Sunday, 15 September 2019

A little bit of bread and no cheese


Two versions of the same document
This is my interpretation, and I'm sticking to it until something from government shows me I'm wrong.

When Boris Johnson gave Michael Gove the job of disaster planning at the Office of No Deal (Offend - not really), he called on his new civil servants (most of whom had been working on the same job under the previous regime) to tell him where they'd got to.

The result was a document called Operation Yellowhammer - HMG Planning Assumptions - Latest changes in red (02/08/19) - Base Scenario, dated 2 August. This, as we're told by the  Herald's Scottish Political Editor Tom Gordon, who supplied a comparison of that document and the latest version, was given to the Scottish government and - I'd venture to say - to the Welsh administration, with a copy held in reserve for Stormont, or supplied to the impressive Northern Ireland civil service.

Note that Operation Yellowhammer was kicked off by Theresa May as prime minister, and you'll see that unprepossessing image again.

A couple of weeks later, somebody slipped a copy of the document to Sunday Times reporters Rosamund Urwin and Caroline Wheeler, and it became an EXCLUSIVE under the headline "Operation Chaos: Whitehall's secret no-deal plan leaked".

The two reporters claimed a "Cabinet Office source" told them "It is a devastating health check on the nation's preparedness" and a "senior Whitehall source" said "This is not Project Fear - this is the most realistic assessment of what the public face with no deal. These are likely, basic, reasonable scenarios - not the worst case".

Think what you like about anonymous Whitehall sources, but the detail is what we've been hearing from industry after industry and professional body after professional body - British Nuclear Medicine Society to British Retail Consortium, and the Road Haulage Association complained that nobody had warned them of refinery closures (paragraph 15).

On the day (18 August), Michael Gove came out and told us that this was "absolutely the worst case" and that the government had taken "significant additional steps" in the two weeks since the document was circulated - I would bloody well hope so - and this was the line they maintained until after Johnson's "controversial" move to suspend Parliament.




A lot of big things happened during this time which I don't want to spend too much time on here.

  • Parliament passed a law to require Johnson to request an Article 50 extension if he couldn't get the Commons to approve a Brexit deal or no deal.
  • One Conservative MP crossed the floor to join the Liberal Democrats, 21 MPs lost the Conservative whip and another one resigned it.
  • Johnson decided to suspend Parliament so that he couldn't be held to account.
  • And he was taken to court in three jurisdictions - Northern Ireland, and England and Wales, where the courts decided the question is political and therefore not for them, and Scotland, where the judges disagreed, and ruled that the prorogation is illegal. For example, Lord Carloway's opinion stated "prorogation was being mooted specifically as a means to stymie any further legislation regulating Brexit". (There is a lot of argument among lawyers about what should be considered "justiciable" in this context.) The UK Supreme Court has set aside 17-19 September to produce a single answer on this question.
  • People seriously started to ask whether a British prime minister had lied to the Queen.






Back on track

On the last day before Parliament was closed down it was time for emergency measures. Jeremy Corbyn demanded and was granted 90 minutes to debate a motion "on whether the Prime Minister will obey the law that this House has just passed into law". That law was the Benn bill requiring the prime minister to request an Article 50 extension if no Brexit has been agreed by the Commons by 19 October, its royal assent announced earlier in the afternoon to make it the European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 2) Act 2019. The government declined to take part until the end of the debate, when Dominic Raab offered "This Government will always respect the rule of law. That has consistently been our clear position and, frankly, it is outrageous that it is even in doubt".

But it was in doubt, and it still is.

Raab refused to allow Sylvia Hermon to make a point, but Corbyn made way (good tactic in this case). She argued "The Foreign Secretary described as flawed the legislation that is intended to stop the country leaving without a deal, which received Royal Assent today. ​May I recommend to him, and indeed to all Members of the House, Radio 4’s interview with Lord Sumption, a very distinguished former member of the Supreme Court? He said that there was not “the slightest obscurity” about the Act. I rest my case. It is not flawed." The motion passed without a vote, not that we were any the wiser by the end about Johnson's attitude to following the law.

But before that came Dominic Grieve's motion, (he got the full three hours allowable for an emergency motion) which takes us back to the main purpose of this piece:

"That a humble address be presented to Her Majesty, that she will be graciously pleased to direct ministers to lay before this House, not later than 11.00pm Wednesday 11 September, all correspondence and other communications (whether formal or informal, in both written and electronic form, including but not limited to messaging services including WhatsApp, Telegram, Signal, Facebook messenger, private email accounts both encrypted and unencrypted, text messaging and iMessage and the use of both official and personal mobile phones) to, from or within the present administration, since 23 July 2019 relating to the prorogation of Parliament sent or received by one or more of the following individuals: Hugh Bennett, Simon Burton, Dominic Cummings, Nikki da Costa, Tom Irven, Sir Roy Stone, Christopher James, Lee Cain or Beatrice Timpson; and that ministers be further directed to lay before this House no later than 11.00pm Wednesday 11 September all the documents prepared within Her Majesty’s government since 23 July 2019 relating to operation Yellowhammer and submitted to the cabinet or a cabinet committee."

That's a lot of material demanded from the government: everything about the decision to suspend Parliament, and everything produced by Operation Yellowhammer that ministers actually saw. The motion passed by 311 to 302, but nobody knew whether government would cough anything up, because Parliament was suspended at the end of the day, after opposition parties had stuck together to refuse Johnson his general election get-out.

Two days later Michael Gove released two documents - just two documents - a version of the Yellowhammer report and a carefully lawyered letter explaining why there would be no more. This is yet another piece of evidence that our governance needs some law behind it. There's not much point in having nice "powers" like a "humble address" if they can't be enforced. The US Congress would be laughing at us: they can sub poena people and evidence.

Two versions of the same document
I've read a lot about this Yellowhammer document, this time entitled Operation Yellowhammer - HMG Reasonable Worst Case Planning Assumptions - As of 2 August 2019, and nobody has suggested that it's different from the last one apart from the title. Nobody has even objected to the assumption that paragraph 15, which was redacted in this new version, is identical to the same paragraph in the document leaked to the Sunday Times. So I'll assume it's one document which Gove has painfully tried to misrepresent from the start.

But the title has changed, and all government mouthpieces must fit the phrase "worst case scenario" into every interview.

The sad, but hardly unexpected, thing is that so much of the media does the same. The Sunday Times scoop is vindicated but BBC News slavishly follows the "worst case scenario" line. It would be bad if they were hiding the real contents of the document, but it's just sad that they can only misrepresent it.

And some government mouthpieces really overdo it.





Meanwhile - booksellers' news

David Cameron's book, For the Record, will be published on 19 September, in good time for full appreciation before Halloween.

Boris Johnson told reporters that nothing his predecessor says "in the next few days will diminish the affection and respect in which I hold him". And we all know we can take him at his word.








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Saturday, 31 August 2019

Letter to my MP - Prorogation of Parliament


Boris Johnson claims to be trying to negotiate a new Brexit deal which - given the little time available - could only be a minimally amended version of the existing withdrawal package. The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 is still in force, so ratifying such an agreement would require a "meaningful vote" and a Withdrawal Agreement Implementation Bill. Mr Johnson's prorogation allows two weeks for all that, assuming its agreement at the 17-18 October EU Council summit.

Mrs May never dared even to publish the version of that bill which would have applied to the existing withdrawal agreement. Does Mr Johnson really expect to take his version through both houses - after a vote under Section 13 of the 2018 Act - in two weeks?

He argues that the prorogation he secured from the Queen last week is a perfectly normal process, which is transparently untrue. He certainly should present a programme for government, having never given us a manifesto to consider, and he certainly should seek a majority in the Commons. Without that his government has no legitimacy. The conference recess, however, has not been approved by the Commons - as you know - and many MPs were determined to vote against it, so prorogation should be assumed to take a full five weeks of sitting time away.

The claim of "ample time" for debate is also laughable, with the few days before prorogation dominated by a spending statement, and the few days before the EU Council summit devoted to a Queen's speech. With demonstrations taking place around the country today and cases to prevent prorogation scheduled in the courts of England, Scotland and Northern Ireland, it should be obvious that Mr Johnson's tactics are questionable.

I ask you to protest against this brazenly deceitful and undemocratic move and do what you can to change Mr Johnson's mind.


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Sunday, 25 August 2019

This is our prime minister





On 24 July 2019, his election by the voting membership of the Conservative and Unionist Party confirmed, Boris Johnson stood on Downing St and told us:

“The people who bet against Britain [apart from my financier friends of course] are going to lose their shirts because we are going to restore trust in our democracy and we are going to fulfil the repeated promises of parliament to the people and come out of the EU on October 31, no ifs or buts. And we will do a new deal, a better deal that will maximise the opportunities of Brexit while allowing us to develop a new and exciting partnership with the rest of Europe based on free trade and mutual support... I have every confidence that in 99 days’ time we will have cracked it. But you know what – we aren’t going to wait 99 days because the British people have had enough of waiting."

A new deal eh? Watch those 99 days, and remember that "we aren't going to wait".

There will be no Queen's speech, and I will not demonstrate my majority

The next day he graced the Commons with his presence:

"I and all Ministers are committed to leaving on this date, whatever the circumstances. To do otherwise would cause a catastrophic loss of confidence in our political system. It would leave the British people wondering whether their politicians could ever be trusted again to follow a clear democratic instruction. I would prefer us to leave the EU with a deal; I would much prefer it. I believe that it is possible, even at this late stage, and I will work flat out to make it happen, but certain things need to be clear. The withdrawal agreement negotiated by my predecessor has been three times rejected by this House. Its terms are unacceptable to this Parliament and to this country. No country that values its independence, and indeed its self-respect, could agree to a treaty that signed away our economic independence and self-government, as this backstop does. A time limit is not enough. If an agreement is to be reached, it must be clearly understood that the way to the deal goes by way of the abolition of the backstop.

"For our part, we are ready to negotiate, in good faith, an alternative, with provisions to ensure that the Irish border issues are dealt with where they should always have been: in the negotiations on the future agreement between the UK and the EU. I do not accept the argument that says that these issues can be solved only by all or part of the UK remaining in the customs union or in the single market. The evidence is that other arrangements are perfectly possible, and are also perfectly compatible with the Belfast or Good Friday agreement, to which we are, of course, steadfastly committed. I, my team, and my right hon. Friend the Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union are ready to meet and talk on this basis to the European Commission, or other EU colleagues, whenever and wherever they are ready to do so."

Greg Hands asked him: "Does [the prime minister] welcome the findings of the alternative arrangements commission, led by [myself] and... Nicky Morgan?" and was told: "I do... the facilitations and the remedies do exist. What it takes now is the political will to get there".

A couple of other things to watch out for here:
  • any signs of Johnson "working flat out" to make a deal happen
  • any signs of readiness to "negotiate... an alternative" or, in particular, to "talk... to the European Commission, or other EU colleagues, whenever and wherever they are ready"
And one to leave hanging: It would leave the British people wondering whether their politicians could ever be trusted again

You'd think, at this point, he'd be looking for alternatives.

I will not meet these people

The next Monday, with Parliament conveniently dispatched on a summer holiday, Politico reported a government briefing: "Boris Johnson will not meet EU leaders until they agree to change their position on the Northern Irish backstop... while he wants to meet EU leaders and negotiate a Brexit deal, he does not want to be sat down and told that the EU cannot possibly reopen the Withdrawal Agreement and that is the message he has been giving to leaders when he has spoken to them on the telephone so far".

"The PM wants to leave with a deal," the spokesperson said, "and we hope that the EU will change their position".

Johnson had hardened his position, the report continued, [two] days after the EU's chief Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier urged European leaders [in a leaked letter] to "remain calm" and "stick to our principles and guidelines and show solidarity and unity" in response to Johnson's insistence that the backstop provision in the Withdrawal Agreement be axed.

The spokesperson said: "The Withdrawal Agreement was rejected by parliament a number of times now and clearly it is not going to pass in its current form. It needs to change if there is going to be a deal".

Later that day (still from Politico), in an interview with broadcast media, Johnson said: "I don't want the UK to be aloof or hanging back. I want us to engage, to hold out the hand and go the extra mile, the thousand miles. And what we wanted to do is to make it absolutely clear that the backstop is no good, it's dead, it's got to go, the Withdrawal Agreement is dead, it's got to go. But there is scope to do a new deal".

But of course he did meet them, as we all saw, and Angela Merkel mused on the many times she'd been told that alternative arrangements would save the day. Maybe it could be done in two years, so why not in thirty days? Most people who aren't members of the UK media pack heard that as an observation that Johnson wasn't telling her anything she could work with, but the headlines were "Merkel hands Boris a 30-day deadline".

Which she didn't.

But he grabbed this "blistering deadline" with both hands, because it meant he could run the clock down almost half the way to Halloween with an excuse that he was looking at alternative arrangements. And he went straight back home and instructed his DExEU secretary to "turbocharge" work on alternatives, without ever having done more than recite the two phases he could remember from the Alternative Arrangements report a couple of times.

You'd think he'd have told his "friend and partner" that he had been working on a comprehensive alternative scheme which she would see within days. After all, time is short (but perhaps not short enough for him).

Interlude

It might come as a surprise to some, but it is not the job of the EU Commission negotiators, or the representatives of 27 member states, who tell the negotiators what to do, to give the UK a "good deal".

I know we're sceptical, but you made us so


And while Johnson was in Biarritz... out came a "leak" which you have to suspect was intended to keep the pressure on MPs at home, but could certainly screw up Johnson's relations with his "friends and partners" at the G7 and later. "An email from senior government advisers to an adviser in No 10 – written within the last 10 days and seen by the Observer – makes clear that the prime minister has recently requested guidance on the legality of" shutting Parliament down "for five weeks from 9 September in what appears to be a concerted plan to stop MPs forcing a further extension to Brexit".

This move seemed to have faded away in recent days, but it might be that the cynical "coup" of executive over legislature is still a thing of propaganda (Sunday morning press statements naturally said it wasn't happening), if not a definite tactic. The idea that legislation might be required in those last few weeks to make No Deal "work" is forbidden in government circles.

And in interviews after the get together in the Basque sunshine Johnson talked of No Deal being touch and go (he has to start trying to get a deal yet) rather than a million to one against. It'll be some other formulation tomorrow. Similarly, he presented his talks with Trump about a big, nay, humongous, nay, the biggest US-UK deal you've ever seen (© the orange man-child, 2019) as likely to take not a bit less than one year (as Trump would like for electoral purposes) and not five years (which is beyond public thinking at the moment), but... what? He neglected to say. What a surprise.

He said a lot more, but it really isn't worth reporting because it will be forgotten tomorrow.

Alternative arrangements

In December 2017 the "Joint report from the negotiators of the European Union and the United Kingdom Government on progress during phase 1 of negotiations under Article 50 TEU on the United Kingdom's orderly withdrawal from the European Union" (these titles really trip off the tongue) introduced the Brexit backstop to the world.

Article 49 stated: "The United Kingdom remains committed to protecting North-South cooperation and to its guarantee of avoiding a hard border. Any future arrangements must be compatible with these overarching requirements. The United Kingdom's intention is to achieve these objectives through the overall EU-UK relationship. Should this not be possible, the United Kingdom will propose specific solutions to address the unique circumstances of the island of Ireland. In the absence of agreed solutions, the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment with those rules of the Internal Market and the Customs Union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement."

 As some of the media reported at the time, that meant that the eventual aim of this Brexit thing was to agree an "overall EU-UK relationship" which would protect the Good Friday Agreement's implementation. If that couldn't be achieved by the end of the withdrawal agreement's transition period (as everybody expected), the UK would propose "specific solutions" to achieve the same objectives, and while we were all waiting for one of those two solutions ("in the absence of agreed solutions"), the backstop would apply ("the United Kingdom will maintain full alignment..." with more in Article 50).

Specific solutions became alternative arrangements, and much work has been done since then. Many Brexiters have told us it would be easy, because the EU Parliament had published a document which did it all. It didn't of course, and it was immediately obvious that most people who referred to it hadn't read it. I took a look at it in March 2018.

There have been quite a few proposals since then, culminating in the work of the Alternative Arrangements Commission, whose report Johnson quotes to back up his assertions that there are "abundant solutions" to this problem (again, without convincingly demonstrating that he's read it). Setting aside the questions and problems which have been raised (of which there are many), let's just turn to the recommendations on page 11 of the full report.

Number 1 is "Working Alternative Arrangements should be fully up and running within three years", which is certainly less time than a full set of agreements on a future UK-EU relationship would be likely to take. But if it's No Deal, what happens during those three years? There would be no alternative arrangements on the border, indeed no arrangements at all.

And we keep hearing reports from the Police Service of Northern Ireland such as this, from ITV. Chief Constable Simon Byrne tells us the border can't be policed electronically.

Incidentally, a backstop, and a Northern Ireland-only backstop at that, not the whole-UK idea that May dragged out of the EU negotiators, seems to be pretty popular among the people actually concerned.





A bit more from an Irish-informed viewpoint

One of Johnson's earnest throwaway lines is to claim that his "friends and partners" in the EU27 are "beginning to realise" what the UK's problem with the backstop is. Of course they've known it for two years or more. Kevin O’Rourke, professor of economic history at Oxford, took a step back in the Observer.

"The only region of the world where you will find sovereign states coexisting without border checks on the trade between them is the EU. There is nothing accidental about this, since eliminating borders was the great project of the EU. It did so by eliminating the reasons why modern states find it necessary to inspect goods crossing international frontiers: in particular, different tariffs on imports from the rest of the world, implying an incentive for criminals to smuggle goods from countries where tariffs are low to countries where they are high; and different rules on what can be legally bought and sold, implying an incentive for criminals to smuggle goods from countries where they can be legally sold to countries where they are prohibited.

 The first reason for border controls was eliminated by the simple expedient of setting up a customs union, which dates back to the foundation of the old EEC and involves all member states having a common trade policy vis-a-vis third countries. And the second was eliminated by ensuring that the rules governing what can be legally bought and sold are the same across the EU: this is the single market, which as you will recall was a largely British invention. When it came into effect in 1993, border controls on trade vanished across Europe."

 "However, that will not stop many in the UK claiming that the backstop, which de facto keeps Northern Ireland in the customs union and single market for goods, is not required to avoid a hard border in Ireland; that in a no-deal scenario you wouldn’t need one anyway; that if there are checks on UK goods at Calais this will constitute “punishment” by the EU; and so forth. While many making such claims are just being dishonest, there are probably others who are genuinely confused. And one reason for that is that they’ve so internalised the EU’s greatest success that they assume it is the natural state of affairs.

 Which is wrong and also a bit ironic."

Who is this Boris Johnson?

This is the man in one picture for me. He's in a hospital - sleeves rolled up, tie tucked in, good boy - on a tour of Devon, and he's asked about people trying to get to the UK in small boats from France, and he can't, or has never thought of trying to, remove that smile from his face.

He tells us, wrongly, "we will send you back... if you come illegally, you are an illegal migrant and the law will treat you as such".

Is he unable to see it as anything but a game? Being able to introduce a lighter moment to illustrate a point can be a good device for public engagement. Being unable not to borders on the sociopathic.






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Thursday, 30 May 2019

Questions for leaders in waiting



Way back in April, the 28 member states of the EU agreed another extension of the Article 50 period, defining a Brexit date of 1 June, 1 July, 1 August, 1 September, 1 October or 1 November according to when a withdrawal agreement can be ratified.

Remember, for the UK to ratify an agreement, the current law says that the Commons has to agree a motion and the Commons and Lords have to pass a new law to implement it. Other laws would still be required to "make it work". None of that changes with a new prime minister unless that current law is changed.

For the EU to ratify an agreement, the EU Parliament has to approve it, then the EU Council has to vote for it. Any proposed changes to the current withdrawal package would first have to go through a negotiation process and approval at least by the member states' representatives in Brussels.

The last extended date for Brexit is already seven weeks behind us, so how are the next five months going to pan out?


24 MayMay announces she will resign, kicks off a phoney Tory war; candidates begin to step forward
7 JuneMay resigns as Tory leader, stays on as prime minister
10 JuneLeadership election begins
2 JulyNew EU Parliament sits for the first time
22 JulyNew Tory leader announced; this could be earlier according to progress in the contest; May is still prime minister until the new leader is invited by the queen to form a government
24 JulyUK Parliament goes on summer break (actual date to be confirmed)
3 SeptemberUK Parliament returns for a few days
16 SeptemberUK Parliament off again for conferences
8 OctoberUK Parliament back to work
17-18 OctoberEU Council - the last chance to ratify a Brexit deal before Halloween?
1 NovemberBrexit

During this time Michel Barnier might have been selected as the new president of the EU Commission (to take office on 1 November). His deputy, Sabine Weyand, already has a new job to go on to at the EU trade directorate.

At some point after 2 July, or whenever the new leader is announced, he or she has to try to convince her or his party, the DUP, the queen and the rest of us that he or she can command a majority. With luck she or he will be asked to form a government.

Will there be a new parliamentary session, and therefore a new queen's speech? If so there is the possibility that legislation such as the new Trade Bill might fall and have to be started again later. There's also the possibility that the new leader's programme will not be agreed, which opens up the chance of a vote of no confidence and even a general election, which would be even more fun.

When can any of this happen?

When is the queen on holiday?

When are MPs available to approve any deal for ratification, or any no deal for that matter?

When are MEPs available to approve any new deal for ratification? They'll be finding their feet and confirming (or not) the new commission.

When do any of these candidates for leader expect to negotiate their own, new deals (the question goes to you as well Mr Corbyn). Who do they expect to negotiate with?

These are questions every interviewer should address with every candidate until the leadership election is finished, and with some of them afterwards.


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Saturday, 20 April 2019

A hostiler environment


Every day seems to bring a new example of the Home Office's hostile environment. On Thursday came a tweet from one Charles Kriel: "An incredibly unwelcome entry to the UK today, as I was informed my 15 week old London born baby does not have the right to reside in the UK despite a Norwegian mother and father with Indefinite Leave. That’s not what anyone should expect when returning home".

According to gov.uk the child could be a British citizen from the status of at least one of his/her parents. It might be that different arrangements have been made for the child's citizenship, but right to reside seems more straightforward: "You have the right to reside if you’re a close relative of an EU, EEA [including Norway] or Swiss citizen. Close relatives [include] children". Are the new settled status arrangements for Brexit changing this qualification, because the existing web pages seem to solve Mr Kriel's problem?

Diane Dodds MEP
The same day a Democratic Unionist politician opened wide a subject that's been bubbling insistently under the Brexit debate for weeks now. The politician in question was Diane Dodds, one of Northern Ireland's three MEPs, and she warned that Brexit must not be "cynically exploited to seek serious and irreversible changes to UK citizenship laws which would set Northern Ireland adrift from Great Britain".

The question concerns citizenship for those born in Northern Ireland, and has been through social media campaigns, questions in the Commons and a judge's decision which set the Good Friday Agreement above UK law. And thereby, to coin a phrase, set Northern Ireland adrift from Great Britain.

The Good Friday Agreement proclaims "the British and Irish Governments... will... recognise the birthright of all the people of Northern Ireland to identify themselves and be accepted as Irish or British, or both, as they may so choose, and accordingly confirm that their right to hold both British and Irish citizenship is accepted by both Governments and would not be affected by any future change in the status of Northern Ireland".

Ms Dodds cites that same paragraph of the agreement (paragraph 1(vi) of the section on Constitutional Issues), but stresses particular words. She refers to people's "right to hold both British and Irish citizenship" and offers an interpretation: "this does not say British or Irish citizenship. Therefore most people born in Northern Ireland are entitled automatically to Irish citizenship, but this is in addition to, and not instead of, British citizenship". Which doesn't seem right.

The citizenship question is simple in the Republic of Ireland, which amended its nationality laws to reflect the position set out in the Good Friday Agreement, but complex in the UK, including Northern Ireland, because the UK amended nothing.


The right to one citizenship or the other, or both, was established as a birthright, so campaigner Emma DeSouza can state "I am an Irish national born in Northern Ireland, Irish by birth & Irish under the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement", yet she has been informed by the UK government that she is "as a matter of fact a British citizen", and that to exercise the rights of an Irish citizen she will have to renounce the British citizenship she doesn't consider she has.

Ms DeSouza's case arose initially because she wanted to regularise her husband's status - Brexit is raising questions like this for millions of people - but other questions have come up, fed by the absence of any provision for this birthright in British law and the apparent ignorance and incompetence of ministers of the British government.

In a related enquiry, Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Karen Bradley was asked "for what reason do the reciprocal voting rights of Irish citizens not cover referendums" and replied "The voting rights which will continue to be enjoyed by British and Irish citizens are reciprocal. British citizens may vote in local and parliamentary elections in Ireland but not Presidential elections or referendums. This reciprocal right is reflected in the voting rights of Irish citizens living in the United Kingdom", thereby appearing to confirm that the basis of the question is the case and has always been so.

Thus, though Irish citizens could vote in - say - the 2016 referendum on remaining in or leaving the EU (as could Maltese and Cypriot citizens resident in the UK, as citizens of a Commonwealth country, not as EU citizens), it is suggested that Irish citizens in Northern Ireland could not as a right vote in - say - a border poll on reunifying Ireland. That qualification would have to be written specifically into the bill establishing the referendum.

Other questions of this sort are blowing up, but for now let's just return to the tribunal Ms DeSouza and her husband asked to decide on their status. The judge stated: "under the terms of the Good Friday agreement people of Northern Ireland are in a unique position within the United Kingdom. The British and Irish governments recognised the birthright of all the people in Northern Ireland to identify themselves as Irish or British or both, as they may so choose." and went on: "The constitutional changes effected by the Good Friday Agreement with its annexed British-Irish Agreement, the latter amounting to an international treaty between sovereign governments supersede the British Nationality Act 1981 in so far as the people of Northern Ireland are concerned. He or she is permitted to chose their nationality as a birthright. Nationality cannot therefore be imposed on them at birth."

I essayed a rather naive look at this subject in 2017, but with the Brexit "settled status" system being rolled out even in the absence of any final decision on withdrawing from the EU, and the Home Office showing every sign of building a new Windrush scandal in plain sight (there is no document which states that you have settled status; every employer, landlord, service provider etc will have to go online to discover whether you can live, work or receive healthcare etc in the UK) it seems inescapable that the complexity and cost of this shambles will continue to grow.



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Friday, 12 April 2019

Letter to my MP - Avoiding the EU elections



Today, Philip Hammond was quoted as saying, "Clearly nobody wants to fight the European elections. It feels like a pointless exercise, and the only way we can avoid that is by getting a deal agreed and done quickly. If we can do that by 22 May, we can avoid fighting the European parliamentary elections".

What does he mean by "if we can do that"? He was referring to negotiations between the Conservative and Labour parties. Is the government yet again talking as if all that matters is to agree an approach within the UK Parliament?

For the UK to ratify the withdrawal package, the EU (Withdrawal) Act tells us the Commons must vote for a motion to approve the withdrawal agreement and political declaration, the Lords must debate a neutral motion on the two documents, and a Withdrawal Agreement Implementation Bill must go through both houses and receive royal assent.

In addition, the treaty can't come into effect without votes in the EU Parliament and the EU Council. And none of these votes can take place without - at least - a draft being agreed by the EU's chief negotiator Michel Barnier, and the EU ministers of the EU27 member states.

Is Mrs May's declared intention, echoed above by Mr Hammond, to achieve all this in time to make UK participation in the EU Parliament elections unnecessary? When could this all happen?

The current EU Parliament meets for the last time on 18 April - while the Commons is in recess - and the new parliament doesn't convene until 2 July. Mrs May and Mr Corbyn might come to an agreement on a new political declaration during the week of 22 April and manage the required approval from Mr Barnier and his working group during the following week, but there will be no EU Parliament to approve it.

Yesterday Martin Whitfield (East Lothian) asked the prime minister, "The deal will require ratification by the European Parliament. The current European Parliament will sit for the last time a week from today, and then after the elections it will meet just once in July to sort itself out. It will not really meet properly until October or November. Is an earlier leaving date not actually an impossibility, because the deal cannot be ratified?".

And she replied, "No, it is not an impossibility. It is possible for the European Parliament to ratify in advance of the United Kingdom ratifying". But whatever she might wish to have them approve doesn't exist today, and as and when it does come into being there will be no EU Parliament to consider it.

I'm told that the EU Parliament can be recalled to discuss an important topic, as the Commons can, and that a quorum of a third of MEPs could make such a decision. Is Mrs May relying on that, during an election period?

It's also possible that she's hoping the condition which could have given us an extension to 22 May - the Commons approving the withdrawal agreement - would suffice, but that leaves a huge hostage to fortune, because it would still be possible that the EU Parliament could reject it later, leaving a parliament without British MEPs, and legally invalid. I can't believe that Mr Barnier, the Commission or the Council would allow that to happen.

To put it simply, I don't see how this country will not be taking part in elections to the EU Parliament on 23 May.


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Friday, 29 March 2019

They know nothing



"I was absolutely disgusted today to see a Conservative Councillor with several decades of experience tell a theatre full of children aged between 10 and 18 that we have no say over EU laws!" reported a Liberal Democrat prospective parliamentary candidate last month. She went on, "Ironically, he was sitting next to an MEP! What exactly does he think MEPs do?!?".

Of course MEPs can amend EU laws, as they were asked to do by many constituents in the case of the Copyright Directive which was finally passed this week. MEPs can also block proposals, though in both cases international cooperation is required, since no country has enough MEPs to achieve these results alone.

Unsurprisingly, the Copyright Directive has drawn much comment, including a characteristically late protest from Boris Johnson, who was UK foreign secretary while it was being debated, but can't be expected to remember that "The UK Government and British publishing/IP-intensive industries drove most of this", as the Institute of Directors' trade and Europe expert Allie Renison tells us.

And the forum for "driving" this process? It's the EU Council and the appropriate councils of ministers. That's British MEPs and ministers "having a say over EU laws". Ms Renison's further tweets in the thread give a flavour of how these things are done. She also seeks to establish (as I would like to) that explaining how something happens doesn't constitute an endorsement of that thing.

****

I came across the tweet which opens this post while looking for a video from yesterday. It featured Richard Ashworth, one of the MEPs representing the South East region of England.





"For over 25 years now, no British prime minister ever explained to the British people what Europe did, what were the benefits, and why it matters. They never defended against the untruths which were spoken and they never took ownership of the decisions that they took in council. And because of that the British press ran a 20-year campaign based on populist mistruths, lies and deceit. And the consequence of that, we see today, in Britain, is a sad nation, divided like never before, and a House of Commons in crisis.

 "So let Brexit stand as a cautionary tale to the people of Europe. To the people of Europe I say this: You are the generation who have lived through the longest period of peace and the greatest level of prosperity ever. Never take it for granted. Value it. Fight for it, defend it every day."


Fine words, and an indictment of British governments of various flavours. The media too come in for criticism, as illustrated by yet another tweet, from a man who can boast long service at the World Trade Organisation.





A particularly depressing aspect of this, apart from the main point that we so seldom see the EU Parliament on our TV screens except as backdrop to a Farageian pantomime, is yet another harking back to war. This time it's the Treaty of Versailles, from which Brexit Party... member Farage plucks the German "reparations bill" as a supposed equivalent of the financial settlement included in the Withdrawal Agreement.

That's dishonest - did war reparations cover the pensions of German politicians who had contributed to the disaster? - but we're used to that.

****

Trying to work this all out sometimes makes my offerings look like attempts to make Brexit work, for which I apologise.

The withdrawal agreement could be the only thing we really have to talk about, since it's a draft treaty with the EU and therefore a long term international commitment. It comes with a non-binding political declaration, and the agreement must be implemented by an Act of Parliament, the draft of which nobody but its drafters have seen.

"Comes with" is suddenly significant, as can be seen below from the process adopted for today (while this post was being written). Concerned lawyers point out that the two papers are not as separate as May might like us all (Labour MPs particularly) to think.

The act must go through all the stages of a new bill, through Commons and Lords, and the other two documents must be approved by the Commons and debated in the Lords before ratification can follow. That's British law. 

The EU Parliament must also approve the two documents, which then pass to the EU Council - meeting as 27 - for approval and ratification. That's EU law.

It seems Theresa May intends to bring the withdrawal agreement alone to the Commons today, in the hope of winning majority support for it, before moving on to the political declaration in some unspecified way.

There's logic to that, since approval of the withdrawal agreement is the trigger for extension of the Article 50 period to 22 May, which May needs if she's going to get all the necessary laws through (though she somehow never told us that in her many strident repetitions of "We are leaving on 29 March") and, perhaps more important, to achieve Brexit with a deal (sorry, I nearly typed "plan") and make further extension look wrong because it would involve elections to the EU Parliament.

The motion to agree that the Commons should sit on a Friday (and, as somebody said, "We’ve known for 2 years that tomorrow was due to be the leaving date, but it was never made a day Parliament would sit. Really?") was passed yesterday with much anger, some perhaps confected but some very real.

What is "business" thinking? Yesterday morning we heard from Alistair Campbell, who's currently devoting his considerable (but possibly tainted) energies to the Peoples Vote campaign. His view is that business people "want it stopped". I know the owners of two small businesses, who I'm not going to drag in here, and who would constitute an inadequate sample to base any argument on, so I'll turn to the representative bodies.

The recent joint CBI-TUC letter said:
  1. avoiding no deal is paramount
  2. securing an extension has become essential
  3. 'the current deal or no deal' must not be the only choice; something that better protects workers, the economy and an open Irish border, commands a parliamentary majority, and is negotiable with the EU
Adam Marshall of the British Chambers of Commerce demands answers and decisions. Might I suggest certainty?

I've seen and heard so many of these statements, it seems No Deal is the demon to be avoided in just about all cases and, whatever individual business owners and managers think and have thought about Brexit itself ("bring it on" versus "just stop it") we've got this far and they don't want to be "political", so the answer has to be "May's deal" not "No deal" - just get it done. The stories about non-disclosure agreements and companies being shunned if they aren't sufficiently gung-ho will come out properly or die away over time.

****

The unifying theme of all this is ignorance. Mr Ashworth described it in his speech, and Adam Afriyie MP demonstrated it on Wednesday night on his dismissive little tweet: "why MPs won’t just leave with a WTO transition beggars belief" which drew a quick response from a passing professor of EU, Human Rights and World Trade Law: "There's no such thing as a 'WTO transition'. It beggars belief that an MP thinks such a thing exists". I don't see Mr Afriyie in BBC Parliament coverage very often. It must be his hard work as "Prime Minister's Trade Envoy to Ghana and Guinea". Or the business interests and independent wealth which enabled him on election to proclaim he would take no expenses.

So many MPs seem to be surprised or even shocked that the prime minister has presented a deal which doesn't tell us what our future relationship with the EU will be. And they seem to have maintained that surprise for months, since the withdrawal agreement was finalised in mid November last year and the Commons was supposed to be ready to vote on it on 11 December, before May ran scared from her first "meaningful vote".

There are many reasons for the absence of a trade deal (expectantly referred to hundreds of times during 2018 by MPs brought in as expert commentators and almost never queried by their media interrogators) from the package which has finally been submitted to the Commons for approval.

The biggest and simplest reason is that there was never going to be a trade deal. The EU's negotiating guidelines, agreed in April 2017, didn't allow for one. They did anticipate "Preliminary and preparatory discussions on a framework for the Union - United Kingdom future relationship" (section IV) but "it was made absolutely clear", as the saying goes, that there would be no negotiation, not just no agreement, on trade and other future UK-EU relationships before what came to be known as "exit day".

Brexit secretary David Davis huffed and puffed and argued that this was unreasonable, not least because the resolution of the Northern Ireland-Ireland border questions should be handled in the context of the future trading arrangements, and promised the "row of the summer" on the issue. There was some merit in this argument, and a strong, stable, confident government which had not just needlessly thrown away its majority might have stuck to its guns.

May, Davis & co capitulated. In plain sight. I could see it, fellow tweeters could see it, the dogs in the street could see it, but some MPs seem to have taken two years to cotton on.

Much of the ignorance is fed cynically by campaigns. Look at the recent scare about "Lisbon 2020", or was it "Lisbon 2022"? Apparently, there are secret parts of the Lisbon Treaty which will remove every country's vetoes, force us all into the euro and the Schengen area despite treaty opt-outs and many other evil things. As Professor Steve Peers points out in his take-down, the weaknesses of the case are obvious as soon as you realise that there are no links to EU documents, "secret" or otherwise.

MPs and MEPs have joined in this viral chain of misinformation. They might be knaves or fools but, as in the case of Esther McVey MP, they do nothing to correct what they have broadcast even when their mistake is demonstrated. The offending tweet might be deleted from the public record eventually, when the damage is done, leaving the smell of knavery all around. And that's the point.

There are many other examples, but one huge but non-existent conspiracy, coupled with one councillor's misapprehension of the workings of the EU should serve to demonstrate the scale of the problem. How can this be happening?

As Richard Ashworth tells us, for 25 years no British government has thought to explain what goes on in the EU, or what it's for. Apart from the now long gone 30-minute slot in Friday's Daily Politics we rarely see British MEPs except those from UKIP (and the rather large number who have fallen out with UKIP but held on to the job). To quote myself: "Funny isn't it, MEPs who do the job we pay them for and actually know something about what the EU is and how it works don't seem to appear in the Westminster bubble media. Unless they're from another EU country and are talking about Brexit of course".

That little thread goes on to refer to work by the Labour leader in the EU Parliament on the "Common Market 2.0" proposal - EFTA/EEA membership plus a customs union with the EU, which was considered in the Commons "indicative votes" process on Wednesday. This kind of input would be useful when considering the proposals on TV or radio but I look and listen in vain.

Instead we hear Lucy Powell MP telling us that this is an "off the shelf" solution and Stephen Kinnock, Nick Boles, Robert Halfon and others proclaiming its simplicity. Unfortunately this "off the shelf" solution doesn't exist. No EFTA/EEA member is in a customs union with the EU. Channel 4 News has found a useful contributor to the debate - Heidi Nordby Lunde, president of Norway's European Movement, is not sure that we in the UK really want (or know) what we would be signing up to, and that our prospective EEA partners might well doubt, after the chaos of the Brexit negotiations, that letting such an "abusive partner" into the house would be a good idea.

  

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Thursday, 14 February 2019

No Deal Means No Brexit


We must keep No Deal on the table, they tell us, or the EU won't take us seriously. If you've ever negotiated anything, they tell us, you have to retain the option to walk away or they'll just wait until you're desperate enough to take whatever crap old deal they want to offer.

Graham Brady, the failed Prince Andrew impersonator who rises to stardom every few years because he claims he has a safe in which he keeps Tory MPs' poison pen letters to their leader, is the most recent purveyor of the secondhand car argument.

"It's like walking away from buying a secondhand car," he argued three weeks ago when he managed a bonus few hours in the limelight by tabling the vacuous "Brady amendment" that was then put together with the ramshackle "Malthouse compromise" to produce something that made lots of Tory MPs ask themselves "Is that really what I voted for?"

****

If you go in ready to buy a car, and you decide the one which looked so attractive through the window is actually not what you wanted, you politely say "No thanks" and you walk away. And what have you lost? Nothing. You go home in the clapped out old banger you arrived in, and go back to surveying the sales sites.

That's not where we are though. That's not what we're doing.  We're in a process where we lose the car we turned up in when the dealer shuts up shop at 6pm, whatever we decide. So if we don't go for anything in the showroom, we're walking home.

There's also the slight problem that the other side considers that the haggling is over. And they think that... because you've agreed a deal with them, and you've shaken hands with the other 27, and you've told them it's great, and you've taken it home where your cabinet has also approved it.

Then you have to face the world again when the Parliament which also has to vote for it, the Parliament you haven't bothered, haven't dared, to keep involved, just tells you to piss off.

****

There is an option which allows you to walk away and lose nothing, drive home happily in the old banger and tell the kids that something better will turn up next week.

It's called revocation.





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Saturday, 9 February 2019

48 days to go - do we want to be alone?


"We'll have up to 40 [free trade agreements] ready for one second after midnight in March 2019," was Laim Fox's pledge to the Conservative party conference in October 2017. So it must be true. Even if he didn't specify that he meant 29 March. And 23:00, since May & co have even capitulated on the time zone - Brexit happens to Brussels time.

But now the Financial Times tells us "UK government has told businesses it cannot guarantee the British economy will be covered by 'most' of the EU’s global network of trade agreements immediately after Brexit - even if parliament approves Theresa May’s divorce deal with Brussels".

The Withdrawal Agreement May has agreed with the 27 other member states includes an undertaking by the EU (in a footnote on page 203) that it will ask its (currently our) trading partners to continue to act as if (= pretend) we are still a member state and therefore covered by all these agreements during the transition period.

I await Fox's statement of which countries will go along with this, and some of those at the briefing reported by the FT say the same. One of them observed "I am particularly worried about small businesses, who may not even know that their trading depends on some of these agreements".

Occident

We're used to Trump's "trade doctrine" that any new trade must reduce the U.S. trade deficit, strengthen manufacturing and boost growth, and we know on some measures the UK has a trade surplus with the US.

Tread carefully.

Before Trump was even inaugurated, his incoming Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross was telling Cyprus (where he'd served as vice-Chairman of the Bank of Cyprus and with which he has some interesting Russian links) to exploit the "God-given opportunity" to steal business from the UK.

The doctrine was expressed in the run-up to renegotiating a NAFTA trade agreement that "triggers renegotiation whenever the US develops a trade deficit with Canada" but not, perhaps, vice versa.

Talking about UK trade, the threat of chlorinated chicken has become a joke, but US lobbyists want rather more than that from any trade deal with the UK. To take a handful of demands from the 30 which Huffington Post listed:

  • Scrap the safety-first approach to food quality and standards
  • Stop people knowing what they're eating is genetically modified
  • Change how the NHS buys drugs
  • Ensure Brits' data can be transferred to foreign countries
  • Allow foreign businesses to sue the British state
  • Legalise dangerous pesticides

Davis and Paterson's expenses, and who paid them

You have to ask what contribution David Davis MP, Owen Paterson MP and Shanker Singham (of Legatum, the Institute of Economic Affairs, then... who knows, as the Charity Commission catches up with him) made to the same case.

But those aren't the only demands coming from the US. Irish foreign minister Simon Coveney was in Washington on Wednesday and received strong backing from "US politicians with affiliations to Ireland" who "wield great influence over US trade policy".

"Peter King, a Republican representative from New York, said it was 'important' that the current unmanned 'soft' border on the island of Ireland be maintained 'if the British want to consider any kind of trade agreement with the United States'." And "Brendan Boyle, a Democratic representative from Pennsylvania on the House ways and means committee, said it was 'hard' to get trade agreements through Congress. He added: 'Trust is important, and if you are about to enter a trade negotiation and you’ve gone back on the backstop and you’ve gone back on the Good Friday Agreement, then that will certainly be remembered'". Ireland has friends on both sides of the Atlantic. Do we still...?

Orient

The EU-Japan Economic Partnership Agreement entered into force on 1 February, building the largest open trade zone in the world, with 635 million people and getting on for a third of the world’s GDP. Apart from trade provisions the agreement sets ambitious standards on sustainable development and includes a specific commitment to the Paris climate agreement.

"Under the pact, Japan will remove tariffs on 94 per cent of all imports from the EU, including 82 per cent of farm and fishery products. For example, the deal scraps Japanese tariffs on gouda and cheddar cheese - which are close to 30 per cent - as well as on wine, which faces duties of 15 per cent on average. Beef and pork exports are also likely to rise. For its part, the EU will eliminate tariffs on 99 per cent of imports from Japan. It will abolish tariffs on Japanese cars and trucks in the eighth year and televisions in the sixth year following the pact's implementation."

The UK is part of this agreement until 23:00 on 29 March 2019. Nobody yet knows what happens after that, but some of the options are:

  • If the Article 50 period is extended, for whatever reason and for whatever period, we remain a member of the EU and a beneficiary of this arrangement during that period.
  • If some version of the current withdrawal agreement is ratified, we enter a transition period and EU trading partners will be asked to treat us as if we are still a full member (see above). According to Faisal Islam's Google translation of a letter from Japanese customs, they assume that everything will stay the same if there is a transition period.
  • From the same letter, if there's no deal, and therefore no transition period, the UK and Japan will deal with each other on WTO Most Favoured Nation terms - the tariffs we used before 1 February 2019. We will have been parties to a preferential trading agreement for less than two months.
  • If the Article 50 notification is revoked, we will continue as a member state of the EU, all this will have been a bad dream, except that people will look at us strangely when leaders meet, and we will not be thought of as the same steadfast, sensible pillar of the world order that we'd like to think we are.
For the future, transition period or not, we will have to do our own deals, and the FT tells us "Tokyo is confident that it can secure better terms from the UK than it did in negotiations with the much larger EU, and is not willing to duplicate the existing treaty precisely in either a bilateral deal or in talks for the UK to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership group". Who's surprised?

Shopping in Myeong-Dong, Seoul.
Photo: Uwe Schwarzbach via a CC-BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence
We have a trade agreement with South Korea as well, at the moment. Jim Pickard of the FT tells us "business sources tell me South Korea is also hoping to use its leverage to extract concessions from the UK over a new trade deal: for example only letting UK count EU industrial parts in "rules of origin" calculations if Seoul can count Chinese parts". Again, who's surprised?

Nobody who keeps up with the LSE blog on Brexit will be surprised. In a post entitled "Can ‘Global Britain’ forge a better trade deal with South Korea? This is why it’s unlikely" we see (I resisted the temptation to include lots of lovely data and analysis):

  1. The UK outside the EU will be a ‘second tier’ player when it comes to negotiating free trade agreements, considerably weaker than the ‘big three’, of the US, the EU, and China;
  2. It will be easier for the UK to sign trade deals with the 53 countries with which the UK already has free trade agreements, via its current EU membership;
  3. One of the countries high on this list will be South Korea, which has a very comprehensive FTA with the EU, covering services and non-tariff barriers, which has already reaped important benefits to both the UK and South Korea;
  4. But, South Korea will be reluctant to replicate the terms of the EU-South Korea FTA for the UK, because it would expect a better deal with the UK than it managed to negotiate with the EU (because the EU has an economy 10 times larger than South Korea, whereas the UK economy is only twice the size of South Korea);
  5. If the UK fails to reach an agreement with South Korea, this would lead to the re-imposition of tariffs on UK-South Korea trade, and would jeopardise the significant services trade that has developed between these two economies; and
  6. Even if South Korea and the UK could agree to replicate the terms of the EU-South Korea agreement, the “rules of origin” in the deal could mean tariffs on many manufactured goods from the UK (such as cars) as a result of the large content of parts from elsewhere in the EU, which would count as made in a “third country” once the UK has left the EU.

And finally

"It’s wonderful to see Liam get his own platform in the digital world,” an aide to the business guru Fox told LCD Views, “and here I was thinking he wasn’t even up to the job of being a shoehorn for someone putting on flip flops. Shows what I know!”

Laim Fox has found his true level as a frequent flyer feature writer for TripAdvisor, we are informed by LCD Views.


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Sunday, 3 February 2019

Alternative alternative arrangements

The withdrawal method

This morning on the Marr Show Sajid Javid called the Commons vote on the Brady amendment "an acceptance of [May's] deal subject to a change, alternative arrangements¹ for the backstop". The plan is to "try and find an alternative arrangement². And Steve Barclay, the Brexit Secretary will be leading on that".

This is a reasonable reading of Graham Brady's vacuous amendment (see Tuesday's Commons Order Paper, top of page 21). In interviews after the vote, Brady suggested "there could be a binding addendum to the withdrawal agreement which puts a time limit on the backstop. This could either stipulate it will end by a certain fixed date, or that it could last for no more than a certain period of time" and possibly "a provision that allows for either side to withdraw from the backstop under certain conditions as a means of breaking the Brexit impasse".

And back to Javid: "The Attorney General, Geoffrey Cox, will be leading on another very important strand of work, which is to see if it’s not an alternative arrangement³ can there be a hard time limit to any backstop, or a proper exit mechanism".

So the Attorney General's job is to look for a time limit to, or an exit clause from, the backstop if the Brexit Secretary fails to find... an alternative arrangement which might be a time limit to, or an exit clause from, the backstop. My waffle meter is twitching.

Javid wasn't done. He then told us "in terms of an alternative arrangement⁴, it can be done. In my own department I’ve got Border Force. And I asked Border Force months ago to advise me, to look at what alternative arrangements⁵ are possible, and they’ve shown me quite clearly you can have no hard border on the island of Ireland and you can use existing technology. It’s perfectly possible. The only thing that’s missing is a bit of goodwill on the EU side".

Leaving aside the poundshop mafia threat in "all we need is a bit of good will", what's he saying here? These alternative arrangements¹²³⁴⁵ really aren't the same thing.

Border Force is "a law enforcement command within the Home Office [which] secure[s] the UK border by carrying out immigration and customs controls for people and goods entering the UK". And they told Javid months ago that this was a non-issue. Apparently.

Has he only just realised the significance of what they told him? Has he not passed the good tidings on to his boss? Because other people have, including various members of the European Research Group and their favourite customs expert Hans Maessen, Brexit adviser at SGS Government and Institutions Services.

I don't discount Mr Maessen's experience, but he has failed to convince the prime minister so far, or indeed Michel Barnier, both of whom you would assume to have the best institutional advice at their beck and call.

But never mind, at PMQs the day after the Brady vote May covered all the bases. She told Jeremy Corbyn she had heard "proposals such as a unilateral exit mechanism or a time limit to the backstop", and "the political declaration already refers to alternative arrangements and raises a number of proposals that can be addressed, such as mutual recognition of trusted trader schemes". She's considering all the alternative alternative arrangements.

The legally binding withdrawal agreement (Protocol on Ireland/Northern Ireland, page 303) refers back to "the Joint Report from the negotiators of the European Union and the United Kingdom Government on progress during phase 1 of negotiations" from December 2017, which "outlines three different scenarios for protecting North-South cooperation and avoiding a hard border," and states "this Protocol is based on the third scenario of maintaining full alignment with those rules of the Union's internal market and the customs union which, now or in the future, support North-South cooperation, the all-island economy and the protection of the 1998 Agreement, to apply unless and until an alternative arrangement implementing another scenario is agreed". That's the backstop, to apply unless and until something better comes along to do the same job.

The non-binding political declaration (Articles 26 and 27) talks of "making use of all available facilitative arrangements and technologies... to consider mutual recognition of trusted traders’ programmes, administrative cooperation in customs matters and mutual assistance, including for the recovery of claims related to taxes and duties, and through the exchange of information to combat customs fraud and other illegal activity... Such facilitative arrangements and technologies will also be considered in developing any alternative arrangements for ensuring the absence of a hard border on the island of Ireland on a permanent footing".

Letting the clock do the work

Not exactly definite is it? Another government could do pretty much what it liked with the political declaration, but it's that "unless and until" in the withdrawal agreement that Brady has to deal with.

May, Javid & co are telling us nothing. We know they don't think we deserve to know anything, but could it actually be because they have nothing to say?


Meanwhile...

I'm reminded by BBC Brexitcast that Craigavon-based Almac, Northern Ireland's biggest pharmaceutical company, has opened a new factory south of the border. Most of the company's business is with the Republic, and there's a risk that products will have to be certified twice, for sale in the EU and outside. The development has been "supported by the Department of Jobs, Enterprise and Innovation through Ireland’s inward investment promotion agency IDA Ireland" and "will be utilised by Almac Pharma Services and Almac Clinical Services, both of which are already registered to operate in the Republic".

And the Border Delivery Group, led by HMRC, has cancelled a briefing meeting with NI business for a third time, because they have been given no political direction on No Deal.

And the head of the Northern Ireland civil service (with no more to go on than a two-page memo from Arlene Foster and the late Martin McGuinness) has warned Westminster and Whitehall that "businesses are going to vote with their feet" because nobody knows how the border is going to operate if there's No Deal.

And finally...

Again from Brexitcast, leaders of EU member states are off to Sharm el Sheikh for a get together with African leaders on 24 February, which seems like a good opportunity to have a special EU Council meeting on the side. But May might need two special council meetings...




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Letter to the Laura Kuenssberg programme - Farage, Musk and "free speech"

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