Brexit is still a work in progress

By Pete North - January 18, 2021

Leaving aside that there are mechanisms within the EEA agreement to modify freedom of movement the fact is, it was impressed upon the UK that retaining the single market meant the application of all four freedoms. This, they said, was non-negotiable. We took them at their word.

Freedom of movement though, was something that had to come to an end. Politically, its hard to see how any government could have done anything else. Part of its unpopularity was that it was imposed on the UK without consultation or consent, and though we were told only limited numbers of people would come, a magnitude more came to the UK to seek employment.

I’ve written at length how freedom of movement has its own problems. It is not a universal good and it is asymmetrical in favour of the continental membership. I shall not rehearse those arguments here.

The point I wish to address is that the four freedoms are not individual freedoms. They are freedoms for capital. Workers rights within the EU treaties are not about pay and conditions for the individual. That is a side effect. The primary purpose is to create an EU wide uniformity under the guise of the level playing field, to stop businesses regime shopping for lower labour costs. They must compete on even terms. Labour rights, therefore, are competition rules – and they care not for individual rights at all.

This to me is the central problem with freedom of movement. It isn’t just the right to swan off where you feel like working. That is merely a perk of living within a system designed for the convenience of commerce. You can dress it up on progressive idealistic garb but at the end of the day it’s raw capitalism.

Leaving aside the societal effects of a more transient population and its effect on communities (a topic in its own right), this has ramifications for democracy. It follows that if there is free movement for workers, then there must be a set of uniform rules of employment. Without such uniformity, unscrupulous employers could exploit people by way of posted workers. This is something the EU has attempted to address but there has been a growth in ‘creative’, abusive and fraudulent practices, such as letter-box companies, bogus self-employment and numerous other forms of unacceptable practice, which involve the exploitation of posted workers.

This essentially sets off a game of regulatory whack-a-mole where in order to resolve the problems it created it needs more power over employment law, further taking it out of the hands of national governments and subsequently beyond union influence. At that point, only the compliant super unions nominated by member states governments have access to the decision making apparatus.

In an attempt to close down the imbalances we’ve seen various interventions, in particular the regulation of temporary agency work, which then created a market for self-employed contractors. They more they attempt to ossify the system of rights within with hard coded regulation, the more unintended consequences they created leading to more uncertainty and less job security with fewer rights overall.

This is reflected in my own career experiences affecting high and low skill forms of employment. I shall not shed a tear to see the Agency Workers Directive fed into the shredder. That said, I suspect under the terms of the TCA neither this not the Working Time Directive will see any meaningful change. Brexit, therefore, is still a work in progress.

The point here is that progressively we are seeing the entire discipline of workers rights taken out of the political where workers can organise and demand rights, and into the technocratic domain where standards are set by the EU, OECD and the ILO, as technical instruments inside trade treaties to the level playing field philosophy.

It is interesting, therefore, that we should see complaints that food standards are signed away and weakened in trade treaties – but not Labour rights. Being that the British Labour party prefers fringe common room politics it has consigned itself to permanent opposition whereby it prefers the standards to be set by the EU and ILO than have them reside on democratically contested space. There marks the poverty of ambition on the British left. Instead of rejoicing that once again we can take ownership of these affairs, they lament that these rights are now in the hands of the cartoon villain Tories.

This is where the left have seriously lost their way. Before you even start looking at regulation, you have to determine the precise function(s) of each instrument. It escapes them that the function of EU level “protections” is to not to provide actual protection in the same way a union might look out for workers. Rather it is for the protection of markets.

In that regard, this form of regulation has been corrupted. The rot started with the EEC, with Monnet (ab)using regulation as a political tool, distorting its primary function – i.e., to regulate. The role of regulation was then widened into trade facilitation, to become a tool of globalisation. Politicians, therefore, have lost sight of what regulation is really all about, and have little idea how complex it has become once it developed into a multi-function tool.

The further problem with investing such sovereignty in the EU, or within trade deals, is that when problems are identified, resolution is a matter of lengthy time consuming negotiation, taking anywhere up to a decade – baking in injustices leading to exactly the sort of populist resentment we see now. Often reforms are a compromise and precisely the wrong remedy. A functioning democracy with sovereignty worthy of tis name is one that is able to identify problems and respond to them in a timely fashion. In EU terms seven years is quite quick, but it’s a long time to wait on the breadline.

Thus, in order to meaningfully “take back control” of labour regulation, an exit from freedom of movement and the single market is a necessary function of Brexit. There was a middle way as we identified in Flexcit but ultimately this proved beyond the abilities of our politics.

The broader philosphy at work, for me, is that provisions should be made for visiting workers, such as the seasonal workers visa, but I don’t like the idea of transient EU citizenship – to be traded as a commodity. If you wish to be part of the economic, social and political life of the country, if you will pardon the expression, shit or get off the pot. Apply for a sodding passport. Be one of us.

It is then between the people, the unions, parliament and their governments to negotiate labour rights into law, not anonymous Geneva based organisations and Brussels lobby groups. It is then for democracies to decide on their own rules and how liberal with wish to be with their guest worker visas. In the case of the UK, there is something of an economic necessity for a liberal visa regime but free of the EU we are free to trade like for like with countries that serve as a more useful destination for British workers than Bulgaria and Estonia.

You’ll get no argument from me that for long distance road trips, the removal of barriers is a great thing, but it is entirely possible to recreate such liberties without political union and the surrender of control over our laws.

This has always been a major bone of contention with the EU. Few can argue that harmonisation of product standards for trade facilitation is a bad thing, and for the most part such trade governance does not meaningfully impact on our lives to the extent any of us really cares – give or take the odd campaign of histrionics about chlorine based poultry washes.

But when the definition of trade governance creeps into areas that ought to be the exclusive domain of national democracies we have a problem. This is not only to the ends of creating a level playing field for multinationals, it is also for the ideological ends of creating a European superstrate. Not a proposition any democrat could support.

The next problem after Brexit is how we uncouple those areas we reserve for democracy from trade which is becoming ever more complex, and increasingly the definition of trade encroaches on those areas which should never be detatched from democratic contest. Between the withdrawal agreement and the TCA, we are not much further forward in those stakes and balancing the dilemma between democracy and trade is still not resolved. This is what we refer to as the “double coffin lid”.

Though I can certainly see the need for global collaboration on rules and rights, and the ILO still has a role to play, with the emergence of nearshoring to mitigate supply chain risks and Covid contraction, is uniformity any longer a relevant ambition?

These are questions for the next generation to grapple with. The whole thing is up for grabs. Climate change is the lever to get the Left into the agenda while trade draws in the right, and no one wants to rock the boat. But given the political tensions created by the neutering of national democracies through global technocracy, resulting in expressions such as Brexit, can we afford to repeat the mistake of investing sovereignty elsewhere? The current and ongoing collapse of our exports suggests not – unless we do away with democratic choice for good.

That is what the remainers want, and they have said as much over the course of Brexit, but to me that sounds more like a recipe for civil and regional wars. Democracy is a precious thing. We should not be so keen to discard it.