Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[The Brain]

Uncle Valmy has been celebrating Christmas. This is just the spirit of the season talking.

[Richard Hakluyt]

Marxist class consciousness cutting across national lines performed very poorly when push came to shove in the Great War. There seems to be something very powerful about having a shared culture and language. I'm not sure if that has changed as much since 1914 as some people may wish it has.

Looking at it from a different perspective, I often wonder to what extent a shared language and culture permitted the growth of welfare states? My suspicion is that multicultural states will see a downgrading of these welfare provisions; ie "we" pay and the "others" get the benefits. I don't think it is any coincidence that the most pervasive welfare states were created in small homogeneous countries and that the USA had possibly the least generous welfare state of the advanced economies.

[OttoVonBismarck]

Yeah. I don't know. I shifted at some point when I thought Putinism (nationalism of a particular type, crony capitalism, plus elections but maybe on the more managed scale) is an exportable ideological alternative to the end of history. I think it was when Erdogan became more authoritarian as PM maybe in his second term and there was a similar politics emerging in Turkey. But you could see it coming in Israel and India as well and I wasn't convinced the West was immune.

What you say here about exporting Putinism is a much better way of voicing my concerns in regard to the future of the West (which obviously includes the EU), it's not that I think the EU is going to be invaded by armies and broken up by force, but rather that this infectious, anti-Western ideology is growing within the EU. It's very difficult to reconcile EU membership with a populace that buys into this sort of ideology. Even calling it Putinism is probably giving Putin too much credit. I think this movement has been growing organically across the world for a few decades now. Putin is probably the first major world leader who realized he could cultivate in this movement a popular engine towards his own personal rule. I'd argue Erdogan was the second, and Trump the third--and most important, world leader to realize this.

To "dye-in the wool" conservatives like myself, Trump's declaration of candidacy in 2015 was a joke. It was a joke to the news media as well. Here we are, after 8 years of losing to Obama in part due to lack of ability to succeed in outreach to minorities, and we have a guy declaring he's running for our party's nomination in his gilted tower lobby by railing against...Mexicans? This sort of anti-immigrant talk had been quite out of vogue for some time in the GOP, and stumbles around it usually seen as a negative. When Romney used the phrase "self-deportation" it wasn't just considered a gaffe by Dems, but a blunder even by his Republican supporters. It really felt like the party, and more importantly, the elites that run the party, were moving more towards the W. Bush/McCain axis that had failed to become dominant back during the mid-2000s stalled immigration reform effort. This was happening because there was a recognition we needed to build a multicultural coalition like the Democrats had built under Obama. Look at the candidates getting the most attention in 2015 before Trump entered the primary. Ted Cruz--hispanic, Marco Rubio--hispanic, Jeb Bush--fluent Spanish speaker, married to a woman from Mexico. The idea that anyone was going to take Trump seriously was initially a joke to me and most of the Republican establishment, which to some degree I guess I'm part of, albeit obviously not a power broker or big moneyed guy.

What I only realize with hindsight is the reason I was so wrong is Trump wasn't talking to me, and he wasn't talking to me in my language. He was talking to a cultural coalition that heretofore was only loosely associated with the party, and was only loosely pandered to as a distinct group. Because our associations with this cultural coalition was loose, some of these people were even previously Democrats. Or at least had been independents willing to vote for either party. Trump ended this loose affiliation and instead drew battle lines. He was saying I represent your culture, white, Christian, heterosexual, rural and surburban culture. This culture is what makes America great, and this culture is under attack. The people who seek to attack it hate your religion, they hate your family, the hate the way you live, they want to take away your trucks, your guns, they want to attack your church, they want to force your daughter to use the bathroom with a man in a dress. They want to make you learn Spanish, they want to take your paycheck and give it to black and brown people who are too lazy to work for themselves, many of whom are here illegally.

While the GOP had flirted with this for ages, they avoided ever saying it in this language because of the obvious fear of being labeled a racist. Labeling a Republican an out racist had, in fact, been very successful in derailing several Republican candidacies over the years, at the Presidential primary level and at lower levels. George Allen, Trent Lott, Pat Buchanan, several more had their careers kind of sucked away by charges of racism.

By going super hard into this, Trump successfully drew lines. Now you have to pick. He didn't even bother much with economic arguments, and his economic positions while a candidate frankly were all over the place, including at times being left of center on some issues. This is because he mainly never wanted the dialogue to be about economics. He wanted it to be about making a decision to ally with a cultural group he believed could deliver him the Presidency, or with one he had labeled "the enemy."

We'll be talking about this event long after Trump is out of office and after he's dead, because it was the election in which one of our two parties stopped functioning as the typical American, two-party system "big tent" party. The Republican party stopped being a collection of factions with some overlapping areas of political/economic/cultural agreement, the differences of which had to be hashed out every so often, into a party that is aligned solely to a specific cultural coalition. Anyone else who chooses to be allied with the party can either bow to this coalition, and its leader--Trump, or be destroyed.

In 2016 and in 2020 the Wall Street Republicans, the small government conservatives, and a number of other groups that traditionally have delivered a lot of money and "ideas" for the GOP (but not usually, directly, tons of votes) decided that they were willing to bend the knee completely as long as they got some policy bread crumbs. Because these smaller groups feel so alienated by a Democratic party that frankly has gone very far to the left at least in its rhetoric, if not yet fully in its actions/leadership, that they view themselves as trapped between a rock and a hard place. A very small number of us have left the party over it, myself in that group.

But honestly most concerning to me aren't the GOP members of the small parts of the old coalition who have bent the knee. Bending the knee means they still see themselves as apart from this, but willing to submit for craven reasons. More worrying is I think a lot of the old coalition has actually been affected by Trump's line drawing. More directly--when asked "do you ally with the culture that you're a part of against this outside enemy, or do you continue to care more about limited government, or about free markets, or about traditional conservative aversion to radical political philosophies?" I think a lot of them have subordinated their classical conservatism to this new cultural movement, they have chosen blood over ideology. It is this that explains why so many of the leaders and mouthpieces for the old "parts" of the GOP coalition have now started writing op-eds and paeans to Trump that clearly contradict everything they've ever said in years of public life. It's not because they're craven, it's because given the stark choice they were willing to completely ignore their old convictions in favor of allegiance to their culture in what they have come to agree is some sort of apocalyptic cultural showdown.

[Valmy]

Uncle Valmy has been celebrating Christmas. This is just the spirit of the season talking.

I wish. That is generally my level of lucid posting for years

Ok let me restate:

1. Class consciousness and class solidarity I don't really think work because they are not really about shared political ideas IMO. I guess they might be if everybody was a Marxist and was like "ah I better unite with my fellow factory owners to protect our class interests according to Marxist theory" but many factory owners in fact had very different ideas on what their interests were. So I am not surprised those bonds did not prove very enduring under stress.

2. Under the strain of World War I the great claims of national solidarity also broke down and left many of the combatants split into rival political camps that spent the time between the two wars at each others throats. I mean Hungary had just liberated itself from centuries of Habsburg Rule for about two seconds before the extreme left and right went at each other. So I don't think World War I demonstrates strong bonds of national identity being supreme.

is that clearer?

[Camerus]

Agree with you on point 1 for the most part. My comment on the weakness of class bonds stretching across national lines was more a response to Josq's comment.

The fact of the matter is with the current generation people are increasingly waking up to the fact that a working class guy in some random English town has far more in common with a working class guy in some random Polish town than either do with the ruling elites in their country.
Traditionally this kind of thinking was at the core of socialism. It led to a growth in progressive values around the world.

Re: point 2. I don't think the bonds of national solidarity are "supreme." Obviously people are motivated by a variety of ideologies and also by naked self-interest. Nationalism is but one significant ideology among these. To the extent that sharing language and cultural ties with other people can be considered "nationalism", this is also a very important motivating factor for people.

Obviously nationalism is not an ideology that overcomes human nature, self-interest, or all competing ideologies all the time in some sort of Volksgemeinschaft utopian fantasy. However, it is a highly significant one and remains so. Unsurprisingly, previous predictions of being able to sweep it under the rug in favour of other ideologies have, simply put, proven false.

This fact has significant implications for how we navigate the tumultuous times we are in and set policies for the coming years and decades to come, including for example the topic of this very thread, namely the extent to which further European integration will be possible, populist backlashes, etc.

[mongers]

Yeah. I don't know. I shifted at some point when I thought Putinism (nationalism of a particular type, crony capitalism, plus elections but maybe on the more managed scale) is an exportable ideological alternative to the end of history. I think it was when Erdogan became more authoritarian as PM maybe in his second term and there was a similar politics emerging in Turkey. But you could see it coming in Israel and India as well and I wasn't convinced the West was immune.

What you say here about exporting Putinism is a much better way of voicing my concerns in regard to the future of the West (which obviously includes the EU), it's not that I think the EU is going to be invaded by armies and broken up by force, but rather that this infectious, anti-Western ideology is growing within the EU. It's very difficult to reconcile EU membership with a populace that buys into this sort of ideology. Even calling it Putinism is probably giving Putin too much credit. I think this movement has been growing organically across the world for a few decades now. Putin is probably the first major world leader who realized he could cultivate in this movement a popular engine towards his own personal rule. I'd argue Erdogan was the second, and Trump the third--and most important, world leader to realize this.

To "dye-in the wool" conservatives like myself, Trump's declaration of candidacy in 2015 was a joke. It was a joke to the news media as well. Here we are, after 8 years of losing to Obama in part due to lack of ability to succeed in outreach to minorities, and we have a guy declaring he's running for our party's nomination in his gilted tower lobby by railing against...Mexicans? This sort of anti-immigrant talk had been quite out of vogue for some time in the GOP, and stumbles around it usually seen as a negative. When Romney used the phrase "self-deportation" it wasn't just considered a gaffe by Dems, but a blunder even by his Republican supporters. It really felt like the party, and more importantly, the elites that run the party, were moving more towards the W. Bush/McCain axis that had failed to become dominant back during the mid-2000s stalled immigration reform effort. This was happening because there was a recognition we needed to build a multicultural coalition like the Democrats had built under Obama. Look at the candidates getting the most attention in 2015 before Trump entered the primary. Ted Cruz--hispanic, Marco Rubio--hispanic, Jeb Bush--fluent Spanish speaker, married to a woman from Mexico. The idea that anyone was going to take Trump seriously was initially a joke to me and most of the Republican establishment, which to some degree I guess I'm part of, albeit obviously not a power broker or big moneyed guy.

What I only realize with hindsight is the reason I was so wrong is Trump wasn't talking to me, and he wasn't talking to me in my language. He was talking to a cultural coalition that heretofore was only loosely associated with the party, and was only loosely pandered to as a distinct group. Because our associations with this cultural coalition was loose, some of these people were even previously Democrats. Or at least had been independents willing to vote for either party. Trump ended this loose affiliation and instead drew battle lines. He was saying I represent your culture, white, Christian, heterosexual, rural and surburban culture. This culture is what makes America great, and this culture is under attack. The people who seek to attack it hate your religion, they hate your family, the hate the way you live, they want to take away your trucks, your guns, they want to attack your church, they want to force your daughter to use the bathroom with a man in a dress. They want to make you learn Spanish, they want to take your paycheck and give it to black and brown people who are too lazy to work for themselves, many of whom are here illegally.

While the GOP had flirted with this for ages, they avoided ever saying it in this language because of the obvious fear of being labeled a racist. Labeling a Republican an out racist had, in fact, been very successful in derailing several Republican candidacies over the years, at the Presidential primary level and at lower levels. George Allen, Trent Lott, Pat Buchanan, several more had their careers kind of sucked away by charges of racism.

By going super hard into this, Trump successfully drew lines. Now you have to pick. He didn't even bother much with economic arguments, and his economic positions while a candidate frankly were all over the place, including at times being left of center on some issues. This is because he mainly never wanted the dialogue to be about economics. He wanted it to be about making a decision to ally with a cultural group he believed could deliver him the Presidency, or with one he had labeled "the enemy."

We'll be talking about this event long after Trump is out of office and after he's dead, because it was the election in which one of our two parties stopped functioning as the typical American, two-party system "big tent" party. The Republican party stopped being a collection of factions with some overlapping areas of political/economic/cultural agreement, the differences of which had to be hashed out every so often, into a party that is aligned solely to a specific cultural coalition. Anyone else who chooses to be allied with the party can either bow to this coalition, and its leader--Trump, or be destroyed.

In 2016 and in 2020 the Wall Street Republicans, the small government conservatives, and a number of other groups that traditionally have delivered a lot of money and "ideas" for the GOP (but not usually, directly, tons of votes) decided that they were willing to bend the knee completely as long as they got some policy bread crumbs. Because these smaller groups feel so alienated by a Democratic party that frankly has gone very far to the left at least in its rhetoric, if not yet fully in its actions/leadership, that they view themselves as trapped between a rock and a hard place. A very small number of us have left the party over it, myself in that group.

But honestly most concerning to me aren't the GOP members of the small parts of the old coalition who have bent the knee. Bending the knee means they still see themselves as apart from this, but willing to submit for craven reasons. More worrying is I think a lot of the old coalition has actually been affected by Trump's line drawing. More directly--when asked "do you ally with the culture that you're a part of against this outside enemy, or do you continue to care more about limited government, or about free markets, or about traditional conservative aversion to radical political philosophies?" I think a lot of them have subordinated their classical conservatism to this new cultural movement, they have chosen blood over ideology. It is this that explains why so many of the leaders and mouthpieces for the old "parts" of the GOP coalition have now started writing op-eds and paeans to Trump that clearly contradict everything they've ever said in years of public life. It's not because they're craven, it's because given the stark choice they were willing to completely ignore their old convictions in favor of allegiance to their culture in what they have come to agree is some sort of apocalyptic cultural showdown.

Thanks for the interesting and thoughtful post Otto.

[Sheilbh]

Meanwhile in Labour.

The Corbynite candidacy might be falling apart.

Rebecca Long Bailey (the candidate who was apparently annointed) has announced she's backing Angela Rayner for deputy leader. The two used to be flatmates and there was talk of a joint candidacy. But Rayner hasn't announced she's running for deputy leader and there's rumours she's still thinking of going for the top job. Apparently Rayner will consult with colleagues and make an announcement in the next week or so. But if she's bounced into running for deputy leader I feel like it might not lead to the most harmonious leadership

Meanwhile there's apparently worries in the Corbyn camp that RLB might not be up to it and Ian Lavery, former party chairman, might run for it. Which I'm not sure would go well....

[Legbiter]

Jesus.

The biggest problem facing Britain is that it might become a one party state if Labour is going to spend the next 10-15 years all fucked up. Is there anyone there who is not actively repulsive? Like from the North even?

[Sheilbh]

Rebecca Long Bailey, Lisa Nandy and Angela Rayner are all from Manchester and in Greater Manchester seats. Ian Lavery is former head of the National Union of Miners (Scargill's successor) with some dodgy uses of union money, but is from the North-East and is MP for a Northumbrian seat.

I think Clive Lewis is Midlands and has a Norwich seat (but no-one cares about the Midlands except for the people of the Midlands ).

Apparently it's been settled Rayner will endorse Long Bailey for leader. This is the wrong way round - Rayner's talented and charismatic and Long Bailey, to me, comes across a bit robotic. She also wrote this dreadful stream of cliches (which, given she complains about triangulation, is a fearsome piece of triangulation within the Labour movement):
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/dec/29/rebecca-long-bailey-labour-party-britain

There's been a lot of commentary about her "progressive patriotism" line. I think Sunder Katwala's spent the day collating useful stuff on this. The issue is it can be a bit of a woolly comfort blanket of a concept and I still don't think Labour have realised that the only people who consider themselves more British than English/Irish/Welsh/Scottish are, broadly, Northern Irish unionists, some Londoners and, generally, minority ethnic communities. They need to get comfortable talking about England. As Katwala noted all of RLB's examples of progressive patriotism are English, but she never mentions England.

Lisa Nandy's pitch still seems the most interesting, and thought-through to me (which doesn't take much given that everyone else's is Corbynism but with less charisma):

Johnson doesn't get the Britain he won – Labour must now show it does
Labour can win again. But it will mean listening to the country and having no time for factionalism – full stop.
By
Lisa Nandy

The Tories have parked their tanks on our lawn, and they intend to take the house. This week they claimed they were ripping up Treasury spending rules to put more investment into former Labour heartlands. Their self-interest and self-confidence are painful to see, but there is no room for pain. To defeat this and raise the bar for the people we have always fought for will take a Labour party that can come out fighting, sustain that fight, and flip the old rules on their head.

When we set up the Centre for Towns three years ago, we had felt the tremors under our feet in those Labour heartlands. After four decades of underinvestment, there was a drumbeat of concern for the lost bus networks, decaying high streets, and young people who had to leave home to find good work. A political system that shrugged its shoulders when people spilled their hearts out was already in serious trouble.

The Tories have won the right to speak for those areas, but there are already signs they haven't got a clue what they are doing or any humility about the responsibility they now have. The new spending rules simply give greater discretion to decision makers in central London. They do nothing to empower the people who know best what problems they have, and more importantly how they would solve them, given the chance.

Boris Johnson has all the hallmarks of a Prime Minister who does not get it. Nobody wants handouts. He is deeply uninterested in the root and branch changes we have spent years exploring – real and long-term investment in transport, digital and skills, in the right places and done in the right way; devolution of power to the right levels giving decision-making to people who can see the potential in their areas, not just the problems; greater accountability of those who seek the trust of the people to govern. These are the details that will make all the difference.

His first act after the election, using his new mandate to attack child refugees, showed his ignorance of communities that have fought off the far right for decades. His arrogance, as much as his intolerance, will find little support in those former Labour heartlands. This is ripe territory for Labour, to win back trust, and to win again.


We can be the party that has the confidence to disperse decisions and power much further, wider and deeper than a small group of people with similar experiences in central London. We could be the party that really hears what is happening across different parts of the country, from Bexley to Livingstone and Wrexham to Birmingham Northfield.

To do this, we have to change. Welsh and Scottish colleagues tell a long and powerful story of being side-lined and disrespected by the national party. If Labour wants to win consent to govern for the whole nation, we have to walk the walk. As a first step, Labour HQ should move out of central London, our party conferences must move out of the major cities, and we must empower good people at the local, regional and national level to make spending decisions and decide on the strategies that will anchor us in our communities again.

This means no time for factions – full stop. Factions sweep away talent. I saw how it cost us a broader range of views and led to some catastrophic decisions during the New Labour era. We cannot afford it now. A defeat on this scale demands a level of humility and a recognition that infighting kills us. We will not convince the public we can build a more equal, compassionate society when we are at each other's throats. Our breadth is our strength and without it we have no claim to be a national party.

Now is not the time for licking wounds or for one last heave. We are in a new world, which demands new thinking and new rules. No more false binaries. No more divisions. No more jockeying for position. We need the widest range of energy and talent to defeat a newly invigorated Tory party and it can be done. We go forward together or we do not go forward at all.

Lisa Nandy is the MP for Wigan. She was formerly Shadow Secretary of State for Energy and Climate Change.

Very soft-left

[Josquius]

Poll out today suggests again its Starmer.
As said, he's centre but the left like him too.

It would be interesting if the tories do invest in the north (I'll believe it when I see it...) and as a result see their own gains undone.
The thing is, and the tories must be well aware of this, a North with low education and opportunity, where anyone with a glimmer of hope flees in their 20s, is just what is needed to ensure the hate is kept alive and people keep voting tory.

[Zanza]

Good article on how Brexit will go on in 2020:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/01/five-known-unknowns-brexit-2020/

The five 'known unknowns' for Brexit in 2020

Tanned and relaxed after a week in Mustique, Boris Johnson returns to the office this week as the most powerful Tory prime minister since Margaret Thatcher.

With Labour's electoral coalition fractured perhaps beyond repair, Mr Johnson will believe he now has a decade at his disposal to reboot Britain - a job that begins with his renegotiation of the UK's relationship with the European Union.

The outcome of this negotiation, the first phase of which is currently set to be completed by Dec 31 2020, will lay the political and economic foundations for what comes next, and yet it is still remarkably unclear how Mr Johnson intends to handle the process.

If he gets Brexit wrong, it could prove a permanent drag on his new administration. Conversely, a successful negotiation (the definition of which depends where you stand on Brexit) may yet provide a springboard to a better future.

So as we look to the year ahead, here are five big 'known unknowns' about what happens next.

Will Boris listen to business?
It was Mr Johnson who memorably exclaimed "f--- business" when, as foreign secretary, he was asked at a diplomatic reception about why greater consideration was not being given to the negative impacts of Brexit for British business.

That was June 2018 and the context of the remarks is important - Mr Johnson was then in the process of fighting against Theresa May's slide towards a much softer Brexit, high-alignment approach set out in the Chequers deal.

Mr Johnson was expressing deep frustration at the apparent drift towards the EU's single market for goods, frustration that only a few weeks later would trigger his resignation from the Cabinet.

Now Prime Minister, Mr Johnson will have to decide whether to put his money where his mouth is - or was. Clarifying those remarks, his aides said he was actually attacking the big business lobby groups, like the Confederation of British Industry, that have been warning about the perils of Brexit for jobs and investment.

The first big unknown of Brexit 2020 is therefore whether Mr Johnson will stick to that position as industry groups spell out the costs of doing a 'hard' Brexit that yanks the UK out of the EU single market after nearly 30 years of deepening economic integration.

Emotionally and ideologically, Mr Johnson is deeply attached to 'freeing' Britain from the EU's all-encompassing regulatory orbit, to create a nimbler, smarter, more productive 'Global Britain' - and yet staying true to this idea will require him to defy the laws of gravity in trade.

He must do so against a growing chorus of warnings about the costs of electing for the UK to trade with the EU (which takes 43 per cent of UK exports) on the same terms as Canada, which sends just 8 per cent of its exports to the EU.

The UK's car makers, for example, are demanding "frictionless trade, free of tariffs, with regulatory alignment and continued access to talent" and warning that exiting without a deal in 2020 would cut output from British car plants by a third by 2024.

And yet the current signals from Whitehall and Westminster point to a much harder, more divergent deal, with a tough immigration regime and - if necessary - accepting the need to pay tariffs to access the EU marketplace.

Even a 'zero tariff, zero quota' trade deal would impose huge burdens on business, unless it is accompanied by alignment on areas such as agricultural standards.

The Food and Drink Federation, which represents UK an industry with exports to the EU worth £13.5 billion a year, has repeatedly warned of a 'hidden hard Brexit' imposed by a basic EU-UK trade deal, as producers face new regulatory and bureaucratic hurdles to send goods to market.

Similar warnings have come from major companies like Airbus and other exposed industries, particularly chemicals and pharmaceuticals - none of which is to mention the impact on service providers (insurance, pensions, transport, financial etc) which by some estimates will fall by £20billion a year under an EU-UK Free Trade Agreement.

Business groups privately say the early signals from government on consultations are not encouraging: time is short and Mr Johnson's first act was to strip any mandatory Parliamentary consultation process out of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill that was re-tabled before Christmas.

How much Mr Johnson listens to these warnings and lobbies will be critical to the shape of any deal - and the future of Britain.

Will the B-word be banished to the business pages?
The second major uncertainty is whether, politically speaking, Mr Johnson can 'Get Brexit Done' in the sense of shifting it away from the top of the news agenda.

For the last three years Brexit has paralysed politics, but the hope of the new Johnson government is that after 'Exit Day' on Jan 31 the country will move on, creating space to focus on other issues, like NHS funding, schools and the care crisis.

To this end, it is reported that Number 10 wants to ban officials from even using the word 'Brexit' in a bid to turn the UK's EU exit talks into a technical process taking place in the background of daily life rather than a cliff-edge that leaves the country constantly quailing.

After all, the election slogan was 'Get Brexit Done', with the heavy emphasis on the act of completing Brexit, not on the substance of what Brexit might actually mean, or deliver for people.

This points to an interesting political challenge for Mr Johnson. Until now, the act of 'Getting Brexit Done' - or effectively winning the guerrilla war over 'leave v remain' which continued after the 2016 referendum - was a political end in itself.

But in triumphantly completing that task, by signing a deal with the EU and winning December's general election and ratifying an exit treaty by Jan 31, Mr Johnson opens the door to a new question 'what is the next deliverable'?

Is it more fish for British fishermen after we leave the Common Fisheries Policy? Is it more certainty for business? Is it healing constitutional divisions? Or more prosperity for the English regions or the North and the Midlands who voted so decisively for Mr Johnson? Because the Brexit negotiation currently envisaged - an 11-month dash for a 'barebones' trade deal - is likely to push Brexit to the fore of politics, not into the background of the business pages.

For now it is difficult to rationalise the two approaches - getting Brexit down at faster-than-necessary speeds, while simultaneously hoping no one much notices the impacts.

How will the Northern Irish 'frontstop' work?
Mr Johnson's headlong dash for a Brexit deal in just 10 days last October, and the political drama surrounding whether it would find a majority in Westminster, largely obscured the nature of the deal that was struck in Brussels.

Put bluntly, a Conservative and Unionist prime minister has consigned a part of the Union (Northern Ireland) to a special status in Europe without the consent of the province's leading Unionist political party.

The Democratic Unionist Party has called the deal "absurd" and "unconstitutional" and Northern Ireland's police chief has warned of the risk of Loyalist disorder if the deal, which puts a trade border in the Irish Sea, is seen to negatively impact Northern Ireland.

Mr Johnson may calculate that - as his election victory arguably demonstrated - the British electorate has little care or interest in Northern Ireland and that any troubles resulting from implementing the deal can be smoothed over.

But the UK Treasury's own leaked internal assessments warn that the new border, with its customs declarations and physical and documentary checks, will be "highly disruptive to the NI economy".

Goods travelling from Great Britain into Northern Ireland will be separated into 'red' and 'green' channels, with those heading into the Republic of Ireland, or 'at risk' of doing so, requiring costly additional formalities.

Mr Johnson has promised "no checks" for goods travelling from Northern Ireland into Great Britain, but business groups still fret that the new status of the province will gradually undermine business relations with the GB-based clients.

The precise extent and nature of the border remains subject to negotiation, but depending on the shape and progress of those talks, Northern Ireland's divisions may yet again cloud the new Brexit horizons.

Will the UK really dare to diverge?
The answers to the first three questions posed above ultimately depend on the extent to which Mr Johnson decides to diverge from the EU's regulatory and trading orbit.

The extent to which the UK diverges - up to and including exiting the EU with no preferential trade deal in place and falling back onto WTO trading terms - will determine how far Brexit stays off the front pages, the operation of the Irish 'frontstop' and the wider impact on business and industry.

Divergence on key areas, such as EU plant and animal health regulations, will particularly determine the level of friction at the border and the depth of any trade deals signed with other countries, particularly the United States.

More broadly, the extent to which Mr Johnson is prepared to agree to follow the EU's rules on workers' rights, the environment and state aid (the Government's ability to subsidise business) will determine whether he can secure 'zero tariff' access to the EU's single market.

Similarly on immigration, the extent to which the UK wants to erect barriers on the movement of people will, at root, determine how far UK services industries in particular are impacted by Brexit in the years to come.

For now, there is a lot of tough talking coming out of Whitehall and Westminster, but as the negotiation progresses and the Dec 31 deadline approaches, calculations may start to change.

In short, the Boris Johnson that wants to 'liberate' the UK from the EU's regulatory orbit, and is prepared to say "f*** [big] business" to do so, will have to wrestle with the Boris Johnson that wants to "Get Brexit Done", keep it off the front pages and maintain the stability of the Union.

The Prime Minister may choose a dual-track strategy - talking tough on issues like immigration and ambitions for global trade deals, while quietly pursuing a much closer economic relationship than this headline billing for Brexit suggests in order to create a smooth exit.

Or he may stick to his guns, and push for something much more radically divergent despite the warning from business and expert trade economists who say that the upsides from doing global trade deals will never compensate economically for erecting trade barriers with the advanced EU markets on our doorstep.

For now Mr Johnson seems brimful of determination to diverge - but he started the last negotiation with similarly tough talk, before largely conceding to EU demands on Northern Ireland.

The unknown, again, is whether that process repeats itself - or not.

What will the transition period look like after December 2020?
For now Mr Johnson has emphatically ruled out any extension to the transition period which was available under Article 50.

That 'standstill' period put a legal roof over the heads of both parties while they negotiated the future relationship, enabling the UK to effectively still be treated as an EU member state even after exit day.

Mr Johnson's refusal to extend that status for up to two more years comes despite overtures from the EU not to be so hasty - only this week the EU's trade Commission, Phil Hogan, suggested Mr Johnson reconsider his position, asking him to move from "stunt to substance".

But barring a last minute change of heart (Mr Johnson has until July 1) that leaves just 11 months to clinch a deal on the EU-UK trade and security partnership.

Or more accurately, eight months, if you allow time to agree a negotiating mandate (which means talks won't start until March) and then to get the deal ratified in the European Parliament and Westminster.

All of which means, deal or no deal, there will (as Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator warned recently) inevitably still be plenty of issues outstanding on Jan 1 2021 when the new deal kicks in.

The big unknown is what this new 'state of play' will look and feel like - and this will depend on the political temperature of the talks as the deadline approaches.

The EU is clear that it cannot, legally speaking, replicate the full-fat 'transition' status of virtual membership enabled by Article 50, but the range of other possible outcomes remains extremely broad.

It could look like something very close to the 'no deal' world that was feared in October this year, with business, trade and transport suffering visible dislocation and disruptions, mitigated only by minimal unilateral actions on the EU side.

Or it could be something softer. The EU, while sticking to its own red lines, has secured its divorce deal including a £39 billion financial settlement and a solution to Northern Ireland, and will be looking to keep the UK as close as possible.

Its motivations may therefore be less defensive than in the previous negotiation. This could lead to something much more benign - with the basic framework of a trade and future association agreement in place, and a determination by both sides to use this as a scaffold on which to build as they adapt to the new trading regimes.

As time passes, deeper agreements could be forged, for example, on transport, data sharing, aviation, audio-visual services and wider services provision - all of which will be dependent on UK appetite to engage and limited by the choices outlined above.

But for all the unknowns of the coming year, one thing is crystal clear: with a majority of 86 seats the outcome - good, bad or indifferent - will ultimately reflect directly on Mr Johnson, and Mr Johnson alone.

[mongers]

Good article on how Brexit will go on in 2020:

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/01/01/five-known-unknowns-brexit-2020/

The five 'known unknowns' for Brexit in 2020

Tanned and relaxed after a week in Mustique, Boris Johnson returns to the office this week as the most powerful Tory prime minister since Margaret Thatcher.
...
snip
....

Zanza, thanks, a good article, but 'they' aren't listening, they've got their fingers in their ears and are endlessly chanting, "La, la, la. La, la, la"; the UK is now Lalaland. 



NB That sentence is my entry for the 2020 most over punctuated post on Languish. 

[Zanza]

The real world is still out there and will come back no matter how loud they sing Lalala.

[Sheilbh]

Dom Cummings is posting on his blog again, and hiring:
https://dominiccummings.com/2020/01/02/two-hands-are-a-lot-were-hiring-data-scientists-project-managers-policy-experts-assorted-weirdos/

[Zanza]

So is he hiring government employees by setting up a personal gmail account and checking the applicants himself? Is that a usual process in government hiring in Britain?