Persuading yourself is the first thing

It came as a surprise to some when the government white paper The United Kingdom’s exit from and new partnership with the European Union included the line "Whilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that".

As the Independent reported in February 2017, this "completely contradicts a key argument for Brexit".  We are of course sovereign in that we can trigger article 50 of the Treaty on European Union and - if that's what the people the referendum dumped this thing on decide - just twiddle our thumbs and drop out.

While we are members, we have shared sovereignty in areas covered by the treaty.  We are part of the decision making process, through ministers of the UK government, a commissioner, civil servants and of course our elected members of the EU parliament. Over the most fundamental decisions we have a veto, but we have entered a collective process.

Brexit involves withdrawal from that shared sovereignty, "taking back control" by pulling back from that collective process, but also incorporating the vast majority of EU law into the UK (and eventually the devolved administrations') statute book.  This is because it's currently our law, and we'd cease to function without it.  I would lay a pointlessly large bet on a major part of it still being in place in 50 years time.

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During the election, as I noted in my blog post at the time, Jeremy Paxman asked Theresa May "When did  you change your mind on the biggest issue of the day?", referring obviously to Brexit, then "Are you trying to achieve something that you think is bad for us?", since she had been a less than ardent but occasionally visible campaigner to Remain.  (The wording of the questions is taken from notes, but I think it's fair.)

On 29 May she wouldn't say that she had changed her mind on Brexit, or that she actually believed in it now, only that she believed in "making a success of it".  She must have had a good think about that (or somebody must have had a word), because by 3 June the line was "You can only deliver Brexit if you believe in Brexit".

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

— The Telegraph (@Telegraph) 1 June 2017

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To wrap up this probably rather strange burrowing into parts of the mind of May I turn to the Florence speech of 22 September, in which she said "The strength of feeling that the British people have about this need for control and the direct accountability of their politicians is one reason why, throughout its membership, the United Kingdom has never totally felt at home being in the European Union".

That reminds me of her foreword to the white paper I began with, where she wrote:  "But one of the reasons that Britain’s democracy has been such a success for so many years is that the strength of our identity as one nation, the respect we show to one another as fellow citizens, and the importance we attach to our institutions means that when a vote has been held we all respect the result. The victors have the responsibility to act magnanimously. The losers have the responsibility to respect the legitimacy of the outcome. And the country comes together".

There's some sense and some truth in both passages. but they also both suggest an oversimplification, a detachment from the real world.  There are obviously people who have felt at home in the EU.  I bet there are more who hadn't given it much thought until they were put on the spot.  And we have negotiated our own relationship with it, as have Denmark and Ireland, and Sweden and probably every member state, whether it's a small part of a protocol (such as the "list of conventions and protocols to which Bulgaria and Romania accede upon accession") or a major reservation (like the UK's opt-out of the euro).

The country has not come together, other than in resignation ("Sod 'em, let them get on with it").  A significant minority feel Brexit as a personal attack, on themselves, their families, their rights and their view of their country.  And, at least in the unrepresentative echoings of Twitter I encounter anything but magnanimity from some "victors".

May's own party is not united.  Jacob Rees Mogg has expressed his opposition to the proposed transition period and Iain Duncan Smith seems likely to object very strongly when he discovers that his latest repetition of "we will no longer be subject to the EU’s laws or to its court [as of 29 March 2019]" is unlikely to be true.

And it really is pushing it for May to call on the "strength of feeling that the British people have about... direct accountability of... politicians".  This is the woman who wasted an extra two months on a supreme court hearing to prevent elected MPs having a say on the triggering of Article 50.  To say nothing of her Henry VIII complex.

I'm not persuaded.  Is she?

Multilateral relations, rules-based systems and international frameworks. Of a sort

May going into No 10 - from @PoliticalPics (I would have used his actual tweet if he let ordinary people access them)

Theresa May is in a cabinet meeting as I begin this, her aim to achieve unanimous agreement on the speech she will give in Florence tomorrow.  The story is that she practically stepped off the plane and into No 10, which means last night's supposed mini-summit with Boris Johnson over the Atlantic came to very little.  Adam Boulton on Sky reports that she told him she needed some sleep.

The speech is billed as an "open and generous offer" to "break the deadlock" in the Brexit negotiations, but it seems to be the wrong time - the September round of talks has had to be postponed until next week - and possibly the wrong place.

May took her "fair and serious" offer on EU citizens' rights to the EU Council in June, three days after the first round of talks had done little more than set up a few working groups and agree the timetable which May & co had refused to countenance until they screwed up an election.  Some EU leaders greeted it politely as "insufficient" and others as "at least it's something" but they basically told her it would have to wait until the July talks because when they told us the negotiations would be done by Barnier, not heads of state and government, they meant it.

Will choosing her own time and place be seen as a sign of strength or of not taking things seriously?

HR News

The Department for Exiting the EU has announced the renomination of the British judge to the Court of Justice of the EU (CJEU or ECJ, according to taste).  Christopher Vajda QC, who has done the job since 2012 after 30 years of practice in European Law, should encounter no difficulties as he goes through a scrutiny panel and approval of his appointment by the Member States.

That first nomination in 2012 was announced by the Foreign Office, but all relationships with the EU seem now to be handled by the bunch responsible for getting us out of it.  As the new announcement says, "While we continue to be a Member State, we will honour our rights and obligations, this includes nominating a judge to the Court of Justice".

Saboteurs department

Before she addressed the United Nations General Assembly (or at least a few of them) on her ideas of multilateral cooperation Theresa May spent a day in Canada, emerging with an agreement that "Canada's free trade deal with the European Union will form the basis for a swift transition to a post-Brexit trading relationship between Canada and the U.K."

A UK-Canada working group will be established to work on a "seamless" transition to a new trading relationship when the UK is legally able to agree one.

Note, as Justin Trudeau did, that the word "basis" means "starting point", not the "copy and paste" reported by some of the media.  In Trudeau's words:  "We will be able to move forward in a smooth transition that keeps the essence of CETA applicable to the U.K. in ways that respect the EU's requirements and rules".  Other CBC comment says this is "a shrunken ambition for those who campaigned for Brexit.  After all, breaking free of the EU was supposed to restore a golden age of free trade as countries rushed to renegotiate deals with a Britain free of Eurocratic interference.  The best now on offer, it seems, is to try to hang on to the deals Britain already has under the EU".

This is one of thousands of things we will have to keep an eye open for.

Stop press!

The cabinet meeting hasn't finished yet.