This week in Brexitland, November 12, 2021
The joys of Article 16 posturing continue
One of the things that Brexit has bestowed upon the nation, strangely enough, is a much greater awareness of the articles that exist within EU related documents. Article 50 was all the rage for many years. These days, it’s Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, which, because there seems to be a great deal of confusion about what is a simple point, I will remind everyone reading this is contained within the Withdrawal Agreement and is not separate from it. This is a common error a lot of Brexiteers make, and I feel like the conversation around our post-Brexit world would be much easier if everyone who supported Leave was forced to google “UK EU withdrawal agreement”, download the WA from the first link that would appear and then just scrawl through the document for five minutes.
The UK government and Lord Frost in particular have been making a great deal of noise over the past few weeks, rising to a crescendo a few days ago, about triggering Article 16. To be clear, what invoking Article 16 allows one of the parties to the agreement to do is temporarily, unilaterally suspend portions of the NI Protocol for a specific and time-limited purpose. It is not, and this needs to be repeated again and again and again, a way to get out of the NI Protocol altogether. Article 16 is very explicit on this point.
There are ways out of the NI Protocol for the UK. The British government can, of course, just say they aren’t going to abide by the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement, including the NI Protocol, but they aren’t keen to do that, for what are obvious reasons. It’s a bit too flying in the face of international rules, even for this lot. Instead, they think threatening to us Article 16 with no specific purpose in mind is clever somehow. It isn’t. It is woefully moronic.
It even looked for a moment like they would actually go through with it all, until of course the US heavies issued a mini-Suez on them, telling them America wasn’t going to be happy if the UK went through with any Article 16 shenanigans and furthermore, would back the EU in any dispute. After that took place, our beloved government found itself at something of an impasse. Invoking Article 16 would solve nothing and most likely lead to either a full suspension of the EU-UK Trade Cooperation Agreement (no deal becomes a reality all of a sudden) or a de facto suspension of it comes into play, with the French doing things like checking every lorry. This would ruin all the government’s economy plans. As an added bonus, it would make the relationship with America even worse than it already is and the international reputation of the United Kingdom would go down a whole other notch.
But the alternative isn’t any better for Johnson. Rumours abound that the prime minister told the few Tory MPs who bothered to actually read the NI Protocol before it was enacted and smelled a rat that, don’t worry, we’ll wriggle out of it later, lads. In the cold light of day, that looks to be impossible. His whole premiership is built on fights with the EU where there is a least the pretence that the UK can win. This episode makes one wonder how the hell that can be maintained for much longer, even amongst the faithful.
Sunak and his post-Brexit financial rules for the City
The chancellor said some stuff this week about what the City would be like post-Brexit, now that we can ‘make our own rules’. This should have been interesting and much bigger news given financial services wasn’t part of the TCA whatsoever, leading people who care about this sort of thing to wonder what happens to the City post-Brexit. It wasn’t bigger news because most of what Sunak had to say on the subject was goobledygook. Just a lot of buzz words about ‘competitiveness’ that communicated one thing to me: the government hasn’t worked out what to do with the City yet. I mean, at all. And it probably will never get there. Events will unfold around them, dictating what happens to the UK financial sector.
Part of the lure of Brexit for the Thatcherites was the idea that the City could be ‘let off its leash’; no longer ‘encumbered’ by EU membership, the financial sector would be free to grow in some never specified way. It’s part of the same myth this group of people maintain about ‘regulation holding us back’, as if there were a handful of EU Directives we could get rid of and then billions of pounds would accrue to the UK economy as a result. In case you were wondering, this is complete bollocks.
It’s Brexit in miniature - there is supposed to be this big upside, but now that the revolution has taken place, we can’t seem to find it anywhere. It must be there, though, because Marx (sorry, Dan Hannan) told it was there and he can’t have been wrong. We must find the upside! Rishi, just give another speech about ‘vision’ and an ‘agile and dynamic approach’ while we have another look for it. Dominic Cummings used to talk about Brexit as being ‘Leninist’. If only the Thatcherites had really listened to him.
Brexit and care homes
A small article on the BBC website this week came with the headline, “Somerset care home boss blames Brexit for staff shortage”. It’s an examination about how loss of Freedom of Movement has badly impacted staffing at care homes around the country, the simple reason being that a large chunk of the people who used to work at them were EU citizens from abroad, and Brexit kind of scuttled all that.
This is a great example of the problems inherent in the Brexiteer theory that goes, “Freedom of Movement was bad because we lost control over immigration. We can take back control and let in only the people we need”. Except, what this is a lot like is the argument that goes, “A capitalist society means we lose control over where the economy goes. By having a planned economy, we can create jobs for everyone who needs them.” Freedom of Movement allowed the market to dictate how these sorts of jobs were filled. Brexit means that we’re now trying to get the government to decide which sectors need people from abroad and which do not. You would think Thatcherites would hate this idea, but no, they think it’s great that the government gets way more say in how these things work, even when it is clear that it’s a bad idea. In other words, when there is a prime example of the market working best, even in untraditional ways, the Brexiteers reject it, because Brexit is always more important than any other consideration.
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