Category Archives: European Union

Britain, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

A second referendum is getting closer by the day

BREXIT

IN Arthur Cash’s biography of the audacious 18th-century constitutional reformer John Wilkes, the author remarks that Wilkes’s lifetime spanned “the American Revolution, which he admired, the French Revolution, which he hated, and the Industrial Revolution, which he did not know was happening”.

Revolution, too, is in the air with Brexit a messy and complicated process. If the country isn’t to be caught out with unsatisfactory compromises being made that does little for her gaining true independence, it’s time to seriously talk about referendums – who organises them, and how. Those who want a new referendum on Europe must face questions about how, when and by whom this still-anomalous bolt-on to our constitution is to be organised. If Remainers are scornful of the Brexiteers’ refusal to propose an alternative, then they themselves must not make the same mistake.

This discussion is becoming urgent: another vote on Europe is moving fast from the highly unlikely to the distinctly possible.

Only the broad outlines can be discerned of the proposed exit deal that Theresa May’s negotiators and the EU are working on; but these will invariably be a development of the “soft” Brexit proposals agreed at Chequers earlier this year. Hardline Brexiteers hate it. There is little enthusiasm anywhere for the plan. There is, however, a growing suspicion that this may be the only available common ground with EU negotiators. It is for this reason that Theresa May stands a fair chance of getting her proposals through parliament’s “meaningful vote” near the end of this year. Staring into the muzzle of what could blast to smithereens a Tory government and very possibly Britain’s March 2019 exit from the EU, it would surely take nerves of steel not to blink first. Many Brexiteers will blink first.

But not all. Steel nerves (or straw brains) can be found among MPs in the European Research Group. It would only take about a dozen of these irreconcilables to sink May’s proposals.

There’s also a chance Britain and our EU partners will fail to find any agreement at all. The more Mrs May compromises, the more the irreconcilables’ numbers grow. The chances that her hoped-for deal is sunk either by Brussels or by her own MPs is floating at around 40 per cent.

Let’s suppose the prime minister does get a draft deal, then faces defeat over it in the Commons. What then? It’s unlikely she’ll want to resign, and will need a good, democratic reason not to. To put her deal to the people in a national referendum would provide such a reason.

Better still, announce that this is too momentous a decision for normal party whipping and make the vote on the deal a free one for government MPs. She could still lose her proposed treaty, but, unwhipped, such a defeat would not be a resignation issue.

But what next? The pressure for a referendum on her proposals would be strong. She has said she won’t countenance another referendum but in these unforeseen circumstances she might relent. Even if she did resign, demands for a general election could only be countered by an acting Tory prime minister pledging a referendum.

By different routes we keep coming back to a referendum as the constitutional logjam-breaker. Labour appears to have gone for this following its conference last week. Although not the likeliest scenario, there is now a strong chance. A government victory in the “meaningful vote” or a general election are equally likely.

 

WE should know who would actually make a referendum happen, what the question should be and what this would do to Britain’s plan to leave the EU on March 29, 2019.

There is probably consensus that the current deadline for negotiating our departure from the EU will have to be extended. The Electoral Commission would want a two or three-month period for the referendum campaign. Our EU partners would no doubt agree to an extension for this purpose.

Lord Adonis, a key figure in the “people’s vote”, along with Open Britain, a campaign group for another referendum to be held, believes parliament could “direct” the government to hold a plebiscite. The biggest problem would be the wording of the referendum question. Open Britain suspects that the Electoral Commission would want clarity, and would recommend a binary [two-option] question.

It would have to be a straight choice between the government’s Brexit proposals and remaining in the EU. But wouldn’t Leavers call this a false dichotomy by insisting there were other options on offer?

Open Britain insists that those who have campaigned to leave the EU have held the country to ransom for years. Referring to them as “charlatans”, the Remain body says they’ve had years to say what they propose.

How about “no deal” as a referendum option? Adonis says there’s no such thing as a no deal. Even leaving on World Trade Organisation terms would leave hundreds of agreements and arrangements having to be remade with our former partners. Bilateral trading agreements are hugely expensive.

Adonis has also posed the question that if the hardline Tory European Research Group can’t define what it is they propose, how can we put it to a referendum?  He also added that the government has a duty not to put to people a proposal they don’t think can be implemented. The inference here is that any proposal must honour Britain’s obligations to Ireland in our “backstop” undertakings to the EU over the Northern Ireland border issue.

 

IF parliament rejects the government’s Brexit plan, a referendum could take place without (depending on its result) impeding Brexit. A six-month extension of the negotiating period could very likely be arranged.

For Remainers, nothing short of getting their way (whatever that is) will be accepted by them as fair. However, a new referendum should be one of the ways in which an impending constitutional crisis could be averted. Let it not be said we sleepwalked into this. The time to start thinking about ways through is now.

Standard
Britain, Economic, European Union, Government, Ireland, Politics, Society

Brexit always leads back to the issue of the Irish border

BREXIT: UK – IRELAND

ONE of the most persistent myths about Brexit is that the Irish border issue was bounced on to an unsuspecting British prime minister by her cunning – or, perhaps, reckless – Irish counterpart. According to this narrative, Theresa May signed up to the December 2017 agreement that committed the UK to avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland without fully understanding the implications because she was desperate for a transition deal.

Yet, what has become clear since is that the necessity of avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland matters as much to Theresa May as it does to Leo Varadkar. Just as no Irish prime minister could ever agree to the renewed partition of the island, Mrs May remains determined not to be the British prime minister who presided over the restarting of the Troubles, still less the disintegration of the United Kingdom.

The British government may have been slow – some might say shamefully slow – to appreciate what was at stake, but it is the Irish border issue, rather than the demands of business, that now drives Mrs May’s entire Brexit policy, as expressed in her Chequers proposal.

But the fact that Mrs May is no less sincere than Mr Varadkar in her desire to keep the border open doesn’t make a solution any easier.

As things stand, the Irish border is the single biggest obstacle to an orderly Brexit and the two sides are as far apart as ever. EU officials say that no progress whatsoever has been made since March in negotiations over the backstop that Mrs May agreed in December. The withdrawal agreement was to ensure that no hard border emerged regardless of the future trading relationship between the UK and EU.

The EU insists that there can be no withdrawal agreement without a functioning backstop. The UK is adamant, however, that the problem can be solved only via a framework trading relationship that makes a backstop unnecessary. Hence the Chequers plan for a “facilitated customs arrangement”, which would see the UK pursue a dual-tariff system, collecting EU tariffs on the EU’s behalf for imported goods for the EU market, but charging only UK tariffs on goods destined for the UK market; and a proposed “common rule book” covering trade but not services.

Neither side shows the slightest sign of budging. Mrs May continues to insist that the EU’s backstop suggestion would amount to introducing a border in the Irish Sea, which she says no UK prime minister could accept. Downing Street believes that Brussels is badly underestimating the degree of cross-party support for its position. Officials note that an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill tabled by Jacob Rees-Mogg ruling out a customs border in the Irish Sea was accepted by the House of Commons without a vote. Downing Street argues that the only way to unblock the situation is for Brussels to drop its opposition to Chequers.

EU officials have countered and have said Mrs May is underestimating opposition to her proposals across the European Union. Brussels is also baffled by the UK’s position on the backstop. EU officials have pointed out that some checks already take place at Northern Irish ports and airports and that the EU’s proposal simply would build upon them. Indeed, civil servants in Northern Ireland produced a draft paper this year in what they dubbed a “Channels” approach, under which goods entering Northern Ireland from the UK could pass through either a red or green channel at ports or airports depending on whether those goods were destined for local consumption or export to the EU. Such a system would depend on some level of risk-based checks combined with appropriate documentation, cross-border cooperation and tough penalties for infringements. The paper concludes that such “a pragmatic extension of present reality . . . seems infinitely preferable to a return to the border of the past”. Yet the UK government has blocked publication and refuses to share with Brussels any underlying data on volumes of goods entering Northern Ireland.

Of course, how this situation plays out will in part be determined by how all sides perceive the consequences of a no deal. Both the UK and Ireland would be hit hard economically. The IMF estimates that both would suffer similar hits to GDP of about 4 per cent by 2030, although Ireland’s far higher rates of growth would make such a shock easier to absorb. British officials believe that Mr Varadkar would pay a political price because he has done little to prepare public opinion for the prospect of the EU at some point obliging Dublin to start introducing customs and regulatory checks at the Northern Irish border, something Britain has said it would not do. But while Dublin is convinced it would win any blame game, the bigger risk may be to the UK. After all, the case for allowing the people of Northern Ireland to decide their own fate before any border checks were imposed and as provided for under the Good Friday Agreement would surely be strong. A recent poll published earlier this month suggested that a majority of Northern Irish under such circumstances would vote for reunification by a margin of 52 per cent to 39 per cent.

The risk for Mrs May is that the very outcome that her entire Brexit policy has been seeking to avoid will have come to pass. A political paradox if there ever was one.

Standard
Britain, European Union, Government, Politics, Society

(In Brief) What are the UK’s Brexit Options?

BREXIT

The Chequers Plan – The Prime Minister has made clear that her July 2018 blueprint remains Britain’s negotiating position and expects her ministers in Cabinet to promote it.

But officials at No 10 know that if the EU continues to stonewall, the internal Tory Party voices who have never liked the deal will only get louder. The agreement would see the UK collect tariffs on behalf of the EU and follow a “common rulebook” for goods but not services.

Canada – Canada’s free trade deal with the EU came into force last October, following seven years of negotiation.

It grants preferential access to the single market without signing up to the EU’s four fundamental freedoms – goods, services, capital and labour.

It removes 99 per cent of customs duties and trade tariffs, but it would not give British financial services the access to the EU market they currently enjoy and does not solve the Northern Ireland border question.

Norway – Under the Norway model, the UK would sit alongside Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein as part of the European Economic Area (EEA).

It would give Britain the freedom to strike trade deals with countries around the world. But free movement of people would continue, which would be unacceptable to many Tory Eurosceptics.

No Deal – The nuclear option. But the Prime Minister has repeated her pledge in the last few days that “no deal is better than a bad deal”.

Britain would make a clean break from the EU and fall back on its membership of the World Trade Organisation. It could also save Britain paying the £39 billion “divorce bill”.

Blind Brexit – This would involve a vague November statement on future trade in a bid to finalise the divorce payment and transition deal. The details of the future trading relationship would be sorted out at an unspecified later date.

Standard