A hard lesson for the British
By Pete North - December 30, 2020
The deed is done. Parliament has done its thing. The deal is to be the basis of our future relationship. As a leaver voter, though, I do not feel especially victorious. The Brexiteers are acting as though they got away with the perfect crime, free of consequence and ready for the brave new world of sovereignty and freedom. I’m not so enthused to be honest.
For starters, there are consequences. The Brexiteers believe that leaving the single market just means added paperwork which we will adapt to in the fullness of time. Undoubtedly some will successfully adapt but it’s going to be hard going, especially in the middle of a pandemic. The greater impact, though, will be the less visible cumulative effects as the inadequacies of the deal close down opportunities.
The other aspect of this is the inherent limitations of sovereignty. The UK is no notionally able to depart from standards and norms, but the penalties for doing so are considerable and the utility of doing so is questionable. Moreover, as technical regulation has moved increasingly into the private domain, the input of governments (even at the EU level) is often redundant. In the time we have live as a member of the EU we have seen a gradual privatisation of regulation in the world economy.
This is particularly evident in the UK-EU TCA, where, since the parties could not agree to use EU rules, the regulatory functions of the agreement have been kicked upstairs and into an even murkier domain in which nation states, NGOs, corporates and blocs compete for influence, where expressions of democracy are even more meaningless (or entirely absent) than they are in the EU.
If there is any utility to Brexit in this regard, it is the power to unilaterally suspend various rules and regulations, or interpret them differently, but the world outside of the EU is not an unregulated domain not does Brexit offer any real solutions to the globalisation paradox. All Brexit does is assert that we are no longer attached to the same locomotive engine, which is fine as far as it goes, but we’re still on parallel tracks headed roughly in the same direction.
It is still the case that the many complaints that brought about Brexit are beyond the power of our own government even if we could instil the political will to act. Very little can happen without intergovernmental cooperation and collaboration in a system where it proves next to impossible to shift the global consensus. The trends in global governance we are now living with date back almost a hundred years, from the first attempts to set up global institutions through to the WTO today.
These institutions are all built on the understanding that a world advancing in terms of communication and travel must function inside a rules based order, where common frameworks and standards bring about greater liberties and notionally increase wealth. Though we are entitled to have our little democratic revolt against reality nobody is obliged to entertain it.
The only times we have seen a fundamental shift in global affairs is when a new consensus is reached. Many believed that the election of Trump threatened the global rules based order, but ultimately Trump was only ever going to last a maximum of eight years and even in his short four years in office, while the EU and others closed ranks, even a superpower such as America was no real obstacle to the march of global integration. Where the WTO was blockaded, the EU and others simply developed a workaround.
Then, as we have observed, the EU through its elaborate network of trade deals has absorbed the doctrines and rules of the WTO, displacing it as a primary dispute resolution body, shifting the focus to bilateral dealings, setting new norms with each ruling, which then influence the behaviours of others. The UK may wish to do things differently, but while everyone else is moving toward harmonised taxation and mutual rules on state aid, they have ways of ensuring our conformity even without supranational authority.
This new world of distributed technocracy means there is no longer a single focus to rail against. Where we once directed our displeasure at the EU, attentions will turn on the WTO as the public face of globalisation but in its orbit is a galaxy of conventions and treaty organisations, each influencing regional and national laws, quietly adopted without debate or scrutiny.
Any notion, therefore, of muscular sovereignty, a bonfire of regulation, and economic renewal, is largely for the birds. Our old fashioned ideas about democracy fail to take into account the limitations of power we can exert. Global migration is one such area, where if there is a solution (and I’m not convinced that there is) it comprises of local action but also wide-ranging international engagement with other actors whose cooperation comes with a price tag. In some cases more than we are willing or able to pay.
This has always been central to the remainer argument – that essentially sovereignty without power is impotent, necessitating the pooling of sovereignty and acting in unison with like-minded allies. In geopolitical affairs with common threats, the argument is not without merit. Similarly in a world where Amazon and Google wield power far beyond a hundred nations at the UN, the creation of powerful bodies able to curb their excesses is a seductive argument.
The problem here is that where decision making is increasingly based on qualified majority voting, if your voice is on the losing side, then millions are marginalised at the stroke of a pen. Entire industries scarified on the altar of the greater good, in the interests of “free trade”. Thus, supranationalism cannot coexist with democracy in any meaningful sense. The cure is worse than the disease.
Though the removal of supranational authority may well be something to celebrate, particularly on a day when it’s cosying up to China, Brexit offers us nothing in the way of alternatives. We still have to navigate our way in a galaxy of global technocracy with a political and media establishment largely oblivious to its existence. All the while we have a public still largely ignorant of what has transpired in the last few decades, living in the hope that technocracy can be abolished and the symptoms of globalisation reversed.
No issue is more totemic of this than fishing, with populists labouring in the hope of restoring fishing ports back to their former glory and revitalising coastal towns. Though they’re right to point to the EU as an aggravating factor, what is done cannot be undone. Having led their supporters to believe the impossible could be done with ease, they’ve set themselves up for a big fall that can only worsen the sense of betrayal and disaffection. We are sure to encounter political turbulence when the “free trade” promise of Brexit fails to materialise.
Moreover, there is the expectation that Brexit necessarily facilitates political reform. That was never a foregone conclusion. It presented a window but without a coherent agenda for what to do with Brexit now that we’ve got it we will likely fumble on with our archaic and obsolete institutions until the momentum is lost.
For my part, I’m resigned to the existence of technocracy, and it’s something we must learn to harness and influence as best we can. There are some things beyond the capacity and runtime or ordinary politics to deal with, where “taking back control” is both futile and unnecessary. Why rail against globally harmonised vehicle safety standards? For all that many say they care about such things there is no evidence of it, and if they did they would know more than they evidently do.
In the final analysis, Brexit is of very little economic utility, and not much use in the sovereignty stakes either – especially while we lack the first clue what to do with it. I think, though, that it has been a useful humbling of our political class and an important point of reflection. It is causing a necessary realignment in our politics and that process is far from complete. When those consequences start rolling in and we measure them against what was promised, it will perhaps further expose the inadequacy of our politics and our media.
Though the trade deal struck by Boris Johnson is barely worthy of its name, it at least creates the foundation of a new relationship, and as soon as the Tories are removed we can set about mending some fences and rebuilding cooperation. Economic and technical integration is a fact of life and much of it will have to be put back exactly as it was. But the lesson for politicians from Brexit is that things like Brexit happen when things are done to people without their consent. The trainwreck that is Tory Brexit is the proportionate blowback for successive constitutional decisions taken without consultation. If that lesson scars the psyche of British politics then it was not all for nothing.