... they first make mad
"It is rightly said that those whom the gods want to destroy, they first render mad. There is enough madness around at the moment to make one start to question whether collective sanity in this country has disappeared. Every time someone tries to present a sensible reasoned argument in this House vilification and abuse follow, including death threats to right hon. and hon. Friends [MPs on the Conservative side]. There is a hysteria that completely loses sight of the issues that we really have to consider. There is an atmosphere of bullying that has the directly opposite consequence in that people are put into a position where they feel unable to compromise, because by doing so they will be immediately described as having 'lost'—as if these were arguments to be lost or won. The issue must be that we get things right."
I agree with almost every word of that. I see the vilification and abuse every day, in media reports, and raw on social media. And as an observer rather than a Twitter cage fighter I don't see a hundredth of what some of the protagonists, or their staff, have to deal with. Can you really block, mute or ignore a tweet which might contain your address and a threat of violence? The right to free speech as a right to raise a posse and dominate your target's life is an ugly thing.
Where Grieve and I part company (this month) is on tactics. Last week he had a majority to pass his amendment. It would have gone back to the Lords and returned to the Commons. The government would have tried, and probably succeeded, to water it down, but when you have a majority you should bank it.
Grieve's amendment attempted to define how the elected representative body of this country should handle the situation of its indirectly elected government conspiring to present an agreement to withdraw from the European Union which is unacceptable to the majority of our representatives, or even, having utterly failed to reach such an agreement, coming back to tell us "OK, we're just dropping out". And Grieve wanted to tell them to sod off. If you've failed the country, you don't just get the job of pretending to manage the failure.
I'm sure I'd disagree with Dominic Grieve on many things - fox hunting for example - but for the last few years I've been aware of him I've admired his intellect, his eloquence and - I really hope - his straightness. But he's given way, last week to promises from the prime minister which weren't delivered, and this week to pleas that the government might be weakened if his logical provisions were actually enacted. As a former head of the Treasury civil service said this week (he's deleted it, but I saw the original tweet and Laura Kuenssberg quotes it) "Axiom of the last 30 years. Europhile Tories always compromise to preserve party unity, Their opponents don't".
Who has been made mad? Some would say Brexit itself is crazy. It's certainly unlikely to help a lot of the people who voted for it. Laura Smith became famous for a moment when she resigned from her position as shadow cabinet office minister (No, I hadn't noticed her either). Five other Labour MPs resigned from even more junior posts to vote for an amendment calling on the government to try to maintain EEA membership.
But Smith voted against, rather than adopting her leader's principled instruction to abstain. She insisted that she was observing the wishes of her constituents, who voted Leave because - to coin a phrase - they had been left behind. She's right that large parts of this country have been served badly by the people who run it and the way they manage our relationship with the "globalised world" we've built and allowed to be built. But, at the very best, Brexit would waste a few years NOT doing anything about why they voted Leave.
Incidentally
We mustn't be too unkind to Mr Hannan. At the time of his tweet he'd been an MEP for barely 17 years, and obviously hadn't worked his way into the job. Unlike those damned tweeters who read stuff:
Didn't Hannan once try to claim there was a 32% tariff on Chilean wine? Just a few problems:— Simon (@uncriticalsimon) April 20, 2018
a) the tariff isn't 32% but 32 cents per litre
b) that's the rate for sparkling wine - it's a lot less for still wine
c) Chile has an FTA with the EU so the rate is zero anyway
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| Australia's prime minister Malcolm Turnbull (centre) launches EU-Australia trade agreement negotiations with EU commissioner Cecilia Malmström (right) |
In April we, the EU, concluded negotiations with Singapore on a Free Trade Agreement and an Investment Protection Agreement, which are now going through the ratification process. They aim to
- "remove nearly all customs duties and get rid of overlapping bureaucracy
- "improve trade for goods like electronics, food products and pharmaceuticals
- "stimulate green growth, remove trade obstacles for green tech and create opportunities for environmental services
- "encourage EU companies to invest more in Singapore, and Singaporean companies to invest more in the EU"
The Singaporean foreign minister spoke to Radio 4's Today programme on 20 April, expressing the hope that the deal would be in place by "Brexit day" to ensure continuing good relations. He told us that Singapore would happily continue trading with the UK on the same terms. That's just a few dozen other countries we have to get the same agreement with.
(I'd give you some quotes from that interview, but the programme's no longer available so I can't transcribe it. It was notable, however, that Justin Webb demonstrated detailed knowledge of customs unions and the state of negotiations between the UK and countries we currently have trade deals with via the EU. The people who deliver our news know stuff, but they're too seldom allowed to show it.)
Also queuing up for ratification and implementation some time soon ("The Commission will then submit the agreement for the approval of the European Parliament and EU Member States, aiming for its entry into force before the end of the current mandate of the European Commission in 2019") is the EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement. To quote the "in-depth analysis", "The economic gains from this agreement are of the same magnitude as a free trade agreement with the United States, and could lead to major increases in exports (notably in the food and feed, processed food sectors). There are also considerable benefits for consumers, business and employment from an effective liberalisation of both markets that encompasses tariffs and regulatory issues. These gains are more symmetrically distributed than earlier FTAs, and benefit groups that do not always stand to gain from trade liberalisation".
Laim Fox already has his work cut out to ensure that we can still trade in the same way during transition as we do now, let alone thereafter. He'll have to put us in the queue for other talks, starting with Australia and New Zealand perhaps. Who was it who said this is the wrong thing, done badly? Oh, it was me.
