Brexitwatch: the last days of cake-and-eat-it?

I explained in my last blog (12 December) how Brexit is actually quite simple, and the consequences that flow from that for the UK are simple too.

Once we decided to leave, we could try to stay close to the EU, which would mean obeying most of its rules. Or we could have a more distant relationship which would make us poorer.

Boris Johnson and the Conservatives did not find this a very attractive choice, and have tried to shirk it for the last three and a half years by claiming there was some kind of magic have-our-cake-and-eat-it solution.

Johnson’s dishonesty, short-termism and general fecklessness has now left him painted into a very fight corner where the choice is between a rotten deal that makes trade with the EU a lot more difficult and the UK a lot poorer, and no-deal which makes trade even more difficult and the UK even poorer.

(Theresa May’s deal would have made us about 3% worse off than remaining; Boris Johnson’s deal (if he could get it accepted by the EU) would make us about 4% poorer, while no-deal would carry an eye-watering 8% penalty.)

He was supposed to finally take a decision between these unpalatable options yesterday, but once again he bottled it. But the decision and the abandonment of cake-and-eat-it can’t be put off beyond 31 December, unless Johnson takes another unpalatable action: seeking the extension to transition that he said would never happen ‘in any circumstances’, and which would enrage the Brexit fanatics who maintain him in power.

  

Brexitwatch: understanding the 'negotiations'

 'Miss! The EU's being mean to us!' Of all the Brexit bleats, is this the most pathetic, and the most demeaning for Britain?

For a start according to Brexiters, the EU can't be mean to us. 'We hold all the cards, they need us more than we need them, the German carmakers will make the EU give in,' and all the other Brexit lies you know and hate.

Unless you don't want to understand, Brexit is actually pretty simple:

The EU didn't throw us out. We, foolishly in my view, left.

The EU doesn't owe us a trade deal or anything else.

If the EU believes a deal with us is in its interest, we get one.

If it doesn't, we don't. 

The EU gets to decide what's in its interest, not us.

That was always the way it was going to be. Isn't it weird how those Brexiters who are most fanatical about standing up for what they claim to be the UK's interests in the 'negotiations' are the most outraged when the EU stands up for its interests?

Brexitwatch: write to Labour

My MP happens to be the Labour leader, Sir Keir Starmer. Before the last election, he gave me a promise that Labour would vote AGAINST any Brexit deal that did not satisfy Labour's '6 tests'.

On 29 June 2018 at 22:55 STARMER, Keir wrote:

Sorry for the delay, John.

Yes, all six tests must be satisfied.

Otherwise, we vote against.

Best wishes, Keir 

The 6 tests can be found here. https://labourlist.org/2017/03/keir-starmer-labour-has-six-tests-for-brexit-if-theyre-not-met-we-wont-back-the-final-deal-in-parliament/

There are few certainties about Brexit, but two things we can be sure of are that any deal Boris Johnson achieves will bear no resemblance to what he promised while he was conning people into voting Leave and that it will not meet the 6 tests - especially test 2: 'Does it deliver the “exact same benefits” as we currently have as members of the Single Market and Customs Union?'

Any deal Johnson agrees will seriously damage our country. It would be an act of monumental folly by Labour to support such a deal, and would disqualify the party from protesting at any of the many damaging consequences that would flow from it.

So I have written to Keir Starmer again (see below). If you agree with me, write to Keir Starmer. If you have a Labour MP, write to them too.

Dear Sir Keir,

I hope that you and your loved ones are well. 

You may remember that before the last election, you gave me an assurance (see below) that Labour would vote against any Brexit deal that did not meet ALL the party's six tests.

I am sorry to have to ask you to repeat the promise, but I keep reading disturbing reports that Labour plans to vote in favour of Boris Johnson's Brexit deal, should he reach one. 

To put it mildly, it seems extremely unlikely that any deal he makes will satisfy the six tests, so can I have your assurance that Labour will not renege on its promise?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

John Withington

Brexitwatch: 'My indecision is final.' Will Boris Johnson's dithering wreck the UK?

Boris Johnson has painted himself into a corner that allows only two unpalatable choices: accept a Brexit deal that breaks virtually every promise made by the Leave campaign or allow a catastrophic 'no deal' which could have any number of adverse effects including denying people the medicines they need to stay alive. (See my posts of Sept 27 and Oct 2).

It is a measure of how Johnson has been paralysed by this dilemma that his government has made no progress since I wrote about it two months ago, and now there is less than a month, and a month interrupted by Christmas holidays, before the transition period ends, and the UK has to face all the consequences of Brexit for the first time.

Now even the right wing Brexit fanatic newspapers are full of scare stories about how Brits who own holiday homes in Europe will be limited about how long they can spend there, how they'll face bigger bills, how insurance policies and driving licences aren't going to be valid anymore, how fishermen might 'take back control' of our waters but won't be able to sell their fish, how farmers will be bankrupted, how European freight companies will decide carrying goods to the UK is just too much hassle, etc., etc.

Of course, this has all been known about for years, but the right wing press had suppressed the stories, or derided them as 'Project Fear', hoping something would turn up. Maybe those German carmakers would finally ride to our rescue?

Johnson's inability to take tough decisions was notorious when he was Mayor of London. Now, faced with a much more crucial decision, he seems to be stuck in the Micawber position, desperately hoping that something will save him from having to choose between a rotten deal and no deal. It's the same approach he adopted with Covid - taking every decision too late. A failure for which many paid with their lives.

What price will the UK pay for his inability to take a decision over Brexit?

Brexitwatch: of cakes and decisions

 Another way of saying: 'I want to have my cake and eat it' is 'I am incapable of taking a decision'. Big political decisions usually involve making painful choices. Take Covid. The harder you lock down, the more you'll limit the spread of the virus, but the more damage you'll do to the economy.

The UK was late in imposing both of its lockdowns. Was this because Boris Johnson was incapable of taking the tough decision about how you balance economic damage against saving lives? Certainly, plenty of people complain about his indecisiveness when he was Mayor of London.

Brexit involves equally painful decisions. The more distant you want to be from the EU, the more damage you do to jobs, businesses and public services, and the greater the danger that you will break up the UK.

Johnson still seems not to have progressed from cakeism. He's still telling the dwindling band of people who believe him that we can have the benefits of EU membership without the responsibilities. The UK has tried demanding this for the last four years without success, but with perhaps just a week left to secure a deal, Johnson seems to have no fresh ideas.

Even if authoritarian nihilist Dominic Cummings has really departed, it will make the central decision no easier. What does the UK want: more distant and poorer, or closer and better off? With time running out, if Johnson continues to prevaricate, we will end up with no decision. And that will mean no deal. And that will mean we won't be able to have our cake or eat it.

Brexitwatch: Kent's Brexit bogs - is Boris Johnson planning his greatest double cross?

There's a story doing the rounds that the UK could rejoin the EU in short order under Article 49. I personally do not give it a lot of credence. Nor do I think we should arrogantly assume that other EU members would want us back after the way we've behaved over the last four years.

Still, it does make you wonder. As I've noted many times, anything you say about Boris Johnson has to be highly speculative because you can't believe a word he says. 

So why is Johnson's government building 'Farage Garages' all over the place to accommodate lorry drivers stranded by Brexit, and why is Kent being turned into a public toilet that you'll need a passport to get in and out of?

Is this just the inevitable result of a no-deal Brexit or whatever lousy bare bones deal Johnson manages to do?

Or is it to ram home to the Brexiters what a disaster leaving the EU is going to be (Kent voted 59% for Brexit in the referendum), and to soften them up for an eventual application to rejoin or at least to agree a relationship that keeps us in the Single Market and the Customs Union? After all, it's quite clear that Johnson knows perfectly well that Brexit is a thoroughly foolish idea for the UK, however much it may have advanced him personally.

I don't believe this is Johnson's game, and I wouldn't put any money on it, but he knows that if he is not to go down in history as the UK's worst ever (and possibly last) prime minister, then at some point he needs to pivot away from disaster.

Brexitwatch: The Level Playing Field Mystery

'Watson. As you know, at the root of the art of detection is observation.'

'Of course, Holmes.'

'So why did I not observe it? Did I not follow the Brexit referendum campaign as closely as any man?'

'You did, Holmes.'

'So why did I not see the Level Playing Field, which we are now being told is the reason we cannot reach agreement with the European Union?'

'Perhaps because it was never there? Perhaps because "We need to leave the EU so we can hand out shedloads of hard-earned taxpayers' cash to 'businesses' run by mates of Dominic Cummings" might not have been an effective slogan?'

'And particularly not on the side of a bus! Capital, Watson!'

'But Holmes do you think the Conservatives had to conceal the fact that they wanted to use your money and mine, and the admirable Mrs Hudson's, to prop up unviable businesses because they have always said that lame ducks must go to the wall, that you can't buck the market. Indeed, wasn't Johnson saying the other day that the private sector always knows better than the state?'

'Though Cummings thinks he knows better than everyone. Watson, you excel yourself.  But there is another hypothesis, or indeed several.' The great detective paused to take a deep draught from his pipe. 'Suppose Johnson knew nothing of any of this during the referendum campaign? Suppose Cummings concealed it from him? Or suppose Cummings himself did not know about it, and that the idea came to him only after he watched 'Dragon's Den', saw the dragons, and thought:"I'd like to do that." Or suppose Cummings could see there was a danger of the EU and the UK reaching a sensible agreement, and decided that must be stopped at all costs, and that the Level Playing Field was just a useful pretext?'

'So what's the answer, Holmes?'

'That, Watson, is the mystery, but I wager the solution will bring no man any good.'

Brexitwatch: why Boris Johnson may go for 'no deal'

On 27 September, I put the case for why Boris Johnson may cave in and make a deal with the EU. Today I look at why he may be forced to settle for 'no deal'.

I was watching a clip from Johnson campaigning before the 2016 Brexit referendum. In the space of about 50 seconds, he promised: 1 Brexit would be 'win-win'. 2. There would be no tariffs. 3. There would be no trade barriers. 4. The City of London would continue to have the same access it has to now to the EU.

No deal that Johnson can achieve could possibly fulfil even these promises. To say nothing of all the others that were made - that we could have our cake and eat it, we could enjoy all the benefits of EU membership without any of the responsibilities, that it would make the UK better off, provide more money for the NHS etc, etc.

So the danger of a deal for Johnson is that it will be measured against the promises he and his acolytes made. And, therefore, perhaps the safest thing is to have 'no deal' and try to put the blame on the EU.

Certainly Johnson's government has been working very hard at that. The UK is reneging on treaties and breaking international law - that's the EU's fault. The UK's doctrinaire refusal to compromise means no progress is being made - that's the EU's fault, etc, etc.

So here is one reason why Johnson may feel 'no deal' is his safest option, and there are others which I will examine in the coming days - always remembering the health warning: because you cannot believe a word Johnson says, it is very hard to predict what he will do. 

Brexitwatch: Boris Johnson - deal or no deal?

Sam Goldwyn warned: 'Never make predictions, especially about the future', and making predictions about Boris Johnson is especially hazardous because you can't believe a word he says (see my post of 5 January).

According to the crankish game theories of Johnson, or perhaps more important - Cummings, the UK will get a good deal only if the EU believes it is serious about 'walking away' from negotiations and settling for 'no deal'. (Though the consequences of no deal are now so widely recognised to be disastrous that Johnson-Cummings have had to try to rebadge it as an 'Australia-type' deal.)

There is no evidence that the EU are in the slightest degree impressed by this nonsense, but plenty that it keeps the more fanatically anti-EU element among Johnson-Cummings' supporters happy.

Nye Bevan asked: 'Why look in the crystal ball, when you can read the book?' And we have already seen Johnson-Cummings with their backs against the wall during the negotiations. They also threatened to walk away during the Withdrawal Agreement talks, but in the end they signed up to whatever the EU demanded, including things like a border in the Irish Sea that Theresa May had rejected. They and their nodding dogs then claimed this was a great victory.

Johnson-Cummings' attempt to renege on that agreement may mean that an even more humiliating climbdown will be required to get a deal on the future relationship, as the EU is probably unlikely to take much on trust from now on. But with a mendacious right-wing press still highly compliant on Brexit, if not on Covid, Johnson may still be calculating that he can repeat his earlier trick: surrender, then claim victory, while his media accomplices play along.

So, if I was forced to predict an outcome, it would be this one, though I wouldn't bet much on it. I'll be examining other possibilities over the coming weeks.

Brexitwatch: MPs - you're out of excuses. Time to resume your jobs

It is the duty of MPs to act in the interests of the UK. Many, perhaps most, regarded this duty as suspended after the Brexit referendum. Though the vast majority knew leaving the EU would damage the UK, they decided to obey the result of the referendum, even though it was explicitly advisory and non-binding, and even though it was set up and conducted in a thoroughly undemocratic way.

Readers of this blog will know I disagreed profoundly with this analysis. But if you agreed with it, the referendum result committed the government to one thing only: that we should ‘leave the EU’. That was the only thing we voted on. That duty has been discharged. We left on January 31, and MPs, therefore, no longer have any excuse for ignoring the national interest.

Any version of Brexit makes us poorer than we would have been if we had stayed in the EU, but the most damaging way to leave is ‘no deal’ – without any agreement. (No doubt worried that people were beginning to realise this, Johnson and Cummings have rebadged ‘no deal’ as an ‘Australia-style deal’. Australia has no trade deal with the EU.) 

A no-deal Brexit, according to the government’s own figures, will cost us around £30bn a year. That’s equivalent to about three-quarters of what we spend on schools. How disappointing then that our MPs have shown so little interest in the Conservative government’s dilatory non-negotiations with the EU, characterised by shouting slogans designed to appeal to the worst instincts of the most extreme Brexiters.

Come on MPs! This is not good enough. You can’t go on hiding behind the referendum result. It is your duty to your country to prevent a no-deal exit and to ensure the damage from Brexit is minimised as much as it can be.

Brexitwatch: Leave means disaster, say Leavers

The 'Leave Alliance' who 'make the case for leaving the EU' now realise Brexit's going to be a disaster. In a series of tweets, they say: 'These days I'm heavily sceptical of #Brexit and the mess it will surely be.'

They add: 'Any serious examination our #Brexit trade negotiations suggests the UK is playing silly b*ggers and was never sincere about a deal and we're just going through the motions to pretend we tried. The headbangers have won.'

I could hardly put it better myself! They point out that the government's plan to join the CPTPP Trans-Pacific partnership on the other side of the world instead of the EU 20 miles across the channel is a waste of time. (Surely even Dominic 'where's Dover?' Raab, our alleged Foreign Secretary, must have noticed the UK isn't very near the Pacific.)

As for a US trade deal, says the Leave Alliance, it'll be much worse than staying in the EU Single Market, and probably won't happen anyway.

Our customs systems 'aren't ready' for the end of transition, and no-deal will cause 'unsustainable customs and red tape overheads'. They conclude that it looks as though the Tories 'haven't the first idea what they're doing.'

You'll be relieved to know that sanity hasn't completely dawned in Brexitland. Even though we Remainers have been warning for the last four and a half years that Brexit is barmy, it is still apparently all our fault. The question now though is whether the Brexiters who have belatedly realised that Johnson is leading us to disaster have the guts to do anything about it.

Brexitwatch: Boris Johnson - intimations of mortality

‘When a man is about to be hanged,’ said Dr Johnson, ‘it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ Assuming that, during his time in the intensive care ward, Boris Johnson felt acutely reminded of his own mortality, what effect might that have?

Because you can’t believe a word he says, anything you write about Johnson is highly speculative, but I spoke to someone who claimed to know him, who told me something I found reassuring. He said the prime minister cares a lot about what the history books will say about him.

If he had died during his brush with coronavirus, they wouldn’t have made great reading: ‘He knew leaving the EU would be highly damaging for the UK, but he pressed on with it because he thought it would advance his own career. He undermined prime minister Theresa May on the pretext that her Withdrawal Agreement was not good enough, then once he had replaced her, negotiated one that was worse. He won an election under a slogan he knew was mendacious, and then when he was confronted with the worst crisis the UK had faced in decades, he proved completely unequal to the task.' Though the charge sheet would obviously be longer than this.

If Johnson is serious about being treated more kindly by history, he must realise there are a number of policies he is going to have to reverse. Most obviously, limiting the damage from Brexit by agreeing a close relationship with the EU to secure the frictionless trade on which the UK’s future depends.

So far the signs aren’t good. He has bizarrely ruled out any extension of the transition period which ends on December 31 at which point, the UK is in danger of crashing out of Europe with a huge hit to jobs, public services, businesses etc.

But the lesson for Boris Johnson of his intimation of mortality is surely this. If there is something you need to do, do it today. There may be no tomorrow.

Brexitwatch: What's Boris Johnson up to?

Three years ago, I was asking: 'What is Theresa May up to?' (see my blog of 9 October 2016) and never coming to any satisfactory conclusion. Now I'm pondering the same thing about Boris Johnson.

Mrs May would never have won any prizes for honesty, unless her opponent was Boris Johnson. The fact that you can't believe a word Johnson says makes it even more difficult to guess what is his policy (assuming there is one).

Like others, I even speculated that if he won a decent parliamentary majority, Johnson might sell the Tory Brexit fanatic ERG down the river just as he betrayed the DUP, and try to negotiate a less damaging form of Brexit by seeking to stay in the Single Market and the Customs Union.

Unfortunately, his announcement that there will be no extension of the transition phase beyond the end of this year suggests he's still firmly in the fanatic camp. Nobody much seems to think that any deal that does not seriously damage the UK can be done by 31 December 2020.

It's a bizarre move in that it weakens even further the UK's poor negotiating hand. The EU is under no pressure to reach a deal by that date, but now Johnson is, which puts him at the EU's mercy.

So why did he do it? Is the man who was attacking Brexit as madness as recently as 2016 now a fully paid up Brexit fanatic? Was it part of a deal to get Nigel Farage to stand down hundreds of his candidates, without which Johnson would not have won his majority?

Or is it a demonstration, that just as with Theresa May, getting a good deal for the UK is not the priority, and that his actions are posturing, designed instead to curry favour with those at home he believes he needs to keep him in power?

Brexitwatch: nail the 'over the line' myth

It’s surely one of the most mendacious of all the Brexit clichés. We keep being told that we have to get Brexit ‘over the line’.

You ‘get over the line’ when you finish a race, and once you’re over the line, the race is over. But with Brexit, it’s completely different. Leaving the EU, if we are foolish enough to do it, won’t be the end of anything. It will be the start.

Whether we leave with no deal, or with May’s deal rebranded as Johnson’s deal, leaving the EU will kick off years, possibly decades of uncertainty as we try to negotiate a future arrangement with them. And, just as they have over the last three years, the EU will hold nearly all of the cards. And as the Brexiters still haven’t decided what they want, it will be a depressing and demeaning experience.

So getting Brexit ‘over the line’ doesn’t stop the nightmare. The only way you can achieve that is by stopping Brexit.

Brexitwatch: to keep Britain in the EU write to your MP NOW

The moment of truth is approaching. Once Theresa May activates Article 50, it will become much more difficult to keep Britain in the EU. So if you want to prevent Brexit, it is important to write to your MP NOW. It is generally believed that MPs are more impressed by letters than emails.

My MP is Sir Keir Starmer, who happens to be Labour's spokesperson on Brexit, but what I have written to him could be used as the basis for a letter to any MP. I reproduce it below:-

Sir Keir Starmer, MP,

House of Commons,

London, SW1A 0AA

23 January 2017

Dear Sir Keir,

I call on you and your Labour Party colleagues to oppose the government’s plan to activate Article 50 and give notice that we will leave the EU.

You and your colleagues are behaving as though they are compelled to go along with Brexit, but you are not.

Throughout the campaign, one of the leading demands of the Brexit side was that the UK Parliament should be sovereign. Well, the UK Parliament decided that the referendum on EU membership should be advisory only. There is, therefore, no legal requirement to take us out of the EU.

Nor is there any moral requirement. The Leave side won by a very narrow majority (which, judging from by-election results since the vote, has already evaporated) in a referendum in which almost 30 per cent of people abstained.

The Leave victory was secured by a systematic campaign of lies and deception (as has been admitted by a number of the Brexit leaders) and its leadership offered no coherent alternative to EU membership.

So if you and your Labour colleagues vote to support the triggering of Article 50, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of your constituents and of Labour voters support staying in the EU, that is a CHOICE that you are making.

And I find it difficult to understand how any MP who cares about the future of our country could make such a choice. There is no evidence of any kind that leaving the EU will benefit us, and a huge volume of evidence that we will be harmed by quitting.

In those circumstances you and your colleagues have a duty to do everything in your power to prevent this disastrous step. This is the most crucial decision Parliament has had to make in decades, and your duty to your country and your constituents outweighs any considerations of party loyalty.

As an intelligent man, you must know that once you allow the government to trigger Article 50, leaving the EU will be inevitable. Even if you can persuade Theresa May to seek Parliamentary approval for the deal she has been able to negotiate with 27 other countries, the European Parliament etc (good luck with that one, Theresa!) you will be faced with a fait accompli.

You will either have to accept the terms she comes back with, however bad they may be, or leave with no agreement at all, which would be a complete disaster.

No. Labour cannot sit on the fence any longer. This is the last chance to keep us in the EU. It is fight or flight time, put up or shut up. And if Labour continues its present policy of chasing the UKIP vote, I fear the wipe out in Scotland will be repeated in many other parts of the country.

Theresa May has no coherent plan for a viable alternative to EU membership. She does not even appear to know whether, once activated, Article 50 can be revoked if negotiations show that the Brexit the British people have been promised cannot be delivered.

For my part, I will not be voting for any politician or political party that supports leaving the EU.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,