Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[ulmont]

Politics has always been tribal especially. I mean I'm tribally anti-Tory - I can't imagine the set of circumstances when I wouldn't prioritise beating them over almost everything else because I think they're bad for the country

Me too. But I think that's a bit different. Support my one team no matter what vs. My options are open just not those fucking guys and for good reason.

Things that need to die: calling nearly every political scandal "xxxxgate".

Waterbeer it is.

Whitebeer.

[Tamas]

I love this Guardian piece.  Especially who correct it is that this government's only visible "achievement" have been signing the Brexit deal, which now they are set to torch.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2022/may/17/martin-lewis-queue-tory-mps-solve-cost-of-living-crisis

Given the employee calibre and attrition rate of this government, it's always a heart-in-mouth moment when they unleash a previously unheard-of minister on the airwaves. Much like the bit in the Simpsons where Mr Burns releases the winged monkeys from his window with a hopeful "Fly, my pretties – fly!". When thuds and bloodcurdling shrieks follow, he turns to his retainer, Smithers, with the curt instruction: "Continue the research."

Perhaps No 10's comms geniuses felt this way when they debuted the hitherto deservedly obscure safeguarding minister, Rachel Maclean, on to Monday's breakfast shows to discuss the cost of living crisis. Who knows why the random nitwit generator machine had made it Rachel's turn? Maybe Helen Whately was refusing to come out of her trailer. In many ways I refuse to believe Rachel even is the safeguarding minister – a huge part of me assumes she is just a character hastily assembled from discarded awayday ideas and then given a pretend job title that it would feel rude to argue with. "Just say she's the 'safeguarding minister'. Sounds like a thing." As for Rachel's thoughts on how increasingly anxious citizens can respond to multiple financial pressures, let's see them fly. "We need to have a plan to grow the economy," she hazarded (no shit), "and to make sure that people are able to protect themselves better, whether that is by taking on more hours or moving to a better paid job."


Continue the research.

In the meantime, if you're keeping a tally of government suggestions for how to deal with acute real-world financial distress, please add "Had you thought of being paid more?" to the pile. Said pile also features similar advice from Thérèse Coffey to work more hours, while George Eustice recently let shoppers in on the little secret of supermarket value ranges. "Generally speaking," he generalised unspeakably, "what people find is by going for some of the value brands rather than own-branded products, they can actually contain and manage their household budget." Amazing, isn't it, that George still has all this good stuff in the tank, when money-saving expert Martin Lewis recently admitted, "I am out of tools to help people now ... I've been through the financial crash, I've been through Covid. This is the worst, where we are right now ... That is simply not tenable in our society. There is absolutely panic and it has not started yet." Has Martin thought of pointing out ways people could retrain in investment banking?

In the meantime, with the Bank of England governor appearing before the Treasury select committee on Monday to forecast "apocalyptic" food prices, do you get the sense that the government has anything in the same postcode as a plan to make things even mildly better? Hand on heart, no. Quite the opposite. In fact, it has two plans to make them worse. The first is a possible trade war with the EU, which smelled-it-dealt-it treaty critic David Frost seems to be suggesting is one of the good kinds of wars. And the second is Boris Johnson's triumphant announcement, via the pages of the Daily Mail as opposed to their line managers, that he is going to lay off 91,000 civil servants.

Let's park the fact that the prime minister surely arrived at this number by the ancient clue-free technique for making cuts – thinking of the total number, then dividing it by five. Instead, we'll focus on the main event, which is suggesting that the best idea for how to enter a recession is to make cuts to frontline service provision. Whatever it says on the back of Johnson's napkin, there simply isn't another way to make 91,000 cuts. Of course, No 10 doesn't tell you about the frontline service provision, preferring instead to intimate that this will merely be a just-deserts response to civil servants working from home. This is the chief bugbear of that incorrigible desk-sniffer Jacob Rees-Mogg, a man whose own work desk does not even feature a computer, but who has recently been slithering round Whitehall like the Child Catcher from Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and leaving sub-Yodel "sorry I missed you" notes for civil servants. I'm told that Rupert Murdoch is obsessed with people returning to the office wherever they may work, so perhaps that puts lead in the Rees-Mogg pencil.

Even so, for a government that has achieved absolutely nothing in office bar a Brexit deal it is currently threatening to torch, it does feel genuinely extraordinary to watch the Johnson administration work so committedly against this organic form of levelling up. As has become increasingly clear ever since the phrase was first farted out, they haven't the first clue how to "level up" anything. Yet in one swift and elegant way, remote working is the market actually beginning to deliver their policy for them – by allowing people to draw metropolis salaries but physically locate themselves in less affluent regions for at least some of the working week. What's not to embrace?

Over to Boris Johnson, a man who famously works from home. Indeed, his officials have spent much of the year explaining that is why certain rules don't apply to Downing Street. "My experience of working from home," Johnson explained at the weekend, "is you spend an awful lot of time making another cup of coffee and then, you know, getting up, walking very slowly to the fridge, hacking off a small piece of cheese, then walking very slowly back to your laptop and then forgetting what it was you're doing." Oh, you forgot what you were doing? Let us help you out. YOU WERE SUPPOSED TO BE BEING THE EFFING PRIME MINISTER. Ah well, perhaps another time. Sorry to have missed you.

[Sheilbh]

Always enjoy Marina Hyde

I feel a bit sorry for the minister yesterday because having looked at the clip I don't think there's any world where what she said was being fairly characterised. Which is partly why politicians tend to speak like machines and just repeat "the line" that worked well in a focus group.

But ultimately it's going to keep happening because the Chancellor isn't doing anything - when ultra-loyalists like Fabricant or a dry as dust Thatcherite like Lord Lilley are out there saying the Treasury needs to do more, you know there's a problem. As long as they can't actually say we're doing something new then they'll keep running into the problem MacLean had.

It's going to keep happening - and when it's not this it'll be the latest fine for the PM or the Sue Gray report with picture or the upcoming by election losses. If the Tories have any instinct for power left (and it's safe to assume they always do - like a lizard brain ) they'll realise they need a new PM and a new Chancellor pretty soon.

Edit: Plus there's definitely a recession on its way.

[Sheilbh]

Tory MP arrested on suspicion of indecent assault, sexual assault, rape, abuse of position of trust and misconduct in a public office between 2002 and 2009. Not charged so this hasn't been made public by the police and, a bit like Sigurdsson who still hasn't been named in the UK, it can't be published who it is until they're charged. Obviously as they've not been charged very limited information but given those crimes it sounds incredibly serious.

The whips are aware and have told the MP to not attend parliament while the investigation's ongoing - which feels like it will reveal who it is, if only inadvertently. Similarly if they are being told to not actually turn up to parliament it feels like they should step down so their constituents can be properly represented even if they haven't been charged or tried yet.

Not sure if it's related to the 50+ MPs being investigated for sexual misconduct by parliamentary authorities - so that may be a separate issue.

Edit: Although "abuse  of position of trust and misconduct in a public office" means they must have been an MP at the time.

[Sheilbh]

Clip of Johnson at the opening of Crossrail:
https://twitter.com/SkyNews/status/1526544710755659777?s=20&t=EWEi9scM8Rb_vET01lWT2A

Sky News
@SkyNews
PM Boris Johnson says mass transit is "vital" for levelling-up as it means people can travel from where they live to "where they can have a good high-wage, high-skilled job", and adds 'we should be getting on with Crossrail 2'.

The Treasury cancelled Crossrail 2 eighteen months ago on the grounds that it would "free up investment elsewhere". It didn't. This isn't the first time Johnson boosted some big infrastructure project his Chancellor has already cancelled. I can't think of another example in my lifetime when the PM and Chancellor were so politically opposed to each other - Blair and Brown might have hated each other but had broadly similar views, for example. Johnson is a big state Tory who loves massive infrastructure projects, Sunak is the living embodiment of the Treasury view.

Separately interview in the Guardian with Dame Margaret Beckett (who I've always had a soft spot for), who, it turns out, has an amazing Timothy Dalton in Hot Fuzz office

[Josquius]

Johnson is right, albeit I know he is a liar. So it is probably damaging to anyone recognising this is right.

[Tamas]

As I think the Marina Hyde article also pointed out,

Always enjoy Marina Hyde

I feel a bit sorry for the minister yesterday because having looked at the clip I don't think there's any world where what she said was being fairly characterised. Which is partly why politicians tend to speak like machines and just repeat "the line" that worked well in a focus group.

But ultimately it's going to keep happening because the Chancellor isn't doing anything - when ultra-loyalists like Fabricant or a dry as dust Thatcherite like Lord Lilley are out there saying the Treasury needs to do more, you know there's a problem. As long as they can't actually say we're doing something new then they'll keep running into the problem MacLean had.

It's going to keep happening - and when it's not this it'll be the latest fine for the PM or the Sue Gray report with picture or the upcoming by election losses. If the Tories have any instinct for power left (and it's safe to assume they always do - like a lizard brain ) they'll realise they need a new PM and a new Chancellor pretty soon.

Edit: Plus there's definitely a recession on its way.

That's nothing a good ol' civil war in Northern Ireland won't fix, now that Russia just sucks too much to engage Britain in combat.

[Tamas]

UK inflation officially at 9% now (factories raised prices 14%, so it sounds legit), president of Bank of England really needs to talk more about his favourite plan of bringing inflation down: stopping people having pay rises (no, really, twice he know talked about this being the solution, in public).

[Josquius]

Don't worry. With covid and Ukraine to hide behind and other countries seeing inflation at 5% and there abouts, brexit should get off the hook free and easy.

[Tamas]

In fact, Labour finally chimed in on the whole Brexit thing, blaming the EU for our troubles:

EU being 'overzealous' with checks under Northern Ireland protocol, says Rachel Reeves
Rachel Reeves, the shadow chancellor, told Times Radio this morning that she thought the EU was being "overzealous" in the checks it wanted on goods entering Northern Ireland from Britain under the Northern Ireland protocol. But she said she wanted this resolved through negotiation, and not by the UK suspending parts of the protocol. She said:

I think the EU are being overzealous in the checks.

There are goods that are destined for market in Northern Ireland, never going to leave Northern Ireland, never going to get into the single market, which is what the EU say is their worry.

For those goods that are just moving into Northern Ireland then I just don't think we need the level of checks the EU are pursuing.

But the way to resolve this is not through megaphone diplomacy, it's not unilaterally ripping up the protocol, it's by working in partnership to resolve these very real issues that do exist.

 

[Sheilbh]

FWIW the European Commission is sort of saying the same.

There's comments in the Irish press from Commission sources that they have observed the last year or two with minimal checks and determined that the actual risk to the single market from Northern Ireland is very low. They're now of the view that it is not necessary for the entire body of EU law to apply between GB and Northern Ireland. Which has always been the case and has always been predictable.

It's a bit like the Commission re-writing multiple EU medicines regulations to not consider the UK a third country for the purposes of the Protocol. The reason that's happening is because just applying the Protocol has unintended consequences (such as cutting Northern Ireland off from certain generic medicines and disrupting NHS-ish supply chains) which no-one wants. Maybe because of the lack of trust, but I think also because the EU's political stance on the Protocol is that it's fine and there's no need for re-opening it, the EU's solution to that has been to amend European law rather than amend the Protocol.

In terms of that landing zone - basically all the parties are talking about a trusted trader scheme so the Irish Sea border does not affect goods that are travelling from GB to NI to be sold/consumed in NI. The unionist/British briefings are calling it "red lanes/green lanes"; the EU statements are calling it "express lanes/standard lanes" - not an issue to die in a ditch over. Though it may take some time to get there and there will be bumps on the way, the shape of this deal is pretty clear. That isssue aloone is probably more than half of the solution to the Protocol (because I think the constitutional issues for unionists proceed from the economic issues).

Of course from my perspective as someone who doesn't like Johnson or his approach I think it is really unfortunate that the points Theresa May made, which were dismissed as cherry-picking, have happened and that proposal May's government made, which were apparently unicorns that would be impossible for the EU to agree, are now being proposed by the Commission. It's a bit like how the EU actually implemented a policy on free movement that Cameron had proposed as part of his pre-referendum negotiation - and was told it was incompatible with the four freedoms. I doubt it would have made much of a difference in the referendum but it's a bit of a shame, given that it became European policy in the twelve months following the referendum, that we didn't try it before.

Frankly it reminds me of the issues with Orban and Poland, there's a pattern of governments acting in good faith raising actual issues getting short shrift and not much flexibility from the EU - but governments that cynically provoke crises getting rewarded. Given where we are likely to end up (based on what the EU is offering now), I wish that had been considered or offered in the May deals. It just feels to me that you should offer maximum flexibility to the governments that are acting in good faith and the brittle, inflexibility with governments that are causing difficulties - not the other way round.

Edit: Incidentally on inflation this thread by Ed Conway from Sky is really interesting:
https://twitter.com/EdConwaySky/status/1526461582850543621?s=20&t=l78pHcFZhN7doc-yiuNe5g

TLDR - the price of wholesale gas in the UK is at its lowest point in 18 months and generally very low even as household prices are increasing.  The reason is the UK has decent capacity for LNG (unlike much of Northern Europe) and pipelines from the UK to Europe are running at capacity with gas from UK LNG terminals to Europe.

So there's loads of gas coming in, not enough capacity for it to leave and - because we've shut down North Sea storage - not much space to store it. (especially as there's relatively low household demand because it's spring/summer). The gas is instead being burned by power plants and the UK, which is normally a big importer of energy from Europe, is now a bit exporter (but again we're running at capacity - in retrospect it may have been a mistake to cancel an interconnecter because it ruined the view of a Grade 2 listed cottage ).

Wholesale gas prices are at a very low level, electricity prices are also at a very low level - but we can't actually store any of this gas for next winter (which would have an impact on energy bills for households) or send it to Europe (which would have an impact on wholesale prices more generally).

Basically it feels like another example of the UK having to welcome the consequences of its own actions - in this case shutting down gas storage, not building new interconnecters or pipelines to Europe to act as a land-bridge for LNG and generally seeing what would happen to a country's energy market if you spent 20 years slowly winding down supply.

[Tamas]

As the rest of this country, Sheilbh, I think you keep ignoring that the UK is not the only external trading partner of the EU. Asking them to treat our very special selves us a special case and give us a solid by looking the other way is also asking them to create problems for themselves further down the line when negotiating with others, because of a) the precedent given and b) because of treating key EU concepts (like the common border) as a fudge.

[Josquius]

As the rest of this country, Sheilbh, I think you keep ignoring that the UK is not the only external trading partner of the EU. Asking them to treat our very special selves us a special case and give us a solid by looking the other way is also asking them to create problems for themselves further down the line when negotiating with others, because of a) the precedent given and b) because of treating key EU concepts (like the common border) as a fudge.

Broadly yes. But the UK is kind of special in being the only 3rd country with whom the EU shares a semi eu/semi 3rd country bit in northern Ireland.

[Tamas]

As the rest of this country, Sheilbh, I think you keep ignoring that the UK is not the only external trading partner of the EU. Asking them to treat our very special selves us a special case and give us a solid by looking the other way is also asking them to create problems for themselves further down the line when negotiating with others, because of a) the precedent given and b) because of treating key EU concepts (like the common border) as a fudge.

Broadly yes. But the UK is kind of special in being the only 3rd country with whom the EU shares a semi eu/semi 3rd country bit in northern Ireland.

But that special NI status was the UK's choice. We signed the bloody treaty.

[Sheilbh]

As the rest of this country, Sheilbh, I think you keep ignoring that the UK is not the only external trading partner of the EU. Asking them to treat our very special selves us a special case and give us a solid by looking the other way is also asking them to create problems for themselves further down the line when negotiating with others, because of a) the precedent given and b) because of treating key EU concepts (like the common border) as a fudge.

But that's an argument against the Protocol at all. It exists because the EU and UK have both acknowledged that Northern Ireland is a very special case that both sides will treat differently. For the EU it is allowing its single market to apply to territory that is not part of the EU or the EEA; for the UK it is allowing EU law and single market rules to apply to part of its territory but not others. By definition that's a special case.

Where else in the world that precedent might apply - I can't think of anywhere with fact pattern that led the EU and UK to treat Northern Ireland as a special case. So it's a bit like the risk to the single market. In theory it creates a challenging precedent and from a purely formalist, rational, legal analysis I can see why you'd resist that but we're already past that point and in practical reality there is nowhere else in the world with this set of circumstances.

All key EU concepts are always fudgey. It is how the EU survives and operates - you can see that in what the Commission have proposed. They have said that there is no need for a renegotiation of the Protocol but have proposed to disapply EU law for various imports, to set up "express lanes"/"green lanes", from their briefing "vastly simplified customs rules". All of that is possible, according to the Commission, without changing a single word of the Protocol - on the other hand you could also have the full body of EU law applying across the Irish sea as a full international border, without changing a single word of the Protocol. So the fudge is inherent in the Protocol if it contains those options and they are both implementing it.

It's why I've always pushed back against the idea that you just "implement" EU law because - as a lawyer who works with EU law it tends to be incredibly vague and trying to interpret what it actually means in practice is most of the work. It may be that in product regulation or chemical regulation it's super-clear, but in everything I've worked on the interpretation is key. We can see this from the Commission it is vague enough to include both a very limited border (which the Commission describes as "unprecedented") and a full-on border within the same text.

As I say - given Micheal Martin's comments, Doug Beattie's comments, the tone from the government here and Sefcovic's comments - my instinct is that everyone already knows the solution, it's already been proposed and discussed. The challenge now will be to work out the practicalities and to choreograph it in such a way that enough unionists are likely to get on board. I could be totally wrong, but my view is the solution's there and everyone knows it and the rest is noise.

Having said that, the fundamentals of the Good Friday Agreement was basically agreed at Sunningdale in 1973 and everyone knew what it would like like but the parties couldn't agree to it, there was a massive unionist general strike and rioting - it then took 25 years of violence to get back to that point. As John Hume put it the Good Friday Agreement was "Sunningdale for slow learners" so there is precedent in Northern Ireland for everyone knowing the shape of a deal but not being able to agree it

But that special NI status was the UK's choice. We signed the bloody treaty.

A treaty is negotiated between two parties who both sign it. Both sides agreed NI was special - both sides need to work out what that means in practice. The bit that I think was missing from that was actually involving/getting buy in from the parties in Northern Ireland especially because of how it interacts with the GFA and that's what needs to happen now.

Edit: And again both sides are acknowledging there are issues - it's just their mechanism for solving it are different. The EU approach it by changing European law so it doesn't apply to the Protocol; the UK approach is to change the Protocol so it makes clear that the relevant EU law doesn't apply to it. Again if you strip away the noise and the briefings (a bit like all the "no deal" stuff) the outline of what this  will look like in the end is there. It's just how to get there practically - and whether there's a need to choreograph it in a way to give the unionists a "win".