Britain's Brexit purgatory

There was never any possibility that last week’s announcement of the Windsor Framework would be immediately transformative. Even so, it’s surprising that there’s been so little attempt by Rishi Sunak’s government to build on the momentum it seemed to offer to create the kind of new post-Brexit strategy discussed in my previous post. Instead, we have uncertainty, drift, and strategic incoherence.

The Windsor Framework on hold

One reason for this was the decision, which looks to have been a tactical error, not to set a timetable for the next steps, either in terms of a parliamentary vote or a decision from the DUP on whether to accept it as a basis to re-enter the power-sharing institutions. The rationale, presumably, was to avoid the charge of trying to ‘bounce’ people into accepting the agreement, hence Sunak emphasising that everyone would have ample time to study it.

The consequence is that the DUP have been able to announce the creation of their own scrutiny process, which may not yield an outcome until next month. That in turn gives the Tory Brexit Ultras a skirt to hide behind, since many of them have said they will defer judgement until the DUP have pronounced. As I suggested last week, this is all rather bogus since the issue isn’t really about the legal fine print of the agreement so much as the extent to which its opponents are politically willing and able to pursue their dogmatic purism. On that, the DUP, especially, are authoritatively reported by Sam McBride of the Belfast Telegraph to be split.

To the extent there is any time pressure, it comes from the fact that Joe Biden may be unwilling to visit the UK for the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Belfast Good Friday Agreement in April with matters still unresolved, especially the matter of the functioning of the Northern Ireland Assembly. But, if he doesn’t, that will be an embarrassment to the UK government which is certainly not something which will much bother the DUP or the ERG.

Drift and uncertainty: Horizon, REUL and GDPR

This leaves the Windsor Framework in limbo, which also means that some of the gains which could follow from it are on hold. The most obvious example is UK participation in Horizon Europe, with multiple reports suggesting that the government isn’t even committed to pursuing this. It is hard to decode this. One possibility is that, until the Windsor Framework is secured, the government does not want to stoke Brexiter opposition to it by emphasising that it is a path to a more general rapprochement with the EU. But many of the reports suggest another possibility, which is that Sunak genuinely doubts whether UK scientific research is best served by participation in Horizon, rather than spending the money in some other way – even though the scientific community is very clear (£) of the central importance of the programme.

The same uncertainty attends the Retained EU Law Bill (REUL), for reasons discussed acutely by Paul Waugh in the i. For now, it continues its passage – it is currently being mauled in the House of Lords – but again the reason isn’t clear. It could be to sweeten the Windsor pill for the Ultras. It could be because, despite the implications of Windsor, Sunak is still flirting with the divergence agenda implied by REUL. Either way, just as snubbing Horizon would go against what scientists want, pursuing REUL would be in total contradiction to what businesses, and multiple charities and environmental groups, want, as well as being a constitutional disgrace and administrative nightmare. It would also go against the grain of the Windsor Framework’s attempt to improve the tone of UK-EU relations and the UK’s international reputation generally.

Less widely reported is the latest stage in the ongoing saga of divergence from EU GDPR regulations, with the government this week introducing a new data protection Bill, replacing the previous one which it paused last October after Sunak came to power. It is too early to be sure, but the new version seems to somewhat backpedal on substantive divergence whilst continuing with the nonsensical idea of a UK only approach which will mean businesses that trade with the EU facing dual regulation or, just as likely, ignoring the UK system – exactly the same conundrum that faces all post-Brexit attempts at regulatory divergence. So the approach seems to be neither full divergence nor complete conformity, again showing strategic confusion, ultimately leading to the key unknown of whether the outcome will mean the EU withdrawing, as it is always free to, the UK’s GDPR adequacy recognition.

Incoherence and folly: the Illegal Migration Bill

Nothing illustrates this lack of strategic coherence better than the current Illegal Migration Bill which began its legislative passage this week. It’s not clear whether the government is unaware of the double meaning of its title or simply doesn’t care. It’s certainly striking to see the almost psychotic glee with which Suella Braverman talks about pushing “the boundaries of international law” and indeed, already, the UN High Commissioner for Refugees has warned that the plans are likely to breach the 1951 Refugee Convention. At root, this reflects the Brexiters’ absurd idea, endorsed by Braverman in relation to the Internal Market Bill when she was Attorney General, that ‘parliamentary sovereignty’ trumps international law.

Meanwhile, gravel-voiced thugs like Lee Anderson grind on about “pandering to the ECHR”. For, of course, it’s no secret that for a huge swathe of Brexiters, from Braverman herself, through Nigel Farage to Theresa May’s former advisor Nick Timothy, derogation from the ECHR is the end game. From their point of view, the very fact that, notwithstanding the cruelty it will inflict, the Bill will almost certainly not solve the overblown ‘small boats crisis’ doesn’t matter at all. It will just serve to justify their push for the sunny uplands of international pariahdom. In the meantime, there are fresh opportunities to attack the civil service and the BBC.

Sunak gurns along with all this, presumably seeing some electoral advantage in it, but more bystander than leader since none of it sits remotely easily with his Windsor Framework announcement. That was not simply about resolving the Northern Ireland Protocol row. It was also about doing so in ways which drew back from previous threats to break international law, first with the Internal Market Bill and later with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, as well as from the flouting of the original Protocol by unilaterally extending some of the grace periods within it. In this way, it was not just about having better relations with the EU but, more widely, repairing the huge damage done to Britain’s international reputation by its Brexit shenanigans.

The Illegal Migration Bill puts all of that in jeopardy, making a nonsense not just of the Windsor Framework’s aspirations in that respect but also of Britain’s post-Brexit international role more generally. For Brexiters have constantly claimed that this role will be one of global ambition, a pivotal player in upholding the rules-based international order. Much of that is overblown rhetoric, of course, but as support for Ukraine has shown it is not totally meaningless (which isn’t to say that, as Boris Johnson and others are still fraudulently claiming, it was Brexit that enabled that role to be played).

However, supporting Ukraine points up sharply the incoherence of Britain flouting international law with respect to refugees, since that hardly provides the moral high ground for opposing Russia’s attempts to annexe Ukraine. Of course, they’re not the same thing, but once a country starts picking and choosing which parts of the rules-based international order it will honour it inevitably loses the ability convincingly to criticise other countries for doing the same.

As always, it comes back to Brexit

If all this illustrates the incoherence of the post-Brexit strategy that the Windsor Framework agreement seems to presage that is for two reasons (or three, if we include Sunak’s political weakness) and, unsurprisingly, they relate to Brexit.

The first is that the Illegal Migration Bill is the clearest current example of how, to frame it in the terms of recent posts on this blog, Brexitism is still very much alive and kicking in UK politics. As Adam Bienkov argued in Byline Times this week, Braverman’s Bill mobilises the same dishonest tactics as Vote Leave (and, for that matter, Leave.EU) used during the Referendum campaign, especially the claims made that ‘Turkey is joining the EU’ and what that would mean. And beyond that direct comparison lies the miasma of a racism that (often) doesn’t quite dare speak its name, the bogus conflation of illiberalism with patriotism, and the invocation of external threats and internal saboteurs. But for these, the great British people would have ‘simple’ solutions to all that ails them.

If that reprises the tropes of the pre-Brexit arguments, the second reason is a distinctively post-Brexit one. For the Illegal Migration Bill is also about the way that Brexit has failed to deliver its promises to ‘control our borders’, a promise which itself was based on the utterly dishonest conflation of immigration in general, EU freedom of movement, and refugees and asylum seekers. More than that, as regards refugees and asylum seekers, who are the Bill’s targets, Brexit has actually made things worse. A recent report by Professor Thom Brooks of Durham University shows that Brexit is “the primary factor” in the sharp growth of small boat crossings since 2020.

The reason for this is that, with Brexit, the UK left the Dublin III regulations, deriding them as an example of EU bureaucracy, and failed to negotiate an alternative agreement, the suggestions the government made being rejected by the EU as an attempt at ‘cherry-picking’. In particular, this means the UK no longer participates in the part of the regulations that allows for asylum seekers to be returned to the ‘first safe country’ they reached in order for their claim to be assessed. It is deeply ironic that Brexiter politicians, including Braverman, constantly parrot the line that asylum seekers should make their claim in the first safe country they reach rather than travelling to the UK when it derives from an EU system they have chosen to leave (they garble this, anyway, as there is no such requirement on the asylum seekers themselves, rather, it is a requirement on the countries involved).

A common Brexiter objection is that, prior to 2020, relatively few asylum seekers arriving in the UK were returned to the first safe country, but the Brooks report (pp. 23-24) explains that this reasoning is fallacious. The point is that, now, people smugglers have an incentive to direct asylum seekers to the UK with the promise that, if they manage to arrive, they will no longer be subject to Dublin III return rules. Nor was this unexpected or unpredicted: as Brooks explains, the government was repeatedly warned that this would be the effect. Whether through indifference or incompetence this created an opportunity for Farage, especially, to whip up new fears, fears which now constitute both a political problem for the government as well as a political opportunity for it to exploit.

This isn’t the place to discuss all the iniquities and absurdities of the Illegal Migration Bill, or indeed the long and dismal story of Britain’s hostility to refugees and asylum seekers, a hostility wholly disproportionate to the relatively limited extent of its exposure, in global terms, to the pressures that refugee movements can bring. It’s certainly not obvious why, rather than simply face up to and rectify its failure to administer an effective system to check asylum applications, anyone thinks the only answer is the pariahdom of ECHR derogation.

Instead, the particular point to emphasise here is that the current migrant panic is bound up with the twin unsayables of the false promises made for the ‘control’ Brexit would deliver and the blunt fact that Brexit has actually exacerbated the problems. This inability to be honest about Brexit then leads to a policy which, if pursued, directly contradicts any strategy of rehabilitating Britain’s reputation as a stable and respected bulwark of global order and standards, a reputation damaged by Brexit in general and the antics of Johnson in particular.

Brexit: unsayable but omnipresent

This nexus of dishonesty about Brexit and the strategic drift which accompanies it goes well beyond the issue of refugees and asylum seekers. Seven years from the Brexit referendum the government still has no clear, articulated idea of what Brexit actually means or what it is for. In those circumstances, it’s inevitable that decisions become simply tactical ones about the politics of party management or news management. This strategic drift blights not just science and business but farming and the environment, regional policy, and just about every other area of British life, including some of the most basic, bread-and-butter issues.

For example, it makes it impossible to properly address the NHS crisis, because doing so would mean admitting the adverse impact of Brexit, especially but not only in terms of staff shortages, as outlined in a recent Nuffield Trust report. It can’t even be publicly acknowledged by government ministers that Brexit plays any role at all in current food shortages, despite expert analysis and even though the majority of the public themselves recognize that this is so (ironically, the lack of political honesty about this may actually lead the public to over-estimate how much of the problem is attributable to Brexit).

It's tempting, and to some degree right, to think that one reason for this lack of strategic coherence is because this is a tired, conflict-ridden government, almost serving out time until it is dispatched, and buffeted by constant scandals and crises. Yet, even in this respect, the long hand of Brexit plays its part. The revival this week of recriminations over the handling of coronavirus, fuelled by self-proclaimed “scoop getter” Isabel Oakeshott (scoop apparently no longer meaning the hard-won fruit of diligent journalistic investigation, but persuading some gullible sap that, prior history notwithstanding, you can be trusted not to break a confidence), is a reminder of the multiple connections between that and Brexit. Indeed, to the extent that Oakeshott is both an avid Brexiter and lockdown sceptic, as were many of those who rushed to defend her (£) as if she was a latter-day Nellie Bly, it was not just a reminder but a continuation.

Similarly, Partygate returned to the news and, with that, a reminder of its own relationships with Brexit and populism. That then became bound up with the role of Sue Gray, giving another opportunity to bash ‘remainer’ civil servants. And lest anyone think that I am reaching to find a Brexit connection, the link between Gray’s supposed ‘stitch-up’ of Johnson and civil service remainerism wasn’t made by me but by Tory MP and former Party Chairman Sir Jake Berry. In any case, as with last week’s squeaking about the constitutional proprieties of King Charles meeting the European Commission President, the supposed outrage about Gray came ill when from the mouths of those who have spent years trashing established norms of conduct in the name of ‘getting Brexit done’.

Re-visiting Brexit botches

In short, Brexit remains an inescapable feature of British politics, constantly present at the same time as being ignored or denied, and resistant to being corralled into any kind of coherent strategy. Whether that is because Sunak doesn’t have such a strategy, or because he is too weak to pursue it, or because it is inherently impossible isn’t clear. He has further chances coming, starting with today’s Franco-British summit, an opportunity to improve relations so strained by Brexit, but with the issue of returning refugees re-inflamed by the Illegal Migration Bill reports already suggest (£) there will be no progress on that, another indication of the perils of incoherence. Still, Sunak may well be able to repair the damage caused, amongst many other things, by Liz Truss’s ‘the jury’s out’ maladroitness and Johnson’s ‘punishment beatings’ calumny.

There will be another opportunity next week when the revised version of the Integrated Review is published, which is expected to coincide with his trip to the US to meet Joe Biden and Anthony Albanese for talks about the AUKUS agreement. At one level, such a review is mandated by the changed foreign and defence policy landscape created by the Ukraine War. At another, it reflects the lack of realism of the original March 2021 review, which, as I noted at the time, downplayed the UK’s European role whilst making grandiose claims about its ‘Indo-Pacific tilt’ with little sign of the resources to make good on it. Having made some similar observations, defence analyst Joshua Huminski notes that this did not impress the US, obviously Britain’s main and crucial security ally, and that what is needed this time round is “pragmatic realism”, meaning a “clear reprioritization of continental European security” that “reflects reality”. In other words, precisely what is needed for the wider re-set of national post-Brexit strategy that the Windsor Framework gestured towards.

Perhaps that will happen, but the longer it takes, the more the damage will mount up. So much of what needs to be done has been made worse by the rushed, hubristic decisions already made. The Integrated Review is one example as, though it is of a very different sort, is the absurd, now delayed, but still planned replacement of CE conformity assessment marking with the UKCA mark. So too is the revamp of data protection legislation mentioned earlier. For that matter, the REUL is the legacy of Liz Truss’s brief, ill-fated, premiership and Jacob Rees-Mogg’s ludicrously over-promoted role within it. Admittedly, the latter formulation suffers from the implication that there is any role for which Rees-Mogg might be considered suitably qualified other than that of understudy for one of Flashman’s less charismatic henchmen in an Amdram production of Tom Brown’s Schooldays.

In other words, there have already been attempts, if piecemeal, to articulate a post-Brexit strategy but, for the most part, these already need to be undone because of Brexiter hubris and incompetence. There is perhaps some sign that the government has learned something from rushing through the largely pointless, if not downright damaging, trade deals with Australia and New Zealand, but if the anticipated accession to CPTPP is simply trumpeted as a Brexit benefit rather than a minor piece of damage limitation, and itself damaging to some sectors, it will suggest that the Brexiter delusions still hold sway.

Waiting for strategic coherence

What is crucial to grasp is that almost everything I have discussed in this post is interconnected, a series of moving parts which need to move in the same direction if there is to be strategic coherence. For example, it is widely understood that securing the Windsor Framework is central to securing CPTPP accession. It is also central to improving relations with the US, which will be further improved by a Europe-focused Integrated Review, and both will help to normalize UK-EU relations, which could lead to improvements in trade and security cooperation. None of these things will eliminate the damage of Brexit, but at least they won’t increase it and at best they might mitigate it. But, at the same time, the UK turning its back on Horizon, continuing with REUL, diverging from GDPR, and especially pursuing an internationally-despised and illegal policy on refugees will work in the opposite direction.

So for the time being it is not just the Windsor Framework that is in limbo, but Brexit Britain itself. The first may resolve one way or another fairly soon, and give an indication of the national direction of travel, but the second may last for months or years. Donald Tusk once remarked that there was a “special place in hell” for those who had advocated Brexit “without even a sketch of a plan” for how to deliver it. In fact, it is not they but the country that is suffering the consequences, if not in hell, then at least in purgatory. The first half of that word derives from the Latin for ‘to cleanse’, whilst it is fitting that the second half is Tory.

Purgatory isn’t an altogether pleasant place to be, clearly, and it brings with it the possibility of even worse to come, but, by the same token, there’s still at least some hope.

Has Britain’s Brexit fever finally broken?

Where to start, after one of the biggest weeks for Brexit news for a long time? Perhaps with my post of a fortnight ago when I discussed two scenarios for Britain’s immediate post-Brexit future. In the first, there would be a gradual move to rapprochement with the EU, taking pragmatic steps to improve the tone and substantive quality of the relationship. In the second, there would be ongoing antagonism and an ideological drive to divergence. I suggested that what happened over the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) negotiations would be a key test of which of these would prevail in the battle for the post-Brexit polity, and concluded that for the first scenario to come about the Brexit “fever has to pass”, which would then be followed by a long period of recuperation.

So, does the announcement on Monday of the ‘Windsor Framework’ (WF) as the outcome of the NIP negotiations mark the breaking of that fever? And what does it mean for achieving, or even going beyond, a scenario of rapprochement with the EU?

I’m not going to summarise the provisions of the WF here. The full suite of UK technical documents is available online, including the Command Paper which gives a detailed overview, with the corresponding EU documents appearing on the European Commission website. Moreover, there are numerous good summaries available including a House of Commons Library research briefing, an excellent detailed explainer from the Institute for Government, and an assessment from BBC Northern Ireland of what it means for Northern Irish businesses. It has also been widely reported in the news, as have the initial reactions of the main political parties.

Instead, in this post I will make a few observations and comments.

The Windsor Framework

The WF does not ‘replace’ the NIP, but rather amends and modifies its operations. That isn’t a criticism, because despite Brexiter fantasies there was never any possibility of it being otherwise, but it is a corrective to some of the claims and reports. The operational modifications are considerable and highly technical, will take time to implement, and the detailed ways that implementation will work will only emerge over time. There might also be unintended consequences: one which has already been flagged (£) is the possibility it will further depress GB-NI goods volumes through Wales’s already Brexit-ravaged ports, because they link to ports in Ireland rather than Northern Ireland.

Nor, despite claims by Rishi Sunak, has the WF “removed any sense of a border in the Irish Sea”. There will still be a border, and whilst it has been very considerably simplified, especially by the creation of the green and red channels, even the green lane does not mean a complete absence of border formalities. But there is no doubt that the WF is significantly better, in the sense of being operationally easier in this and many other ways: border frictions are probably the minimum they could be given the realities of Brexit.

In relation to governance and sovereignty, whether it is a better is open to interpretation as, of course, was whether the unmodified NIP was problematic in those respects. Northern Ireland is still treated differently to the rest of the UK (though unionists don’t always object to that) precisely because the Protocol means it remains in the EU single market for goods. As a result, there is still an ultimate role for the ECJ, as there was always going to be, and the new ‘Stormont Brake’ mechanism, whilst a significant innovation, doesn’t constitute the ‘unequivocal veto’ the government is presenting it as. However, again, the new governance arrangements represent the most minimum role for EU law and the least intrusive role for the ECJ that could realistically be envisaged.

In this sense, whilst the WF can be seen as having obtained very extensive ‘concessions’ from the EU, the reactions of the Brexit Ultras and the DUP are inherently matters of political judgement rather than the outcome of any ‘objective tests’ or legal scrutiny they might apply. It would be perfectly possible, taking the hard line that some in those groups have long adopted, to say that neither sovereignty nor parity with the rest of the UK have been achieved. If so, that would render any conceivable version of the NIP impossible. No doubt many in those groups would like to make that so, but they may not judge it politically viable to insist upon it, a point I’ll come back to.

To the extent that this is, indeed, a genuine improvement on the NIP, there are two obvious points to be made. Firstly, it is hardly a ‘triumph’ so much as further evidence of the dishonesty and incompetence of the original Johnson-Frost negotiation, of the dishonesty with which it was presented to the electorate, and of the dishonesty of the Tory MPs, and Tory and Brexit Party MEPs, who voted for it. Secondly, even having created that original mess, it would have been perfectly possible, as Fintan O’Toole explained this week, for something like the WF provisions to have been agreed at any point after the NIP became operational in 2021.

That it was not done before, and that it has been now, is because all of the Brexiter bluster about ‘playing hardball’ with the EU through drastic threats and unilateral breaking of agreements was not just hokum but bunkum. That in turn also discredits the recurrent Brexiter lie that it was the ‘remainer parliament’ making ‘no deal Brexit’ impossible which was the reason for agreeing the NIP they later disowned. The WF simply wouldn’t have happened if Sunak hadn’t paused the NIP Bill, something clear from multiple ‘insider’ accounts of the negotiations (£). All this is to Sunak’s considerable credit, as well as, apparently, to that of James Cleverley, Chris Heaton-Harris and Steve Baker.

More generally, the WF happened because Sunak adopted a totally different approach, based on pragmatism, realism and ‘technocracy’ rather than ideology, fantasy and aggression. In other words, he not only dropped the threats, but, in a positive sense, replaced them with sensible engagement. This, and the related trust such an approach was able to engender, was something which Johnson was congenitally incapable of and which May, for all that she came to have some elements of Sunak’s pragmatism, couldn’t deliver on whilst the Brexiters were in full cry. For the first time since the Article 50 process began, the UK fielded a ‘serious’ negotiating team at the political level, comprised of Brexiters, certainly, but apparently relatively free of Brexitism.

A new chapter in post-Brexit relations?

With Sunak’s different approach has come something more than the delivery of the WF itself, in that there is now at least the possibility, explicitly expressed, of a complete re-set of UK-EU relations. One initial sign of that is that, within the WF, there is a commitment from the UK to completely drop the NIB Bill and for the EU to drop the infringement proceedings relating to the UK’s unilateral flouting of the NIP grace periods. More generally, in the Political Declaration it is stated that “the new way forward on the Windsor Framework marks a turning point in how both the United Kingdom and the European Union will work together collaboratively and constructively” (p.4).

The immediate fruits of that appeared during the press conference announcing the agreement, when Ursula von der Leyen indicated that UK participation in the Horizon Europe science programme could now be progressed, and Sunak spoke of other areas of possible co-operation, such as energy security. Moreover, again in the Political Declaration, “both the European Commission and the Government of the United Kingdom express their intention to fully exploit in the future the potential of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement” (p.1). So, here, there is an implicit recognition that, even within the limited remit of the TCA, the Johnson-Frost approach also delivered a sub-optimal outcome which the government will now seek to rectify.

The idea that the WF heralds a new and better chapter in UK-EU relations was underscored by the meeting between King Charles and von der Leyen. That occasioned much fury from the Brexiters (£), with Jacob Rees-Mogg clutching his pearls about constitutional impropriety (pearls made rather grubby by his own role in involving the monarchy at the time of the illegal Prorogation). Some saw it as an attempt to butter up the unionists by implying a Royal seal of approval for the deal. But I think its real significance, intended or not, and the real reason for Brexiters’ anger about it, was to symbolise a kind of healing of the rift and rancour that Brexit brought and hence to cement a re-set of relations.

Such as re-set has been on the cards for a while, partly because of Ukraine, and partly because the implosion of the Truss mini-budget put the issue of economic realism more centrally into UK politics than it had been since the Brexit referendum (and also did much to discredit the entire Brexitist world-view). It also, undoubtedly, has become more politically possible because of the now firmly established public view that Brexit was a mistake and has been highly damaging.

However, it is important to recognize that the WF, assuming it goes ahead, does not mark the point when Brexit is ‘done’, or even that the Protocol is done. In relation to both it is a moment, pivotal perhaps, but still only a moment, in what is and will always be the ongoing process, or processes, of Brexit. What the WF does, as regards the Protocol, is somewhat re-define those processes and, as regards Brexit more generally, potentially change the tone of the processes. So even if this is the beginning of a new chapter, it is only an early chapter in a very long book, itself only the first of several thick volumes.

The Ultras’ reactions

Naturally the Brexit Ultras, especially outside the Conservative Party, are viewing all this with dismay with, for example, Richard Tice of the Reform Party denouncing it as Brexit in Name Only (BRINO). But although that betrayal narrative will always fly with the hard core of leave voters it’s a message with diminishing traction because it has been the constant cry of wolf of people like Tice. Indeed, he implicitly recognizes this in saying that the WF “reinforces” BRINO. For if we already had BRINO then there’s not really anything new for him to complain about. Equally, the more insistent he is about BRINO the more he opens up the obvious question that, in that case, we might just as well reverse Brexit entirely.

The situation for the Ultras inside the Tory Party is rather different, not least because, unlike the Reform Party, they will soon be defending their seats at a General Election. In the immediate aftermath of the WF announcement they have been rather muted and are clearly split. The enthusiastic backing for the deal from Chris Heaton-Harris and, especially, Steve Baker did much to blunt any attack the ERG might have envisaged. It would also seem that the ‘traditionalist’ or ‘pragmatist’ sections of the party have been unusually robust in showing their impatience with the default vexatiousness of the Ultras and the default ambitiousness of Boris Johnson.

There is also clearly an awareness, not just from the pragmatists but also shown by Rees-Mogg, that inflicting a defeat on Sunak as a vehicle for a Johnson comeback would carry huge electoral dangers for the already floundering government. Johnson himself initially remained silent, and didn’t even attend Sunak’s announcement in the Commons. But yesterday he said he would “find it very difficult to vote for” the deal, and expressed a preference to return to the approach of the NIP Bill. However, to the extent he said he “hoped it would work”, he held off from outright condemnation and seemed to imply that if the DUP accepted it then so would he. (The speech itself included a litany of dishonesty about Brexit which I don’t have space to discuss: suffice to say there were no new lies).

This is all in marked contrast to the talk from just two weeks ago of a Johnson-led rebellion of 100 or more Tory MPs. There’s an element of chicken and egg here, since a groundswell of rebellion would embolden Johnson to take his chance to lead it, whilst the absence of leadership from Johnson means there is little for potential rebels to rally around. It’s a further illustration of his less than Churchillian propensity to ‘lead from behind’.

Then, too, as Rafael Behr points out this week, “the terrain of battle [provided by the WF] is so small – a scrap of European court jurisdiction under a mound of procedural safeguards in Northern Ireland”. Creating a massive political crisis from such unpromising materials is hardly likely to impress bemused and, at least outside Northern Ireland, largely indifferent voters, and nor does it provide an especially heroic hill for even the most red-faced and plumply excitable of the Spartans to die on. The only Brexiter MP so far to suggest she might entertain doing so is Nadine Dorries (£) and it’s not clear that, even amongst those who in some cases could, not uncharitably, be called somewhat unhinged, hers is a voice that commands immediate respect.

Is Brexitism dying?

As a result of all this, it's tempting to argue, as Behr does, that this moment reveals that “Brexitism is dying and Johnsonism may be dead”, which I suppose is another way of saying the Brexit ‘fever has broken’. It is certainly the case that the Brexitists have been wrong-footed and are floundering. It’s also true that this is one of Johnson’s lowest moments, with his own failed Brexit deal exposed, along with the depravity of his naked opportunism. From that point of view, we might be seeing a significant shift in the ‘Brexitist versus Traditionalist’ civil war in Conservatism that I discussed in a recent post. But I think it is a little early to write the obituaries just yet.

First and foremost, there is still the matter of the DUP reaction, with reports that they are split on which way to go. That split undoubtedly reflects the fact that their decision isn’t so much about the terms of the WF as what advantage they may or may not see in continuing to have a pretext to collapse the power-sharing institutions. In this sense, whilst ostensibly taking time to get legal assessment of the deal, this is, as I said earlier, primarily a political calculation.

Sunak has strongly implied that the WF will go ahead, unchanged, even if the DUP continue to refuse to allow the Northern Ireland Assembly to sit. But, if so, it’s clear that Johnson and at least some of the ERG will take their cue from the DUP (£) to argue that what it now suits them to call the primary rationale for the WF has not been realised. As they wait, the ERG have also turned the matter over to its ludicrously named ‘Star Chamber’ for legal scrutiny.

One straw in the wind as to how the Ultras are thinking came with David Frost’s response to the WF (£). In general, it showed not a shred of insight into his own culpabilities and failures, but the fact that Frost has about as much self-awareness as a toilet seat is hardly news. More interestingly, the article contained neither a complete repudiation nor a complete welcome of the WF. Thus it recognized that there were some substantive improvements that were “worth having”, and implied that the agreement was likely to go ahead. But it also recognized that the “fundamental Protocol framework” remains in place, ascribing this, inevitably, to Sunak’s failure to maintain the threat of passing the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.

In this way, Frost left open the possibility of a more full-throated rejection of the WF in the future. So in effect he is waiting to see which way the wind now blows: notably, he tweeted his article as being only “an initial comment” on the deal given the complexity of the documents. But, on the basis of what he has already said, it’s clear that whatever the detail of those documents, the WF is not, in his own terms, the wholesale re-writing, still less ditching, of the Protocol that he and other Brexiters want.

A similar line is being taken by Jacob Rees-Mogg, now moonlighting as a presenter on GB News, who appears to regard it as some dastardly EU trick that the letter of international treaties is binding. But, again, his comments about the continuing role of EU law in Northern Ireland show that, even without reading the small print, he already thinks the WF violates the Brexiters’ version of ‘sovereignty’. In short, as with Johnson’s predictably self-serving stance, this is all about buying time during which it’s possible that the initial momentum Sunak got for the WF may stall whilst that of a rebellion grows in advance of the promised vote.

For what it’s worth, my sense is that as this week has progressed the opposition to the WF has slightly hardened, with an increasing cohesiveness in the attack lines the Ultras are running and, though that might simply reflect the way the deal was revealed, the more time that passes the more opposition to it will consolidate. Certainly if the DUP were to reject the deal it would do so.

The other aspect of the fate of Brexitism is the question, assuming the WF does go ahead, of how ruthlessly or consistently Sunak will then follow-through. In particular, is he really willing to heap further coals on the ERG’s head by scrapping, or at least slowing the time frames of, the Retained EU Law Bill (REUL)? If so, that would be a fresh blow for the Ultras (though it might also galvanize them to re-group). If not, then, apart from being yet another Brexit hit to business (£), the rapprochement with the EU that the WF presages will falter and, conversely, Brexitism will be given a new lease of life.

What does it mean for remainers/re-joiners?

So much for the Brexiters. What about remainers and re-joiners? In general terms, they should welcome the WF as, at least potentially, a return to some kind of realism and pragmatism. If nothing else, if the outcome is to restore the Northern Ireland Assembly to operation, and to help stability there, then that is something everyone should be pleased about. Many of us, not just in Northern Ireland, though of course especially there, have dark memories of the decades before the peace process and the Belfast Good Friday Agreement.

Beyond that, there’s a degree of relief in an improved tone in UK-EU relations after all these years of hostility, a hostility that was totally unnecessary even given Brexit. Moreover, to the extent that it may create something like a scenario of ‘rapprochement’, that would be, as I’ve argued before, a necessary but not sufficient condition for the possibility of joining the single market, a customs union, and even the EU itself.

Against that, it would be unhelpful to remainers, and simply untrue in itself, if either the WF or the improved relations that could flow from it were widely regarded by the public as having ‘got Brexit done’ or having done anything to redeem the damage of Brexit other than to have sanded some of its very roughest edges. It just undoes some of the worst, most egregious and most unnecessary harm of Brexit, whilst serving as a reminder of the utter incompetence of the way it was done. The core, irreducible damage of Brexit continues.

However, it’s important not to be trapped into a version of the Leninist maxim that ‘it has to get worse before it can get better’ or, to put that differently, it may be that it had got as bad as it is going to and we are now on an upward curve. In particular, it is highly notable that within a few hours of the WF announcement numerous people, including the SNP’s Westminster leader Stephen Flynn, were beginning to ask the question that if this was indeed a good deal for Northern Ireland then what about the rest of the UK? It is a question that has gained salience during the week with Sunak’s repeated argument that being in both the EU single market for goods and the UK single market is a huge advantage.

We’ve been here before. In the early days of the NIP Michael Gove repeatedly stressed that Northern Ireland had “the best of both worlds” for exactly that reason. But that was before it was actually implemented and the idea got lost as the NIP became mired in rows. Now it has returned, and with new force given that there is so much evidence of how economically damaging leaving the single market has been. And if it is accepted that the single market for goods is advantageous, then why not services?

The same reasoning applies to non-economic issues. If Horizon, why not Erasmus? If science and education, why not climate and environment? If energy security, then why not security in all its aspects? If sanctions, then why not foreign and defence policy? If ‘small boats’, then why not replicate Dublin 3 regulations? Ultimately, once the basic premise of co-operation, as outlined in the WF, is established then all of these questions become re-opened. In this way, the UK might discover through painful experiment the principles of co-operation that are ingrained into, and institutionalised by, the EU. Of course, this is exactly the path that the Brexiters fear the WF leads to: which is all the more reason for remainers and re-joiners to support it.

But there is also a conundrum in doing so. It could be that Sunak reaps political rewards for the WF, either directly, for the agreement itself, or, more likely, indirectly, in the sense of having shown he can ‘solve problems’ and control his own party. If that yields improved opinion poll ratings for the Tories, then it will do much to keep the Brexit Ultras under control, which should cement his more cooperative approach to the EU. However, it is all but impossible to conceive that his approach would go beyond friendly cooperation to, say, joining the single market, still less the EU. So if, along with other things (e.g. reduced inflation), the WF contributed to him to winning the next election, unlikely as that currently seems, then ‘friendly co-operation’ might become the end-state for the medium-term. There could be worse things than that, of course, but there could be much better.

So what about Labour?

It's here that Labour policy becomes crucial. If the WF is significant in potentially re-setting UK-EU relations, it is also significant in its potential to recalibrate the domestic politics of Brexit. For what Sunak has done with the WF is, in effect, to adopt the entirety of Labour’s current position as government policy, which is why Labour had no choice but to support it (and, anyway, were right to do so). Labour, as Keir Starmer and David Lammy have made clear, propose improving the tone of relations, resolving the NIP row, extending co-operation, and making full use of the possibilities of the TCA for a closer trading and security relationship. All that is now, explicitly, Sunak’s policy.

Assuming that policy holds, it is both a challenge and an opportunity for Labour. A challenge because it deprives them of a distinctive policy and makes their offer to erstwhile remainers look even more puny. An opportunity because it creates a political space, and arguably a political necessity, to be more ambitious. That space was opening anyway, because of public disaffection with Brexit, but the WF makes it larger. It will be harder for Sunak to ridicule that for being too soft on Brexit when it is not only the logic of his own position but also the same critique as the Brexiters make of him.

Of course it’s possible, as Rafael Behr’s column argues, that Starmer will now simply park Brexit as a ‘non-partisan’ issue. But there’s likely to be considerable pressure from within his own party to do more than that.  It’s of note that within hours of the WF being announced the senior Labour MP Chris Bryant raised the point that if Northern Ireland benefitted from the EU single market then the same should be true for the rest of the UK.

Arguably Starmer has prematurely boxed himself into a corner by setting red lines against the single market or a customs union, but there is some wriggle-room since he has generally couched things in terms of there being ‘no political case’ for the single market. It would be just about possible to use that as cover to say that the politics subsequently changed, and apart from its electoral appeal to most Labour voters that would burnish Starmer’s increasingly positive relationship with business. It’s not likely, but it’s more likely than it was because of the WF, and may become still more so before we get to the next general election.

A moment of hope?

So, after all this, has Britain’s Brexit fever broken? It’s a little too early to be sure – and even if it has, further relapses are to be expected - but I think it is possible. It would have been almost unthinkable before now that the UK Prime Minister and the European Commission President would have given the kind of joint press conference that we saw this week, either in substance or in tone.

It would have been still more unthinkable that it could have happened without an immediate, overwhelming outpouring of angry opposition from Tory Brexiters and the Brexit media. That may still come, but so far it has mostly had a strangely weary and resigned quality. But perhaps a better sign of whether the fever has broken will be if, indeed, Labour develop a more ambitious policy, since this would show that the fear that Brexit is too hot to touch was subsiding.

If there has been a shift, it isn’t simply because of the Windsor Framework, or even just because of Sunak’s consensual approach. It is a result of many things – Ukraine and the Truss mini-budget fiasco, as I mentioned earlier, but also sheer exhaustion and boredom. More fundamentally, it reflects the growing realization, over many months now, of just what a disaster Brexit has been. Even Brexiters now offer only the most lacklustre of defences for their project and, crucially, defences are all they are. The grand national liberation they once proclaimed has turned to ashes.

So although it is a moment for a modest amount of hope, it is a hope which is the bitter fruit of failure. After all, if the Brexit fever has broken, it was the fever of a self-injected malady. And if a corner has been turned, it is only to the long road of re-building from those ashes, the legacy the Brexiters bequeathed, and their monument too.

Sunak's Protocol no-show is entangled in Brexit lies

Two weeks ago I posted about the ongoing schism between ‘Brexitists’ and ‘Traditionalists’ within British Conservatism. Then, last week, I wrote about the battle for the post-Brexit polity in terms of whether a scenario of ‘rapprochement’ with the EU will emerge, or one of a constant ‘repetition’ of antagonism towards the EU. Clearly these two things are intimately related, especially whilst the Conservatives are in government. 

In both posts, I made the obvious point that a key moment in all these issues was approaching, in the form of a possible deal over the operation and application of the Ireland/Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP). That moment has now arrived in that, although the anticipated announcement of that deal this week didn’t happen, the pre-announcement politics have become intense.

It seems certain an agreement won’t be unveiled until at least next week, and what then happens will have potentially major implications for the country, UK-EU post-Brexit relations, the Tory Party and Rishi Sunak’s premiership. The implications are no less great if, after all the indications of an imminent resolution, Sunak suddenly announces that he hasn’t been able to reach a deal. And he surely can’t continue much longer without doing one or the other.

In the meantime, this provides an opportunity to take stock of where we are now, how we got here, and what may happen next. As ever with Brexit, it’s a complicated story.

Where are we now?

Last Friday it was reported (£) that Sunak “appears determined to take on Tory Eurosceptics by striking a compromise with Brussels”. On Sunday the story was (£) that Sunak was ‘pausing’ the deal because of ERG and DUP opposition, but by Monday we were told he was ‘pressing ahead’ despite this opposition which, on Tuesday, he was “relaxed” about. Such contradictory reports have continued all week, under cover of repeated claims from the government that there is ongoing “intensive work” with the EU. But Tony Connelly, RTE’s invariably reliable Europe Editor, tweeted that, but for a few loose ends, the substance of the talks had finished last weekend. So it really does come down to Sunak’s domestic political management now, which is unfortunate given that, in Anand Menon’s words, he is “truly awful” at politics.

It’s not clear what he is waiting for, since it is unlikely that there is much else he can do to satisfy his anticipated opponents if they stick to their maximalist demands. Perhaps some haggling might buy off the DUP, but there is no public sign that is in prospect. Nor is there any sign of the ERG* withdrawing their opposition to anything that it’s likely Sunak could have negotiated with the EU, even if that includes the quite substantial concessions on setting VAT and other taxes and on state aid provisions which some reports have claimed.

It may be that Sunak is hoping that will change under the influence of Northern Ireland Secretary and former ERG Chair Chris Heaton-Harris, who is widely reported to be enthusiastically supporting (£) whatever has been agreed. That hope would be further raised if Northern Ireland Minister Steve Baker, another ex-Chair of the ERG, endorsed the agreement but, conversely, if rumours he may resign over the agreement come true that would surely boost a rebellion.

It's also not at this point clear whether there will be a parliamentary vote on any deal. There is no legal requirement for one. Although in response to Keir Starmer at Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) on Wednesday Sunak said that Parliament would be able “to express its views”, that could be interpreted either way. But, even if none were proposed by the government, the ERG might find a way to engineer a vote. If so, the government would win with Labour support, which itself would be damaging to Sunak.

It’s also possible that Labour (or perhaps the SNP) could table an Opposition day debate, not with a view to defeating the government but exposing Tory divisions. It was certainly telling that Starmer used all six of his PMQs to ask about the Protocol, given his habitual reticence on anything Brexit-related. But this is one Brexit area where Labour feels on safe ground and, indeed, Sunak’s rather weedy attempts to dismiss Starmer’s approach as rooted in opposition to Brexit and a willingness to “surrender” to the EU hardly made sense given that he supports Sunak’s policy.

But, vote or no vote, if the ERG decide to exact revenge on Sunak they have plenty of ways of doing so. There are already threats of ministerial resignations (£), and with Boris Johnson stirring the pot and the strong possibility of poor results in the May local elections, who would bet against yet another Tory leader being toppled, ludicrous as that would be?

How did we get here? A very brief history of dishonesty

It’s easy to imagine that some in the general public hearing news reports about the NIP this week are puzzled. Surely Brexit was ‘done’ some time ago, and all the parliamentary rows about it a thing of the past? After all, that was exactly what voters were told would happen if Johnson won the 2019 General Election. But, of course, it was a lie, and it was a lie that grew from a series of earlier lies and led to countless more.

Those lies started before the Referendum, when Johnson and others insisted that a vote to leave the EU would have no implications for the Irish border, or for the Belfast Good Friday Agreement (GFA) and the associated peace process. In doing so, they dismissed or ignored explicit warnings to the contrary. This still lies at the heart of some Brexiters’ opposition to the NIP: they don’t believe any need for it exists.

This isn’t the place to reprise all the twists and turns of the search for magical ‘alternative arrangements’ which would square the circle of a border being unavoidable but there being no place where a border would be politically acceptable. Such arrangements were never found, and even Shanker Singham, the Brexiters’ go-to trade expert, who chaired the Alternative Arrangements Commission, recognized that on the core issue of Sanitary and Phyto-Sanitary (SPS) regulations there is no alternative other than for Northern Ireland to follow the same rules as Ireland (and therefore the EU). Yet, extraordinarily, this week Brexiter Bernard Jenkin was again floating ‘alternative arrangements’ for an Irish land border as the solution.

In due course Theresa May came up with the solution of the backstop, which the Brexiters rejected as they claimed it would mean the UK remaining in a permanent customs territory with the EU. It most likely would have done, although in principle it would only exist ‘unless or until’ alternative arrangements were in place. That this didn’t satisfy the Brexiters demonstrated that they knew that their claims about the feasibility of alternative arrangements were also lies.

So Johnson came up with ‘the front stop’, the basis of the NIP, which created an Irish Sea border. But he lied about that, too, denying that it meant such a border. It seems likely that he also lied by telling ERG MPs that the arrangement was only temporary (see also revelations made by Dominic Cummings). Johnson then sold it as the oven ready deal to voters, and the Brexiters – Tory MPs and Tory and Brexit Party MEPs – subsequently voted for it in both the UK and European Parliaments.

Ever since, there has been a torrent of lies about it, many of them told by David Frost who negotiated the Protocol apparently unburdened by the knowledge of just how awful it was. If only he were capable of such reticence now. These lies include that it was only agreed under duress because the ‘remainer parliament’ had deprived Johnson of the ‘leverage’ of ‘no deal Brexit’; that it was only ever intended to be temporary; that the consequences of it weren’t known; that the EU wasn’t expected to apply it too literally; that it has damaged the Northern Ireland economy.

Throughout all that, there has also been a torrent of legal and quasi-legal nonsense about how Article 16 could be used to get round the Protocol (it wouldn’t), about how Article 13.8 means the Protocol was not permanent (it doesn’t), about whether the Protocol violated the GFA (see below), and about how parliament has the sovereign right to over-ride international law (it doesn’t). Such claims come and go, are endlessly discredited, only to re-appear. At the same time, it shouldn’t be forgotten that, almost since it came into force, the UK flouted its provisions by unilaterally extending several of the ’grace periods’ for implementation. Meanwhile, in Northern Ireland itself, the DUP used the Protocol as a justification to collapse the power-sharing institutions.

None of this should be shrugged off as ancient history. This edifice of lies isn’t just what created the current mess, it is also what needs to be demolished if there is ever to be any prospect of genuine progress.

The Protocol and the Belfast Good Friday Agreement

Within all of the lies, one which has again featured prominently this week warrants more detailed discussion. Although the ERG and the DUP are advancing similar arguments against agreeing any changes to the NIP short of, effectively, scrapping it, the two are not the same and have different interests. The ERG showed, in backing Johnson’s deal, that they didn’t ultimately give tuppence about the unionist case against the Protocol. It suits them now to say that the DUP must be satisfied so that the Northern Ireland Assembly and Executive can be restored, just as it suits them to say that the NIP jeopardises the GFA. But that isn’t what they said at the time when Johnson explicitly stated in Parliament that it was “fully compatible” with the GFA.

As usual, there are numerous different strands to disentangle in all this. One is the persistent claim from the DUP, now taken up opportunistically by the ERG, that the NIP violates the principle of ‘cross-community consent’ in the GFA. But this principle doesn’t apply to making international treaties such as the NIP, and the Supreme Court has ruled that the Protocol doesn’t violate the Northern Ireland Act (the legislation which implemented the GFA in the UK). Perhaps even those of us lacking the legal eminence of the Supreme Court might have suspected that any case whose applicants included Ben Habib and Kate Hoey might have flaws. In particular, and amongst other things, its ruling rejected the claim that the Act required a referendum in Northern Ireland on the Protocol on the basis of it being a ‘constitutional change’. In any case, if that claim had any logical (let alone legal) force then it would surely apply to Brexit itself, which didn’t have majority support in Northern Ireland.

However, the invocation of the GFA is more political than legal. The Brexiters bitterly resent the extent to which the EU and Ireland successfully established that the GFA must be honoured by not creating a land border in Ireland. But they realised that this was a powerful legitimating argument and, in particular, one that had traction in the US, especially once Joe Biden came to power. So they co-opted it to bolster international support as well as to give them domestic cover. That started under Johnson, with, for example, the visit of the then Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab to the US in September 2020 (just as footage emerged that he had not even read the GFA) and continued after Biden’s election with, for example, the visit of ‘special envoy’ Conor Burns last June.

Notably, this no longer seems to be a line which Sunak is pursuing and, indeed, it is precisely the fact that he seems to have accepted the basic architecture of the NIP which explains ERG and DUP suspicions of an imminent ‘sell-out’. But it is a line the ERG/DUP are still pushing hard, as for example in Iain Duncan Smith’s article in the Sunday Telegraph (£) this week. It was a particularly repellent piece in the way the way it invoked the killings during the Troubles, when Smith himself had been a soldier in Northern Ireland. For despite the emotional blackmail of his lament that “given so much sacrifice, I cannot understand why we would risk its demise now” he not only voted for the Protocol but derided those calling for lengthy debate or scrutiny of it.

Nor should it be forgotten that, before the referendum, the then Northern Ireland Secretary and ERG member Theresa Villiers said it was “highly irresponsible” even to mention the possible effect on peace in Northern Ireland. It strikes me that then was exactly the time when it was responsible to do so, and massively irresponsible to leave it until now to do so.

The problem isn’t the NIP, it’s Brexit itself

With that said, and whatever the legalities of the GFA, it’s undeniable that the NIP has caused a major political problem in Northern Ireland. The DUP’s refusal to participate in the power-sharing institutions may be unjustifiable, especially given the consent mechanism which, as things stand, would be satisfied since a majority of current MLAs support the Protocol, as, indeed, do the majority of people in Northern Ireland. Yet the political reality of the DUP’s stance can’t be ignored and, certainly, the unhappiness amongst many in the unionist community shouldn’t be ignored. That the DUP’s own support for Brexit has contributed to this situation is true, and an effective debating point, but it doesn’t affect that political reality. In this sense, although I disagree with it in many respects, Tom McTague’s article in UnHerd this week about the concerns of unionists has some validity.

But this, rather than the GFA narrowly conceived, reveals the real issue that John Major and Tony Blair warned about so forcibly, but to so little effect, before the Referendum. In Major’s words at the time, a vote to leave would mean “throwing all of the pieces of the constitutional jigsaw into the air”. He has been proved right. Brexit threw a huge rock into the delicately calibrated mechanisms and compromises of the entire peace process, the ground from which the institutional fruit of the GFA and the NI Assembly grew.

Moreover, once Brexit became defined as hard Brexit it created the infamous ‘Trilemma’ to which there is no solution (or, more accurately, no solutions other than abandoning hard Brexit, or Irish re-unification). The addition of the need to keep the Assembly operational being adopted as a requirement, not just of the DUP but of the UK government, has added a fourth leg to that to create what in the past I have called the ‘Quadrilemma’ (a usage which, alas, hasn’t caught on).

In short, the problem isn’t the Protocol, it’s Brexit itself. There is no solution, or certainly no good solution, and the Brexiters have signally failed to come up with one. For the most part they now airily say that ‘Mutual Enforcement’ is the answer (and yet another version of it has been wheeled out this week). But it is one that has been considered and found inoperable, principally, as with 'alternative arrangements’ in general, because of the complexity and density of Ireland-Northern Ireland supply chains, especially as regards agricultural goods and the enforcement of SPS regulations. It’s also somewhat ironic to continue to float it even as the UK as a whole fails to implement controls on EU imports risking, as the NFU warned again last week, a “disastrous” food scandal. It is precisely the risk of spreading animal diseases and consequent impacts on the food chain that is one of the biggest practical objections to Mutual Enforcement.

Mutual Enforcement is also, as even its proponents recognize, a solution that relies upon high trust between the UK and the EU, trust that the UK, and the Brexiters in particular, have squandered, not least by breaking the original agreement and by constant ‘hardball’ threats to disapply it. Indeed, even as they push this high-trust solution, the Brexiters, including Johnson and Truss, are still insisting (£) that it is vital to continue with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, with its threat of unilateral disapplication, to ‘put pressure’ on the EU. If Mutual Enforcement could ever have been a technically viable proposal the Brexiters have ensured that it is politically impossible.

So, in the absence of a better solution, some version of applying the existing Protocol is all that is achievable. Even within that framework a better version than what Sunak is likely to have agreed with the EU would be possible, were it not for the Brexiters’ intransigent refusal to accept the EU offer of dynamic alignment of SPS regulations, which would do much to make the Irish Sea border thinner. Yet, for all their professed concern about political stability in Northern Ireland, they still prize an abstract ideal of ‘sovereignty’ above it.

What happens now?

Much of this continues to go round and round the same old debates and issues of the last seven years. But the context of Sunak’s current dilemma is somewhat distinctive. This is for several reasons, the first of which is Sunak himself. His central pitch is of being a ‘pragmatist’ who is ‘economically competent’ and a ‘problem solver’ which means that, more than was the case for Johnson or Truss, failing to resolve the stand-off with the EU would be reputationally damaging for him. Conversely, and especially given the government’s unpopularity and the severe ongoing economic problems, actions that might lead ultimately to a trade war with the EU, and the opprobrium of the US, would hardly demonstrate such pragmatism or economic competence.

Equally, opponents of his putative deal are not in the same position they once were. The DUP risk the impatience, especially of younger and less sectarian voters, at the prospect of the endless suspension of the Assembly and, with that, the festering of many bread-and-butter political problems (though it’s true they also face pressure from the even more extreme unionist parties). Bobby McDonagh, the former Irish Ambassador to the EU, argues that a Protocol deal would actually be in the DUP’s best interests.

As for the ERG, they may well find that provoking a political and perhaps economic crisis over a problem the public was told had been solved, and one most of them care little about anyway, will not be at all popular. That’s all the more so given that most voters think Brexit was a mistake that has damaged the economy, and at a time of food shortages which are attributable in part to Brexit. The Brexit Ultras may even reflect that, egged on by Johnson for his own transparently self-interested reasons, they risk creating, or hastening, the implosion of the government and the Tory Party altogether.

At all events, it’s hard to see how Sunak can postpone things much longer. Apart from anything else, doing so isn’t cost-free. It takes up political time and energy, and saps the UK’s international reputation at a time when Ukraine, in particular, requires international cooperation. It leaves UK participation in Horizon Europe on hold. It leaves Northern Ireland in limbo. Perhaps worst of all, because it leaves open the ultimate possibility of trade sanctions from the EU, it has a dampening effect on investment, already chilled by Brexit itself. Conversely, as Bloomberg reported this week, reaching a sustainable deal would give a major boost to investment and economic growth.

To a slightly lesser extent, all of this also applies if the outcome is, as some Conservatives are suggesting, some kind of ‘fudge’ in which Sunak gets a deal but it is not accepted as an end-state, with Brexiters continuing to agitate for further changes and negotiations and Sunak at least indulging that possibility. One way he might do that would be to continue with the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill, albeit holding off making use of its powers, to persuade the ERG that it might be used in some further negotiation. Doing so would continue the pattern of Tory leaders trying to ‘manage’ the ERG when national, if not party, interest requires standing up to them robustly. I doubt he has the stomach for that, though.

Finally, apart from all the other costs of not reaching an agreement with the EU, capitulating to the ERG will not solve Sunak’s political problems either. The existing Protocol would still be in place and hence, presumably, so too would the DUP’s refusal to allow the Assembly to sit. Within the Tory Party, such capitulation would inflame the increasingly vociferous ‘pragmatist’ faction, who are threatening to vote down the NIP Bill if it continues its passage as, in this scenario, it surely would. (They would also presumably do so if, as a sop to the ERG, Sunak chose to continue with the Bill even after having done a deal.)

So, returning to the general themes with which I began, whatever Sunak does now it will not resolve the schism in Conservatism. Whether he over-rides the Ultras or capitulates to them it will continue, and may well intensify quickly. In terms of re-setting relations with the EU, over-riding the Ultras and doing a deal will certainly help, but less so if it is only seen as a temporary fix, as just described, or if accompanied by a ‘consolation prize’ in the form of, say, continuing at pace with the Retained EU Law Bill.

For now, as so often before, we are enduring the ‘will they, won’t they’ Theatre of the Absurd of Brexit. And, as always, the outcome hinges on the perpetual civil war within Conservatism and the perpetual dance around the deranged sensibilities and insufferable arrogance of the political grotesques who prosecute it.

 

 

*I continue to use the term ERG, in line with the media and for ease of exposition. But the actual membership of the ERG is reported to be dwindling, and the Brexit Ultra opposition to the NIP, and potentially to Sunak’s deal, within the Tory Party is much wider.

The battle for Britain’s post-Brexit polity

In the book I wrote about Brexit I anticipated (pp. 275-278) two broad scenarios for how the immediate future would develop once the realities of Brexit began to be felt (the book itself ended with the end of the transition period). These scenarios weren’t about ‘staying out’ versus ‘re-joining’, though they might eventually have implications for that, but about different ways of ‘being out’.

Post-Brexit scenarios

In the first scenario, the bitter domestic debate and the corresponding antagonism towards the EU would gradually die down. The inescapable facts of geographical proximity and of economic and regulatory interdependence would normalize the UK-EU relationship, in that it would come to be viewed as a rather dull issue to be approached in pragmatic terms, and seen through the prism of UK strategic interests rather than Brexit per se. The first concrete outcome of that would come with making use of the provisions within the existing Trade and Cooperation Agreement (TCA) to deepen it as regards both trade and security.

In the second scenario, the UK would be stuck in a perpetual Brexit ‘Groundhog Day’. The approach to relations with the EU would be one of permanent hostility, resentment and suspicion. And there would be a similar hostility to attempts from the supposed ‘Establishment’ and ‘liberal elite’ to improve those relations. The economic damage of Brexit would be blamed on ‘EU punishment’ rather than Brexit itself, and the Referendum vote would continue to be used as a supposed mandate for ever-greater divergence from the EU and even as a mandate for a “Brexit 2.0” of leaving the ECHR.

‘Scenario one’ might be called one of ‘rapprochement’ or perhaps ‘amelioration’, and ‘scenario two’ might be called one of ‘repetition’ or even ‘intensification’.

Elements of both of them have been on display this week. That is because we are now witnessing, on a daily basis, a battle that will determine which, if either, of these scenarios will prevail as the consensus view of the UK polity, broadly conceived.

It is a battle played out in contestations over the nature and extent of Brexit damage, over specific post-Brexit policies including the Northern Ireland Protocol and the Retained EU Law Bill, in all the less visible interchanges between interest groups and the government over post-Brexit funding schemes or regulatory regimes, and in increasingly vociferous denunciations of the ECHR, especially in the context of ‘the small boats crisis’.

The current state of play

By the ‘UK polity, broadly conceived’, I mean the nexus of political parties and political actors, civil society organizations, the commentariat and media, including social media, and public opinion. I stress that, because it is not, as some seem to think, simply about what the opinion polls say, important as that is. Public opinion is certainly a necessary condition in settling which scenario emerges, but it is not a sufficient one.

It is indeed the case that public opinion is settling towards the first scenario. Some 47% (and 30% of leave voters) want a closer relationship with the EU, though what is meant by ‘closer’ is not homogenous, with just 14% (and 18% of leave voters) wanting it to be more distant than at present. That is still not a majority, but it is a very strong lead. It is likely that political actors, in the sense of business groups, trade unions and numerous lobbying groups, are even more united in favouring scenario one, as evidenced for example by the many signatories to a letter calling on the government to abandon the Retained EU Law Bill (£).

However, the commentariat and media remain as split as ever, and scenario two still has enthusiastic support in, for example, the pages of the Telegraph, Mail and Express. There has been some change in the way that is expressed, though, with the tone becoming notably more defensive as the evidence of Brexit damage has mounted (£) and as commentators realize they are losing the battle of the narrative and, with it, public support.

As for the government, in line with my post last week it is hopelessly stuck. It’s clear that there are elements, including Rishi Sunak himself, which see the need for something like the first scenario on grounds of economic and political pragmatism. That is evident in numerous reports that Sunak wants a resolution on the Northern Ireland Protocol, but the fix he is in is reflected by other reports saying he has been “sitting on” an agreed deal for the last week, presumably for fear of the Brexit Ultras’ reaction. That looks like the final gasp of what for a long time seems to have been a policy of hoping that ‘something will turn up’. It hasn’t, and it’s likely he’ll find out next week what that reaction will be: already their opposition is growing louder (£).

The same desire for rapprochement is also evident in the government’s decision not to continue to contest the legal challenge to its treatment of EU citizens with pre-settled status and, in a more general way, in the Bloomberg report this week that Sunak has asked senior ministers and officials to draw up plans for a less acrimonious relationship with the EU. But, again, the same report highlighted the risk of a backlash to any such plans from the Ultras. And it’s not even as if the government itself has a coherent approach to EU relations since, in other reports this week, there are plans to “snub” the EU Horizon science funding programme, itself delayed purely because of the Protocol row.

Overall, whilst there may be some impetus to scenario one under Sunak, and he may even make some headway, there is no possibility of it becoming the settled consensus under this government. On the other hand, all the other political parties, apart from the Reform Party and DUP, are supportive of, at the very least, scenario one and certainly opposed to scenario two. The Labour Party, in particular, has effectively made scenario one its policy. So it does seem likely that, assuming a Labour election win, the next government will seek to enact it.

However, it’s crucial to understand that this would be a necessary but by no means sufficient condition for it actually happening. The key point is the earlier point that what is at issue is a consensus across the UK polity. Such a consensus doesn’t mean total agreement, which is never going to happen anyway. Instead it means scenario one dominating, and support for scenario two becoming the province of marginal and fringe actors in politics and the media. In particular, creating a consensus around scenario one will need significant buy-in from at least some who supported Brexit as well as from those who opposed it.

The Ditchley Park meeting

From that point of view, reports of a “secret” meeting held at the end of last week at Ditchley Park to “discuss the failings of Brexit and how to remedy them in the national interest” was an interesting development. The meeting brought together Brexiters (including Tories Michael Gove, Michael Howard and Norman Lamont, and Labour’s Gisela Stuart who co-chaired Vote Leave) and erstwhile remainers (including Labour’s David Lammy and Peter Mandelson, and the Tory David Lidington), as well as several former civil servants and some business leaders.

I call it ‘interesting’ not because it is going to yield anything in the way of concrete consequences, but because it is a tiny example, and so far as I know the first of its kind, of what a wider and long-term process of consensus-building for scenario one would look like. It is also, as Martin Fletcher of the New Statesman observes, perhaps the first time that as prominent a Brexiter as Gove has come anywhere close to acknowledging the failures of Brexit. Not that it should be over-stated: Gove, unlike those Labour MPs who attended, did so without the knowledge or consent of his party leader.

Brexiter reactions

That such a consensus is very far from being in the offing is also shown by the “near-hysterical responses” to news of the meeting. The most predictable came from Nigel Farage, with his autonomic reflex moan that “the full sell-out of Brexit is underway”. The Brexiter press took the same approach (£). You have to wonder just how often something can be sold out before there ceases to be anything left to betray. Brexiters like Sherelle Jacobs in the Telegraph (£) perhaps recognize this, but she draws the equally ludicrous conclusion that “Brexit was finally condemned to death in the gilded splendour of Ditchley Park”!

The Mail was sufficiently infuriated to run three items about the meeting – a report, an editorial, and a comment article by Steven Glover. Inevitably, the main attacks were multiple versions of the line that this was “a cynical remainer plot to derail Brexit”, but it was a line which made little sense, precisely because of the presence of “apparently unapologetic leavers” (though note the implied question raised by the word ‘apparently’) like “sinuous” Michael Gove (again, note the language: no one can fault tabloid journalists on their capacity to insinuate meaning). Nor could it be squared with the fact that neither re-joining the EU nor re-joining the single market were on the agenda. Indeed, all that was on the agenda was precisely the kind of rapprochement that I have called ‘scenario one’.

The logic of some of the Mail’s secondary lines of attack was also rather hard to follow. Apparently the secret nature of the meeting was evidence of its sinister intent, but so too was the fact that the leak of it having been held had appeared in the “Europhile Observer”. So was the cunning plot to conceal the meeting’s existence or to reveal it? Equally, David Frost ponderously warning, like a lumpen schoolboy who has diligently memorized the textbook without understanding its meaning, that the “establishment want to unravel the deals we did in 2020” was at odds with his own perpetual insistence that the Protocol, which is a key part of those deals, is not sacrosanct and, indeed, should be ‘unravelled’.

Most splenetic of all was someone called Carol Malone on GB News, who delivered a diatribe about “the anti-democratic treacherous elites” who by meeting to discuss how to make Brexit work better had apparently “spat on democracy and spat on the British people”. Goodness knows how unhinged she would have been had the meeting been a discussion of how to abandon Brexit altogether.

‘Remainer’ reactions

Perhaps less predictable were the negative reactions* from some of those who are anti-Brexit, although Martin Fletcher, referred to earlier, gave a qualified positive response and others were willing to give it a very cautious welcome. But some were almost as suspicious of the secrecy as the Brexiters, though it’s surely obvious that this was precisely because of the sensitivity of holding such a meeting, a sensitivity amply demonstrated by the ferocious response to its disclosure. In any case, whilst it is true the meeting wasn’t publicized by Ditchley Park, it wasn’t quite the conspiratorial event some depict it to be. To my mind, the level of confidentiality was sensible rather than sinister although, of course, ultimately such conversations will have to be public if a consensus for scenario one is to be created.

Many comments were disdainful of the lack of representation from any party other than Tories and Labour, or from trade unions and lobby groups. That’s a reasonable criticism, and, again, ultimately consensus-building would need a broader base, but it’s not indefensible to have a narrow group for what was widely recognized to be an unprecedented meeting, and one which would seem to have been very exploratory in nature.

In particular, some of these comments about lack of inclusiveness seemed to assume that the meeting had some kind of official or semi-official status that would, or could, give rise to a new national ‘plan’. Perhaps that was encouraged by the misleading reporting of the meeting as being a ‘Summit’. At all events it is obviously nonsense: such a meeting has no power at all, and certainly isn’t the basis of some kind of cross-party government or policy initiative. For that reason, similar comments about the lack of EU involvement were wide of the mark. The entire significance of the meeting, such as it is, lies in it (conceivably) being a tiny first step towards, specifically, domestic consensus-building around a very modest agenda.

Other comments jeered at precisely that modesty, insisting that no discussion was worthwhile that did not have re-joining the EU, or at least the single market, on the agenda. This is almost the mirror-image of the Brexiters’ criticisms, in that whereas they falsely assert that this was the real agenda and it was an attempt to sell out leavers, the re-join critics dismiss it for not having this agenda and being an attempt to sell out remainers.

Re-joiners beware

Underlying this is what I am increasingly coming to see as almost as big a block to ‘scenario one’ as that of the Brexit Ultras – the insistence by some that re-joining is something that will be quickly and easily achieved. I don’t think that is so, for the reasons I discussed in a video this week as a guest of Federal Trust (again, the comments beneath are instructive). But, whether I am right or wrong, the key point is that if re-joining is going to happen in whatever timescale, a necessary condition for it will be the creation of scenario one rather than scenario two. If scenario two becomes dominant, then re-joining will most certainly not happen. If scenario one takes hold then re-joining is by no means assured, but it becomes possible.

The danger, then, is that if even the tiniest step taken towards scenario one is dismissed out-of-hand by re-joiners and dismissed out-of-hand by Brexiters, then it will never happen. By insisting that only their preferred perfect outcome is acceptable, re-joiners, unwittingly no doubt, aid Brexiters in their rejection of it. In turn this makes it easier for scenario two to emerge. I don’t mean by this that re-joiners should give up on campaigning for their preferred outcome, just that they make that outcome much harder to achieve if they insist that anything other than the near-immediate delivery of that outcome is pointless or even, in a kind of reversal of the standard Brexiter line, a ‘betrayal’.

Commenting on reactions to the Ditchley Park meeting from “annoyed Remainers and EU commentators”, Helene von Bismarck, an eminent German historian specializing in Britain’s international relations, wrote “Too little, too late, they say. I am impatient too, but seriously, where do you want to start? If nothing except a Time Machine transporting you back to 2015 will make you happy, the future is bleak”. She also, rightly, pointed out that the meeting doesn’t constitute any kind of a turning point but at least – or at best – part of a process of facing up to the realities of Brexit.

That doesn’t, of course, mean that the agenda of that meeting did, in itself, face those realities. Gerhard Schnyder, in his discussion of it on his latest Brexit Impact Tracker is also absolutely right to say that:

“… eventually, the country will have to come together and heal the deep wounds Brexit has inflicted on the British body politic. But not on any terms. The risk is that if ‘moving on’ happens without a proper analysis of why Brexit took place and why it was never going to work, the ideas that drove the Brexit fringe of the UK’s political sphere will continue to cast their long shadows over the inevitable process of softening hard Brexit.”

However, that is not going to happen in one moment of revelation. The ‘proper analysis’ already exists; the political issue is to establish it as a consensus, which means enrolling at least some committed and leading Brexiters through a repudiation of their entrenched beliefs. That will take time and patience.

One implication of this could just conceivably be imminent. Although it is unlikely, suppose that Sunak decided that the only way of securing the deal with the EU to revise the Protocol was to take up Keir Starmer’s offer of Labour support, or even just threaten to do so to bring his rebels into line? If so, re-joiners should resist the temptation to denounce Labour for ‘propping up’ Brexit and instead see it as a significant move towards creating scenario one through a cross-party agreement that marginalizes the Brexit Ultras and undermines their desire for scenario two.

A battle for high stakes

The stakes here are very high. Each of the scenarios I sketched has very different consequences. For scenario one, rapprochement and amelioration lead to ‘restoration’, by which I don’t, or don’t simply, mean eventual re-joining, but a thorough repudiation and marginalization of the entire populist or Brexitist project. For scenario two, repetition and intensification lead to ‘pariahdom’, meaning international isolation and domestic authoritarianism and immiseration. But it’s also possible that the current situation, in which the two scenarios are contested with neither becoming dominant, will become the permanent one. That scenario, which we could call ‘muddling along’, actually seems quite likely at the moment and if so would lead to permanent economic and geo-political decline, as well perpetual political and cultural strife.

How re-joiners decide to conduct themselves will be one, though clearly only one, of the factors in what now happens in terms of these post-Brexit scenarios. The extent of the damage of Brexit and how widely that damage is recognized is one of many others. So is the scale of the expected Tory defeat at the next election and how the Tory Party then responds. A Labour government will take us some way to scenario one, though won’t be enough to do so in itself, and will presumably improve the TCA (and, to pre-empt some objections, no, that doesn’t mean ‘cherry-picking’ and, no, it won’t come close to reversing the economic damage of Brexit).

Getting from that to any kind of re-joining (whether of EU or single market) will need a situation to develop where it is the settled ambition of both government and official opposition parties, rather as it was in the 1960s when (unsuccessful) applications to join the EU were made by both Conservative and Labour governments, though, post-Brexit, any such application would need to be preceded by a referendum. In other words, as then, and quite differently than was the case with Brexit, joining would become an established national strategy.

The British polity is currently nowhere near that point. And it may never get to that point (and that won’t be hastened but delayed if, as some think, it needs to be preceded by reforming the ‘first past the post system’, which would mean electing a government with such a policy and then holding, and winning, a referendum on that, before even getting to the question of re-joining).

The long road ahead

But if things are ever to get to that point it will start with baby steps like the Ditchley Park meeting (even to call that a baby step is to over-state the case), after which there could and would certainly need to be far more confident and significant strides. The Brexiters, even as their cause languishes in the opinion polls, will still have the power to keep trying to trip that process up. They can only be aided in that if re-joiners and erstwhile remainers jeer at and belittle every fledgling attempt to walk.

Of course it is absurd, infuriating, ludicrous that we should be in such a situation, and that it is not possible simply to say, as one might in everyday life, that a terrible mistake was made and that it should be put right as quickly as possible. But, politically, that isn’t possible because of the deep and toxic nature of Brexit and the bitter divisions that still exist over it, including over the very idea that it was a terrible mistake. For evidence of that, just look at the extraordinary anger even something as trivial as the Ditchley Park meeting provoked. The poison can’t just be sucked and spat out. The fever has to pass and, even then, a long recuperation will be needed.

In the time that takes, the costs of Brexit will rack up, higher and higher. That’s disastrous. But one of the many damages caused by Brexit is precisely the fact that even the process of reversing it entails huge costs.

 

 

*I am mainly referring here to reaction on social media. In line with my usual practice I don’t link to tweets unless they are from public figures, but if anyone doubts the veracity of my account of these reactions see, for example, some of the responses to my own tweet of the original report of the meeting.