Labour devoted the day to campaigning on the NHS and other public services, but apparently today was going to be another one based on Brexit and leadership for the Tories. May's afternoon speech in Bath seemed little different from any of the other versions of "that speech" I've subjected myself to, but the main media topic was sparked by Jeremy Corbyn's announcement that he would after all be at the BBC debate in the evening.
A bad deal is worse than no deal?
"Nobody voted for Brexit to make themselves poorer" is a mantra I hear frequently, but it's not exactly true. A survey last December (by YouGov for Open Britain) suggested that some people expect to be worse off, and many Leave voters are prepared to lose significant amounts of money (and, of course, for everyone else to lose money as well).
Asked "What impact do you expect the UK’s departure from the European Union to have on your personal finances, taking account of income, taxes and prices?" Leave and Remain voters at the 2016 referendum replied:
The subset who confirmed that they would vote to Leave when asked again in December 2016 were then asked "What is the maximum amount of money, taking account of income, taxes and prices, you would personally be willing to be worse off by in order for the UK to leave the European Union – or would you not be willing to lose any money at all?" and replied:
More than 300 people in this sample appear to have voted to Leave, not in order to be poorer perhaps but certainly prepared to be poorer.
[Update ( 01/06/17): Of course, you can read these numbers to say that few people who think they know expect to lose very much and around 80% are not prepared to lose more than £20 a month if anything at all, so we'd better make Brexit as close as possible to what we have today. This is the way the commissioners of the study interpreted it.]
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#MrsME suggests the effects of "not getting Brexit right" would be "dire", and all the estimates I've heard recently (including one from Andrew Lilico, a Brexit supporter) are that the economy would shrink after Brexit, but the question of individuals and families actually losing money isn't a live issue in the election.
She makes great play of the idea that "in eleven days" it will be either Strong And Stable™ #MrsME or chaotic Corbyn sitting down at the table across from the bloody foreigners, and at a time when the Labour leader would be desperately trying to pull together a cabinet from his disparate and sniping ragbag of support. In fact it would be the likes of David Davis or Keir Starmer, with a gang of civil servants, taking the Eurostar, and #MrsME would also have recently been engaged in cabinet making.
As I noted yesterday, Jeremy Paxman couldn't persuade #MrsME to say that she's changed her mind on Brexit, or that she actually believes in it now, only that she believes in "making a success of it". And the idea of coming away with no deal at all is everywhere at the moment, which to her could be classed as a success if the alternative was that undefined horror, the "bad deal".
What does "no deal" even mean? To start with, we're looking at at least two deals, one covering withdrawal from the EU (which is what the Article 50 process is actually about) and one or more on trade and other aspects of our future relationship.
The Tories would do their damnedest to negotiate a new trade relationship in parallel with Article 50 (Labour haven't really indicated how they would approach this, but they have rejected the "no deal" option) but I've yet to hear anybody serious suggest that this negotiation (as opposed to the one in their head, which might be fine and dandy but doesn't start with the world and people as they are) could be finalised in two years.
Presumably #MrsME is threatening to walk out of any set of talks at any time, because "you need to have that option in negotiations". But what does walking out actually mean?
Abandoning trade talks would result in everything remaining as it was at the time. If we were still inside the EU at that point we would be working exactly as we do now but we would have decided to move to "WTO terms" at the moment of leaving (let's call it 29 March 2019). And then negotiations would start on what those terms actually would be, to be agreed by all 164 WTO members, including the EU. (That work would have to be done on leaving the EU in any case, to define our relationship with the rest of the world, regardless of ongoing negotiation/transition/implementation work on a UK-EU agreement.)
Add this to the 'we can always fall back on the WTO' file https://t.co/N1tIjn6KB1 pic.twitter.com/Y3eMIXqVNY— Ian Dunt (@IanDunt) May 30, 2017
Walking out of the Article 50 talks would be more inconvenient for the EU, and therefore might be thought to be a more powerful tactic. But we would still be in the EU, we would still be attending EU Council meetings, our MEPs would still be attending Brussels and Strasbourg as often as they do now (eh Mr Farage?). Under Article 50 there are only two ways to leave the EU: with a withdrawal agreement, or without on the passing of 29 March 2019.
(Some will protest that we could just cut ourselves off, stop paying the contributions and repeal the 1972 European Communities Act (and that's what we should have done months ago) but at present the government insists that it will do things according to our legal obligations, as David Davis might say.)
At the point of walking out, unless it was already mid-March 2019, parliament would be in the middle of considering the Great Copy And Paste Bill, fighting to shoehorn 42 years worth of EU legislation into UK law and, I hope, fighting to prevent the executive changing too much without parliamentary scrutiny. It's to be hoped also that we would have begun setting up (staffing, equipping and paying for) all the regulatory bodies which would be needed to duplicate - sorry, replace - all those that do it for the whole EU. Time-critical IT projects across the board anybody?
And, most important, walking out would not result in no deal. It would leave many individual deals undone until the date of exit, which would then cripple the UK economy and society, and any attempt to go back and tackle one or two would now be hindered by acrimony, frozen trade, travel gridlock and financial meltdown:
- with Euratom, to make it possible to transport and process nuclear fuel legally
- over air travel, so that flights between the UK and US could continue; without the EU-US Open Skies agreement they would have no legal basis
- over security and justice arrangements, so that access to EU security databases and arrest warrant cooperation would not be withdrawn
- over customs and tariff arrangements, so that there would be a legal basis on which imports and exports can be made
- over whether banks and services companies could work and sell in the EU
- over whether professional qualifications would still be recognised
- and dozens of other matters
- that expats in the UK and other EU countries would still not know that their residence and rights were protected
- that the status of the border between Ireland and Northern Ireland would still be undefined
As Stephen Bush concludes in the New Statesman:
"Forget Theresa May’s claim that Britain is ready and willing to walk away from “a bad deal” – as it stands, Britain isn’t even ready for what her government thinks a good deal is. We haven’t staffed up to deal with a greater volume of customs checks when we are outside the customs union. We certainly haven’t prepared for capabilities we might lose, like safety inspections. No deal is better than a bad deal? Don’t believe a word of it."
But still, every Tory allowed out in front of a microphone parrots the "everything depends on a good Brexit" slogan. No deal could not be a good Brexit, so maintaining both lines is contradictory and ridiculous. Yet rumours still spread that "no deal" is the preferred option.
1. I've had some information on Brexit from a source close to Number 10. They are well placed and reliable...— J.J. Patrick (@J_amesp) March 7, 2017
Saboteurs department
As Schona Jolly QC concludes this Twitter thread, "May called this election. If she wants a mandate, she must answer the questions."1. Some thoughts on today. May reminds us, w a straight face, Brexit negotiations start on 19/5. Ten days after an election she called.— Schona Jolly QC (@WomaninHavana) May 30, 2017
The view from India via France
An Indian gvt minister was asked recently whether the Brits had shot themselves in the foot with Brexit. His answer : "in both feet" https://t.co/In6jSXCsbW— Sylvie Kauffmann (@SylvieKauffmann) May 30, 2017
Agreements with the EU would only be the beginning. We have the benefit of many deals - large and small - with many countries across the world, and all of them would lapse at Brexit.
The many international treaties and agreements that will need to be renegotiated after Brexit – 759, to be exact https://t.co/36bOwXkzuo pic.twitter.com/JdclUHsJ8j— Financial Times (@FT) May 30, 2017
The BBC debate will be all over the news when this goes out, so I'll restrict myself to Caroline Lucas's comment on leadership: "The first rule of leadership is to turn up".
