Category: Communications and Media & Law and Policy

A tale of two texts – what the United Kingdom should have published yesterday but did not

4th February 2020

Yesterday was the first working day since the United Kingdom formally left the European Union.

The European Union chief negotiator produced draft negotiation guidelines for the next stage of the Brexit process: that is the future relationship agreement between the United Kingdom and the European Union.

You can read the draft here, thirty-three pages of detailed guidelines, which if adopted will shape the next stage of the negotiations.

Back in March-April 2017, after the Article 50 notification, a similar set of guidelines shaped how the European Union approached – and then prevailed in – the withdrawal agreement negotiations.

The European Union negotiators put thought into and prepare for such negotiations: they understand process.

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Yesterday, the United Kingdom government could have published a similar document: say, a draft negotiation document for the Prime Minister to put before Parliament for approval.

There would be no problem with the Prime Minister doing this: he has had the civil service machine at his disposal since summer – plenty of time for the government to know what it wants from the next stage of negotiations, especially as he wants the agreement in place by the end of this year.

And there would be no risk for the Prime Minister in doing this either: unlike his predecessor, he has a majority in the House of Commons and so he could be confident of any such guidelines getting parliamentary approval.

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But the United Kingdom government did not produce similar guidelines.

There was, it must be admitted, a written statement, but it was in such a high-level wish-list form that it would barely qualify as heads of terms for the upcoming negotiation.

The failure of the United Kingdom government to publish a document as detailed as that of the European Union has one obvious explanation, given what happened (and did not happen) between 2016 and 2020.

That explanation is not that the United Kingdom government has some cunning plan that it is keeping close to its chest.

The obvious explanation for the United Kingdom government not publishing a document as detailed as that of the European Union is that it has (currently) no proposals as detailed as those of the European Union.

As in 2016-2020, the United Kingdom does not have a clue in practical or detailed terms what to do next.

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There was, however, a significant text published yesterday – the first working day of Brexit – by the United Kingdom government.

This was the tub-thumping speech of the Prime Minister about free trade.

A speech that did not mention Brexit once.

A speech so full of cod-economics and cod-history that it would make an A-level student blush.

A speech that was an exercise in whimsical nostalgia, rich in superficial cleverness.

A speech you would expect from the eternal essay-crisis examination-crammers of this witless winging-it government.

This was the first blast of the United Kingdom government’s trumpet on its first working day of supposed liberation.

There could have been no more telling contrast to the detailed European Union proposals published the same day.

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Any sensible person wants these negotiations to go well, and as a United Kingdom citizen and resident I want these negotiations to go well for the United Kingdom.

Nothing here is a cheer for the European Union, who are now to us as much of a “third” entity as we are to them.

But one does not do well in negotiations (or any bilateral exercise) by not understanding counter parties or opponents.

The United Kingdom government should be meeting detail with detail, process with process.

There is certainly no excuse not to realise this, given the hard experience of the exit negotiations.

And the United Kingdom government can do detail and process when it wants to do: after all, the European Union’s single market is itself a triumph of British pragmatism and planning.

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At some point, it will become painfully obvious that yet more flag waving and bombast will not be enough.

(And anyone with a decent grasp of history will tell you that flag waving and bombast was certainly not enough in those supposedly glorious Elizabethan, Victorian and World War II times beloved of Brexiteers: drudgery and attention to detail always mattered.)

The two texts of the first working day of Brexit – the European Union detailed proposals and the Prime Minister’s Greenwich speech – are the first two moves for the next phase.

And one shows serious preparation for what happens next, and the other shows none at all.

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The L word, the F word, and contemporary UK politics

9th December 2019

In a few days there will be a general election in the United Kingdom.

This post is not about the possible election result – that is still uncertain and it may even come down to voting intentions which are as yet not settled.

This post is instead about two words that should have had more impact on the campaign, and current politics generally, but have not.

One word begins with L, the other with F.

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The L word

The first word is “lie”.

Some commentators in the United Kingdom aver that more should be done to confront politicians with their lies.

Peter Oborne, a journalist of immense integrity, has even sought to document and expose each lie of the current prime minister (the estimable website is here).

This is essential work: nothing in this post should be taken to mean that recording each lie is not important.

But it is not enough.

This is because many politicians now do not care about being called a liar, or even be shown to be one.

Such a reaction is a cost of political business for them – and some even relish that they “trigger” such a response as some perverse form of validation.

The ultimate problem is not that many politicians lie.

The ultimate problem is far more worrying and far more difficult to resolve.

The ultimate problem is that many voters want to be lied to.

These voters may pretend otherwise, claiming that they want “honest politicians”.

In reality, such voters just want politicians to say what the voters want to hear.

There is therefore an incentive for politicians to lie.

Until and unless many voters can be made to care about being lied to, every fine and worthy effort in exposing the lies is (at least in the short-term) futile – a public good but not enough to effect immediate change.

There are many political lies: small lies, forgettable lies, lies that take longer to expose than any mortal attention span.

But the biggest lie in the current general election – a lie that may determine the outcome – is “Get Brexit Done”.

Brexit cannot be “done” without years of intense effort and attention.

Entire international relationships have to be rebuilt from scratch; entire areas of law and policy have to be reconstructed; entire social and economic patterns of behaviour have to be re-worked.

And all this in addition to the making of actual decisions about what we want those relationships, laws, policies, and social and economic patterns of behaviour to be.

And all that in turn against the intractable problem of fitting in a Brexit policy within the framework of the relationship between the United Kingdom and Ireland.

Brexit cannot be “got done” by mere exhortation.

It is a lie but a lie many want to believe and cannot be dissuaded from believing by mere arguments, logic or evidence.

And by the time many voters will come to care that they were lied to, Brexit will be too long gone for any voter choice to make much difference.

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The F word

The second word – the F word – I will not type.

It is a word which has lost its traction when it needed to still have traction.

The word describes the 1920s and 1930s manifestation of populist nationalist authoritarianism, a political phenomenon that despite the heady optimism of democratic campaigners has never been too far away.

Complacently, some believed that the thing had gone away with the end of the second world war, or with the transitions to democracy of Spain and Portugal.

The thing, however, is always there.

What happened in the 1920s and 1930s in Germany and Italy and elsewhere was always just one set of manifestations of the thing.

Populist nationalist authoritarianism has more purchase on voters than many conservatives, liberals and socialists realise.

It is the politics of easy answers.

In the United Kingdom there are those in favour of Brexit who routinely trash the (independent) courts, the (independent) civil service and diplomatic service, the universities, the broadcasters, even the supremacy of parliament.

This populist disdain for independent institutions is unhealthy.

The threat of the “will of the people” is used as intimidation.

Coupled with nationalistic rhetoric (on immigration and Brexit generally) and authoritarian hostility to legal checks on government (contempt for human rights), you have all the ingredients of the thing described by the F word.

But if you call this thing by its name, it now has little or no effect.

People will yawn and shrug and pay no real attention.

And because what we have before us is not visually the same as the 1920s and 1930s manifestation of the thing – no uniforms, no goosesteps, and so on – many of those hearing the F word will regard what is now happening as not being an example of the F word at all.

Of course, using the F word is not as important as stopping the thing it describes from taking hold.

 

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Calling politicians – and pundits – liars, and describing the vile populist nationalist authoritarianism that they promote as the F word, is not going to stop them lying or the thing the F word describes.

The words are not enough, and it may be that new words are needed to make old warnings.

And unless voters can be made to care about being lied to by politicians, or about the implications of the populist nationalist authoritarianism (again) being promoted, then there will be little to stop either the politicians or the F word thing.

Making voters care about any of this is the challenge for liberal and progressive politicians (and pundits) in the United Kingdom and elsewhere.

And the biggest challenge is to make enough voters care in time.

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