One way of telling the story of Brexit is that it was sold to the British public as, and perhaps believed by its advocates to be, a project to regain sovereignty but without any economic costs and, even, with economic benefits. Since that was impossible, when it came to be delivered, sovereignty was prioritised despite the economic costs. Of course, there is a huge flaw in that story, which is that the idea that EU membership meant a loss of sovereignty and Brexit meant regaining it was simply false or, at best, as demonstrated in Anthony Barnett’s superb essay from 2018, based on a concept of sovereignty so dated and naive as to be worthless.
Nevertheless, for Brexiters, and perhaps many leave voters, it had a meaning, which had two, related but different, aspects. One was that a country should and could decide ‘for itself’ what rules to follow. The other, more blatantly nationalistic, was that this country, in particular could and would get ‘more for itself’ on its own than it could within the EU because, as Vote Leave insisted (see slide 10 of link), “Great Britain is a great country” with the fifth largest economy, G7 membership, a permanent seat on the UN Security Council, and significant intelligence and military capability.
Sovereignty in practice: latest news
What we are now seeing in abundance are the realities and limitations of those ideas of sovereignty, even within their own terms. It was already plain in the Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) which reflects the way that the UK prioritised sovereignty over anything else. Thus what resulted was, in effect, a tariff-free deal for domestically produced goods and very little more. All of the currently emerging costs to industries and consumers flow from that, including the extensiveness of the checks needed to comply with the Northern Ireland Protocol (i.e. because a ‘deeper’ TCA would have meant a correspondingly ‘thinner’ Irish Sea border).
Norway non-agreement
The most obvious new example is the failure to reach a fishing deal with Norway, with potentially devastating effects on British cod fishing. Before, the UK benefitted from the agreements made between the EU and Norway, which is not part of the Common Fisheries Policy (CFP). Now, it must strike its own deal with Norway but has not been able to. This is an interesting development because, unlike negotiations with the EU, it is not presented in terms of Britain being ‘punished’ for Brexit or as a failure by Norway to recognize Britain as a ‘sovereign equal’. So a lot of the standard Brexiters’ rhetorical smokescreen is stripped away and the reality emerges: UK sovereignty is circumscribed by that of other countries, even quite small countries can and will resist the UK’s demands, and they are more able to do so now that it is not an EU member.
Jersey row
Fishing is also central to this week’s drama over the permits that, because of Brexit and in line with the fishing chapter of the TCA, French fishermen now need to fish in Jersey’s waters (it has arisen now because, until the end of April, there was an ‘amnesty’ under which the pre-Brexit arrangements continued). It’s a highly complicated story as all fishing stories are, but particularly so because of the distinctive constitutional status of the Channel Islands. Thus it is not actually about CFP, but it is about Brexit because the TCA superseded the Granville Bay Agreement, dating back to the nineteenth century but last amended in 2000, which had governed fishing rights in these waters. Scrapping it as part of Brexit was strongly lobbied for by the Jersey Fishermen’s Association during the TCA negotiations. Separately, the UK also chose to leave the 1964 London Fisheries Convention (causing problems for fishing around Guernsey, Alderney and Sark which have been more quietly dealt with by agreeing an extension of the interim arrangements with the EU).
Brexiters see ‘taking back control of our waters’ and being ‘an independent coastal nation’ as emblematic of regaining sovereignty. But the inevitable consequence is to encounter the sovereignty of other countries. For this was not, as some Brexiters are inevitably spinning it, a row with the EU but with France, although the EU is ‘siding’ with France in saying the permits are not being issued as the TCA says they should be (£) (the UK government disputes this – I do not know who is correct, but there are now talks underway).
This carries two lessons. First, that the EU will tend to stand up for its members against third countries, which is one of the ways sovereignty is magnified by membership. Second, it underscores that EU membership does not end national sovereignty. Nor is it necessary to leave the EU to engage in nationalistic posturing to appeal to nativist voters. Hence, with elections in both countries in prospect, foolish and ridiculous words from French politicians threatening to cut off electricity supplies to Jersey were matched by foolish and ridiculous actions from the UK in deploying Royal Navy vessels to observe what turned to be a rather limited ‘blockade’ of St Helier by French (and some Jersey) trawlers. For all the furore, the drama is already fading but it or similar rows have plenty of potential to flare up again.
At one level, all this is (just) yet another Brexit mess, and a reminder of how Brexit has thrown a rock which produces waves and ripples which are now showing up in small and large ways. Interestingly, despite the political rhetoric, as the participation of some of them in the blockade shows, Jersey fishermen are highly sympathetic to their French colleagues, recognizing that they’ve all been caught up in this mess. It also bears saying that as long ago as March 2017 the House of Lords EU Committee warned the government of the dangers Brexit posed for the Channel Islands. But my point here is that this episode illustrates the consequences of a free-for-all between ‘sovereign equals’.
Lugano Convention
This week’s third lesson in the realities of sovereignty, just announced though long-trailed, comes with European Commission’s recommendation that the EU should not accept Britain’s application to re-join the Lugano Convention on cross-border enforcement of legal judgments. Technically, membership is not confined to EU or even single market members, but the Commission’s view is that the UK’s relationship with the single market is now so distant that it should not be re-admitted to the convention. Inevitably this is described by Brexiters as ‘punishment’ but it’s actually no different in kind to the Norwegian fishing non-agreement: other powers have the right to decide not to agree to what the UK wants, and they will sometimes, even often, exercise that right. The eventual outcome will depend on whether the - yes - sovereign member states of the EU decide to follow the Commission’s recommendation.
It doesn’t even matter if, as some may think, the European Commission or Norway or France are miscalculating their interests: that is their prerogative. In fact, much of the Brexiters’ case was based on claims about what was and was not in the EU’s interests. Hence all the stuff about the UK trade deficit, German carmakers and so on. As a matter of fact, these claims were proved wrong – as many of us knew they would be – and the EU prioritised the integrity of the single market. Again, it’s irrelevant to argue that the EU ‘should have’ made a different calculation of its interests. Brexiters have to face the world as it is, not as they imagine it ought to be.
A permanent negotiation
This basic fact is not going to go away. What Britain now faces – not temporarily, but for the foreseeable future – is an ongoing process of negotiating with the EU and others, constantly facing choices about what it will sacrifice in the name of sovereignty, and constantly facing the reality that others have powers, rights and choices which they will exercise as they see fit. That is true both in general but also in relation to specific aspects of the TCA (Jersey fishing permits being a minor example) where there are phased implementations.
Currently, that means primarily the negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP). Several reports this week suggested that the EU is offering some flexibility in its implementation but within the basic parameters of the agreement, and proposing UK alignment with EU Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) rules. This, at a stroke, would remove many of the Irish Sea border checks. So far, the UK government still regards this as incompatible with sovereignty even though, at least for the time being, it doesn’t actually propose to diverge significantly from EU SPS standards.
The issue is, rather, that alignment means ‘dynamic alignment’ (i.e. when the EU rules change, the UK’s are bound to do so) and it’s this which would supposedly violate sovereignty. It therefore becomes a theological argument about whether the UK’s SPS standards are the same as the EU’s because they are agreed to be aligned or because they just happen to be the same at the moment. It’s true that the UK might want (or have) to change SPS as part of a future trade deal, especially with the US. But since, as has been emphasised this week by US Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, that is at best some way off, it is very hard to see why a temporary alignment with the EU could not be agreed.
After all, the UK government would be happy with, and is currently seeking, an ‘equivalence’ agreement (in other words, an agreement in which, whilst standards might not be the same in each market, they are deemed good enough for both). But that doesn’t work from an EU point of view, primarily because it involves a high-trust relationship with a third country that has not shown itself to be very trustworthy during the Brexit process, and about which there are lingering memories of the BSE epidemic as well as one with a shortage of Official Veterinarians (which also a problem for the current arrangements). Additionally, the volume of trade with the UK is much greater (and differently configured) than that of those third countries (such as New Zealand, which is the model usually touted) with which the EU does have SPS equivalence agreements.
And, again, if the UK were to decide, perhaps because of a trade agreement with the US, to substantially change its SPS rules then an equivalence agreement with the EU would presumably go out of the window anyway. Plus I think (I’m not sure – this is a horribly complex topic) that if EU SPS rules changed significantly then any equivalence agreement would have to be renegotiated anyway, so the practical distinction, on sovereignty grounds, between ‘dynamic alignment’ and ‘equivalence’ seems a fuzzy one. (For an excellent explainer of the concepts of dynamic alignment, equivalence and trade agreements in the context of Brexit, see trade expert Dmitry Grozoubinski’s ExplainTrade briefing).
In practical terms, then, dynamic alignment would mean the UK automatically changing the rules (or exiting the agreement) when EU rules changed whilst equivalence would mean re-negotiating (or exiting) the agreement. To any normal person this surely seems like some mediaeval debate about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin. It’s perfectly possible, and there’s just the tiniest sign of it, that what will be created is something which in substance is dynamic alignment but which the UK will call equivalence.
No coherent strategy
To re-iterate, whilst negotiating the operation of the NIP is the biggest immediate issue, the underlying one is that the UK-EU relationship is going to be the subject of a never-ending negotiation, and all the time the UK is going to have to make decisions about what to prioritise: the Brexiters’ peculiar version of sovereignty, or economic and political reality. That is inevitable simply because, like every other country in the world, but more so because of economic and geographic connection, the UK faces the reality of EU regulatory superpower deriving from market size.
It doesn’t seem that there is any coherent strategy for, or even understanding of, this from the UK government. For example, having made an issue of not recognizing the diplomatic status of the EU Ambassador to the UK, the government has this week agreed to do so. That’s the right decision, but by not making it from the beginning the UK squandered good will by posturing – for nothing. This is, precisely, a sign of an absent or incoherent strategy. The same will be true if, after marching up the hill of unilaterally breaking the NIP, the government quietly marches back down and accepts SPS alignment. If so, again it would be the right decision but reached via a foolish route.
Moreover, our relations with the EU cannot be separated from those with other countries for at least two reasons. On the one hand, the UK needs the EU’s support – political, diplomatic, and economic - in its antagonistic relationships with, especially, Russia, Iran and China. In this respect the recent ‘Global Britain’ Integrated Review was inadequate (see section five of link), since it barely touches on the UK-EU relationship despite it being a pivotal one. Though here, too, there are tiny signs of a more realistic approach quietly emerging.
On the other hand, the UK’s primary ally, the US, is deeply concerned with UK-EU relations in general, and the security and political situation of Northern Ireland in particular. This week saw the first face-to-face meeting between Dominic Raab and Anthony Blinken and though couched in diplomatic terms the message was clear: not only will the US not countenance anything that violates the Good Friday Agreement (translation: ‘Brexiters wanting to rip up the NIP, beware’) but it wants “political and economic stability in Northern Ireland” (translation: ‘make the NIP work’).
Irresponsibility or cynicism?
In the face of these realities, the question is how far the UK government is willing to push the Brexiters’ idea of sovereignty. The answer hinges on whether the government is irresponsible or cynical (most likely it will be ‘both’, but it needs to be ‘neither’).
If it is irresponsible then it will push on with the naive sovereignty agenda, making absurd provocations such as that of the EU Ambassador and silly gestures with Royal Navy ships, trashing its relations with the EU and the US by flouting international law, indifferent to the economic and political damage, and indifferent to the security situation in Northern Ireland. It may well do that if there’s no domestic political price to be paid or, indeed, a political benefit as a result.
If it is cynical, it will quietly yield on what to most people are arcane technicalities about, say, SPS whilst bigging up false claims about what Brexit has achieved. This would rely upon Brexiter MPs and commentators being gullible and ignorant, but that’s not a completely outlandish expectation. We’ve already seen this approach deployed with misleading or simply untrue claims about Brexit and vaccines, about freeports, and, most recently and perhaps most ludicrously, about Brexit enabling Britain to resist the aborted football super-league plans.
The UK-India ‘trade deal’
It is also evident in overblown claims about the UK’s post-Brexit trade deals. This was on display again this week when Liz Truss asserted that Brexit had allowed the UK to do a ‘trade deal’ with India. In fact, for the most part, it was a commercial deal of the sort that UK could, and did, make whilst an EU member, just as EU members like Germany have. It’s true that it also contained a Memorandum of Understanding (which may, though it’s by no means certain, eventually lead to a Free Trade Agreement with India), and that couldn’t have been done as an EU member. But the overall claim was misleading although, inevitably, jumped on by those Brexiters who don’t understand that the term ‘trade deal’ is an imprecise one, and not necessarily the same as a Free Trade Agreement, as a vindication of Brexit. In any case, the actual economic benefits of any eventual trade agreement probably won’t be very large, certainly compared with the loss of trade caused by exiting the single market.
These points about trade policy are boringly unoriginal, having been made endlessly in one form or another by many people, including me, for years. But they still matter, because the ongoing false claims about trade deals root back to the basic issues with which I began this post. That is, they pretend that ‘regaining’ sovereignty was not just cost-free but economically beneficial. So it is important to say that some of the claimed benefits did not require this ‘sovereignty’ whilst, overall, the costs are much higher than any benefits which may derive from it.
Moreover, it is important to confront the persistent slipperiness of Brexiters in the way that when challenged about the economic costs they very often resort to saying ‘you don’t understand, it wasn’t about the money it was about regaining our freedom, which is priceless’. But not only was that not how Brexit was sold in 2016, it is also not what is being said about the benefits of an independent trade policy. If Brexiters want to justify themselves in economic terms, then they can’t use ‘priceless’ sovereignty to escape a proper accounting.
But ‘we are where we are’?
I understand the view that ‘we are where we are’ and so there’s no point harking back to the false promises that were made. But I don’t accept it. For one thing, it is galling to hear so many Brexiters now wheeling out as arguments against Scottish independence precisely those they dismissed when made by remainers against leaving the EU. More importantly, the promises made in 2016 are not part of some remote past. Rather, they are only now, since the end of the transition period, actually playing out in terms of practical consequences. That is less than five months ago. So these are not dead issues and one way we know that is, indeed, because the Brexiters are still at such pains to churn out false claims to justify what they have done.
So if there is to be a ‘moving on’ and an acceptance that ‘we are where we are’ that has to start with an honest acknowledgment from the Brexiters – meaning, principally, the government – of where exactly it is that we are. And that means, even assuming that they may have done it in good faith (which requires considerable charity), acknowledging that this particular form of sovereignty they have created presents very serious problems.
If they are to be addressed, or at least ameliorated, it will require a patient diplomacy and a realistic recognition of the powers that other countries, and the EU, have and of Britain’s relatively (not, of course, entirely) limited power. In short, it requires the opposite of both the ‘cynical’ and the ‘irresponsible’ responses we currently see. I’ve mentioned in this post a couple of tiny signs this might happen, but I’m not holding my breath.
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Showing posts with label Norway. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Norway. Show all posts
Friday, 7 May 2021
Friday, 8 March 2019
The Brexit torture continues (and there's no end in sight)
It’s been
another painful week of shadow boxing and game playing that hardly begins to
address the crisis the UK is now in, and refuses to address the choices that it
must make. As the Flip
Chart Fairy Tales blog puts it in a good synopsis of the current
mess, “there is something infantile about all this. It’s like children who know
they have to tidy their rooms but come out will all sorts of bizarre excuses as
to why they can’t do it just yet”. Will next week see any sort of resolution?
Almost certainly not.
It’s clear that nothing much will or could come from the ludicrous attempts this week to get EU agreement that the Irish backstop should have all the features that make it a backstop removed. Flogging that dead horse again wasn’t so much serious politics as a case for the RSPCA.
It had been rumoured that the Attorney-General and even the Prime Minister would be returning to Brussels, but that is now apparently off and, instead, May made a “plea” to the EU in a speech in Grimsby. It’s as if she’s forgotten that she already agreed to the backstop, and the reasons why she did so. Even if the outcome is some new document or form of words it’s very unlikely to persuade the hard core, at least, of the ERG to support May’s deal.
Moreover, news that the government is planning a programme of massive unilateral tariff abolition in the event of no-deal – for all that the detail of what this means is unclear – is the kind of thing to get the Ultras salivating. Why vote for any deal when there is a real madness in prospect? After all, May’s deal only eviscerates UK services, but with unilateral tariff abolition in prospect these economic Jacobins can finish off manufacturing, and with a fair wind agriculture, as well.
Meanwhile, the meagre ‘left behind fund’ and unenforceable promises about future workers’ rights protections are unlikely to get any more support from Labour MPs than would have been available anyway. Thus any such votes will be insufficient to make up for the likely scale of the ERG rebellion, to say nothing of how the DUP and Tory remainers may vote. So although the margin of defeat may well be less than in January, it is hard to see the outcome being any different.
That seems to be made more likely rather than less by the soul-sapping reports that if she loses May intends to then seek yet another meaningful vote (thus, in the latest jargon, MV2 will be followed by MV3). Leaving aside the grotesque irresponsibility of extending the agony for businesses and individuals who have no idea how key aspects of everyday life are going to work in just three weeks’ time, it’s also terrible tactics.
Hitherto, the attempt has been to threaten the Brexiters with the possibility of no Brexit and the assorted pragmatists and remainers with no-deal. By creating the possibility of MV3, those threats disappear and potential rebels of all hues can vote against her deal in MV2 in the hope that something will then emerge that suits them better.
The prospects for the Kyle-Wilson amendment*
One potential point of interest will be the fate of the Kyle-Wilson amendment, assuming that it is tabled which, like so much else about next week, is currently in doubt. Proposed by the two Labour MPs whose name it bears, in its present form it would see MPs support May’s deal contingent on it being put to the electorate in a confirmatory referendum.
In principle, Kyle-Wilson could be passed if sufficient backbenchers voted for it. In practice, it will not succeed without support being given from the Labour front bench, and Jeremy Corbyn is reported to be under increasing pressure to do so. That would likely entail that it be re-worded so that it didn’t require Labour MPs to actively support May’s deal, but rather to ‘withhold support’ for it until after the confirmatory referendum. Even so, many Labour MPs would certainly refuse to vote for it, and the revised format would make it (even) less appealing to the Tory rebel MPs whose votes would also be needed to pass it.
So it seems very unlikely to succeed next week, but I do just half-wonder whether, if we do get to MV3, the Kyle-Wilson amendment might be accepted by the government. That currently looks like an utterly absurd suggestion given May’s implacable opposition to another referendum. But she has been forced to change her mind before, for example over the Brady and, in effect, the Cooper-Letwin amendments, and might have to do so again. Impossible as it seems now it might end up being her best, perhaps by then her only, chance of getting her deal agreed.
Actually, it would have made a lot of sense – and probably been achievable - had Theresa May said from the moment she took office not just, as she did, that the referendum result would be honoured but that she would go even further and promise the electorate the chance to accept or reject the outcome of the negotiations when they were completed. You, the people, will decide! After all, something like that seems to have been envisaged by none other than Jacob Rees-Mogg back in 2011 (although he claims this has been taken out of context). In fact, it would be a pretty obvious thing to do were it not for the toxic and irrational politics that Brexit has spawned.
Such a declaration from the outset, especially had it been combined with a deliberative process of public and parliamentary debate, plus some form of expert commission, in advance of triggering Article 50 might have done a great deal to avoid all the problems that have arisen. We’ll never know, now, whether that is true or not. So, to use that well-worn political cliché, ‘we are where we are’ and have to deal with it.
In accepting that, it also has to be accepted that any course of action now contains severe problems – there are no good outcomes left for almost anyone at any place on the spectrum of Brexit opinion. So setting out the case for Kyle-Wilson, or something like it, is emphatically not to say that it is an ideal solution, just that it at least deserves consideration.
Kyle-Wilson addresses the actual choice the UK must make
The most obvious objection to it comes from Brexiters, for many of whom having (presumably) May’s deal as the only Brexit option on the ballot paper will be, to say the least, unpalatable. It is worth recognizing that for some of them that will be because it means too soft a Brexit, for others because it is not soft enough. That is important, because it actually goes to the heart of the case for Kyle-Wilson.
As I and many others have repeatedly pointed out, the core problem that delivering Brexit has faced came from the fact that the 2016 Referendum mandated leaving the EU, but not the form of leaving. Eventually, the form it would take was going to have to be defined, and (with the caveats below) May’s deal does that. So, of course, for many Brexiters it is not the form that they would like.
The same would be true whatever form it had taken. Brexit does not mean any one thing to those who want it. By the same token, the claim that 17.4 million who voted leave in 2016 knew what they were voting for cannot, by definition, be true since what it meant was not defined until long afterwards.
So another national vote now on May’s deal cuts through all this by saying that - rightly or wrongly, necessarily or unnecessarily - this is the shape that the meaning of Brexit has taken. It is no longer a theoretical proposition, or one which can be negotiated a different way because the time for negotiation has run out. What Brexit means, empirically, now, in 2019 is: this. The question for the UK is: do you want it, or not?
The UK has to answer that question, so the only issue is whether that answer is going to be given by Parliament or by the electorate. Parliament seems incapable of doing so, certainly in any way that provides a stable basis to deliver on the answer. It is already clear that even if Brexiter MPs do, against all predictions, vote for May’s deal they will immediately say that it was not an acceptable one, and that they had been bounced into supporting it. That is no basis on which to then begin the long years of negotiation that will follow – ‘Brexeternity’ as Denis MacShane dubbed it this week.
Moreover, given that one possible answer is ‘no, we want to remain’ then it really needs a referendum to say this since it was a referendum which – again, rightly or wrongly – set the whole process in motion. Even with a referendum that would be difficult enough; without it there would surely be a political meltdown.
Would we know what we were voting for?
A better objection to Kyle-Wilson is that May’s deal only defines what Brexit means to a limited extent. It defines the Withdrawal Agreement (WA), of course, but the Political Declaration (PD) on future terms is only a fairly vague set of parameters. Apart from the fact that this is also the case for MPs voting on the deal, this objection can be answered in three ways.
First, it was always going to be the case that future terms would only be fully agreed after the Article 50 period had ended and the UK had let the EU. Claims to contrary, by Theresa May and numerous Brexiters at various times, were always false. It is true that the PD could have been much more detailed. That it was not reflects the fact that almost nothing happened in phase 2 of the Article 50 talks because as soon as phase 1 was agreed in December 2017 the government fell into disarray about what it had just agreed (specifically the backstop) and as to what it wanted the future terms to be. Even though the PD was never going to be a completed or binding agreement it could have been more than, in effect, a restatement of UK and EU red lines.
Secondly, despite this, it is not quite true to say that the PD is entirely vague, or that the fact that it is non-binding makes it of no relevance at all. By embodying the red lines it does set the political direction of travel and a fairly particular one in its reference to ending freedom of movement (and, therefore, no single market membership) and the UK having an independent trade policy (and, therefore, no customs union). We don’t know exactly what will be delivered, but we do know roughly what is envisaged.
Thirdly, unsatisfactory as it may be not to know anything like the full details of the future relationship, now is the last moment at which it is possible to ask the question as to whether people want to leave on what the terms look like being, or remain in the EU on the current terms (e.g. the various exemptions that the UK enjoys). That is the only meaningful question to be asked. Once the Article 50 period has expired, the possibility of asking it will no longer exist. So, again, we are where we are. It may not be ideal, but that’s the way things are.
Back, yet again, to Norway?
A different way being touted to get around the impasse is the resurrection of the Norway+ idea, currently also referred to as Common Market 2.0. That would entail the passing of an amendment which would require the government (presumably alongside applying for an extension of the Article 50 period) to renegotiate the PD so as to articulate as the clear direction of travel membership of the single market and a customs union.
There have been reports in the last couple of days that Jeremy Corbyn is discussing just this with some Tory backbenchers. It is, to say the least, absolutely ridiculous that he is only now, with a few weeks to go, looking seriously at what would have been the logical position for Labour to take from the outset, as the only even approximately ‘jobs first’ Brexit available. Instead, thanks partly to his lack of interest in Brexit, but more the ideological aversion he and his core advisors have to the single market, he only belatedly endorsed a customs union. Even now, after all these years, he still talks cakeist drivel about a close relationship with the single market, as if there is an intermediate position between the binary of ‘in’ or ‘out’.
If Labour were, belatedly, to endorse single market membership then it is conceivable that such an amendment would pass. It is then, in turn, conceivable that the PD could be re-negotiated along those lines. But there is absolutely no reason to think that, if on that basis a Brexit deal was ratified, there would be a UK government that would or could deliver on it. It would be a non-binding commitment created by opposition and rebel votes that would have to be enacted by a minority government under May or another, probably even more hard line, leader.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 referendum seeking soft Brexit would have been both a possible and sensible way for the UK to proceed. Now, although in times of such uncertainty nothing is impossible, I think that ship has sailed. The only realistic way of reviving it would be if, as some have mooted, there were to be a long extension agreed to Article 50, effectively pressing the re-set button on the whole Brexit process.
At all events, whatever happens next week we will still be lashed to the Brexit torture rack which Britain has inflicted on itself. Wikipedia notes that “one gruesome aspect of being stretched too far on the rack is the loud popping noises made by snapping cartilage, ligaments and bones”. As our MPs bray and shout in the chamber and lobbies next week, it’s worth bearing in mind that, metaphorically, those are the sounds we will be hearing: our country being pulled apart by confusion, incompetence, cowardice, delusion, and lies.
*Update (10/03/19): As half-anticipated, Kyle-Wilson will not get the backing of Labour, and will not be tabled as an amendment to Tuesday’s meaningful vote, but both may happen afterwards. Meanwhile, there’s some slight indication that my avowedly absurd idea that the government might end up accepting it is not entirely preposterous, with reports today that its authors have had detailed talks with the Brexit secretary.
It’s clear that nothing much will or could come from the ludicrous attempts this week to get EU agreement that the Irish backstop should have all the features that make it a backstop removed. Flogging that dead horse again wasn’t so much serious politics as a case for the RSPCA.
It had been rumoured that the Attorney-General and even the Prime Minister would be returning to Brussels, but that is now apparently off and, instead, May made a “plea” to the EU in a speech in Grimsby. It’s as if she’s forgotten that she already agreed to the backstop, and the reasons why she did so. Even if the outcome is some new document or form of words it’s very unlikely to persuade the hard core, at least, of the ERG to support May’s deal.
Moreover, news that the government is planning a programme of massive unilateral tariff abolition in the event of no-deal – for all that the detail of what this means is unclear – is the kind of thing to get the Ultras salivating. Why vote for any deal when there is a real madness in prospect? After all, May’s deal only eviscerates UK services, but with unilateral tariff abolition in prospect these economic Jacobins can finish off manufacturing, and with a fair wind agriculture, as well.
Meanwhile, the meagre ‘left behind fund’ and unenforceable promises about future workers’ rights protections are unlikely to get any more support from Labour MPs than would have been available anyway. Thus any such votes will be insufficient to make up for the likely scale of the ERG rebellion, to say nothing of how the DUP and Tory remainers may vote. So although the margin of defeat may well be less than in January, it is hard to see the outcome being any different.
That seems to be made more likely rather than less by the soul-sapping reports that if she loses May intends to then seek yet another meaningful vote (thus, in the latest jargon, MV2 will be followed by MV3). Leaving aside the grotesque irresponsibility of extending the agony for businesses and individuals who have no idea how key aspects of everyday life are going to work in just three weeks’ time, it’s also terrible tactics.
Hitherto, the attempt has been to threaten the Brexiters with the possibility of no Brexit and the assorted pragmatists and remainers with no-deal. By creating the possibility of MV3, those threats disappear and potential rebels of all hues can vote against her deal in MV2 in the hope that something will then emerge that suits them better.
The prospects for the Kyle-Wilson amendment*
One potential point of interest will be the fate of the Kyle-Wilson amendment, assuming that it is tabled which, like so much else about next week, is currently in doubt. Proposed by the two Labour MPs whose name it bears, in its present form it would see MPs support May’s deal contingent on it being put to the electorate in a confirmatory referendum.
In principle, Kyle-Wilson could be passed if sufficient backbenchers voted for it. In practice, it will not succeed without support being given from the Labour front bench, and Jeremy Corbyn is reported to be under increasing pressure to do so. That would likely entail that it be re-worded so that it didn’t require Labour MPs to actively support May’s deal, but rather to ‘withhold support’ for it until after the confirmatory referendum. Even so, many Labour MPs would certainly refuse to vote for it, and the revised format would make it (even) less appealing to the Tory rebel MPs whose votes would also be needed to pass it.
So it seems very unlikely to succeed next week, but I do just half-wonder whether, if we do get to MV3, the Kyle-Wilson amendment might be accepted by the government. That currently looks like an utterly absurd suggestion given May’s implacable opposition to another referendum. But she has been forced to change her mind before, for example over the Brady and, in effect, the Cooper-Letwin amendments, and might have to do so again. Impossible as it seems now it might end up being her best, perhaps by then her only, chance of getting her deal agreed.
Actually, it would have made a lot of sense – and probably been achievable - had Theresa May said from the moment she took office not just, as she did, that the referendum result would be honoured but that she would go even further and promise the electorate the chance to accept or reject the outcome of the negotiations when they were completed. You, the people, will decide! After all, something like that seems to have been envisaged by none other than Jacob Rees-Mogg back in 2011 (although he claims this has been taken out of context). In fact, it would be a pretty obvious thing to do were it not for the toxic and irrational politics that Brexit has spawned.
Such a declaration from the outset, especially had it been combined with a deliberative process of public and parliamentary debate, plus some form of expert commission, in advance of triggering Article 50 might have done a great deal to avoid all the problems that have arisen. We’ll never know, now, whether that is true or not. So, to use that well-worn political cliché, ‘we are where we are’ and have to deal with it.
In accepting that, it also has to be accepted that any course of action now contains severe problems – there are no good outcomes left for almost anyone at any place on the spectrum of Brexit opinion. So setting out the case for Kyle-Wilson, or something like it, is emphatically not to say that it is an ideal solution, just that it at least deserves consideration.
Kyle-Wilson addresses the actual choice the UK must make
The most obvious objection to it comes from Brexiters, for many of whom having (presumably) May’s deal as the only Brexit option on the ballot paper will be, to say the least, unpalatable. It is worth recognizing that for some of them that will be because it means too soft a Brexit, for others because it is not soft enough. That is important, because it actually goes to the heart of the case for Kyle-Wilson.
As I and many others have repeatedly pointed out, the core problem that delivering Brexit has faced came from the fact that the 2016 Referendum mandated leaving the EU, but not the form of leaving. Eventually, the form it would take was going to have to be defined, and (with the caveats below) May’s deal does that. So, of course, for many Brexiters it is not the form that they would like.
The same would be true whatever form it had taken. Brexit does not mean any one thing to those who want it. By the same token, the claim that 17.4 million who voted leave in 2016 knew what they were voting for cannot, by definition, be true since what it meant was not defined until long afterwards.
So another national vote now on May’s deal cuts through all this by saying that - rightly or wrongly, necessarily or unnecessarily - this is the shape that the meaning of Brexit has taken. It is no longer a theoretical proposition, or one which can be negotiated a different way because the time for negotiation has run out. What Brexit means, empirically, now, in 2019 is: this. The question for the UK is: do you want it, or not?
The UK has to answer that question, so the only issue is whether that answer is going to be given by Parliament or by the electorate. Parliament seems incapable of doing so, certainly in any way that provides a stable basis to deliver on the answer. It is already clear that even if Brexiter MPs do, against all predictions, vote for May’s deal they will immediately say that it was not an acceptable one, and that they had been bounced into supporting it. That is no basis on which to then begin the long years of negotiation that will follow – ‘Brexeternity’ as Denis MacShane dubbed it this week.
Moreover, given that one possible answer is ‘no, we want to remain’ then it really needs a referendum to say this since it was a referendum which – again, rightly or wrongly – set the whole process in motion. Even with a referendum that would be difficult enough; without it there would surely be a political meltdown.
Would we know what we were voting for?
A better objection to Kyle-Wilson is that May’s deal only defines what Brexit means to a limited extent. It defines the Withdrawal Agreement (WA), of course, but the Political Declaration (PD) on future terms is only a fairly vague set of parameters. Apart from the fact that this is also the case for MPs voting on the deal, this objection can be answered in three ways.
First, it was always going to be the case that future terms would only be fully agreed after the Article 50 period had ended and the UK had let the EU. Claims to contrary, by Theresa May and numerous Brexiters at various times, were always false. It is true that the PD could have been much more detailed. That it was not reflects the fact that almost nothing happened in phase 2 of the Article 50 talks because as soon as phase 1 was agreed in December 2017 the government fell into disarray about what it had just agreed (specifically the backstop) and as to what it wanted the future terms to be. Even though the PD was never going to be a completed or binding agreement it could have been more than, in effect, a restatement of UK and EU red lines.
Secondly, despite this, it is not quite true to say that the PD is entirely vague, or that the fact that it is non-binding makes it of no relevance at all. By embodying the red lines it does set the political direction of travel and a fairly particular one in its reference to ending freedom of movement (and, therefore, no single market membership) and the UK having an independent trade policy (and, therefore, no customs union). We don’t know exactly what will be delivered, but we do know roughly what is envisaged.
Thirdly, unsatisfactory as it may be not to know anything like the full details of the future relationship, now is the last moment at which it is possible to ask the question as to whether people want to leave on what the terms look like being, or remain in the EU on the current terms (e.g. the various exemptions that the UK enjoys). That is the only meaningful question to be asked. Once the Article 50 period has expired, the possibility of asking it will no longer exist. So, again, we are where we are. It may not be ideal, but that’s the way things are.
Back, yet again, to Norway?
A different way being touted to get around the impasse is the resurrection of the Norway+ idea, currently also referred to as Common Market 2.0. That would entail the passing of an amendment which would require the government (presumably alongside applying for an extension of the Article 50 period) to renegotiate the PD so as to articulate as the clear direction of travel membership of the single market and a customs union.
There have been reports in the last couple of days that Jeremy Corbyn is discussing just this with some Tory backbenchers. It is, to say the least, absolutely ridiculous that he is only now, with a few weeks to go, looking seriously at what would have been the logical position for Labour to take from the outset, as the only even approximately ‘jobs first’ Brexit available. Instead, thanks partly to his lack of interest in Brexit, but more the ideological aversion he and his core advisors have to the single market, he only belatedly endorsed a customs union. Even now, after all these years, he still talks cakeist drivel about a close relationship with the single market, as if there is an intermediate position between the binary of ‘in’ or ‘out’.
If Labour were, belatedly, to endorse single market membership then it is conceivable that such an amendment would pass. It is then, in turn, conceivable that the PD could be re-negotiated along those lines. But there is absolutely no reason to think that, if on that basis a Brexit deal was ratified, there would be a UK government that would or could deliver on it. It would be a non-binding commitment created by opposition and rebel votes that would have to be enacted by a minority government under May or another, probably even more hard line, leader.
In the immediate aftermath of the 2016 referendum seeking soft Brexit would have been both a possible and sensible way for the UK to proceed. Now, although in times of such uncertainty nothing is impossible, I think that ship has sailed. The only realistic way of reviving it would be if, as some have mooted, there were to be a long extension agreed to Article 50, effectively pressing the re-set button on the whole Brexit process.
At all events, whatever happens next week we will still be lashed to the Brexit torture rack which Britain has inflicted on itself. Wikipedia notes that “one gruesome aspect of being stretched too far on the rack is the loud popping noises made by snapping cartilage, ligaments and bones”. As our MPs bray and shout in the chamber and lobbies next week, it’s worth bearing in mind that, metaphorically, those are the sounds we will be hearing: our country being pulled apart by confusion, incompetence, cowardice, delusion, and lies.
*Update (10/03/19): As half-anticipated, Kyle-Wilson will not get the backing of Labour, and will not be tabled as an amendment to Tuesday’s meaningful vote, but both may happen afterwards. Meanwhile, there’s some slight indication that my avowedly absurd idea that the government might end up accepting it is not entirely preposterous, with reports today that its authors have had detailed talks with the Brexit secretary.
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