Tag: Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson, Brexit, coronavirus, Michel Barnier, Negotiating

Doing #Brexit in the Days of #Covid19.

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

raab

Brexit is done. The United Kingdom has left the European Union. And it is always worth repeating that it was the UK’s decision to leave. It wasn’t asked to leave. Much less was it expelled. And, as elsewhere in life, leavers don’t normally get to dictate the terms of their leaving.

Brexit cannot now be cancelled, and the UK no longer has the option of remaining in the EU on current terms and conditions. The UK had no part in the negotiations over the past two weeks on the EU’s latest €500bn Covid-19 package and it will have no part in any future EU discussions on rebuilding Europe’s economies in the years ahead.

All that remains is for the EU and UK to work out the terms of the future relationship between the two. This agreement will not only need to cover the basics of trade in goods and services, but also issues as diverse as data transfers, aviation, road transport, financial services, fisheries, nuclear energy, personal and business travel arrangements, as well as potential UK participation in a wide range of EU scientific and other programs, if it wishes to do so.

While the UK has legally left the EU, the two sides have agreed a “transition year” to run until December 31, 2020. Because of this, there has been, to date, no visible impact of the UK’s exit. For the moment, there are no new custom checks and no new barriers to trade between the two. Travel between the UK and the EU, and vice versa, continues as before and UK citizens can still benefit from EU initiatives, such as the European Health Insurance Card (EIHC).

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Boris Johnson, Brexit, British Government, Single Market

UK’s Brexit mandate is based on 3 fictions

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blogpost was written on Saturday March 7th.

BoJo

The first week of negotiations on the terms of the future relationship between the EU and the UK after the end of 2020 transition year opened this week in Brussels. The previous week both sides published their negotiating mandates. The EU mandate can be found here. The UK´s here.

Leave to one side the technicalities of tariffs, quotas, rules of origin and so on, the small stuff of trade negotiations. “Zoom out” and see the big picture. And the big picture is this: the UK is leaving the EU. The UK decided to leave. It was its decision and its decision alone. It was not pushed out or asked to leave.

All the consequences of Brexit flow from the UK´s decision.

The UK is walking away from the deal it now has, as an EU member, of frictionless trade in goods, liberalised access for the services sector, and full integration into intra-EU data flows covering individuals, businesses, and justice and security matters. The UK government has now accepted that any future deal will be worse than this, will generate border delays and frictions, will curb services access and disrupt data flows.

Business will take a hit, in some cases a very big hit (see below). But, as is it right, the current UK government has privileged sovereignty and law-making autonomy over economic and commercial considerations.

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Boris Johnson, Brexit, British Government, Trade Deals, UK Labour Party

And so, #BREXIT is ‘Done’- Now for the Really Hard Part

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
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EU Council staff members remove the UK flag –  livier Hoslet/AFP via Getty Images

And so, Brexit is done. As of midnight, last Friday, January 31, Brussels time, the UK left the European Union. As of today, it is now a “third country”, anchored outside the EU´s legal order, free to go its own way and chart its own course. This will not become evident for another year, because the UK, as part of its Withdrawal Agreement, has accepted to follow all EU laws during 2020 as if it were still an EU member, including any new laws that come into force during the year.

But the UK will no longer have a voice in EU decision making in 2020. No UK EU Commissioner, no members of the European Parliament, no involvement of UK officials in the hundreds of EU meetings that take place every day.

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Boris Johnson, Brexit, British Government, Conservative Party, Jeremy Corbyn, UK Labour Party

UK #GE2019: @BorisJohnson’s Conservative party wins big

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
GE2019 Result BBC
Chart via https://twitter.com/bbcelection 

This could be a bitter-sweet victory for Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party.

Johnson’s gamble has paid off and the Conservatives have decisively won the UK general election . He looks like having a clear overall majority of 80. Labour has put in its worst performance since 1935, winning just over 200 seats. Corbyn and “Corbynomics” turned out not to be such a vote winner after all.

Sweet though such a victory is for Johnson, the bitterness comes with the results in Scotland and Northern Ireland. In Scotland, the pro-independence, anti-Brexit Scottish Nationalists (SNP) swept the boards. The final results were SNP: 48 (+13) Conservatives: 6 (-7) Lib Dem: 4 (-) Labour: 1 (-6). Ten years ago, Labour had over 40 seats in Scotland.

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Boris Johnson, Brexit, British Government, Conservative Party, Jeremy Corbyn, UK Labour Party

Some thoughts on Brexit as UK has another election

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog

This blogpost was written on Sat, November 2nd, 2019. The next BEERG Brexit blogpost will be in mid-December, after the results of the UK general election are known 

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The granting of an extension by the EU until January 31 next and the calling of a UK general election has put the Brexit process on hold for now. How Brexit proceeds, if indeed it does, will be decided on December 12, the day the UK votes in its third general election in four years.

At the time of writing the outcome is impossible to predict. Election campaigns are strange events. The unexpected can happen during the next six weeks, and probably will. Trying to predict the outcome of this election based on what happened in 2017 is a fool´s game.

This Briefing has always been about Brexit and what Brexit means for businesses and their employees, whether based in the UK or elsewhere in the EU. We do not see it as our role to comment on UK politics more widely or to express particular political preferences.

For that reason, we are pausing this Briefing for the duration of the general election campaign.

Once the results of the general election are known, we will start writing again about the Brexit process which, as we suggest elsewhere in this Briefing, will never end. Writing about Brexit is a labour of Sisyphus.

However, our decision to sign off until mid-December, presents us with an opportunity to offer some thoughts on Brexit and the Brexit process and the light they have shone on the UK over the past three years. Continue reading →

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Backstop, Brexit, British Government, Customs Union, Data Protection, Single Market

No matter what, years of Brexit uncertainty beckons

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blogpost was written on Sunday Oct 20th, 2019

boris

Whatever happens in the days and weeks immediately ahead, one thing can be said for certain: the UK faces years, if not decades, of uncertainty as it struggles to negotiate, and then constantly renegotiate, the nature and substance of its relationship with the European Union.

Despite what Brexiteers like to claim, the UK cannot deny the pull of history and geography.

The “history” is, in the first place, that European economies have been slowly integrating over the past fifty-plus years and that integration is not going to stop, or go into reverse, anytime soon. The “history” is, in the second place, that Northern Ireland is not a “normal” part of the UK and because of its unique relationship with Ireland, the country with which it shares the island of Ireland, it will always need to be treated differently from the rest of Great Britain.

The “geography” is that the European Union is, and will remain, the UK’s single biggest market for both goods and services for many years to come. Which means, given that the EU will be some six times bigger than the UK, that if the UK wants to trade with the EU it will be largely on EU terms. But this undermines a great deal of the rationale for Brexit, that it allows the UK to “take back control” of its own laws enabling it to diverge from EU standards.

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Backstop, Boris Johnson, Brexit, DUP, Irish border, Northern Ireland

#Brexit hits the #IrishBorder, again.

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blogpost was written on Tuesday morning, Oct 8th. 
Border 1
 Pic via:  twitter.com/marksugruek

As things stand, the UK is due to leave the EU on October 31st next. UK prime minister, Boris Johnson, has said he will take the UK out on that date, “do or die”. However, the UK parliament has passed legislation, The Benn Act, which instructs the prime minister to request a further Brexit extension from the EU should there be no withdrawal agreement in place by October 31.

Johnson has said that his government will “obey the law” but will still take the UK out of the EU on October 31 next. At the same time, he has given an assurance to the Scottish courts that he will write the mandated extension letter to the EU, if necessary.

“Alice laughed: “There’s no use trying,” she said; “one can’t believe impossible things.” “I daresay you haven’t had much practice,” said the Queen. “When I was younger, I always did it for half an hour a day. Why, sometimes I’ve believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.”

It would appear that the only way that the UK can now leave the EU on October 31st next is with a “Brexit deal”. The former prime minister, Theresa May, had negotiated such a deal but it was rejected three times by the House of Commons for a variety of reasons.

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Article 50, Backstop, Boris Johnson, Brexit, British Government, Customs Union, Michel Barnier, Negotiating, Single Market

The #Brexit Syndrome Delusion

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This blogpost was wrtitten on Friday Sept 27th.

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Wikipedia defines Stockholm Syndrome as

“a condition which causes hostages to develop a psychological alliance with their captors during captivity. These alliances result from a bond formed between captor and captives during intimate time together, but they are generally considered irrational in light of the danger or risk endured by the victims.”

However strongly the bond is felt, to the outside observer it is irrational, explainable only by the unreal circumstances created during the time of captivity.

A large part of the UK political class and the wider population now seem to be suffering from “Brexit Syndrome”. This is probably best defined as:

an irrational and emotional commitment to a political project which all objective evidence shows to be deeply damaging to the long-term national interest.

Brexit Syndrome causes many friends of the UK from across the world to shake their heads in disbelief that a previously pragmatic country could become so deluded.

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Brexit, British Government, Brussels, Michel Barnier, Negotiating

#Brexit: Dealing with the EU (Part 2 of a series of 3 blogposts)

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
This Blogpost was wrtitten on Monday Sept 16th

bettel

As we wrote last week, it seems to us that if the UK was to “make Brexit work” three things were of fundamental importance.

  1. The government needed to develop a consensus in the UK about what Brexit meant, some form of widely-shared vision of what the UK outside the EU should look like.
  2. Resulting from one, negotiate a future deal with the EU that would minimise the impact of withdrawal on the UK economy and provide for a “good neighbour” relationship for the future
  3. Hope that geopolitical developments across the globe would fall favourable for a UK out of the EU, facilitating the conclusion of new trade deals which would open new export markets.

In last week’s BEERG Brexit Briefing we examined the failure of, first, Theresa May, and now Boris Johnson to attempt to build any consensus in the UK around what Brexit should mean in practice and how this lack of consensus was adversely impacting the UK’s discussions with the EU.

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Backstop, Boris Johnson, Brexit, Customs Union, Data transfers, Single Market, Theresa May, UK Labour Party

Can #Brexit be “Made to Work” (Part 1).

Posted on by BEERG Brexit Blog
Thsi blogpost was written early on Tuesday Sept 10th
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Pic via Stephen Morgan (Lab) MP on Twitter

An article in the Times reports that David Frost, Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s Brexit negotiator, told Johnson that there was no hope of agreeing a new deal on the Irish backstop while uncertainty in parliament continues. According to the Times:

In a one-page memo to Mr Johnson and his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, Mr Frost wrote that until there was clarity on the domestic front the European Union would not offer a renewed deal.

“The EU are not under pressure to agree alternative arrangements until they know the process will not be taken over by parliament,” he wrote. “Until then they will listen to us but avoid committing. Talks will only become serious when it’s a choice between deal or no deal.”

Frost’s comment on the opposition in Parliament to the Johnson approach to Brexit reminded me of when I first started thinking and writing about Brexit some two years ago. Then it seemed to me that if the UK was to “make Brexit work” three things were of fundamental importance.

  1. The government needed to develop a consensus in the UK about what Brexit meant, some form of widely-shared vision of what the UK outside the EU should look like.
  2. Resulting from one, negotiate a future deal with the EU that would minimise the impact of withdrawal on the UK economy and provide for a “good neighbour” relationship for the future
  3. Hope that geopolitical developments across the globe would fall favourable for a UK out of the EU, facilitating the conclusion of new trade deals which would open new export markets.

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