Brexit SuperSaturday – and my role as your guide

I blog for my own amusement and edification but readily confess to a thrill when the clicks soar to 750 which they did yesterday – presumably as readers sensed we were reaching Brexit End-game.

I am very conscious that English is a second language for some 70% of my readers and therefore take my role as a guide to the specifics of the UK very seriously indeed.

So before offering any comment on today’s events, let me try to spell out in a little more detail how I see that role.

I do not pretend to be an impartial observer on either Brexit or the UK – but I do try to be fair-minded and reasonably “inclusive”. I learned the importance of this initially from my parents and then from my own experience of negotiating the various boundaries of class, group, profession, intellectual discipline and nation. That soon taught me that seeing the different sides of an issue has its advantages

I am, for example, very open about my Scottishness; am no friend of the nationalist cause (whether Scottish or English) but am pretty critical of the perverse influence of the upper-class elites on the British political culture. Too much of the rhetoric practiced for decades by people such as Boris Johnson smacks of the blinkered arrogance one expects from imperialist adventurers…..

I was deeply disappointed (and personally threatened) by the results of the 2016 Brexit referendum – although I can well understand (if not sympathise with) the emotions caused by migration trends. And the European “project” has been technocratic and secretive. In the late 60s and early 70s as the debate raged in the UK about membership of the “common market” I was a bit of an agnostic - although by 1979 I was openly European.

In the 1980s I was active in European networks and starting to understand the differences in cultural style.
From the 1990s I was in the middle of the European Commission procurement system and able to see with my own eyes some of its corruptions……..

I hope this helps readers understand my background a bit better…

So – today’s events

There will be drama at Westminster today – but it might not be quite the historic day people expected…...One of the early amendments to be dealt with is the one covered in my last post which would require Parliament to confirm any Brexit deal with its Final Reading of a Withdrawal Bill. (That seems to me fairly obvious - so I confess I don't quite understand why Lewin and Benn felt it necessary to have Thursday's vote)  

The latest numbers I have is that Johnson could win today by 2-3 votes. Everything is down to the votes of a few maverick Labour MPs and the new MP from Grimsby has just indicated she will join 8 other Labour MPs to support the hard Brexit which Johnson is asking the House to approve. Even if he wins, parliamentary procedure requires 2 further stages of "reading" and things are so finely balanced that the exact votes for these 2 stages can't be taken for granted. People have to be present physically and move into the appropriate voting place.....   

I was, however, impressed by an article which suggested that there was too much focus on such tactical issues and that most people were ignoring the elephant in the room

The talk is mostly on the numbers in parliament. Occasionally it veers into the provisions for a dual customs system in Northern Ireland and the reliability of the level playing field concession. That makes sense - it's where the votes will make or break. 

But it is extraordinary that we are not talking about the real issue of what is happening here, the actual underlying reality of what this decision involves. It is more than an elephant in the room. It is a monster, filling up all the space, breathing fire on us, and yet we are somehow managing to pretend it isn't there while our hair sets alight. 

The issue is: What would Johnson's deal actually do to the economy of this country?

That's not about Brexit. You can leave the EU and stay close to its trade regime. This is about how you do Brexit. 

The Johnson deal is the hardest of hard Brexits. It pulls Britain completely out of the customs union and single market and envisions a very minor free trade agreement to replace it.

It's not fashionable to talk about this now. These arguments were made after the referendum. As Brexit bored on, we all desperately searched out new areas of debate and focused on the aspects which caused most division in parliament. And somehow we ended up in this place, where the fundamental choice we are about to make is barely discussed. You could watch dozens of hours of TV news without even a mention of it. So it's worth, one last time, providing a reminder of what's actually going on before we decide to do it.

“Taken together, the single market and customs union are the most advanced examples of international economic cooperation in the history of mankind. They do two things. The customs union harmonises tariffs so that goods pay no tax and experience no country-of-origin checks inside their territory.

“The single market aligns regulations, so that goods can move freely without worries about whether they're against the rules in one country or another.

This project massively increases trade and improves the economic well being of the countries who are members of it. It means that investors from countries like Japan use Britain as a beachhead to Europe.

It means services, a core and criminally under-discussed part of the British economy, can sell their products all over a continent of well-off consumers. 

It means you get infinitely more than any trade deal, because it does not involve the country-of-origin checks which make exports complicated and laborious. It means just-in-time supply chains can operate with lightning efficiency, because they know there will be no blockages.

It keeps you locked in to one of the most advanced regulatory climates on earth, with high standards for food safety, agricultural rules, worker safety and environmental protection. It gives the UK access to major trade deals with countries like Japan and Canada, on terms negotiated using the leverage of the massive European consumer market, and secured using some of the most impressive trade negotiators in the world.

It allows lots of medium-sized economies to club together so that they can go toe-to-toe with larger economies. China and the US can bully almost anyone. They're big enough. But they can't bully the EU. In a world that is slowly degenerating into a dog-eat-dog system without the old rules-based order, it offers strength and protection.

“Outside of that system, Britain is going to hurt. A recent report by UK in a Changing Europe projected a reduction in UK GDP per capita after ten years of between 2.3% and seven per cent under Johnson's plan.

The gap will be defined by whether we try to make up the loss by bringing in lots of immigrants and find a way to improve productivity. The best case scenario is a £16 billion hit to public finances per year. It's £49 billion hit in the worst case.

This will not be made up for by securing new free trade deals overseas. These agreements are tiny and inconsequential next to the European project. The government's own analysis suggests that even at peak British negotiating success they would amount to an increase in GDP after 15 years of somewhere between 0.1% and 0.2%.

People's lives will be damaged. They will be poorer. They will be £2,250 a year worse off by 2034. The nation's finances will be hurt. There will, in the end, be more austerity. And this will be done just as the world is most uncertain, amid a bitter trade war between China and the US, when the WTO is being brought to its knees by Donald Trump.

These arguments are treated with scorn nowadays. We're told that people who still care about economics have lost sight that this is a debate about identity and sovereignty. That's fine. It's about those things too. But when you experience hardship, everyone cares about economics. A man without bread is not concerned with where the regulatory decisions are made on lawnmower levels. 

“We are about to sabotage our relationship with the most successful economic project in the modern world. It is the biggest decision we'll take in our lifetime and one which, if we do it, we'll regret for a long time to come. It's worth mentioning that - the actual reality of what is happening - at least one more time before MPs vote.