Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[PDH]

The problem with defining "what makes sense" for a voter is that the logic on one party may not be the logic of another.  We like to believe in a set of facts that can only lead to one conclusion, but that is not how people (and especially people in social groups) often think about things.  Facts are weighted, disregarded, or given far more weight from one set of people to another.

In the UK (or what will be left of it), I expect the eventual outcome to be grumbling and bitching but in the end a notion that the hardship was/is worth it because of mumble mumble sovereignty and keeping Johnny Foreigner at bay, and anyway our Grandmums had it worse and she still smiled - oh, could you pass me the tea that is 3x more expensive because of the rotten Continentals who mess in wholesome British affairs.  Easily a whole other set of what is important.

[OttoVonBismarck]

With Brexit there also is no fundamental right or wrong. Being "in" the EU isn't "right" and being out of it isn't "wrong." There are positives and negatives. Trying to remove myself from an American perspective, which is hard, but say I was Canadian and Canada was offered a spot in the EU--I would likely be against that for a number of reasons. Would there be benefits to joining? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean it's "wrong" to not want to be in, either.

A lot of Remainers I think were frustrated because they "feel" that "Leavers" wanted to leave for "invalid reasons", especially when they identify those reasons in terms of basically deceptive advertising and false claims made by prominent Leavers during the campaign. But I think most people largely understood there were positives and negatives from leaving, and the leavers simply decided they preferred to leave. There is no "balanced scorecard" weighting whether or not the Leavers reasons were "legitimate or not", it's very subjective in many cases.

[Sheilbh]

I agree totally with those posts.

In addition I think the deceptive advertising point is oversold. With the exception of the "Turkey is joining the EU" I don't think the advertising was any more deceptive than a normal political campaign. Even "Turkey is joining" - the defence from Leave would be that Turkey is in the accession process, the EU position is if Turkey meets the acquis they can join and the UK government's position was that they have a veto but they support Turkey joining. The famous £350 million to the EU example is, from my understanding, using a gross figure instead of net (the net figure is under but around £250 million) - it was picked up and criticised regularly by journalists and by UK Statistics Authority. But I just struggle to see gross v net as a line that was crossed for dishonest politics.

The Remain campaign also did similar things. So all of those economic predictions that didn't happen (3.3 million jobs at risk, 20% drop in house prices etc) from my understanding were based on analysis of what would happen if the UK left the EU the day after the referendum with no deal - which is absurd and something that was never going to happen. I think that stuff was more corrosive because George Osborne was splashing the Tresury letterhead on it as official estimates from him as Chancellor rather than political figures made by a campaigning politician.

I also think, because it's the UK, there is an element of snobbery and class about this. Farage and Johnson are not the tribunes of the working class. But the reality is that for a lot of Remainers I think their view is that the wrong people voted for the wrong thing. I think the vast majority of Remainers have moved on from that - but there is a fair dose of snobbery with many on that side.

Yes, that's one of the core problems with the brexit vote as it was set up.
Look at polling data from the decade before and the EU was never an issue for more than 20% of people absolute max. Its just not something most had a view about at all as much as Brussels red tape is a standard moan from people who don't have much interest in anything.

Sure but that didn't change by accident. Farage has spoken at length about how he did this. UKIP up to 2004 was a pretty hard core libertarian party going on about Brussels red tape and sovereignty with limited appeal - 3 MEPs and 6.5% of the vote in a PR system was their best result.

Then the accesion of the new member states changed everything for them. The UK didn't put any transition measures in place and the Home Office and government were expecting, and made preparations for, under 20,000 people to come to the UK a year. Estimates are that 250k came in the first year and about 1.9 million people from those countries have settled status so came to the UK at some point before 2021 - including people who'd returned or didn't apply for settled status and it's probably a lot higher. It was wildly beyond what the UK had planned for or been communicating to the public.

Farage has explained that the mistakes around accession allowed him to link immigration (an issue people cared about) to the EU (an issue they didn't). Over the next ten years they basically removed anything in their manifesto that wasn't popular - so all the libertarian stuff about privatising the NHS etc was ditched and instead they were arguing for huge increases in NHS spending. It was incredibly successful and in their best election (2019 European Parliament) their successor party came first and won 30% of the vote. It didn't just happen because of the referendum it was something that was worked on for at least the previous decade.

It's probably, I think, the model for any campaign to re-join through a takeover of the Lib Dems, for example. What are the issues that people care about that they can link to re-joining the EU? And you probably need to ditch anything that isn't popular because you'll need to attract enough people from right and left around the basic idea that we need to re-join.

[crazy canuck]

With Brexit there also is no fundamental right or wrong. Being "in" the EU isn't "right" and being out of it isn't "wrong." There are positives and negatives. Trying to remove myself from an American perspective, which is hard, but say I was Canadian and Canada was offered a spot in the EU--I would likely be against that for a number of reasons. Would there be benefits to joining? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean it's "wrong" to not want to be in, either.

A lot of Remainers I think were frustrated because they "feel" that "Leavers" wanted to leave for "invalid reasons", especially when they identify those reasons in terms of basically deceptive advertising and false claims made by prominent Leavers during the campaign. But I think most people largely understood there were positives and negatives from leaving, and the leavers simply decided they preferred to leave. There is no "balanced scorecard" weighting whether or not the Leavers reasons were "legitimate or not", it's very subjective in many cases.

The better analogy is whether it would make sense for a Canadian to want to sever Canada from NAFTA.  Since the first US Canada free trade agreement, and then with the addition of Mexico, the economies of the US and Canada have become ever more interlinked.  It would be disruptive to say the least and silly to sever those ties now.  Just as it was silly for the UK to do the equivalent with the EU.

[Barrister]

With Brexit there also is no fundamental right or wrong. Being "in" the EU isn't "right" and being out of it isn't "wrong." There are positives and negatives. Trying to remove myself from an American perspective, which is hard, but say I was Canadian and Canada was offered a spot in the EU--I would likely be against that for a number of reasons. Would there be benefits to joining? Absolutely. But that doesn't mean it's "wrong" to not want to be in, either.

A lot of Remainers I think were frustrated because they "feel" that "Leavers" wanted to leave for "invalid reasons", especially when they identify those reasons in terms of basically deceptive advertising and false claims made by prominent Leavers during the campaign. But I think most people largely understood there were positives and negatives from leaving, and the leavers simply decided they preferred to leave. There is no "balanced scorecard" weighting whether or not the Leavers reasons were "legitimate or not", it's very subjective in many cases.

The better analogy is whether it would make sense for a Canadian to want to sever Canada from NAFTA.  Since the first US Canada free trade agreement, and then with the addition of Mexico, the economies of the US and Canada have become ever more interlinked.  It would be disruptive to say the least and silly to sever those ties now.  Just as it was silly for the UK to do the equivalent with the EU.

Well no, you can make an argument for Canada to join the EU.  It would go something like the US has been an unreliable partner who has threatened to tear up NAFTA, increasing trade frictions over steel and aluminium, crossing the border has been increasing more difficult over the years, and probably yada yada human rights and shared values.  Now I'm not making that argument because I think the negatives of losing such easy access to the US market would vastly outweigh any benefits, but there is an argument to be made.

[Sheilbh]

The better analogy is whether it would make sense for a Canadian to want to sever Canada from NAFTA.  Since the first US Canada free trade agreement, and then with the addition of Mexico, the economies of the US and Canada have become ever more interlinked.  It would be disruptive to say the least and silly to sever those ties now.  Just as it was silly for the UK to do the equivalent with the EU.

But the EU is not just a trade agreement or a free trade area it is far more, which is the upside and the cost. Just seeing the single market as a trade agreement massively undersells it and the wider EU. It is a separate legal order that creates its own legislation, has citizens, has directly enforceable rights with an independent court and more.

It is unique and goes far beyond trade. There is no equivalent or analogy.

[crazy canuck]

The better analogy is whether it would make sense for a Canadian to want to sever Canada from NAFTA.  Since the first US Canada free trade agreement, and then with the addition of Mexico, the economies of the US and Canada have become ever more interlinked.  It would be disruptive to say the least and silly to sever those ties now.  Just as it was silly for the UK to do the equivalent with the EU.

But the EU is not just a trade agreement or a free trade area it is far more, which is the upside and the cost. Just seeing the single market as a trade agreement massively undersells it and the wider EU. It is a separate legal order that creates its own legislation, has citizens, has directly enforceable rights with an independent court and more.

It is unique and goes far beyond trade. There is no equivalent or analogy.

Yes, I was simply making the point that one needs to take into account the fact that economic links which have developed over several decades are hard to sever.  There better be a damn good reason that outweighs that kind of economic chaos.  But that is not something that was taken into consideration because the leave side lied about the economic consequences.

[Tamas]

So what Sheilbh, the big red bus with the £350 000 000 per week windfall for the NHS wasn't overly misleading?

Also it's early days for the job losses and property price fall.

[Sheilbh]

So what Sheilbh, the big red bus with the £350 000 000 per week windfall for the NHS wasn't overly misleading?

As I say £350 million was a gross figure not net. I don't think that's overly misleading in the history of political discourse, no.

And pre-pandemic the government had announced increasing spending on the NHS to meet that pledge. Of course there was no need to leave the EU to do that but they wanted to say they'd done it - and post-pandemic spending will increase a lot more and probably still not be enough to catch-up.

Also it's early days for the job losses and property price fall.

Sheilbh and Tamas - secret hard Brexiters to encourage a collapse of property prices

[Tamas]

So what Sheilbh, the big red bus with the £350 000 000 per week windfall for the NHS wasn't overly misleading?

As I say £350 million was a gross figure not net. I don't think that's overly misleading in the history of political discourse, no.

If it wasn't misleading where's the money? Lying for political gain is still lying and should not be ok. "Some remote dishonest reference to a largely unrelated fact somewhere" should not be our standard to label something as not misleading.

[Sheilbh]

If it wasn't misleading where's the money? Lying for political gain is still lying and should not be ok. "Some remote dishonest reference to a largely unrelated fact somewhere" should not be our standard to label something as not misleading.

I always thought the issue with it was that the argument that "we send the EU £350 million a week" rather than the "let's fund the NHS instead" bit?

But yeah I mean in 2018 Theresa May's government announced that they'd be increasing spending in the NHS by £20.5 billion a year (so £394 million a week). That's been increased too. What's the dishonesty in that bit? It was utterly unconnected to the £350 million a week to the EU (which was gross not net) so any government could have increased funding to the NHS by that much if they wanted to - but it has happened. It will increase significantly more with the post-covid spending. Though probably not by enough for the NHS to properly recover from the pandemic.

[Tamas]

  I need to walk away from this level of apologetism

[garbon]

I still have the leaflet that was suggesting turkey was joining and didn't explain but had syria/Iraq in called out colour suggesting that if UK stayed, we would be awash with migrants from those two countries. Felt pretty dishonest to me.

[Sheilbh]

Yeah I think the "Turkey is joining the EU" ones were dishonest.

[Sheilbh]

Summary of what the EU is offering on the Protocol which all sounds pretty good (and not a million miles away from some of May's proposals) and I think if this is where we could have ended, ideally we would have had this before unionists united in opposition. I could be wrong but I also personally suspect the UK government is preparing to declare victory. Sausages are free (I've always suspected Johnson chose that as an emblem as it's a relatively easy fix) and they're currently having a row about the CJEU having jurisdiction that it doesn't have - which can easily be fixed as a cosmetic win without changing the substance. As Connelly says I suspect it will be the same as last time when Frost was pushing for "alternative arrangements" and Johnson overruled him to agree to the NIP and took the credit for a deal.

Unionist reaction will be key and my guess would be that the key to breaking the unified opposition is getting Northern Irish business on board/keen on these proposals. The DUP/TUV wing of unionism want the protocol gone - and that's it. Doug Beattie of the UUP has said the protocol needs "replacing with a new treaty" (which is form not substance) that meets the needs of all communities - so I still think he's persuadable and with that united unionist opposition collapses. And I think there's possibly space for a unionist party which is willing to accept this type of arrangement, if business are behind it, plus it fits with the wider UUP modernisation program. But it would be very bold for him.

My fear is that unionists are too far gone and this is now too big an issue for them for anyone to walk back for fear of being seen as betraying the community. It will need work to build an off-ramp.

Tony Connelly
@tconnellyRTE
Here is the gist of the EU proposals on the NI Protocol, to be set out by @MarosSefcovic tomorrow:
1/ Sources say overall the proposals will mean a "massive" reduction in checks and controls on goods moving GB-NI, and in customs formalities
2/ There will be simplifications and relaxations that will allow for the free flow of SPS goods into NI, including "identity products". Essentially the movement of chilled meats (ie sausages) will be control free but labelling will be required
3/ Critically, for large mixed consignments of animal-based products only one export health certificate will be required (rather than dozens)
4/ This will be facilitated by a much bigger flow of data between the UK and EU and between big retailers, which have sophisticated traceability systems, and the EU
5/ On customs, the principle will be that goods deemed not at risk of entering the single market will have a zero customs value in the UK system, but that will also expand to mean minimal customs requirements
6/ Sources say this will result in "a massive reduction in customs procedures on goods arriving" - I understand the Commission will give specific examples tomorrow
7/ On governance, one paper will refer to possible changes in the working of the Joint Consultative Working Group. Also structured dialogue with key stakeholders will be formalised, so meetings will no longer be ad hoc but will be regular.
8/ There will also be reference to a possible sub structure for Northern Ireland in the EU UK Parliamentary Assembly. Naturally, there is no reference to the ECJ, or David Frost's demands on that score
9/ On medicines: The Commission has already said it will introduce a new law to ensure the free flow of medicines to NI from GB. It's understood the medicines paper will make it clear that this will cover generics, all cancer and new innovative and life saving medicines
10/ Sources say new medicines that are authorized either in Britain, or in Europe,  will be readily available in Northern Ireland.
11/ The papers will signal where solutions are to be found, rather than be filled with finalised, technical outcomes. Sources say that indicates that an intense discussion with the UK will follow (and if the UK has better ideas which work within the Protocol they can be adopted)
12/ Sefcovic will present the papers to the member states, the College of Commissioners, the European Parliament tomorrow - the papers will be published on Thurs and a Commission team will travel to London the same day to start the talks
13/ Sefcovic will present the papers as being for the benefit of the people of NI, and not a big concession to Downing Street
14/ Diplomats say the papers have been the result of very hard discussions with the main Commission directorates: DG SANTE, DG TAXUD and DG GROW and that there has been considerable resistance due to fears over the integrity of the single market, especially on SPS
15/ What margin for a landing zone might there be, given the vertiginous heights Lord Frost has put the bar following his Lisbon speech?
16/ Sources point to key moments in the past years where Boris Johnson took a sudden and big gambit (then claimed credit for it); while Article 16 is still a worry, officials are hopeful that a deal can be reached
17/ If A16 is triggered, diplomats say the Commission has been working on a parallel track in terms of the response (France and Germany have been pushing the hardest for a contingency plan)
18/ It's understood checks won't be eliminated completely. They will also just cover GB-NI trade, ie, if ingredients from Asia are used to finish a good in GB then that product would be subject to checks
19/ The key message from the Commission will be that Sefcovic went to NI to listen carefully to stakeholders, and he has delivered solutions within the "outer boundaries of what EU law can bear", acc to one diplomat

Edit: And again I think Sefcovic is really good. He gets the issues in Northern Ireland and that they are real and important, but that's not a concession to London but rather for Northern Ireland and, in my view, necessary if the NIP is to serve its purpose which is to support the peace process.

Edit: Although I've just realised that if they do go for the sub structure for Northern Ireland within the EU UK Parliamentary Assembly that you could end up with Sinn Fein refusing to take their seats in Westminster and Unionists refusing to take their seats on that body - God