Fisking Duncan Smith

In today’s Daily Mail one of the most longstanding and hard line Brexiters, the former Tory Party leader Sir Iain Duncan Smith, yet again put forward a series of arguments against the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP).

It was no doubt timed to coincide with today’s ‘stocktaking meeting’ of the Joint Committee overseeing the NIP and is part of the ongoing attempt by the Brexit Ultras (£) to pressure Johnson’s government into ‘triggering Article 16’ or, even, simply scrapping the Protocol.

Background

As such it has to be understood against the background of how, throughout the Brexit process, the Ultras have failed to understand or accept the implications of Brexit, and especially hard Brexit, for Northern Ireland and, in particular, the need for a border that hard Brexit causes. As such, it represents one of the core, and perhaps the most unforgiveable, example of the Brexiters' total irresponsibility in advocating a project the consequences of which they neither comprehended nor cared about. Elsewhere, I have written a detailed analysis of many of the twists and turns of this general background.

More specifically, it has to be understood against the background – shared by Duncan Smith and all current Tory MPs, as well as by the government – that the NIP formed part of the Withdrawal Agreement that Boris Johnson and David Frost negotiated with the EU in 2019. More than that, it was the part which was hailed as a triumph for being crucially different to Theresa May’s deal because it ‘got rid of the hated backstop’ and instead created a GB-NI border as part of the GB-EU border.

This was the ‘oven ready’ deal, endorsed by Duncan Smith, that Johnson and all Tory MPs campaigned for at the 2019 General Election. They then all voted in favour of it after they had won the election, and Johnson signed it as an international treaty in 2020. Duncan Smith, notoriously, derided the idea that the details of the agreement even needed to be extensively discussed by MPs as they were already well-understood. So Duncan Smith, quite as much as anyone else, is responsible for the NIP he now denounces.

And in case anyone thinks that the Ultras may have supported it without realising what its effects were going to be in practice then a) that shows gross dereliction of duty and b) is falsified by the fact that, from before its operations were even implemented, they were denouncing the entire Withdrawal Agreement, including the NIP, as not being ‘sovereignty compliant’. This can be seen in the July 2020 report from the Centre for Brexit Policy (of which Duncan Smith is a Fellow and some of the arguments in his article appear in that report).

In this post, I will discuss each of the claims or arguments that Duncan Smith makes. The article is reproduced in its entirety below. Duncan Smith’s text is in normal font within speech marks, with my discussion in italicised font beneath.

Duncan Smith’s Daily Mail article

"There can be few people who do not now realise how disastrous the Northern Ireland Protocol is for that part of the UK."

The latest detailed opinion poll evidence shows that the 52% of the Northern Irish public agree that the Northern Ireland Protocol is on balance a good thing for Northern Ireland, whilst 41% disagree. Even amongst unionists, only 11% think it is the most important issue in the forthcoming Assembly election.

"It is divisive, restrictive and is causing real harm to the local economy."

It is true that it is divisive in the sense that its core provision of an Irish Sea border creates a division within the UK single market and that this was done in the face of bitter opposition from many unionists, including the DUP, understandably so, because it offends their core political principle. Duncan Smith knew both of these things when he voted for the NIP. Indeed one can feel considerable sympathy for ordinary members of the unionist community who have been comprehensively let down by both the government and their political leaders. The DUP’s support for Brexit and handling of the real influence it had over the Brexit process is a story of extraordinary political failure. Equally, the process that forced Northern Ireland (like Scotland) to leave the EU against the wishes of the majority is a central problem, about which Smith says precisely nothing.

Claims of economic damage are usually based on the work of Dr Esmund Birnie of Ulster University, much cited by the DUP, but it is based on limited data and comparing the NIP with what would have been the case had Brexit not happened. The fact is that Brexit is economically damaging for the UK as a whole, but is likely to be less damaging in NI than for the rest of the UK, precisely because the Protocol means that NI remains in the European single market for goods, as well as being part of the UK (see also here (£), here (£)). Indeed ONS figures suggest that this is already happening, and the Protocol is protecting the NI economy. And NI manufacturers say that the Protocol is the least of their worries. Of course if Duncan Smith’s point is indeed that Brexit is economically damaging for the whole of the UK (and indeed the EU) then he is right.

"But this terrible arrangement is not just bad for that part of the realm – it’s bad for the rest of the UK as well.

That’s because, two years after we formally left the EU, the Protocol still gives Brussels a hold over wider UK policy-making."

Duncan Smith knew or should have known this when he voted for the Protocol.

"For example, it is probably fair to say that if it wasn’t for the pernicious effects of the Protocol, every family in Britain could be £100 a year better off from scrapping VAT on fuel bills.

After all, the power to set our own VAT rates was rightly hailed as one of the benefits of quitting the EU.

And with households facing a cost of living spike, driven by spiralling energy costs, the UK government knew that a cut in VAT on energy would help those struggling with their cost of living and deliver on our manifesto pledge.

But this very Tory-friendly, tax-cutting idea was effectively ruled out because it could not take effect in NI where VAT rates on domestic fuel bills must still match EU levels.

Allies of Chancellor Rishi Sunak may say the VAT cut was ruled out because it would also benefit wealthy people who didn’t need it.

However, thanks to the Protocol, it was also just too politically embarrassing for Ministers to deliver a tax cut which helped with spiralling energy bills in Great Britain but not in NI.

So torn between scrapping VAT in Great Britain and leaving Northern Ireland out, or doing nothing at all, the Government chose to leave VAT on energy in place."

This is what Johnson agreed and Duncan Smith knew or should have known it would be the effect of the Protocol. In any case it is speculative whether this is the reason the UK government isn’t cutting VAT on fuel.

"But that’s not all.

The Protocol also gives the EU power over whether the UK, post Brexit, can change our rules on the state aid we give to industry and the economy at large."

This is what Johnson agreed and Smith knew or should have known it when he voted for the Protocol.

"The EU claims the purpose of the protocol is to protect the Belfast/Good Friday agreement, (GFA) by keeping the north/south border open.

However ironically, the only people now threatening to re-introduce border checks between Northern Ireland and Ireland in the event of a dispute is the EU."

Presumably this is a reference to the brief few hours when the EU considered using Article 16 to halt vaccines being exported to NI. If so, it is not an ongoing threat, and it wouldn’t have entailed border checks, just the non-shipment of vaccines from Belgium. Conceivably, what Duncan Smith means is that if the UK unilaterally refused to implement Sea border checks, then land border checks might well be the only possible option left for the EU – but this is the core problem of Brexit as regards NI, and the reason for the NIP.

"The reality is that Brussels is trying to use the Protocol to do as much damage to the UK-wide single market as they can."

This is paranoid nonsense. Neither Brexit nor the NIP were desired by the EU. The NIP arises, in general, because of the problem Brexit created and, in its particular form, because Brexiters like Duncan Smith preferred it to Theresa May’s backstop. So, yes, it damages the UK single market – but he and others like him are to blame for that, as they are for refusing the EU’s offer of an SPS alignment deal (see below).

"Already the Protocol is leading to real economic harm in the NI economy."

As above, Brexit is harming the whole UK economy, but the NIP is mitigating some of that damage for NI.

"Trade is clearly being diverted to the Irish Republic in contravention of the agreement."

Diversion of trade is occurring but does not ‘contravene’ the agreement. It may be a ground on which to invoke Article 16, although even that is far from being an accomplished fact because it is a safeguarding measure against developments which were not reasonably foreseeable from the Protocol. In fact it was obvious, and should have been obvious to Duncan Smith when he voted for it, that the creation of an Irish Sea border was bound to result in diversion of trade because it created a barrier between GB and NI and GB and Ireland, but not Ireland and NI. But even if it were argued that is not so, all that Article 16 does is to create a temporary suspension of parts of the NIP pending a negotiated solution.

In any case, the mitigations which the EU has proposed would, if agreed by the UK, go a considerable way to reduce diversion of trade. And this would be even more so if the UK were to accept aligning with EU Sanitary and Phyto-sanitary (SPS) rules. This would resolve even more of the practical border issues and, at one stage, was lobbied for by the DUP. But Brexiters like Duncan Smith, and the British government, refuse this solution because of a dogmatic adherence to a very narrow idea of sovereignty. In this, they would now seem to be out of line with Jacob Rees-Mogg’s recent statements (£) that the UK should unilaterally accept some EU rules in order to reduce non-tariff barriers to trade.

"Furthermore, no less a figure than Lord Trimble, architect of the Good Friday Agreement, has made it very clear the EU is now damaging the social balance in Northern Ireland - again in contravention of the agreement."

If “the agreement” means the GFA then a court case has already rejected the argument that it is contravened by the Protocol. If (as implied by its following the point about trade diversion) it means the Protocol, then, as with diversion of trade, ‘societal difficulties’ would not ‘contravene’ but could be the basis for use of Article 16 – but, again, arguably not if the problems weren’t reasonably foreseeable and, again, even if Article 16 did apply all it would do is create a temporary suspension of parts of the NIP pending a negotiated solution. Since the UK and EU are already in negotiations, why does Duncan Smith imagine they would yield a different outcome if done via Article 16?

"There is already a better way to protect the GFA and keep the border open without border checks.

It is called ‘Mutual Enforcement’.

This involves both the EU and the UK mutually enforcing each other’s rules, regulations and taxes for companies exporting into each other’s territory.

Any company operating out of NI would be required to declare that it had met all the obligations contained in EU law when selling goods to the Republic of Ireland.

Any breach of that obligation would be followed up by the authorities in the UK and breaches would carry severe penalties as an effective disincentive to break that obligation, avoiding the need for border checks and safeguarding the integrity of the EU and UK’s internal markets."

This is nonsense. Mutual Enforcement has been endlessly proposed throughout the Brexit process and rejected because, in the words of Professor Katy Hayward of Queen’s University Belfast – a leading expert on the issue - it is not viable. It is simply absurd for the Brexiters to continue year after year to insist that it could provide a solution, or even that it ‘should’. It’s way past time for Duncan Smith and the Ultras to get real.

"The EU’s refusal to discuss replacing the Protocol, flies in the face of the existing agreement.

It was always expected that the Protocol would be temporary.

Article 13.8 of the Protocol makes it clear the protocol can be replaced."

This is nonsense. The Protocol was always intended to be permanent, and as a ‘frontstop’ not a ‘backstop’ – the first resort not the last resort. It can be replaced by a future agreement, but there is no obligation on either the EU or the UK to make (or even to discuss) a different agreement, and until such time as they choose to do so the NIP stands as permanent. If by ‘expected’ Duncan Smith means he believed the assurances which Steve Baker says were given to Tory backbenchers by Dominic Cummings and Michael Gove that the Withdrawal Agreement could be changed later then he is a fool. It was an international treaty, not some trivial document.

"Furthermore, Article 16 of the Protocol states that unilateral action can take place if there are, ‘serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties or diversion of trade’.

All are now present in Northern Ireland."

As discussed above, it is questionable whether these conditions have been met but, even if so, the unilateral action Article 16 allows is limited and temporary and, in itself, solves nothing.

"As I have said, this isn’t just a matter for those living in Northern Ireland but for the whole UK.

The very idea that a part of the UK should find itself subject to the authority of another collection of states on things as important as taxes, without having a say in the decision, is terrible.

Yet that has become the case."

This is what the government agreed and Duncan Smith voted for.

"Whatever happened to no taxation without representation?"

If this refers to things like VAT on energy in NI, then what happened is that Duncan Smith and the government agreed to end it.

"This is why I say it is time for the UK government to show some courage, take unilateral action and end the protocol."

If this means the unilateral action enabled by Article 16, then that doesn’t allow the UK to “end the Protocol”. If, as seems likely, Duncan Smith means unilaterally end the Protocol then this would violate international law, risk significant sanctions from the EU, create a major rupture with the US, jeopardise the GFA and have serious risks for security in NI and perhaps the whole of the UK. It would be an act of gross irresponsibility.

"If the EU really cared about the Good Friday Agreement, it would immediately engage in discussions to replace this temporary arrangement with a much better solution, such as Mutual Enforcement."

In other words, back to the same old problems Brexit poses for NI with no workable solution. And, actually, it is worse than that. One of the big stumbling blocks to Mutual Enforcement is that it requires high levels of trust from the EU. So the proposal that the UK unilaterally ripping up the international treaty it signed only two years ago would somehow be a route to this already rejected solution is a sign of, at best, grotesque stupidity.

"If not, we have to ask ourselves: whatever happened to no taxation without representation?" 

See above.

Final thoughts

There’s nothing new in Duncan Smith’s article – he and others of his persuasion have made virtually identical arguments for years now. So why bother with them? Partly precisely because they are not new, and in this sense show the utter intellectual bankruptcy of the Brexit Ultras. But of course they don’t repeat them simply though stupidity. They do so because experience has shown them that if they keep hammering their demands they may well get them met, especially by an enfeebled government. It’s therefore worth challenging them, even though it is boring.

However, the issue goes well beyond being boring. Firstly, it is the refusal to accept what the government agreed to in the NIP which more than anything else has poisoned UK-EU post-Brexit relationships, to all our detriments. To understand that, it’s worth imagining what Smith and the Ultras would be saying if it had been the EU which had immediately reneged on some crucial part of the Withdrawal Agreement.

Secondly, as Patrick Cockburn has recently argued, this running sore means that the government, egged on by the Brexit Ultras outside government, are creating “a permanent condition of crisis” in NI. He suggests that whereas the unionist community might have regretfully accepted the NIP (as indeed implied by their earlier desire to accept SPS alignment), the constant suggestion that the UK might renege on it has actually fanned their opposition.

It is for this reason that Duncan Smith’s article, and, if only there was time, all such writings should be challenged. It is not simply that they are boring, dishonest and stupid. They are also damaging and dangerous.

Updated 23/02/22: the original version incorrectly referred to Duncan Smith as Smith. This has now been rectified.

England's dreaming

With apologies to those who have a fastidious objection to cliché, the sound of Brexit chickens coming home to roost and Brexit pennies dropping is now all but deafening. Thus the Daily Telegraph has belatedly worked out (£) that ending the right of freedom of movement of people does not just make it much harder for ‘them’ to come ‘here’ but also for would-be British ‘expats’ hoping to retire in the EU. Indeed the Express positively fulminates at the “new” laws “targeting” the British in Spain and “criminalizing” them for having the incorrect papers  (silence, though, from the Brexiters on the disgusting treatment being meted out to EU nationals seeking to enter the UK). The Express has also just discovered that Brexit is having a serious adverse effect on UK financial services.

Yet with wearying inevitability, these and other realizations are unaccompanied by any understanding at all that they arise from the UK’s own choices. Instead, they are invariably ascribed to the hostility of the EU, or of its member states, and to some version of the ‘we’re being punished for Brexit’ narrative which has been in place almost since the day of the referendum result. There’s an invincible, obstinate wall which simply can’t be broken through and that is not surprising, for its bricks are the combination of bellicosity and victimhood that were so central to the vote to leave in the first place.

Brexit’s fatal flaw

The horrible flaw that runs – to use another cliché – like words through the Brexit stick of rock is: we’ve left, but it’s outrageous that we’re treated as if we’ve left. There’s little point in berating leave voters for such sentiments, as they come directly from the Brexiters who campaigned for and implemented leaving. The cosy-sounding word ‘cakeism’ was the embodiment of their squalid dishonesty, and it shouldn’t be forgotten that Boris Johnson claimed that his Brexit trade deal proved that cakeism was achievable.

It is a sentiment which is alive and kicking now, and is at the centre of the growing conflict over the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP), with David Frost complaining that the EU is treating goods flows from Great Britain to Northern Ireland as they do “a Chinese container ship arriving in Rotterdam”. This, he whines, is a “purist view” which the UK “didn’t anticipate” when signing the NIP. So Frost – and one must assume the government as a whole – continues to refuse to understand that, with Brexit, Britain became a third country not as some mere technicality for ‘purists’, but as a matter of legal and political fact. And it is not just stupid but dishonest to pretend that what is happening at the Irish Sea border is a surprise: a Cabinet Office briefing spelled it out when the NIP was agreed in 2019.

The reality is that, from the beginning, Johnson’s government either did not understand or lied about what it had agreed, and did so in the most fundamental way of denying that an Irish Sea border would even exist. This, rather than any technicalities of implementing it, is the rotten core of this week’s developments in the NIP row, and most certainly not, as Frost and others are claiming, something that has arisen because of the EU’s foolish, but rapidly dropped, plan to suspend the NIP over vaccine supplies.

The complex strands of the NIP row

The latest developments are complex and have multiple strands. First, there are things that Frost has been writing and saying in the media, and during an appearance before a remarkably supine and unchallenging Select Committee, chaired by, and stuffed with, Brexit fanatics. To call its scrutiny toothless would be to grossly insult the denture-wearing community.  In essence, Frost’s position amounts to saying that the NIP he negotiated is “not sustainable”, and that if the EU doesn’t allow the UK to avoid its obligations then the government will invoke Article 16 to suspend the Protocol. This has been the threat since the very first days of it coming into operation (and well before the EU’s Article 16 demarche) and reflects not so much concerns about the implementation of the NIP as an objection to its very existence. That has added political impetus now with the election of Edwin Poots as DUP leader, as his avowed aim is to scrap the NIP altogether.

In parallel to, and consistent with, Frost’s statements are the government’s proposals for a ‘roadmap’ for a phased NIP implementation, and its initial response to the EU’s proposed legal action over the UK’s breach of the NIP by unilaterally extending the grace periods for some border checks. This response apparently includes the suggestion that the UK might argue to suspend the NIP on grounds of force majeure (meaning, in brief, that unforeseen circumstances beyond the UK’s control mean it should be released from its obligations). If so, this seems unlikely to succeed not least because, as noted above, it is on record that the government knew what the effects of the Protocol would be.

A final strand is the hearing of evidence in a case at the Belfast High Court, brought by unionists and some other Brexiters, which aims to have the NIP declared illegal. The opening submission, that the Protocol is comparable to the Vichy regime, gives a taste of how ludicrous bellicose victimhood is not confined to the pages of the Express and Telegraph. (The hearing has now finished and there will be a reserved judgment in the next few weeks). There are also now more-or-less open threats of Loyalist violence over the NIP.

The deeper roots of the NIP row

There’s a lot of chewy detail in the various reports I’ve linked to but, as always, it’s worth standing back a little bit. The root cause of what is going on is the failure of Brexiters to understand or to accept that (hard) Brexit had any implications for Northern Ireland or an Irish border at all. That is one specific part of the wider refusal to accept the realities of being a third country, and it has never gone away.

It was compounded by Johnson’s rush to agree to anything that ‘ditched the backstop’ and to create what – and in all the current noise this mustn’t be forgotten – he described as a great deal, upon which he and all Tory MPs campaigned for in the 2019 election and voted for in the subsequent parliament, and which he signed as an international treaty. The now-established Brexiter myth, repeated by Frost this week, that it was a deal forced on Johnson by MPs refusing to countenance ‘no deal’ is simply false.

These things aren’t just some sort of game, or a newspaper column that can be written one week and disowned the next. The NIP mess – nothing remotely like which was suggested when electors were encouraged to vote leave in 2016 – is entirely of the Brexiters’ making, and of Johnson in particular. What makes it all the more shameful is that fact that, as former leader of Labour MEPs Richard Corbett points out, the NIP was a major concession by the EU, allowing and trusting a third country to manage the external border of the single market.

That trust was utterly misplaced, which won’t shame the British government but does shame many British people. Perhaps more importantly in terms of realpolitik, as was underscored by a resolution of the US Senate this week and the EU reaction to it, the UK will pay a heavy geo-political price if it persists with this behaviour. It also makes it much more difficult for the EU to show the flexibility that some are advocating by softening its ‘zero-risk’ approach to NI border checks, since that would require it placing even more trust in the UK.

The flip-side of all this is the total inadequacy of Johnson’s and Frost’s conception of ‘sovereignty’. For Frost, whose mediocrity is being ever-more clearly exposed now that he is in the government and effectively in charge of Brexit, this is the magic word that answers every question. Thus the problems of the NIP, and more generally, all arise from the EU not having ‘adjusted to the fact’ that the UK is ‘now’ a sovereign power. In fact, the main problem is Frost’s inability to understand the realities and limitations of sovereignty, which include having to abide by agreements you have made, and recognizing the sovereignty of other states as well as the ways in which it is pooled amongst EU member states.

But the even deeper concern is that Frost’s delusions about sovereignty now lead him to the proposition (£) that not only is the UK able to be completely free of the EU “regulatory orbit” (which, I suppose, is feasible if you’re willing to accept the extraordinarily high economic cost) but that the UK can become “a global leader in setting standards and rules, alongside the US, China and the EU”. This simply isn’t going to happen, and can’t happen, because the UK is too small for it to be able to happen. Frankly, it is an insane idea, grounded perhaps in nationalistic arrogance but more (or is it a version of the same thing?) in its failure to grasp the sovereignty of others.

The desperate search for Brexit benefits

Perhaps the most tragi-comic moment in Frost’s Select Committee appearance came when he stated that he is going to employ someone from outside the government and civil service to head a unit to identify post-Brexit benefits. Just as it’s a bit late in the day to be complaining about the NIP he negotiated, so too might one think that these post-Brexit benefits should have been assessed before rather than after the event. And his mention that he’s looking for someone with access to the knowledge of ‘thinks tanks’ (doesn’t everyone have access to this?) suggests that what is in prospect is a job creation scheme for some Tufton Street loon. Amusingly, though, this latest plan seems to imply that even the Brexiters have worked out that charging Iain Duncan Smith with the search for Brexit benefits wasn’t the wisest of moves.

Meanwhile, it’s also emerging that the much-touted post-Brexit benefit of ‘making our own trade deals’ is a distinctly two-edged one. In fact, it’s one of the reasons given by Frost for why the most obvious way to improve the NI situation – SPS alignment – is being ruled out by the UK. This isn’t, heaven forbid, for ‘ideological reasons’, Frost pontificates, but because it would hamper making these trade deals. Translated, that is an ideological reason: it’s certainly not a pragmatic one, since the gains of new trade deals will undoubtedly be less than the costs, both economic and non-economic, of non-alignment. For example, the UK-Australia trade deal that is apparently about to be struck is estimated to be worth, at best, 0.02% more GDP than would be the case without it.

In any case, it turns out, to the surprise of no-one, that making such deals is a politically fraught matter, as this week’s cabinet row over the deal with Australia shows (£). For domestically contentious issues such as farmers’ livelihoods, and possibly food and animal welfare standards and carbon emissions, are at stake. It can be be debated whether these concerns are well-founded, or whether there are benefits which compensate for them. The point, though, is that such debates can’t be avoided. In this sphere, too, cakeism is not an option and choices and trade-offs can’t be ignored.

In principle, these choices would be about the economic and perhaps strategic case for and against a particular deal. But such considerations are swamped by the government’s desire to demonstrate ‘Brexit benefits’ by completing a trade agreement – any trade agreement – with a country with which the EU does not currently have one. As I’ve remarked before, the Brexiters’ case for an ‘independent trade policy’ has always been based on the symbolism of ‘independence’ rather than the economics of ‘trade’ or the strategy of ‘policy’.

Moreover, in its desperation to announce a UK-Australia deal at June’s G7 meeting (which the Australian Prime Minister will attend) ‘sovereign’ Britain has put itself in a weak negotiating position with what the ever-ludicrous Daniel Hannan, forever stuck in an imagination of the 1950s, calls “our kinsmen Down Under” (£). Nothing matters except ‘proving’ it was right to leave. Indeed, if reports are to be believed, desperation to do a trade deal with India was a factor in delaying travel restrictions, thus leaving open the door to the ‘Indian variant’ of coronavirus.

In short, Brexit is turning out to be exactly the mess that was predicted, and for exactly the reasons predicted. If anything, it is proving worse, in that the dishonesty and incompetence of the Brexiters in government turns out to be even greater than the most pessimistic expectations. Given all that has happened in the last five years it may seem strange to say this, in what has been a relatively quiet week, but I don’t think I’ve ever felt as depressed about Brexit as I do at the moment. It’s not exactly a new realization, but it somehow seems clearer than ever that nothing is ever going to dislodge the fantasies and lies of Brexit and the Brexiters, and that there is no false narrative or bogus logic they will forego to justify what they have done.

In parenthesis (skipping this section doesn’t stop the one after it making sense)

It’s a very minor example, but this long-obvious truth was illustrated by some remarks this week by Professor Alan Sked, the founder and first leader of UKIP, and a distinguished historian. Noting that some German exporters “are giving up on the UK market due to delays and red tape since Brexit”, Sked argues that their problems are an ironic consequence of Michel Barnier’s (meaning the EU’s) insistence that the UK could not ‘cherrypick’. This led to a deal amounting to what Barnier “deigned to concede” rather than on the terms “desired by us”. But, he suggests, British exports to the EU have “bounced back” so “EU red tape at borders” has damaged EU companies, whereas “British regulations have still to come in”. Unfortunately, though, “idiot remainers” are apparently incapable of understanding his impeccable logic.

There are many layers within this farrago of nonsense. First, whilst there has been some recovery of UK exports to the EU since the initial drop in January it is far from complete (the picture looks even worse using Eurostat, rather than ONS, data, because the latter doesn’t include intra-company good transfers, i.e. when goods cross borders within company supply chains). Sked perhaps has in mind Frost’s claim about exports having returned to average 2020 levels, but that is deeply misleading because last year was massively affected by the huge mid-year drop due to Covid lockdowns. (It also leads Frost to the bizarre contortion that EU-administered checks on GB-EU trade have little effect, but UK-administered checks on GB-NI trade are causing major disruption.)

Second, it is indeed the case that the UK has postponed the introduction the necessary EU-GB import controls until January 2022, and in some cases March 2022. This isn’t due to some flexibility or charity on the part of the government – it is simply that, unlike the EU, it hadn’t prepared adequately for the end of the transition period. But that being so it is British exporters to the EU who face more in the way of increased Brexit red tape than EU exporters to the UK, exactly the other way round to what Sked claims. And, indeed, many UK exporters have given up as a result, especially small firms, of which one in four have done so. That is damaging to the UK but so, for that matter, is it damaging to British consumers when EU companies cease to service the UK market.

More fundamentally, it is of course the case that trading businesses in both the UK and the EU face barriers that did not exist when the UK was in the single market and customs union, and so all are worse off. The Brexit trade deal was the first in history to make the terms of trade worse than those which had existed before, a lose-lose for both parties. But that is not because it was all that the EU ‘deigned to concede’, it is because that was the path that the UK chose both with hard Brexit in general, and with the particularly hard form of complete regulatory dis-alignment that Johnson and Frost pursued on the grounds of ‘sovereignty’. These were, precisely, the terms “desired by us”.  

It’s difficult to know for sure, but the implication is that Sked thinks there would have been a way of leaving the single market and customs union without the re-introduction of the ‘red tape’ that these institutions abolish, and that this was an unnecessary dogma on the part of the EU. Or, in others words, that leaving somehow didn’t need to mean leaving, with the implication that the actual consequences of doing so were punitive (albeit that, on Sked’s account, the punishment has ‘backfired’ on the EU).

What is so depressing about all this is that it would be ludicrous to say that Sked is in any functional sense stupid, and, surely, incredible to imagine that someone who has devoted so much of his life to leaving the EU hasn’t developed any understanding of its practicalities. So the only reasonable interpretation is that he (and, no doubt, many others) is so heavily invested in the idea of Brexit as to be both able and obliged to perform these extraordinary and perverse twistings of evidence and logic in order to justify it.

The sleep of reason

Writing on the LSE Brexit Blog this week, Dr Nick Westcott of SOAS compares Brexit with a Ponzi scheme in which “the money and the sovereignty have gone, for good” but the scheme still persists because people have not yet admitted that to themselves. Of course, many of us already knew and some others have come to realize it. But Westcott is right that this is not in general so, and thus, for now, the Ponzi scheme continues. I don’t think it is going to end anytime soon. There is nothing which will dent the faith of true believers.

This isn’t (simply) because that faith is impervious to reason, for example by simply denying any adverse effect of Brexit, although that is part of it. It is because Brexiters have developed a form of reasoning which is impervious to reason. So when adverse effects are not, or cannot be, denied, they are re-cast so as to prove Brexit was right. Crucial to that is the idea that Brexit shouldn’t mean being treated like a non-member and that, when it is, this just demonstrates that leaving was vital because the EU is being ‘nasty’.

Thus any benefits - real or fabricated – prove that Brexit was right, but so too do any costs. There’s every sign now that our country is going to disappear down this rabbit hole of illogic, compounded by delusional ideas about the power of our sovereignty, and the irrelevance of that of others, doing permanent damage as a result.

A joint Resolution Foundation and LSE project launch this week (£) spelt out how Brexit adds to the challenges of what will be a ‘decisive decade’ for the UK, including dealing with the realities of a US-EU-China dominated global economy. But such future-oriented thinking is light years away from Frost’s bullish assertions about the UK’s future as a regulatory superpower, and still more from the government’s obsession (£) with protecting Britain’s glorious history from ‘woke’ revisionism. In fact, to use a final cliché, it is time we all woke up and smelt the coffee. Until we do, however noisy the returning chickens and dropping pennies, they won’t be heard.

 

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My book Brexit Unfolded. How no one got what they wanted (and why they were never going to) will be published by Biteback in June 2021. It can be pre-ordered from Biteback, or via other online platforms, as a paperback or e-book.

 

Brexit, beached

With Joe Biden’s victory now assured, millions of words have now been written – in the UK, if nowhere else – as to what it means for the US-UK relationship and for Brexit in particular. Of these, I’ve found the analyses of CNN’s Luke McGee, James Kane of the Institute for Government, and Lisa O’Carroll, the Guardian’s Brexit correspondent, especially insightful. There are also some intriguing thoughts about the wider consequences of a Biden presidency, so far as I know only in the form of a twitter thread, from Charles Grant, Director of the Centre for European Reform.

2016 recedes into history

My own take is that it’s worth taking a step back from Trump’s defeat to recall what his victory in 2016 meant for Brexiters, namely to validate their project as being not an anomaly but as having caught the tide of history. With the self-proclaimed ‘Mr Brexit’ in the White House, and plucky Brexit Britain at his side, the EU would shortly collapse and a new era would begin. And it’s important to clarify what the Brexiters and Trump shared in their imagination of that new era – it was one of separate nations, unhampered by the constraints of international organizations or multi-lateral agreements, but making bilateral agreements if and when it was in their interests. A US-UK trade deal would be emblematic of how that new world would be, as well as a symbolic affirmation of Brexit itself.

It’s true that Trump’s hostility to NATO, the WTO, the UN, the WHO and so on was never matched, or even shared, by the UK government or by most Brexiters. Indeed, the latter seem to find the prospect of obeying ‘WTO rules’ positively exciting. But they very much shared his vision of the nation state. Ironically, Brexiters failed to appreciate that, by definition, that meant that for all his talk Trump was never going to grant the UK a trade deal on any terms other than his own, and actually he blew hot and cold on the whole idea. In any case, despite his delusions of grandeur he operated within his own constraints. In particular, it has been plain since at least August 2019 that Congress would not ratify any trade deal if Brexit posed a threat to the Good Friday Agreement (GFA).

Much attention is now focused on the prospects of such a trade deal with Biden’s America, and his own very strong and stated commitment to the GFA. But the more important point is that his election strips away the last vestige of Trump’s 2016 boost for Brexit. The EU has manifestly not collapsed and is not going to, there is no sign of any other member wanting to follow the sorry path of Brexit, and the populist wave has not triumphed. And of course all the predictions of how as ‘the fifth largest economy’ the UK ‘held all the cards’ in delivering Brexit have long ago been discredited.

Now, there will be a US administration strongly committed to the EU and more generally to multi-lateralism and international co-operation. It’s only necessary to read Nigel Farage’s snivelly lament for the hours he spent in Trump Tower to see how fatally isolated the Brexit project now is. That sense is compounded by the emerging news of the imminent departure of Dominic Cummings and the rest of the Vote Leave team from Downing Street. Far from having caught the tide of history it is now beached on the mudflats of a failed international putsch, the ghastly remnants of an experiment that has gone so horribly wrong that government ministers are supposed to no longer refer to it by name.

Can the government recognize what’s changed?

So the question now is whether the UK government recognizes all this or whether it is so captured by Brexiter ideology as to be incapable of doing so. As it happens, there is a very precise litmus test immediately available to answer that question in the form of the Internal Market Bill (IMB) or more specifically those clauses relating to Northern Ireland which, on the government’s own admission, would be in violation of international law. If the government persists this will make not just a trade deal but harmonious relations with the US generally impossible, as it will with the EU.

It is increasingly clear that this is not simply because of what the effects on the GFA might be but also, more broadly, because of the disdain of the EU and, now, the US for Johnson’s brazen disregard for international law even if the GFA isn’t damaged. In that sense it is irrelevant whether the IMB clauses do or – as can certainly be argued - don’t in themselves threaten the GFA, or even whether or not they are ever invoked. What matters is simply their existence if they are passed into law. Comments this week from both Simon Coveney, the Irish Foreign Affairs Minister, and US Congressman Brendan Boyle underline this. For both, the key issue is the betrayal of trust over an agreement so recently signed by the UK government.

Sovereignty and independence in an interdependent world

This in turn goes to the heart of the inadequacy of the Brexiter understanding of what ‘independence’ and ‘sovereignty’ mean, which seems to be one of untrammeled freedom of action. On the one hand, this is what led them to believe, as no other EU member does, that being in the EU meant not being an independent and sovereign state (a lie nailed by the very first Brexit White Paper in February 2017, which stated that “Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU”). On the other hand, it led them to think that as an ‘independent’ country the UK can operate without constraints.

This was the gist of Suella Braverman’s advice that the IMB was legal: “Parliamentary supremacy means it is entirely constitutional and proper for Parliament to enact legislation, even if it breaches international treaty obligations”. It also permeates Johnson’s negotiating position with the EU within which the idea of being ‘sovereign equals’ translates into the accusation of ‘bad faith’ if the EU doesn’t give the UK exactly what it wants (£). It even drizzles right down the food chain to the boorish antics of the Brexit Party in the European Parliament, as if ‘independence’ is a licence to ridicule and insult others.

The way the Brexit Ultras think about independence was well-illustrated this week by Iain Duncan Smith’s insistence that Brexit has nothing to do with the US because “we are a sovereign nation” as if this precluded the US – also a sovereign nation, after all – from taking its own view of Brexit. In a similar vein was John Redwood’s letter to Joe Biden (draft text here), which can be read as “a warning” to the President-elect to recognize the significance of the UK “becoming a truly independent nation again”.

Despite insisting that the UK will uphold the GFA (and, following the bizarre new line of Brexiters, that it is the EU that threatens it), it is clear that Redwood does not understand the Biden concerns about the IMB and, from his tweets, that he doesn’t accept that it breaks international law. Instead, he waves the size of the 2016 leave vote as if it had any significance now that Britain has left the EU, and as if it provided an alibi for Britain to conduct itself however it wants. That vote is all they now have, since they are incapable of identifying what benefits this ‘independence’ has, what they actually want to do with it, or how it can possibly justify the mounting damage it is causing (for which, see the latest updates to Yorkshire Bylines’ Digby Jones Index)

‘So what?’ would be an obvious reaction and, presumably, that of the third assistant letter-opener to the Biden junior staffer who is most likely the closest person to him to read it (although, that said, it is unlikely, along with the Foreign Secretary’s equivocation, the Prime Minister’s terse – and botched - congratulations and the putrid tweet of some previously obscure peer that got reported in the US, to have done anything to endear the UK to the incoming President). But, unfortunately, we in this country are obliged to take notice of Redwood, Duncan Smith and their fellow ERG backwoodsmen since they continue to exert a grip upon our politics. Indeed, to read Redwood’s letter one could be forgiven for thinking that he spoke for the British government, rather than being a mildly eccentric backbencher who has not held ministerial office for 25 years. So their understanding of what ‘independence’ means matters.

And it is an understanding based on fantasy. The real world is an interdependent one, in which nations face constraints, their actions have consequences and, indeed, they must reckon with the sovereignty of others. Even if the formal enforcement mechanisms of international law and of international agreements are relatively weak, the realpolitik is that other countries, especially those with which you want to do deals, have ways of showing their displeasure. At the other end of the scale, behaving insultingly to other countries does not make them admire your independence of action but reduces their respect for, and goodwill towards, you.

Same old issue: purism vs pragmatism

So in the coming days, even hours, Johnson’s government is going to have to decide whether to prioritise the purism of this ersatz independence above pragmatic reality and, in a way, that is just the latest version of the choices Brexit Britain has faced all along. And, as has also always been the case, the answer lies in the internal battles of the Tory Party. In general, these have always pushed the government towards purism – the main, almost the sole, exception having been when Johnson agreed his deal which, awful as it was, was more pragmatic than no (withdrawal) deal at all.

But the political circumstances are very different now. Johnson was far more popular and powerful within his own party, and the Brexiters had glimpsed the possibility of losing Brexit altogether. So they supported a deal they hated and which they have since sought to repudiate. Now, he is beleaguered on every front, especially because of Covid-19, his inner team is in disarray, and his backbenchers are in a febrile and rebellious mood. The Brexiters have got Brexit – there is no going back on that – and no longer have the fear of losing it, and many would be happy with a no (trade) deal outcome. So if Johnson moves to do a deal with the EU they are likely to strike. It’s true that their parliamentary scope to derail it is fairly limited, but they have other weapons, most potently that of challenging his leadership, something which is already rumoured in any case.

Yet pragmatism suggests that if Johnson wants to avoid quite serious international isolation he will need to do a deal with the EU – it will be a thin deal, though potentially could develop into something more extensive in the future – both for its own value and as a way of aligning with Biden’s wider agenda. To do so will entail not only U-turning on IMB but also offering substantive concessions to the EU on one or all three of fisheries, subsidies and governance. And it can’t be assumed that the concessions EU will seek will be unchanged by events. After all, just as the Biden presidency leaves the UK isolated so too does it strengthen the EU.

Some regard it as inevitable that he will now do a deal, although the apparent insistence on retaining the offending clauses of the IMB, even though their rejection by the House of Lords provided a ready get out, suggests otherwise. As Peter Foster, writing in the FT (£), suggests it would be wrong to “underestimate the emotional attachment of Mr Johnson and his inner Brexit circle” to the clauses as “a vital assertion of British sovereignty”. But with that inner Brexit circle now dissolving, as Cummings and Cain depart at the end of the year, does that mark a shift away from their purism making a deal more likely – or even, as some rumours suggest, does it arise from that shift having happened - or will no deal be the last hurrah of their final weeks in power? What, if anything, is the significance of the rumours that David Frost was about to resign but that he has now decided not to?

The deep roots of Brexit’s failure

My own view is still that even now it is impossible to predict which way Johnson will go, and pointless to try not least given the chaos of his administration. But clearly the IMB issue is going to come to a head very soon – the negotiations as a whole are going to the wire but 19 November seems to be the absolute deadline – and when it does then, whatever the outcome, it will represent the latest episode in one of the deepest flaws in the Brexiters’ entire project. For as Jon Worth outlines in detail in an excellent blog this week the IMB mess arises from the Brexit Ultras’ refusal to accept or even to understand the ‘trilemma’ posed for (hard) Brexit by Northern Ireland (see also this explanation from law Professor Phil Syrpis).

At root, that comes from an even deeper failure, as outlined in my post of March 2017, to understand the nature of borders – both why they exist and what is needed to make them disappear. Brexit has been constantly caught on the ‘cakeist’ hook that Brexiters want both to leave all the institutions that make borders disappear whilst refusing to accept that this means that borders must re-appear.

It is, as ever, worth recalling what Boris Johnson, like other Brexiters, had to say about the Irish border when they were selling Brexit to the British people: “the situation would be absolutely unchanged”. Even in September 2018 he described the border problem as “a gnat”. He rejected the initial idea of a sea border, rejected May’s backstop arrangements, then signed up to a sea border and has ever since sought to deny the consequences of having done so, with the IMB being the result. As to what he does now, with no pain-free choices left then as Rafael Behr argues it will simply be a matter of how he calculates he can best avoid blame.

Johnson is Johnson, and bears a heavy responsibility for Brexit. But it shouldn’t be forgotten that he was one of many leading Brexiters who, orchestrated by Dominic Cummings, cajoled voters into leaving the EU without knowing or caring about what happened to Northern Ireland, to the GFA, and certainly to Ireland. For that matter, they didn’t know or care what Brexit meant for everything from creating customs arrangements to disrupting medical supplies to road haulage (£) to musicians’ tours to financial services (£) to data transfer, police and judicial cooperation to the millions of lives left in limbo, and so much else besides. They didn’t know or care at the time of the Referendum and, for the most part, they haven’t bothered to find out since. Worse, throughout all these years they have vilified and belittled those who did know and care.

So as Brexit limps on, the unloved orphan of a failing populism, to some kind of resolution of at least what the end of the transition period will mean, we shouldn’t forget the lies shamelessly told, the promises blithely made, and the fears viciously propagated which have brought us to this shambolic point.

The sillier season

This week’s headlines about migrants seeking to cross the channel served as a reminder – not that it should ever be forgotten, still less forgiven – of the way that the more general migrant ‘crisis’ (in scare quotes for a reason) of 2015 was weaponised in the 2016 Referendum campaign. Of course, as with their economic claims, Brexiters have now deemed it politically incorrect to even suggest that migration and immigration were central to their case (which, we are now expected to believe, was all about Edmund Burke’s theories of sovereignty).

The official Vote Leave campaign confined itself, relatively speaking, to dog whistles, most notoriously in the implications of the, in any case untrue, claim that ‘Turkey is joining the EU’, and the linkage of this to Syria and Iraq. Nigel Farage and UKIP, by contrast, were happy to blow the hunting horn, as with their hideous ‘Breaking Point’ poster. Indeed, cynics might say that the two campaigns were not so unconnected, and that Farage acted as an enabler for the official campaign to keep itself relatively clean whilst reaping the rewards of that which they ostensibly disavowed.

At all events, between them the two campaigns exploited the refugees both directly and also by the wholly dishonest conflation of freedom of movement, immigration in general, refugees and asylum seekers (for more detail on this aspect of the Referendum, see this article by Dr Amanda Garrett of Georgetown University).

The current bogus panic about cross-channel refugees also has Farage lurking sweatily in the background as for some months now, like a censorious suburban curtain-twitcher newly equipped with a bus pass, he has been hanging around beaches and hotels (£) in his grubby mac trying to whip up talk of an “invasion” – talk which then all too predictably crossed over into the mainstream. Farage - who let’s not forget no longer holds elected office and heads a basically defunct ‘party’ - may have done more to pollute British politics than any other politician of his generation but, as ever, the government are more than happy to splash around in his fetid cesspit.

Less control, not more

In this way, there are direct parallels between Brexit and this current “artificial emergency”, and polling evidence shows a clear relationship between views about the two, but with a new twist. For what this latest episode brings into focus is that Brexit, far from allowing Britain to take back control, is likely to make the situation much more complicated. This is because, as Professor Steve Peers explained in an excellent blog this week, within the tangled maze of international law and conventions about refugees and asylum seekers, the EU’s Dublin rules provide part of the framework to address this issue.

To very briefly summarise (as so often, it’s a complex issue, so do please use the links to get a fuller picture), Peers explains that the oft-quoted idea that those seeking asylum are obliged to do so in the first safe country they reach is bogus (and there are often good reasons why they do not). However, amongst its participants, the Dublin rules do often assign responsibility to that country, even if asylum has been sought elsewhere in the EU. In practice, this often provides the basis on which some of those relatively few asylum seekers who reach the UK are returned to France and elsewhere which, apparently, is what Brexiters want (the idea of any obligation either to the people themselves or to other countries not being a prominent feature of their moral universe, and indeed, reading posts on social media, the idea of refugees being people at all seems to be beyond some of them).

Yet that and other EU provisions will be lost to the UK at the end of the transition period. It may be that the UK and the EU agree something similar (or, even, better) but it is by no means clear that this is in prospect – or even that it has been the subject of substantive discussion - and Peers concludes trenchantly that as regards asylum seekers “the effect of Brexit may be ultimately to reduce UK control of migration, not increase it”. Equally, the idea that Brexit will miraculously free the UK from the Dublin rules to do more advantageous bi-lateral deals on refugee return with individual EU member states “seems extremely implausible” according to Professor Jonathan Portes. But in the tautological theology of Brexit, any EU rules are seen as suspect so it becomes an article of faith that leaving them will be ‘liberating’.

How (not) to make friends and influence people

It does not follow, as is being widely said on social media, that Home Secretary Priti Patel talking about the need for co-operation with France is in and of itself a further indication of the folly of Brexit. After all, there have been bi-lateral agreements with France about refugees even whilst the UK was an EU member. But it does serve as a reminder that international problems entail international co-operation in general and, in this case, constructive relations with France in particular, which have hardly been aided by Brexiter rhetoric, such as Boris Johnson’s ill-judged and offensive remarks about ‘World War Two punishment beatings'.

Nor is the cause of co-operation well-served by the current headlines about Patel issuing ‘ultimatums’ to France, or about the ‘outrage’ of France seeking financial contributions to its control of the border. As with the Brexit negotiations, antagonistic messages that may be designed by the British media and politicians solely for domestic consumption are seen and heard abroad, and inevitably sour international relations. Not just France but Germany, Ireland and Spain have all been subjected to repeated insults during the Brexit process. It would be foolish to think that this has no effect, or that it can make co-operation with such countries (over refugees or anything else) anything other than more difficult.

Post-Brexit, Britain risks becoming friendless as a stark new YouGov survey shows and, even on the Brexiters’ own ‘Global Britain’ reckoning, will need to become adept at neat diplomatic footwork in order to avoid isolation. But such footwork is alien and, even, anathema to this Brexit government, which would prefer to blunder bullishly around the diplomatic china shop so as to pander to its core vote – and its own antediluvian party and parliamentary membership - than do anything that might actually be construed as being in the national interest. It’s yet another example of this Vote Leave administration permanently re-fighting the leave campaign rather than governing. The effects on Britain’s well-being, let alone its international reputation (£), are of course irrelevant to these Brexit ‘patriots’.

An article this week by a senior former diplomat, David Hannay, underscored just how damaging this approach is proving to be for the trade negotiations with the EU. The British government, he argues, is acting in a way which is “unprincipled” and is destroying trust. This is principally because of the way that the Political Declaration (PD) has effectively been treated by the UK as totally irrelevant whereas it had been signed with the EU on the understanding that it constituted a shared framework (I would add that this has come on top of repeated ways during the Article 50 negotiations that the UK behaved in an untrustworthy manner, principally when the phase 1 agreement was disowned). This, Hannay, argues, is damaging not just to the prospects of a trade deal but to Britain’s more general need to build friendships abroad including with European countries.

No one likes us, we don’t care

If the government is already reckless of such considerations, the Brexit Ultras are as always urging an even more irresponsible and dangerous course with their now growing clamour against not only the PD but the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) itself. This of course would be even more serious: in rejecting the PD, Britain is breaking its word but if it rejects the WA it breaks an international treaty.

I wrote about this last week, with links back to how it has been in prospect ever since the 2019 Election, despite the ERG voting for the agreement. This week has seen yet another salvo in the Express from Iain Duncan Smith against the WA (which was nicely taken down by, again, Steve Peers), as well as a report in the Sunday Telegraph (£) which headlined the bizarre suggestion from an unnamed source that the WA was ‘not worth the paper it was written on’. That accusation is usually made of an agreement the other party can readily ignore, and so is a strange thing to say of one which you propose illegally to disown.

But that is hardly the strangest feature. Whereas last week Duncan Smith was talking about things “buried in the fine print” of the WA now – perhaps stung by the many criticisms of him for having apparently voted for something he didn’t understand – he loftily declares (in the Telegraph piece) that “everyone knew this stuff before” but voted for it so as to be out of the EU and able negotiate as a “sovereign nation” (inevitably, it has not sunk in that had Britain not been a sovereign nation it couldn’t have signed the WA anyway). Similarly, in his own Express piece he writes of his “surprise” that his comments of the previous week were a “revelation” (even though he had presented them as just that) and claims that the WA “was always a work in progress” rather than, in fact, an international treaty. He clearly doesn’t realise, or perhaps just does not care, that this is an even more indefensible position since it implies that he and his ERG cronies acted with deliberate bad faith rather than simply incompetence.

I won’t add to what I have written before about this latest piece of Brexiter duplicity and irresponsibility, with its potential to take Britain to international pariahdom. As noted last week, it will be repeated endlessly in the coming months so there will be plenty of opportunities to analyse it then. In any case, repeatedly pointing to its flaws is largely irrelevant: its purpose, probably already achieved, is to persuade the Brexiters’ base that the WA can and should be repudiated.

Even on the most charitable interpretation that it is designed as a signal to Boris Johnson not to make ‘concessions’ in the EU trade negotiations it will already have done further damage to Britain’s reputation – again, the British press is read in other countries. But, increasingly, the Brexit Ultras resemble those Millwall fans who used to chant “no one likes us, we don’t care”, although possibly even this credits them with a greater degree of self-awareness than is warranted by the evidence.

The art of the deal?

Meanwhile, trade negotiations with non-EU countries continue – sort of. A shouty headline in the Express (interestingly now changed to something much more anodyne, but see the original here) reported the “Brexit DISASTER” that talks with the US had been delayed, with the growing possibility that they would end up being held under a Biden presidency if Trump loses the November elections. This wasn’t actually news to anyone following the news (£). But its prominent discussion in such a rabidly pro-Brexit ‘newspaper’ has its own significance in the gradual falsification of all the promises made by Brexiters to its readers.

The idea of a UK-US Free Trade Agreement has always been held up as the iconic economic prize of Brexit (even though its actual economic effect would be very small). Moreover, it has been an article of faith to Brexiters that Trump would facilitate a good, quick deal in contrast to Obama’s much-resented ‘back of the queue’ warning during the Referendum campaign. That, too, was highly unrealistic given Trump’s capricious nature, not to mention his avowed ‘America First’ position (though, by the same token, the substance of talks with a Biden administration wouldn’t necessarily be any different).

So as early as July 2017 The Lord Jones of Birmingham, better known as Digby Jones, the fanatically pro-Brexit former head of the CBI, with all the august dignity we expect from a Peer of the Realm bated “remoaners” that a trade deal with the US was “in the bag”. More seriously, in September 2019 Johnson and Trump were reported to have agreed that a deal would be done “in lightning quick time by July [2020]”, explicitly to precede the Presidential elections (albeit that at that time Trump looked likely to win).

It is in that context of over-blown promises that imparting the news to Express readers that they won’t be kept is important (I assume the subsequent significant change to the headline was because they were infuriated by the original - or someone was). And it can hardly be blamed on coronavirus given that this is not seen as an adequate reason to extend talks with the EU. Nor, given the previous emphasis put on completing a deal this summer, can it be seen as anything other than sophistry to now claim, as Liz Truss did at a House of Lords Committee last month, that setting a target date is being avoided to deny US negotiators the benefit of time pressure.

But the UK-US negotiations have another role within Brexiter mythology. According to former Brexit Secretary David Davis – the man of whom it can fairly be said that he gets everything about Brexit wrong – they would provide leverage in the talks with the EU. Shanker Singham, the Brexiters’ favourite trade guru, agreed that the London-Brussels -Washington “game theory” triangle would put pressure on the EU. It was a highly dubious proposition, which has shown no signs whatsoever of coming true but, in any case, it is now dead in the water since negotiations with the EU – which resume next week - must finish by (in fact before) the end of the year.

Crackers

On the subject of doing deals, the other Brexit story of (passing) interest this week is the supposedly soon to be completed trade re-negotiation with Japan. This is reported to be snagged on last-minute differences over market access for Britain’s Stilton cheesemakers. Trade negotiation experts have explained that such hold ups over apparent trivialities are more the norm than the exception and no doubt they are right.

At the same time, it is hard to resist the thought that this particular row has a special piquancy as it will be Britain’s first post-Brexit trade deal and the government desires to demonstrate that it can achieve more favourable terms for British interests than those of the EU-Japan deal. And, moreover, to do so in relation to an iconic British product.

If successful, it will be more headline fodder for the core voters but – as with the entire ‘sovereignty’ schtick - will in any substantive sense be meaningless. For, economically, it is only of symbolic value (British sales of blue cheese to Japan last year totalled just £102,000) but, then, as with the US talks, the whole point about an independent trade policy is not the ‘trade’ part but the word ‘independent’. Still, like the issue of fisheries, which it closely resembles in that respect, it is at least a rich source of cheesy puns.

My modest contribution is to point out that the whole thing is crackers, and half-baked crackers at that.

I don’t just mean the Stilton story.

The Brexit screw tightens

Almost since the day of the Referendum, the Brexit process has gone round in circles with the same issues resurfacing, and the same contradictions and paradoxes recurring. That continues to be the case, but the repetitions can be misleading in two ways. One is that with each re-run some new evidence emerges to re-enforce the underlying issue or contradiction. The other is that, as the end of the transition period gets closer, each iteration of the circle makes the matter in question more urgent. In the past, I’ve used the metaphor of the Mobius strip to capture these repetitions, but perhaps a better image is that of a thread being screwed inexorably tighter.

Freeports and chemicals

This week has seen several examples. Freeports have for years been touted as a benefit of Brexit, and became government policy when Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, with a consultation exercise launched last February. I discussed the issue at that time and won’t repeat that analysis here, except to say that it pointed to the very mixed evidence of their benefit, even in their ‘non-EU’ form. Last week saw another outing of the argument for their virtues but the very same day new research from the UK Trade Policy Observatory showed these to be “almost non-existent” (£). If this is to be a major component of post-transition trade and industrial policy, it is misplaced.

If freeports will not provide an economic boost, the dangers of Brexit to the economically and strategically vital chemicals industry were again laid bare (£) in the latest of a series of excellent reports by Peter Foster on the practicalities of Brexit. The industry is the UK’s second largest manufacturing sector and its trade and supply chains are massively tied to the EU. These dangers have always been incipient because of the decision to leave the European Chemicals Agency (ECHA) and the REACH regulations it oversees, but under Theresa May there had been a plan to seek some form of Associate Membership.

That might or might not have succeeded (a House of Lords Report in 2018, which also sets out in clear detail the entire ECHA/REACH issue, was doubtful), but under Johnson’s even more hard line approach, complete regulatory independence is now the policy. This is going to be hugely costly (£1 billion, according to Foster’s report) and bureaucratically cumbersome however it is done, and the more so if no agreement is reached with the EU on accessing ECHA data – which is doubtful. In short, no one yet knows how it is going to work or whether it will be ready in time for the end of transition, and that’s less than five months away.

But the real kicker is that even if it all goes ahead, what in effect will have happened is to a very large extent a replication of the existing regulatory regime with the sole ‘advantage’ of it being badged British. Indeed, it’s an example of one of the many things that the UK’s budget contribution was paying for, though not included in the crude accounting that dominated the Referendum campaign. Its replication is also an example of how, in practice, Brexit Britain will be pulled by the gravitational force of EU regulation because REACH is also, increasingly, a global standard.

This is the purely theoretical ‘sovereignty’ which is being regained; the costs to businesses, trade and jobs, which are real, are the price. It is a paradigm case of what Brexit is going to mean in practice, as has been clear since August 2017 – back when all we knew about Brexit was that it meant Brexit – when the provisions of the (then) Data Protection Bill were outlined.

Round-up of other news

We have also seen updates on the objections of Kent residents to the new Brexit lorry parks plus the news that Operation Brock is to be revived for the end of the transition (as for Holyhead, goodness knows how its problems will be dealt with), new warnings of food shortages in Northern Ireland because of the Irish Sea border, new warnings of an ‘environmental governance gap’ at the end of the transition,  the revival of government plans for stockpiling medicines in preparation for possible disruptions, a new CBI survey showing business concern about, and lack of preparedness for, the end of the transition period, and the latest culture war volley in the elevation of prominent Brexiters to the House of Lords (forgotten, now, is the Brexiters’ insistence that it is crucial that our laws be made by those the people can vote out of office). As with the list of some of last week’s developments in last week’s post, the sheer diversity of complex problems is striking.

As for the latest good news about Brexit, that’s easily dealt with: there is none. Some might propose that the imminent UK trade deal with Japan is an exception but, although we don’t yet know the detail, it isn’t likely to be significantly different (£) to the EU-Japan deal the UK is currently part of. It’s certainly true that not doing such a deal would have been damaging, but that just means that this story is ‘not bad news’ rather than being ‘good news’ - despite the jubilance of the Brexit press, of which we will have more when the agreement is signed (and, note, this deal is, at Japanese insistence, a speedy re-negotiation rather than a roll over, to which Japan would not agree). It is also possible, as mentioned in a recent post, that if and when the UK and the EU reach a trade agreement then a further, more extensive, deal with Japan might follow.

Similarly, are we really meant to welcome today’s news that up to £355 million is to be spent to support new systems and processes for trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland? That may be helpful to Northern Ireland’s businesses – though there are many questions as to how, whether and when it will work – and if it was offsetting the damage of a natural disaster might in that sense be welcome. But Brexit is self-inflicted, and all along it was denied that this, or any, damage would occur.

So if good news means something unequivocally good that is happening as a result of Brexit, and which wouldn’t have happened without Brexit then we are still waiting for it.

The significance of Iain Duncan Smith

In the face of this, it might be expected, in any rational polity, that those who have championed Brexit and its unalloyed advantages would now be starting to express some alarm about – perhaps even some contrition for – what they have foisted on us. And in a way they are – but it is a way that is neither rational, nor moral, nor honest. Witness how this week we have seen veteran arch-Brexiter Iain Duncan Smith bemoaning the financial commitments signed up to in the Withdrawal Agreement (WA).

It’s a story with multiple layers of absurdity and disingenuity. He complains that “in the fine print, unnoticed by many” of the WA is a £160 billion bill for EU loans. But this is the WA which was Johnson’s great ‘oven ready deal’ that was presented to the voters at the 2019 Election and which, afterwards, Duncan Smith enthusiastically voted for in the House of Commons. That vote on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill was rushed through, but did he then join the calls for more scrutiny of “the fine print”? No. On the contrary he said “if there is anything about this arrangement that we have not now debated and thrashed to death, I would love to know what it is”.

So he fully supported it, but apparently didn’t understand its implications which it was his job to scrutinise and to which he now objects, and argued against further scrutiny. But – the final ridiculous twist – the £160 billion story isn’t really true anyway (it is based on the effectively zero possibility of every loan made by the European Investment Bank being defaulted on simultaneously).

It’s easy – almost obligatory - to mock this depressing farrago of stupidity and lies, but to do so misses its deeper significance, which is two-fold.

First, it is the latest salvo in the Brexit Ultras’ attempt to disown the entirety of the WA. In a post immediately after the 2019 election I flagged up the likelihood that they would do this, and have since recorded how it is becoming a growing, concerted campaign, which carries profound dangers of international pariahdom. It will intensify through this autumn, and reach a crescendo if there is no trade deal.

Second, and more broadly, it is the latest indication of the truly tragic fate that Brexiters have inflicted on Britain, whereby they insist that Brexit must be done or else the will of the people is betrayed, but also insist that any actual way that Brexit is done is a betrayal of the will of the people. It is a paradox from which there is no escape, and which dooms us to years, probably decades, of culture war.

Culture war ‘refugees’

One effect of that culture war is to produce ‘refugees’. Again, it’s been obvious from the beginning that Britain would suffer an exodus of people alienated by Brexit. Most obviously that means EU nationals in the UK who both for reasons of practical uncertainty and cultural affront no longer wish to be here. It also means UK nationals, and again for both economic and cultural reasons – those who see Britain headed for economic danger but who also feel politically exiled by Brexit.

Inevitably, those most likely to leave are those with the skills to do so easily. Anecdotally, including from my own experience, this has been underway since 2016 but this week saw the first hard evidence of a brain drain as regards UK nationals moving to the EU (though it is still partial, and it will be a while before we know the full effect, which will also be on emigration to non-EU countries; it can be expected that rates of UK emigration to the EU are now peaking, as after transition freedom of movement and associated rights will cease).

That this is a ‘brain drain’ – a term we have only rarely heard in the UK since the 1970s though in June 2017 I warned it was in prospect – is significant because it indicates that this is another economic cost of Brexit. But it also reflects some crucial issues in the underlying demographics of the Brexit vote in which both post-compulsory education and being economically active associated with voting remain, whilst the converse was true for leave voters.

The consequence of this has become the new ‘unsayable’ in the political correctness of Brexit. It means that those who actually have to deal with the practical consequences of Brexit do not greatly overlap with those who chose it. That can’t be a condescending comment to make, since Brexiters themselves constantly say that the remainers are the elite. And what does an elite do, other than run things? Of course, they aren’t for the most part plutocrats, tycoons or even big business leaders (all of whom, by definition, aren’t very numerous). Rather, they are the private and public sector managers, the professionals, scientists, entrepreneurs, academics, game designers, tech workers, musicians and so on.

In the main they aren’t high born – most probably have working-class parents, many may even consider themselves to be working-class – nor are they necessarily very well-paid. What Brexit has done is to spit in their faces. Not so much because of the Referendum result but because of the ‘winner takes all’ refusal to enact a compromise form to reflect the narrow result. And more than anything because of the constant insults since the vote. They are now open game for every taunt. They have been told every day for four years that they are metropolitan elitists, in the pay of the EU, exploiters of Bulgarian nannies or Polish plumbers, cry-babies, saboteurs, traitors, and enemies of the people. And, constantly, they are told that if they ‘love the EU so much’ then they should go and live there. So it’s not particularly surprising that they are doing just that if they can (or, as seems to be happening with the Civil Service, resigning rather than be used as “political punchbags”).

The culture war on the middle class

It used to be a cliché that any History exam paper answer on any period about any country could gain marks by reference to ‘the rising middle class’. Brexit has in effect declared culture war on Britain’s middle-class – or at least the most productive, active parts of it. It’s that which is leading skilled people to leave or to withdraw from public life. Yet at the same time it is they who are charged with actually dealing with Brexit since, of course, most of them are not in a position to emigrate or resign.

For it is not the archetypal Brexit-voting coastal town pensioner who thinks that immigration has gone too far, is fed up with being told what to do by Brussels and just wants his country back who has to manage social care provision for his peers. It’s his, again archetypal, remain-voting grand-daughter with a social science degree who works in local government, is desperate as she can no longer recruit EU workers, has had her hopes of further study in the Netherlands dashed and her relationship with her Dutch boyfriend jeopardised. The horrible achievement of the Brexiters has been to configure the grandfather as an ‘ordinary, decent person’ who has ‘taken revenge on his remoaner elitist’ grand-daughter.

By setting up that bogus – but vicious - cultural conflict, Brexiters have potentially set in train something much more dangerous. It’s obvious to anyone paying attention that we’re at the start of an unemployment bloodbath with, daily, new redundancy announcements because of Covid-19 and it’s going to be exacerbated by Brexit, especially when the transition period ends. Traditionally, the socially liberal middle classes were happy – or, if not happy, felt a moral obligation – to support through taxes the unemployed, as a kind of implicit social contract.

A broken social contract?

I’m not sure that will be so true anymore for those who, whilst not able to join the brain drain, now feel like exiles in their own country. Whenever some adverse effect of Brexit is reported social media posts immediately focus on who voted for it – so, for example, the current stories about Kent lorry parks, in a county where the majority voted for Brexit, are not viewed sympathetically. Stories about the concerns of people in Sunderland or Cornwall about the effects of Brexit get similar treatment. The response is invariably to point out, often gleefully, that a majority in those areas voted for Brexit so they must accept the consequences.

I don’t defend those sentiments: leave voters were misled, and worse, by the Referendum campaign and years of media poison and, anyway, the adverse effects of Brexit are not going to smartly target leave voters but spare remainers. Moreover, whilst remainers certainly have no obligation to ‘get behind Brexit’, they need not make their own contribution to prolonging the culture war. And, in any case, it would be a cruelly moralistic world if we all got punished for every mistake we made. But, defensible or not, those responses are real and can be read every day.

Perhaps they are not widely shared, and represent only a vocal sliver of remainer opinion. But if these sentiments are more extensively held, as I suspect they are, this means that the economically inactive and low-skill demographic and the ‘left behind’ regions that voted for Brexit will no longer be seen by the liberal middle class as deserving of support. It will be said that they have got what they voted for, and will have to live with it.

That, after all, is the logical consequence of the Brexiters’ ‘elitist’ narrative: they chose to say that leave voters were ‘the people’ and remain voters weren’t. They infected Britain with this culture war as a tactic to win the Referendum. So, harsh as such remainer ‘vengefulness’ may be, it does grow from soil cultivated by leading Brexiters. For that matter, the first part of my critique, above, of this vengefulness is what Brexiters insist to be the elitist condescension of denying that leavers knew what they were voting for.

Yet as I said in a tweet which – by my modest standards – went viral this week, the proposition that voters in 2016, when Brexit had no detailed or settled definition, knew exactly what they were voting for hardly sits easily with Duncan Smith’s claim that, equipped with the detailed Withdrawal Agreement in 2019, he didn’t understand what he was voting for.