Brexit: choppy waters ahead

By Pete North - January 16, 2021

It’s taken me some time to fully digest the TCA. The thing about EU trade deals is that if you’re looking for something and you don’t find it, it doesn’t mean it isn’t there. This is why I’m not particularly on board with the consensus view that it’s a “thin deal”. It’s thin in terms of what trade it enables, but in terms of the commitments it’s as comprehensive as it gets.

That is to say, the EU has built in considerable deterrence against divergence. Instead of calling on EU law or porting in EU law into the TCA container, it binds us to global conventions, guidelines, declarations and frameworks from which EU law is derived. We then have to inform the EU of any regulatory change so that it can be measured against the scope of those global “rules” as to whether the have the effect as their EU derivatives.

If you were looking for specific non-regression clauses – as I expected to see, you won’t find them. It’s the governance mechanisms that lock us in or deter us, so any divergence has to be worth the potential penalty of doing so. How far we diverge now is largely dependent on how determined the Tories are to shaft what remains of our EU exports. Being that they haver already set upon Operation Bleach (a Tory deregulation sweep), more than likely blissfully unaware of what they’ve signed up to, things will only get worse.

One imagines the intent of the EU is to look at the long term picture, in the expectation that the inadequacies of the deal will make themselves apparent in no time, whereupon they will let us stew long enough for political tides to turn against Johnson, and only then will their door be open to modifications. In the meantime the game, I suspect, is to discourage divergence so that a successor administration more friendly to the EU can set about building the type of partnership we should have been aiming at.

This is probably what prompts Operation Bleach as the Tories know full well their days in office are numbered thus will seek to diverge a much as possible in areas their donors hold an interest in, and seek external FTAs to bake in that divergence. In other words, They’re going to lock it away from democratic influence the same way the left used the EU – thereby preventing reintegration with the EU. Thus in the democracy and “sovereignty” stakes, we are no further forward – but then that ambition probably died the day Vote Leave was given the campaign designation. .

This is probably stymied by way of Donald Trump’s defeat, but they’re not completely out of options yet. We wait to see what horrors CPTPP brings. Not content with having utterly destroyed JIT supply chains and UK food exports, the Tories will twist the knife further.

Here the Tories are probably working on the assumption that having taken us out of the single market, thereby killing off EU exports anyway, the further imposition of negligible tariffs is neither here not there. In that estimation they are probably not wrong. We will, therefore, see a painful reordering of the economy to service alternative markets as best we can.

Being that there is no combination of FTAs that compensates for the loss of the single market, one wonders what ace they think they have up their sleeves. In this the Tories take their thinking from Matt Ridley who likes to blather on about technology, innovation and biotechnology. For that you need to have the best research in the game and first mover advantage in order to capture the regulation. This is not impossible but the UK is not riding high in the competence stakes right now.

As to what the future holds, one suspects that Johnson will have to go before this term is out. I doubt he can ride out Covid and the immediate fallout of Brexit with his political hide intact. Though flat-footed, Starmer seems to have found a rhythm, and so long as he can keep a lid on his dumpster fire of a party and stop reminding people they exist, by an accident of numbers he could very well be the next PM. Certainly at this point a Tory majority exceeding double figures does not look likely.

For here Starmer seems to be taking direction from Tony Blair, who understands that Labour doesn’t get anywhere near power again unless they accept that Brexit is a done deal for the foreseeable future. In a speech yesterday he said “If a return to Europe is ever to be undertaken by a new generation, the UK should do it as a successful nation Europe is anxious to embrace, not as supplicant with no other options”.

As ever Blair retains his sharp political instincts, and he’s saying a great many sensible things at the moment. The only problem is that he and Brown had a major hand in bringing us to where we are today and I wouldn’t trust either of them as far as I could comfortably spit out a rat. One gets a sense that Starmer is their protégée – a limp low-toner photocopy – which is pretty much the best the left can dredge up for now. The question at the next election, therefore, is whether the public are tired of the fumbling incompetence and dishonesty of the Tories enough to gamble on Blair 1.9¾.

Though the polls are stubbornly unchangeable right now, with Labour making only marginal gains, we still have a summer of protest to come. There is growing disquiet over Covid lockdowns and we are likely to see massive protests from the fishing and haulage industries. One can well imagine industrial action and loads of dead fish dumped outside Westminster. As the fuel strikes showed, the haulage industry is capable of bringing the country to a standstill. There are already rumblings afoot. Since there is presently no force within parliament to stop the government doing whatever it pleases, the pressure will have to come from the outside.

There’s a lot of politics to be done between now and the next election. We’ve run up a huge political overdraft and now we have to start paying it back. In this time Britain has to come to terms with its political choices and live with he consequences. All the pennies must drop before we can set about rebuilding a functioning relationship with the EU.

For as long as this iteration of the Tories is in office, that’s not going to happen. Our malaise, therefore, will last as long as Labour prioritises its fringe infighting over taking power. While one half of the party obsesses over identity politics and the other is agitating to re-join the EU, Labour makes itself a permanent opposition.

At this point, one simply abandons all hope of a happy outcome for the time being. Brexit was never going to be smooth sailing even by leaving on the best possible terms. I accepted this much when I voted to leave. Everyone I know who voted to leave recognised the risks of such an undertaking. It may just be that we’re going to get more turmoil than any of us bargained for. We may have “got Brexit done” but the Brexit era is only just beginning.