This article was written on Nov 12th 2017.
It is becoming increasingly difficult to see Brexit ending well. Indeed, the process could hit the wall within weeks. Why? The complete and utter inability of the UK government to agree what it wants out of Brexit and, as a result, how to conduct the exit process. This should not be surprising given the closeness of the Brexit referendum vote: 52% to 48%, with the 52% only representing 37% of the total electorate.
It would appear that, when it comes to Brexit, the UK electorate roughly breaks down into three, though it is impossible to say exactly what weight to give to each of the three.
1. First, there are those who are totally opposed to Brexit and want to see the decision reversed.
2. At the opposite end of the spectrum are those who want, in the words of arch-Brexiteers, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, the UK to become “a fully independent self-governing country”, irrespective it would seem, of the costs involved.
3. The third bloc, probably where most pragmatic businesses people are to be found, believe that if Brexit is to go ahead, then the economic disruption should be kept to a minimum, preferable through continued membership of the EU’s single market and the customs union.
Under the BEERG law of unintended consequences; the unintended outworking of an action or event is often far more significant or impactful than the intended one. And so, while the UK media obsessed on sex scandals and a cabinet resignation, the Brexit process crawled along with the announcement of another round of EU/UK talks next week and a vote in parliament forcing the government to publish 58 sectoral studies on the economic impact of Brexit.
Over the past number of years, I have been involved, on the management side, in many European-level labour negotiations. But one particularly comes to mind.
UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s speech in Florence last Friday was designed to unlock the stalled Brexit negotiations between the European Union (EU) and the UK over an agreement on the departure of the UK from the EU. In her speech May said essentially four things:
UK Prime Minister, Theresa May, is to fly to Florence next week to deliver a speech billed as an “important intervention” on the Brexit negotiations. Why Florence? Why not the European Parliament? Florence, a once great banking centre in Europe, its glory days long behind it. A role model for London, post-Brexit perhaps.
“Repeal and replace” makes for a great political slogan. For Republicans in the US, who minted the phrase, it meant repealing and replacing the Affordable Care Act (“Obamacare”). In January of this year, President Trump told ABC news that “he wanted “good coverage at much less cost” and “a much better healthcare plan at much less money.” Over recent months President Trump has found that while “repealing” might possibly be easy, replacing is a lot harder. To date, the Act has been neither repealed nor replaced.
The announcement on Sunday August 27, by way of an article in The Observer, that the Labour Party now backed a transition arrangement for the UK after it leaves the EU in March 2019 changes everything, utterly.