Brexit: displacement activity

17/04/2018

Having described the (as yet unverified) chemical attack in Douma as "utterly haunting", prime minister May went on to say yesterday that: "The fact that the atrocity can take place in the world today is a stain on humanity".

She cited intelligence showing a "wider operation to conceal the facts of the attack" was under way "supported by the Russians" and said it was morally and legally right to strike and "degrade Syria’s chemical weapons activity".

I am not going to say that the prime minister has deliberately sought out this alleged attack as a way of distracting attention from her domestic policy woes, but it is clearly the case that she is highly selective in her concerns, while her claim the UK's air strike on Syrian assets is hotly disputed.

And even to this day, with none of the inspectors from the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons having yet visited the scene of the original incident, and the events being called into question, there can be no certainty that there ever was a gas attack.

The idea of staged attacks, of course, is nothing new, pace the Gleiwitz incident in 1939, when a faked attack on a German radio station was used as a pretext for war. And then, in 2006, we investigated the Qana incident, which had all the hallmarks of being staged in order to invoke western sympathy.

Nevertheless, it is unarguably the case that, coinciding with the ramping up of the temperature on Syria, media coverage on Brexit – and with it public debate – has subsided. And it would not be untoward to suggest that Mrs May might be content that this is the case, or that weak leaders often seek out foreign adventures to divert attention from domestic woes.

Whether by accident or design, though, we cannot afford this interruption in the "great debate" that has barely got started and most certainly is not yet addressing the substantive issues. Nor is there any benefit in the self-indulgent posturing of the "People's Vote" campaign, which provides yet another distraction from the reality of Brexit – as if we did not have enough already – and a thinly disguised attempt to reverse Brexit.

There is no utility whatsoever in calling for a popular vote on the Article 50 settlement. One it is finalised and agreed by the European Council and the Parliament, there is no question of re-opening the books. For the UK, it is "take it or leave it" and if we leave it we drop out of the EU without an agreement.

In any event, the subsequent trade deal and the associated side-deals will have a far greater long-term effect. Since these will comprise a fully-fledged treaty, Parliament will have every opportunity to debate the issues and vote on the outcome.

Yet, even with all that, reality is able to poke its face through the cracks occasionally, whence we find that things are not progressing very well at all.

Here, the latest glimmer comes the shape of Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney who has just put down a marker of behalf of his government on the need for progress in the Irish border question.

Speaking in Luxembourg, Coveney reminded us – although no one should need that reminder – that unless substantial progress was made by June with the British government in enshrining the Border "backstop" arrangement in law, then the efforts to agree a withdrawal treaty to govern the UK's exit from the EU "will be in jeopardy".

This is seen as a "noticeable hardening of the Irish position" and comes after last Thursday's meeting between Coveney and Germany's new foreign minister, Heiko Maas.

Referring to the prospect of a "hard" border between Northern Ireland and the Republic, Mr Maas is reported to have said that Germans understood the emotional sensitivities around the border, given his country's own experience of division. "I do understand the need that we do whatever we can in order to avoid a flaring up of a historic conflict", he said.

Coveney came away from the meeting claiming that Ireland had got "unambiguous solidarity" from the largest country in the EU. "I think the Germans do understand actually the significance of borders and barriers and the emotions that get stirred up by that type of imagery", he said, then adding: "The idea that anybody could be talking about the re-emergence of physical border infrastructure on the island of Ireland is something that we simply can't allow to go unchallenged or unchecked".

Coming back to yesterday's statement, Coveney warns that without significant progress towards trying to find a wording that puts in place an operational backstop in the withdrawal treaty, "we'll have to ask some very serious questions as to whether it’s possible to do it by October".

The point here, as set out in the Guardian, is that the border question is the subject of six weeks of side talks between officials from London and Brussels. They are three weeks into the talks and a formal review due tomorrow, between Britain’s lead negotiator, Olly Robbins, and the EU’s deputy chief negotiator, Sabine Weyand. Coveney is concerned that the UK is no closer to agreeing wording that would be satisfactory to all parties.

From Luxembourg, Coveney was due in London where he had a number of meetings with British ministers scheduled. But he took time out to say that a lack of significant progress would mean "difficulties in June", at the next European Council due on 28-29 June.

If there was no agreement by then, Coveney says, it would put the transition period at risk. "It puts everything at risk", he says. Michel Barnier, he adds, has been "very clear": there will be no withdrawal agreement if there isn't a backstop relating to the Irish Border … and the political commitments in December.

Putting it the other way around, the UK Government has committed to a resolution of the Irish question. "If that isn't in the withdrawal agreement then there will be no withdrawal agreement, and if there is no withdrawal agreement there will be no transition deal either, says Coveney.

For all that, the "technological solutions" on offer have been comprehensively rejected by the Commission while the Mrs May has been unyielding on the only solution that might settle the border issue – continued participation in the EEA (aka Single Market).

That leaves us exactly where we have been since the Lancaster House speech, locked in an impasse that is going nowhere. And nor can it go anywhere unless or until Mrs May pulls back from the edge or accepts the "backstop" – something which remains, for the time being, politically untenable.

For how much longer this can continue is anyone's guess but, currently, we are on our way to a "no deal" scenario with nothing standing in its way. No amount of distraction will change that and neither are our chances improved if the media and politicians continue to ignore this pressing issue.

It should by no be apparent even to the UK Government that there are no acceptable technological fixes and, with the latest German intervention, there is going to be no weakening in the EU's resolve. Mrs May must either make the necessary concessions or risk economic catastrophe.

Here though, we need also to be looking at the failure of the opposition to focus. To say that Labour's Brexit policy has been incoherent would be overly generous. Time and again, the Party has let Mrs May off the hook and it is no closer to pinning down the prime minister on this make-or-break issue.

Sometimes, though, where there is no obvious solution to a problem, the temptation is to fall back on displacement activity and let things find their own level. Either the problems solve themselves or the build to a crisis where the circumstances more or less dictate the solution.

In this case, this is very far from being a wise option. Brexit imposes a series of technical demands and administrative challenges which cannot be settled by default. Failure to prepare in good time, devoting sufficient resources to new systems is to surrender to the forces of chaos. And that seems to be the journey on which both the government and the main opposition have embarked.

And while the events which so preoccupy both media and politicians at the moment are transitory, there can be no dispute that Brexit is forever. Failure to engage on this is set to extract the most savage of penalties.