7th December 2022
Here is a story about three Bills.
The Bills are not chaps called William, but legislative proposals placed before the Westminster parliament by the government of the United Kingdom.
Taken individually – and especially taken together – these three Bills tell a tale.
They tell the story of Brexit.
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The first Bill is the Northern Ireland Protocol Bill.
This is a proposal that would enable the government of the United Kingdom to break the exit agreement it signed with the European Union.
This agreement was signed in a rush, so as to “get Brexit done”.
This was the agreement which, if you recall, was promoted by the-then prime minister Boris Johnson as an “oven-ready deal”.
And this was the agreement which sought to square the rushed Brexit with no commercial border in the island of Ireland.
(An alternative way of addressing the same problem, with the “backstop”, was rejected when Theresa May was prime minister.)
The current Bill is an attempt to somehow unwind this solemnly agreed position.
Many think this Bill has no good purpose – indeed, many regard the Bill as having no purpose other than to placate some government supporters.
And it certainly is a rum thing for any government to so openly proclaim its lack of good faith in entering international agreements.
The Bill, therefore, tells us about the lack of thought and preparation of the government of the United Kingdom in how it approached Brexit.
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The second Bill is the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill.
The Bill shows us that the government of the United Kingdom, having got Brexit done, does not know what to do with it.
This is the proposed legislation promoted by Jacob Rees-Mogg which would automatically repeal all European Union law still in force.
It does not matter whether that law is useful – or even essential.
It does not matter if the law was negotiated by the United Kingdom and serves to protect certain public interests.
The retained law is going to be repealed automatically anyway.
There is no good reason for this silly Bill.
The only reason it exists is to show that the British government is doing something – anything – with the supposed “Brexit opportunities”.
And as no concrete, discrete opportunities have been identified, it is doing this daft and potentially dangerous thing instead.
This second Bill, therefore, tells us that not only did the government rush through Brexit without proper preparation, but it also has no idea what will follow Brexit.
(In this, this second Bill is akin to the rushed and disadvantageous “international trade agreements” which were also signed so as to show “Brexit opportunities”.)
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The third Bill is the Bill of Rights Bill.
This legislation is not directly about the European Union, but it tells us everything about the need for there to be new “European” courts and laws for the government to attack.
Brexit was simply not enough, and so the next target is the European Convention of Human Rights.
This third Bill shows the need for Tories to have a perpetual war with “Europe” (even if not the European Union) that has been unsatisfied by Brexit.
The Bill itself is not a good piece of legislation, and it has been roasted by judges and Conservative politicians.
It seeks to repeal the Human Rights Act, and to make it as difficult as possible for anyone to rely in domestic courts on their rights under European Convention of Human Rights.
This third Bill, therefore, tells us that Brexit was not really about the European Union, but about trying to satisfy (but failing to satisfy) the endless demand of some government supporters for confrontation and retreat with something European.
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If Brexit was worthwhile, then it would take only one good government Bill to show the benefits of Brexit: for the United Kingdom government to show what it could do with its new autonomy from the European Union.
But there is no such good Bill.
Instead there are these three misconceived and illiberal Bills, each trying to do something pointless or needless.
Each in their way, and when taken together, telling us all we need to know about Brexit: that the exit was rushed and botched, that the exit has provided no practical benefits, and that that the exit will never be enough for many of those who supported it.
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Chris Grey will quote it.
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Ghost would be better.
As James Bond was once heard to exclaim, “skewered”.
The Northern Ireland so-called question involves an unavoidable contradiction. Brexit requires a border between the UK and the EU, The ‘Good Friday’ Agreement (GFA) requires no border between the UK and The EU.
To meet the GFA and Brexit cannot be done unless any border is outside the Island of Ireland (IofI). That means between IofI and mainland Britain OR between IofI and mainland Europe. Breakup the UK or break up the EU. You pays your money and you takes your choice!
Except that breaking up the EU is not a choice open to the UK, which is not a member of the EU.
The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill also involves a contradiction. Several sections of the Good Friday Agreement, such as Section 5 (Safeguards) of Strand One ‘Democratic Institutions of Northern Ireland’ (p5), Section 26 under Legislation (p8) and Section 2 of ‘Rights, Safeguards and Equality of Opportunity’ (p16) require the ECHR for successful operation
Oh dear, what will the Three Bears say when they get home?
Or are we dealing with the Three Jovial Brexiters?
Does a Jovial Brexiter exist outside thought experiment?
Spot on.
In other news today BrewDog has had an advertisement pulled by the ASA on the grounds that consumers could be misled:-
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2022/dec/07/brewdog-beer-ad-pulled-over-one-of-your-five-a-day-claim
Perhaps strange that we live in a society where BrewDog, not Johnson aka Big Dog, is sanctioned for using misleading campaign slogans.
Please visit my Etsy shop and buy “The Chartists and the Mad Riddle of Brexit” poster (only £1):-
https://www.etsy.com/uk/listing/1331535369/poster-the-chartists-and-the-mad-riddle
Poster uses authentic Victorian fonts on a nice cream background in an easily downloadable A4 PDF format.
All profits on poster sales will go to the Royal College of Nursing.
The absence of a “good Bill” to show the benefits of Brexit is not just or even primarily due to the undoubted incompetence of this government. It is because the “benefits of Brexit” are at best vanishingly trivial and probably don’t exist at all.
The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill was introduced in the House of Commons in the dim and distant days when Liz Truss (remember her?) was Foreign Secretary. June 2022. Between (checks notes) Dominic Raab (aha!) and the incumbent, James Cleverly. The Bill passed all if its Commons stages within a matter of weeks and has been in the Lords since July. A date for its Lords report stage has not been announced.
The Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill was introduced in the Commons in that brief 7 week period when Jacob Rees-Mogg (remember him?) was Secretary of State at BEIS. Between (checks notes) Kwasi Kwarteng (oh!) and the incumbent currently known as “Grant Shapps”. A date for its report stage in the Commons has not been announced.
And the Bill of Rights Bill was introduced in the Commons by a certain Dominic Raab (him again!) in his first spell of just under a year as Lord Chancellor. June 2022. Between (checks notes) Robert Buckland QC (as he then was) and Brandon Lewis (who managed to resolve for now the pay dispute with the criminal barristers in that brief period before Dominic Raab resumed this position again – perhaps Raab was unable to resolve it himself because his briefing was not correctly formatted or something, but at least nobody died that time, probably). A date has not been announced for its second reading in the Commons. After its first reading in June, it has made no legislative progress whatsoever. No second reading: nothing.
All three have the flavour of hobby-horses ridden furiously by their original jockeys, but to little end, and with little enthusiasm by their successors. Kites that were released but refused to fly.
Each would be a legal disaster. The first, a bill to unilaterally abrogate specific and limited elements of an international treaty that the UK negotiated and agreed just a couple of years ago, imperiling the sensitive settlement in Northern Ireland. The second, a bill to plant a time bomb under important pieces of legislation embedded in all manner of legal regimes over 40 years, not because of what they do but because some have a dyspeptic even frasmotic reaction to the place where they come from (where they *really* come from). And the third, to take rights away from individuals under a document that the Conservatives themselves drafted and entrenched across the continent of Europe as a bulwark against the tyranny we defeated in 1945.
How do we get rid of this damnably useless government and the ideologically driven incompetents within it? In the name of God, go!
Pitchforks. Torches optional.
I would settle for a general election, as so many things are going to hell in a handcart. One might have expected some sort of stability when the government was elected just three years ago with an 80 seat majority, but nothing of the sort. Where are we going?
You’ve got to have torches.
Really good comment!
Quick update, nearly 8 weeks later.
There is still no date for a second reading of the Bill of Rights Bill, seven months after its first reading in June 2022.
The Northern Ireland Protocol Bill went completed its committee stage in the Lords on 7 November but still has not emerged for its report stage. No movement in 11 weeks.
After a hiatus since November, the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) Bill completed its report stage and third reading in the Commons on 18 January, and had its formal first reading (no debate) in the Lords on 19 January.
I recently heard Rees-Mogg likening the EU revocation bill to the statute law repeals bills that started in the 1960s. But that was (indeed, is) a project that followed the creation of the Law Commission in 1965: among other tasks, the commission has slowly been identifying spent, obsolete or unnecessary Acts of Parliament or parts of Acts that can safely be repealed to clean up the statute books (this is repealing legislation, by the way, not a return to the common law, as Rees-Mogg likes to claim).
After several years of work, the first Statute Law (Repeals) Act was passed in 1969, abolishing a mixed bag of legislation, including most of the confirmation of Magna Carta in 1297, parts of the Statue of Winchester (1285) and the First and Second Statutes of Westminster (1275 and 1285), the Sunday Fairs Act 1448, the Ship Money Act 1640, and the Copyhold Act 1894. But this process has continued for nearly six decades now. The most recent latest Statute Law (Repeals) Act was passed in 2013, and the Law Commission published its 20th report on statute law repeal in 2015, which proposed abolishing parts of the venerable Statute of Marlborough (1267).
Why is that we move so slowly to repeal obsolete and unnecessary English laws from past centuries, but wish to rush pell-mell into destroying UK laws from the decades since 1972 that still have important effects?
There was a complacency, and a strategic myopia at the heart of Brexit also. Brexiters assume that peace in W Europe is assured, and that W European nations could never again be at war with each other.
Never even mind the obvious economic rationale, the EU was good at keeping W Europe nations civilised and friendly.
The dull business of daily cooperation on trading standards etc had that incidental benefit.
Brexiters ignore that constant warfare was the default state in W Europe for centuries.
They assume that we no longer need the EU to stay aligned and friendly, and that W European nation states can manage that without the EU.
Their naivety is off the scale.
Oceana has always been at war with E[U]rasia.
I wonder if the second and third bill that you cite may serve an additional purpose from the perspective of their proponents. They effectively raise the political cost of re-entering the EU at some future date. The UK is currently relatively aligned with EU law and the ECHR (which is a requirement of EU membership). This has benefits in terms of not having to realign ourselves with that body of law should the political will for rejoin materialise (in both the UK and the EU) at some point in the future. Rejoin could happen relatively quickly.
Create as many differences as possible as soon as possible, and there would be more need for realignment upon the political will for rejoining materialising. Rejoining would then take more time as that alignment was carried out giving nay-sayers more opportunities to sabotage an attempt to rejoin.
To the extent they succeed they will simply guarantee the break-up of the UK. The idea that this kind of malice has any purchase beyond Little England is surely for the birds.
However, it seems new constitutional arrangements are already unavoidable.
“… it is doing this daft and potentially dangerous thing instead.”
I would question the use of the word “potentially” here, and suggest that it should be omitted! JRM seems to forget that much of EU law was proposed and/or advocated by the UK.
If Revelation shows that the reinstituting of the Roman Empire is the future then how can we make what we would like important.
but we knew what you write all along , especially the last part of your summary (no tangible benefits)and it was obvious the second part would become a reality (that certain people would never be satisfied), so how is it that your commentary is even required? only the first part (rushed execution of brexit) was a result of Boris Johnson’s need for showing apparent results or perhaps opportunism
to add – I understand that the present legislation exposes the inadequacies of the policies, the execution and of the so-called benefits. but the real question for me is whether our democracy and parliamentary processes are capable of even acknowledging the obvious dead end position the nation have been steered into or whether we should expect continuous vacuous legislation as you have just analyzed.