Category: European Union Law and Policy

31st August 2021

When does the story of Brexit begin?

Some would say that the story of the departure of the United Kingdom begins with the founding of the European Economic Community itself, or even of the European Coal and Steel Community.

For even then the supranational approach that the United Kingdom was to find so repugnant was obvious (see here).

Others can point to the accession of the United Kingdom to the European communities in 1973 or (a view with which I have sympathy) the treaty of Maastricht of 1992.

More recent start dates would be the referendum of 2016 or the timing and circumstances of the Article 50 notification in 2017.

It depends on the nature of the story you want to tell.

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This post looks at another starting-point.

The ‘Bloomberg speech’ of then prime minister David Cameron in January 2013.

Cameron, of course, is now little more than a pantomime villain in the story of Brexit, reduced to texting ministers and officials for commercial favours while the audience groans and hisses.

And the prospect of reading – still less sitting through – an old Cameron speech may not be a welcome one.

But.

This 2013 speech, when taken together with the ‘renegotiation’ of 2015-16, shows fault lines that later shaped how Brexit evolved in practice, and it is worth looking back at.

An edited version of the speech is still on the government website (with some brief ‘political’ content removed) while the Downing Street YouTube channel has the speech in its entirety.

To the extent the speech is remembered now – if it is is remembered at all – it is because it contained the promise by the head of the then coalition government of an ‘in/out’ referendum, in the event that the conservatives won outright the next general election.

And that announcement is of significance as, unlike many political promises, it was carried out.

But also of significance is the framing of the announcement – what the speech did and did not say.

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One premise of the speech is that the referendum would be tied to a ‘renegotiation’ which, in turn, envisaged treaty changes for the benefit of all member states.

It would be this new ‘settlement’ that would then be promoted as part of the referendum campaign.

To the extent that there is a fundamental critique of the European Union it is in terms of ‘sovereignty’ and the ‘gap between the EU and its citizens’.

And to the extent that there is a detailed practical critique it is about the ‘unfair’ relationship between Eurozone members and member states such as the United Kingdom that were not part of the Eurozone.

The speech has structure and coherence – and, after the experience of Theresa May and then Boris Johnson, it is a strange feeling to read a prime ministerial speech that has structure and coherence.

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But.

There is a lot missing.

There is not a single mention of immigration – even though by the ‘renegotiation’ of 2015-16 this had become a perceived political priority.

This is because although the Eurozone crisis had begun, the perceived migration crisis (and the rapidly increasing domestic political support for UKIP) was in the future and as yet unknown.

Some now contend that Brexit was always about immigration and migration and ‘taking control’ of our borders – yet the issue is not mentioned once in the major speech that initiated the political process that led to the referendum.

There is also not a mention of ‘freedom of movement’ or indeed any of the ‘four freedoms’ that the European Union aver are integral to the single market.

For Cameron and the United Kingdom, the single market could be discussed and extolled without any reference to the foundational principles of that market.

It was almost as if the same single market was different things to the United Kingdom and to the rest of the European Union, described in different ways, and with each side talking past the other.

Ireland gets one brief mention – and is bracketed with the United Kingdom for having border controls against the rest of the European Union.

But there is nothing at all about how the single market and shared membership of the single market and the customs union meant there was no need for a regulatory or customs border on the island of Ireland.

There is also nothing about how shared European Union membership provided a solution to the hard political problems of the Irish border (and similarly there is no mention of Gibraltar either).

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And there is a complacency about treaty changes – an assumption that the fundamental reforms to the European Union that could only come about by amending the treaty texts would be an easy task in a tight time frame.

The referendum was to be in the ‘first half’ of the next parliament – in effect the entire process of renegotiation and referendum would need to take place between 2015 and 2017.

Looking back from 2021, we now know that there has been no new European Union treaty at all – the last general treaty is still that of Lisbon in 2007 – and there is no appetite for a new treaty and the politics it would entail.

But without treaty changes there was a severe limit to what could be achieved in a negotiation, especially against a strict deadline.

And so – unsurprisingly – the ‘renegotiation’ was damp and squibby.

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The Bloomberg speech revealed a lack of realism about what could be achieved from the beginning of the ‘renegotiation’ process, with expectations raised that could not be fulfilled.

And this had a significant political consequence.

For, from the very beginning of the referendum process, the government made no positive case for the United Kingdom to be part of the European Union as a matter of principle.

The government’s case was instead to be for the United Kingdom to remain part of the European Union on renegotiated terms and as part of a new overall settlement.

But when those renegotiated terms fell flat, and the new overall settlement failed to come into existence, then the government had nothing positive to argue and campaign for.

Indeed, given the lacklustre government campaign – directionless after the failure of the ‘renegotiation’ – it is remarkable that the referendum was as close as it was.

The government’s own run-up to the referendum, from the announcement of the referendum onwards, had been misconceived.

And you can see why this was by reading what was in – and what was not in – the Bloomberg speech of January 2013.

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21st August 2021

Someone somewhere – I think P. D. James – says that no coffee tastes as good as it smells.

And given that most people drink coffee not for the taste but for the (perceived) caffeine kick, some people do not seem to see the point of decaffeinated coffee.

(Such people include me, for what it is worth.)

But some people do, and it appears that they will currently be disappointed if they go into a chain of well-known coffee shops.

For in those coffee shops there is no decaffeinated coffee.

I established this in two branches of the same well-known coffee shop near where I live – and not with loaded questions but with a general ‘how come’ when told they had none.

Both times the answer was: Brexit.

(The first mention was prompted by overhearing someone else being told there was no decaf, the second was prompted by me inquiring generally.)

The second person who told me this I did not know, but the first – the manager of the most local branch – is as undramatic and unpolitical person as you can imagine.

I had – and have – no idea if this is the true reason for the lack of stock.

Perhaps it is a coffee shop urban legend.

Perhaps it is the desperate excuse of a desperate area manager.

But it was the explicit, resigned reason given in two separate shops, independently of each other.

I mentioned the first incident on Twitter – and it seemed to affirm what others had experienced.

https://twitter.com/davidallengreen/status/1429007481762615296

So: either there was a number of people lying, or there is a mass delusion, or a number of people are experiencing shortages and these shortages are being attributed to Brexit.

A quick infantile response to this is to say ‘so what’ and dismiss it as a ‘first-world problem’ (which may affect, of course, coffee growers not from the first-world.)

Perhaps it is: access to decaffeinated coffee may well be up there with guacamole and vegan bacon as the least of all our concerns.

But.

If this is true – and it certainly is the sincere belief of honest people – then it provides a micro-example of the inconveniences and misadventures that unsurprisingly will follow the United Kingdom ceasing to be part of the European Union single market.

There were always going to be some effects – and this could just be one.

And perhaps in the medium term, the supply lines will adjust, and decaffeinated coffee shall again be available in chain stores.

If so, then – other than passing complaints – Brexit will have taken effect without the huge backlash that many – especially Remainers – predicted.

On the other hand, if this inconvenience is added to others, and then to others, and they accumulate then – maybe – voters will see the point of the United Kingdom being part of the single market – and politicians could respond accordingly.

What will practically shift minds will be certain things being unavailable – even minor things – and people attributing the shortage to the explanation.

The taste of Brexit, like coffee, may not be as good as what some people expect it be.

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(And for what it is worth, I support the United Kingdom being part of the single market but no formally rejoining the European Union – which some of you will say is the political equivalent of liking decaffeinated coffee.)

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In the meantime…

…it looks as if we will now go further into Brexit with a caffeinated, heightened sense of nervous energy.

And what could go wrong with that?

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13th June 2021

‘I told you so.’

These is perhaps the most dangerous four-word phrase in the English political lexicon.

And the danger is that the one who did tell others so then just shrugs, and does nothing more.

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A political idiot does [x], even though you (and others) averred that [x] would be irresponsible and dangerous.

Of course: it is natural and right to point out the idiot did [x] even though the irresponsible and dangerous idiocy was both foreseen and foreseeable.

And this is what this blog did yesterday.

But.

It is not sufficient.

The government can (and will) just shrug off the criticism.

And a sufficient number of voters will nod-along with the government, regardless of these errors being pointed out.

Any sensible person knows that the government made serious mistakes forcing though Brexit at speed and without a plan, and in signing up to a withdrawal agreement without understanding or caring what it said.

It is bleedingly obvious.

But there is only so much purchase in pointing this out, and that purchase is unlikely to extend to changing any voters’ minds.

Something more is needed.

Something positive.

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The biggest problem in the politics of the United Kingdom at the moment is that neither the government nor the official opposition have any substantial positive vision of the United Kingdom after Brexit.

The government, having obtained Brexit, is the proverbial dog that caught the car.

And the opposition are refusing to engage with Brexit at all, fearful of the repercussions of mentioning it – and a cowered opposition is, of course, a useless opposition.

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It is fun – and easy – to point out the government entered the Northern Irish protocol of its own free will.

The pressure to sign it at speed was self-inflicted.

We know this, and they (if ministers are honest with themselves) know this.

Yet the protocol was only, in effect, a backstop and an insurance policy (though less of a backstop and an insurance policy than the proposed formal arrangements it replaced in the course of the negotiations).

And what is the positive vision of the post-Brexit relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union?

Does anyone – anyone at all – have a positive vision of what happens next?

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12th June 2021

Some things remain true even when they are said again, and again, and again.

One of these truths is that a Brexit done at speed was never going to go well – and that the government of the United Kingdom refusing extensions (either to the Article 50 period or the transition arrangements) was gross irresponsible idiocy.

Ministers placed themselves under self-inflicted pressure and suffered self-imposed weaknesses.

All to ‘get Brexit done’.

Another of these truths is that if the United Kingdom left the single market then one of three things would have to happen.

Either the United Kingdom would have to stay aligned with the single market anyway, or there would be a border on the Irish mainland, or there would be a border in the Irish Sea.

Any other possibility would be fanciful, if not fantasy.

A further truth is that there was little point going through with Brexit until and unless the United Kingdom had a settled and realistic view of what would then follow, in terms of its relationship both with the European Union and with the rest of the world, and in terms of what would happen in respect of Northern Ireland.

But on this basis the United Kingdom still does not know what we want, though we want something.

The only possible merit, from a Brexit point of view, of this rushed, muddled and directionless Breixt is that, if the process had lasted any longer, it may well have been reversed.

There may have been other Brexits possible in theory, but this was perhaps the only one possible given the politics before the 2019 general election.

This is not a merit from any sensible and objective view, but perhaps it explains why this botched Brexit did happen, instead of any other.

All to ‘get Brexit done’.

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Thank you for reading.

If you value this daily, free-to-read and independent legal and policy commentary for you and others please do support through the Paypal box above, or become a Patreon subscriber.

You can also subscribe for each post to be sent by email at the subscription box above (on an internet browser) or on a pulldown list (on mobile).

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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.

Comments will not be published if irksome.