“but these people (hard line Brexiteers) – they want to destroy us (the EU). They want us to blow up from the inside. I tell you, as long as I have strength, we’ll stand in their way. We won’t yield an inch to those people. Never.” - Michel Barnier
Few comments emerge from members of the United Kingdom’s EU trade deal negotiating team. The words that are said give the impression the team’s feet are set in concrete. “No surrender – no compromise” is the rallying cry. Legislation has been passed to severely limit Parliamentary scrutiny of the process. The negotiations seem like a badly written opera. The performers sing out of tune to a bewildered audience. As the curtain comes down those looking on can only sit helplessly as the curtain raises again for yet another agonising act. The potentially apocalyptic end is now less that 4 months away.
Away from the negotiating Zoom conference room, in the real world, over half the UK’s trade is with EU countries, thousands of jobs are at risk and whole industries are at stake. Four years ago, we were told friction-free trade with the EU would be maintained, that striking a post-Brexit deal with the EU would be easy and, come last December’s General Election, the deal was “oven ready”.
As far as I can tell Boris Johnson is sticking to the same cunning plan he hatched when he decided at the time of the Referendum which side would best serve his personal ambitions. He calculated he could bluster his way to a “cake and eat it” position. That he could have all the advantages of membership of the Single Market without paying the membership fee and escaping all the rules that make the market work efficiently and fairly.
My assumption is that Boris thought he could bung a few subsidies the way, of say, Cheddar cheese producers thus enabling it to be sold cheaply to the French to hopefully wean them off Brie and Camembert. In Boris Bluster land the plan was to get free of the EU’s rules, subsidise UK manufacturing and producers and boost the economy at the expense of those rule-bound Europeans. The EU are saying, quite understandably, that the UK will not be allowed to run a coach and horses through the rules and, simply, if the UK wants tariff-free access, then we must play by the same rules as everybody else. This is particularly relevant when it comes to state aid to producers and manufacturers.
So we sit less than 90 days away from a no deal Brexit when the transition period ends on 31st December. The Times, hardly a bastion of progressive politics, has kindly produced a table setting out what no deal means. It does not make comfortable reading. Crime will be harder to fight as the UK will no longer have access to Europe’s crime fighting resources; lorries will back up awaiting customs clearance at yet to be constructed lorry parks, processing will be in the hands of 50,000 yet to be recruited customs officials, shortages of food and medicines as just in time supply lines will be frustrated and on and on. Tariffs will apply to imports and exports (40% on beef for example) and failure to collect will get us into big trouble with the World Trade Organisation. This is on top of the Government’s failure to provide manufacturers with the UK’s future labelling requirements thus leaving them with little time to design legislation-obeying labels let alone get everything that goes into shops exported properly and legally labelled.
The latest twist is that Boris intends to amend the legislation passed by Parliament that put the Withdrawal Agreement into law while admitting doing this “breaks international law in a very specific and limited way”. Has Albion ever been more perfidious?
Brexit hardliners seem unafraid of a no deal. A senior Minister recently admitted on the Today programme that “no deal” would be a good outcome. They see it as a punishment for those unwavering Europeans. This all begs the question; who will get the blame for our inability to reach an agreement despite having four and a half years to do so? One thing is for certain, Boris, or indeed anybody from his close group of supporters, won’t accept responsibility, or the Brexit ultras out in the country. So who does get the blame? Here are my suggestions.
5G Telephone Masts The traditional conspiracy theorists go-to option. The pubs will be alight with conversations convinced the dastardly Chinese are using 5G masts to control the Europeans to stand firm against the UK’s entirely reasonable demands.
Vaccines Again a conspiracy theorists’ favourite. Childhood injections given to Europeans included an anti-British ingredient.
The French They have never forgiven us for Agincourt. They ran away in two world wars and we brave Brits had to rescue them. Brexit intransigence is their revenge.
Bitter Remoaners The insignificant 16 million Remain voters have plotted their payback against the democratic wishes of the overwhelming majority by taking sides with the EU negotiators. Very unpatriotic.
The Germans We have never trusted them despite putting them in their place twice. For them is it all about putting right the wrongs of the 1966 World Cup Final. This was the chance.
The Deep State If there is nothing else to blame, Fred down the pub says there are invisible forces that control us and deny us our democratic rights. Nobody knows who they are, where they are based and how they get things done but hey ho!
The Left-Wing Do-Gooders This is a collaboration of those so deeply despised by the Daily Mail. Judges, lawyers, the Supreme Court, experts, Guardian readers, social workers, teachers, actors and writers and anybody living in Islington. Indeed, anybody from the liberal Metropolitan elite who, unlike Brexit voters, were hiding behind the sofa on D-Day.
But surely the favourite for getting the blame heaped on them must be EU Chief Negotiator Michel Barnier. After all he can hardly speak English and that is why he failed to agree each and every demand without debate. You can easily imagine the swivel-eyed Brexiteers of the Commons – Redwood, Duncan Smith, Bridgen, Francois, Jenkin – queuing up for television interviews and the opportunity to stick the boot in.
The irony is that from the outset the UK has been on a mission to get a deal that is worse than the one we currently enjoy. If we want all those benefits with the opportunity to build on them, the only option is to remain in the Single Market. It would be a major failure of statecraft for both sides if a deal failed to emerge – but be absolutely sure we would be the big losers. Losing means jobs gone, family incomes undermined, industries lost, exports frustrated……and now we risk the status of a pariah state. In future known as a country that reneges on its international commitments.
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