These wholly unelected people, unknown to most ordinary folks, have just signed the Agreement on the Withdrawal of the UK from the EU, opening the way for the vote in the European Parliament on Wednesday. We are most definitely leaving the EU. This image alone would bring a smile were it not for the fact there's an equivalent UK picture featuring Boris Johnson who is wholly ill equipped to make anything good of it.
All the same, on Brexit day I will be sinking a pint or two to celebrate arriving at the end of what has been a long hard road, consuming pretty much every single day for the last five years. The game may not be over but we are formally leaving the Treaties of the EU marking a new era for Britain.
But while leave (and remain) campaigning organisations are winding down, this blogger is not vacating the field. Brexit will dominate the agenda for a long time to come. As I have oft remarked, Brexit is not an end in itself. Our formal departure is less significant than the actual outcomes.
This, though, is where it's going to get pretty boring. The media will lose interest because it is not interested in outcomes at all. It's only interested in the personalities and drama. But there's a reason for that. Most of their readers are similarly shallow and tribal and couldn't give a monkey's about outcomes either.
To be be fair, one can completely understand why the details are a turn off. Trade is a dull subject. Insofar as there is a trade debate it is limited to a narrow band of self-appointed experts churning over the same handful of talking points desperately trying to draw attention to themselves. Then when it comes to the specifics they tend to be so impenetrable that even the experts can't agree on what anything means. It's easy to see why people revert to sources with prestige whom they trust. There isn't time in the day to learn it all for anybody normal.
The problem with that is that it leads to a highly partisan debate where the facts fall between the cracks. Remainers will choose to view any news in the most negative light possible while Brexiteers will inflate any morsel of good news they can find. If there's a wrong end of the stick they will grasp it with both hands. Britain will secure trade deals and it won't matter to Guidophiles is it's just a rollover deal or shallower in scope than what went before. It will still be cause to gloat.
Brexiteers will be in full damage control mode when the consequences of our departure start to hit home. Outside of the single market, trade in services is only marginally better than the WTO baseline and the likes of Japan or anyone who has an existing deal with the EU is bound by those MFN clauses meaning they can't offer us anything over an above what they've granted to the EU otherwise they have to grant the same to the EU without the EU having to reciprocate.
By the time we leave the transition period under the whatever the new regime is likely to be the temporary continuity MOUs will come to an end and we'll be lucky to end up with FTAs even close to what we currently enjoy. That, combined with the loss of the single market, means that even if a deal can be struck with the USA, we're still taking a major hit.
The good news, is that many of the comprehensive deals we presently enjoy via the EU or relatively recent developments, the actual impact of which is barely noticeable. I'm not particularly worried about our trade with the rest of the world. It will even out in due course. It was always the case that if we wanted to stimulate more commerce with the rest of the world it was going to take more than FTAs. We need a proactive strategy encompassing aid and development, particularly in those countries where the EU has yet to secure comprehensive partnerships.
Presently CETA is the most far reaching EU agreement on services. Japan and South Korea and others will level up over time but ultimately geographical proximity is the main driver of services combined with liberal visa arrangements and soft integration such as recognition of qualifications. The EU does not have it as sewn up as remainers would have us believe. In WTO language trade agreements on services are termed Economic Integration Agreements, and as such, few of the EU's FTAs would qualify.
As ever Africa is touted as the land of opportunity, and to a point that's correct. African states are highly suspicious of comprehensive EU treaties in that they wish to preserve their own trade defences and don't want the EU dumping its surpluses thus undermining the industries they are trying to develop to move away from the blooded hand of mineral wealth. There are opportunities for the UK if we are prepared to talk visa liberalisation and aid. That may prove politically difficult (as it did with India).
Despite the political challenges, though, I am reasonably assured that we have what it takes. Previously I favoured the idea of rolling DfID up into the department of trade or the FCO but so long as there is a coherent interdepartmental strategy there is no reason why it can't be tasked with enhancing our overseas trade interests. Though DfID is a much maligned department, much of what it does is wholly experimental and its results are difficult to quantify but it is still an important instrument of influence. Populist calls for its demise (usually from the Guidophiles) are unhelpful.
We must also remember that we are quite new at this. The UK lacks the institutional knowledge because we haven't had our own distinct trade and foreign policy for some years. The ideas machines in London are way behind the times which is why obsolete ideas like free ports still hold sway in Tory circles. Ultimately the use of free ports is viewed internationally as an indirect subsidy in contravention of certain WTO conventions and have very little regenerative potential. We are going to have to think bigger.
What should be our central concern is our trade and cooperation relationship with the EU. It is, after all, our largest market and closest of all our interests. The political ambition may be toward regulatory independence but this has business and industry screaming at the government for reassurance. Unless there is a high degree of regulatory alignment business will suffer as will employment and though it is politically expedient to say "fuck business" right now, British voters still have bills to pay.
This is where it gets tricky. It would seem the technical integration we could tolerate will not be offered without far reaching level playing field provisions encompassing non-regression clauses that to a very large extent defeat the commercial deregulatory objectives of the Tories while compromising sovereignty too far for those who prioritise those matters. Though the technical and trade governance rules may be global in nature, the EU will be calling the shots on the LPF provisions and there will be a role for the ECJ since we abandoned the Efta option.
Adding to what is already nightmarishly complex, we then have the Northern Ireland protocol to contend with that will have a major influence over own own territorial governance mechanisms (whatever they may be) and if not directly adopting rules from the EU, to preserve a degree of compatibility, we will have to be mindful of it, aligning unilaterally. Methinks the Tories were operating under the presumption that Northern Ireland was a backwater concern we could largely isolate when in reality it will become the tail wagging the dog.
For now Boris Johnson is holding the line by lying outright, saying that there won't be customs complications between the two territories but even he can't escape the inevitable by glossing over it. He hopes to walk away with a minimalistic deal (which is about all that can be achieved in the time available) and that may placate Brexteers, but in so doing he is inflicting enormous damage that will at some point need to be corrected. That will of course mean going back to Brussels cap in hand and gradually piecing together much of what we could have had simply by remaining in the EEA. Only Johnson is hoping to be long gone by then.
The truth of the matter is that the spirit of Brexit always was going to be defeated by the detail. We are very much in Hotel California territory. This was very much anticipated by The Leave Alliance which is why we took the view that Brexit as envisaged by Brexiteers was something of a pipedream. With the explosion of international trade governance rules and standards alone with global regulations adopted via the EU, the intellectual basis for Tory Brexit always stood on a foundation of intellectual sand.
By remaining in the EEA and joining Efta we could have used our collective influence to enhance the EEA agreement, recognising that there was no realistic way to break from the EU's regulatory orbit. We would then at least have a means of controlling what we adopt and shaping it accordingly, while having a distinct firewall between us and the ECJ. Had Leave.EU and Vote Leave invested in any kind of planning they would have recognised the bear traps and ambushes well in advance and would have seen, as we did, that the EEA, though suboptimal, was our best hope for a viable Brexit and the most workable basis for a collaborative relationship with the EU.
By rejecting this option we are now on a trajectory to being a passive "rule taker" and back on the ratchet, which is neither desirable nor tolerable. In respect of that, Brexit as will be delivered, does not meaningfully resolve our philosophical disagreement with Brussels and though we may grudgingly accept our fate in the interim, we will again see disquiet within the Tory party under the banner of True Brexit has never been tried!
Though we are leaving the treaties of the EU, a highly symbolic gesture, the reality is that our fate is forever bound to an extent by geography. We are may be leaving but the EU continues to exist and continues to be a power with which we must contend. There are endless questions still without good answers and our politics is manifestly incapable of answering them. As much as we are ill served by our government there is no hope to be found on the opposite benches. This, combined with a media that finds it all too boring, we may well end up a vassal state. It's almost like some sort of Brexit plan was a good idea after all.
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