Category: Brexit

The Brexit compact: the EU does not mind the UK getting the credit, as long as the EU gets what it wants

15th October 2021

There is a lovely quote from Ronald Reagan:

‘On my desk in the Oval Office, I have a little sign that says: There is no limit to what a man can do or where he can go if he doesn’t mind who gets the credit.”‘

(Source)

And this describes more-or-less where we are now with Brexit.

The European Union does not care what the political and media supporters of the United Kingdom say or do.

But it knows the United Kingdom government cares desperately what its political and media supporters say or do.

So we are now in the situation where there is a convenient compact.

The European Union decides what will happen at each stage of Brexit so as to protect its interests and those of member states, especially Ireland.

Speedy Article 50 notification without prior negotiation; sequencing; the joint declaration; the financial settlement; the exit agreement; the trade and cooperation agreement; the Northern Irish protocol proposals, et cetera.

And in turn, the United Kingdom can call each stage a triumph for its hard bargaining, and so get the domestic coverage it craves.

Everyone is a winner.

(Or they think they are.)

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Understanding the secrecy of the United Kingdom over its proposals for the Northern Irish protocol

14th October 2021

We are told that the United Kingdom government has provided its proposals to the European Union for changes to the Northern Irish Protocol.

We can assume this to be true – else the European Union would say that they have not received such proposals.

(It is sad we cannot trust the word of the government on this without express or implicit corroboration.)

But these proposals do not appear to have been made public.

This cannot be explained by the usual ‘cards close to the chest’ excuse – as the European Union know what those proposals say.

So there must be another reason.

And the only possible reason appears to be is that the United Kingdom government does not want the people of the United Kingdom – or the press of the United Kingdom – to know what is in those proposals.

Just think about this.

Brexit was supposed to be about the United Kingdom people ‘taking back control’ from the European Union.

But now the United Kingdom government is allowing the European Union to be privy to proposals on what happens with one part of the United Kingdom – and not the people who live and work there.

It is an extraordinary situation, if you think about it.

This is the reality of ‘taking back control’.

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A hard look at the latest Brexit speech of Lord Frost

13th October 2021

Yesterday the Brexit minister David Frost gave a speech – and it is a speech that is worth considering carefully.

One reason to consider it carefully is that – unlike many ministerial speeches (and articles) that are produced by advisors and other functionaries – it is plain that this speech is the product of the minister’s mind.

As such, the speech has more historical and probative value that the usual erratic yet dry sequences of banalities, evasions and misdirections that constitute most ministerial communications.

We have an actual insight into one key minister is thinking (or not thinking) at this key moment, and this is rare, and we should appreciate it.

And as he is the minister who negotiated the two Brexit agreements – the withdrawal agreement and the trade and cooperation agreement – an insight into his thought (and lack of thought) is especially important at this time.

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The explicit inspiration for the title of yesterday’s speech is a pamphlet by the eighteenth-century Whig writer and politician Edmund Burke.

And yesterday’s speech is, in turn, expressly a sequel to Frost’s Brexit speech in February 2020, which was also named after a publication by Burke.

In that February 2020 speech, English-born Frost described Burke as ‘one of my country’s great political philosophers’.

Burke was Irish.

And Burke died in 1797, before the Act of Union between Great Britain and Ireland.

This is just not a debating point: the slip is indicative of the shoddy combination of showiness and shallowness – about Ireland and other matters – in both of Frost’s speeches.

The Burke cited is the Burke of the quotation dictionaries, and of the beginnings and conclusions of C-grade A-level history essays, and not the Burke of history.

The Burke of history would probably have impeached this illiberal government in an instant.

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The two Frost speeches, looked at together, reveal tensions.

For example, the February 2020 speech praised agreement negotiation at speed.

Referring to the then-prospective trade and cooperation agreement, 2020 Frost said:

‘…we can do this quickly. We are always told we don’t have enough time. But we should take inspiration, I think, from the original Treaty of Rome back in 1957. This was negotiated and signed in just under 9 months – surely we can do as well as that as well as our great predecessors, with all the advantages we have got now?’

But 2021 Frost does not like agreement negotiation at speed: the Northern Irish Protocol was ‘drawn up in extreme haste in a time of great uncertainty’.

The problem here is that there is no deeper thought beneath the phrases employed.

Frost has a fine phrase for negotiation at speed, and he has a fine phrase against negotiation in extreme haste.

But he does not realise nor care that the two phrases conflict: they are both simple expedients to get him through to his next paragraph.

This explains why during the Brexit negotiations Frost has been so constantly wrong-footed.

There is no substance, for all the paraded erudition.

The big negotiation taking place here is not between the United Kingdom and the European Union, but between the David Frost of 2020 and the David Frost of 2021.

And, somehow, both are losing.

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Looking more closely at yesterday’s speech, you will see that it is structured (superficially) as a sequence of five ‘points’:

‘First to say that Brexit has changed our international interests and hence will change our patterns of European relationships – not necessarily fundamentally, but significantly. Second, that Brexit means competition – we will be setting a different path on economic policy. Third, that Brexit was about democracy – it is a democratic project that is bringing politics back home. Fourth, that the EU and we have got into a low-equilibrium somewhat fractious relationship, but that it need not always be like that – but also that it takes two to fix it. And fifth and finally, that fixing the very serious problem we have in the Northern Ireland Protocol is a pre-requisite for getting to a better place.’

Each of these points, however, turn out to be exercises in characterisation.

The United Kingdom position is characterised, and the European Union position is characterised.

Each characterisation is loaded and self-serving: the United Kingdom is portrayed as blameless and misunderstood, and the European Union is depicted as ignorant and even spiteful.

These characterisations are so extreme that both are better described as mischaracterisations.

And so the characterisations dissolve on closer examination as nothing more than excuses and accusations.

For example, take the issue of policy.

At one point Frost says that the United Kingdom will develop more substantial policy relationships with some European Union countries and not others, rather than the European Union as a whole.

But then he complains that the European Union is too rigid in binding the member states together in matters of policy:

‘In most EU member states many important things can’t be changed through elections – trade policy, monetary policy, fiscal policy, important elements of immigration policy, indeed some important aspects of industrial policy.’

Frost does not seem to realise that the United Kingdom is – and will be treated as – a ‘third country’.

The tactic of trying to circumvent the European Union and with engaging member states directly did not work during the Brexit negotiations, and there is no reason to believe it would work now.

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But the most important part of this speech is about Northern Ireland.

Here he makes some general contentions about sovereignty and the role of the European Court of Justice.

He then insists that the import of these contentions is that the Northern Irish protocol needs to be replaced.

In a way this is a reversal of the usual caricature of continentals being obsessed with airy abstractions, in contrast to our robust Anglo-Saxon empiricism.

For the complaint as articulated by Frost does not amount to much more than a general objection to the European Court of Justice on conceptual grounds.

And, in the meantime, the European Union is proposing a range of practical measures to give efficacy to the Protocol but without removing the minor and residual role of the European Court of Justice.

And so he is wrong-footed again.

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The one thing in common between the two speeches is that Frost is brashly defiant in his support for Brexit.

He is certain that it was a historical necessity that the United Kingdom had to break free.

This, in turn, means he sneers at the European Union for not understanding the true nature of Brexit and its implications.

But both the 2020 and 2021 speeches reveal that the real failure to understand the implications of Brexit are with Frost and other United Kingdom ministers.

The European Union, on the other hand, seem to understand the (current) United Kingdom government all too well.

Frost complains about lack of trust: ‘we are constantly faced with generalised accusations that can’t be trusted and are not a reasonable international actor’.

But these accusations are not ‘generalised’ – instead they are, to use a phrase, ‘very specific and limited’.

And, according to statements today from a former Brexit adviser, the accusation of bad faith is well grounded.

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So, yes.

Frost’s speech has historical and probative value.

But it is not an impressive piece of work.

Characterisations (and mischaracterisations) do the work of propositions; accusations pile upon excuses; assertions are implicitly undermined by other assertions; and (ahem) very specific and limited concerns are dismissed as too general to matter.

And so the true historical and probative value of the speech is not as an insight into the thinking of the government at this stage of Brexit, but to its lack of thought.

Here it should be noted that Frost relies on the (supposed) popularity of Brexit as its ultimate justification:

‘That’s why I don’t see anything wrong with Brexit being described as a populist policy. If populism means doing what people want – challenging a technocratic consensus – then I am all for it.’

The wise counterpoint to this populism, of course, was once put as follows: that our ministers and representatives owe us their judgement – and that they betray us instead of serve us if they sacrifice their judgement to public opinion.

And who made this compelling counterpoint so eloquently?

Edmund Burke.

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Why does it matter if the United Kingdom government breaks international law? And do such a breach really mean the Rule of Law is under threat?

12th October 2021

Yesterday many celebrities of legal Twitter were engaged in a detailed discussion about whether the government of the United Kingdom was really threatening ‘the rule of law’.

(Celebrity in legal Twitter is akin to what Jasper Carrott once said of the disc jokey Ed Doolan: world-famous in Birmingham.)

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The discussion was prompted by this thought-provoking tweet and thread from @SpinningHugo:

https://twitter.com/SpinningHugo/status/1447447283570774017

The proposition is as follows: (a) nobody disputes that the United Kingdom breaking international law is a bad thing; (b) but the reason it is a bad thing is not because it offends the ‘rule of law’.

The proposition contains a clever and subtle distinction, and the tweeter (who I do not know personally) puts it forward with characteristic charm and the confidence that is an endearing quality of their Twitter account.

But I fear it is not entirely correct.

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What is correct is that the phrase ‘the rule of law’ can be deployed almost unthinkingly.

And the notion of a thing offending ‘the rule of law’ can also be too easily adopted.

Not every unlawful action by a government is an assault on the ‘the rule of law’.

A government can commit a tort or some other civil wrong; a public authority may act outside of its powers; and agents of the state can commit criminal offences.

That in each instance the courts are capable of holding the relevant entity or individual to account is an example of the rule of law working, rather than it being subverted.

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What is also correct is that ‘international law’ is not like other sorts of law.

For example, much of it exists without any practical means of enforcement or even adjudication.

At law school, I heard an eminent professor describe international law as ‘a fiction’.

There is a saying that domestic law is a matter of law, foreign law is a matter of fact, and international law is a matter of fantasy.

And there is another saying that if a rule is not capable of enforcement then it is not really a ‘law’.

If these sayings have any purchase, then an assertion that there has been breach of international law may perhaps have a political or normative meaning, but it does not necessarily have much legal meaning.

And so a breach of international law by a nation state is not by itself enough to say that the very principle of ‘the rule of law’ – which is attached to all law, domestic and international – is being attacked.

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And, for completeness, ‘the rule of law’ is not always necessarily a good thing.

Many evil things – from slavery to torture – can be placed on a legal basis, and compliance with such laws is not a good thing.

To the extent that we should care about the principle ‘the rule of law’ then other principles are at least as important, such as equality, due process, accountability, democracy, legitimacy, the separation of powers, universal human rights, and so on.

The rule of law, and nothing else, can sometimes be indistinguishable from tyranny.

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But.

I think @SpinningHugo makes two errors.

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The first error is to suggest (by implication) that the breach of international law by the United Kingdom is not capable of being an attack on the principle of ‘the rule of law’.

There are breaches, and there are breaches.

And some breaches can be trivial or substantial examples of non-compliance, and some breaches can be intended or designed to undermine systems (if they exist) of enforcement and adjudication, and may also create a moral hazard that discredits the legal regime more generally.

Such breaches not only mean a rule has been broken, but that the very rules themselves are placed into peril.

In essence: some breaches of international law are also demonstrations that a state actor simply does not believe that legal rules apply to them.

And as ‘the rule of law’ – if it means anything – means that all are subject to the law, then – logically – such an act of open disavowal can only violate that principle.

In essence: any state actor is capable of breaching international law in a manner that undermines the general principle that the law should be obeyed.

Even the United Kingdom.

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The second error is to aver that the recent (and ongoing) post-Brexit conduct of the United Kingdom is not itself a threat to ‘the rule of law’.

(So not only is the United Kingdom capable of breaking international law here in a way that is a threat to the rule of law, but that it is actually doing so.)

The United Kingdom government last year sought to legislate so as to deliberately breach obligations it had entered into under the Northern Irish protocol.

The protocol provides legal obligations on the United Kingdom (and the European Union):

(a) that were freely entered into,

(b) that are capable of enforcement and adjudication through an agreed formal process; and

(c) which have been placed into domestic law by statute.

The Northern Irish protocol is therefore, by any meaningful definition, ‘law’.

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Last year the United Kingdom government was not about to breach the Northern Irish protocol by accident or through recklessness, or on the basis of a grey area of interpretation.

The United Kingdom government intended to breach the the Northern Irish protocol – by deliberately using domestic legislation.

This was, in essence, the United Kingdom government asserting that a legal obligation did not bind it.

Since that threatened (but withdrawn) threat the government has not been so blatant in its commitment to law-breaking.

Yet it is still seeking ways for it to avoid or ignore a legal commitment it entered into, on the basis of a belief that some legal commitments do not apply to the United Kingdom.

This instance of subversive intent, if translated into solid political action, is a threat to ‘the rule of law’.

It is not just that the United Kingdom government will break a legal commitment.

It is also not just that the United Kingdom government does not care that it will break a legal commitment.

It is because the United Kingdom government is intending to break a legal commitment on the basis that it does not believe that it should be bound by that legal commitment.

For such a move not only is a breach of a particular rule, but a fundamental repudiation of the general principle that a legal command should be obeyed.

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Perhaps some may say that some legal commands should not be obeyed.

But we should not fool ourselves into thinking that such disobedience is not a breach of ‘the rule of law’.

It is a breach of ‘the rule of law’ – but it is a breach that you think does not matter.

It is to assert that ‘the rule of law’ sometimes does not matter absolutely.

And that – well – is a different proposition to saying that a breach of international law cannot be a breach of ‘the rule of law’.

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The Brexit Policy of Admiral Boom

11th October 2021

You will remember from Mary Poppins the character of Admiral Boom.

In the first Poppins book of 1934 the admiral is introduced early, almost as the first absurd or magical element of the story:

‘…Mr Banks popped his head out of the window and looked down the Lane to Admiral Boom’s house at the corner.

‘This was the grandest house in the Lane, and the Lane was very proud of it because it was built exactly like a ship.

‘There was a flagstaff in the garden, and on the roof was a gilt weathercock shaped like a telescope.’

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Given the problems of the United Kingdom government in procuring a post-Brexit trade flagship, perhaps building one in a garden, with a flagstaff, is not as absurd or magical in 2021 as it would have been to readers in 1934.

But in the book there is no time gun.

The cannon was devised for the 1964 film:

And as you will remember, the firing of the cannon is regular and loud and a cause of few moments’ inconvenience.

But ultimately the cannon fire is inconsequential: the vases and the pictures are put back as before, and the characters carry on as before.

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Admiral Boom is now, it seems, in charge of Brexit policy.

On a regular basis – usually at the weekend for the excitement of the Sunday press – there is an explosion.

Article 16 of the Northern Irish protocol will be triggered, or something.

There is then a sudden flurry of a frenzy, but soon the political actors carry on as before.

This is not to say that Article 16 will not get triggered – the United Kingdom government has done stranger things during Brexit.

And it is not to say that – under cover of Article 16 – a deal could not be done by the European Union and the United Kingdom – for realpolitik can take many forms.

But it is to say these regular threats of triggering Article 16 are being regarded as only as loud and momentarily inconvenient as the firing of Admiral Boom’s cannon.

Either Article 16 should be triggered or it should not be, but the performative politics of regularly threatening to do so should be avoided.

Article 16 is intended for urgent situations – but this long run up indicates a lack of urgency.

(And Article 16 does not say what those currently wanting to trigger it thinks it says, as this blog has previously averred.)

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The current Brexit minister David Frost – who is the one usually saying that Article 16 will be triggered – is not in a credible position.

Here are his tweets from when the agreement was signed.

‘excellent deal with the EU’

‘the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice ends’

‘a fully independent country once again’

The current news is that Frost is citing the (very limited) role of the European Court of Justice in the protocol as the basis for ‘a significant change’.

 

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So we have the preposterous negotiation of Frost against Frost.

The Frost of 2020 who not only trumpeted the Brexit deal in general but that it ended the role of European Court of Justice in particular against the Frost of 2021 who now says the role of that court is fundamentally important.

And somehow in this negotiation both Frosts are losing.

Both were/are wrong.

The Frost of 2020 did not want to admit the small continuing role of the European Court of Justice.

The Frost of 2021 does not want to admit that the small continuing role of the European Court of Justice is of almost no practical importance.

The European Court of Justice is a sham issue – it is a contrived, bad faith attempt to find something – anything – to open up the protocol.

As an exercise in misdirection, it is up there with the Chewbacca defense:

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The current politics of the United Kingdom have a surreal quality – where things are better illustrated by references to Mary Poppins and South Park than by citing precedents from political history.

We have a Brexit agreement negotiated and celebrated as ‘excellent’ by the same minister who now says it is so flawed that it needs to be re-negotiated.

Like the (literally) ship-shape house introduced at the beginning of Mary Poppins, what should seem very odd has very soon become very normal.

Yet, as the attorney in South Park avers in another context, ‘it does not make sense.’

And the key to understanding so much of current law and policy of United Kingdom is that it does not make sense, but it is happening anyway.

Brace, brace.

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What if…there had not been a Brexit referendum in 2016?

9th October 2021

Currently on Disney+ is a series of animated programmes exploring what would happen if some point or other was changed in the Marvel Cinematic Universe.

Of course: when the source material is itself fantasy, the point of speculating about the effects of any changes can only be of limited import – just one fiction instead of another fiction.

With the real world, on the other hand, such counterfactuals at least start with what are understood to be facts.

And so: what if there had not been a referendum in 2016?

Presumably the Conservative government elected in 2015 would have stayed in office until 2020.

And presumably the Greek debt crisis and the migration crisis would have been unaffected.

Politically, however, there is no reason to believe that the rise in Ukip support would have abated.

And so all may have happened is that there would have been substantial Ukip gains in the 2020 general election – especially if the Conservatives were seen to have reneged on their manifesto commitment of holding a referendum.

If so, there might have just been a referendum in 2021 instead.

An alternative counterfactual is if the Conservatives had not promised a referendum in 2015 – but similarly that would have meant Ukip gains at that general election instead, with a referendum to follow.

The hard political truth may be that, by 2015 and the Ukip gains, a referendum on European Union membership was likely to take place.

Less obvious, however, is how events would have unfolded had Remain won the referendum – or if, in 2019, the parliamentary stalemate had been broken by a government of national unity proposing a further referendum that Remain could have won.

These – 2016 and 2019 – were the two political moments that Remain could have ‘won’ – not be refusing a referendum, but by winning that (or a further) referendum instead.

It was not so much that Leave won the referendum but that Remain lost (and then, in 2019, lost again).

And that did not need to happen.

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All because you ‘trigger’ Article 16 that does not make it a gun

4th October 2021

Another Monday, and another week begins with the government of the United Kingdom saying that it going to do something to show how serious it is about the Northern Irish protocol.

And David Frost, the Brexit minister, is again threatening to ‘trigger’ Article 16.

He may well do so, for this government has done dafter things in respect of Brexit and other matters.

But, as this blog has previously averred, if you actually look at what Article 16 says, you will see that it does not expressly provide for the suspension of the protocol.

It instead provides for a process – slow and deliberate – where the parties to the protocol can discuss measures fulfilling certain strict conditions, with the objective of ‘safeguarding’ the protocol.

Article 16 is not much of weapon.

All because you trigger Article 16 that does not make it a gun.

Maybe the European Union and the United Kingdom will do a deal under the cover of the Article 16 process.

Maybe; maybe not.

But the process in and of itself is not something that is intended to disrupt, let alone dismantle, the protocol.

Article 16 is more of a bicycle repair kit than a Beretta handgun.

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And what if Article 16 happens and the United Kingdom – either by law or politics – does not get the deal it is seeking?

What is the United Kingdom to do?

Threaten to trigger Article 16 a second time?

Or a third?

What if Frost’s bluff is called – and (yet again) he does not achieve what he is seeking to achieve?

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The one useful experience that is coming out of this situation is that – one hopes – United Kingdom ministers will be more careful about what international agreements they sign in this post-Brexit period.

An international legal instrument is not akin to a press release to be signed (off) so as to get Brexit done.

Entering into this agreement was a serious commitment, but the United Kingdom government was not serious.

But, just as inexperienced business people may sign one shoddy contract but never sign another one, perhaps the next generation of politicians – both those who make the decisions and those who hold them to account – will take the exercise of entering into a deal more seriously.

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Unless and until the European Union agrees to amend the protocol, the United Kingdom is stuck with the withdrawal deal it signed.

This is the practical reality of ‘getting Brexit done’ and ‘taking back control’ – the United Kingdom is perhaps more reliant on goodwill than before.

This legal dependency is the hidden, inconvenient truth of Brexit – and Brexiters could not have in substance made us any more reliant on the European Union if they had tried.

Brexit did get done – but by giving away control and not by taking it back.

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‘Regardless of Brexit’ – why bad policy-making is a more serious problem than Brexit

28th September 2021

Over at the Financial Times today there is an outstanding piece of journalism (again) by Sarah O’Connor.

In this article she explains why temporary/emergency migration schemes can be misconceived:

‘But it’s not always that simple. It is common for migrant workers to borrow money to pay for visas, transport and recruitment fees, which makes them vulnerable to exploitation. In addition, unlike under the EU’s free movement of labour, they are usually tied to a specific employer or recruiter which makes it hard for them to leave if they are treated poorly. As a result, the schemes can exacerbate poor pay and conditions in some sectors and calcify employers’ dependence on migrants.

‘One study by the US Economic Policy Institute concluded: “We cannot point to one historical example in which a temporary labour shortage has been remedied with a temporary labour migration programme, and then employers returned to hiring local workers.”

‘A favourite aphorism of migration experts is that there is nothing so permanent as a temporary migration programme.”

The article should be read in full here.

And then, setting out other examples, she avers:

‘None of this was inevitable. If the government had really wanted to improve the quality of jobs in the food and transport sectors, it could have done so regardless of Brexit.’

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And on Twitter, another insightful commentator Dr Anna Jerzewska set out the following thread:

And today Jerzewska correctly comments on O’Connor’s piece:

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There are purists who will say that any Brexit would be bad, for there was no way the process of the United Kingdom leaving the European Union could have gone well.

To an extent, the purists are correct: there was no way such a fundamental shift to settled commercial, policy and legal relations could go uniformly well.

But.

There is no reason why Brexit had to be done this botched way.

And this is not just the captaincy of hindsight.

(For example, in 2017 I set out some practical suggestions for how Brexit could be done better.)

Yet for political reasons, Brexit was done in a rush and with no planning or real thought (that is, with no real policy) as to what post-Brexit arrangements should be put in place.

And it is this policy failure – literally, the failure to have a policy – which is, alongside Brexit and Covid, the cause of so many of the current discontents and disruptions.

What Brexit is revealing and exposing are the policy failures of successive government, and especially recent governments.

Like discovered checks in chess, things have moved that show deep vulnerabilities that had hitherto been hidden.

And because the post-Brexit government is not serious about policy, and has no grasp of dealing with complex situations, we get expediency and bluster instead.

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Perhaps – like a policy equivalent to a market adjustment – a new group of politicians will now emerge to supply the policy seriousness that is now demanded.

This would be like how in many wars, new worldly commanders come to the fore to replace the clumsy peacetime generals who make the initial mistakes.

Perhaps.

But unless we soon have a generation of politicians that have the measure of the practical problems facing the United Kingdom then there can only be more chaos and crisis-management, instead of planning, thought and policy.

Brace brace.

*****

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The government proposes a Christmas gift for emergency visa workers: a deportation order on or after 25 December 2021

26th September 2021

Ebeneezer Blackadder:
In fact, there is something in your stocking, Baldrick, something I made for you.

Baldrick:
Ah, well that’s the best kind of gift, Mr. B. What is it?

Ebeneezer Blackadder:
It’s a fist. It’s for hitting people with. See?

– Blackadder’s Christmas Carol (1988)

*

The government’s proposal was daft to begin with.

An extraordinary proposal, even for this government.

And just in case you would not believe me, here is the BBC tweet announcing it – and the BBC’s name is good upon ’Change, for anything it choses to put its name to.

The necessary implication of the government’s proposal is that by automatic operation of law these lorry drivers who will deliver our Christmas goods and these poultry workers who will provide the Christmas turkeys will become illegal aliens at the stroke of midnight on Christmas Eve.

What a Christmas present for those who choose to come over here to provide services, goods and food for those of us in Great Britain.

The following tweet on this is (I think) intended as satire:

But as Zoe Gardner observes, it it not far off the actual legal position:

She is right: that would be the legal position on Christmas Day.

*

And as this blog averred yesterday, there is no reason to believe this quick fix will work in any case.

Let us remember what happened last year.

There is thereby no particular reason to think there will be a rush of workers wanting to help Great Britain out at this time of need.

And so the proposal may become an(other) example of the post-Brexit government discovering that the many problems created by Brexit are not capable of quick easy solutions.

Inviting such workers on terms where – once they have delivered Christmas goods in their lorries and helped provide the turkeys for Christmas dinners – they will literally become illegal aliens at the strike of midnight – is a thing not even Charles Dickens would have imagined.

To adapt Blackadder:

Ebeneezer Blackadder:
Thank you for helping save the British Christmas, there is something in your stocking, something I made for you.

EU migrant worker:
Ah, well that’s the best kind of gift, Mr. B. What is it?

Ebeneezer Blackadder:
It’s a deportation order. It’s for deporting people with. See?

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“Can any of you drive a lorry?”

25th September 2021

Some magazine covers are for the ages.

This The New European cover captures the current predicament of the current United Kingdom in respect of migration.

On one hand, the government is strident in its attempt to exclude migration.

Brexit-supporting politicians boasted about ending ‘freedom of movement’ as an end in and of itself.

(It always seemed odd to hear those boasts about ending freedoms – as if ending a freedom was something to be proud about.)

The current home secretary loudly wants, as a matter of policy, to deter cross-channel migration – a policy aimed at and appreciated by those who clap and cheer at such things.

And on the other hand, we not only have damaging self-inflicted labour shortages – we also now have a significant reversal of policy.

The United Kingdom government has realised – in perhaps the first of what will be a telling sequence of realisations about Brexit in reality – that ending freedom of movement causes serious problems as well as prompting claps and cheers.

*

One of the causes of this situation is that that those who wanted to suddenly and drastically end migration had no grasp of what would happen in practical, messy reality.

Brexit was (and remains) a political attempt at treating a complex problem as a simple problem.

And so we keep bouncing between the fantastic realm of slogans and the mundane world of reality.

Here the government’s reversal of some visas (the applications for which will be tied up in red tape) may not even work as a policy change.

If so, then such an abrupt reversal may not be enough to solve the problem this government has created for itself – and for us.

And if there is to be a sequence of realisations, where Brexit slogans – one can hardly call it an ideology – do not match Brexit reality, then the government will find that quick-fix reversals will not work either.

It is one thing to realise that reality does not match up with your slogans, but it is another to realise that no policy reversal will match up to the policy mistake you have made.

And so we may end up with a bunch of stressed, washed-out, desperate and directionless politicians – facing the question: can any of you drive a policy?

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