Friday, 29 March 2019

They know nothing



"I was absolutely disgusted today to see a Conservative Councillor with several decades of experience tell a theatre full of children aged between 10 and 18 that we have no say over EU laws!" reported a Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate last month. She went on, "Ironically, he was sitting next to an MEP! What exactly does he think MEPs do?!?".

Of course MEPs can amend EU laws, as they were asked to do by many constituents in the case of the Copyright Directive which was finally passed this week. MEPs can also block proposals, though in both cases international cooperation is required, since no country has enough MEPs to achieve these results alone.

Unsurprisingly, the Copyright Directive has drawn much comment, including a characteristically late protest from Boris Johnson, who was UK foreign secretary while it was being debated, but can't be expected to remember that "The UK Government and British publishing/IP-intensive industries drove most of this", as the Institute of Directors' trade and Europe expert Allie Renison tells us.

And the forum for "driving" this process? It's the EU Council and the appropriate councils of ministers. That's British MEPs and ministers "having a say over EU laws". Ms Renison's further tweets in the thread give a flavour of how these things are done. She also seeks to establish (as I would like to) that explaining how something happens doesn't constitute an endorsement of that thing.

****

I came across the tweet which opens this post while looking for a video from yesterday. It featured Richard Ashworth, one of the MEPs representing the South East region of England.





"For over 25 years now, no British prime minister ever explained to the British people what Europe did, what were the benefits, and why it matters. They never defended against the untruths which were spoken and they never took ownership of the decisions that they took in council. And because of that the British press ran a 20-year campaign based on populist mistruths, lies and deceit. And the consequence of that, we see today, in Britain, is a sad nation, divided like never before, and a House of Commons in crisis.

 "So let Brexit stand as a cautionary tale to the people of Europe. To the people of Europe I say this: You are the generation who have lived through the longest period of peace and the greatest level of prosperity ever. Never take it for granted. Value it. Fight for it, defend it every day."


Fine words, and an indictment of British governments of various flavours. The media too come in for criticism, as illustrated by yet another tweet, from a man who can boast long service at the World Trade Organisation.





A particularly depressing aspect of this, apart from the main point that we so seldom see the EU Parliament on our TV screens except as backdrop to a Farageian pantomime, is yet another harking back to war. This time it's the Treaty of Versailles, from which Brexit Party... member Farage plucks the German "reparations bill" as a supposed equivalent of the financial settlement included in the Withdrawal Agreement.

That's dishonest - did war reparations cover the pensions of German politicians who had contributed to the disaster? - but we're used to that.

****

Trying to work this all out sometimes makes my offerings look like attempts to make Brexit work, for which I apologise.

The withdrawal agreement could be the only thing we really have to talk about, since it's a draft treaty with the EU and therefore a long term international commitment. It comes with a non-binding political declaration, and the agreement must be implemented by an Act of Parliament, the draft of which nobody but its drafters have seen.

"Comes with" is suddenly significant, as can be seen below from the process adopted for today (while this post was being written). Concerned lawyers point out that the two papers are not as separate as May might like us all (Labour MPs particularly) to think.

The act must go through all the stages of a new bill, through Commons and Lords, and the other two documents must be approved by the Commons and debated in the Lords before ratification can follow. That's British law. 

The EU Parliament must also approve the two documents, which then pass to the EU Council - meeting as 27 - for approval and ratification. That's EU law.

It seems Theresa May intends to bring the withdrawal agreement alone to the Commons today, in the hope of winning majority support for it, before moving on to the political declaration in some unspecified way.

There's logic to that, since approval of the withdrawal agreement is the trigger for extension of the Article 50 period to 22 May, which May needs if she's going to get all the necessary laws through (though she somehow never told us that in her many strident repetitions of "We are leaving on 29 March") and, perhaps more important, to achieve Brexit with a deal (sorry, I nearly typed "plan") and make further extension look wrong because it would involve elections to the EU Parliament.

The motion to agree that the Commons should sit on a Friday (and, as somebody said, "We’ve known for 2 years that tomorrow was due to be the leaving date, but it was never made a day Parliament would sit. Really?") was passed yesterday with much anger, some perhaps confected but some very real.

What is "business" thinking? Yesterday morning we heard from Alistair Campbell, who's currently devoting his considerable (but possibly tainted) energies to the Peoples Vote campaign. His view is that business people "want it stopped". I know the owners of two small businesses, who I'm not going to drag in here, and who would constitute an inadequate sample to base any argument on, so I'll turn to the representative bodies.

The recent joint CBI-TUC letter said:
  1. avoiding no deal is paramount
  2. securing an extension has become essential
  3. 'the current deal or no deal' must not be the only choice; something that better protects workers, the economy and an open Irish border, commands a parliamentary majority, and is negotiable with the EU
Adam Marshall of the British Chambers of Commerce demands answers and decisions. Might I suggest certainty?

I've seen and heard so many of these statements, it seems No Deal is the demon to be avoided in just about all cases and, whatever individual business owners and managers think and have thought about Brexit itself ("bring it on" versus "just stop it") we've got this far and they don't want to be "political", so the answer has to be "May's deal" not "No deal" - just get it done. The stories about non-disclosure agreements and companies being shunned if they aren't sufficiently gung-ho will come out properly or die away over time.

****

The unifying theme of all this is ignorance. Mr Ashworth described it in his speech, and Adam Afriyie MP demonstrated it on Wednesday night on his dismissive little tweet: "why MPs won’t just leave with a WTO transition beggars belief" which drew a quick response from a passing professor of EU, Human Rights and World Trade Law: "There's no such thing as a 'WTO transition'. It beggars belief that an MP thinks such a thing exists". I don't see Mr Afriyie in BBC Parliament coverage very often. It must be his hard work as "Prime Minister's Trade Envoy to Ghana and Guinea". Or the business interests and independent wealth which enabled him on election to proclaim he would take no expenses.

So many MPs seem to be surprised or even shocked that the prime minister has presented a deal which doesn't tell us what our future relationship with the EU will be. And they seem to have maintained that surprise for months, since the withdrawal agreement was finalised in mid November last year and the Commons was supposed to be ready to vote on it on 11 December, before May ran scared from her first "meaningful vote".

There are many reasons for the absence of a trade deal (expectantly referred to hundreds of times during 2018 by MPs brought in as expert commentators and almost never queried by their media interrogators) from the package which has finally been submitted to the Commons for approval.

The biggest and simplest reason is that there was never going to be a trade deal. The EU's negotiating guidelines, agreed in April 2017, didn't allow for one. They did anticipate "Preliminary and preparatory discussions on a framework for the Union - United Kingdom future relationship" (section IV) but "it was made absolutely clear", as the saying goes, that there would be no negotiation, not just no agreement, on trade and other future UK-EU relationships before what came to be known as "exit day".

Brexit secretary David Davis huffed and puffed and argued that this was unreasonable, not least because the resolution of the Northern Ireland-Ireland border questions should be handled in the context of the future trading arrangements, and promised the "row of the summer" on the issue. There was some merit in this argument, and a strong, stable, confident government which had not just needlessly thrown away its majority might have stuck to its guns.

May, Davis & co capitulated. In plain sight. I could see it, fellow tweeters could see it, the dogs in the street could see it, but some MPs seem to have taken two years to cotton on.

Much of the ignorance is fed cynically by campaigns. Look at the recent scare about "Lisbon 2020", or was it "Lisbon 2022"? Apparently, there are secret parts of the Lisbon Treaty which will remove every country's vetoes, force us all into the euro and the Schengen area despite treaty opt-outs and many other evil things. As Professor Steve Peers points out in his take-down, the weaknesses of the case are obvious as soon as you realise that there are no links to EU documents, "secret" or otherwise.

MPs and MEPs have joined in this viral chain of misinformation. They might be knaves or fools but, as in the case of Esther McVey MP, they do nothing to correct what they have broadcast even when their mistake is demonstrated. The offending tweet might be deleted from the public record eventually, when the damage is done, leaving the smell of knavery all around. And that's the point.

There are many other examples, but one huge but non-existent conspiracy, coupled with one councillor's misapprehension of the workings of the EU should serve to demonstrate the scale of the problem. How can this be happening?

As Richard Ashworth tells us, for 25 years no British government has thought to explain what goes on in the EU, or what it's for. Apart from the now long gone 30-minute slot in Friday's Daily Politics we rarely see British MEPs except those from UKIP (and the rather large number who have fallen out with UKIP but held on to the job). To quote myself: "Funny isn't it, MEPs who do the job we pay them for and actually know something about what the EU is and how it works don't seem to appear in the Westminster bubble media. Unless they're from another EU country and are talking about Brexit of course".

That little thread goes on to refer to work by the Labour leader in the EU Parliament on the "Common Market 2.0" proposal - EFTA/EEA membership plus a customs union with the EU, which was considered in the Commons "indicative votes" process on Wednesday. This kind of input would be useful when considering the proposals on TV or radio but I look and listen in vain.

Instead we hear Lucy Powell MP telling us that this is an "off the shelf" solution and Stephen Kinnock, Nick Boles, Robert Halfon and others proclaiming its simplicity. Unfortunately this "off the shelf" solution doesn't exist. No EFTA/EEA member is in a customs union with the EU. Channel 4 News has found a useful contributor to the debate - Heidi Nordby Lunde, president of Norway's European Movement, is not sure that we in the UK really want (or know) what we would be signing up to, and that our prospective EEA partners might well doubt, after the chaos of the Brexit negotiations, that letting such an "abusive partner" into the house would be a good idea.

  

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Thursday, 14 February 2019

No Deal Means No Brexit


We must keep No Deal on the table, they tell us, or the EU won't take us seriously. If you've ever negotiated anything, they tell us, you have to retain the option to walk away or they'll just wait until you're desperate enough to take whatever crap old deal they want to offer.

Graham Brady, the failed Prince Andrew impersonator who rises to stardom every few years because he claims he has a safe in which he keeps Tory MPs' poison pen letters to their leader, is the most recent purveyor of the secondhand car argument.

"It's like walking away from buying a secondhand car," he argued three weeks ago when he managed a bonus few hours in the limelight by tabling the vacuous "Brady amendment" that was then put together with the ramshackle "Malthouse compromise" to produce something that made lots of Tory MPs ask themselves "Is that really what I voted for?"

****

If you go in ready to buy a car, and you decide the one which looked so attractive through the window is actually not what you wanted, you politely say "No thanks" and you walk away. And what have you lost? Nothing. You go home in the clapped out old banger you arrived in, and go back to surveying the sales sites.

That's not where we are though. That's not what we're doing.  We're in a process where we lose the car we turned up in when the dealer shuts up shop at 6pm, whatever we decide. So if we don't go for anything in the showroom, we're walking home.

There's also the slight problem that the other side considers that the haggling is over. And they think that... because you've agreed a deal with them, and you've shaken hands with the other 27, and you've told them it's great, and you've taken it home where your cabinet has also approved it.

Then you have to face the world again when the Parliament which also has to vote for it, the Parliament you haven't bothered, haven't dared, to keep involved, just tells you to piss off.

****

There is an option which allows you to walk away and lose nothing, drive home happily in the old banger and tell the kids that something better will turn up next week.

It's called revocation.





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Saturday, 9 February 2019

48 days to go - do we want to be alone?


"We'll have up to 40 [free trade agreements] ready for one second after midnight in March 2019," was Laim Fox's pledge to the Conservative party conference in October 2017. So it must be true. Even if he didn't specify that he meant 29 March. And 23:00, since May & co have even capitulated on the time zone - Brexit happens to Brussels time.

But now the Financial Times tells us "UK government has told businesses it cannot guarantee the British economy will be covered by 'most' of the EU’s global network of trade agreements immediately after Brexit - even if parliament approves Theresa May’s divorce deal with Brussels".

The Withdrawal Agreement May has agreed with the 27 other member states includes an undertaking by the EU (in a footnote on page 203) that it will ask its (currently our) trading partners to continue to act as if (= pretend) we are still a member state and therefore covered by all these agreements during the transition period.

I await Fox's statement of which countries will go along with this, and some of those at the briefing reported by the FT say the same. One of them observed "I am particularly worried about small businesses, who may not even know that their trading depends on some of these agreements".

Occident

We're used to Trump's "trade doctrine" that any new trade must reduce the U.S. trade deficit, strengthen manufacturing and boost growth, and we know on some measures the UK has a trade surplus with the US.

Tread carefully.

Before Trump was even inaugurated, his incoming Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was telling Cyprus (where he'd served as vice-Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus and with which he has some interesting Russian links) to exploit the "God-given opportunity" to steal business from the UK.

The doctrine was expressed in the run-up to renegotiating a NAFTA trade agreement that "triggers renegotiation whenever the US develops a trade deficit with Canada" but not, perhaps, vice versa.

Talking about UK trade, the threat of chlorinated chicken has become a joke, but US lobbyists want rather more than that from any trade deal with the UK. To take a handful of demands from the 30 which Huffington Post listed:

  • Scrap the safety-first approach to food quality and standards
  • Stop people knowing what they're eating is genetically modified
  • Change how the NHS buys drugs
  • Ensure Brits' data can be transferred to foreign countries
  • Allow foreign businesses to sue the British state
  • Legalise dangerous pesticides

Davis and Paterson's expenses, and who paid them

You have to ask what contribution David Davis MP, Owen Paterson MP and Shanker Singham (of Legatum, the Institute of Economic Affairs, then... who knows, as the Charity Commission catches up with him) made to the same case.

But those aren't the only demands coming from the US. Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney was in Washington on Wednesday and received strong backing from "US politicians with affiliations to Ireland" who "wield great influence over US trade policy".

"Peter King, a Republican representative from New York, said it was 'important' that the current unmanned 'soft' border on the island of Ireland be maintained 'if the British want to consider any kind of trade agreement with the United States'." And "Brendan Boyle, a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania on the House ways and means committee, said it was 'hard' to get trade agreements through Congress. He added: 'Trust is important, and if you are about to enter a trade negotiation and you’ve gone back on the backstop and you’ve gone back on the Good Friday Agreement, then that will certainly be remembered'". Ireland has friends on both sides of the Atlantic. Do we still...?

Orient

The EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement entered into force on 1 February, building the largest open trade zone in the world, with 635 million people and getting on for a third of the world’s GDP. Apart from trade provisions the agreement sets ambitious standards on sustainable development and includes a specific commitment to the Paris climate agreement.

"Under the pact, Japan will remove tariffs on 94 per cent of all imports from the EU, including 82 per cent of farm and fishery products. For example, the deal scraps Japanese tariffs on gouda and cheddar cheese - which are close to 30 per cent - as well as on wine, which faces duties of 15 per cent on average. Beef and pork exports are also likely to rise. For its part, the EU will eliminate tariffs on 99 per cent of imports from Japan. It will abolish tariffs on Japanese cars and trucks in the eighth year and televisions in the sixth year following the pact's implementation."

The UK is part of this agreement until 23:00 on 29 March 2019. Nobody yet knows what happens after that, but some of the options are:

  • If the Article 50 period is extended, for whatever reason and for whatever period, we remain a member of the EU and a beneficiary of this arrangement during that period.
  • If some version of the current withdrawal agreement is ratified, we enter a transition period and EU trading partners will be asked to treat us as if we are still a full member (see above). According to Faisal Islam's Google translation of a letter from Japanese customs, they assume that everything will stay the same if there is a transition period.
  • From the same letter, if there's no deal, and therefore no transition period, the UK and Japan will deal with each other on WTO Most Favoured Nation terms - the tariffs we used before 1 February 2019. We will have been parties to a preferential trading agreement for less than two months.
  • If the Article 50 notification is revoked, we will continue as a member state of the EU, all this will have been a bad dream, except that people will look at us strangely when leaders meet, and we will not be thought of as the same steadfast, sensible pillar of the world order that we'd like to think we are.
For the future, transition period or not, we will have to do our own deals, and the FT tells us "Tokyo is confident that it can secure better terms from the UK than it did in negotiations with the much larger EU, and is not willing to duplicate the existing treaty precisely in either a bilateral deal or in talks for the UK to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership group". Who's surprised?

Shopping in Myeong-Dong, Seoul.
Photo: Uwe Schwarzbach via a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence
We have a trade agreement with South Korea as well, at the moment. Jim Pickard of the FT tells us "business sources tell me South Korea is also hoping to use its leverage to extract concessions from the UK over a new trade deal: for example only letting UK count EU industrial parts in "rules of origin" calculations if Seoul can count Chinese parts". Again, who's surprised?

Nobody who keeps up with the LSE blog on Brexit will be surprised. In a post entitled "Can ‘Global Britain’ forge a better trade deal with South Korea? This is why it’s unlikely" we see (I resisted the temptation to include lots of lovely data and analysis):

  1. The UK outside the EU will be a ‘second tier’ player when it comes to negotiating free trade agreements, considerably weaker than the ‘big three’, of the US, the EU, and China;
  2. It will be easier for the UK to sign trade deals with the 53 countries with which the UK already has free trade agreements, via its current EU membership;
  3. One of the countries high on this list will be South Korea, which has a very comprehensive FTA with the EU, covering services and non-tariff barriers, which has already reaped important benefits to both the UK and South Korea;
  4. But, South Korea will be reluctant to replicate the terms of the EU-South Korea FTA for the UK, because it would expect a better deal with the UK than it managed to negotiate with the EU (because the EU has an economy 10 times larger than South Korea, whereas the UK economy is only twice the size of South Korea);
  5. If the UK fails to reach an agreement with South Korea, this would lead to the re-imposition of tariffs on UK-South Korea trade, and would jeopardise the significant services trade that has developed between these two economies; and
  6. Even if South Korea and the UK could agree to replicate the terms of the EU-South Korea agreement, the “rules of origin” in the deal could mean tariffs on many manufactured goods from the UK (such as cars) as a result of the large content of parts from elsewhere in the EU, which would count as made in a “third country” once the UK has left the EU.

And finally

"It’s wonderful to see Liam get his own platform in the digital world,” an aide to the business guru Fox told LCD Views, “and here I was thinking he wasn’t even up to the job of being a shoehorn for someone putting on flip flops. Shows what I know!”

Laim Fox has found his true level as a frequent flyer feature writer for TripAdvisor, we are informed by LCD Views.


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Sunday, 3 February 2019

Alternative alternative arrangements

The withdrawal method

This morning on the Marr Show Sajid Javid called the Commons vote on the Brady amendment "an acceptance of [May's] deal subject to a change, alternative arrangements¹ for the backstop". The plan is to "try and find an alternative arrangement². And Steve Barclay, the Brexit Secretary will be leading on that".

This is a reasonable reading of Graham Brady's vacuous amendment (see Tuesday's Commons Order Paper, top of page 21). In interviews after the vote, Brady suggested "there could be a binding addendum to the withdrawal agreement which puts a time limit on the backstop. This could either stipulate it will end by a certain fixed date, or that it could last for no more than a certain period of time" and possibly "a provision that allows for either side to withdraw from the backstop under certain conditions as a means of breaking the Brexit impasse".

And back to Javid: "The Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, will be leading on another very important strand of work, which is to see if it’s not an alternative arrangement³ can there be a hard time limit to any backstop, or a proper exit mechanism".

So the Attorney General's job is to look for a time limit to, or an exit clause from, the backstop if the Brexit Secretary fails to find... an alternative arrangement which might be a time limit to, or an exit clause from, the backstop. My waffle meter is twitching.

Javid wasn't done. He then told us "in terms of an alternative arrangement⁴, it can be done. In my own department I’ve got Border Force. And I asked Border Force months ago to advise me, to look at what alternative arrangements⁵ are possible, and they’ve shown me quite clearly you can have no hard border on the island of Ireland and you can use existing technology. It’s perfectly possible. The only thing that’s missing is a bit of goodwill on the EU side".

Leaving aside the poundshop mafia threat in "all we need is a bit of good will", what's he saying here? These alternative arrangements¹²³⁴⁵ really aren't the same thing.

Border Force is "a law enforcement command within the Home Office [which] secure[s] the UK border by carrying out immigration and customs controls for people and goods entering the UK". And they told Javid months ago that this was a non-issue. Apparently.

Has he only just realised the significance of what they told him? Has he not passed the good tidings on to his boss? Because other people have, including various members of the European Research Group and their favourite customs expert Hans Maessen, Brexit adviser at SGS Government and Institutions Services.

I don't discount Mr Maessen's experience, but he has failed to convince the prime minister so far, or indeed Michel Barnier, both of whom you would assume to have the best institutional advice at their beck and call.

But never mind, at PMQs the day after the Brady vote May covered all the bases. She told Jeremy Corbyn she had heard "proposals such as a unilateral exit mechanism or a time limit to the backstop", and "the political declaration already refers to alternative arrangements and raises a number of proposals that can be addressed, such as mutual recognition of trusted trader schemes". She's considering all the alternative alternative arrangements.

The legally binding withdrawal agreement (Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, page 303) refers back to "the Joint Report from the negotiators of the European Union and the United Kingdom Government on progress during phase 1 of negotiations" from December 2017, which "outlines three different scenarios for protecting North-South cooperation and avoiding a hard border," and states "this Protocol is based on the third scenario of maintaining full alignment with those rules of the Union's 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, to apply unless and until an alternative arrangement implementing another scenario is agreed". That's the backstop, to apply unless and until something better comes along to do the same job.

The non-binding political declaration (Articles 26 and 27) talks of "making use of all available facilitative arrangements and technologies... to consider mutual recognition of trusted traders’ programmes, administrative cooperation in customs matters and mutual assistance, including for the recovery of claims related to taxes and duties, and through the exchange of information to combat customs fraud and other illegal activity... Such facilitative arrangements and technologies will also be considered in developing any alternative arrangements for ensuring the absence of a hard border on the island of Ireland on a permanent footing".

Letting the clock do the work

Not exactly definite is it? Another government could do pretty much what it liked with the political declaration, but it's that "unless and until" in the withdrawal agreement that Brady has to deal with.

May, Javid & co are telling us nothing. We know they don't think we deserve to know anything, but could it actually be because they have nothing to say?


Meanwhile...

I'm reminded by BBC Brexitcast that Craigavon-based Almac, Northern Ireland's biggest pharmaceutical company, has opened a new factory south of the border. Most of the company's business is with the Republic, and there's a risk that products will have to be certified twice, for sale in the EU and outside. The development has been "supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through Ireland’s inward investment promotion agency IDA Ireland" and "will be utilised by Almac Pharma Services and Almac Clinical Services, both of which are already registered to operate in the Republic".

And the Border Delivery Group, led by HMRC, has cancelled a briefing meeting with NI business for a third time, because they have been given no political direction on No Deal.

And the head of the Northern Ireland civil service (with no more to go on than a two-page memo from Arlene Foster and the late Martin McGuinness) has warned Westminster and Whitehall that "businesses are going to vote with their feet" because nobody knows how the border is going to operate if there's No Deal.

And finally...

Again from Brexitcast, leaders of EU member states are off to Sharm el Sheikh for a get together with African leaders on 24 February, which seems like a good opportunity to have a special EU Council meeting on the side. But May might need two special council meetings...




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Friday, 28 December 2018

Letter to my MP - Understanding of the EU's trading arrangements


I understand that you will have received a letter from Tim Martin of J D Wetherspoon plc and another in reply from Jim Cornelius. I urge you to read them both.

Mr Martin laments that "some MPs, speaking on behalf of major parties on national television, still don't understand the basic mechanics of the EU's customs union". Mr Cornelius responds that "Mr Martin's claims about EU protectionism and tariffs are wide of the mark, and he seems to be given an inordinate amount of time to espouse them on TV without ever being challenged by experts".

Having worked through much of the information referred to by Mr Cornelius over the last three years (though I wouldn't claim his depth of knowledge) I'm convinced that his criticisms are justified. It is also notable that he provides evidence to support his points, while Mr Martin does not.

I agree with Mr Martin that it's a pity so many people still don't understand the workings of the EU's trading arrangements, but on this occasion he is the one who really falls short. Unfortunately, several MPs and MEPs have taken the same position. I hope you are not among them, and that the information provided in this exchange will inform the debate better in future.


For reference (not included in my email):

Letter from Tim Martin
Letter from Jim Cornelius
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Tuesday, 25 December 2018

A sarcophagus over No Deal Brexit?


The "sarcophagus" covering Chernobyl reactor 4
One day in 1986 I had a phone call about the radioactive clouds heading our way from the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. "How can we protect our children?" was the gist of the enquiry, and I had a vested interest too - our first son was born three weeks after the explosions in Chernobyl reactor 4.

What could I say? There was a lot of nasty stuff up there, and how much of it we got and where we got it would depend on the vagaries of weather at various levels of the atmosphere. I told my caller that - going by media reports and the scientific reading and discussion I'd managed to do - stoking up fear and lying awake at night was likely to do more harm than the fallout itself.

I don't feel too guilty about my advice. The plume of radioactive particles was widening and dissipating, and the amount which came down in the UK doesn't seem to have caused massive damage. Some British farmers ended up not being able to put sheep meat from upland areas into the market without testing for contamination (the restrictions were lifted on the last few hundred sheep farmers in 2012), I remember herb crops such as thyme being restricted for a while, and there were calls - which I backed - for the issue of iodine tablets.

Why did the question come my way? Being a recent chair of the local anti-nuclear/CND group draws attention, and I'd done a lot of reading over the few years before. But my formal qualifications were limited to an O-level in physics

****

What brings this memory back on Christmas Day? Jonathan Lis writes for Prospect on the horrors of a No Deal Brexit: "Hard Brexiteers accuse Remainers of stoking up this worry. The reverse is true: I am doing my best to reassure people that it won’t happen. Because it won’t". This time we're not facing the rudimentary forces of nature - radiation and weather - we're up against human-made institutions trying to deal with a human-made problem, and they will manage to stop themselves before the worst happens. I hope he's right, and I think he could be.

Lis is hard on May, and she deserves it. Her plan is to "blackmail" MPs into voting for the withdrawal package by waving the spectre of No Deal in front of them. "May is literally threatening the country with economic and social devastation in order to win a parliamentary vote. It is the most recklessly irresponsible peacetime act of any prime minister in modern history."

 He goes on: "Last week, the car industry released an unprecedented statement asking the government and parliament to take no-deal off the table. The prime minister will not. British employers are openly begging her not to sacrifice them, and she refuses. It doesn’t matter that she is bluffing. Companies have to believe what the government tells them, and many are already preparing to leave. Once they have gone, they will not return. Quite an achievement for the self-proclaimed party of business".

"We can 'take back control' of Britain but not of France" he points out. "Full customs and regulation checks will take place on outbound traffic across the Channel, and that means incoming traffic will grind to a halt. Food and medicine will not arrive. People will die." As a Remainer I'd argue that he's being a bit apocalyptic, and go into the detail, but he tells me that "no-deal is a game to May", and she has approved all these threats.

According to the Guardian, Michael Gove told the Commons environmental audit committee (and I can only say he's playing May's game - note the "will" rather than "would"): "If you have friction and disruption – and we are trying to minimise that – between Dover and Calais, then the ability to get food, particularly perishable items on to the market, will be impeded... That is likely to drive some price increases. It is also the case that some of the alternative routes by which food will reach our shores will add additional costs, for example Spanish produce being rerouted... rather than going through Dover/Calais can increase costs... So I do think there is a real risk in the event of a no deal of price spikes in certain foodstuffs."

 And from the evidence session itself (I wish all committees would publish transcripts as quickly as the best): "We would need to apply for third country status in order to be able to export. I'm convinced for a variety of reasons, including informal contacts with European actors, that we will have third country status, but I wouldn't want for a second to suggest that the granting of third country status means that all concerns disappear, because as this committee knows, it is the case that for all products of animal origin they need to go through a border inspection post and there are no border inspection posts yet at Calais... the existence of additional checks will create frictions and of course it is the case that there will also be tariff barriers that will particularly badly hit livestock farmers and food producers." 

The vote on the withdrawal package was scheduled for 11 December, and pulled when May admitted to herself that she couldn't win it. Now it's promised "in the week of 14 January" after another five days of debate (which needs a new timetable motion to be passed in advance, which in turn means a new Dominic Grieve amendment to try to assert Parliament's authority if everything falls apart) and the FT suggests "Tory officials have expressed growing confidence that Mrs May’s Brexit deal will pass the House of Commons next month, although they see it as an attritional struggle that may involve the bill being defeated on the first and even second attempt".

Some MPs still say No Deal is OK, and a campaign on Twitter in recent months tells me that No Deal is all any Leave voter ever wanted (which is demonstrably untrue, but we'll put that aside for now). Lis's case, and our only hope, is that the withdrawal package hits the buffers and dies in a heap, and that Parliament then takes this thing by the scruff of the neck (mixed metaphor overload!): "Many commentators point out that no-deal is the legal default. They are technically correct. But just imagine we get to say, 20th March, and we are heading for no-deal in nine days’ time. Do we really think that MPs will do nothing? That the cabinet won’t disband? That the government will win a confidence vote? That the EU will kick us over the cliff-edge when neither parliament nor the people want to jump? No-deal may be the default but in reality it is a choice."

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I was talking to my niece's husband this morning. He's a Leaver, and argued that May has come back with such a bad deal because she never believed in it in the first place. She couldn't answer Jeremy Paxman's question "When did you change your mind on the biggest issue of the day?" during last year's election campaign but she does exhibit the enthusiasm of the convert nowadays - must be something to do with her faith giving her confidence she is "doing the right thing".

****

And on the subject of Chernobyl, I was lucky enough in 2016 to get into a screening of Birdsong - Stories from Pripyat (with music - live on the occasion - by No 2 son's friend Robin Richards). It might well be one of those art projects which disappears into somebody's archives, but if it does re-emerge, I recommend it.


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Sunday, 23 December 2018

2018? Don't talk to me about 2018


This year's Christmas card -
printing by raremags.co.uk
Brexit has put my life on hold over the last three years, but it has also enriched it.

For me, Brexit is the wrong thing to do, and it's being done badly. Despite the appalling campaigns, the 2016 vote can't be ignored, and the British establishment - from the most above-it-all civil servant through business and politics to the most poisonous of media outlets - should be forced to face at least some of the motives behind those decisions to vote.

But can Brexit be anything but a distraction from dealing with the respectable reasons people voted to leave the EU? It seems very likely to make it more difficult to do so, though it has forced a lot of those who claim to be in power at least to pretend to be concerned about the issues involved.

I've encountered some amazing people - mostly online because I don't get out much. I've learned a lot - reading treaties and acts of parliament and blog upon blog - and I think I've played a part in passing that information around. And I certainly haven't thanked many of them, but proponents of Brexit are among those who've made me think, educated me, and changed my position.

Just not as much as most of them would like.

So Merry Christmas to fellow travellers and sparring partners alike. Just about none of us likes where we are today, but most of us are still going to be here at the end of next year, so we do have some common interests.

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It's an interim ID card - I'm still working on
a picture which finds my good side.
One of the bright sparks of this year has been the work of the fine people at Able Archer, who are docu-satirising the Brexit negotiations. Yesterday I received an unexpected package which turned out to be a goody bag from their crowdfunding exercise. And now I feel like an insider.

The story so far is here and I look forward to the next three episodes as the drama unfolds.

(@teamablearcher on Twitter, "Able Archer - Negotiations, Brexit Satire." on Facebook)






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Friday, 7 December 2018

Labour cake is the best cake


In December 2015, when Daniel Hannan came out with yet another of his smooth but ridiculous  Brexit prescriptions, the only thing to say was, "all we want is the good bits and none of the bad bits". Over the months that became the referendum campaign that formula came out again and again, in a variety of contexts and with various names attached, but the message was the same - we can get everything we want, and we won't have to give anything back.

In early 2017 David Davis, by now DExEU secretary, told us his Brexit would "deliver the exact same benefits as we have" now, and everybody laughed. But Labour decided it was too good a slogan to waste, and stuck it in their collection of six tests. So now we had a Brexit on the opposition side, completely devoid of detail but at least as good as what we have now as an EU member state. After all, there were five other tests. We start with exactly the same. The others must add to that, mustn't they?

****

Philip Hammond was rather rude about Labour's tests on Thursday. "Labour calls for a Brexit that delivers the 'exact same benefits' as we currently have. That is called remaining in the European Union and it means being in the single market as well as the customs union, and last time I checked that was not Labour policy. A customs union alone would not deliver those 'exact same benefits'. It would not maintain supply chains, remove regulatory checks and non-tariff barriers, or deliver frictionless borders. So Labour’s policy fails its own test."

****

But Corbyn wasn't listening. His Brexit, would bring a "new, comprehensive customs union with the EU, with a British say in future trade deals". The UK would move from being one voice in 28 in a customs union to one voice in two. It would "remove the threat of different parts of the UK being subject to separate regulations" at least as far as customs arrangements go, and "deal with the large majority of problems the backstop is designed to solve". Perhaps it would, perhaps it could, perhaps it might, but Michel Barnier doesn't have the competence to negotiate a permanent, full-featured customs union under Article 50. The temporary, bare-bones affair in the proposed withdrawal agreement was enough of an undesirable stretch.

On top of that would come "a new and strong relationship with the single market that gives us frictionless trade" - why didn't anybody else think of that? - "while setting migration policies to meet the needs of the economy". With a wave of a socialist wand (and a Tory immigration policy) the indivisible four freedoms are divided, and just two adjectives from the Tory motivation bag - "new and strong" - are enough to do the job. There's no need for sordid details like How?

We're told that Labour people find a much better reception in Brussels (perhaps because their hosts only have to be polite when there's no actual negotiation to be done) but we're never told that any of this stuff is acceptable to anybody. And again, it's not something for Article 50.

The bag of rainbow drops is bottomless - "existing EU rights at work, environmental standards and consumer protections will become a benchmark to build on" because after all, "these rights and protections, whether on chlorinated chicken or paid holidays, are what people actually want". This is all for the UK government to decide anyway. The only reason any of it might be in a treaty is to prevent us exploiting a close relationship with the EU and still driving standards down to gain competitive advantage.

And it's for now! "It’s a plan that can be negotiated with the EU, even at this late stage, with most of the building blocks already in place". Which building blocks are those then? The features of EU membership, or what May has put together over the last two years? And (it's that wand again) it will "command a majority in parliament and bring the country together".

Once May's package has been voted down, all we need is a general election, but if the swine on the other side won't cooperate "all options must be on the table", including "Labour's alternative and, as our conference decided in September, the option of campaigning for a public vote to break the deadlock". All options, when there's been no election (let alone a Labour victory), and Corbyn's in no position to do anything about any of them.

****

If any of the Labour representatives have broached this "plan" in Brussels I'm sure they've been told that it's all for the future, when Michel Barnier is well out of the way. To have a go at these ideas the UK would first have to leave the EU, preferably with a withdrawal agreement, which might as well be the one they plan to vote down next Tuesday because it would need all the same features. Including a backstop.


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Sunday, 2 December 2018

Letter to my MP - the "meaningful vote" - the reply


Four days ago I wrote to my MP to ask whether she feels sufficiently "fully informed" to register her vote on 11 December for or against the proposed Brexit withdrawal agreement.  I pointed out that the prime minister had promised to provide MPs with "the appropriate analysis on which to be fully informed, on which to base their judgement", but that she had in fact published an economic analysis which presents no information for the framework for a future relationship agreed on 25 November, but does contain modelling of her "Chequers" proposal.

 The reply - as with the previous two I've received - doesn't really address the question as I'd put it, but it does include some of Ms Robinson's own thoughts along with the standard departmental text.

 The letter repeats the now-established formula that "The UK will be able to negotiate, sign and ratify free trade agreements with countries from around the world during the implementation period which will come into force after it has concluded". As I noted yesterday, this seems unlikely in the case of new agreements, since sensible countries would want to know the UK's relationship with the EU before deciding what relationship with the UK is appropriate and possible. At least some of the agreements we currently enjoy as an EU member state could be concluded during transition.

 One striking line is "In my view, both parties must aim to have all agreements and border issues resolved before 2020". It's not obvious that negotiations will get going in earnest before autumn 2019 when the new EU Parliament has approved the appointment of commissioners and the full Commission, so concluding everything even by the end of 2020 (which I hope she means) looks to be quite a stretch.

 Amusingly, the letter ends "This agreement will now be discussed at an EU summit and will be debated by Parliament over the course of the next two weeks". Unless she knows something I don't know about the 13-14 December EU Council meeting, that suggests this text is rather out of date. Oh and, by the way, she intends to vote for the package.

 Here, with the single redaction of my address, is the text of the reply.




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Saturday, 1 December 2018

There is a world beyond Stockport, and a time beyond Monday


Laim Fox - the first time it was a typo; now it's policy
Yesterday morning, Secretary of State for International Trade Laim Fox told an audience at the Port of Bristol: "The IMF has predicted that 90% of global growth in the next 5 years will originate outside the EU".

In February he said: "I often repeat the fact that the IMF estimates that, in the next 10 to 15 years, 90% of global economic growth will originate from outside the European Union".

Fox is not the only one to make some version of this claim or, as you can see, more than one version himself. What are the actual figures, and what do they mean?

A Twitter contact points me to a Q&A session in the EU Parliament.




The record tells us: "The importance of EU market access to third countries is indicated, among others, by the fact that 90% of future growth will come outside the European Union. This figure was calculated based on GDP data from the IMF World Economic Outlook database (April 2015). These calculations were updated to reflect the latest available IMF data (October 2015). As it can be seen in the table attached, the world GDP is expected to reach USD119 trillion in 2016 and USD149 trillion in 2020. The respective forecasts for the EU GDP are USD20 trillion and USD23 trillion. This means that in 2016 11% of the world GDP growth will come from the EU and 89% from non-EU countries, whereas in 2020 90% of the world GDP growth will come from outside the EU."

The table referred to can be seen in the annex to that question. World GDP and EU GDP are both projected to grow from 2016 to 2020, with the EU growing slightly more slowly, so the EU's share of world growth falls from 11% to 10%. 90% of global economic growth in 2020 will therefore originate from outside the European Union, to borrow some of Fox's words. This is not exactly "global growth in the next 5 years" or indeed "the next 10 to 15 years" as seen from 2018. Has Fox just half-understood a striking figure and misused it, or does he have some other source? Would it not just be simpler to say "about 90% of global growth at the moment comes from the world outside the EU"?

What, if anything, do we take from this? If in the future poorer countries grow faster than rich countries that's neither unexpected nor undesirable, but we don't see anything like that in these aggregate figures. Instead there's a slight shift in activity from the 7% of the world population of which the UK is currently a part to the other 93%. British companies currently buy from and sell to companies and people in the EU and the rest of the world and, at the aggregate level, Brexit doesn't change that. The odd new trade deal might make some of that trade easier and more profitable. The loss - more or less temporary - of agreements we currently have but lose at Brexit will make it harder and less profitable.

A tweet from Fox's verified account comes to mind. I still have no idea what he's trying to prove with this presentation. It shows, for example, that the UK trades successfully outside the EU and that the share of exports to the EU has risen slightly in recent months.




Yesterday again, BBC Newsnight broadcast an item on Fox's favourite topic, new trade deals. Technology editor David Grossman spoke to a businessman: "At Mould Master in Bristol they make plastic components to ship all over the world. You won't find anyone keener than CEO Martin Betty to find new markets but, he says, it would be foolish to turn away from existing customers".

Mr Betty put it simply: "We have three priorities. Number one priority is to hang on to what we've got, number two priority is, sell more to our existing client base, and number three is to find new markets. But it has to be in that ratio and it has to be at that level, because right now there is a lot of pressure on all British suppliers selling to Europe and we need to maintain our European clients because they are vitally important to our overall volume and our overall business".

 This message was reinforced a couple of minutes later by David Henig, who spent nine years as a senior official in Fox's Department of International Trade and its predecessors. "It's going to be years before we know what we can do, tradewise," he said. "All our partners are going to be saying to us, 'what's your relationship with the EU'? We don't know. This deal... is the blind Brexit that people warned us about."

The yellow brick road to new trade agreements with China, the USA and the rest might make Laim Fox's eyes light up, but it's also his job at the moment to prepare all the agreements we currently benefit from for renegotiation after the Brexit transition period during which our trading partners will be asked to pretend that we are still an EU member state. The occasional progress report on this might be reassuring.

Those carefully honed words from yesterday's speech "there is a world beyond Europe, and a time Beyond Brexit" are vacuous and self-evident. There's actual work to do.
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Wednesday, 28 November 2018

Letter to my MP _ the "meaningful vote"


In January this year Mrs May told journalists "When the time comes for Parliament to vote on the final deal, we will ensure that Parliament has the appropriate analysis on which to be fully informed, on which to base their judgement."

Today the Prime Minister has published "EU Exit - Long-term economic analysis" in preparation for the coming debate and decision on the withdrawal agreement and political declaration she agreed at the EU Council on Sunday.

You will be asked to vote in less than two weeks, as required by the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, to accept or reject the two documents agreed at the summit.

Today's analysis doesn't describe a "final deal" though. The political declaration on the future relationship is only a starting point for negotiations which might begin next April, and the analysis doesn't work from what was signed off last Sunday anyway. As we are told on page 4, one of the modelled scenarios is "the policy position set out by the Government in the July 2018 White Paper on 'The future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union'" (commonly known as Chequers).

Do you feel sufficiently "fully informed" to register your vote on 11 December?


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Letter to the Laura Kuenssberg programme - Farage, Musk and "free speech"

Dear Ms Kuenssberg, I hear from BBC TV and Radio News that you will this morning be giving a platform to Nigel Farage to defend attacks on t...