Category: British Government

Article 50, Brexit, British Government, Jeremy Corbyn

#Brexit Cake-ism in the Soul* (* With apologies to Sartre)

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blog was written on Sept 24th 2018

skynews-jeremy-corbyn-labour-conference_4430839
Jeremy Corbyn at the 2018 Labour Conference – Pic via Sky News

It is difficult to understand the English reaction to last week’s events in Salzburg. I say English rather than British because that is what Brexit primarily is, an outbreak of English nationalism, a belief that somehow or other, England is being treated unfairly, given its inherent greatness.

The language of the Brexiteers tells you as much. “Global Britain”, set to reconquer the world. Add in suggestions that surfaced over the past weekend from a senior Tory advisor that Ireland should consider re-joining the UK outside the EU. Brexiteers see Ireland “coming home” as the first step on the road to building an Anglosphere consisting of the old white Commonwealth nations, Canada, Australia, New Zealand. When that is done the US will want in.

At the heart of the Anglosphere a “Singapore-upon-Thames” social and economic model for the UK: low tax, deregulation, swashing a buccaneering buckle across the world. In reality, and to be a more accurate, a fantasy version of what Singapore actually is.

Yet these global delusions do not themselves explain the hysterical reaction to last week in Salzburg. See here for a recap on what actually happened.

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Brexit, British Government, Michel Barnier, Negotiating, Theresa May

A Bad Week for Theresa May on #Brexit in #Salzburg

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
Salzburg Dinner
Pic: Getty Images via BBC website

This blog was written on Sept 21st, 2018

In our Brexit Briefing last Tuesday (here) I wrote:

“So, how will Brexit end up?”, they ask. My answer is that I have no idea. I have been following Brexit developments in detail over the past two years and have written some 60 or so of these Briefings. Yet, I have absolutely no idea of what is going to happen between now and March 29th next year. Quite frankly, neither does anyone else.

What happened yesterday in Salzburg, when the EU brutally said that Mrs. May’s Chequers plan was unacceptable and would not work underscores the truth of this statement.

In the run-up to Salzburg it had been widely reported, especially in the UK press, that Mrs. May would use the occasion to appeal to the EU’s political leaders to go over the head of the “Brussels theologians” and show more flexibility in accommodating UK demands to be both in and out of the EU’s single market and customs union at the same time. “In” so as to ensure continued frictionless trade in goods between the UK and the EU so preserving the UK as the European off-shore manufacturing base for US, Japanese and, in the future, Chinese companies.

“Out” for services allowing the UK to cut buccaneering trade deals, with which a swath of UK politicians have an ideological obsession, with non-EU countries.

(For the arguments on why this approach was never going to work see this excellent article by former Irish ambassador, Bobby McDonagh: here)

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Brexit, British Government, Conservative Party, Michel Barnier, Theresa May

PM May middling on #Brexit: Mogg-ists to the Right of Her, Boles-ists to the Left

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This Brexit Blog was written on Sept 3rd, 2018

 

Mogg May Boles

After another week of negotiations between the EU and the UK we are no further along. If anything, things have gone backwards. To coin a phrase, we are in for a long, hot winter.

As we wrote in last week’s BEERG Brexit Briefing, the real issue for the immediate future remains the “politics of hard numbers” in the UK House of Commons. Of course, the UK government and the EU are working to finalise the Withdrawal Agreement by the end of this year at the latest, the October deadline having slipped, however, as any decent trade union negotiator will tell you, there is not much point in coming back with an agreement if the members are in no mind to accept it.

Sometimes the mood is just ugly and it can take a strike to break the logjam.

If the 60, or so, Conservative Party, Moggite, “vote against anything”, ultra-Brexiteers oppose whatever Withdrawal Agreement Prime Minister Theresa May reaches with the EU then she simply doesn’t have the votes to get it through the Commons.

The Moggists are now campaigning under the rubric “Chuck Chequers” the plan on which May still places all her Brexit bets, even after the EU has said no.

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Article 50, Brexit, British Government, Irish border, Northern Ireland

#Brexit and the Politics of Hard Numbers

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blog was written on Aug 26, 2018.

Commons voteIn the end, democratic politics comes down to the brutality of numbers… of hard numbers. Either you have the votes to get measures through parliament or you don’t.

Politics is about being able to count. Ask the Australian politician Peter Dutton about hard numbers. Last Monday he believed he had the votes to oust the Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, and take the top job himself. He had the votes, as they say in Australia to ‘spill’ Turnbull but lost to Scott Morrison when it came to the decision as to who would replace Turnbull. Dutton counted the wrong numbers.

For a great part of the past 100 years parliamentary majorities and party discipline generally gave UK governments the numbers they needed in the House of Commons.

But not when it comes to Brexit.

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Article 50, Brexit, British Government, Negotiating, Theresa May

Six Specific #Brexit Thoughts on a Summer’s Day

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blog was written on Monday July 30th.

cropped-raab-1.jpgIt was a Brexit week in which not much happened, except for the small matter of the EU’s chief negotiator, Michael Barnier, telling the new UK Brexit Secretary, Dominic Raab, that a key proposition in Theresa May’s Chequers plan would never be accepted by the EU.

You know the proposition, I’m referring to. The one where the UK says to the EU we’re leaving because we never liked you and you are holding us back; we are setting up as a rival business and we are going to do our own deals with the people you already have deals with or are doing deals with. But would it be OK if we collected monies owed to you by these guys? We promise, we’ll be honest and pass it on to you. All of it, every euro.

To nobody’s surprise, Barnier politely declined the UK’s offer. The UK is now working on plan E or F, not sure which.

I started writing about Brexit a year or so ago in response to questions I was being asked by the multinational companies we deal with. I have learnt a lot in that time, not just about Brexit but about British politics and about the EU, and about the almost complete lack of understanding of the EU, what drives it and how it works, on the part of the UK political class and commentariat.

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Article 50, Brexit, British Government, Irish border, Northern Ireland, Theresa May

There is Only One #Brexit Question: The Irish Question

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

May FosterBrexit, all comes down to this: The Irish Question.

As on so many other occasions over the past 200 years, the English, and it is mainly the English, do not know to handle the existential problems that Ireland creates for UK politics.

As we have done previously in this Briefing, it is well to remind ourselves that the UK voted to leave the EU. It was not pushed out, expelled or asked to leave. It decided to leave, and UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, determined, fairly much on her own it seems, that leaving meant leaving the single market, the customs union, the jurisdiction of the European Court and ending the free movement of people. The problems of Brexit are entirely of the UK’s making.

The EU didn’t start the fire.

Despite initial shock and deep disappointment, the EU has never sought to challenge the decision of the UK to leave. It accepted the decision and told the UK that its departure would have to be dealt with in accordance with Article 50 (A50) of the Lisbon Treaty. The key language in A50 reads:

In the light of the guidelines provided by the European Council, the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State, setting out the arrangements for its withdrawal, taking account of the framework for its future relationship with the Union. Continue reading →

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Brexit, British Government, Brussels, GDPR, Labour Law, Michel Barnier, Theresa May

The @GovUk #Brexit White Paper: More Questions than Answers

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blogpost was written on Friday, July 13th, 2018 

WHIf it worked once it will work again. That seems to be Theresa May’s approach to the Brexit negotiations, judging by the White Paper The Future Relationship Between The UK And The EU, published on Thursday. Back in 2012 when she was Home Secretary, using protocol 36 of the Lisbon Treaty, May opted-out en bloc from all the police and criminal justice measures adopted under the Maastricht Treaty before the EU court of justice in Luxembourg took over jurisdiction of them under Lisbon.

She then proceeded to opt back in to all of the measures she liked but was able to claim, to assuage die-hard anti-European Court Tory backbenchers, that she had opted-out.

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