Tribalism

I devoted a fair number of my collected 2019 posts to the question of what element of British – or rather English - identity had persuaded them to cast themselves adrift from the Continent (the posts have been gathered at pp133-196 of the collection). In my search for culprits I even looked at novelists. But one of the first places I looked was that of the British media whose role was well summarized by this comment 

We are paying the price of our media. British journalism thinks of itself as uniquely excellent. It is more illuminating to think of it as uniquely awful. Few European countries have newspapers that are as partisan, misleading and confrontational as some of the overmighty titles in this country. The possibility of Brexit could only have happened because of the British press 

And more extensively analysed in this article in a French journal. 

But it is perhaps Tabloid Britain – constructing a community through language Martin Conboy (2006) which best conveys the huge pulling power of the popular press in Britain and the role it has played in appealing to the worst in the british voter. 

Journalists are our crucial link with the world of both power and of ideas. Usually they are reporting what others want them to say – but the best of them have their own voice.

Each of us gravitates to a newspaper which tends to reflect our worldview – in that sense we are all deeply tribal. My particular poison is “The Guardian” one of whose editors (Alan Rusbridger) has produced a couple of fascinating books which I parsed in a couple of posts at the beginning of the year. “The Guardian” has a world-wide reputation – indeed its American sales outstrip those of the British market.

At the very end of the second post, I had slipped in the information that a critical appraisal of the paper had just been published with the revealing title Capitalism’s Conscience – 200 years of the Guardian  ed D Freedman (2021) 

I hadn’t realised that this followed another book-long analysis of the even more significant global role another UK journal has played – namely the weekly Economist. Liberalism at Large – the world according to The Economist by Alexander Zevin was produced in 2019 and was reviewed in the New Yorker by the inimitable Pankaj Mishra

There are two bright spots in this tale - or at least one and a half. The half is that the quality journals (certainly The Guardian and The Economist) are bucking the trend and pulling in more customers. The second  bright spot is that what we call the "gutter press" doesn't seem to be exerting the influence and power they once did - as noted in today's Mainlymacro post - losing out to the live images of social media.  

why the British masochists did what they did

The last post was, as always, too long. It did, however, elicit a friendly gesture of farewell and solidarity from an old (Dutch) friend who, very reasonably, commented that the Brits have been a bit obsessed by european technocrats.

He then went on to make the important point which I’m sure he’d allow me to reproduce here that- 

“the same bureaucrats have been able, the last decade or so, to develop a number of norms and rules that provide at least some constraints to the unfettered capitalist forces of the larger than life global companies. And some protection against the abuse of power in Poland or Hungary.

“At this point the EU is the only world player that at least tries to set some norms to protect the environment, restore equality, maintain product safety, provide some protection against the abuse of power by governments within and beyond the EU zone”. 

Readers will know that I am embarrassed by Brexit and Brexiteers. The British novelist Ian McEwan put it pithily recently when he called it “the most pointless, masochistic” event in British history.

But there is a reason why 52% of those who bothered to vote in the 2016 Referendum voted to leave – which cannot be dismissed as populism, hostility to immigrants or a right-wing press. As far back as 2011 I tried to articulate what it was about the “European project” which rubs Brits up the wrong way – and repeated the attempt a few months later

I want in the next few posts to explore my Dutch friend’s point of view but first let me try to summarise, in bullet-points, the argument of the article from the “reluctant Brexiteer” which was the focus of my last post –

- The European Union has been able to use geo-political muscle to negotiate benefits for both consumers and citizens

- trade issues are secondary to those of accountability and democracy

- the “european project” has always had a technocratic drive at its core. The “Monnet method of treaty creep” is a rather opaque way of expressing an important truth…

- the “nation-state” remains an important concept – despite the abuse federalists have thrown at it

- the Laeken Declaration of 2001 admitted that Europe’s peoples had come to see the EU as "a threat to their identity" and that there was no appetite for "a European superstate or European institutions inveigling their way into every nook and cranny of life." It spoke of returning powers to the member states and restoring "democratic legitimacy" through a convention.

-  The “European Convention” headed by Valéry Giscard d'Estaing in fact continued the federalist thrust and, when treaty revision was rejected in 2005 by the French and Dutch, the Lisbon Treaty simply brought most of it back in

- the contempt this shows for the voter is the force which has released the populist backlash in so many European countries – not least the UK

Please note – this is simply my summary of the article as I understood its main points. 

But there is very little here I can disagree with – save, perhaps, the casual dismissal of the economic aspects of the argument. I have a feeling that many of those who argued this way will live to rue the day….

The only real point of dispute I have with the article is with the overly optimistic, if not nationalistic, note of its conclusion. The British direction of travel in the last 40 years does not warrant the complacent sentence about

“the same tolerant free-thinking UK, under the rule of law, that it has mostly been for 300 years” 

I'm afraid British tolerance and openness went out of the window decades ago!

The end of a doomed relationship

Marriages with egoists are doomed. The relationship the Brits sought in 1973 with what was then called “the Common Market” was driven by a combination of despair and cold economic calculation. The 1960s had seen a profound critique of the state of Britain and of british industry and a feeling that joining Europe was the only option. 
But enthusiasm for that cause was muted and limited indeed to a few individuals such as Edward Heath and Roy Jenkins.

Margaret Thatcher may have had an initial enthusiasm but was ultimately horrified by what the Single Market (which she had allowed Lord Cockfield to negotiate) produced – and turned strongly against the European project in the late 80s.

Blair may have danced more to the European music but was never an  enthusiast and Brown, of course, was so embarrassed by the Lisbon Treaty that he refused to join the final signing ceremony. This history is nicely captured in this podcast

The poor Brits could never make sense of the talk of “ever-closer union” - let alone of federalism – which they tended to write off as excitable rhetoric.  

My posts last year tried to explore what it was about the Brits that made them such difficult partners….….(see pages 133-196 of To Whom it may Concern – the 2019 posts) I tended to blame the English - who have always played the “balance of power” card in their relationships with Europe but have to admit that we Scots, with our looser but nonetheless fervent sense of nationhood, did play a rather promiscuous role – not least with our French friends and our more nomadic role as mercenaries. 
I happen to have strong Germanophile feelings – but am highly critical of the current English political class for its total loss of geopolitical sense of the future risks from a German-dominated Europe – let alone one with Russian links….

With departure from the European Union being only 30 or so hours away (although things will remain broadly the same until the end of December), now seems a good time for a more measured statement of what has been at stake…And this, I am amazed to confess, I find in an article in the outpost of high Conservatism – the Daily Telegraph newspaper which I have only lightly edited -

Sadness, foreboding, and dismay that it ever came to such a point: these are the emotions that this reluctant Brexiteer feels as we finally leave the European Union on Friday.  

I feel no satisfaction in the traumatic moment. Yet I stick to my view that this dysfunctional marriage had to end. Such is the Brexit paradox.

There has been much commentary over recent days dividing us (again) into opposed camps: Remainers still angry or in mourning, set against triumphant foes of Brussels. But what about the rest of us with more subtle feelings and in many cases a deep affection for l’Europe des patries? 

Of course we recognise the advantages (for some) of being able to live and work anywhere in the EU. We know Brussels did a good job breaking down the cartels, opening up cheap air travel and (belatedly) ending the racket of roaming fees. 

We can see that if you are dealing with a Chinese Communist Party that sees itself in “existential struggle” with the West, or with a pathological predator like Vladimir Putin, it is better to club together in self-protection. Mark these down on the good side of the ledger. But they are not the heart of the matter.

It has been a particularly irritating habit of the British establishment, aligned with a nexus of vested interests, and their army of academic and media auxiliaries, to reduce Brexit to a matter of trade above all else. If that were the case, then one would wish to stay in the EU.  

Brexit is political – not economic

But Brexit is not about trade, and nor are the details of customs clearance or rules of origin as important as we keep being told. They are not trivial but they are second order issues.

The elemental question is who runs this country. Do we wish to be a self-governing democracy under our own courts, or a canton of a higher supra-national regime that keeps acquiring more powers – beyond its ability to exercise them competently – through the Monnet Method of treaty creep? 

There is no mechanism for removing this overweening hybrid executive in Brussels, even when it persists in error as did in nearly accomplishing the extinction of North Sea cod by sheer ecological vandalism, or when it forced half of Europe into a debt-deflation spiral from 2010 to 2015 based on economic doctrines discredited a century ago. 

How do you dislodge the European Council from the Justus Lipsius when it behaves outrageously? Can you impeach it? No, you can’t. 

Why the Brits object to the very essence of the EU

Commission fonctionnaires may be urbane, talented, and hard-working, but they are not a civil service. They can launch dawn police raids. They can impose vast fines on their own authority. They have quasi-judicial powers and the prerogative of legislative initiative. 

They are more like the Roman Curia. Nothing like this has existed in British political life since the Reformation. How do voters hold this Caesaropapist structure to account? They cannot do so. That is what Brexit is about.  

There are great numbers of us in Britain, France, Holland, the Nordics, or the Czech Republic, who think the precious liberal nation state – inspired by the redemptive values of the English Bill of Rights and the Déclaration des droits de l'homme – has been a resounding success.

We think it is the only forum of authentic democracy, the agent of the greatest moral progress the world has ever seen. We think the systematic attempt to discredit the nation state by blaming it for two world wars is an historical sleight of hand, a lie fed to two generations of European school children though the co-ordinated Franco-German curriculum in a systematic brain-washing exercise.

We see it as the guarantor of social solidarity and a bulwark against religious agitation, fracture, and the unforgiving clash of communitarian identities. We think it should not be discarded lightly. 

Why no sensible person should believe that the EU technocrats have learned their lesson

……..We are told that the EU has learned its limits and has stopped accreting power. Another Conference on the Future of Europe is planned: a two-year vox pop foray to rebuild trust and show EU citizens that their voice counts.

Forgive me for wincing. I was the Telegraph’s Brussels correspondent when Europe’s leaders – chastened by the torching of Gothenburg – published the Laeken Declaration in 2001. This mea culpa confessed that Europe’s peoples had come to see the EU as "a threat to their identity" and that there was no appetite for "a European superstate or European institutions inveigling their way into every nook and cranny of life." 

It spoke of returning powers to the member states and restoring "democratic legitimacy" through a Philadelphia convention. What happened? EU insiders hijacked it. A praesidium under super-elitist Valéry Giscard d'Estaing picked Commission lawyers to draft the wording. 

The final text called for an EU president, a justice department, a supreme court with jurisdiction over all areas of EU policy for the first time, and for scrapping the national veto across further swaths of policy. 
It became the Lisbon Treaty, pushed through by executive nod without a referendum, except in Ireland where voters promptly rejected it – to no avail obviously.

Sure enough, the insiders are already subverting this new attempt. The European Parliament – a self-promoting corporation as much as a legislature – has picked the arch-integrationist Guy Verhofstadt to lead the charge and is already talking of stripping states of their tax and foreign policy vetoes.

Nor can the EU retreat as long as the euro exists. The logic of monetary union is fiscal union, and that path leads to a unitary superstate. The euro cannot be made to work successfully any other way, as the German professoriate warned a quarter century ago. 

Either the eurozone moves towards an EU treasury with shared debts, fiscal transfers, and federal tax powers, or it will stumble from crisis to crisis with each cyclical downturn until it blows apart. But to assume those powers is to strip the Bundestag and its peers of their core tax and spending prerogatives, without which democracy is a sham.

My readers know that, as a Brit in Romania, I am no friend of the Brexiteers – but, equally, I have always been critical of the ambitions of the European technocrats and opposed to their deliberate obstruction of democratic control. 
But I did find the  author's optimistic conclusion sadly typical of the English sense of superiority - which was vividly on display for me this week when I attended a (n...otherwise very impressive) briefing session in the British Embassy in Bucharest. On the back of the official visiting card I picked up on the reception desk for the event were two words – "GREAT Britain" - with the first word blazoned in capitals and a union jack at the edge of the card! 
How crass! But how typical of an egoist1

How the article concludes

My fond hope, the article concludes, is that by saving our democratic nation state from slow asphyxiation we will head off a drift into anomie and dangerous political waters. The dust will settle and the world will wake up to find the same tolerant free-thinking UK, under the rule of law, that it has mostly been for 300 years, and wonder how it misread Brexit so badly.  

It is Europe that the liberal intelligentsia should worry about. The EU has choked off the political breathing space of its members. It risks succumbing gradually to the Salvinis, the Orbans, and the neo-Falangist syndicalism of the AfD and the Rassemblement, as voters rebel against globalist cultural nihilism.

A liberal-minded Briton does not have to apologise for Brexit and the restoration of democratic self-rule, but that does not make it a pleasant exercise. The sadness is that Europe’s hard-driving ideological elites have led us to this regrettable juncture.

I will drink my toast on Friday to fellow souverainistes across the Channel. Join us soon.

Further Reading

- “The Missing Heart of Europe” is an excellent book produced by Thomas Kremer in 2005 which goes a long way to explain british exceptionalism

- Jonathan Storey is an historian and a Brexiteer - with long experience of Europe. This the most recent of a series of extensive blogposts he has produced on the constitutional aspects of the relationship

- UK Economic policy in the 1960s and 1970s and the challenge to learning; Oliver and Pembleton (2006) A very good extended essay on how exactly the economic issues were interpeted

- Kenneth Morgan is another historian who produced recently this very useful analysis of the UK  policy developments of the 1970s
- Chris Grey is an academic whose Brexit Blog has, each week, mercilessly dissected the arguments of the Brexiteers. On the last day before the UK left, this post summarises the 200 plus posts to help understand “how we reached this point – and where it might be taking us” 

- Collapse of a Continent – a 2014 post which contains useful excerpts from Perry Anderson’s essential but neglected The New Old Europe (the hyperlink gives the entire book) which contains a penetrating outsider’s analysis of how various types of academics have tried to make sense of the European project
- an interesting assessment of the experience of the various individuals who have since 1973 headed the British team in Brussels

- The Observer’s political correspondent gives a brief assessment of the past 47 years of UK membership

What Might Have been

This evening should see the definitive British parliament vote on Brexit and we have today also learned that the government intends to have all stages finished in TWO DAYS.

Normally international treaties – and this is such a treaty, under law – must be before parliament for at least 21 sitting days in order to be ratified. This minimum time period is laid down in the Constitutional Reform and Governance Act (Crag) of 2010. But this provision is lifted for the purpose of the WAB, to allow the 31 October deadline to be met.

Amazing how governments can play fast and loose with convention. That’s the beauty of the country having no written constitution……

MPs were given the 220 pages of the Bill only yesterday evening – although Friday evening saw a rough guide. No serious person now believes a word that comes from Johnson’s mouth or pen. So the text will need line by line attention – and much consultation. Caroline Lucas, the Green MP, put it nicely when she wrote

“MPs had more time to debate the Wild Animals in Circuses Act (affecting 19 animals) than they will to decide the future of 65 million people”  

On such a critical day, I don’t want to play the usual guessing pantomime which passes for political comment. I want simply to indicate why those who simply ”want to get Brexit over” are in for a bitter, bitter disappointment and why the air will, in a few years, be full of bitter recriminations.

And, in this argument, I want to bring into play the words of the longest and strongest Brexit supporters – Richard North and his son Pete who also has a blog from which I give you these facts

- countries do the highest volume of trade with their immediate neighbours.

- Just under half our trade is done with the EU.

- Much of our exports only exists because of the facilitation measures inherent in the single market.

- Frictionless borders is a product of regulatory harmonisation.

- The EU is a regulatory superpower.

- If you want to do business with a regulatory superpower then you follow its rules.

- It doesn't have to take your position into account. 

- The cost of non-tariff barriers far exceeds the cost of tariffs. 

- The EU is the largest contiguous regulatory block in the world, extended by way of its own FTAs and external agreements. 

- There is no likely combination of new FTAs that could ever offset the loss of the single market.

On the face of it, therefore, there isn't an economic case for leaving the EU. If only this were just an economic question.

Brexit, though, touches on a range of issues which come into conflict with the direction of travel of the EU. It is said that the EU wishes to be a federal superstate. EU scholars say that ambition ended with Lisbon with a recognition that member states to not share that aim. To a large extent they are right. It's only really the mouth foamers such as Guy Verhofstadt who still speak to that goal.
But the EU is still an incomplete project and one that is still guided by its founding dogma of "Ever closer union". Economic integration is a tool of political integration. As rules are harmonised authority over them is centralised which diminishes the power of national parliaments to reform or repeal laws according to their own values and political manifestos.

If we take democracy to mean the ability of peoples to organise and take power to direct the institutions then the EU does not qualify. It is a benign dictatorship - but a dictatorship nonetheless. There can be no democratic choice against the treaties.

The EU may never become a federal superstate with homogenised law throughout but it will continue to weaker member state sovereignty and lay down the parameters in which member states must operate. Primarily the objective is to liberalise trade within the borders of the EU so that national borders are increasingly meaningless. Superstate it may not be but it is most certainly a supreme government with the power to overturn laws of member states.

The effect of such rapid integration on the UK has been profound. Economically and culture it has made a deep and lasting impact. It has transformed the culture of politics and government. All levels of government below the EU are constrained by it and must give over much of their resources and time to implementing agendas devised in Brussels and above. The people can be overruled and their decisions nullified.
That the EU has a parliament does not make it a democracy. Elected representatives turning up to rubber stamp initiatives devised by the EU machinery is a figleaf of consent but one lacking a legitimate mandate. Especially when you consider the Euro election turnouts.

52% of British citizens who bothered to vote were not convinced by the economic arguments – or, rather, were prepared to set them aside for the issues of “political sovereignty” (for which read “immigration” and a clear understanding that European Court decisions now trumped British justice). There may have been some uncertainty about which of the 2 European Courts had the most influence but they knew that they didn’t like the situation)

So far, Pete North isn’t saying anything we haven’t already heard….it is the next part of the argument which Pete (and his Dad) have been hammering (to little avail) for the past decade – namely that unpicking the legal implications of EU membership and negotiating acceptable trade deals will take a decade; and that a far better arrangement is to go with EFTA. This would, of course, keep the UK under the aegis of the European Court of Justice – although, in theory, this could be negotiated about further down the line. Pete north’s post goes on -

There are two types of Brexiter. There are those who hold these economic realities to be true and those who deny those realities. The latter believes that leaving without a deal has manageable consequences and an exaggerated economic impact. I therefore have as much difference of opinion with them as I do remainers.

As mentioned much of our high tech just in time economy is a product of regulatory harmonisation and much of our trade with the EU only exists because of it. An overnight departure, subjecting us to the full force of tariffs and third country controls (as defined by the Notices to stakeholders) is a hammer blow to the UK economy with grave ramifications for jobs. Thus far this has been disregarded as "project fear" - with Brexiters ever keen to remind us that this isn't just an economic question.
On the latter point I do not disagree but the economic question is not one we can afford to ignore. In the bluntest of remainer terms, you can't eat sovereignty. Bills have to be paid. Mortgage payments have to be made. Politics impacts our lives.

I do not pretend to be a trade expert - but don’t need much convincing that few politicians understand the transformation which has taken place in the role of regulations in the past decade…Anthony Barnett is one of the UK’s most independent-minded and thorough journalists and confessed in 2018 that it was only then that he started to appreciate its significance.   

I wrote about this earlier this year, referring to some of the discussions which have been taking place in academic circles about the “Regulatory State” – particularly “The Rise of the Unelected Democracy and the new separation of powers” by Frank Vibert (2007)

The EU has for the last two decades used global standards as the basis of its regulations and the base framework of regulatory cooperation in its external relations. Globally we are moving toward a single regime of standards, leaving only the USA and China as the sticks in the mud. Were we to secure a deal with the USA according to their system of standards, even if it doubled the volume of trade done with the USA (which not FTA has ever done) it wouldn't come close to mitigating the loss of the single market.

Much of what is commonly understood about trade follows assumptions from the previous decade of globalisation when offshoring was the fashion and corporates moved around to exploit differences in tax regimes and labour standards. To some extent the EU has sought to close some of these holes by way of its own "level playing field" provisions and seemingly it has had an effect

But the talk is no longer about “offshoring” but of “nearshoring”

update;
Anna Soubry says that she can’t find a single part of the Brexit bill that meets a promise made by the Leave campaign in the referendum.

Further Reading

The Odyssey of the Regulatory State; article by D Levi-Faur (2011)

The Rise of the Unelected Democracy and the new separation of powers” by Frank Vibert (2007) which, full disclosure, I still haven’t been able to complete

https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/why-brexit-won-t-work-eu-is-about-regulation-not-sovereignty/

https://nomadron.blogspot.com/2019/03/regulatory-sex.html

http://peterjnorth.blogspot.com/2019/10/what-makes-me-such-expert.html

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/18/remainers-boris-johnson-brexit

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/20/catastrophic-men-theory-history-step-forward-boris-johnson

The Meaning of “it”

It was Bill Clinton who, during the Lewinsky impeachment, famously answered “it all depends what you mean by "is”. That is the stage we are reaching with Brexit

As you might anticipate from ex-Eton schoolboys, the UK government continues to operate with counter-productive petulance and high-handedness. It was the threat of a No-Deal and Johnson’s attempt at prorogation that produced both the Benn Act and Saturday’s postponement of a vote on the “Johnson deal”.

And the Eton arrogance was on display at the end of Saturday’s parliamentary proceedings when the Leader of the House – the fop Rees-Mogg – announced that the vote on the Johnson deal would take place on Monday and then flounced out without taking any questions. The Speaker of the House of Commons will actually decide whether it is appropriate for the House to resume consideration of the matter…..

A few hours later, PM Johnson – having stated in the House that he would not be seeking "to negotiate a delay" – sent not one letter to Donald Tusk of the European Council but three – the last of which baldly stated that no extension of the 31^st October deadline was being sought.

He didn’t even bother to sign the first letter – which indicates the crassness of the man….. (The second letter is an explanatory note from the UK Ambassador to the EU)

Technically his third letter is inconsistent with the Benn Act – and is therefore illegal. So on Monday the court consideration of that point will be resumed.

The UK Courts are naturally very reluctant to get involved with anything that smacks of politics – but have a duty to uphold the Rule of Law – as they did unanimously on the attempted suspension of parliament at the end of last month.

A lot of British people are saying they “just want it all to be over”. What they don’t seem to understand, however, that no one really knows what “it” is. I know this sounds clever – but it isn’t. It’s the reality.
- Theresa May’s 2018 deal was what is called a “soft” Brexit – remaining inside the Customs Union (CU) and Single Market (SM)
- Johnson’s is a “hard” Brexit – with the entire UK except for Northern Ireland being outside the CU and SM at December 2020. We  don't actually know what sort of trade arrangements will be attempted with the EU and others. If the EU negotiations on that score (by December 2020) are unsuccessful (or later if agreed), we could crash out with “No Deal”
-  “No Deal” has the country crashing out on 31 October – with total uncertainty and with no trade deals negotiated and operating immediately under World Trade Organisation Rules
- The publication on Friday of the detailed text of the new Johnson Deal confirms that he favours the American (ie minimal) regulatory model for trade agreement to which all british trade unions and what’s left of manufacturing industrialists are opposed

Further Reading

As I’ve indicated, there are only two blogs which give you the “unvarnished truth” on Brexit. Oddly, they are from opposite ends of the Brexit spectrum…..

- The first is that of the man who has argued for Brexit for many decades, the only person to have produced a blueprint for it (subsequently ignored by Brexiteers because it warned that it would decade at least a decade to unpick the country from all the EU legislation) -  Richard North’s EU Referendum blog which gives you here his assessment of what happens now

- The other blog is that of Chris Grey – The Brexit Blog – who gave us today this analysis which is what I have based this post on.

Readers who want to get a sense of what leftist Brexiteers think should keep an eye on The Full Brexit blog

As resort to the Courts is always possible, I will also be keeping an eye on the Constitutional Unit’s blog
For once, a political “correspondent” actually gave a good summary of the event viz https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/oct/20/boris-johnson-saturday-drama-turns-to-farce-all-his-own-fault

And, as always, Boffy continues to challenge conventional wisdom - https://boffyblog.blogspot.com/2019/10/no-deal-is-better-than-johnsons-deal.html

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. 

while our attention was diverted.......

We were all so focused on Brussels yesterday that we forgot to keep check on what was happening in Westminster where the government was defeated by 12 votes on a motion tabled by Sir Oliver Letwin, the former Tory cabinet minister, ensuring that, when the Commons votes on the Brexit deal tomorrow, it will be possible for MPs to debate and vote on multiple amendments.

Taking advantage of his own rule change, Letwin has tabled an amendment to the government motion tomorrow. It has heavyweight, cross-party support, with those backing it including Hilary Benn, the Labour chair of the Brexit committee, Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader, and Philip Hammond, the former Conservative chancellor.

The amendment would remove almost all the government motion (which says the Commons has approved the Brexit deal) and withhold approval of the deal until the legislation implementing it has been passed.

As Letwin explained in the debate yesterday, his aim is to close a loophole in the Benn Act, the legislation forces the PM to request a Brexit extension if a deal has not been passed by the end of tomorrow.

A vote in favour of the deal would have meant there was no need for the PM to request an extension. But if the withdrawal agreement bill (WAB) failed to get through parliament by 31 October (several stages or “readings” are necessary and key individuals could be missing), the UK could end up leaving with no-deal by accident.

                          

Letwin’s amendment would lead to the PM having to request an extension tomorrow, on the proviso that if the WAB gets through by the end of October, at that point the extension would be withdrawn. You could call it a backstop.

The Benn Act passed by 29 votes at second reading and it is likely that the Letwin amendment, which is just intended to copper bottom the Benn Act, will also pass tomorrow.

If it does, the make-or-break vote on Johnson’s deal will never actually take place. Instead MPs will vote on a bland motion (see below), which could go through on the nod.

At that point, if Johnson complies with the assurances that he gave to the court of session in Scotland, he will have to write a letter to the EU requesting an extension.

And at that point Johnson would have to decide whether to try to pass his withdrawal agreement bill by 31 October, to release him from the obligation to take up the extension - or whether to accept the extension, and then hold the election that Labour has promised to back in the event of an extension happening. He would campaign promising to implement his Brexit deal - against Labour promising a further negotiation.

This is starting to get speculative, but what is clear is that there is now a real chance that “Super Saturday” could turn out not to be the make-or-break Brexit moment people have been expecting.

Assuming that Letwin’s amendment passes, this is the motion, as amended, that MPs would be voting on. (The Letwin text, replacing 12 lines in the original, is in bold.)

That, in light of the new deal agreed with the European Union, which enables the United Kingdom to respect the result of the referendum on its membership of the European Union and to leave the European Union on 31 October with a deal, this house has considered the matter but withholds approval unless and until implementing legislation is passed.

You can read the text of the Letwin amendment on the order paper here (pdf). 

Johnson's Three Card Trick

My Bulgarian, Portugese, Polish, Italian, Romanian, Russian and American readers will, I know, be waiting “with bated breath” for my reaction to the latest Brexit development. So my post is based on 5 of your questions -

- How did he manage to pull it off? 

- Will it fly tomorrow in Parliament? 

- In what sense is it different from the Deal which Theresa May negotiated last year?
- What are this morning's front pages saying? 
- what happens now? 

1.     How did the “greased piglet” manage to pull it off?

The media reaction in the UK so far seems to assume that all he conceded was that Norther Ireland will remain under EU rules, for the foreseeable future - with the Belfast Assembly (mothballed since January 2017) given the power to decide when to opt out. The reality is rather different (see section 3 below).

The EU’s main concern has been to maintain the integrity of the Good Friday agreement  that saw the end of violence in the north. The EU could not accept the idea of any border controls or customs arrangements on the border between Ireland (an EU member) and Norther Ireland (UK). So the EU was happy to get this concession – although it just seems to postpone the moment at which there could be such controls….

One of the known risks is that the North could eventually unite with the Irish republic - but Conservative party members have already given a clear indication they are fed up with Northern Ireland and would be happy to see it go. And ditto for the Scots – who have too loud a voice in the British Parliament - and have anyway clearly stated that what’s sauce for the Irish goose is sauce for the Scottish gander.  

2.    Will MPs vote for it?

Johnson’s tactics have loosened the parliamentary logjam. He basically threw his allies in the DUP (the Irish unionists) to the wolves when he made the concession. When Theresa May gambled in the 2017 General Election and lost her majority, she had to make major concessions to the DUP which cost a lot of money.

The DUP was strongly supported by the right-wing ERG group in parliament (led by Jacob Rees-Mogg) - but the approach of a No-Deal reality; and the distaste for the Irish connection seem to have been sufficient to allow a lot of the ERG members to peel off and declare their support for the Johnson Deal.

And, of course, Boffy had sorted all this out by Thursday afternoon.

Reaction from Northern Ireland itself suggests general acceptance for what would be a considerably increased special status

MPs have this year consistently voted down May’s Deal and also what few efforts Boris Johnson managed to put in front of them. The Labour party has 6 simple tests for any Deal -

1. Does it ensure a strong and collaborative future relationship with the EU?

2. Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?

3. Does it ensure the fair management of migration in the interests of the economy and communities?

4. Does it defend rights and protections and prevent a race to the bottom?

5. Does it protect national security and our capacity to tackle cross-border crime?

6. Does it deliver for all regions and nations of the UK?

As a party, they cannot therefore support this new Deal – not least because they simply don’t trust Johnson in his assurances about coherence with EU-type regulation (the “level playing field” of EU jargon)

That leaves the mavericks who have left or been booted out of the Labour and Conservative parties in parliament – about 30 of them. 
It is therefore basically their votes tomorrow which will decide this….

And this is a quite brilliant analysis of the choices individual MPs now face - with the gun at their head and given a mere 36 hours or so to make a decision whose consequences will reverbate for at least decade. As Jeremy Bentham might have put it “nonsense on stilts”!

3.  How does the Johnson Deal differ from May’s?

The border basically moves from the Irish mainland to the Irish Sea. And the Northern Irish Assembly (which has been in abeyance for a couple of years) is given the power to decide on its extension (or not) of EU customs regulations.
But Johnson has basically been deceiving most of us with his version of the "three cards trick".

Our attention was on the harsh reality of No-Deal - against which this deal is better.  If, however, we compare this Deal with the Theresa May one, this one takes the country out of the Customs Union and Single Market....
It took Ian Dunt of the Politics Today website to remind me of that basic fact - despite my having reproduced the Labour Party's 6 tests above. 
MPs, of course, are not as stupid as me and will not fall for such legerdemain (????)

The detailed provisions which Theresa May’s Withdrawal Agreement  had made about the “level playing field” have been removed and put, instead, into the political agreement (which, of course, has no legal force)

Readers can see for themselves in this track-change document produced by the Open Europe website - which has also produced this guide to the Johnson Deal

This confirms the view of those who read the very composition of the new Johnson Cabinet as indicating he was going down the American path of loose regulatatory capitalism...

4.     What the front pages of the British  Press are saying

Most papers make it clear that this is not a done deal. The Times says: “Final hurdle in sight as Johnson gets his deal”, the Guardian reports: “Johnson gets his Brexit deal – now it’s a numbers game”. The Mirror says: “On the brink of Brexit … once again”, the i has: “Johnson gets his EU deal … now for the tricky part” and the FT says: “DUP veto threat leaves Johnson’s Brexit deal gamble in the balance”.

Other papers are sounding warnings to MPs to vote for the deal.

·         The Telegraph quotes from the prime minister: “It’s my deal or no deal”,

·         the Daily Mail features a picture of Johnson pointing, with the headline: “He’s done his duty. Now MPs must do theirs”,

·         The Sun has rhyming advice: “Get real … take the deal”
the Express says: “Just do it!”

And the European press is clear that the concessions were all Johnson’s

5. What Happens Now?

There could be a slight hiccup tomorrow if an amendment is selected and passed for MPs to be given a few more days to given to read and assess the implications of what is before them (see next post). The government has denied MPs an official cost-benefit analysis but enough independent economic analysis is available to indicate that the costs of the "hard" Brexit this is will be very severe....

This post from Richard North reminds us that, even if the UK Parliament approves the deal, it becomes a “done deal” only after ratification by the European Parliament and the European Council - which may take more than a week. 

And that, if the deal is voted down (however narrowly), it immediately triggers the Benn Act whereby the government has, legally, to seek a 3 month extension from the EU

So there…consider yoursel' tell’t!

Further Reading

- https://www.theguardian.com/politics/ng-interactive/2019/oct/18/how-much-johnson-great-new-deal-actually-new; perhaps the single best briefing – includes a visual guide to the 5% difference between May’s Deal of 2018 and this one. And also to parliament’s vote on 19th
- https://www.politics.co.uk/author/ian-dunt; the best British website on politics and Brexit

- https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/10/time-and-motion.html; The most incisive and objective of the many Brexit blogs

- http://eureferendum.com/Default.aspx; the most independent of the pro- Brexit blogs
- http://eulawanalysis.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-withdrawal-agreement-implementation.html; detailed legal commentary on the latest withdrawal agreement 
https://ec.europa.eu/commission/sites/beta-political/files/consolidated_withdrawal_agreement_17-10-2019_1.pdf - all 537 pages of the official withdrawal agreement from the EU website