11th May 2023
There is a glorious, telling passage in the new book from Anthony Seldon about Boris Johnson.
It is the day of the Brexit referendum result:
“Boris Johnson had expected Remain to win: ‘Holy s**t, f**k, what have we done?’ he uttered under his breath on hearing the result. […]
“‘Oh s**t, we’ve got no plan. We haven’t thought about it. I didn’t think it would happen. Holy crap, what will we do?”
What will we do, indeed.
As a Canadian diplomat remarked at the time: the Brexiters were the dog that had caught up with the car.
And that has pretty much been the general position since: what do we actually do with the possibility of divergence from EU law and policy?
Because there have been few answers to that question, there have been a succession of simplistic, gesture-ridden proposals.
For example, the Johnson government promoted a Bill that would mean that all retained EU law would be repealed automatically on a given date: a so-called “sunset clause”.
As Brexiter ministers could not think of anything specific to repeal, they decided to repeal everything, all at once.
This was silly.
The unintended consequences of sudden removals of forty-five years worth of technical legislation would have been horrific.
And this sudden removal ignored the fact that much of that legislation had been crafted and shaped by United Kingdom ministers and officials in our interests and to meet our needs.
The proposed legislation was a reckless exercise in superficial politics.
The government, now recovering some of its wits under the new Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, has now announced that the sunset clause will be ditched.
This is a sensible and welcome move.
Some who want the United Kingdom to rejoin the European Union may want to gloat at the government’s reversal.
But.
Rejoiners should perhaps be worried instead.
For this shift – like the Windsor framework – is a signal that Brexit silly season may be coming to an end.
And that long-term, fundamental divergence is about to begin.
The government is now getting real – and realistic – about Brexit.
The clowning legislation of Jacob Rees-Mogg is being dumped.
Of course: some Brexiters are upset at this symbolic sunset being itself sunsetted.
For them the politics of Brexit is just about symbols and gestures.
And so they too are quite unaware that the real Brexit is now beginning.
***
Comments Policy
This blog enjoys a high standard of comments, many of which are better and more interesting than the posts.
Comments are welcome, but they are pre-moderated and comments will not be published if irksome, or if they risk derailing the discussion.
More on the comments policy is here.
“Rejoiners should perhaps be worried instead.”
Rejoiners need to also take a realistic view of Brexit. Rejoining is (probably) never going to happen. Rejoining the single market, perhaps. Rejoining the EU as a member state? Never. It only takes one veto. Why on earth would they have us back?
We would not be rejoining the European Union, but joining it.
We may not reasonably expect to have the same arrangements we had as an EU member before we left.
You can re-join on an individual level by leaving this sinking ship and moving to Europe. Not as easier as before freedom of movement was unjustly and undemocratically stripped from us, but still possible.
it may indeed be ‘beginning’ but it has been delayed.
interesting to see how much the next government can slow it further.
I suppose it depends on your tolerance of pain …
The Windsor Framework was the first recognition that the way to manage relationships will be piecemeal and incremental. The retention of the EU created law is a step to stop the slide to unregulated chaos. Rejoining is too hard for a long while, so we shall have to muddle through for a while longer and meanwhile create a set of policies that meet the needs of the relationships with the EU members and others. This cannot be done by the current Government, which is still mired in the mud of the Brexit policy errors. But it will be an important job for the next one.
I am sure that what you say is true.
However, it isn’t in the interests of many businesses to diverge from EU standards, even in a controlled or thoughtful way. The EU remains our biggest market. We have land borders with Spain and Ireland. People selling into those markets will need to keep to EU standards. I can’t think of many areas where we would benefit from not keeping to those standards.
Even if we can diverge, it is in everyone sensible’s interests to remain as though we were part of the single market. As you implied, the Brexit-extremists are not sensible. But they are on the wane.
And that means that, when we get to thinking about rejoining either the EU or the Single Market (and/or customs union) or something bespoke, I expect the amount of “undivergence” to resolve will be quite limited.
Fingers crossed.
A simple fact: standards of all kinds, financial, material and so on, are the foundation of all trade.
If your standards differ or you have none, then trade is more costly (you need two products not one) or impossible.
This does seem like a sign of sanity, admittedly a rather small one, and it’s interesting that relatively few Brexit MPs are up in arms about it. (Naturally the Brexit press is raving, but they’re simply beyond help). Rejoining simply isn’t an option. First of all, before they would consider any application, the EU would need some formal assurance (such as a cross-party agreement) that the whole Brexit pantomime could never happen again. And second, as I understand it, new entrants (which is what we would be) would have to join both Schengen and the Euro, which would be completely unacceptable to many. It’s also highly unlikely that we would be offered all the opt-outs that we used to enjoy.
You are certainly right that the UK might hope but could not expect to rejoin with all of the opt outs and special treatments that were negotiated over the years.
On the euro and Schengen, new EU member states have to commit to joining them eventually, but there is no deadline.
Bulgaria and Romania have plans to join the euro, but Denmark has an opt out. And, while being obliged to join, there is little prospect of any action being taken by the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, or Sweden. Sweden meets most of the convergence criteria to join, but deliberately keeps itself out by choosing not to join ERM II.
On Schengen, Ireland has an opt out, and Bulgaria, Romania and Cyprus not yet in. Northern Cyprus causes a problem for Cyprus, and accession by Bulgaria and Romania was voted down by Austria and the Netherlands in December 2022 over concerns about illegal immigration.
As with other member states, I expect the UK would be able to fund a constructively ambiguous way to give the necessary commitments but without a binding timetable. Like Augustine, we will promise to be chaste, just not yet.
Euro and Schengen. If the friends of my two boys (21 and 17) are anything to go by, they’d welcome both
There may be a changing in values going through generations
For what it’s worth, I’m a Boomer, very proud to be a Brit, and would also welcome the Euro and Schengen despite many good reasons not to
While embracing the euro may be unacceptable for people of a certain age, the younger generation couldn’t give a monkeys, of this I’m sure, and would be delighted to be part of Schengen. As for the opt outs, again these are historical and have little or no relevance to upcoming generations who were born while we had membership. I suspect many in the EU will be quite happy to entertain us becoming members again once the Redwoods and the Hannans (and their ilk) are dead or too old to be important. I only hope this occurs in my lifetime.
I think British businesses will continue to say what they have been saying all along, you diverge if you want to, business is not for turning away from the requirements of one of its largest single markets.
Divergence has always been more symbolic than anything else.
The British Government may lower regulations, but businesses may do what countries within the European Union do and treat such as no more than minima to be built upon.
“What does Boris Johnson intend to do with this new-found sovereignty? He doesn’t have a clue. He put out an appeal to businesses to come up with EU regulations to repeal. That’s the problem with these pesky EU regulations. They tend to be well-thought-out, rather good and often written by Brits. The majority of businesses don’t want to ditch them. By following EU standards, which are increasingly considered to be the gold standard of regulation around the world, global market access is assured. Companies don’t want the extra costs that come with having to meet a variety of differing standards.”
https://westcountryvoices.co.uk/trading-the-orchard-for-an-apple/
Divergence seems to be an example of a freedom passionately sought by the ignorant about trade and industry, on behalf of a group of people, many of whom do not want it, because they will have little use for it.
A company that exported to Europe on 31st December 2020, still doing so today has no option, but to comply with EU rules, standards and specifications.
On Twitter, it is not unusual for a certain type of Brexiteer to pop up and say, but only a small proportion of United Kingdom based businesses export into EU27.
Got you!
That is true, but there are plenty of UK based businesses who do not themselves export into the EU27, but supply goods and services to those who do. If those suppliers wish to retain that business then they, too, will have to continue to comply with EU rules, standards and specifications.
Enter the star spangled chlorinated chicken.
If you export ready meals with chicken in them to Europe and, at some point in future, US fowl is suspected of having entered your supply chain then you may well kiss goodbye to any future business with EU27 countries.
In addition, many countries around the world have actually adopted EU rules, standards and specifications as proxies. Why bother designing your own national rules, standards and specifications when someone else has already endured the pain of doing so?
And, of course, if companies in countries around the world want to export to the EU then they too will have to comply with EU rules, standards and specifications.
And a UK based company that exports nothing to Europe, but supplies goods and services to companies in third countries that do export into the EU27 will also … I think you know where I am going with this?
It is worthwhile noting that there seems to have been an underestimation of the number of businesses in the United Kingdom taking advantage of the Single Market, courtesy of platforms like Facebook and eBay.
There are Brexiteers who feel companies might run two production lines, one producing an inferior product for sale into markets not applying EU rules, standards and specifications.
I have not come across anyone yet who thinks that a significant number of overseas companies will deliberately produce goods and services to lower UK standards rather than maintain their existing product standards, if they, of course, bother to sell into such a small market at all.
Phrases like cost effectiveness, break even points, Just in Time, fixed and variable costs have little or no meaning for Brexiteers.
Just in Time is particularly baffling to some older Brexit voters, who lasted worked decades ago.
Of those who finally come to understand an innovation like JiT, many say as it was not around when they were at work then companies will just have to drop it, build cavernous warehouses and so on.
They never say where the money will come from to pay for such unremunerative expenditure.
Finally, there is the ‘small’ matter of implied racism.
Put simply, what does it say about your mindset, if you think a consumer of your product in Buenos Aires will be happy to purchase an inferior version of the one you are selling to a consumer in Paris, just because he or she lives in South America and not Western Europe?
And if you choose to go down that road, what is to stop someone from setting up to produce for the Argentinian market a better quality version of the product you are trying to sell in Buenos Aires?
The underlying rationale for divergence seems to be partly based on a pile it high, flog it cheap approach to business. The sort of nonsense that helped get us labelled the Sick Man of Europe before we joined the European Economic Community.
The world as the Baroness once observed, does not owe us a living.
Of course, Margaret Thatcher was one of the driving forces behind the establishment of the European Single Market.
If we do not produce what the world wants to buy then we really will have returned to the days before we joined the EEC.
This of course cuts both ways. Retaining legislation makes rejoining the single market easier – something along the lines of a Norway type deal, which will get the economy out of the doldrums, but will not enable it to pick up to the level afforded by full membership (there are still border checks for Norway).
In the longer term, the balance of power in Europe is shifting to the arc from the Nordics, through the Baltics and the Centre. Add Ukraine to that arc and we likely have a second ‘arc of wealth’, Oslo to Odesa, rivalling the Milan-London one. The UK becomes increasingly peripheral economically under that scenario.
As a member of the EU in that scenario, the UK would carry less weight and thus less potential for disruption.
Economically, the one card the UK has to play is its internal market and the purchasing power of its consumers.
As for being on the periphery of Europe.
Well, in terms of renewable energy, 40% of Europe’s wind resources, for example, blow around these Isles, including Ireland, of course.
Ireland’s West Coast would be more easily integrated into the European Grid with cables crossing land rather than under the sea.
And the exploitation of the seas around our shores to create energy is still in its infancy, despite the use of the motion of water to create energy hardly being new.
For around a century, Scotland, in particular, has been using the flow of water to generate electricity.
True, but the Ireland to France inter-connector is already underway:
https://commission.europa.eu/news/celtic-interconnector-between-ireland-and-france-next-milestone-reached-2022-11-25-0_en
As an aside to your comment about Scotland’s use of hydroelectricity: I feel we are seriously behind in this country when it comes to harnessing this power. I worked for an American company in Spain that was involved in computerising the control of hydroelectric schemes and was amazed at how relatively advanced these schemes were back in early 1970. Yet in the UK , outside of Scotland there are only a small handful of hydro schemes. Feels like we’re missing out.
[Sorry if this is somewhat off topic, but the above comment just reminded me ;)]
I remain optimistic that the citizens of the UK will eventually remember the reasons that led us to joining the EEC in 1973, and we will decide to rejoin the EU. When we do, I expect the EU will still exist and will welcome us back, because it will be in our mutual best interests.
But I don’t think that will happen for at least another two parliaments or 10 years, and probably in reality significantly longer. It is a project for the next political generation, but I hope to see it before I die (on the same timescale as I am optimistic we will finally see nuclear fusion generating electricity on a commercial scale).
Given that timetable, I expect an increasing degree of divergence between the UK and the EU in the meantime. It is what it is. And we will have only Westminster and Whitehall to blame for any friction or other problems it causes, not Brussels.
“When we do, I expect the EU will still exist and will welcome us back, because it will be in our mutual best interests.”
It only takes a single veto to scupper the whole thing. Any one of the 27. Even if it were in our mutual best interest, I’m not confident of being able to convince them all of that after that crap we’ve just pulled. So there’s the issue of the veto to contend with as well as the very serious political inertia to overcome in even contemplating asking to join again. I just don’t think it will ever happen. It’s probably even less likely than becoming a republic.
Fundamental divergence is not about to commence. A slow process of working towards Accommodation will be the story from now on. All talk of rejoining is for the birds. Particularly if it involves rejoining under the previous arrangements.
Meanwhile, hopefully a new sensible government probably Liberal Democrat working closely with a Labour majority will focus their attention on making sense of UK politics and rebuilding a nation so painfully divided by the whole Brexit saga.
The Labour Party and the Tory Party are currently squabbling over a tiny minority of voters whom Deborah Mattinson, Starmer’s Director of Strategy, describes as “hero voters”.
They are the voters who swing directly from Tory to Labour, effectively having double the impact of anyone who moves from a third party. The profile of these voters is Brexit-supporting, older (but not retired), economically precarious, socially conservative, white, not in big cities and without higher education.
Socially conservative, if you are unaware is a euphemism for people who have a tendency towards racism, sexism (to which women are not immune), homophobia, ablism … and they are probably not particularly favourable towards single parents either.
I am afraid to say that the attitude towards education of many of these heroes may be summed up as suspicious of, if not hostile towards education.
Claire Ainsley, whom Sir Keir appointed his senior policy adviser on becoming Labour leader, had been working with the heroes in focus groups before the General Election.
And the reported words of such focus group members have been spoken now and then, even by Sir Keir himself.
In the context of divergence, buy, make and sell more in Britain (to boost British exports), the spam on Labour’s policy menu, it comes with everything, whether you want it or not, was crafted not by Rachel Reeves, but by Brexit true believer, Ainsley, BA Politics, MSc Global Politics, to please the Red Wall.
To be fair, the Tories talk of buying British, particularly the likes of John Redwood.
Labour’s planned policy, out of George Osborne via Rishi Sunak, of encouraging British based pension funds to diversify into greater investment into risky start ups and the development and construction of major infrastructure projects is an example of how “Labour will use flexibility outside of the EU to ensure British regulation is adapted to suit British needs.
“… we will change rules on insurance, which are currently taken directly from EU regulations, to allow British pension savers to own and build British infrastructure.”
In other news, British pension funds last September managed to mislay £500bn, not on paper and under the current regulatory regime.
What price divergence in that context?
Lisa Nandy has rather given the game away in her recent book in which she sets out how England may be reshaped in the form of Wigan (and, yes, we are predominantly talking about English voters).
If UKIP has triumphed in the Tory Party, Blue Labour is very much riding high in Labour.
The Stranglers were wrong, there are heroes, just not where anyone expected to find them.
The anxieties and prejudices of Mattinson’s heroes, for now, exert a magnetic pull on the national debate to the exclusion of other voters.
Therefore, the gravitational pull of Hard Brexit would not reduce under the current policies of Labour, if it wins the next General Election.
In Sir Keir, we do seem to have an honourable man, fallen amongst the cynical, ever more shredding his principles, grubbing for votes amongst a group of people who do not share his party’s values whilst liberals shout, ever more loudly, “Get the Tories out!”
I came across this on the Guardian website recently which may explain a lot:
“People tend to ask: do politicians know they’re lying? Are they sincere or insincere? Politicians don’t think in those terms. They think: this is the case I have to put – almost like a QC – whatever I privately feel.”
https://www.theguardian.com/stage/2018/may/06/david-hare-james-graham-drama-politics-labour-party
The sad thing is there was another option.
Labour might have built a firm coalition of support from amongst disillusioned Leave voters and (small) business folk, as well as One Nation Conservatives, appalled at the direction of travel of their party and the estimated 25% of the Tory’s General Election vote that voted Remain in the Brexit referendum.
And with the policies Labour now rejects, like electoral reform, reached out to folk who normally vote Green; Liberal Democrat; PC or SNP to encourage them to lend Labour their votes at the next General Election.
Ah, but such a strategy requires hard graft, the search for consensus on individual issues and attention to detail.
Better it would seem for the Whigs, sorry, Labour, mangling a half remembered quotation from 19th century British politics, to take part in a two carriage race with the Tories.
Two carriages, splashing each other with mud admittedly, but nonetheless heading for the exact same destination.
We’ll never be rejoining under previous arrangements. We’ll be required to take the whole panoply of regulations, Schengen and monetary union too.
Unlike David the REUL Bill being scrapped gives me some optimism that the destructive tendency have lost their influence and the middle managers are in the ascendant. There will come a point when they realise that going back cap in hand is the lesser workload/costs solution.
Even as a Brexiter it’s not worth diverging from global standards just for the sake of it – few commentators really understand that most EU SM rules are derived from global bodies such as WTO/WCO/UNECE/ICAO et al – the EU is as much as a rule -taker as is the UK from these global intergovernmental bodies.
The UK will likely to continue to diverge in services – particularly Financial & Digital services inc AI not least because our legal system is based on precedent & is not permissive /prescriptive per the EU lex.
AI is likely to be a game changer whether EU likes it ( it doesn’t currently) or not – UK far more likely to work with US and similar countries to agree global regulatory standards given the likely economic & productivity improvements that AI offer’s.
Finally, nature abhors a vacuum – the longer the UK is out of the EU , the status quo becomes less attractive – UK is already pivoting away from EU economically and longer term over trade. The high cost/high protection/high welfare costs/lower growth of EU is less attractive to faster growing markets ( & populations) of Asia-Pac – it’s why TTCPP & Aukus is strategically important for us.
David’s post contains many sensible and insightful points, but the overall thesis advanced is open to question. The Windsor Framework is emphatically good news since it ends the UK continuing violation of commitments it had freely entered into to prevent the creation of a hard border in Ireland. Yes, the implementation of the Framework isn’t (and won’t be) entirely unproblematic. The same will apply to other steps towards sanity that the government has taken, such as the abandonment of the proposed bonfire of EU legacy regulations. But it was impossible for the government (any government) to have continued down the path that Johnson had followed in any case. His policy was essentially one of prevarication, of putting off the real consequences of Brexit through a cavalier attitude towards the country’s legal commitments. That could not have gone on indefinitely without consequences that even Johnson was unwilling to risk. The Trade and Co-operation Agreement comes up for renegotiation in 2025. How would that have gone (or go) if the UK was still not fulfilling the most basic of its obligations under the agreements it signed when leaving the EU? I agree that there is plenty of further pain from implementing Brexit to come, but things would not be any better or easier if the government fails to take what steps it can to mitigate the damage. The more of these, the better. The only downside for rejoiners is that they may have to abandon some illusions about how difficult the path back to EU membership is likely to be. That doesn’t add up, in reality, to “very bad news”. On the contrary.
The Cardiff Uni political scientist Thomas Prosser (who campaigned for Remain) has written plausibly about how even medium term divergence will create conditions that will come to suit many businesses. So that the prospect of another move against the status quo would be unpopular. In that light, this post looks set to stand the test of time.
The real bad news for Rejoiners is not the dumping of the sunset clause that was inevitable in the sense that anything is inevitable, but rather the fact that the two main political parties, the one that has held power for the last 13 years and the one that hasn’t, aren’t interested in rejoining – they can’t rejoin because of freedom of movement – both parties are being held hostage by large minorities to ensure freedom of movement never comes back This at a time when net migration shows the biggest inward flow of migrants in over 8 years. That is the real bad news for Rejoiners.
For all the excellent reasons given by other commentators, one can expect divergence, in reality, to be minimal.
However, one area that could usefully be examined is the possibility of equivalence.
In a sane regime, where one expects particular results, one is less concerned about the means of obtaining those results. It is there that the UK has some greater flexibility than EU member states, because there do exist EU regulations that are cumbersome, and which can be improved. The UK can develop different, more efficient and effective processes for achieving the same results as EU regulations – and also has the freedom to develop better regulations that are a superset of European ones (there can be a business advantage in better quality). Mandating how things should be done restricts the scope for improvement. Mandating results gives freedom to achieve them in a better way.
If Brexit has any sunny uplands, it is in the freedom to do things better.
Divergence will also occur where the Eu evolves to take advantage of its stronger position and the UK is not able to keep up. It is not within the UK gift to prevent fundamental divergence, nor to ensure that accommodation occurs or works for UK interests.
So what has actually happened to the ‘bonfire of legislation’ since the December 2019 general election.
The number of Statutory Instruments in each of the last three years is as follows:
2020 – 1669
2021 – 1443
2022 – 1392.
Approximately 80% of this legislation is passed using the negative procedure (signed by a Minister and laying it in the House of Commons for 40 days). If no objection then it automatically becomes law after that time.
So how much scrutiny has approximately 3600 out of 4500 pieces of legislation received by our MP’s. I appreciate that some is just to make minor amendments but, even so, it seems like a huge amount of time is spent drafting this stuff that nobody either cares about or complies with.
Brexit was firstly about removing the UK from the EU and secondly afterwards undermining and destroying from inside the institutions of the EU.
The majority of the 450 million EU citizens are not daft. They tolerate Brits because Brits amuse them and are not viewed as a danger. You have given them Bercow and his ties, Bojo, and now Charles 111. It is fanciful to think that the UK will be voted back into the EU during the lifetimes of the majority of people presently alive. It is equally fanciful to think that the UK will rejoin the Single Market because of the 4Fs.
The reality of Brexit is reduced economic activity leading to reduced comparative global prosperity . This is all a result of the actions taken by the Kingdom ( United ) itself.
You have eaten all your cake. You may have cleaned all the shelves in the cake shop but after nearly seven years you have nothing with which to replenish these shelves.
Wrecking the EU was certainly part of the plan – the idea was to encourage other member states to split away by showing what a great success Brexit was. (Instead, of course, it’s served to frighten them out of doing so). But in my view many people don’t fully realise the extent to which Brexit was part of a much larger project and was underpinned not simply by Atlanticism (hence earlier enthusiasms for NAFTA and TTIP) but also by the semi-imperial and racially-tinged idea of the ‘Anglosphere’. And now we have the ‘Indo-Pacific tilt’ and AUKUS. All of this is performative anti-Europeanism. Really, if these people could do so, they’d detach England from the rest of the UK, pull up the anchor and moor the island somewhere off the coast of Australia.
In my opinion, I believe that Brexit has started that very process of ‘unhitching’ England, and the creation of the ‘Dis-United Kingdom ‘
Businesses trade, not nations.
As Michael Gove has observed, Brexit has levelled the playing field for companies used to trading with the Single Market and other countries.
The same level of complexity, more or less now exists in both cases.
Greater complexity, in the case of trading with the Single Market.
But the Single Market remains geographically much, much closer than any other major market.
It is a truism that not only does the market in which you sell sets the rules and regulations of the goods and services that you sell there, but that profit maximising businesses will sell into the markets where they may, well, make the most profit.
As ever, selling into markets with the fastest economic growth is mentioned.
Being in the EU never prevented that.
Columbia, for example, has had a fast growing economy in recent years coinciding I believe with changes in how estimates of the size and growth of an economy may be, cough, legitimately determined, even if the trade being counted is not legal.
One needs must consider growth rates in context.
An economy of, say, 100 units, actually growing 2% per year may grow more slowly than an economy of 10 units, growing at 10% per year, but at the end of year one, the larger economy will be two units larger and the smaller one, one unit larger.
I would observe regarding the labour market that whilst immigration has risen, partly due to counting EU students as migrants where they were not before, businesses are finding it harder to fill vacancies.
1 million vacancies thereabouts at this time at all hard and soft skill levels across the UK economy.
There is no shame at this point in putting your hand up, if you do not appreciate the distinction between the two skill types.
The distinction has significance in the context of an economy with a large service sector and in which around 90% of private sector employers employ nine or fewer staff.
In my humble opinion, something is not working in our labour market, but the nitty gritty of recruitment and training is not for the think tank wonks and Commentariat column writers or politicians, for that matter.
Never mind the quality of migrant workers, just count the numbers, the dipstick or stock, and not even the churn or, if you prefer on and off flows.
It is a matter for the rude mechanicals in the fields of recruitment and training, employers and even experts, some of whom used to work for the Department of Work and Pensions, but not in my experience at the Home Office.
We have still heard too much from experts.
It seems rather odd to have taken back control and ended up with a misfiring labour market with, for example, medical personnel heading for better jobs, pay, terms and conditions in countries like Australia.
UK based companies may never trade with Australia much more than they do now, but we are currently leaking staff more than before.
The British brain drain, much beloved by thriller writers and film makers in the 1960s, because readers and filmgoers might easily relate to it, is back, Palmer.
It must all be rather perplexing for those who voted for Brexit, because they believed the forrins were coming over here and taking our jobs (and no one from here was going over there, much).
Even more baffling must be Northern Ireland wherein the economic benefits of staying in parts of the EU are being extolled by amongst others, Rishi Sunak, our Brexiteer Prime Minister, creating a rather jarring comparison with the state of the economy in the rest of the UK.
A Northern Ireland border poll in that context will be rather amusing as re-unification would move Northern Ireland into the EU.
A move that would be argued against on current form by amongst others, those Brexiteers who have stressed the benefits of Northern Ireland’s current status and by Sir Keir’s Labour Party that under all of his predecessors had a policy of not taking sides in a border poll.
Whatever the merits or otherwise of divergence, Brexit is unlikely to become any less baffling, in the near future, to those who voted to Leave believing the simple promises of Dominic Cummings’s campaign.
One of those, we have now had confirmed was Boris Johnson, himself.
Taking a leaf out of someone else’s book, how long before we learn Johnson sent the wrong article to The Times back in 2016?
Absolutely, businesses trade, countries facilitate the process.
There are other dimensions at play here that ought to be factored in.
1. Transition – UK, then EEC then EU joined at the hip for 45 years – it was always going to take time to disentangle
2. EFFA/EEA semi Norway Option was never seriously considered as an interim non BRINO solution
3. The Eurozone has for a no. of years been the tail wagging the EU dog – the UK not being, nor never seeking to be in the euro/euro monetary system has been disadvantageous too UK economically but was a sovereign, financial & governance step too far ( once in Euro, there was no going back, ergo, there was no going in paradoxically)
4. The UKs trade was in the EU, only with 5 or 6 big countries – we did and do very little trade with c. 20 odd countries – the much vaunted 450m rich population was/is nearer to 200m in reality
5. UK politics & services ( financial & AI/digital) don’t align with EU vision/law –
6. EU regulatory/protection/high cost welfare/socialist/green polities doesn’t easily align UK’s more agile, bluntly more anglo-saxon ( still) market driven economy
All in all divergence will become more commonplace because it’s easier for nations to diverge than converge ( as the European Commission & Parliament) is finding with outliers like Poland & Hungary.
“Now we’re no longer a member we can change our domestic legislation as much as we want and sell new (financial) products to a market of 67 million rather than the 450 million in the EU.”
“Being able to change rules for our domestic market is very small beer and not a great Brexit benefit.”
https://twitter.com/charlotsmoore/status/1492055209085911059?s=20
The City of London was a backwater before the UK joined the EEC.
Now we have left the EU, the City is reverting to be a backwater.
I will begin to seriously believe in the predictions for Artificial Intelligence when it stops being a solution looking for a problem to solve.
I gather back in the day those revolving whiteboards were sold by salespeople, partly on the strength that if you held a drywipe pen firmly against the surface and started the board revolving you might draw a straight line.
There are people who voted for Lexit, Left Exit, who think the European Union is some sort of capitalist conspiracy and that Vladimir Putin is more sinned against than sinning.
“A Northern Ireland border poll in that context will be rather amusing as re-unification would move Northern Ireland into the EU.”
That’s an aspect of the Windsor Framework that I hadn’t considered. Not only does it make the DUP look like fools by removing any reasonable objection to remaining in the customs union, but it also makes the case for re-unification considerably weaker. Sunak is clever.
Rishi Sunak has been extolling the economic benefits of Northern Ireland’s position with regard to the EU.
Surely what is sauce for the Northern Irish goose is sauce for the British gander?
And Ireland is proving to be a clear beneficiary of Brexit whilst still in the EU which would seem to strengthen the case for reunification at a time when even some Unionists are beginning to think that being a valued part of Ireland might be better than being merely a pawn in Westminster political games.
I think you may be missing the point. Sunak has not been extolling the virtues of NI being in the EU, which would be an odd position for a Tory PM to take after all this. He has been extolling the virtues of the unique situation in which NI can partake of both the EU single market and the UK market, such as it is.
What reason to join the Republic of Ireland when it already has all the benefits, plus remaining within the British market? After all the people of NI already have the right to identify as Irish.
What’s good for the NI goose was good for the British gander, but we threw the baby out with the bathwater.
As for unionists being a pawn in Westminster’s games, well I personally can’t understand how there are any unionists left at this point, but apparently the animosity runs very, very deep. And the DUP were hardly pawns when May lost her majority. They made it virtually impossible for her to negotiate an agreement that could get through Parliament.
The extreme unionists want a hard border and they want to destroy the GFA, which they never agreed with in the first place. They now are failing to retain much of any influence either at home or in Parliament. So with this Windsor Framework, I can only hope the republicans will now calm down.
I’m imagining the look on Dominic Cummings’ face at some future date when England tries to follow the Scottish Republic’s example in rejoining the EU, only to see its application vetoed by one member-state — Turkey.
Of course, there will be legacy of distrust to overcome, and a latter-day De Gaulle may keep us out. But never is a long time.
In my view, the UK made a mistake when it failed to join the EEC from the start in the 1950s, missing the opportunity to shape it from the inside. As Russell Bretherton (the British civil servant who attended the Spaak Committee in 1955-56) wrote : “We have, in fact, the power to guide the conclusions of this conference in almost any direction we like, but beyond a certain point we cannot exercise that power without ourselves becoming, in some measure, responsible for the results.”
That strategic mistake allowed De Gaulle to keep us out under Macmillan in 1961 and Wilson in 1967. Wilson’s government made a further approach in 1969 and that was carried through by Heath.
If the past is any guide, a movement to rejoin could easily be a 10 to 20 year project.
I benefitted from the opportunities that EU membership presented for most of my life, and sadly my children will miss out on that. But perhaps their generation will help us to correct that mistake, for the benefit of their own children in due course.
Quite often, if Twitter and the Commentariat are anything to go by those who see great economic opportunities in divergence have no background in business, are currently not in business or have no plans to start up in business.
Moreover, a certain Boris Johnson, back in 2013, wrote in Churchillian style that “If we left the EU … we would have to recognise that most of our problems are not caused by “Bwussels”, but by chronic British short-termism, inadequate management, sloth, low skills, a culture of easy gratification and under-investment in both human and physical capital and infrastructure.”
We have left the EU and I am not seeing much evidence of politicians and other key stakeholders addressing the issues we did not have to leave the EU to address and which would get in the way of following up any benefits of divergence.
In particular, the poor quality of too much of British management and business ownership rarely features in any discussion about improving productivity.
I am not sure we are particularly well placed to exploit any benefits of divergence.
Incidentally, you would think that someone who might give master classes in sloth and who is addicted to easy gratification would appreciate how many millions in the UK are employed in the leisure and tourism industry?