The day that decided nothing

The latest parliamentary dramas can seem perplexingly arcane or, alternatively, as the ‘Super Saturday’ terminology suggests, like some kind of sports tournament. The latter trivialises that the future of country is at stake. The former distracts from what are at heart quite simple issues.

No actual form of Brexit can be agreed on by Brexiters

The first such issue is the familiar one that has been at the core of the entire row over Brexit. As soon as its gets defined in any particular way, some who support it in principle do not support it in that version. As regards Johnson’s deal, predictably, that includes Farage and his Brexit Party followers. For them, not just that deal but any deal will be unacceptable. That is partly because nothing can ever live up to their fantasy, and partly because they are invested in the politics of protest.

The Brexit Party has no MPs, of course, but its views are often closely shadowed by members of the ERG and their sympathisers, principally amongst Tory MPs. That was clear at the time of May’s ill-fated deal. Surprisingly, they are now signed up for Johnson’s deal. Perhaps that is just because they realise that to reject it might well mean ending up with no Brexit at all. Perhaps it is that they recognize that Johnson’s deal takes them to the hardest form of Brexit short of no deal. Still, it is surprising in that it concedes that – not as a backstop but as the definite form Brexit will take – one part of the UK will remain for very many intents and purposes within the EU. That, apparently, is the price worth paying.

As a result, the people who have fallen off the end, of course, are the DUP. Since they sometimes give the impression of being in a permanent state of anger it is easy to miss the fact that they are currently genuinely and deeply angry. And they have good reason to be, in that it is unarguably true that Johnson’s deal constructs a significant border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, in clear violation of the DUP’s core principles. Moreover, they have been sacrificed by those with whom they made common cause over Brexit, and who professed to have common cause with them over the union.

Their votes proved crucial in ensuring the passing of the Letwin Amendment on Saturday, which withheld parliamentary agreement to Johnson’s deal in the absence of the passage of the Withdrawal Agreement legislation. This in turn triggered the Benn Act provision, requiring Johnson to apply to the EU for an extension.

So that’s the first part of the story of this Saturday: once Brexit got defined in a particular way, some Brexiters – in this case the DUP – didn’t like it. Of course, at the other end of the spectrum, some Tory MPs who would have accepted a soft Brexit have long ago jumped ship because of the hard Brexit nature of May’s deal.

A total breakdown of political trust

The second part of the story relates to the total breakdown of political trust within parliament, and the ongoing battle between Executive and legislature. That, too, has been a feature of the Brexit saga from the outset. It was first manifest in the attempt – blocked by the Supreme Court in the first Gina Miller case – to prevent parliament having a vote on triggering Article 50. But it continued throughout Theresa May’s premiership in all kinds of ways, including literal contempt of parliament and the metaphorical contempt that May showed in, for example, her extraordinary public broadcast last March castigating parliament for not passing her deal.

Such conduct would be ill-advised at the best of times. In the context of having no overall majority it is supremely ill-judged. But Johnson has continued down the same path. It is worth recalling that the Letwin Amendment only arose because of the possibility that the government, or at least some Brexiter MPs, might try to use a loophole in the Benn Act. That is, if the motion to support Johnson’s deal had passed unamended then the extension letter would not need to be sent on 19 October, and the provisions of the Benn Act would lapse. But if the withdrawal legislation were then collapsed – perhaps by the ERG – then no-deal Brexit, which the Benn Act had been designed to prevent, could occur via the back door.

That suspicion was greatly exacerbated by the constant messages from Johnson – including his loutish baiting of other MPs about ‘the Surrender Act’ - that he does not see the Benn Act as legitimate and would do all he could to flout it. Even on Saturday, and despite the most recent Cherry case in the Scottish courts, he spoke as if he might not send the letter (it was later confirmed that he would, so it was a pointless bit of petulance not just to say so, outright). At any event, the seeds of distrust had been sown long before, and MPs had good reason to fear that, absent the Letwin amendment, a way would be found to flout the clearly expressed opposition of parliament to no-deal Brexit.

But, recall, the Benn Act itself was the product of the reckless way that Johnson has conducted himself since coming to office. On the one hand, again, it arose because of his insistence that leaving with no deal at the end of October was a real possibility, despite previous parliamentary votes against it. On the other hand, his ill-fated plan to suspend parliament was precisely designed to head off the possibility of something like the Benn Act being passed. Yet, because of imminent prorogation, MPs were pushed to act immediately, with the Benn Act the consequence just before prorogation began. Plus, in angrily taking the whip from the 21 Tory MPs who voted for it, Johnson set up at least some of the support for the Letwin Amendment and, possibly, for opposition to passing his deal as well.

So, over and over again, the actions of Johnson – like May before him – have provoked the circumstances of greater mistrust, greater suspicion, and greater acrimony. And how did the government react to Saturday’s defeat? By Rees-Mogg using the device of a point of order (which meant he did not have to answer questions about it) to announce that on Monday there is to be a new ‘meaningful vote’ – that is, a vote on whether to accept Johnson’s deal or not, the same question as the motion that was not voted upon because of the Letwin Amendment. And, as points of order were made in response, he arrogantly walked out of the chamber of the House of Commons.

It was, yet again, contemptuous of parliament and, perhaps most foolishly, of those on his own benches who had just supported the Letwin Amendment. It can also only increase the suspicions that lay beneath that amendment. For, if held and passed, the Monday vote would mean the extension letter being withdrawn and the possibility of no-deal Brexit would be reinstated.

The immediate question that arises is whether the Speaker, John Bercow, will allow this vote to occur. It seems to fall foul of his ruling – with respect to May’s repeated meaningful votes – against bringing the same motion back. But there may be some chicanery possible that circumvents that.

There will be no end to uncertainty

So that’s the second part of today's story. The last part is that, somehow or other, there will be debates about and votes on the legislation that would actually implement Johnson’s deal. Then, all the detail of what it really means will get picked over. Some who might currently look like supporting it may not do so. Amendments are possible, including an amendment attaching a confirmatory referendum. At the moment, the numbers are probably just about there for Johnson to get his deal done, and not there to get another referendum. But those numbers are tight, and could change – not least if Johnson, Rees-Mogg and – presumably, behind the scenes – Dominic Cummings continue with their combative and counter-productive tactics.

All that is to come, and there’s no point saying much about Johnson’s deal and the problems with it now. But one thing is worth saying, because it came up repeatedly in Saturday’s debate. The idea that Johnson’s deal should be passed in order to get certainty, including business certainty, is totally bogus.

One aspect of this is that although it is a cliché that ‘business likes certainty’, it doesn’t follow that having certainty will be good for the British economy. Certainty just enables business to make plans more easily. So if the certainty delivered is – as Johnson’s deal means – that there will be greater trade barriers between the UK and the EU than at present, it doesn’t mean that businesses just shrug and say ‘ok, so now we know’. It means that those affected by this will divert themselves or their new investments elsewhere. Similarly, individuals with the ability to do so will relocate accordingly. What is needed for economic prosperity is not certainty, per se, but certainty of the conditions that enable economic prosperity.

Beyond that, if Johnson’s deal passes and Britain leaves the EU at the end of October, there will be just 14 months to negotiate a new trade agreement (not to mention all the non-trade things, including regulatory cooperation) before the end of the transition period. That is clearly not long enough, and so we would very soon be having debates about whether to extend the transition period, application for which would have to be made by July 2020.

Johnson has already ruled out seeking such an extension. Which means that there will be a new business cliff edge looming at the end of 2020. Moreover, it will be a steeper cliff than would have been the case under May’s deal, because the backstop in that deal would have had the whole of the UK in the customs union, whereas under Johnson’s deal it will only be Northern Ireland.

To which should be added this. Not only will there be no certainty even if Johnson’s deal happens, nor will there be any let up in the political and cultural divisions Brexit has caused. For that goes back to the issue with which I began this post, about how no form of Brexit is acceptable to all Brexiters.

The national tragedy this creates is that even if Brexit is done through Johnson’s deal – or any other – the most passionate advocates of Brexit will still be bitterly unhappy. So an entire nation will have deformed its future for something that half – probably now more than half, and their voice was heard loud in demonstration today - the country don’t want, and a sizeable part of the other half, who did, don’t want in this form. We’ll still be just as deeply divided, but also much poorer into the bargain. Underneath all the obscure parliamentary protocols and procedures, it’s this which is at stake.

The fog of war

A strange air of unreality pervades Brexit Britain. Like one of the pea-soupers for which, along with pragmatism, we were once known abroad, the country is currently cloaked in a fog of inertia and delusion which has left it in limbo.

Leadership lies

Much of that is down to the Tory leadership contest within which, despite its being conducted behind closed doors, much absurdity can be glimpsed, but which is also curiously muffled. Amongst the absurdities of the different candidates’ positions on Brexit are the familiar non-starters of a re-negotiated Withdrawal Agreement (WA), primarily seeking to ditch the Irish backstop, as well as the oxymoron of the ‘managed no deal’.

The latter has been given a particularly egregious twist by Andrea Leadsom, who accepts that the WA is not going to be renegotiated and is dead, but amongst other impossibilities, proposes to enshrine in UK law those parts of what has been agreed which are acceptable to the UK, for example security and intelligence-sharing relationships. The gaping hole in that ‘plan’ is that without the WA there is no agreement with the EU on those selected parts, and UK law has no power over the EU or EU states.

Even the supposedly more ‘pragmatic’ candidates such as Matt Hancock and Rory Stewart are proposing, in essence, to continue with May’s deal (Hancock makes some half-hearted gestures towards renegotiation) but with no suggestion as to how this will be passed by parliament just because there is a new Prime Minister.

Many of the candidates seem to want to avoid talking about Brexit much at all and as for the front-runner, Boris Johnson, almost nothing is heard from him – reportedly he is “being kept under virtual house arrest” (£) because his campaign team fear that any public statement may cause embarrassment. That may well be an astute decision on their part but it is hardly a ringing endorsement of a man who would be Prime Minister.

Reheated rubbish

Meanwhile, there is plenty of noise from the foot soldiers of the no-deal Brexit cause. Yet another ERG report was wheeled out this week – this one entitled A Clean Managed Brexit – reheating all the same old half-truths, fantasies, misunderstandings and falsehoods. It was instantly taken apart by the combined expertise of trade expert David Henig and EU Law expert Steve Peers. As Henig pithily concluded, it exhibited “a total refusal to face up to the real world”, whilst Peter Foster, the Daily Telegraph’s Europe Editor, pronounced it “completely ludicrous”.

I’m grateful that there are people willing to put the time and effort in to debunking this endless stream of nonsense but, whilst it is definitely a worthwhile thing to do, it has limited traction. Its proponents will certainly never admit they are wrong – hence they recycle the same stuff, ignoring all criticism and correction – and they have a different purpose in mind. That purpose is, with the help of a compliant media, just to keep constantly in the political air the idea that there are workable, straightforward solutions to the Brexit mess they have created. It’s a non-stop PR exercise, rather than an attempt to provide realistic policy proposals.

Of course, these self-same people were the ones who used to say that making a deal with the EU would be quick, easy and advantageous. They have no shame in now making the same claim for no-deal and, inevitably, blame the failure of their earlier claim solely on the machinations of “remainers and the Establishment”, as that well-known anti-establishment figure Lord Digby Jones put it.

Trump and trade

This low-level background rumble from the Brexit ideologues is an important part of their propaganda war, but they had a far louder voice, that few will not have heard, in Donald Trump this week. Here, too, realism was in short supply – for example in the repetition of his previous advice to the UK to sue the EU (the grounds and the court for such an action stubbornly unspecified) and the idea that his swaggering bellicosity offers a template for how Britain should approach Brexit.

Of particular delight to the Brexiters – whose erstwhile fury at US Presidents interfering in Brexit has now entirely disappeared – was his promise of a “phenomenal” UK-US trade deal. Yet, even leaving aside relying on the caprice of a President who changes his mind hour by hour, and even leaving aside the fact that a trade deal isn’t simply in Trump’s gift, there’s no realism here, either. As David Henig, again, pointed out, the UK would gain little benefit from such a deal and, as another trade expert, Sam Lowe, warned, would have much to fear from it.

Indeed, government estimates suggest a UK-US deal would be worth at best 0.3% GDP in the long-run (£), nowhere near enough to offset the damage of any form of Brexit, let alone no-deal Brexit. A UK-US Free Trade Agreement – like the entire notion of an independent trade policy - has a purely symbolic rather than an economic value because it connotes ‘sovereignty’ and ‘taking back control’. But that too is illusory in that what is most at stake in modern trade negotiations is regulatory alignment and for the UK the choice is alignment with the EU or with the US. To the extent that there is ‘more sovereignty’ in one or other of these alignments it lies with EU membership, which gives the UK a greater voice.

Taking back control?

Taking back control seems, in any case, to be morphing into something extremely peculiar. In a recent post, I speculated that what I described as the insane idea of the prorogation of Parliament might come to the fore under a no-deal Prime Minister. I didn’t expect it to get so early an outing, though, first from the senior backbencher Sir Edward Leigh and then from leadership contestant Dominic Raab.

Forget the quaint and arcane language: the prorogation of parliament means the suspension of democracy. That it comes from those who regard holding another referendum vote as a ‘betrayal of democracy’ is perverse; that it should even be being talked about, especially by an aspiring Prime Minister, is a disgrace.

But, apart from being odious, it is again (probably) completely unrealistic. For one thing, as Speaker John Bercow has suggested, parliament would find a way to prevent it. For another, even attempting it would almost certainly blow the Tory Party apart and lead to a rapid end to the new Prime Minister.

Do mention the war

It seems doubtful if, coming to this week’s other unmissable story, suspending parliamentary democracy was the freedom that was fought for on D-Day. Those commemorations do not in themselves have a Brexit connection except that, as I’ve remarked before, there is a strand in Brexit thinking and imagery that relates to Britain’s fixation with the Second World War. It is a fine and necessary thing to commemorate such events and to recall Britain’s wartime efforts (indeed, I myself have written a book about the codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park).

Yet seeing the wall-to-wall media coverage given to the anniversary I was struck by the extent to which we seem so much more pre-occupied with the past – and that particular part of the past - than with the future. Just in the snippets that I caught, minute details of, for example, how fuel was piped across the channel and how tides and weather were calculated were all meticulously explained.

No doubt programmes about non-tariff barriers to trade or cumulative rules of origin would be considerably less entertaining. Still, given that Britain is embarking on an epochal shift in both economic and geo-political positioning, shouldn’t we also be being provided with intense, deep information about what that entails?

Somehow, both with the commemorations and with all the pageantry for Trump’s state visit there is a sense at the moment of a country no longer willing or able to live in present realities, still less to grapple with what the future might hold. Yet all around us, completely ignored by the long list of would-be Prime Ministers, we are seeing the real, concrete effects of Brexit.

Don’t mention the costs

The Ford factory closure announcement may, as they claimed, be nothing to do with Brexit. However, that needs to be treated with some caution given the long history of warnings from Ford, and given that the company would hardly want to alienate some customers, and the government, by blaming Brexit. At all events, in decisions like these, which are always multi-factorial, Brexit is never going to weigh on the positive side of the equation, and whatever the truth about the Bridgend plant, Ford are clearly warning that Brexit is a threat to the rest of its UK operations.

What is unquestionable is that the scarcely reported departure from London of the European Banking Authority (EBA), which moved to Paris last Monday, is solely due to Brexit. As with the recent loss, for the same reason, of the European Medicines Agency (EMA) what is at stake is not so much the loss of jobs (and taxes, and knock on spending) but the erosion of the UK as a regulatory hub and as an influencer. It is not dramatic in itself but, like a slow puncture in a tyre, the accumulation of Brexit effects is to damage the long-term economic viability of the country, especially in its most strategically important business sectors.

It should be recalled that as recently as May 2017 the then Brexit Secretary David Davis claimed (£) that both the EBA and the EMA could be kept in London despite Brexit. Again, it was a wholly unrealistic idea. And this has been, and will continue to be, the repeated pattern: Brexiters making obviously false or at least highly questionable claims and promises, each of which is warned about at the time but the warnings are ignored or derided.

When the warnings come true, the false and questionable claims are forgotten, or the consequences are said to be nothing to do with Brexit and are just a ‘coincidence’. And a new set of claims, promises - and fresh warnings - are made, or the old ones repackaged.

So we are building lies upon lies in a vertiginous spiral which each week takes us further away from anything which bears any resemblance whatsoever to reality. The first casualty of war, as the saying has it, is truth.