EU Referendum


Brexit: back in business


03/01/2021




It seems as if today's duty propagandist for The Sunday Telegraph is Home Secretary Priti Patel, writing under the headline: "As a fully sovereign nation, Britain can look to the future with hope and optimism".

One worries about this sort of claim because if that is all the government has to offer, then it's hard to see what we have gained. Since we already had sovereignty, as such, then being a "fully sovereign nation" is simply more of the same.

But, of course, there is more. We have a deal, writes Patel, "that will deliver for families and businesses in every part of the UK with the first free trade agreement based on zero tariffs and zero quotas that has ever been achieved".

This is also a deal "that guarantees that we are no longer bound by EU rules, that there is no role for the European Court of Justice and that we will have full political and economic independence".

Well, that's what the lady believes, and it seems to be the party line. She doesn't point out that, before TransEnd we were part of the Single Market and the customs union, where we enjoyed zero tariffs and zero quotas. Thus, in that sense, all this deal has done is restore part of the status quo.

As for being bound by "EU rules", we've already explored that in depth and while it is true that there is no role for the ECJ in the TCA, the idea that we will have "full political and economic independence" is for the fayries. There is not a nation on earth which can boast full independence in anything.

That, though, is as good as it gets. While no-one but the legacy media is surprised at the absence of queues at the ports, with the lorry-watchers having nothing to report, the Sundays have all but given up on TransEnd and what they are publishing is hardly worth reading. The focus in mainly on Covid with a smattering of climate change.

In days of old, when there were some newspapers which had not yet become comments, one might have expected the Sunday newspapers to be in analytical mode. The weekend after Christmas was too early to offer a detailed evaluation of the TCA so this week would have presented the ideal opportunity.

Such that there is, though, is largely trivia or a rehash of old stories. The Sunday Times has a derivative and largely uninformative piece of "Brexit and the City", speculating on the long-term future of the London-based financial services industry.

The paper also tells us [some] specialist retailers across the EU have stopped selling goods to the UK "due to the tax rules involved in delivering to Britain after Brexit".

We are thus told that small shops ranging from Scandinavian slipper suppliers to Belgian artisan brewers have halted supplies, with the rather odd claim that "some say this is temporary while they navigate new tax laws introduced last Friday", while others have stopped to avoid customs declarations and registering for VAT.

VAT may well be an issue, although I am not sure (yet) how the business-to-business rules affect sales. But customs declarations should not be a problem as these are made by the importer. This notwithstanding, some UK buyers are finding that, when they try to place their orders abroad, the UK is not listed as a delivery option.

From the sound of it, some of that might reflect the reluctance of logistic companies to handle shipments to the UK, in which case it is too early to tell whether this might be temporary, of reflects a longer-term trend. The general consensus seems to be that it will be a couple of weeks before we get any real sense of how the new systems will work.

In a way though, it is perhaps just as well that the media are not expending much energy on analysis. The output tends to be superficial and, in the main, insufferably patronising, or just plain wrong. We had to put up recently, for instance, with a dreary piece by the BBC's Faisal Islam perpetrating the myth that the Single Market was "a creation for which the UK has paternity rights", presented as "Margaret Thatcher's rallying call for European reform".

Given the BBC treatment of the Norway option, I would not trust any analysis the BBC has to offer on the subject of the EU, and this is no different. The reality, though, is not difficult to research, which just goes to show how lazy and careless the BBC has become.

When in 1957 the Six agreed the Treaty of Rome, they established a customs union, the effect of which was to abolish tariffs at internal borders and set a common external tariff. The union was complete by 1968, two years ahead of schedule, but that did not mean the abolition of border controls. By the early 1980s, checks were still common and, by 1984, the European Commission was despairingly reporting:
Last year a Belgian journalist rented a van and loaded it up with some old furniture that he wanted to take to a holiday house that he had just bought in the South of France. He drove to the frontier and was eventually allowed to cross an hour and a half, 15 signatures and half-a-dozen forms later. The import of second-hand furniture into France for a holiday home ('Do you have proof of ownership, sir?') is perfectly legal, and not subject to any tax or duty. But all the old French customs procedures still exist. The red tape involved in transporting an old wardrobe is the same as for a load of computers or fifty barrels of poisonous dioxin waste from Seveso.
Border checks were estimated to cost between 5-10 percent of the value of goods crossing internal frontiers and, in February that year, a go-slow by customs officials on the Franco-Italian border brought the system to crisis point when French lorry drivers mounted a strike in protest, blockading roads and paralysing commerce. After two weeks, riot police and soldiers had to be mobilised to clear the roads.

At Community level, the response in June 1984 was for the Fontainebleau European Council to agree in principle the abolition of customs and police formalities at the Community's internal borders. On 13 July 1984, the French and German governments took the step towards attaining this objective, signing the Saarbrücken Agreement at the Saarbrücken-Forbach border crossing point in the symbolic Goldene-Bremm area.

This bilateral treaty – outside the framework of the Treaty of Rome - committed the two nations to reducing checks and establishing joint control points. It marked one of the first formal initiatives which led to the development of the Single Market.

The following year, on 14 June 1985, Belgium, Luxembourg and the Netherlands joined with France and Germany to build on this initiative, signing the Schengen Agreement. The five countries committed themselves to the gradual abolition of checks at common borders and to facilitate the transport and movement of goods at those borders.

This, like the Saarbrücken Agreement, was outside the Community framework. Thus, when the Commission White Paper on the completion of the internal market was published, on the same day as the Schengen Agreement, its proposal to secure the complete abolition of frontiers was nothing new.

The resultant Single Market was not a "British invention" and nor, as Margaret Thatcher liked to think, had "Britain given the lead". As early as March 1968, the Commission had set out a programme for the elimination of technical obstacles to trade between Member States.

At that time, the completion had been set for 1 January 1971, but the political crisis in France had delayed implementation. With the Yom Kippur War in 1973 and the energy crisis that followed, in turn precipitating a Europe-wide financial crisis, it was 1984 before planning could resume.

The White Paper of the following year, therefore – heralded as the plan that kick-started the "completion" of the Single Market - was simply the extension of a policy line established with the Treaty of Rome and pursued ever since. By no means could it be considered a British invention.

But, when this is the level of background briefing we're getting from the media, we're actually better off on our own. People who want fluff can go to the media, but for sensible information, one needs to go elsewhere.

Just when I thought it was safe to wind down our efforts on the blog, it seems we're very much back in business for the foreseeable future.

Also published on Turbulent Times.