Our latest BEERG Byte videocast features myself and Baroness Margaret Ritchie, an independent member of the House of Lords discussing the impact of Brexit on the cohesion of the United Kingdom, specifically as it will affect both Scotland and Northern Ireland.
It is perhaps appropriate that, in these far from normal times, that this BEERG Brexit Briefing is longer and more detailed than normal. The reason relates directly to the complexity of the question which I pose and then attempt to answer as comprehensively as possible: if there is no Brexit transition phase then can there be a deal?
There will be no request from the UK to extend transition beyond the end of 2020. Nor will a deal be in place by then on the future relationship between the EU and the UK. On December 31 next, the UK will leave the EU’s single market, customs union, and associated agreements and protocols. It will be a “third country” outside the EU’s legal order. The fallout will not be pleasant. The politics will be ugly.
This is where the logic of Brexit leads and “Hard Brexit” politicians are now dominant in the UK.
Brexiteers believe that the UK, no matter what the circumstances, will always be better off out of the EU than in. For them, quite simply, the EU has nothing to offer the UK. Only this disdain for all things European can explain the failure of the UK to join the EU program scheme to bulk-buy PPE earlier this year . The “my dog ate the email” excuse (and others) proffered by ministers simply fails to stand up.
December 31 next cannot come quickly enough for Brexiteers, the economic disruption from Covid-19 notwithstanding. They want to be able to wake up on January 1, 2021 and say: “Free at last, free at last, thank God almighty, we’re free at last”.
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.
The ideological complexion of the Johnson administration makes a no-deal Brexit more and more likely and businesses need to get ready accordingly. At the very least, they need to prepare for a prolonged period of great uncertainty in the UK and in the UK’s relationship with the European Union.
The replacement of Theresa May by Boris Johnson was not just a change of personnel at the top. Nor was it just a change in the negotiating approach to Brussels with Johnson adopting a Trump-like “madman” demeanour, as he famously suggested he would, if given half a chance, at a dinner in London in 2018:
“Imagine Trump doing Brexit,” Johnson added. “He’d go in bloody hard … There’d be all sorts of breakdowns, all sorts of chaos. Everyone would think he’d gone mad. But actually you might get somewhere. It’s a very, very good thought.”
It’s a Long, Long Way from Gove to Here
“The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards and we can choose the path we want.” – Michael Gove, April 2016
“I don’t believe it (no-deal Brexit) will be Armageddon” – Suella Braverman, March 2019
It’s a long way from “holding all the cards” to it won’t be “Armageddon”. Three years is indeed a very long time in politics.
Speaking to the Institute for Government last Monday, Sir Ivan Rodgers, the former UK ambassador to the EU who resigned from that position because his advice on Brexit strategy was being totally disregarded in London, said there was no chance that the UK would be able to disentangle itself from the EU even if Brexit goes ahead. He added:
“These fantasies of release and liberation – they are fantasies. We are going to be negotiating on everything from aviation to farming for evermore with our biggest neighbour. We cannot live in glorious isolation. Talk to the Swiss and to the Norwegians – they live in a permanent state of negotiation with the EU.”
BEERG Brexit Blog 