The most significant Brexit-related development of the last fortnight was Keir Starmer’s first visit to Brussels since becoming Prime Minister. Media attention focused on his meeting with the President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, but, notably, he also met with Charles Michel, Chair of the European Council, and Roberta Metsola, President of the European Parliament.
Significant it may have been, but dramatic it certainly wasn’t, and no one should have expected otherwise. This was never likely to be the moment for some great announcement and, in fact, the joint statement of the Starmer-van der Leyen meeting, whilst positive in tone, was fairly anodyne in content. Nevertheless, it did contain some points of interest.
The Starmer-von der Leyen statement
The reaffirmation of a shared commitment to the Withdrawal Agreement, Windsor Framework, and Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) could be taken as a reminder of the EU’s desire to see all of the provisions of these fully implemented, and perhaps as a pre-condition of any ‘reset’. It was certainly a reminder of the Labour government’s acceptance of the basic architecture of what was agreed by its Tory predecessors, and thus the limitations of such a reset. Yet the reference to “the unique relationship” between the EU and the UK, whilst at one level a truism, could betoken a recognition by the EU that not all its relationships with third countries are of the same order, and by the UK that the brief and hubristic days of post-Brexit ‘global Britain’, in which the EU hardly counted, are long gone.
At all events, the statement identified the desire to develop an agenda of strengthened cooperation “at pace” and, interestingly, included within that agenda were references to both climate change and energy. These had been identified by Joël Reland of the UK in a Changing Europe (UKICE) research centre in advance of the meeting as being something to watch for as neglected, but highly viable areas, for greater cooperation within the existing agreement architecture, and of potentially mutual interest to both sides.
But ‘pace’ will indeed matter. For example, the ongoing development of both UK and EU Carbon Border Adjustment Mechanisms (CBAM) and associated Emission Trading Systems (ETS) means that decisions about their possible linkage, a perfectly realistic possibility within the TCA framework, will soon become pressing. More generally, as economics commentator Simon Nixon argued in a recent post on his Wealth of Nations substack, emerging EU plans to revive EU competitiveness are likely to have major implications for the UK. In short, any reset of relations with the EU will not occur against a static background.
The main substantive announcement in the joint statement was of agreement to begin holding regular EU-UK summits, starting early next year. Anton Spisak of the Centre for European Reform, and a seasoned analyst of Brexit, pointed out that the significance of this should not be downplayed, given the unwillingness of both parties to entertain the idea in the past. Small as it may be, it is a sign of progress, and was welcomed as such by the European Movement UK.*
Testing questions for the ‘reset’
How far that progress goes, and what it consists of, remains to be seen, not least because, as I discussed in a recent post, it’s unclear what the government means by ‘the reset’. But, whatever its intentions, many commentaries on the Brussels’ meeting focused on UKICE Director Professor Anand Menon’s remark that to pursue them the UK needs to show the EU “a token of good faith” by agreeing to a Youth Mobility Scheme (YMS). Yet, beyond the obvious fact that this would do much to enhance the credibility of the UK’s commitment to a genuine reset, what I have not seen discussed is exactly why such a gesture is needed and what it would betoken.
I think the answer to that is bound up with the entire post-Brexit question. To what extent has the UK, not just in its government but in its wider political culture, banished or at least decisively marginalized ‘Brexitism’? I’ve argued in the past that it is this which will be the key test for the viability of any idea of ultimately joining the EU or the single market. It isn’t enough for there to be majority support for doing so in the opinion polls. The credibility question, for the EU, is whether or not there is any danger that a move to join would subsequently be reversed, and the trauma of Brexit repeated. If there is such a danger, there is no attraction for the EU in entertaining UK accession.
That is not in prospect, but the same argument applies, though arguably to a lesser extent, to the far more limited aspirations for rapprochement envisaged by the current government. To what extent can they be taken as a reliable, permanent, feature of UK-EU relations? Or will this ‘reset’ be followed, a few years down the line, by another reset, back in the direction of the Brexit Ultras’ desire for separation, antagonism, maximum distance, and ‘sovereignty’ above all else? Is the UK now, in fact, a reliable interlocutor again, or is the Brexit virus liable to break out again, as shingles may for anyone who has had a bout of chicken pox?
In this sense, complaints that the EU’s original proposal for a YMS deal were made at a time that was unhelpful (£) to the then Labour opposition missed the point: these questions aren’t (just) about any particular party or government, but about the British polity. If the EU still has to tip-toe around the Brexit eggshells of UK politics, then that in itself answers the question of whether or not Brexitism has been marginalized.
There is also a deeper, or, anyway, different version of this same question, which is also highly germane to the viability of a substantive reset in relations. Brexit aside, the UK’s attitude to the EU during the years in which it was a member was very much characterized by grudging transactionalism, rather than by any commitment to European ideals. Brussels was the place the UK went to bang the table with a handbag, and extract the most it could whilst giving the least possible in return. Now that the UK is outside, is that still the approach, rather than, as a reset might imply, one of genuine partnership?
Oddly, and perhaps unintentionally, the comments of some ‘post-Brexit realists’, who, whilst understanding very well the folly of Brexit, discuss Labour’s reset in terms of negotiating strategies and ‘offensive’ and ‘defensive’ objectives, reinforce the impression that this transactionalism persists. At all events, a genuine reset needs to entail more than regret about the way in which May, Davis, Johnson, and Frost went about divorce proceedings. If the marriage is to be replaced by friendship, it is also necessary for there to be a genuine desire to avoid repeating the behaviour which preceded the divorce.
The YMS test
On these questions, YMS is quite a good test to set, relating as it does to the neuralgic issue of immigration which played such a central role in the vote for Brexit. YMS manifestly doesn’t cross the Labour red line on the restoration of freedom of movement of people, so if the government still sees it as too politically toxic to pursue that suggests two, related, things. One is that within the British polity, generally, the experience of Brexit has still not lanced the populist boil about immigration. The other is that the Labour government is not minded to challenge, but to accept, the orthodoxy of anti-immigration sentiment.
It would seem as if that test has already been failed. Unsurprisingly, anti-immigration politics still suffuses Farage’s Reform Party as, hardly any more unsurprisingly, it does the Tory Party, whoever its new leader turns out to be. The Tories did have the possibility of saying that, with Brexit, they had delivered the ‘points-based’ system which Brexiters like Farage used to say was all they wanted. They could then have initiated the ‘honest conversation’ everyone says they want to have about immigration, for example by decoupling it from asylum-seeking, and by challenging the voters about their view that immigration in general should be significantly reduced whilst those same voters, including Conservative voters, do not support reductions in almost every specific category of immigration. But, whether from fear of Reform, their own preferences, or some combination of the two, the Tories have not chosen to take this opportunity.
Nor is there any sign that the Labour government will do so. That clearly extends even to YMS, with reports that the cabinet is split over whether to agree to it, and identifying Home Secretary Yvette Cooper as the main opponent. Cooper played a pivotal and praiseworthy role in preventing Boris Johnson’s government enacting a ‘no deal Brexit’, and a courageous one, too, given the horrendous abuse and threats she faced. So it might be tempting to see her stance on YMS as the latest example of the Home Office capturing its Secretary of State. After all, Theresa May went from challenging her party to stop being ‘nasty’ to being a distinctly nasty Home Secretary, and the department seems to have had similarly radicalizing effect on one-time Immigration Minister, then Tory leadership candidate, Robert Jenrick.
In fact, Cooper has been arguing against freedom of movement since at least December 2016. And although she must know very well that YMS would not mean anything like its restoration she insists that the EU “see this in the context of free movement”, whatever that is supposed to mean, or why it even affects the issue. But it isn’t just Cooper. Starmer, too, despite being enthusiastic about the case for freedom of movement as recently as January 2020, is reported to fear the reaction from the pro-Brexit press to a YMS deal. So even on this quite limited measure it seems Labour have no appetite to take on Brexitism, thus failing first part of the YMS test, namely, whether has Brexitism been marginalized.
This does not mean that YMS will not be agreed in the end. Many people (including me, for what it is worth) expect that it will be. However, the consequence of having failed the first test is that, if and when YMS is agreed, the UK will also fail the second test. For if it is agreed as, or is presented as having been agreed as, part of some quid pro quo deal to obtain some softening of the economic damage of Brexit, such as an SPS deal, then it will be clear that the UK’s relationship with the EU remains within the same transactionalist frame as it has always been. That needn’t preclude a ‘reset’ but places limits upon it, and defines the future ‘partnership’ in relatively shallow terms.
The ECHR test
Whilst the YMS is a good test of the question of whether the UK has left Brexitism behind, there is a different test, which is whether the UK is likely to go even further down the path it took with Brexit by embracing a ‘Brexit 2.0’ of leaving the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and its associated Court. That, too, is largely bound up with immigration, to the extent that ECHR derogation is almost invariably presented as being a means of ‘stopping the small boats’ (in this sense, it is also bound up with the failure to differentiate immigration from asylum-seeking).
Here the text of the Starmer-von der Leyen statement was revealing in “re-affirming” the parties’ mutual commitment to the Convention. It’s not clear that Rishi Sunak could have done the same thing, given his repeated pandering to the possibility of derogation over the ‘Rwanda plan’. By contrast, on this, Starmer’s resolve is unequivocal: a government under his leadership will never leave the ECHR. Given all his priors, it is unthinkable that he will renege on this.
However, it is very far from obvious that this is the settled view of the British polity. Again, it is unsurprising that Farage and Reform UK are adamantly opposed to ECHR membership, whilst support for it within the Tory Party is fragile. Of the remaining leadership candidates, Robert Jenrick has unreservedly advocated leaving and, despite having initially rejected the idea, Kemi Badenoch now says that she would consider doing so.
Whichever of them wins will undoubtedly find much support for making leaving the ECHR official party policy, since doing so is now an article of faith to those on the right. At the same time, former candidate Tom Tugendhat’s foolish attempt to court the right by contingently supporting leaving indicates that even on the more ‘centrist’ wing of the party it is no longer seen as unthinkable. At the very least, his having done so will have weakened what remains of the One Nation Tories’ ability to oppose it. Meanwhile, Boris Johnson, with his usual opportunism, this week called for a referendum on membership.
So it certainly can’t be said, despite all the miseries that Brexit has caused, and despite its unpopularity with the public, that Brexit 2.0 can be ruled out, or that demands for it will be confined to the margins of politics. That seems all the more the case given the faltering first 100 days of the Labour administration. Of course, it is too early to judge, but the possibility of a two-term hegemony, in which Labour might re-write British politics, looks less likely now than it did in the immediate aftermath of the election, whilst the possibility of a disillusioned electorate turning to nationalist populism has become more feasible.
The Gibraltar test
Whatever the truth of that turns out to be, it is abundantly clear that the populist and pro-Brexit media has not been cowed by the new government, and continues to exert a very considerable influence upon it. Many believed that a huge Labour majority would somewhat tame that media, for the general reason that the centre of political gravity would have shifted, and the specific one that journalists would become somewhat beholden to the new regime.
That hasn’t really happened, and certainly not to the extent that it did in 1997, with the result that Starmer’s government has immediately become embroiled in controversies, leaks and scandals (some of them highly confected), and has already been forced to engage in a domestic re-set. That has multiple implications, including for the prospects of a ‘reset’ of relations with the EU.
A clear example was the furore over the announcement that the UK has agreed to cede sovereignty of the Chagos Islands to Mauritius. This is itself, in part, a Brexit story because, as the BBC report of it mentioned, Brexit meant that many EU nations were no longer prepared to back the UK’s case for retaining control of the territory. It’s a point that Brexiters should heed, since it a reminder of how Brexit has weakened the UK geo-politically as well as economically.
However, more to the present point is the way that the agreement was represented by Brexiters and the right-wing press as showing “weakness” and even “treason”, ignoring the fact that the negotiations which led to the agreement had been started by the previous Tory government. This was then linked to ridiculous claims (ridiculous as there is zero connection) that it would be followed by similar deals to cede sovereignty of the Falklands and Gibraltar (£).
It’s the latter claim which relates most directly to Brexit, since the post-Brexit situation of Gibraltar remains unresolved and under negotiation, and resolving it is, in itself, now a test of Starmer’s desire for a reset with the EU. In principle this is becoming urgent, with the new Entry/Exit System (EES) Schengen border controls due to begin in early November although, as I write, reports are confirming the recent rumours that these will be postponed again. But the new controls will, eventually, happen and this matters, since a key issue is maintaining an open border between Gibraltar and Spain, and the associated question of the management of border controls at Gibraltar’s port and airport (which is also an RAF base).
The last time I discussed Gibraltar in detail on this blog was in April, when it seemed that a deal was imminent. A deal, that is, brokered by the Tory government. Since then, reports of the negotiations have been sparse, although last weekend it emerged (£) that the government was about to make formal complaints to Spain about its military overflights of the territory, which doesn’t augur well. But if, and I would think when, a deal is done it will almost certainly involve ‘concessions’ to the EU and Spain, reportedly already made by the previous government, on who undertakes border controls.
This will be the cue for Brexiters to cry ‘betrayal’, as they would have done under the Tories but now, no doubt, with the support of the Tory leadership. Such protest may be marginal, and easily batted away by the government. But the reaction to the Chagos agreement suggests the possibility of a Gibraltar deal being woven into a wider narrative of Starmer being ‘weak’ and ‘not standing up for’ Britain, both generally and in relation to the EU. If that narrative gains ground it will be another indication that Brexitism exerts a profound hold on the UK, whatever its government may be.
Still not done
The question of how Brexit will continue to unfold is a crucial one for our country, so it was with considerable regret that I learned that Yorkshire Bylines’ Davis Downsides Dossier is to be discontinued. It has been a huge, and I think unique, resource for collating media reports about the practical consequences of Brexit, and I’ve referred to it many times.
That isn’t the only loss. At the high-profile end of things, the decision to end the European Scrutiny Committee, for all its problems, without any replacement is a big setback for scrutiny and accountability of the government’s post-Brexit policies, as Jill Rutter and Hannah White of the Institute for Government explain. I’m particularly saddened by the decision to stop funding UKICE from April 2025. UKICE has been a consistently outstanding source of reliable data, incisive analysis, and intelligent comment about Brexit, and an invaluable public resource, not least for this blog where I have cited its work in, very possibly, the majority of posts.
At, if they will forgive me, the lower-profile end of the spectrum, Nick Tyrone has now ended his ‘Week in Brexitland’ newsletter, and Gerhard Schnyder has ended regular posts of his Brexit Impact Tracker blog. Again, I have often cited these sources on this blog and it is a shame that they are gone.
These losses contribute to a growing sense that Brexit (somewhat like Covid) is regarded if not as over, then as something that just has to be put up with, like the British, or more accurately English, weather. It’s a sense I tried to capture in more detail about a year ago in my post entitled “mustn’t grumble”. So continuing with this blog, even on its new fortnightly basis, feels like ploughing an increasingly lonely furrow, but I think it is still a worthwhile one. And this week, just over eight years since I launched it, the blog received its ten millionth visit, and the readership via email sign-ups continues to hold up, so hopefully I am not the only one to think so.
After all, as this post shows, Brexit is very far from ‘being done’, and that was without even mentioning the latest postponement to an aspect of import controls, this time that of digital product safety declarations. And as this post also shows, we are also far from done with Brexitism.
*Another small step of note was the this week announcement of a new agreement between the UK’s Office of National Statistics and EU’s Eurostat, severed since Brexit. It’s not really an example of ‘the reset’, since it was anticipated by the TCA and has been under discussion for a while, but it has a significance beyond itself in that it facilitates UK participation in EU programmes such as Horizon Europe. At the same time, it’s yet another reminder of the extent to which Brexit has caused so many utterly pointless, yet damaging, ruptures, large and small.
Showing posts with label Ursula von der Leyen. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Ursula von der Leyen. Show all posts
Friday, 11 October 2024
Friday, 11 June 2021
Britain's Brexit shame
As pre-figured in my previous post, UK-EU relations are now entering a crunch period which started with Wednesday’s meeting of both the Partnership Council and the Joint Committee (the former overseeing the Trade and Cooperation Agreement, the latter the Withdrawal Agreement). It took place at a time when, in the apt title of Tony Connelly of RTE’s latest blog (which also gives a fantastic summary of the issues at stake) “bad faith and brinksmanship” meant the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) was “on the edge”.
It remains there, since no significant progress was made and, notably, there was no joint statement made, just separate UK (PC, JC) and EU (PC, JC) statements. At the last Joint Committee meeting there had been a joint statement (there has never been a meeting of the Partnership Council before), so this was in itself a sign of acrimony and perhaps of the difference in approach (£) between David Frost and Michael Gove, the previous chair.
In the run up to the meeting there were some bellicose noises from Frost and other government ministers, as well as widespread reports that the EU is running out of patience and liable to take retaliatory action for the UK’s failure to fully implement the NIP*. Lurking in the background were sinister images of balaclava-clad loyalist marchers in Northern Ireland, protesting against the Protocol.
As long-term readers of the blog, or anyone who has followed Brexit with any attention, knows, these latest events have been years in the making. They go right back to the false pre-referendum assurances, given by Boris Johnson and others, that Brexit would make no difference to Northern Ireland’s borders. That wasn’t just the beginning of the story but, in some ways, the whole of the story because, fundamentally, right up to the present time, neither Johnson nor the Brexit Ultras generally have truly accepted that Brexit requires a border somewhere. Even when the Irish Sea border came into force, they denied it existed. To the extent that it is undeniable that it does now exist, they have misrepresented this as being due to EU – and sometimes Irish – intransigence.
Lies
There’s no point in finessing a basic fact: Brexiters have consistently lied about Northern Ireland (and much else besides) and the consequences are now coming back to haunt them, and all of us. They lied about what Brexit meant for Northern Ireland, and they lied about what they agreed for Northern Ireland. Johnson is the most obvious culprit, but it goes much wider than him: they almost all lied or at least misled.
For example, on the specific issue of the movement of sausages across the sea border – much in the news this week, and discussed further below – Michael Gove stated categorically in a TV interview that it had been agreed that this could continue. Anyone listening would take that to mean that it would go on forever, as he didn’t mention that what had actually been agreed was a six month grace period that is now about to expire.
That was nested within the bigger lie that the Withdrawal Agreement, including the NIP, would ‘get Brexit done’ when in fact it marked the beginning of an ongoing process. It also goes much deeper than Northern Ireland, because it is fundamentally about what departure from the single market and customs union meant for the UK in general and they lied about that, too.
Again – and apologies for this, but it is hard not to keep repeating points as events keep bearing them out – I’ve written endlessly on this blog about how Brexiters seemed to treat Brexit as being, somehow, symbolic rather than having concrete legal, economic and political effects. The corollary of this was denouncing those who warned of these effects as ‘remainer saboteurs’ and, as the warnings come true, treating it as the fault of the EU. It’s a mindset that has been in evidence again this week in George Eustice’s complaints that rules about third country products, such as sausages, are “a peculiar quirk of EU law”, and in the now ubiquitous moan from the government that insisting on such rules is “legal purism”.
Illogic
The latter phrase is a telling one in that it reflects the ‘we’ve left but we shouldn’t be treated as if we’ve left’ mentality: it’s the law, but only ‘purists’ would actually enforce it. It also has echoes of the earlier proposal to break international law but only in “a very specific and limited way”. It isn’t, to say the least, a defence to rely on in court. It is also, in its own way, revealing. For it implicitly concedes that the EU is perfectly within its rights to expect the UK to comply with what was agreed.
The ‘sausages’ rule example (actually just one part of a broader set of regulations for chilled meat products, but focusing on ‘the great British banger’ is better for Brussels-bashing headlines) is also part of the wider dishonesty of Brexiter (il)logic, which again goes back years. Its basic form, familiar from the ‘Project Fear’ rebuttal line, is to reduce any argument against Brexit to an easily dismissed absurdity. Thus warnings that it would reduce trade were rendered as claims that all trade would cease; or suggestions that the EU had kept peace amongst its members were rendered as claims that leaving would lead to World War Three.
The more developed form we are seeing now is to sneer that regulations about something so banal as sausages are a sign of EU pettiness, thus ignoring the many and substantive issues of public health that food regulations are needed to deal with. At its deepest level, this is part of the ‘anti-ruleism’ that permeates Brexiter thinking.
Childishness
This isn’t just dishonest, it’s also profoundly childish. Indeed, it’s not always clear that Brexiters consciously lie in the claims they make. Just as often, it seems as if they are like toddlers, oblivious to the constraints of cause and effect but having tantrums when those constraints become manifest. A prime example is the superbly deranged rant this week from Allister Heath in the Telegraph (£), wailing that the Protocol “was imposed on the UK by the EU at our moment of greatest weakness” (although, almost needless to say, at the time Heath extolled its virtues). No mention here of “holding all the cards”, of a “great oven-ready deal” or even of being “sovereign equals”. It might best be summarized in the words of every red-faced, bawling infant ‘it’s not fair’.
Just about every sentence in David Frost’s article in the Financial Times (£) this week - which clearly set out his approach to the subsequent meeting - can be read in the same way. I won’t provide the line-by-line rebuttal that I did for a previous, similar, article, although almost every line within it is again either untrue or a distortion of the truth. Its central feature as regards the details of NIP implementation, including the issue of chilled meat products, is the argument that the UK has come up with a reasonable proposal in the form of an ‘equivalence’ agreement on standards.
But this is simply to restate the main ongoing bone of contention, in that what is needed is an ‘alignment’ agreement, not an ‘equivalence’ agreement (see my post of 7 May for more detail on this important distinction). It’s dishonest to pretend that this is a viable solution: it’s been clear not just for months but since at least December 2017 (!) that it would not fly**.
Dishonesty
More fundamentally, the core proposition within Frost’s article, that the experience of operating the Protocol has shown its unexpected problems, is a flat out lie. We know this for a fact, because civil service briefings at the time that it was agreed show that ministers were told of the problems that would occur, something underlined this week by the former DExEU Permanent Secretary. On the narrow issue of chilled meats, we know that the government already knew the ban was in prospect in the absence of regulatory alignment. We also know that within days of the NIP coming into effect Johnson was threatening to suspend it, and that soon after he explicitly tasked civil servants to find ways around its provisions (£).
It has also long been obvious, and given new weight by Gavin Barwell’s comments this week, that Johnson’s government agreed and signed up to the NIP whilst always intending, as Barwell puts it, “to wriggle out of it” later. That was done for domestic political reasons – to be able to campaign in an election on the ‘oven-ready deal’ platform (not, be it noted, a ‘this is a terrible deal but we were forced to sign it’ platform) – but doing so marked a crucial new moment in the Brexit saga, and one which was deeply dangerous and irresponsible. Before, what was at stake was a horribly dishonest domestic debate about Brexit. Afterwards, that horrible dishonesty got written into an international treaty.
In other words, it was the moment when Brexiters shifted from lying to electors (and perhaps to themselves) to lying to the outside world.
The EU’s dilemma
This presents the EU with an almost insoluble dilemma, not simply over the chilled meats issue but over the multiple ways in which the NIP isn’t being implemented by the UK. How do you deal with a country that continually lies and cheats in a way unlike a normal state, yet is not a rogue state either? With a country that keeps saying it wants only to be a friend, but keeps behaving like an enemy?
If the EU does nothing then, bit by bit, the NIP will be undermined and, ultimately, there will be a gaping hole in the border of the single market and customs union. The UK will, indeed, have wriggled out of the commitments it made in bad faith and growing ultimately from Brexiters' refusal to accept the need for a border.
On the other hand, the dispute resolution systems and retaliations open to the EU under the Withdrawal Agreement are rather slow and fairly limited, and invoking them will inevitably provoke UK accusations of ‘bullying’ and ‘punishment’. It may be that the days are long gone when anyone in the EU cared much about bad headlines in the UK press. But the fact that Frost and others are using the UK media so extensively to make their case suggests to me that they are preparing the ground, domestically, to claim that their ‘reasonable efforts to be cooperative’ have been rebuffed by the EU and that, combined with the putative EU retaliation, will be used to justify something much more confrontational. Most obviously, that might include triggering Article 16, something the British government has repeatedly threatened almost from day one, Edwin Poots is urging, and Frost has refused to rule out.
This would then create an even more difficult situation for the EU and presumably that is why, for now, all it is doing is giving warnings of retaliation if the UK undertakes any more unilateral violations of the Protocol. At the same time, Ursula von der Leyen has signaled that the EU will seek to influence Johnson by ‘discussions in the margins’ of the current G7 meeting which, interestingly, Frost is also attending.
What happens now?
No doubt the EU will also continue to seek support from the US to pressurize Britain into complying with the NIP or, better still, taking the obvious route of agreeing to sanitary and phyto-sanitary regulatory alignment, as offered by the EU. For the most ludicrous feature of the whole situation is that a relatively easy solution exists were it not for Johnson and Frost’s insistence on a dogmatic idea of ‘sovereignty’. The Biden administration has even suggested this week that alignment would not imperil a trade deal with the US.
Things will come to a head soon. Presumably the desire for good optics for the G7 summit is at least one reason why, despite his bellicose newspaper articles, Frost didn’t escalate the dispute with the EU this week. But time is running out. As I mentioned earlier, the grace period which was agreed with the EU last December allowing movement of chilled meats and meat preparations (including sausages) across the sea border ends on 30 June.
If there is no negotiated agreement to extend it there will be significant disruption. If the UK unilaterally extends it – as it did for some of the other grace periods earlier this year, the subject of ongoing legal dispute – which Frost also refuses to rule out, then the EU has indicated that this will be the point at which it will take firm retaliatory action, regardless of what that may then provoke from the UK. It is hard to see how it could not do so: at some point a line has to be drawn unless the EU is going to accept that the NIP isn’t going to be implemented.
Some reports this week have suggested that the EU could fall back on an emergency plan that would place some border checks between Ireland and the rest of the EU. Personally, I think that is unlikely to happen. It would certainly mark a radical departure from the solidarity with Ireland that the EU has shown throughout the Brexit process. And even if adopted on a supposedly temporary basis it would surely morph into a permanent situation if the UK simply sat back and did nothing, as it surely would. If the implication is that the EU will do all it can to prevent an escalation of conflict with the UK then I would think that agreeing a temporary extension to the chilled meats grace period to be more likely. It won’t resolve anything, but would buy a little time in which something might turn up. Not a great strategy but maybe better than the alternatives.
Biden’s intervention
The hope might be that the already quite strong intervention from the Biden administration this week will concentrate Johnson’s mind. I am not sure it will. This isn’t, as yet anyway, like the Suez moment, when the US brought naked diplomatic, political and financial pressure to bear upon the UK. For now, the US is pressing for a “negotiated settlement” that does not “imperil or undermine the Good Friday Agreement”.
That may well be code for calling on the UK to honour the NIP, but it doesn’t say that in terms. The UK government argues, no matter how mendaciously, that it is indeed seeking a negotiated settlement that upholds the Good Friday Agreement “in all its dimensions” (which is also code, implying that the NIP as it stands tilts against the unionist community).
Moreover the government’s statement that Johnson and Biden had agreed that the EU and the UK should find “pragmatic solutions to allow unencumbered trade between Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland”, if accurate, is, in its reference to mutual pragmatism, exactly the line that Frost is taking, and is bizarre anyway since there is no way that trade can be unencumbered now. As for the official joint statement, it didn’t explicitly mention the NIP at all.
Tellingly, Johnson shrugged off the idea that there were any differences with Biden over the NIP, claiming he’d simply agreed on the need to “get it sorted out”. So, in private if not in public, the US may need to take a much harder line than it has thus far to have an impact.
Shame
I don’t write much about my personal feelings on this blog, but I don’t think I can be alone in feeling a deep sense of shame at the blatant dishonesty of Johnson’s, Frost’s, and the British government’s behaviour over the NIP. Brexit was bad enough in itself, but this continuing and continuous lying and cheating is truly disgraceful. It demeans Britain and even those of us who bear no responsibility for it are in turn demeaned.
That links directly to the childishness I referred to earlier, which is in turns infantile and adolescent. There’s something profoundly mortifying about seeing serious politicians and officials in the EU having to put up with the mewling self-pity, the broken promises and the endless aggressive insults of Brexit Britain. And there’s something sphincter-tighteningly embarrassing about the ‘wait till your father gets home’ sense of having to look to Biden to inject some discipline into proceedings.
It is grimly ironic that this goes on at the same time as, reflecting the never-ending Brexiter obsession with World War Two, Johnson crows about ‘renewing the Atlantic Charter’ against the backdrop of an aircraft carrier. Grimly ironic, too, that his government goes on endlessly about pride in being British and showcases its “GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland” campaign whilst doing so much to shame and sully Britain’s reputation.
Footnotes
*The Brexit saga has gone on for so long, and become so convoluted, that it can be hard to remember what some of these things mean, but for a detailed explanation of what implementing the NIP involves there is an excellent report from the Institute for Government.
**The article linked to at this point actually needs some further explanation because, confusingly, it has David Davis talking about ‘regulatory alignment’ as a solution but further down it becomes clear that what he actually means is, indeed, ‘regulatory equivalence’. Nested within the article is a link to an Institute for Government explainer which helps to show why equivalence isn’t a solution: in brief because it does not bring with it a commitment to stayed aligned, so is a form of ‘cakeism’. Frost is currently going round the same old loop, albeit in circumstances where the exit deal has already been signed, rather than those in which it was still under negotiation.
It remains there, since no significant progress was made and, notably, there was no joint statement made, just separate UK (PC, JC) and EU (PC, JC) statements. At the last Joint Committee meeting there had been a joint statement (there has never been a meeting of the Partnership Council before), so this was in itself a sign of acrimony and perhaps of the difference in approach (£) between David Frost and Michael Gove, the previous chair.
In the run up to the meeting there were some bellicose noises from Frost and other government ministers, as well as widespread reports that the EU is running out of patience and liable to take retaliatory action for the UK’s failure to fully implement the NIP*. Lurking in the background were sinister images of balaclava-clad loyalist marchers in Northern Ireland, protesting against the Protocol.
As long-term readers of the blog, or anyone who has followed Brexit with any attention, knows, these latest events have been years in the making. They go right back to the false pre-referendum assurances, given by Boris Johnson and others, that Brexit would make no difference to Northern Ireland’s borders. That wasn’t just the beginning of the story but, in some ways, the whole of the story because, fundamentally, right up to the present time, neither Johnson nor the Brexit Ultras generally have truly accepted that Brexit requires a border somewhere. Even when the Irish Sea border came into force, they denied it existed. To the extent that it is undeniable that it does now exist, they have misrepresented this as being due to EU – and sometimes Irish – intransigence.
Lies
There’s no point in finessing a basic fact: Brexiters have consistently lied about Northern Ireland (and much else besides) and the consequences are now coming back to haunt them, and all of us. They lied about what Brexit meant for Northern Ireland, and they lied about what they agreed for Northern Ireland. Johnson is the most obvious culprit, but it goes much wider than him: they almost all lied or at least misled.
For example, on the specific issue of the movement of sausages across the sea border – much in the news this week, and discussed further below – Michael Gove stated categorically in a TV interview that it had been agreed that this could continue. Anyone listening would take that to mean that it would go on forever, as he didn’t mention that what had actually been agreed was a six month grace period that is now about to expire.
That was nested within the bigger lie that the Withdrawal Agreement, including the NIP, would ‘get Brexit done’ when in fact it marked the beginning of an ongoing process. It also goes much deeper than Northern Ireland, because it is fundamentally about what departure from the single market and customs union meant for the UK in general and they lied about that, too.
Again – and apologies for this, but it is hard not to keep repeating points as events keep bearing them out – I’ve written endlessly on this blog about how Brexiters seemed to treat Brexit as being, somehow, symbolic rather than having concrete legal, economic and political effects. The corollary of this was denouncing those who warned of these effects as ‘remainer saboteurs’ and, as the warnings come true, treating it as the fault of the EU. It’s a mindset that has been in evidence again this week in George Eustice’s complaints that rules about third country products, such as sausages, are “a peculiar quirk of EU law”, and in the now ubiquitous moan from the government that insisting on such rules is “legal purism”.
Illogic
The latter phrase is a telling one in that it reflects the ‘we’ve left but we shouldn’t be treated as if we’ve left’ mentality: it’s the law, but only ‘purists’ would actually enforce it. It also has echoes of the earlier proposal to break international law but only in “a very specific and limited way”. It isn’t, to say the least, a defence to rely on in court. It is also, in its own way, revealing. For it implicitly concedes that the EU is perfectly within its rights to expect the UK to comply with what was agreed.
The ‘sausages’ rule example (actually just one part of a broader set of regulations for chilled meat products, but focusing on ‘the great British banger’ is better for Brussels-bashing headlines) is also part of the wider dishonesty of Brexiter (il)logic, which again goes back years. Its basic form, familiar from the ‘Project Fear’ rebuttal line, is to reduce any argument against Brexit to an easily dismissed absurdity. Thus warnings that it would reduce trade were rendered as claims that all trade would cease; or suggestions that the EU had kept peace amongst its members were rendered as claims that leaving would lead to World War Three.
The more developed form we are seeing now is to sneer that regulations about something so banal as sausages are a sign of EU pettiness, thus ignoring the many and substantive issues of public health that food regulations are needed to deal with. At its deepest level, this is part of the ‘anti-ruleism’ that permeates Brexiter thinking.
Childishness
This isn’t just dishonest, it’s also profoundly childish. Indeed, it’s not always clear that Brexiters consciously lie in the claims they make. Just as often, it seems as if they are like toddlers, oblivious to the constraints of cause and effect but having tantrums when those constraints become manifest. A prime example is the superbly deranged rant this week from Allister Heath in the Telegraph (£), wailing that the Protocol “was imposed on the UK by the EU at our moment of greatest weakness” (although, almost needless to say, at the time Heath extolled its virtues). No mention here of “holding all the cards”, of a “great oven-ready deal” or even of being “sovereign equals”. It might best be summarized in the words of every red-faced, bawling infant ‘it’s not fair’.
Just about every sentence in David Frost’s article in the Financial Times (£) this week - which clearly set out his approach to the subsequent meeting - can be read in the same way. I won’t provide the line-by-line rebuttal that I did for a previous, similar, article, although almost every line within it is again either untrue or a distortion of the truth. Its central feature as regards the details of NIP implementation, including the issue of chilled meat products, is the argument that the UK has come up with a reasonable proposal in the form of an ‘equivalence’ agreement on standards.
But this is simply to restate the main ongoing bone of contention, in that what is needed is an ‘alignment’ agreement, not an ‘equivalence’ agreement (see my post of 7 May for more detail on this important distinction). It’s dishonest to pretend that this is a viable solution: it’s been clear not just for months but since at least December 2017 (!) that it would not fly**.
Dishonesty
More fundamentally, the core proposition within Frost’s article, that the experience of operating the Protocol has shown its unexpected problems, is a flat out lie. We know this for a fact, because civil service briefings at the time that it was agreed show that ministers were told of the problems that would occur, something underlined this week by the former DExEU Permanent Secretary. On the narrow issue of chilled meats, we know that the government already knew the ban was in prospect in the absence of regulatory alignment. We also know that within days of the NIP coming into effect Johnson was threatening to suspend it, and that soon after he explicitly tasked civil servants to find ways around its provisions (£).
It has also long been obvious, and given new weight by Gavin Barwell’s comments this week, that Johnson’s government agreed and signed up to the NIP whilst always intending, as Barwell puts it, “to wriggle out of it” later. That was done for domestic political reasons – to be able to campaign in an election on the ‘oven-ready deal’ platform (not, be it noted, a ‘this is a terrible deal but we were forced to sign it’ platform) – but doing so marked a crucial new moment in the Brexit saga, and one which was deeply dangerous and irresponsible. Before, what was at stake was a horribly dishonest domestic debate about Brexit. Afterwards, that horrible dishonesty got written into an international treaty.
In other words, it was the moment when Brexiters shifted from lying to electors (and perhaps to themselves) to lying to the outside world.
The EU’s dilemma
This presents the EU with an almost insoluble dilemma, not simply over the chilled meats issue but over the multiple ways in which the NIP isn’t being implemented by the UK. How do you deal with a country that continually lies and cheats in a way unlike a normal state, yet is not a rogue state either? With a country that keeps saying it wants only to be a friend, but keeps behaving like an enemy?
If the EU does nothing then, bit by bit, the NIP will be undermined and, ultimately, there will be a gaping hole in the border of the single market and customs union. The UK will, indeed, have wriggled out of the commitments it made in bad faith and growing ultimately from Brexiters' refusal to accept the need for a border.
On the other hand, the dispute resolution systems and retaliations open to the EU under the Withdrawal Agreement are rather slow and fairly limited, and invoking them will inevitably provoke UK accusations of ‘bullying’ and ‘punishment’. It may be that the days are long gone when anyone in the EU cared much about bad headlines in the UK press. But the fact that Frost and others are using the UK media so extensively to make their case suggests to me that they are preparing the ground, domestically, to claim that their ‘reasonable efforts to be cooperative’ have been rebuffed by the EU and that, combined with the putative EU retaliation, will be used to justify something much more confrontational. Most obviously, that might include triggering Article 16, something the British government has repeatedly threatened almost from day one, Edwin Poots is urging, and Frost has refused to rule out.
This would then create an even more difficult situation for the EU and presumably that is why, for now, all it is doing is giving warnings of retaliation if the UK undertakes any more unilateral violations of the Protocol. At the same time, Ursula von der Leyen has signaled that the EU will seek to influence Johnson by ‘discussions in the margins’ of the current G7 meeting which, interestingly, Frost is also attending.
What happens now?
No doubt the EU will also continue to seek support from the US to pressurize Britain into complying with the NIP or, better still, taking the obvious route of agreeing to sanitary and phyto-sanitary regulatory alignment, as offered by the EU. For the most ludicrous feature of the whole situation is that a relatively easy solution exists were it not for Johnson and Frost’s insistence on a dogmatic idea of ‘sovereignty’. The Biden administration has even suggested this week that alignment would not imperil a trade deal with the US.
Things will come to a head soon. Presumably the desire for good optics for the G7 summit is at least one reason why, despite his bellicose newspaper articles, Frost didn’t escalate the dispute with the EU this week. But time is running out. As I mentioned earlier, the grace period which was agreed with the EU last December allowing movement of chilled meats and meat preparations (including sausages) across the sea border ends on 30 June.
If there is no negotiated agreement to extend it there will be significant disruption. If the UK unilaterally extends it – as it did for some of the other grace periods earlier this year, the subject of ongoing legal dispute – which Frost also refuses to rule out, then the EU has indicated that this will be the point at which it will take firm retaliatory action, regardless of what that may then provoke from the UK. It is hard to see how it could not do so: at some point a line has to be drawn unless the EU is going to accept that the NIP isn’t going to be implemented.
Some reports this week have suggested that the EU could fall back on an emergency plan that would place some border checks between Ireland and the rest of the EU. Personally, I think that is unlikely to happen. It would certainly mark a radical departure from the solidarity with Ireland that the EU has shown throughout the Brexit process. And even if adopted on a supposedly temporary basis it would surely morph into a permanent situation if the UK simply sat back and did nothing, as it surely would. If the implication is that the EU will do all it can to prevent an escalation of conflict with the UK then I would think that agreeing a temporary extension to the chilled meats grace period to be more likely. It won’t resolve anything, but would buy a little time in which something might turn up. Not a great strategy but maybe better than the alternatives.
Biden’s intervention
The hope might be that the already quite strong intervention from the Biden administration this week will concentrate Johnson’s mind. I am not sure it will. This isn’t, as yet anyway, like the Suez moment, when the US brought naked diplomatic, political and financial pressure to bear upon the UK. For now, the US is pressing for a “negotiated settlement” that does not “imperil or undermine the Good Friday Agreement”.
That may well be code for calling on the UK to honour the NIP, but it doesn’t say that in terms. The UK government argues, no matter how mendaciously, that it is indeed seeking a negotiated settlement that upholds the Good Friday Agreement “in all its dimensions” (which is also code, implying that the NIP as it stands tilts against the unionist community).
Moreover the government’s statement that Johnson and Biden had agreed that the EU and the UK should find “pragmatic solutions to allow unencumbered trade between Northern Ireland, Great Britain and the Republic of Ireland”, if accurate, is, in its reference to mutual pragmatism, exactly the line that Frost is taking, and is bizarre anyway since there is no way that trade can be unencumbered now. As for the official joint statement, it didn’t explicitly mention the NIP at all.
Tellingly, Johnson shrugged off the idea that there were any differences with Biden over the NIP, claiming he’d simply agreed on the need to “get it sorted out”. So, in private if not in public, the US may need to take a much harder line than it has thus far to have an impact.
Shame
I don’t write much about my personal feelings on this blog, but I don’t think I can be alone in feeling a deep sense of shame at the blatant dishonesty of Johnson’s, Frost’s, and the British government’s behaviour over the NIP. Brexit was bad enough in itself, but this continuing and continuous lying and cheating is truly disgraceful. It demeans Britain and even those of us who bear no responsibility for it are in turn demeaned.
That links directly to the childishness I referred to earlier, which is in turns infantile and adolescent. There’s something profoundly mortifying about seeing serious politicians and officials in the EU having to put up with the mewling self-pity, the broken promises and the endless aggressive insults of Brexit Britain. And there’s something sphincter-tighteningly embarrassing about the ‘wait till your father gets home’ sense of having to look to Biden to inject some discipline into proceedings.
It is grimly ironic that this goes on at the same time as, reflecting the never-ending Brexiter obsession with World War Two, Johnson crows about ‘renewing the Atlantic Charter’ against the backdrop of an aircraft carrier. Grimly ironic, too, that his government goes on endlessly about pride in being British and showcases its “GREAT Britain and Northern Ireland” campaign whilst doing so much to shame and sully Britain’s reputation.
Footnotes
*The Brexit saga has gone on for so long, and become so convoluted, that it can be hard to remember what some of these things mean, but for a detailed explanation of what implementing the NIP involves there is an excellent report from the Institute for Government.
**The article linked to at this point actually needs some further explanation because, confusingly, it has David Davis talking about ‘regulatory alignment’ as a solution but further down it becomes clear that what he actually means is, indeed, ‘regulatory equivalence’. Nested within the article is a link to an Institute for Government explainer which helps to show why equivalence isn’t a solution: in brief because it does not bring with it a commitment to stayed aligned, so is a form of ‘cakeism’. Frost is currently going round the same old loop, albeit in circumstances where the exit deal has already been signed, rather than those in which it was still under negotiation.
Friday, 10 January 2020
We’re beginning to see what ‘taking back control’ looks like
It’s widely remarked upon that ‘take back control’ was a brilliant campaign slogan, not least because it could be taken to mean whatever people wanted it to mean. But as the cliché has it, politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Whatever lofty dreams the slogan may have inspired, we are now beginning to see the more prosaic realities of what it is going to mean in practice, and how these are puncturing the delusions that not only characterised the Referendum campaign but which have proved remarkably resistant to the battering received by events over the last three years.
Having to have reality explained - yet again
The core delusion was tackled again this week by the new President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, during her visit to the UK. In polite, regretful and measured tones – painfully at odds with so much of the political debate here - she pointed out the basic fact that, by definition, the UK’s new relationship with the EU will be less close and less beneficial than that of a member state, and less close and less beneficial than that of a member of the single market. It is a statement of the blindingly obvious, to the extent of being a definitional truth and virtually a tautology. Michel Barnier made exactly the same point in 2017, and again just a few weeks ago.
Von der Leyen also made the points, equally obvious to anyone with any knowledge, that a comprehensive deal could not be done by the end of the transition period, that the time available for even a minimal deal would be tight, and that the greater the distance the UK wanted in the relationship, the less comprehensive the deal would be. Again, these are no more than definitional facts. That anyone, let alone a major stateswoman, should have to explain them again arises solely because all of them are still denied, and apparently not even understood, by many Brexiters. It is actually quite embarrassing to be in a situation where such delusion has not just persisted but now occupies central stage in British politics, so that it falls to those abroad to state the obvious. But such is the pass to which the Brexit ‘patriots’ have brought our country.
There is little sign that this is making inroads amongst the cheerleaders for Brexit. Barnier’s 2017 speech was said to have “dashed the hopes” of something better than a free trade deal when the something better – single market membership – is what Britain had ruled out. Nothing has changed since. The rabidly pro-Brexit Daily Express characterised von der Leyen’s comments as having “THREATENED” the UK, describing her as having “lashed out” at the Prime Minister in her speech. Similarly, responding to the recent report (£) of Barnier saying that the UK would have to adhere closely to EU rules to get a good trade deal, Ruth Lea – a leading member of Patrick Minford’s erstwhile Economists for Brexit group – tweeted that this was “yet more bluster” rather than a statement of the obvious.
Having to take what you are given
Yet for all their media and social media outrage, the Brexit foot soldiers have not noticed that their government has quietly abandoned any idea that a trade deal can yield ‘exactly the same benefits’ as the single market or preserve ‘frictionless trade’. The Brexiter dream of a British exceptionalism, summed up as ‘having your cake and eating it’, has ended. Britain will accept what’s left after everything it has ruled out with its own red lines has been taken away. At the moment, as regards trade with the EU, that looks as if it’s going to mean, at best, a possible zero tariffs, zero quotas deal for goods trade.
This falls a very long way short of single market membership, of course, or of the Vote Leave assurance of membership of a supposed “free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey”, and even a long way short of Canada +++ that Brexiters used to speak of so breathlessly. Ironically, it is, in a certain way, consistent with the Brexiter idea that the EU would want a deal because of the UK’s trade deficit – but that deficit is in goods trade only, and so such a minimal deal would be a more beneficial one for, yes, German car makers and such like exporting to the UK than it would for the smaller volumes of goods the UK exports to the EU.
Such an approach reflects the longstanding failure of Brexiters to understand the difference between a free trade area and a single market, nested within which is a myopic and outdated focus on tariffs on goods. Thus what is in prospect does little or nothing for services, where the UK currently has a trade surplus with the EU, little for international supply chains in manufacturing, and nothing for all the non-tariff and regulatory barriers to both goods and services trade.
If a report in this week’s Financial Times (£) is correct, the government is minded to regard the clamorous objections of, for example, the auto, aerospace and pharmaceutical sectors – all of which rely on international supply chains and regulatory harmonization - as the noise of declining industries and, by implication, sees these as sacrificial in order to get a quick deal done. Certainly it seems to be accepted by both sides that passporting for financial services will end, possibly to be replaced with inferior ‘equivalence’ regimes.
So a deal will perhaps, even probably, be done. But so what? Anyone can do a bad deal in which they take what they are given because they’ve made anything better impossible. Far from having your cake and eating it, you get a cake with all the icing and chocolate stripped off, and what you eat is plain and stale sponge.
Pretending a bad deal was what you wanted
On any rational basis, this is insane economics. And it is not true to say that the Brexit vote was nothing to do with economics and was not why leave voters chose to leave. For, if that was so, the Brexiters would not have put such ferocity into repudiating Project Fear, and such energy into claims of how good future trade terms would be. Rather, we have a government knowingly pursuing a policy that will be economically damaging, but hoping that the electorate will, as per my previous post, forget that the damage was due to Brexit and forget the promises made about how things would be. But this, then, sets up an interesting paradox, which will be very important in the coming years.
To sustain their position, Brexiters will have to pretend that a minimal trade deal is, actually, a comprehensive trade deal, exactly as promised. Yet, in that case, they will have to drop the claim that the EU have been punitive or have out-negotiated the UK. Indeed, that is precisely the move that Johnson pulled off with his Withdrawal Agreement, and it might be fairly easy to do as regards a trade deal, since few people understand what that really means, and may well believe that getting ‘zero tariffs’ is a great British victory rather than the minimal outcome ‘threatened’ by the EU.
So this, too, is what taking back control looks like – a shabby con trick in which the mug punter is promised a shiny new roadster and given a rusty old banger. And there is something peculiarly English (I use this word deliberately) in the idea that the punter thus conned will drive off saying ‘better not make a scene and, anyway, it could be worse’. Politically, much depends on whether that is indeed what happens, or whether the electorate recall what they were promised and, if so, who they blame for not delivering it.
Learning your place in the world
If trade negotiations with the EU are already shaping up to give Britain what it has unwittingly chosen, it is also already beginning to be clear that the rest of the world is adjusting to the new reality of post-Brexit Britain. An excoriating article in The Times of India mocks the decline of British ‘soft power’. Meanwhile, it was reported that Australia has turned down a UK proposal to end the use of work visas as part of a future trade deal because it “could cause an exodus of highly trained workers to the UK and an influx of unskilled British workers to Sydney and Melbourne”. Apparently, they prefer an ‘Aussie-style immigration system’.
These are just two small examples from this week, but they are indicative of the emerging direction of travel. Having initially been bemused by the Referendum result, and then confused by the political crisis that followed, the election result has now cemented the new reality of Britain’s place in the eyes of the world – a “diminished” figure, being taught daily that it just isn’t important enough or powerful enough to exert much “control” over anything.
There is nothing shameful in that – it is true of all countries bar, perhaps, superpowers. But other countries accept that and address it precisely though the formation of blocs and alliances that allow them to live more comfortably and easily in the world. What is embarrassing is the hubristic refusal to understand that, and to enact a Vainglorious Revolution that forces us to live with less comfort and ease in the world. That is compounded by having a Prime Minister who not only embodies such hubris but who is also widely seen as untrustworthy and unserious, but Brexit would make it so in any case.
Events in the Middle East this week underscore this, as indeed have some other recent international crises. It’s important not to over-state this, because even without Brexit the Trump presidency would represent a major challenge for British diplomacy. One key part of the post-imperial role that Britain found – more by chance than choice, perhaps – was as the Transatlantic Bridge between the US and the EU. Trump was always going to strain that bridge at one end. But completely uprooting the pier at the EU end has made that even more unstable. The UK is now uncomfortably adrift, with many of its key strategic priorities (such as the Iran nuclear deal) bound up with the EU whilst being in abject desperation for a politically symbolic (though economically relatively trivial) trade deal with the US.
The haplessness of that situation is shown by reported pressure from Brexiters within cabinet to pursue trade talks in parallel with both the EU and the US – a deferral, rather than an understanding, of the choices to be made. It is also a peculiarly unrealistic idea even in its own terms: if no deal, or a limited deal, is done with the EU there will be an immediate deterioration in terms of trade at the end of the year, which is not true as regards a US deal and, anyway, a US deal of any sort in Trump’s election year is highly unlikely.
So in an economically regionalised world, the UK has decided to have no region. In a politically multi-polar world, it is caught between poles. That is as evident in relation to dealing with Russian nationalism as it is to standing up to China over Hong Kong or addressing the endless saga of the Chagos Islands. Again, these would pose severe challenges without Brexit, but are made more difficult by the loss of the economic and diplomatic muscle that EU membership brings and the addition of pressures to create new trading relationships outside the EU. Indeed, in this sense, the economic and geo-political aspects of Brexit are inseparable.
Thus we are at the very beginning of paying the huge price not so much for pursuing a poor strategy – and many of the issues alluded to are problematic and contentious in their own right and might, usefully, have been up for reconsideration - but for having, with Brexit, abandoned strategy altogether. So taking back control in this context means simply drifting, rudderless, ignoring – perhaps not even being aware of - the consequences and choices of Brexit.
Having Brexit defined for you
From the outset of this blog I’ve been arguing – like many, many others – that the core problem with the Brexit Referendum was that it was a vote against something, EU membership, without being a vote for anything that had been defined. That has been the underlying truth in all the years that have followed. But, now, something is beginning to change. For with the ineluctable passage of events the meaning of Brexit is, gradually, starting to be defined.
But that definition is not being decided primarily by internal British political debate about what kind of country we want to be and what a post-Brexit economic and geo-political strategy would look like. Every opportunity to do that – during the Referendum campaign, as a post-referendum consensus-building process, or in the 2017 or 2019 General Elections – has been squandered. And Johnson’s ‘just get it done’ approach to Brexit compounds that error, making a virtue of the refusal to take the time and create the process to plan it. Not so much oven-ready as half-baked.
So instead, as we come within weeks of leaving the EU, Brexit is being defined for us by others whether in the EU or beyond. We don’t know what it will end up looking like - except for being economically poorer, politically weaker, and culturally meaner - and we won’t have very much say in it, although domestic choices can make it more or less bad. In ‘taking back control’ we have, in some fundamental way, lost control of our future. Over and over again we refused, collectively, to get real. Now we’re going to be made to do so.
Having to have reality explained - yet again
The core delusion was tackled again this week by the new President of the European Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, during her visit to the UK. In polite, regretful and measured tones – painfully at odds with so much of the political debate here - she pointed out the basic fact that, by definition, the UK’s new relationship with the EU will be less close and less beneficial than that of a member state, and less close and less beneficial than that of a member of the single market. It is a statement of the blindingly obvious, to the extent of being a definitional truth and virtually a tautology. Michel Barnier made exactly the same point in 2017, and again just a few weeks ago.
Von der Leyen also made the points, equally obvious to anyone with any knowledge, that a comprehensive deal could not be done by the end of the transition period, that the time available for even a minimal deal would be tight, and that the greater the distance the UK wanted in the relationship, the less comprehensive the deal would be. Again, these are no more than definitional facts. That anyone, let alone a major stateswoman, should have to explain them again arises solely because all of them are still denied, and apparently not even understood, by many Brexiters. It is actually quite embarrassing to be in a situation where such delusion has not just persisted but now occupies central stage in British politics, so that it falls to those abroad to state the obvious. But such is the pass to which the Brexit ‘patriots’ have brought our country.
There is little sign that this is making inroads amongst the cheerleaders for Brexit. Barnier’s 2017 speech was said to have “dashed the hopes” of something better than a free trade deal when the something better – single market membership – is what Britain had ruled out. Nothing has changed since. The rabidly pro-Brexit Daily Express characterised von der Leyen’s comments as having “THREATENED” the UK, describing her as having “lashed out” at the Prime Minister in her speech. Similarly, responding to the recent report (£) of Barnier saying that the UK would have to adhere closely to EU rules to get a good trade deal, Ruth Lea – a leading member of Patrick Minford’s erstwhile Economists for Brexit group – tweeted that this was “yet more bluster” rather than a statement of the obvious.
Having to take what you are given
Yet for all their media and social media outrage, the Brexit foot soldiers have not noticed that their government has quietly abandoned any idea that a trade deal can yield ‘exactly the same benefits’ as the single market or preserve ‘frictionless trade’. The Brexiter dream of a British exceptionalism, summed up as ‘having your cake and eating it’, has ended. Britain will accept what’s left after everything it has ruled out with its own red lines has been taken away. At the moment, as regards trade with the EU, that looks as if it’s going to mean, at best, a possible zero tariffs, zero quotas deal for goods trade.
This falls a very long way short of single market membership, of course, or of the Vote Leave assurance of membership of a supposed “free trade zone stretching from Iceland to Turkey”, and even a long way short of Canada +++ that Brexiters used to speak of so breathlessly. Ironically, it is, in a certain way, consistent with the Brexiter idea that the EU would want a deal because of the UK’s trade deficit – but that deficit is in goods trade only, and so such a minimal deal would be a more beneficial one for, yes, German car makers and such like exporting to the UK than it would for the smaller volumes of goods the UK exports to the EU.
Such an approach reflects the longstanding failure of Brexiters to understand the difference between a free trade area and a single market, nested within which is a myopic and outdated focus on tariffs on goods. Thus what is in prospect does little or nothing for services, where the UK currently has a trade surplus with the EU, little for international supply chains in manufacturing, and nothing for all the non-tariff and regulatory barriers to both goods and services trade.
If a report in this week’s Financial Times (£) is correct, the government is minded to regard the clamorous objections of, for example, the auto, aerospace and pharmaceutical sectors – all of which rely on international supply chains and regulatory harmonization - as the noise of declining industries and, by implication, sees these as sacrificial in order to get a quick deal done. Certainly it seems to be accepted by both sides that passporting for financial services will end, possibly to be replaced with inferior ‘equivalence’ regimes.
So a deal will perhaps, even probably, be done. But so what? Anyone can do a bad deal in which they take what they are given because they’ve made anything better impossible. Far from having your cake and eating it, you get a cake with all the icing and chocolate stripped off, and what you eat is plain and stale sponge.
Pretending a bad deal was what you wanted
On any rational basis, this is insane economics. And it is not true to say that the Brexit vote was nothing to do with economics and was not why leave voters chose to leave. For, if that was so, the Brexiters would not have put such ferocity into repudiating Project Fear, and such energy into claims of how good future trade terms would be. Rather, we have a government knowingly pursuing a policy that will be economically damaging, but hoping that the electorate will, as per my previous post, forget that the damage was due to Brexit and forget the promises made about how things would be. But this, then, sets up an interesting paradox, which will be very important in the coming years.
To sustain their position, Brexiters will have to pretend that a minimal trade deal is, actually, a comprehensive trade deal, exactly as promised. Yet, in that case, they will have to drop the claim that the EU have been punitive or have out-negotiated the UK. Indeed, that is precisely the move that Johnson pulled off with his Withdrawal Agreement, and it might be fairly easy to do as regards a trade deal, since few people understand what that really means, and may well believe that getting ‘zero tariffs’ is a great British victory rather than the minimal outcome ‘threatened’ by the EU.
So this, too, is what taking back control looks like – a shabby con trick in which the mug punter is promised a shiny new roadster and given a rusty old banger. And there is something peculiarly English (I use this word deliberately) in the idea that the punter thus conned will drive off saying ‘better not make a scene and, anyway, it could be worse’. Politically, much depends on whether that is indeed what happens, or whether the electorate recall what they were promised and, if so, who they blame for not delivering it.
Learning your place in the world
If trade negotiations with the EU are already shaping up to give Britain what it has unwittingly chosen, it is also already beginning to be clear that the rest of the world is adjusting to the new reality of post-Brexit Britain. An excoriating article in The Times of India mocks the decline of British ‘soft power’. Meanwhile, it was reported that Australia has turned down a UK proposal to end the use of work visas as part of a future trade deal because it “could cause an exodus of highly trained workers to the UK and an influx of unskilled British workers to Sydney and Melbourne”. Apparently, they prefer an ‘Aussie-style immigration system’.
These are just two small examples from this week, but they are indicative of the emerging direction of travel. Having initially been bemused by the Referendum result, and then confused by the political crisis that followed, the election result has now cemented the new reality of Britain’s place in the eyes of the world – a “diminished” figure, being taught daily that it just isn’t important enough or powerful enough to exert much “control” over anything.
There is nothing shameful in that – it is true of all countries bar, perhaps, superpowers. But other countries accept that and address it precisely though the formation of blocs and alliances that allow them to live more comfortably and easily in the world. What is embarrassing is the hubristic refusal to understand that, and to enact a Vainglorious Revolution that forces us to live with less comfort and ease in the world. That is compounded by having a Prime Minister who not only embodies such hubris but who is also widely seen as untrustworthy and unserious, but Brexit would make it so in any case.
Events in the Middle East this week underscore this, as indeed have some other recent international crises. It’s important not to over-state this, because even without Brexit the Trump presidency would represent a major challenge for British diplomacy. One key part of the post-imperial role that Britain found – more by chance than choice, perhaps – was as the Transatlantic Bridge between the US and the EU. Trump was always going to strain that bridge at one end. But completely uprooting the pier at the EU end has made that even more unstable. The UK is now uncomfortably adrift, with many of its key strategic priorities (such as the Iran nuclear deal) bound up with the EU whilst being in abject desperation for a politically symbolic (though economically relatively trivial) trade deal with the US.
The haplessness of that situation is shown by reported pressure from Brexiters within cabinet to pursue trade talks in parallel with both the EU and the US – a deferral, rather than an understanding, of the choices to be made. It is also a peculiarly unrealistic idea even in its own terms: if no deal, or a limited deal, is done with the EU there will be an immediate deterioration in terms of trade at the end of the year, which is not true as regards a US deal and, anyway, a US deal of any sort in Trump’s election year is highly unlikely.
So in an economically regionalised world, the UK has decided to have no region. In a politically multi-polar world, it is caught between poles. That is as evident in relation to dealing with Russian nationalism as it is to standing up to China over Hong Kong or addressing the endless saga of the Chagos Islands. Again, these would pose severe challenges without Brexit, but are made more difficult by the loss of the economic and diplomatic muscle that EU membership brings and the addition of pressures to create new trading relationships outside the EU. Indeed, in this sense, the economic and geo-political aspects of Brexit are inseparable.
Thus we are at the very beginning of paying the huge price not so much for pursuing a poor strategy – and many of the issues alluded to are problematic and contentious in their own right and might, usefully, have been up for reconsideration - but for having, with Brexit, abandoned strategy altogether. So taking back control in this context means simply drifting, rudderless, ignoring – perhaps not even being aware of - the consequences and choices of Brexit.
Having Brexit defined for you
From the outset of this blog I’ve been arguing – like many, many others – that the core problem with the Brexit Referendum was that it was a vote against something, EU membership, without being a vote for anything that had been defined. That has been the underlying truth in all the years that have followed. But, now, something is beginning to change. For with the ineluctable passage of events the meaning of Brexit is, gradually, starting to be defined.
But that definition is not being decided primarily by internal British political debate about what kind of country we want to be and what a post-Brexit economic and geo-political strategy would look like. Every opportunity to do that – during the Referendum campaign, as a post-referendum consensus-building process, or in the 2017 or 2019 General Elections – has been squandered. And Johnson’s ‘just get it done’ approach to Brexit compounds that error, making a virtue of the refusal to take the time and create the process to plan it. Not so much oven-ready as half-baked.
So instead, as we come within weeks of leaving the EU, Brexit is being defined for us by others whether in the EU or beyond. We don’t know what it will end up looking like - except for being economically poorer, politically weaker, and culturally meaner - and we won’t have very much say in it, although domestic choices can make it more or less bad. In ‘taking back control’ we have, in some fundamental way, lost control of our future. Over and over again we refused, collectively, to get real. Now we’re going to be made to do so.
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