Winter Solstice, 2021
One of the daft things about Brexit – and there have been many – is that the Foreign Office was not made responsible for Brexit policy after the referendum.
This was because, in part, the Foreign Office was distrusted by Brexiters.
Instead we had, first, a pop-up department with no centre of gravity in Whitehall – DExEU, if you remember it – and then we had David Frost as a floating minister-negotiator without much civil service support.
All this was misconceived.
It meant that, for example, the network of diplomats in member states were at least one step way from those conducting negotiations, and the United Kingdom negotiators often seemed unaware of what was behind the European Union negotiation mandate.
It also meant that – with trade or with Northern Ireland – there was little regard for the international context of the negotiations.
And it meant the talent and experience pool for the negotiators was far more shallow than it needed to be.
Regardless of one’s views as to the merits and party political political significance of Foreign Secretary Elizabeth Truss now being responsible for the negotiations, it is a Good Thing that the Foreign Office is now responsible for post-Brexit policy.
It is, in a way, an administrative counterpart to the Liberal Democrat victory in North Shropshire, where voters in a heavily Leave constituency were not deterred from voting for a pro-EU party – another example that the spell of Brexit hyper-partisanship is beginning to fade.
A Leave constituency can now be safe with a pro–EU party, and post-Brexit policy can now be safe with the Foreign Office.
That said, there is still the gap as set out in a previous post on this blog: the absence of an actual post-Brexit policy.
But we are more likely to get one with the Foreign Office being responsible for post-Brexit policy than we would do with a flimsy (and virtual) government department or a shouty minister-negotiator with no department.
At some point, there will be a realisation that a close and sustainable association agreement, with joint institutions, needs to be put in place between the United Kingdom and the European Union.
Our current post-Brexit policy should be thinking and working backwards from this objective, ensuring that when we get to that (more) stable state the United Kingdom is in the best possible position.
Brexiters need to stop being defensive: they have got their Brexit, and the United Kingdom is not a member state of the European Union – no rearguard is necessary.
Remainers and rejoiners, in turn, need to accept that the United Kingdom will not be joining the European Union for at least a generation.
We should not continue with the heightened politics of 2016 – with Brexiters, remainers and rejoiners all re-fighting referendum issues like a historical battle re-enactment society.
Maybe Truss is not (yet) the right politician to move Brexit policy to the next stage.
But the Foreign Office is the right department.
And so it is a welcome move.
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It seems that Truss either did not read your post or if she did, she has ignored the suggestions on the road forward. I do know of course that it is just part of the leadership campaign to ensure she is in the final 2. Sensible strategy is nothing to do with it.
Magpies are attracted to bright shiny things.
Liz Truss likes photo-opportunities that allow her to dress up, pose on a tank, an aircraft carrier or a motor bike or look serious, sitting and listening to a foreign leader.
Liz has her lighter side, highlighted, for example, by a visit to a local tourist attraction.
If you reviewed the last few months of her working life, going by the posts on her Twitter feed alone, especially the pictures thereon, you would already think she was the Prime Minister or combining the role of Foreign Secretary with that of Trade and Defence.
I think you are being over optimistic in your analysis of the by election result. The Labour vote collapsed, and appears to have gone tactically to the lib dems. Even so, the lib dems’ entire vote of 17000 is 5000 less than the previous tory majority. I have no doubt that the thousands of ethno nationalist trubeleaver zombies will shuffle forth to defend their imperial delusion at the general election.
Who knows how significant it will turn out to be that before the referendum Truss was firmly opposed to Brexit, and that her express reasons for changing her mind were, ahem, less than convincing?
I wish I could share your comfort DAG. But the FCO or whatever it is called now, has been hollowed out and its once respected Ambassadors in the EU are no longer given the time of day. Because of Brexit, my own company has set up an Irish company and whereas previously we would do a “wash-up” with the British Ambassador in the “citadel” after a series of meeting in a CEE country, we will now do it with the Irish Ambassador, who already has so much more influence in European capitals than his British counterpart. It is the same in Washington now that we have an “Irish American” President who values the “Irish accords”.
Added to that, how can anyone have confidence in the Foreign Office whose senior civil servant remained on holiday leaving the completely overwhelmed twenty something graduate staff to manage the collapse of Kabul crisis? Anyone recall the disillusioned young desk manager in “Smiley’s people” who resigns? There is clearly no longer any honour among these people. I would have resigned immediately rather than have to face the Parliamentary Committee with such feeble admissions of my own rank cowardice. Liz Truss has turned her coat so many times, from Green to Lib Dem to Tory, perhaps she should answer to “joseph” in the coat of many colours. The EU is polite, but it is also familiar with Realpolitik and has informed UK (reported in FT) that the same options are available: make the Protocol work and if UK reneges on Article 16 expect the entire FTA to fall over. But yes, it is better that the debacle is at the Foreign Office – maybe after work with a glass of wine in the garden.
Yeah… But… Liz Truss…
Acute as ever, except for one particular. The claim that the UK won’t rejoin for a generation is an unusually commonplace idea to come from this highly original commentator. It is made often by Brexiters in glee and Remainers in despair, but whenever someone says it (or similar) we must ask them about what they were saying half a dozen years ago. Compulsory mask wearing in Sainsburys? Lorry parks in Kent? A US president inciting an attack on the Capitol? No, I thought not.
The reaity is that history is only successfully predicted when looking back. Looking forward, it contains things which haven’t happened yet and we don’t yet know what they are. If you want to try to overcome this by looking at trends, just take the biggest.
The EU is a huge market right alongside the UK. Very close alignment is inevitable. Once that has happened, the drive will be to match will be very powerful. Something like membership will follow. I think will be within ten years. But what do I know? Like everyone else, I didn’t predict masks in Sainsburys either.
“At some point, there will be a realisation that a close and sustainable association agreement, with joint institutions, needs to be put in place between the United Kingdom and the European Union.”
If you are right, then this country won’t even be World Leading in the only thing we are currently – Arrogance
How long is a generation, David?
This lot are nothing but a cabal of trolls, though. It simply amuses them to annoy and frustrate.
I’m emigrating.
Well, I would, if there was somewhere sane that would have me.
If we have to wait a generation before this country regains its sanity and rejoins – or forms a meaningful alliance with – the EU, death will have taken me. I’ve always been a staunch European, yet am perfectly capable of loving my country. I’ve lived in other countries, but familial ties and my love of country always tipped the balance. But back then my country hadn’t lost its mind – and now it feels as if my country is holding my life hostage.
Buyers remorse is an awful thing. Brexit brought out the worst in ‘us’. Now my countrymen – those who allowed the bigots to poison their brains – are finding out just what a crap life/deal they have been sold. There’s worse to come.
I hope Truss and the Foreign Office will make a better meal of it than DExEU and Frost did and repair some of the damage.
An anecdote: a good friend of mine was headhunted for DExEU in its original iteration. He left for the sake of his mental health. David Davis was a nightmare (I shan’t elaborate further, but many others already know this). May should be ashamed of how she dealt with matters post Referendum. Johnson is just a puppet, when it comes to the EU. Frost was – well, I can only think he has been angling for some kind of advancement for himself, because only this can explain his behaviour.
This country deserves so much better. The best gift that 2022 could bring us is a realisation of this and an end to all this nonsense.
I completely agree with all you’ve said. My family and I are emigrating, too. We can’t bear being here, and don’t want our little boy growing up here. So we’re off next year, after several years of planning. Every day makes us more clear that we need to leave, and that we are making the right decision. Thankfully, we retain our EU free movement rights.
“I’m emigrating.
Well, I would, if there was somewhere sane that would have me.”
Ireland.
https://www.citizensinformation.ie/en/government_in_ireland/ireland_and_the_uk/common_travel_area_between_ireland_and_the_uk.html
To quote: “Irish and UK citizens have the right to live, travel, work and study within the Common Travel Area.”
As it’s Christmas I am trying to be optimistic, like our great leader.
It looked before Frost resigned that Johnson wanted the N Ireland issues resolved. It may be that Johnson has briefed Truss to that effect. She may have a struggle between her ambition, that might lead her to want to emulate Frost in his negotiating “skills”, and her core beliefs as a former Remainer.
Let’s see how it turns out.
Seasons greetings to DAG and all readers.
I think we are doomed for now to Brexit Groundhog Day, reliving the battles of the referendum for the foreseeable future.
Until folk, regardless of their position on Brexit, accept that we have serious problems in the here and now to address and that many of them have been caused or at least exacerbated by the hardest of Hard Brexits then we will be stricken with a bout of chronic hysteresis.
To admit that there are Brexit related issues that must be dealt with now is, naturally, to suggest that the rationale for voting Leave was flawed and that rejoining is not an immediate solution to said problems.
The Conservative Party negotiated and signed up to the hardest of Hard Brexits and the Labour Party endorsed the deal.
The end of Freedom of Movement has tightened Britain’s labour market, helping to create one million vacancies and, in part, prompting the Monetary Policy Committee to raise the bank base rate.
How increasing the interest rate will fill help businesses fill jobs before some of them falter and fail early in the New Year is unclear, but I am sure the one club golfers know what they are doing.
One might think they were seeking to prove that those projections of the likely negative impact of a Hard Brexit on the economy were overly optimistic.
The Conservative Party’s answer to the problem is, according to Priti Patel, to grow our own domestic work force. The only way to effectively do that would be to clone Boris Johnson, many times over; develop a working method of time travel, we need not worry about moving in space and then send armies of Johnson clones back in time twenty, thirty and forty years to propagate like crazy. A plan that would play to one of Johnson’s few strengths and be well within his comfort zone.
The Temporal Invasion of the Propagators makes a good working title.
Labour does not have an answer, but the self styled new party of business recognises that growing labour and skill shortages are the major problem facing business. That lack of a solution did not prevent Sir Keir Starmer QC announcing at Labour’s Annual Conference that a Government he led would create 8,500 new specialist mental health vacancies in the NHS to add to the current 100,000 vacancies of all types therein that make up 40% of the 250,000 unfilled positions in the health and care sector.
Cognitive dissonance and Govitis, the irrational fear of experts, are still running wild amongst the body politic and much of the rest of our society.
The only credible solution that significantly addresses the explosion of the United Kingdom’s demographic time bomb is some replication of the conditions of Freedom of Movement for inward migrant labour.
But we know how well that would play with the Red Wall, the destination of whose votes concerns Labour and the Conservatives to the exclusion of almost all else.
There are, admittedly, a number of prophylactic solutions to the issue.
One of which would be to raise the State Pension Age.
Another would be to convert some of the capital earmarked for levelling up, however we are defining that this week, into revenue and spending it on helping the economically inactive, many of whom would like a job, apply for some of the jobs employers are desperate to fill.
Of course, that would mean levelling up everywhere, regenerating people not places; property developers spending money with Magrathean Consulting and politicians, of all stripes and none, forgoing laying the cornerstones, capping stones and posing, grinning inanely with an outsize pair of rubber scissors to cut the ribbons at the official openings and, you guessed it, unveiling the stones marking said openings of (strike out as applicable) iconic structures/vanity capital projects/vital pieces of infrastructure/wastes of taxpayer money.
And politicians like Michael Gove and Lisa Nandy would have to look up the location of places in Cornwall and of towns like Hastings, locales which are not Oop North, and of the Terra Incognita that is the English Midlands.
If they like, they might describe the project as a Brexit bonus, designed to unite the country, well, England at least.
One should also not forget the self inflicted Brexit bonuses, like the UKCA standard, an unnecessary, costly burden on business that, it appears, we were not able the enact when in the EU. I gather it is part of the Global Britain brand.
Who knew we left the EU to actually increase business regulation?
Johnson’s two word business policy is still being actively pursued. Arguably, it is the only one which he has really managed to put into effect and deliver upon.
It would seem to be a cost free policy pledge for Labour to announce it would scrap UKCA in Government. A vote winner amongst the business community, most of whom would be perfectly happy complying with just the CE standard.
Of course, it would mean saying the UKCA standard is inferior to the CE standard which is not just used by countries within the Single Market, but by many others around the world …
I agree with every word you have written about the FO. The reality of establishing a standalone department to handle Brexit is that there was no confidence that FO diplomats would support the government’s negotiation objectives and fear that well entrenched back channels (between UKREP and the various DGs, for example) would be leaky.
As for your suggestion that the public should accept what we have and lump it for another 20 years or so – let’s see. I think we’ll have to rerun the whole thing again soon – not to rejoin but to align more closely, to undo some of the scorched earth damage wrought by Frost and co.
Ignoring the settled will of under-50s guarantees the issue will be revisited soon. Not least because having our future economic policy dictated by people with ‘no skin in the game’ (retired, rentiers and NEETs) rather than working age folk is absolutely bizarre. And unsustainable ultimately.
Which explains the increasingly frenzied attempts by the likes of Steve Baker to dictate what Remainers should or shouldn’t accept.
Speaking personally – it’ll be the country’s economics (and my own) that make up my mind. Promises were made – the reality is falling well short. Sunlit uplands are in short supply.
Which isn’t to say I’m not open to being convinced of the economic benefits of Brexit.
I’ve long thought that Brexit is in many respects like a modern secular rerun of the Reformation and its aftermath, and most likely the long term consequences will be much the same, and thus in most respects beneficial.
Even if some future Remainer leader (the modern equivalent of Bloody Mary) strives to make the UK rejoin the EU, they will probably fail and over time our paths will diverge, until for one reason or another the issue becomes almost irrelevant.
Perhaps the EU itself will soon ease off on its apparently obsessive and relentless drive for uniformity and supra-national supremacy, or be forced to by dissenting nations such as Poland (a parallel with the Council of Trent!)
(I voted for Brexit by the way, primarily because I thought our self reliance as a nation and its quality of leadership was atrophying as the EU took on ever more competencies and our technical and political dependencies on it increased. “Use it or lose it” as they say.)