This week in Brexitland, September 24, 2021
Another week goes by in Brexitland and here are the main stories:
The US trade deal myth finally dies a death
After years of Brexiteers bigging up a trade deal with America as the way to make dumping ourselves out of the largest single market in the world seem a lot less like a terrible idea, and Remainers unconsciously supporting the whole concept by going on and on about chlorinated chicken, even the pretence that a bilateral deal between the US and the UK is remotely possible has finally been laid to rest.
“The Biden administration is not doing free trade deals around the world right now but I’ve got absolutely every confidence that a great deal is there to be done,” the Prime Minister said, and in Boris-speak this is basically saying forget about it, not happening, at least while Biden is in the White House.
Truth is, the failure of a US-UK trade deal emerging has very little to do with Joe Biden, however much certain certain Tories would like to console themselves with that thought. If Trump had won, he might have talked a lot more bullshit about doing a trade deal with the UK - although, not necessarily - but the deal itself would have come no closer to actual reality.
The reason for this is, the US doesn’t do the sort of deals the UK was looking for with them. It’s really that simple. The biggest deal it has is with Canada and Mexico, whatever the downgraded version of NAFTA is called at the moment. Two things should be noted about that deal. One, it is only as comprehensive as it is because the US cares about trade with its nearest neighbours hundreds of times more than it does about trade with other countries farther away. Maybe there’s a lesson in there for the British government, but I wouldn’t count on them getting it.
Two, the deal is fairly rubbish for Canada and Mexico anyhow. America just isn’t that into giving other countries great access to its market. You know why? Many reasons, but let’s just pick the most obvious: it’s a self-sustaining continent unto itself and also happens to be the largest economic and military power in the history of the human race. It hasn’t thought of the UK as being particularly geopolitically significant since it humiliated us with Suez 65 years ago. You can say they’re wrong to think that way, you can think they are right to - what you shouldn’t do is base the entire trade strategy of your country on some deeply misguided view of what the Americans think about you.
Petrol rationing
The decision for major petrol providers to start rationing fuel is the main story of the week, bar none. The issue here is clear: there isn’t a shortage of petrol, just the drivers to move it around the country. This is actually just the latest iteration of the lorry driver shortage problem. BP have even said directly that this is all about “delays in the supply change which has been impact by the industry-wide driver shortages across the UK”.
Some will say the shortage of lorry drivers isn’t primarily a Brexit issue. But here’s what I’ll say to that: if Brexit hadn’t happened, would we really have this problem? Further, why is it that this is affecting Britain and not continental Europe in the same way? Even Northern Ireland is far less affected than Britain. If we still had freedom of movement, we wouldn’t be in this situation - you could put up pay for drivers and they’d come running. Pay rises for lorry drivers is what’s happening anyhow, the problem being, we don’t have enough people who can in fact drive a lorry domestically as it stands. We can train people up, but that takes time and the point is, we have an immediate problem. Therefore, to say that this isn’t a problem caused by Brexit just seems to be avoiding the root cause of it all.
Playing hardball
One of the more annoying myths around Brexit that persists is that in order to strike a deal with the EU, Johnson and Frost played “hardball’. They eschewed the supposed soft, friendly tactics of May and told those Eurocrats what the deal was going to be, no two ways about it. And this not only worked, it has set the stage for the UK government to continue this “hardball” playing with the EU in future.
This is completely untrue. For one, May tried being tough with the EU in all sorts of ways, none of which worked. Johnson decided when he became prime minister that he needed a withdrawal agreement quickly and then figured out that the only way that was going to happen was to agree to a customs border down the Irish Sea. This is the very opposite of playing hardball - it is caving in to the EU completely and without a fuss. As for the trade deal that was struck a little over a year later, Johnson tried to be obstinate with the EU for most of that time before essentially caving in on almost everything to get a last second deal. His “hardball” playing didn’t work at all in any practical sense, although I think getting the deal at the last second was a work of political genius on Johnson’s part, seeing as how he got both Starmer and Farage to fall in line. But that still didn’t validate the “hardball” idea in terms of actually getting the EU to concede anything of value.
Now we’re told that Frost’s dangling of Article 16 as a weapon is playing “hardball” and will get the EU to see the UK means business. Only, this again hasn’t worked at all as a tactic; the EU have conceded nothing on the Northern Irish protocol. The only way this whole thing works in any sense is that certain newspapers lap it up as proof that the current government is fighting the good fight. Really, it’s just a desperate attempt to keep the “we hold all the cards” myth alive for as long as possible.
Playing “hardball” with the EU has got the UK precisely nowhere across five years of this being a supposedly effective strategy. Yet until certain pro-Brexit portions of the media begin to demand actual results, this story will continue to be spun.
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