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

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

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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, 20^th 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".

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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.

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.

****

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)

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?

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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."

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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.

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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.

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.

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.

See Parliamentary questions in European Parliament

18 March 2016
E-014997/2015(ASW)
Answer given by Mr Moscovici on behalf of the Commission
Question reference: E-014997/2015

— Michael Loftus (@newsfrom2) 1 December 2018

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.

The UK exports more to the rest of the world than the EU, @ONS figures released today confirm.  Total exports outside the EU were £342.8bn in the year to June 2018 #FreeTradeUK pic.twitter.com/4749jX1Kjd

— Dr Liam Fox MP (@LiamFox) September 28, 2018

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.

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?

A lot of people aren't going to like this

Five weeks ago I tried to describe how this Brexit thing could actually happen. It was about right as far as it went, but there's (at least) one point I didn't cover.

When it comes to the new year and whoever's in charge for whatever reason decide they'd really prefer to avoid the total failure that is No Deal, and that they might need more time to...

1. finalise the wording of the withdrawal agreement or (perhaps more likely) the political statement on a future UK-EU relationship
2. pass the Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill through Parliament
3. run a leadership election in the ruling party
4. run a general election
5. run another referendum, either on the merits of "the final deal" (which, for the thousandth time, is the withdrawal agreement, not a trade agreement) or because it's discovered that the original campaign was seriously tainted by illegal activities (Professor Chris Grey considers this quite a logical proposition, and unlikely in the extreme)

... it might be thought necessary to extend the Article 50 period, which, if nothing is done to change it, comes to a screeching halt at midnight, Brussels time, on 29 March 2019.

Firstly, they'd have to be pretty sure that the leaders of the other 27 member states were going to agree to the proposal, since Article 50 requires unanimous agreement. At various times other EU leaders have seemed open to the idea, but that might change as the actual implications become apparent. 

Then, they'd have to change UK law, at least the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018, which defines "exit day" as "29 March 2019 at 11.00 p.m." (UK time being an hour behind Brussels time). The bill was originally designed to allow this date to be left undefined until nearer the time, but May & co were spooked into setting it in stone quite early in its passage through the Commons. After all, nobody was to get the idea that it would be possible, and certainly not easy, to stop the process.

So far, probably, so straightforward (once the parliamentary battles on the decision to extend had been won). The big problem is elections to the EU Parliament, which begin on 23 May 2019. Any proposal to extend the Article 50 process - meaning that the UK would be a member state during the elections - would require us by EU law to hold elections. But the 73 seats currently occupied by British MEPs (some of them also representing Gibraltar) have been allocated to other countries (two to Ireland) and the UK would find that it doesn't have the law to hold such elections, since the relevant act was repealed (unnecessarily early, but that might also have sprung from the spooking of May) by that same EU (Withdrawal) Act.

Open Reason (associated with Nick Clegg) consider how these problems could be addressed, with exotic suggestions such as Observer MEPs, or even simply ignoring the law! Suffice it to say that any such development would maintain our reputation as awkward sods. 

Even some parliamentary Brexiters might find all this a bit upsetting if they'd come round to the idea that the delay was in fact necessary. 

Looking at the numbered list above, we might consider points 1 and 2 fairly straightforward, and quite possibly easy to complete within the period from 29 March to - say - 17 May. 3, 4 and 5, on the other hand, might now look self-indulgent to varying degrees, but might turn out to be more or less necessary as the time approaches.

I write at the end of a week which has featured many headlines, quickly denied by government spokespeople (then probably reinforced by others) telling us that a deal is imminent, so all this might be quite unnecessary (I'd still keep 1 and 2 in mind though). Yet we're now told it's only 50-50 and it's still quite possible that anything that is "brought back from Brussels" will be rejected, leaving No Deal as a real possibility. And then the horrors of 3, 4 and 5 might be back with us.

I suspect we ain't seen nothin' yet, as they say.

It's not just the rock luvvies

When Bob Geldof writes a letter about Brexit the response is predictable - "Project Fear with a Geldof leer". Not everyone will like his phrasing - "We have decided to put ourselves inside a self-built cultural jail!" - or the list of backers - Rita Ora, Damon Albarn, Jarvis Cocker, Simon Rattle, Brian Eno, just a load of luvvies.

Hang on, Simon Rattle? What's he doing in this company? And then you read on and see that Howard Goodall, composer among many other things of the theme for Blackadder and choral work for Classic FM, presenter of Sgt. Peppers Musical Revolution for BBC2, as one of the supporters. Goodall picks up the theme in a long blog post written partly in response to a "courteous" enquiry from Nadine Dorries. He contrasts his experience of working in the US:

In order to rehearse and conduct with the choir and orchestra [in Texas], the commissioning church’s music & arts department were obliged to engage a team of lawyers to work on the visa submission made, initially, to the US Dept of Homeland Security to acquire a ‘petition’ (permission document from the requesting body in the USA). This process is time-consuming and (if the lawyers hadn’t been members of the congregation offering their time pro bono) relatively expensive too.

It took weeks, in fact, since to be classed as an alien of ‘Exceptional Ability’ you can’t just assert you have won awards or had your work performed all over the world, you have to prove all these claims in writing. You can’t assert you have won an EMMY award, for example, you have to show it, either as a scan of its certificate or a photograph of the physical award itself bearing your name. Multiply this process by the 40 years of my career thus far and you can appreciate how the hours mount up.

That’s just the first stage. The second stage in being granted a visa (for one week’s work!) is you making your own application online to the US Embassy, armed with the Petition that you hope you have by now been granted (which in itself is insufficient to allow you to travel and work). This took a few hours of further bureaucracy and the payment of roughly £140 of fees. The third stage is an interview at the Embassy itself, for which one has to allow approximately 3 hours to include a fair amount of queuing.

with the same pursuit within the EU:

I know it is a privilege to be able to work in another country as I do from time to time but my point is this: I conduct my works fairly regularly. If I were to undertake the same rehearsing and conducting job in Berlin, or Rome or Paris I simply get on a plane and go and do it. No administrative costs, no visas, no long delays not knowing whether one can travel. Brexit will deny me, and all professional musicians, this easy access to 27 other countries, countries which in the world of music are significant and busy employers of musicians.

At another end of the music business is Stephen Bass of Moshi Moshi Records, who fears that "any change to travel rules [will have] a dramatic effect on the fortunes of the [bands] I look after and the crew of people involved in live shows... Countries like America make it increasingly difficult to tour, and effectively cut themselves off from being a territory in which Moshi Moshi acts can perform and generate income. To have our near neighbours isolating us in a similar way would be a disaster for us and even worse for bands starting out in their careers".

There's no way of knowing at this stage whether it will be this bad, but doesn't "no way of knowing" sum Brexit up as we hit the three-day countdown to The October EU Council summit?

Page 1 of 20 pages of documents included in
Jim Vallance's blog post
John Lennon's Work Permits 

Don't be daft, come the protests, musicians have always been able to play in Europe - orchestras, soloists, the Beatles in Hamburg...

Nobody said it was impossible. It might even have been easy with the right management, though the story of the Beatles in Hamburg (1960) is instructive: "As [their manager at the time] had not obtained German work permits, they were detained at Harwich for five hours. [The manager] finally convinced the authorities that they were students on holiday, although work permits were later obtained after their arrival in Hamburg".

The point is, you had to make arrangements - work permits (eventually) signed by the appropriate officials (then George Harrison was deported for being under-age). As a citizen of an EU member state today you can travel and play anywhere in our 28-country home area as a right. You have to observe local laws on noise and opening times, but no more than a local in whatever town you're playing in.

Page 10 of 20 pages of documents included in
Jim Vallance's blog post
John Lennon's Work Permits 

I looked through the tweets and blogs of a couple of bands I've been following for years, and there's no mention of permits and visas for a European tour. Will temporary visas be required in future? Do the negotiations for a Brexit withdrawal agreement cover the subject? Assuming a transition period, the question doesn't arise until 2021, but will it be agreed at EU level, or will 27 sets of national rules apply? How ready will a British orchestra or an up-and-coming folk rock band be to tour if they need complex and expensive documentation - a carnet - "to avoid paying import duties and taxes on their instruments", potentially at each border they cross?

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What's the position for musicians visiting this country? The immigration system being discussed by government at the moment speaks of five year visas for "skilled workers" and border checks for visitors, but I've seen nothing on short-term work visas which might be suitable for musicians. There's talk of six-month work permits for agricultural workers, and every industry is queuing up to argue, essentially, that nothing should change, but there's nothing for that band from Antwerp you've heard online and want to book for your three day festival in one of the Manchester Northern Quarter's many cellars.

Since government has only just started thinking about post-Brexit immigration policy (despite it being an obsession, for May especially, since 2010 and before), let's look at the principle that they're telling us will apply: in future, British immigration policy should be non-discriminatory, treating people the same wherever they come from, rather than giving special treatment to EU citizens from elsewhere in our huge home area. How do we treat musicians coming to this county from non-EU countries today?

The Womad festival provides an example. Three of this year's acts were unable to appear, or arrived the day after their scheduled performance. The festival's co-founder Peter Gabriel told the Guardian: "It is alarming that our UK festival would now have real problems bringing artists into this country … [many of whom] no longer want to come to the UK because of the difficulty, cost and delays with visas, along with the new fear that they will not be welcomed."

A story told in Private Eye 1474 in July goes into detail and illustrates what could happen - a good version and a bad version:

When musicians from non-EU countries come to play in the UK, they can do so without a visa (£245 per person "standard" and another £400 "fast-track" - absurdly expensive for a touring orchestra) if they have a "certificate of sponsorship" from a promoter or an invitation from a "permit-free" outfit like the Barbican, the Edinburgh Festival or Glyndebourne. And so it's been for years.

However, two non-EU citizens travelling, they thought, legitimately without visas recently tried to enter the UK via Ireland. They were stopped, jailed overnight and sent home. The reason? The Home Office has, without warning, unearthed an obscure control order from 1972, the time of the Troubles, which says visa-waiver provisions don't apply if you're entering the UK via Ireland.

Many musicians - especially from the US, Canada and Australia - do come into the UK via Ireland, either in transit or stopping off to perform in Dublin. There has never, until now, been any suggestion they needed visas. This sudden, unannounced change of policy so surprised Steve Richard, an immigration expert who advises musicians, he went to the Home Office to ask was was going on.

"So far as I'm aware," he says, "this control order has never been enforced: for 46 years it's been dormant, buried in obscurity and forgotten. Resurrecting it is bizarre." All he was told was that 46 years of non-enforcement were neither here nor there: it was the law, and henceforth it would be applied.

"They did admit it had to do with UK/Irish border issues being thrown into what they called 'sharper focus'," says Richard, "and they insisted that the control order was a matter of record for anyone to consult. But you'd have to be clairvoyant to know it existed. And this is going to affect not only musicians but sportsmen too."

So, if the policy for short term working stays for musicians and others is to be "non-discriminatory", what kind of thinking will prevail? Will it be the supported visa-free system for everybody, or the "visas please or jail" version that seems suddenly to be the thing if you come in the wrong way? What rules does "Global Britain" propose - level up, and open ourselves to the culture of the world, or level down, and cut ourselves off in the name of "taking back control"? And when will UK negotiators get round to looking at this question for our own touring musicians?

****

Musicians, sportspeople.. who else will be affected by the choices government makes? A dozen authors couldn't attend this year’s Edinburgh international book festival after their visas were refused by the “humiliating” application process. Festival director Nick Barley fears it will deter artists from visiting the UK. "We’ve had to draw on the help of MPs, MSPs, ambassadors and senior people in the British Council and Home Office to overturn visa decisions that looked set to be rejected," Barley said. "We’ve had so many problems with visas, we’ve realised it is systematic... We want to talk about it and resolve it, not just for [this festival], but for cultural organisations UK-wide."

Three museum professionals from Egypt had their visa applications refused in August, preventing them from attending an Egyptology conference in Swansea; several scholars were denied visas to attend the Global Symposium on Health Systems Research in Liverpool, and then (not visas this time, just a busy airport)...

The family of Nelson Mandela were stopped at Heathrow Airport security, resulting in them missing their event at Edinburgh International Book Festival.https://t.co/PTfDsKxkhu

— The Scotsman (@TheScotsman) August 13, 2018

Going back to the Geldof letter, we find a quote in response from Jacob Rees-Mogg in the Telegraph of 8 October: "Handel did not need the free movement of people to come to England and compose the Messiah". Which drew various replies of which I'll give just one. Someone who really cares about detail (unlike Rees-Mogg it seems) pointed out that Handel needed his own Act of Parliament to regularise his activities in England.

Letter to my MP - deals and no deals - the reply

Three and a half weeks ago I wrote to my MP to express concern about ministerial statements which attempted to make the withdrawal agreement currently being negotiated - particularly the financial settlement - conditional on a final UK-EU trade deal which is not being negotiated and might in fact never happen.

I quoted David Allen Green, the FT's legal commentator: "The UK is proposing to renege on the payments to the EU it has already agreed in principle. This is dangerous madness. As a post-Brexit UK makes its own way in the world, it is crucial that future partners see UK as trustworthy in its promises" and concluded by saying I believe the government's ambiguous, or even cynical, position is short-sighted and likely to be counter-productive.

I received a reply on Friday. It fails to address my concerns or the statements from ministers. As I said last time I published such a reply, anybody would think she had just read the subject line and asked an assistant to produce a chunk of standard ministry-supplied text.

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

How could this Brexit thing actually happen?

The news sometimes tells us that "we're less than six months away from Brexit", which might still sound like a long time, but there's a lot to be packed into that period. This post attempts to outline the process in the UK, then to fit it in with the way the EU expects to handle it. And finally, what if this finely tuned machine falls apart at some point?

I still think leaving the EU is the wrong thing to do, and that it's being done badly, but hey ho, this is what I think is going on.

It's the law!

The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 has some fiddly rules on how the outcome of Brexit negotiations must be handled (Section 13, pages 14-17 of the PDF version). This part of the bill was fought over for days, between Commons and Lords, in an attempt to craft the famous "meaningful vote". In my estimation May and her whips worked hard to remove most of the "meaning", and as far as possible to keep the process in ministers' hands.

To get the ball rolling, a government minister must present three things to the House of Commons and the House of Lords:

• a statement that agreement has been reached
• a copy of the withdrawal agreement
• a copy of the framework for a future relationship

The next stage is for Parliament to approve the two documents. The Commons has to pass a resolution and the Lords has to debate a motion (the elected house's resolution is more powerful than the Lords' motion, but is still just a Yes/No to the government's proposal, with no consideration of options). Finally another law - a Withdrawal Agreement and Implementation Bill laying out how the withdrawal agreement is to be implemented - must be passed.

If possible, the Commons resolution must be agreed before the EU Parliament votes on approving the withdrawal agreement, which I've heard is a sequence acceptable to the EU27, though there is no such formal requirement in Article 50.

"If push really comes to shove, and they try and push
Chequers through the House of Commons, then I
and my colleagues will vote against it,"

What happens if the Commons doesn't pass this motion, as some of May's loyal followers are still threatening? The government then has 21 days to "make a statement... in writing and published in such manner as the Minister making it considers appropriate". This statement must simply set out how Her Majesty’s Government proposes to proceed after this failure.

Here's one of the contentious points. This statement has to be "considered" by the Commons and the Lords within seven sitting days. The Lords must "take note of it" and the Commons must debate a "motion in neutral terms". This parliamentary language is intended to prevent either house from intruding on the government's plans to proceed. When Dominic Grieve caved in and this language was accepted, there was much debate about whether and how the Commons could intervene nonetheless to prevent a departure with no deal, but nothing is certain at this point.

And what happens if the prime minister decides that no agreement can be reached with the EU? The Act imposes a deadline of 21 January 2019. If, by that time, she concludes that "no agreement in principle can be reached in negotiations under Article 50(2) of the Treaty on European Union," she must make a statement to that effect. The government then has 14 days to produce yet another statement on how it plans to proceed, and a further seven days for the same process of motions which can't be changed, but leave the government to pick up the pieces of its own failure. A similar process, though with slightly different timing, must be followed if by the end of that same day no agreement has actually been reached with the EU (perhaps if it takes the prime minister completely by surprise?).

Any of these statements of failure might in theory lead to a return to the negotiating table or... what?

As far as I can see, the law says nothing about what is to be done if the UK Parliament approves the documents but the EU Parliament doesn't, or the agreement falls at the final hurdle of a vote by the EU Council (without the UK). As we'll see below, either of these developments could occur after the 21 January deadline, though they must be considered unlikely, since the agreement would have been agreed by the Council (with the UK) before going to Westminster, and the EU Parliament will have been kept informed of progress.

The enormous amount of work required if there's no deal is outside the scope of this post (and probably the scope of human consideration).

Is there time?

The formally agreed timetable still assumes that the final withdrawal agreement (and whatever level of framework for the future has been produced) will be considered by the October EU Council summit, but it's fairly generally assumed that it won't be ready by that point, and that a special meeting will be required in November. EU Council president Donald Tusk has told us he's happy to organise it. I've pencilled in 13 November because it's the only date I've heard, but talk around the recent Salzburg meeting was that it would probably be a couple of days later [Update 18 October 2018: the emergency summit has not been scheduled because the October summit (or rather the negotiations leading up to it) have achieved very little.].

Sources: 2018 plenary sessions. 2019 plenary sessions. council meetings

Let's assume, therefore, that a Brexit agreement is available by 19 November and that everybody is still aiming for 29 March as the end date.

How much time would it take the Commons to consider something like a 150-page withdrawal agreement - this is an international treaty document - and a 20-page political statement on the future UK-EU relationship? The latter would not have treaty status, but could be the thing most of our MPs, media and fellow citizens are watching out for. How many committees would demand a period for consideration, to inform the eventual votes? The government would want to allocate as little time as possible, inviting the minimum intervention by elected members, but any MP who wouldn't object to such cavalier behaviour should be ashamed of him- or herself.

Assuming for the moment that the UK Parliament will be at it hammer and tongs when an agreement arrives (in fact, of course, the poor little mites will have to take their usual holidays - a few days off in November, three weeks for Christmas and never working on Fridays) let's look at what will be going on in the EU.

If the EU Parliament does refrain from discussing the agreement before the UK Parliament has finished with it (and can we really imagine that no parliamentary committee will start early, arguing that it's a plenary session which will make the final decision?) we could be well into 2019 before detailed consideration begins. Of course the MEPs have been kept informed of progress in negotiations by frequent updates to party group leaders and other briefings by Barnier (unlike our own MPs, many of whom don't seem to have the faintest idea of what's going on - job done, says May).

A Reuters report tells us how the EU Parliament sees the approaching buffers: "A European Parliament plenary session on 11-14 March 2019 will be the last possible in order to endorse any Brexit deal on time, Polish MEP Danuta Hubner, head of the European parliament's constitutional affairs committee, told fellow MEPs Monday... The parliament's meeting 25-28 March would be too late because the Council also must approve it, she said. The UK is set to leave the EU on 29 March."

And when it's all signed off, Michel Barnier can take a holiday or retire, because that will be his job done. The Commission will then take over in the normal way if there's a trade deal to be negotiated.

If it doesn't work

Customs post at Killeen/Killean Co Amagh, 1960s
via @OldIrelandPics on Twitter

That's all fine if everything goes according to plan, but there's still disagreement (and worse) now among the governing party, mostly about the framework for the future and its possible implications for the Irish border section of the withdrawal agreement. I have my doubts that more than a handful of MPs have given a thought to the other remaining issues discussed in my previous post. I call that irresponsible, but it's all you can expect on this question.

There's also talk of elections and referendums, following months of work by the People's Vote campaign and a Labour conference where Brexit was under the spotlight more than antisemitism for a change. The passage in Jeremy Corbyn's conference speech which offered to support or take over May's negotiations has attracted a lot of attention:

"But let me also reach out to the Prime Minister, who is currently doing the negotiating.
"Brexit is about the future of our country and our vital interests. It is not about leadership squabbles or parliamentary posturing. If you deliver a deal that includes a customs union and no hard border in Ireland, if you protect jobs, people’s rights at work and environmental and consumer standards - then we will support that sensible deal. A deal that would be backed by most of the business world and trade unions too.
"But if you can’t negotiate that deal then you need to make way for a party that can."

Those, including some 150 constituency Labour parties, who worked to ensure that the possibility of a further vote was included in the motion (and will be disappointed that the possibility of a Remain option in that vote wasn't explicitly included) will fear that Corbyn is ready to ignore that option, but a different kind of interest is being shown elsewhere.

Jeremy Corbyn’s #Brexit announcement will be read with interest in EU. Angela Merkel understood to believe #Chequers proposal on common rule book for goods could work if UK joined a customs union @BBCNewsnight

— Nicholas Watt (@nicholaswatt) September 26, 2018

If Corbyn managed to contribute (most of) the Labour vote in the Commons to support (most of) May's MPs to approve "her deal" the timetable above would do, but much of the discussion around the Labour conference was on their demand for a general election, or "campaigning for a public vote" on "the final Brexit deal" if that doesn't work. The only part most media outlets quoted was the paragraph on a referendum, but the motion which was passed on Tuesday was 570 words long and I didn't see anybody pick up the sentence "Conference believes we need a relationship with the EU that guarantees full participation in the Single Market".

An election or referendum might come out of any of the ways the process might fail to achieve an agreement by 21 January or in later chaos (May is determined not to go there, but who knows what the atmosphere might be by then?) and you can't do either of those in a few days.

Last year's snap election took place seven weeks after the announcement, and it couldn't be squeezed much more than that. Of course there's a body of law governing an election, but each referendum needs its own new law. How much backing would there be behind a decision to go that way? How much time would it take to get a bill through and agree a question with the electoral commission?

There would be calls to extend the electorate to include 16-17-year-olds, British expats absent for more than 15 years (as promised by Cameron in 2015) and EU27 citizens; or to restrict it further by removing Commonwealth and Irish citizens from the roll. The electoral commission would request a six month period between enactment and vote, and the commission itself needs a major overhaul with much stronger powers, as shown by the law-breaking during the last referendum campaign. Most of these demands would almost certainly be refused, but even so it would take quite a time.

Whether for an election or a referendum (or indeed a request to buy a little more time for negotiations that are nearly complete) the Article 50 period would have to be extended. Who would make the request? That would depend on the state of chaos at the time, but it would presumably be whoever was prime minister by then. Replacing May would take a couple of months too, unless - say - her government resigned and "another party leader" took over without an election, or this "emergency" forced the Conservative party to bypass the rules even more than it did to select May herself. It would also be necessary to amend the EU Withdrawal Act, which currently defines "exit day" as 29 March.

The current EU27 negotiating directives - the source of Michel Barnier's mandate and the special competence which allows him to produce an agreement which doesn't need ratification by the 30-ish national and regional governments - set a date of "at the latest 30 March 2019 at 00:00 (Brussels  time)" which would presumably have to change too. 

The next elections to the EU Parliament will take place between 23 May and 26 May, so the amount of time by which the Article 50 process could "easily" be extended is pretty limited. There is no plenary session of the parliament planned until July and it would be a new Parliament with at least some new members, so picking the Brexit process up again would be quite a task. There would also be a new commission, with Jean-Claude Juncker's replacement as president newly (indirectly) elected too.

Everybody is currently working on the assumption that the UK will no longer be a member state by May, and there are therefore 73 seats in the Parliament to be distributed among other members. An Irish border question which doesn't have to be dealt with in a withdrawal agreement is how the Republic will deal with their extra two seats. It was announced on Monday that one would go to the Dublin constituency and one to the Southern Constituency, with a couple of counties "moving south" to balance the numbers.

The new Commission president will not be Michel Barnier, we can be sure  of that. By coincidence an announcement from Mr Barnier came out today to the effect that it is his "duty and responsibility to continue the #Brexit negotiations right to the end" and he will therefore not be running for selection as the European People's Party lead campaigner in the elections.

In the event that the Brexit saga ended with a referendum which chose to Remain, and the Article 50 notification was revoked (assuming that is legally possible) we'd never have left and we'd simply remain a member of the EU under our current terms (though with far less good will). But not only would the UK have no MEPs at that point, there wouldn't actually be places in the Parliament to accommodate any new ones. Also, an aspect of the EU (Withdrawal) Act that I only noticed recently is that, though it repeals the European Communities Act 1972 (the fundamental law which recognises EU treaties and law) only on Brexit day, other laws were repealed on the day it was enacted, and one of those was the Act which makes the holding of elections to the EU Parliament legal.

This Brexit thing could continue being a mess far longer than anyone thought.

What's the deal?

The People's Vote campaign wants a "People's Vote on the final Brexit deal". Labour's new composited motion for their conference wants to "put that deal to the public". What "deal" are they talking about?

What "deal" are May, Raab & co negotiating at the moment? There's endless talk of a "Canada deal" or a "Chequers deal" or "no deal" but the only output actually described in Article 50 of the Treaty on European Union is "an agreement... setting out the arrangements for... withdrawal, taking account of the framework for [the withdrawing member state's] future relationship with the Union".

During negotiations that "framework for [a] future relationship" has been elevated to the status of a major document. May and Davis originally proposed to conduct full trade negotiations in parallel with talks on the terms of withdrawal, but Michel Barnier had no mandate to do so. Proper trade negotiations can only be conducted with a third country, and therefore after Brexit itself. Then May called an unnecessary election, lost her majority, and gave up her grand plan on day 1.

Even so, all the talk in politics and the media, in Labour as well as the Tories, is now of trade deals, to the extent that I fully expect that a majority of the population believes that is what we're expecting to see by 29 March 2019.

****

A recent report by the Institute for Government lays out what has been achieved and what has still to be achieved, and one of the main points about the "future framework" is that "there is currently no public statement of what this framework will look like, and how much detail will go into it". Barnier suggests 15-20 pages, as opposed to the withdrawal agreement, whose draft PDF is currently 130.

The IfG's report has a number of helpful charts and tables, of which I'll use just one. I advise you to look at the original to read it properly.

Half the main topics of the withdrawal agreement are considered complete (though EU expats in this country and British expats in the EU27 are not in unanimous agreement with that claim for "citizen's rights"). Then we have two groups of topics on which progress is being made (I'm sure the future of Gibraltar and the military bases on Cyprus will be a doddle) and the big problem of the Irish border (or as Andrew Maxwell the Irish comedian observed recently to loud applause from a London audience, the British border in Ireland).

The question of the future relationship intervenes strongly here. The idea of a backstop was introduced in the joint progress report agreed in December 2017. If you assume, as most people do, that the future relationship will not be defined, let alone agreed, by the moment of Brexit, some arrangement is needed to ensure that people and goods can continue crossing the border in both directions until a final (assumed to be superior) agreement is reached.

Barnier presented a legal definition of a backstop which was quickly rejected in March 2018. May protested that it effectively drew a border between Great Britain and Northern Ireland - down the Irish Sea - with its assumption that no customs or sanitary checks would be performed at the line between Northern Ireland and the Republic, but that they would be done on either side of the water.

The Chequers proposal emerged in part to solve this problem, imagining that the final relationship could be implemented before the end of transition (when the EU asks the rest of the world to pretend the UK is still a member state, when we obey the rules like a member state, but when we play no part in the decision-making), which is 1 January 2021. But the proposal is unacceptable to the EU27, since it involves cherry picking parts of the single market and expecting the EU to allow a third country to work as if it is in the same customs area without submitting to the full legal structures that maintain the customs union.

Various other ideas have been proposed for the Irish border, but they all essentially assume a final relationship, whereas the EU27 and the joint report May & Davis signed up to assume that something is required to cover the time between Brexit, or rather the end of transition, and an actual trade agreement. That something is the backstop, and Barnier has been tweaking it - "de-dramatising" it, in the negotiators' parlance - but May has continued to reject it because of that notional line down the Irish Sea.

****

And so we arrive at Salzburg, where British politics and much of the British media judge that May was humiliated - Donald Tusk told her "Chequers will not work". In fact what happened was that May was told to her face what EU leaders have been telling the world for months, though they were being "gentle" (as reported in a former British trade negotiator's discussion of May's statement the day afterwards).

This next section is disingenuous. The EU has been sending signals about why Chequers proposals are unacceptable since the day of their publication. But were trying to be gentle, as they'd been asked to be. Then got angry the UK Gov briefed this was acceptance 5/ pic.twitter.com/S0fdOCJ9mV

— David Henig (@DavidHenigUK) September 21, 2018

Now there's open rebellion in the Conservative party, demands to "chuck Chequers", and yet more new proposals crawling out of the woodwork. With the "200 days to Brexit" mark receding behind us, we're left with the talks at an "impasse" and the clock still ticking loudly. Oh, and the Conservative party conference is days away, and everybody is well aware that May will have to try (again) to unite her warring factions with... a speech. Nobody serious wants No Deal, or at least not in public, so the talks are still the only game in town, and the rules are rather simple:

• If you want a half-decent future relationship with the EU you need a transition period in which to (begin to) negotiate one.
• If you want a transition period you need a withdrawal agreement.
• If you want a withdrawal agreement you need an Irish backstop, and it needs to be fully defined and implementable.

The withdrawal agreement is the only legal document which will come out of the Article 50 process, the only thing that the UK Parliament, the EU Parliament and then the EU Council actually have to vote on, according to the rules in the treaty. And there's a huge amount of work still to do on it. But all eyes are on this wretched "future framework" which hasn't really been started. And all the players and the ones who think they're players want to fill it with Chequers or Canada or Norway (see the Labour motion) or...

And that will be what many MPs think they're really voting on in October (no chance), November (fair chance) or later. The document which will actually kick off the next few decades of British history needs full scrutiny, but "trade deals" will fill the papers. After that, will anybody know what they voted for?

 

A few geeky numbers about referendums and things

People (people like Theresa May and Nigel Farridge) keep telling me that the 2016 referendum was the biggest vote for anything, ever, or the biggest democratic exercise ever. They're right about the first, and wrong about the second, and there's a variety of numbers you should look at.

The 2016 vote for Leave was bigger than any party has received in any general election, and larger than the 1975 vote to stay in the EEC. By just 32,161 votes. The  majority in 2016 was less decisive than in 1975, and the population was rather smaller 43 years ago.

1975 EEC referendum

votes for Stay In: 17,378,581

vote share 67.2%

electorate: 40,086,677

turnout 63.9%

2016 EU referendum

votes for Leave: 17,410,742

vote share: 51.9%

electorate: 46,500,001

turnout: 72.2%

But the 1992 general election was a bigger democratic exercise than either referendum, attracting more votes and a higher turnout from a smaller electorate than in 2016.

1992 general election

votes cast: 33,614,074

turnout: 77.7%

electorate: 43,249,721

2016 referendum

votes cast: 33,551,983

turnout: 72.2%

electorate: 46,500,001

(I've taken the numbers from a variety of sources, from Wikipedia pages on the various votes to information assembled by the House of Commons library.)