no deal Brexit was only a diplomatic version of what in the social media swamp re-appears as undiluted hatred. A better and more leaderly message would have been to the British people, explaining why the punishment narrative is misplaced. But all roads lead back to the Tory Party’s civil war, and for Hunt (a remainer turned Breliever, who may well harbour leadership ambitions) to have done so would be to be open to attack for the heresy of what are now being putridly called 'remainer tendencies'.

The highly respected Brexit commentator, David Allen Green, wrote today about the need for those expressing alarm about the possibility of no deal to be calm (though not complacent) and gave several sound reasons for this. That is no doubt good advice, and could be extended across the spectrum to those ramping up the pressure for there to be no deal as well as those fearing it. But, again, it is really only the government which can fill the void here, by providing the calm leadership to do so, and that is not possible when there is a void at the heart of where government should be.

The summer may provide a breathing space for everyone, but once the silly season is over the government need to get serious. This farce could very soon turn into a tragedy. Just today, a reputable British newspaper, The Times, carried an opinion piece lauding the virtues of autocratic leadership over democracy. A straw in the wind, perhaps, of the kind of politics that the combination of Brexit chaos and Brexit McCarthyism could take us to.

We’ve seen that movie, and it doesn’t end at all well.