You're joking. Not another one!

Could there be another Brexit referendum?

Let's get one thing straight. Another referendum would not be illegitimate. Several polls indicate that a majority of British people want a chance to vote on whatever deal May & co finally come to. The idea that it would be an affront to the will of the people as expressed on one day to ask the same electorate a different but related question two and a half years later when we all know far more is just ridiculous.

It would not be "like Ireland, being asked again and again until they get the right answer". (And the second Irish vote on the Lisbon treaty, for example, was not on exactly the same question as the first, since an extra protocol had been negotiated, ensuring that "Irish policies on tax, abortion and military neutrality would not be affected by Ireland ratifying the treaty" to address the Irish electorate's fears.)

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May has promised a "meaningful vote" in Parliament at the end of the negotiations. She has also promised that the British Parliament will get a chance to vote before the EU Parliament begins its considerations. The options in that vote are currently presented as a take it or leave it - if you don't like what we've concluded with the EU27, we'll just drop out with no deal and take the consequences (which is such a stupid idea that it should have been laughed out of court already).

Labour and others are trying to amend the EU Withdrawal Bill, currently going through the House of Lords, to make the choices more reasonable and the vote more "meaningful". "Our amendment would make it clear that, should the prime minister's deal be defeated, it must be for Parliament to say what happens next, not the executive," says Keir Starmer. Other amendments would insert an option to withdraw the Article 50 notification and remain in the EU, or to make the operation of the bill subject to a vote by the British electorate.

There are campaigns, such as the Lib Dems' "Exit from Brexit" - a vote "once a 'clear picture' emerges of the outcome of the Brexit talks", and Best for Britain's "People's Vote on Brexit", but at present Labour seem likely to whip their members in the Lords (and later their MPs, as necessary) against anything but their own amendment, which might win backing from other parties, and might leave the Commons looking around at each other some time in October or November, saying "OK, now what?".

Before the referendum, Leave campaigners seemed happy to consider a further referendum "on the terms of Brexit". Dominic Cummings, campaign director for Vote Leave, told the Economist in January 2016 that "there's a strong democratic case for it" and John Redwood wrote in 2012 (following David Davis) of a "double referendum on the EU" where two questions would be asked:

1. Do you want the UK government to negotiate a new relationship with the EU based on trade and political co-operation?"
2. "Do you want to accept the new negotiated relationship with the EU or not? Voting No means withdrawing from the EU."

Cummings was considering what leadership candidates to replace David Cameron might offer to their Tory party electorate, and Redwood's choice was Out-with-a-deal versus Out-with-no-deal, but neither they nor Davis considered a confirmatory referendum outlandish, undemocratic or illegitimate.

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But when could a "second referendum", or "the first vote on the facts" take place? The discussion above suggests that a new referendum could follow a vote in the UK parliament on a withdrawal treaty brought back from the EU summit on 22 October by a triumphant or resigned May and Davis. But would it have to wait for the EU parliament to accept or reject that treaty? You can't sensibly vote for a deal that's just been rejected by MEPs (including our own), and there's little point in voting for it if the MEPs then go on to reject it.

And what would the question be? Could there be a popular vote on May's preferred choice between her deal and no deal? Or would it have to be a multiple choice voting paper?

• Accept the withdrawal agreement
• Reject the withdrawal agreement and leave the EU with no agreed relationship and no transition (what used to be called the WTO option, or "crashing out on WTO terms", but would also mean no agreement on trade in services, security cooperation and many other things) 
• Remain in the EU

Or would Starmer's informed and empowered parliament decide the bleedin' obvious, that no deal is the worst deal of all and make it Deal v Remain? And would the Europhobic Corbyn whip (many of) his parliamentary party against that? There would certainly be opposition.

Accepting the withdrawal agreement at this point would mean proceeding to transition and negotiation of a final trade and security relationship (which might or might not all work within the agreed transition period, though the ever-optimistic David Davis tells Andrew Neil for the Spectator that "the UK and the EU will ‘get pretty substantively close’ to a free trade agreement by October").

Rejecting it and opting for Remain would see two years of legislative effort torn up, and No Deal would leave us making things up as we went along.

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Assuming that the decision to run a referendum was taken, what would have to be done? Referendums are still not a standard part of the British constitution, so a new law to define and authorise the vote would be required. I can't imagine it could be passed in an afternoon, as is theoretically possible. It would be fought tooth and nail, and arguments about advisory and binding results, and thresholds for turnout and majority, would be made with more force (and attention) than they were in 2015.

According to the stipulations of the act and the question to be asked, campaigns would have to be constituted and submitted to the electoral commission for designation. You would expect the government to be at the heart of the campaign for its deal. Would there be a freebooter campaign for No Deal? There would be a Remain organisation, and separate party or other groups to make the electoral commission's job more interesting. Much more attention would be given to funding than in 2016. And finally the campaign itself. Could a vote take place less than three months after the law was passed?

An alternative, often touted in these conversations, would be an election. But that could only do the job if parties offered distinct and opposing policies on the issue. Several small Remain parties taking on two versions of a Leave-with-a-deal-and-then... campaign would hardly be credible.

And all this would take place against the backdrop of the EU doing... what? Approving a withdrawal agreement which might be about to be thrown away? Preparing guidelines for the continuing negotiation during transition? Finalising the next multi-annual financial framework on the assumption that the UK would not be part of it? Or allowing for the possibility that we might be? Would our newly energised parliament demand the extension of the Article 50 process? Would the EU27 tell us to go away and stop wasting their time?

There are certainly polls which report public support for another vote, but there are a few others which don't. Commentators claim to identify a "just get on with it" mood, which could swell the Leave vote or the abstentions - there would certainly be people arguing that the "will of the people" can only be used once - and a "plague on all your houses" sentiment could develop, leaving us with a low turnout and an unsatisfactory result.

I still think Brexit is the wrong thing, being done badly, that it will harm us economically, reduce our status in the world, and I have a lot of sympathy for the argument that what started with democracy should end with democracy, that we should make a final, informed decision when we know what "Brexit means Brexit" means. But it's not easy. It needs turning into much more than a slogan rather quickly.

Tell us what you know

One result of May's Road To Brexit speech must surely be that her "preferred option", her detailed specification of a Red White And Blue Brexit, has now been run through the treasury model from which we have so far only seen leaked details. But one result we should not expect is actually to see that forecast.

There must be hundreds of assessments of the impact that Brexit will have on individual companies, sectors, regions, countries and international economies. Many of these are in the public domain, and they almost all say the same thing as each other and as the leaked results of the government model - that Brexit will reduce the UK's economic activity more or less. The only exceptions are those few produced by declared pro-Brexiters, which don't seem to use respectable assumptions (see reviews here and here).

But forecasts are always wrong, retort the usual suspects whenever a microphone or a camera presents itself. Iain Duncan Smith could probably recite the script in his sleep. Steve Baker got into trouble for basically calling his own department's civil servants dishonest and Jacob Rees-Mogg puts on his serious face and turns his voice down half an octave. The Treasury used to produce forecasts, he tells us, but they were always politically biased (in fact ministers more or less crudely changed the figures they produced) so the independent Office for Budget Responsibility came into being. If the Treasury is producing forecasts again this can only be a bad thing, Rees-Mogg invites us to agree.

A useful maxim I've encountered in other areas is "All models are wrong, but some are useful", attributed to the British statistician George Box. Every model is wrong because it's a simplification of reality, but simplifications of reality can help us explain, predict and understand the world, whether in economics, bubble physics or climate science. A map is a very wrong model of the world, but good maps are very useful (with thanks to a discussion on StackExchange).

What model are the government's new forecasts based on? It's a new one, produced in response to economists' failure to foresee the global crash in 2008. As Chris Giles tells it in the Financial Times (£) "the government economic service... has built a computable general equilibrium model of the sort that all countries use in trade negotiations. It has more computational heft and uses more data than the Treasury brought to bear in its pre-referendum assessment of the long-term effects of Brexit".

And Philip Hammond has been telling everybody about his model. In response to questions from Catherine McKinnell at the Treasury select committee last October, he explained, "The Treasury is working with DExEU, DIT and the Home Office on a cross-departmental model... to model different scenarios. It is a wholly new model... that is continually being refined... The  model has the capability to look at countries and sectors". However, Hammond told us it was "internal work at the moment, which is being shared by the four Departments that are most intimately involved" and "We are not planning to publish this work".

In her hastily rearranged speech last Friday, Theresa May told us "existing models [of Brexit] do not provide the best way forward for either the UK or the EU. But before I turn to what a new and better model might look like, I want to be straight with people – because the reality is that we all need to face up to some hard facts". The facts she has no intention of giving us are what she thinks her approach to Brexit will do to the economy.

Is that being straight with people?

Do we have to leave it to the courts?

For @theresa_may to pride herself on telling hard truths, she must publish @DExEUgov #impactassessments (amongst other things).

Any transparent & accountable govt would publish them.

There should be no need for this fight.

Keep going, Jo & @MollyMEP. https://t.co/T2QYXMzeah

— Schona Jolly QC (@WomaninHavana) March 6, 2018

If you are going to do this damn silly thing, don’t do it in this damn silly way

We begin with the words of that most educational of civil servants, Sir Humphrey Appleby, and move on.

"So the politics of Brexit are truly remarkable not just because Brexit polarises opinion more deeply than perhaps any issue in modern British history but because it does so in a particular way. Brexit policy has taken a form that demands the impossible and requires those who know it is impossible to implement it. It is overseen by someone who presumably thinks that it is possible in this form, but doesn’t appear to believe that it is desirable. Meanwhile it is proclaimed as the sacred Will of the People who magically knew what they voted for two years ago, even though it was only last week that the government precariously agreed what that was. And what we end up with will certainly be different to what the government wants, because that’s impossible to deliver, but whatever it turns out to be it would be an affront to democracy to ask the people to vote on whether or not they agree to it."

Chris Grey puts things so well that it makes me wonder why I bother with this blog. I can only plead that I sometimes make connections he doesn't (not that he couldn't) and this morning it's worth looking at Rachel Sylvester in the Times, who writes, "It is becoming clearer by the day that Theresa May is leading the country towards a Brexit that she does not truly believe is in the national interest, even though she sees it as her duty to implement it. This is an extraordinary position for a prime minister to be in, psychologically as well as politically. There is no precedent for a leader consciously embarking on a course that they know will make their people poorer and less safe."

Both writers recall the words of Jonathan Edwards MP (Plaid Cymru, Camarthen East and Dinefwr) in the Commons yesterday: "Following the Prime Minister’s speech on Friday, she was asked by a journalist, 'Is Brexit worth it?'. She failed to give a direct answer; will she answer today? Is Brexit worth it: yes or no?". At the despatch box May replied in the affirmative readily enough, but this is not the first time her commitment has been in doubt.

Towards the end of last year's election Corbyn and May (both, publicly, Remain voters) had to face Jeremy Paxman on Channel 4. I reproduce what I wrote at the time: "May was asked 'When did  you change your mind on the biggest issue of the day (Brexit)?', then 'Are you trying to achieve something that you think is bad for us?'.  (Both questions are rendered approximately but fairly, I hope.)  And she wouldn't say that she had changed her mind on Brexit, or that she actually believed in it now, only that she believes in 'making a success of it'". And yet again, two days later, when she had gathered her thoughts...

"You can only deliver Brexit if you believe in Brexit," says Theresa May pic.twitter.com/dDgK4plbkE

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) June 1, 2017

I first really came across Matthew Parris when he tried to live on the dole for a week in 1984 and found he couldn't do it. Since then he's often made me shout at the radio, but he sometimes comes up with good questions. His opinion piece from the Times of 3 February 2018 seems relevant here.

"Wickedness may not always lie in the carrying forward of bad projects. It may also lie in allowing oneself to be carried forward by them, knowing their wrongfulness. Perhaps that is the more culpable, for zealots at least believe their madness. A special kind of guilt attaches to the sane majority of the Conservative Party today. It is written across their faces."

Come together? We're still here

"It’s an insult to the people of Britain to demand that we 'come together' to support a Brexit that almost half who voted did not want, and in a form that more than half of them certainly don’t want" writes Professor Chris Grey in one of his invaluable Brexit chronicles (my emphasis).

No, this is not "Leave voters didn't know what they were voting for". This is asking who May has behind her in the Brexit she's trying to construct. Media attention this weekend is on whether the Tory soft-Brexiters and the headbangers are reconciled by May's 45 minutes at a Mansion House lectern, but should the concern not be for the preferences of "the British people", to coin a phrase?

Six weeks ago, George Osborne's London Evening Standard quoted a poll for "website Left Foot Forward" which found 60% support for remaining in the single market and 57% support for the customs union. Even 44% of those who voted Leave in 2016 supported single market membership. The actual numbers are on the BMG website.

And yet, to quote May's speech, "We are leaving the single market".

This is far from the only recent poll which gives a similar picture. When the question reminds respondents that the single market includes free movement the score goes down; when they're offered some form of reform of free movement the single market is more popular, but membership of the EU's internal market is still there as an option.

Tom Newton Dunn claimed on Radio 4's Week in Westminster on Saturday that the subject of the customs union wasn't mentioned in the 2016 campaign, at which Jacob Rees Mogg protested that we obviously hadn't been listening to his speeches. Clearly not.

Later that year Liam Fox told Andrew Marr that the customs union was still being considered: "The UK may seek a compromise deal to remain in the EU customs union... the cabinet would 'take a collective view on this once we have looked at all the issues'". January's BMG figures suggest that people are willing to consider it.

And yet, to quote May's speech: "The UK has been clear it is leaving the Customs Union".

But everybody knew that voting Leave meant leaving the single market!
Not those who wanted an EEA Brexit.

And everybody knew we'd be leaving the customs union!
Perhaps not the majority who missed those Rees Mogg speeches.

But Cameron told us!
This from those who didn't believe another word the then prime minister uttered.

Two weeks after the referendum vote in 2016, Comres ran a poll on what people expected to happen. David Cameron had resigned and we had no prime minister; the Tory leadership election was well under way but Andrea Leadsom had still to drop out of the contest. People were asked who they trusted to "carry out the will of the British people" and answered:

A few questions later they were asked what kind of new deal they expected. Looking just at the single market (the customs union wasn't considered in this poll)...

As you can see, fewer than 30% expected to leave the single market (35% of Leave voters).

Chris Grey's two sentences before the one I opened with are: "The most depressing aspect of it, as with the Florence speech, was the sub-text that it would be better for Britain not to leave the EU at all or, at least, to do so whilst staying within the EEA. It is a terrible, tragic failure of political leadership that a British PM is enacting a policy which is not only harmful to Britain but which she clearly realises is harmful to Britain."

So, come together? We haven't gone anywhere.

Brexit - the sonic screwdriver approach

Michel Barnier, walking the border
between Ireland and Northern Ireland
with representatives of the Irish government

One of the big questions raised by this week's draft withdrawal agreement (and a hundred documents and meetings before it) is "How do we avoid a return to the borders of the past?". Or, as it's normally put now: "How do we avoid a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland?". All sides have stated that they want the border to continue to be as open as it is today and, as we know, if "everybody wants it" and "it's in everybody's interests" then it will happen.

Theresa May was interrogated on the subject by the House of Commons Liaison Committee - a daunting assembly of the chairs of all the Commons select committees (though there are usually only about a dozen of them on any particular occasion). As the Times reported, "Asked about her government’s plans to avoid a hard border the British prime minister refused to rule out the use of cameras to monitor people and goods between the Republic and the North". But then "Pressed by Yvette Cooper, a senior Labour MP and chairwoman of the home affairs committee, on whether she could confirm numberplate recognition would not be used, Mrs May said: 'We have said that there will be no physical infrastructure in relation to Northern Ireland. We have put forward a number of suggestions as to how we think that border issue can be addressed'".

Those suggestions can be found in papers issued last summer on customs arrangements and specifically Northern Ireland and Ireland. A major suggestion for the border is what's usually referred to as "technology", which is taken to mean online registration of shipments, with VAT and customs duties being treated as an accounting process, plus the recognition of the largest companies as "trusted traders" who are assumed not to need stopping for customs checks.

That doesn't cover everyone of course, and former Taoiseach Bertie Ahern sums the scheme up as follows (see Give the impression of doing no work until it's far too late): "Our economy is relatively small, a huge amount of the trade is multinationals; it should be possible, I think, to do that by technology," Then: "But of course, when you come down to agriculture and smaller items, I don’t think technology would work. One thing we do not want, can’t have, is back to a physical border.” And then: "Theresa May, take her at her word, she’s confidently said she doesn't want a physical border, the EU don’t want a physical border, the Irish Government don’t. So you’re left down with the one alternative — to make technology work in most cases and to throw a blind eye to those areas that can’t come in within technology". The number of border crossings which would have to attract the blind eye (though obviously not the volume or value of goods in transit) has been estimated at 80%.

The proposals have been rejected as inadequate, unworkable or "magical thinking" by the Irish government and EU negotiators, probably because there is little detail. Brexiters pour scorn on this, accusing everybody of just being negative. After all, they say, other countries have frictionless borders - look at Switzerland and its neighbours, Norway and Sweden, Canada and the USA. They don't always recognise that Switzerland has free movement and is in the Schengen zone (people cross borders as well as goods) and has a raft of bilateral agreements replicating much of the single market and easing customs. Neither do they mention that both Norway and Sweden are inside the single market. And how frictionless are those borders anyway?

Excellent visit by select committee to Swiss border to see how political will and co operation and technology makes Swiss/German/French border crossings smooth. Useful info for our enquiry into land border issues NI/ROI pic.twitter.com/LPrVV7r5qK

— Kate Hoey (@KateHoeyMP) November 23, 2017

That's a border post. You know, the kind that nobody wants on the Irish border. "Zollabfertigung" means "customs clearance". The evidence that Hoey and the rest of the committee heard from the head of Swiss customs demonstrated that the vast majority of personal travel between Switzerland and its neighbours involves no stopping, and the vast majority of trade is done by pre-notification, trusted traders, risk assessment and technology, like cameras and ANPR. That's the vast majority, not all. There are stops, there are checks, and occasionally there are follow-ups away from the border.

But, the Brexiters cry, the EU itself has done the work... and they refer to a report called Smart Border 2.0 - Avoiding a hard border on the island of Ireland for Customs control and the free movement of persons. It's not clear that they've read it though. 

(Incidentally, another Brexiter line is that neither Ireland nor the UK wants a border at all; it's "the EU forcing Ireland to erect checkpoints". However, this favoured report says "the withdrawal of the UK from the EU will create a requirement for some form of border controls on both sides of the Irish border" which presumably refers to the international legal context as set out in the rather technical Article XXIV of the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT 1947) which effectively states that either you have a border or you form part of a customs union.)

Smart Border 2.0 seems a good report, with useful data such as numbers of person and vehicle movements across the border, and studies such as the Swiss, Norwegian etc cases mentioned above. But what it sees as eliminating a "hard border" seems rather different from May & co's idea. To take the list of features from the executive summary (comments in round brackets come from elsewhere in the report) and [comments in square brackets are my additions]:

Free Movement of persons under CTA (Common Travel Area):

• Free movement lanes at major border crossings for eligible people covered under CTA (special lanes at major crossings, minor crossings completely open)
• Use of enhanced driver's licenses [this is a US notion; is it relevant here?] and RFID (Radio Frequency Identification Device) capabilities [the range at which such devices can be read varies with the chosen technology]
• Use of ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) at manned and unmanned border crossings (for example, at unmanned crossings to identify vehicles which should present at a manned border crossing) 
• Requirement for people not eligible under CTA to present at a manned border crossing (if such a person uses another crossing they're considered to have entered illegally)
• One check: at jurisdiction of entry [I assume this means that everything can always be done at the border]
• Creation of a frequent travellers program for people not eligible under the CTA
• Legal basis for collaboration and data exchange between Ireland and Northern Ireland/UK

Create a low-friction border for the movement of goods by:

• A bilateral EU-UK agreement regulating an advanced Customs cooperation that avoids duplication and where UK and Irish Customs can undertake inspections on behalf of each other
• Mutual recognition of Authorized Economic Operators (AEO)
• A Customs-to-Customs technical agreement on exchange of risk data
• Pre-registration of operators (AEO) and people (Commercial Travellers programme in combination with a Certified Taxable Person programme)
• Identification system by the border
• A Single Window (this is an international standard for information management between the private sector and government in relation to import and export) with one-stop-shop-elements (coordinated border management approach where businesses, at import and/or export, have a single contact with one government agency also representing other agencies at the release of goods [I assume this would cover things like (phyto)sanitary checks on farm produce])
• A Unique Consignment reference number (UCR) (A specific number regulated by a standard from the World Customs Organization that follows a consignment through its life cycle in the global supply chain, making it possible for governments to identify and follow a specific consignment from a risk and compliance perspective)
• A simplified Customs declaration system (100% electronic) with re-use of export data for imports
• Mobile Control and Inspection Units
• Technical surveillance of border (CCTV, ANPR etc)

A Swiss border crossing

There's a lot of technology there, and lots of structures to be designed, implemented and staffed, but the report does talk in terms of it being available by March 2019, and also serving as a model for future UK/EU working, so I'll leave that for now. For the purposes of this post I'll just point out that here we have:

• manned crossings
• free movement lanes (and therefore other lanes where you have to stop)
• radio frequency readers for people via their passports, and for goods
• ANPR and CCTV

This is infrastructure at the border - quite a lot of it - including several items which the UK government has said will not be present, or Northern Irish representatives have said must not be there.

Then there are significant logistical and legal agreements, including:

• an agreement that UK and Irish Customs can undertake inspections on each other's behalf
• mobile control and inspection units (at the Swiss border the two countries' people can operate on either side of the border; they even have helicopters)

When these measures were mentioned in the evidence session with Swiss and Norwegian customs staff, eyebrows were raised and committee members expressed some doubt that they were appropriate for this case.

In addition there are several requirements for data sharing, which in other areas raises the question of which legal jurisdiction is to be used, and which court or other body is required to settle disputes.

This is an idea of "smart borders" that claims to bring together international standards, best practice and new technologies to create low-friction borders that support fast and secure movement of persons and goods. Coordinated border management, with trusted trader and trusted traveller programmes, it says, can significantly reduce compliance requirements and make borders almost friction free [my emphasis]. That sounds very much like the Swiss or Norwegian/Swedish borders, or even the idea presented to cabinet by Boris Johnson (and then publicly rejected by his boss) which considered: "Even if a hard border is reintroduced, we would expect to see 95% + of goods pass the border [without] checks."

It doesn't sound quite like the Irish border someone ordered.

And finally

Why did I mention a sonic screwdriver? Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times wonders whether Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and other leading Brexiters are big fans of Dr Who, because he observes "much evidence of sonic screwdriver strategy (the all-purpose get out of jail free card for scriptwriters) in their thinking. Their mystical faith in technological solutions is most obvious in discussions about the Irish border". If you can get round the paywall, it's worth a read.