Brexit: How about a British-style agreement?

By Pete North - June 13, 2021

I regret to inform you that the Twitter bubble is at it again.

The Brexit chatterati of Twitter are tossing around the notion of a Swiss-style agreement with the EU. As we note, any system negotiated between the UK and EU would in no way resemble the Swiss set up. In a lot of ways this is the Customs Union debate all over again where politicians and hacks have got the wrong end of the stick and recommend something they don’t understand, isn’t likely, and isn’t all that desirable.

To answer Tom McTague’s question above, it’s not at all reasonable that a country the size of the UK would have no control over its own food safety system and be a passive recipient of laws. It suits as a solution for those who believe it makes a lot of problems go away at the stroke of a pen and have no particular objection to being a supplicant of Brussels if only as a means to punish Brexiteers. But it would sign us up to a system that is unnecessarily cumbersome. It has never functioned efficiently, despite its enormous expense. If there were to be any immediate benefits from Brexit, dumping this system was one of them.

Though the Tories have said in the past that no British government would sign up to anything like that and then done the opposite, we can take it as read that Brexiteers would have Johnson’s head as a desk ornament if he attempted such an agreement. A Labour government might attempt it, but we don’t have a Labour government and I don’t think we’re likely to see one this side of 2030 at the very earliest. In the meantime, it’s not fertile ground for Labour in opposition to be arguing to hand back powers to Brussels already. Thus it is a complete dead end politically.

As it happens, I think the EU is keen to lodge such a solution in the debate precisely so that the Tories think twice about collapsing the NI protocol. The Tories might not like it but they will like the alternatives even less. It is therefore in their own interests as Brexiteers to cut their losses and stop stoking up opposition to the Protocol.

The other point to note is that there isn’t much point in such an agreement for the same reason there isn’t much point re-joining the single market. Once you sever an international supply chain it is not so easily re-established. Trade lost by now will likely stay lost. History doesn’t have a rewind button.

Which then brings us to the reality in which we find ourselves now. We are told that farmers can’t find enough labourers and we are short of lorry drivers. This is as much to do with Covid and a complete lack of preparation, with industry having not lifted a finger to mitigate problems we all knew were on the way. That for me prompts bigger questions as to the desirability of fragile supply chains based on borderline slave labour which is endemic across the single market system – be it the German meat industry or Italian and Spanish fruit and veg.

In seeking to put Humpty back together again, we are ignoring all the potential of Brexit, largely because the chatterati hasn’t the imagination to see any other possibilities. What passes for a trade debate on Twitter is dominated by a noisy circle of self-referential remainers who think the EU way is the best and only way despite knowing nothing about it. One example being David Aaronovitch.

As TT readers will be well aware, SPS controls are nothing to do with customs or customs unions. Regulatory inspections are a function of the single market. The CU is integral to the EU treaties. Remaining in it was not an actual option, and repatriation of trade decisions was and is a fundamental of Brexit. There was an adequate solution in the form of EEA Efta (without a customs union) that would have given us a say in the rules but as we so very much enjoy pointing out, remainers (by a very large margin) voted against that. We now have to build on the TCA and the Protocol and see where we end up.

That then requires us to think about whether we really do want frictionless trade. As we frequently point out, a single market in goods and free movement of people makes for a single market in organised crime ranging from vehicle theft through to people smuggling, trafficking, drugs, waste and recycling crime, and pretty much anything else you can imagine. If we are looking to resolve issues of inequality and exploitation, food sustainability and security and environmental husbandry, then we need to rethink the foundations of our regulatory systems. Now we are out of the single market, there is plenty of scope.

As to Northern Ireland, there are too many parties over-egging the significance of the Protocol. There is a huge list of areas which the Protocol does not cover. This includes all services, so recognition of qualifications, data flows, the digital single market and all telecommunications, public procurement, legal services and labour regulations are still governed by London – notwithstanding the looser cooperation in the TCA. It is hyperbole to say that the Protocol leaves Northern Ireland in the EU or that it meaningfully pushes Ireland toward unification – unless your measure of that is whether you can get Tesco own brand sausages from a farm just outside Hull.

In any case, it now looks like Johnson has run out of options. The Protocol is here to stay if he wants to keep Biden on side and the prospects of a US FTA alive. If Johnson was hoping for any concessions, he is to be disappointed and so now he has to engage his one and only talent of managing a face saving climbdown. It’s going to upset the DUP but whatever you do as regards Northern Ireland, somebody is always upset and will go marching with drums. Somebody has to go home short changed and it might as well be the DUP since this is as much their mess as the Tories.

Ultimately the Tories made a conscious decision to leave Northern Ireland food under EU regulatory control. They valued GB regulatory independence more than they valued the Union. They knew what the deal meant – but they just don’t have the integrity to admit it. Time to fess up. It’s also time for the DUP to admit they were taken for a ride. They made the cardinal error in British politics. They trusted a Tory. That was an unforced error – and they’d have seen this coming if they’d done their own homework. This is also on them.

Now it’s time for all to admit that what was done cannot be undone. There simply aren’t any viable alternatives. A land border is neither viable or desirable, or even sensible. Whatever fictions Tory trade “experts” dream up, they cannot rewrite the rules of the single market. The bed is made and now it’s time to lie in it. The more important question is how we make good of the regulatory independence now that we have it. That is not a question we can ask of Aaronovitch et al being that they never wanted it in the first place and would hand it back in a heartbeat. They have retreated from the debate so it’s up to the rest of us to design our future.