EU Referendum


Brexit: a scorpion's work


15/07/2018




Having regard to Theresa May's response to Nigel Dodds concerning the Irish "backstop", which I mentioned in yesterday's piece, there can be little doubt that, on this point alone, there can be no Withdrawal Agreement.

If that wasn't enough, though, a gimlet-eyed reader also noted another important intervention last Monday, this one by the DUP's Sammy Wilson. Addressing the prime minister, he noted that it had been argued that the policy agreed at Chequers "was necessary to protect the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom, because it would avoid the need to implement the backstop arrangement with the Irish Republic".

Thus, Wilson asked: "Is it part of the agreement that the Government will sign a legally binding protocol with the EU that would treat Northern Ireland differently? If not, why is it necessary to have a divisive future trade arrangement that is designed to protect the constitutional integrity of the United Kingdom if that was never in jeopardy?

The prime minister's response to this was, to say the very least, instructive. "We have rejected the European Union's proposal in relation to the protocol", she said, then adding:
The expectation is that there will be a protocol in the withdrawal agreement, but we have always made clear our belief that the best resolution of the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland will come within the overall trading relationship that we develop between the United Kingdom and the EU, and that is exactly what this plan delivers.
Again, we see another interesting use of the indefinite article – experienced in the Brexit debate when discussing the customs union as against a customs union.

Here, we see the distinction between the protocol and a protocol. Explicitly, Mrs May is saying that the current text has been rejected, but she keeps open the proposition of another text being agreed. Implicitly, this has to be different to the original text. It could hardly be the same, otherwise Mrs May would be agreeing the protocol.

If we go back to December's Joint Report and the infamous paragraph 49, we recall the statement that: "The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border. Any future arrangements must be compatible with these overarching requirements".

It was intended at the time (and remains the intention) that these objectives would be achieved through the overall EU-UK relationship. But, if this was not be possible, the United Kingdom would "propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland".

Then, in the absence of agreed solutions, the UK would "maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement".

With respect to the commitment to maintain "full alignment" with the rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union, this did not pre-suppose that Northern Ireland would remain in either the Internal Market or the Customs Union – merely that the relevant rules should continue to apply.

Clearly, the "overall EU-UK relationship" as set out in the White Paper is not sufficient to avoid a hard border, whence there must be "specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland", failing which there was the so-called "backstop", which was set out in the protocol to the draft agreement.

With that protocol now firmly and unequivocally rejected, there is no "backstop" in place. Before there can be any further progress on the Withdrawal Agreement, a new protocol text must be produced and agreed.

Given that the "backstop" was supposed to have been settled in June and that there are no new proposals on the table, it does not seem possible that a new draft could be prepared and agreed by the time of the next European Council in October, even if the EU was prepared to discuss the issue.

And it must be remembered that, if any proposal from the UK lies outside the EU's current negotiating guidelines, M. Barnier must go back to the European Council for a new mandate. His first opportunity to do that would be in October, which necessarily precludes an agreement by that Council of a protocol which differed substantially from the original.

However, even with that hurdle out of the way, we still have the overall relationship to address. And that gives Booker his theme for this week's column (no link yet).

Ever since 17.4 million of us voted to leave the European Union, he says, we have been confronted with one question overriding all others: how could we free ourselves completely from the political structures of the EU without doing irreparable damage to our economy?

Through more than 40 years of European integration, the UK economy has become so enmeshed with those of the rest of the EU, that a vast tranche of our economic activity is only legally authorised by a thicket of EU laws.

Was it possible, he asks, that we could extricate ourselves entirely from the EU, while holding on to that economic relationship which, in exports alone, provides 14 percent of our national income, also yielding a hefty slice of Government tax income?

Even before the referendum, he reminds his readers that some of us were urging that there was only one practical way we could get pretty well all we wanted: to become a fully independent country, freeing ourselves from three quarters of the EU’s laws, while continuing to enjoy "frictionless" trade, and also free to sign trade deals across the world, and even to exercise some control over EU immigration.

This was to remain in the wider European Economic Area (EEA) by re-joining Norway in the European Free Trade Association (EFTA). Membership could have solved virtually all the problems which have proved so intractable, including the Irish border, But Theresa May chose instead to leave the EU's economic system altogether, to become a "third country".

Thus have we wasted 17 months discussing entirely fanciful proposals, each of which contradicted the "core principle" which the EU made clear even before we triggered Article 50: that “it will not be possible to cherry-pick and be a participant in parts of the Single Market", to enjoy a uniquely privileged status not open to any “third country” outside the EEA.

Yet, Booker declares, what is Mrs May’s latest proposal, which has provoked such uproar, but again exactly that. It is so detached from reality that it can only end next March in the ultimate disaster, where we crash out without an agreement. Few people in Britain yet have any idea of the chaos which will ensue, as we are shut out of our largest export market and much besides.

Whole industries will go into meltdown. It would be the gravest economic crisis in our history. And we shall have brought it entirely on ourselves, because those in charge of our affairs have never begun to understand the technical realities of what we were up against.

That sums up the Booker view, but it is clearly not one shared by his own newspaper. The Telegraph view is that Brexit needs to be "urgently renegotiated" and, if the EU refuses, the Government has other options at its disposal.

One of the few positives to emerge from the Chequers meeting, the paper says, was a commitment to step up plans for "no deal". These, it says, must be accelerated massively. The Government should be publicly preparing to inject billions into the economy to mitigate any short-term economic uncertainty.

Then, according to the Telegraph, the government should make it clear that "bizarre threats" to, for example, "cut off electricity supplies to Northern Ireland or prevent British planes from landing in European airports are insulting and unacceptable, and will receive a resolute response".

And this is as far as it gets although, symbolically, the clown Hannan would vote for Mrs May's Brexit plan – not that he would get a chance, being a lowly MEP.

Taking on the Telegraph's response to the "bizarre threats", though, it should be aware that there are laws made by the EU, with the active participation of the UK, which prohibit the sale of electricity to third countries via an interconnector, unless there are specific agreements in place to manage the transfer. Equally, no third country airliner may land at an EU/EEA airport unless it conforms with the Third Country Operator safety checks, as administered by EASA.

These are laws which, to date, the UK has been entirely content to have applied. Yet it appears that, when those same laws apply to the UK as a third country, they become "insulting and unacceptable".

Nevertheless, the chances are that the UK will not get a chance to decide whether it wants to be "insulted" by "unacceptable" laws. Mrs May has to resolve the "backstop" and, if it is anything close to being acceptable to the EU, the DUP will most certainly reject it.

There are those who say that, for the DUP to stand its ground would bring down the Conservatives and thus, also, deprive the DUP of its influence. But we are not looking at rational behaviour here. The DUP is the scorpion to Mrs May's frog. It will sting her to death midstream, and drown itself – because "that's what it does".