Monday 14 May 2018

I told you so, Michael

I read last week that Michael Gove is getting worried that Brussels will not negotiate meaningfully over the Irish border, but will just keep saying "not good enough" and forcing us into the fallback agreed in December of "maintaining full alignment" as that suits them better.

I thought Mr Gove was meant to be one of the sharper tools in the cabinet box, if not necessarily entirely voter-friendly. Obviously he's neither. Moreover, he clearly didn't read my blog of 8 December, Reasons To Be Cheerful - or Entangled? (seriously, can you believe he didn't see it?) written immediately after I had read for myself the 14 page "joint report" on the first phase of the negotiations which had just been published.

The sentence "In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement." left me deeply worried. I commented: "The EU side can just refuse to agree to anything they or the Republic don't like. They don't have to do anything other than say "non".

It seems Mr Gove might have just woken up to the fact that the EU can keep us where they want us, entangled (Genesis song reference) in the Hotel California (Eagles song reference). Of course, you remember the lyric "you can check out any time you like but you can never leave".

Davies and May have kicked the can down the road, avoiding the crunch of what many of the detailed arrangements should be for a long time but the they've got near to the end of the road now. To be fair I don't think any other strategy was practicable while they let pennies drop to see if concensus in the Tory party could be achieved. So now to achieve that two cabinet groups have been established to work up the customs union and maximum facilitation options and have a showdown, maybe, at last. But as Gove has realised, it doesn't matter if the EU just says "non", bluffing that we will blink and not do the same, afraid of a Mexican stand off.

There is a perfectly respectable argument for staying in a customs union with the EU. But I don't buy it. It is fervently advocated by all who would prefer to remain in the EU which is, of course, a valid point of view. Many of those who espouse this option want us to stay involved in any way possible as a route to effectively staying in or paving the way to rejoin in the future. But, in my view, none of that is what the electorate voted for.

The reason I am against a customs union is that it would inevitably be worse than being a full EU member. I am not prepared to accept that we voted for something that is definitely worse than we had before. The alternative, whatever it looks like but certainly free to make our own trade deals, might be better or might be worse but no-one has convinced me that it would definitely be worse. We need to make our own future. We can only do that if we are free.

To do that we have to push through the EU posturing on the Irish border. As Dominic Lawson has pointed out several times, the European Parliament's own detailed report on this issue ("Smart border 2.0: Avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland") said  "the solution presented here can be implemented regardless of the legal framework for the UK's exit from the EU." Lawson has written several columns pointing out that what works for the Swiss would work in Ireland. Indeed, the Swiss prime minister is reported to be puzzled that the Irish border is causing an issue in the Brexit negotiations. All of which points to the EU side deliberately making an issue out of something that needn't be, for their own advantage. Which I find tantamount to negotiating in bad faith. 

Nevertheless I accept that there might need to be some very difficult decisions to make over Ireland. But as Northern Irish trade with the mainland is more important than cross Irish border trade by about an order of magnitude, if there has to be a tangible border it's really a no brainer which one to choose. So we can't hold the whole UK back because of this local issue - it would be daft and there is no need to anyway.

All we need to do is to unilaterally say how we are going to manage the border issue and leave the EU and the Republic to lump it or erect a hard border. It won't be our hard border, so they will take the flak.

Over to you, Michael and Boris.

Of course, even if the cabinet can agree - I guess eventually they must - that is only stage 1. Just Michel Barnier, the Commons and the Lords to go. The Commons is as problematic as the cabinet - there may well be no majority for any conceivable option. So chaps (because they are still mainly chaps) just remember David Cameron promised us a vote which would be implemented by you lot.

If any option - and I mean any option - can be agreed by the cabinet, negotiated with the EU and approved by the Commons I can't see the last hurdle of the Lords being a problem. I say that notwithstanding the Lords risible behaviour in recent votes. 

Perhaps the low point was Lord Roberts of Llandudno preposterously comparing Theresa May's government's approach to the Brexit enabling bill to Hitler's power grab in one of the recent debates. All you need to know about Lord Roberts is the remarkable strength of his CV that led to his appointment as a Liberal Democrat peer in 2004. The highlight is that he stood for Parliament five times in the Aberconwy constituency. He lost all five times, mind. If ever there was a case for reform of the Lords - which the LibDems have always championed - Roberts personifies it. With political giants like this representing us in our so called upper chamber, what can possibly go wrong?

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