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Norway-Plus

Will Brexit High Noon be settled by a Shootout, or a Nod-and-Wink?

23rd February 2019 by newtjoh

The UK will exit the EU on the 29 March by legal default without a deal (No deal), unless the Commons agrees on one, or a combination, of the following five options.

1. May deal revised by Brady amendment
The Commons by a margin of 16 votes on the 29 January mandated the Prime Minister (PM) to seek ‘alternative arrangements’ to the Northern Ireland (NI) backstop, included in the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) she had negotiated and agreed with the EU back in November.

Only a fortnight earlier MPs had rejected that WA and its accompanying Political Declaration (PD) – The May deal– by a record 230 votes.

Despite the PM’s previous implacable insistence that her deal – backstop included – was the best and only one on offer, her acceptance of the Brady amendment was not totally unexpected.

It had already become clear that May would to continue to court support from the hard-Brexiteer (HB) faction of her party by promising to go back to Brussels to get concessions on that backstop.

She seems to have calculated – on the advice apparently of her husband, Philip, and in accord with her Chief Whip, Julian Smith – that seeking broader cross-party support for a softer Brexit, as was preferred by her chief of staff, Gavin Barwell, would have split her party more certainly and quickly.

She needed something to take back to Brussels with parliamentary backing. Essentially, however, the can was kicked down the road yet again. The notion that the PM could bring back to the Commons a revised deal that eliminated or at least time-limited the backstop in a legally certain way was illusory from the onset.

Alternative ways to prevent a hard border in Ireland, such as the technological fixes that the July 2018 Brexit White Paper mooted are not feasibly available, at least within the foreseeable future.

As EU’s deputy Brexit negotiator, Sabine Weyand, put it pithily earlier in February, they simply don’t exist. A time-limited backstop, in turn, is a contradiction in terms.

It simply is not in the interests of the EU, either strategically or tactically, to re-open the WA.

Strategically, it would lose Brussels the agenda-setting control it has exercised over the negotiation process. The UK could press for the adoption of alternative trading arrangements of its own choosing sooner, rather than later (outside a common EU customs territory).

Such premature arrangements could either cause the return of a hard border within Ireland, or through smuggling and the back-door dumping of goods through an open (NI) back door, undermine the EU’s own common customs territory and the single market(SM).

Tactically, the EU possesses no incentive to alter its red lines, at least until the last possible moment, to avoid No deal.

Many HB European Reform Group (ERG) MP’s are wedded to a No deal exit. They voted on tactical grounds for May to do their bidding while the No deal cliff edge becomes ever-closer.

Their – always lent and conditional – support will be withdrawn in the absence of a demonstrable capitulation by the EU to their demands. Given that, any concessions offered by the EU to May to placate them would prove futile and probably counter-productive in outcome: taken by ERG members as a willingness to bend.

Yet a No deal UK exit would itself activate the risk of the re-imposition of a hard border within the island of Ireland – the outcome that the backstop is designed precisely to prevent.

For that reason, Brussels has shown some willingness to offer May something ranging from a letter(s) of comfort to a codicil or supplementary protocol to the main body of the WA, as indicated in the 24 January Letters of Presidents Tusk and Juncker to Prime Minister May<

Their content, subject to sympathetic interpretation, could allow May to claim that the backstop would be ended with reference to some defined process, providing her ERG faction some residual assurance that it would not be permanent.

Such assurances will almost certainly call upon  the beholder to make  a semantic differentiation of temporary and indefinite,  open to future interpretive dispute. Subordinate to the main legal body of the WA , such a protocol or codicil will not be legally certain, but will rather rely on the good will of both parties, as was the case previously.

2. Extension of Article 50 agreed or imposed by Parliament.

The essential dilemma that the PM continues to face is that tilting towards a Brexit soft enough to attract cross party support will split her party, while relying on ERG support to secure a parliamentary majority is a chimera.

Boxed-in a corner of partly her own making, her forlorn hope is that by running the clock down close enough to the 29 March exit date will frighten enough hard-Brexiteers to pass her deal, with or without a last-minute EU concession on the NI backstop.

The stick that she apparently thinks that she can hit them with is that if they do not, an extended, rather than an operational, extension to Article 50, on the EU’s terms as long as one year, will follow.

The Commons would then increasingly likely vote for a softer Brexit, or, if it remained deadlocked, as the only last option left on the table, apart from voting to revoke Article 50 or for a general election, or for a People’s Vote (PV) that could reverse Brexit.

Such a strategy was always an inordinately dangerous, uncertain, and risky one, both economically and politically. That Parliament would allow such brinkmanship with so much at stake, beggars reasoned belief.

Yvette Cooper’s amendment to set out a statutory process for MP’s to require the government to seek an Article 50 extension from Brussels will be re-tabled on the 27 February, this time with Sir Oliver Letwin, a Conservative ‘one nation’ grandee appealing to its middle ground.

A similar amendment fell on the 29 January. This was largely because 14 Labour MP’s, plus the unwhipped Frank Field and Kelvin Hopkins, voted against it, while 12 abstained, including eight members of the current Corbyn-led shadow cabinet: Tracy Brabin, Judith Cummins, Gloria de Piero, Yvonne Fovargue, Mike Kane, Emma Lewell-Buck, Jim McMahon, and Melanie Onn. A full voting inventory is provided here.

Another month has elapsed since then. Barely a month is now left before a default No deal proceeds by default. This time, therefore, the Cooper amendment is more likely to attract increased support from ‘agnostic’ Conservative MP’s who desire Brexit to be delivered through an orderly negotiated deal without further delay.

Consistent with that, the convenors of the Brexit Delivery Group, Simon Hart and Andrew Percy, wrote on 21 February to Julian Smith, the Chief Whip, warning them that its members were inclined to vote in favour of the Cooper amendment to avoid No deal by extending Article 50. If their 50-odd members support the Cooper-Letwin amendment it would likely pass on the back of majority Labour support.

Even more significantly, Remainer Ministers, have put pressure on the PM to rule out No deal before 27 February, some apparently threatening resignation. This weekend three cabinet heavyweights, Amber Rudd, Greg Clark, and David Gauke, expressed, in clear and unambiguous terms, their support for an Article 50 extension.

Others, including the chancellor, Philip Hammond, and the PM’s and hitherto steadfastly loyal deputy, David Lidlington, are probably keeping their powder dry, at least until next month.

If May still does not concede an Article 50 extension, they might well activate that threat, deciding that the time for them to finally bark had come, and by supporting the amendment help to defeat the government they had just left. Such an act of desperation would be to the almost certain likely detriment to their future political careers, which, of course, does raise a question mark over its likely scale and significance.

But to head it off and to prevent a split that potentially could even prove more portentous than that involving the ERG, May could well bow to the inevitable and rule out No deal. A short extension might even suit her as that would tend to concentrate ERG minds on the risks of continuing to reject her deal.

But it is also possible that May will try to persuade her Remainer Ministers and MP’s to give her until 12 March to come back to the Commons with a revised proposal subject then to a meaningful vote: one last kick of the can, before the day of reckoning, when Parliament finally has to decide whether to take control or not of the Brexit process to prevent No deal, finally comes.

3. Second referendum or PV
MP’s are riven into factions, each banking on a result – whether that is No deal, Norway-plus, or a PV – coming to pass as ‘the last one standing’ before the No deal curtain comes down, rather in a bar-room brawl fashion.

Two large segments of MP’s within the Conservative and Labour Party’s demand something that most MPs within the Commons generally, do not want: on the Conservative side, a No Deal exit; and, on the Labour side, a PV.

Without compromise from a substantive number within either or both groups, any alternative to No deal cannot command a stable majority within the Commons.

Apart from only a handful of ‘hard’ Remainers, of which three, Anne Sourby, Sarah Wollaston, and Heidi Allen, have already defected to The Independent Group (TIG) of MPs, most Conservative MM’s oppose a PV.

A larger group of Labour Remainer MP’s do support it as providing a channel to cancel, rather than mitigate, Brexit. The original seven party defectors to TIG, cited Jeremy Corbyn’s failure to support a PV as a catalyst for their decision, accusing him of enabling Brexit, contrary to the expressed wishes of most party members and voters.

Further such defections could follow, if an amendment by Hove MP, Peter Kyle, is not supported and whipped as official party policy. This, intriguingly and tantalizingly, trades acquiescence to May deal for the government allowing a second referendum choice between it and Remain.

But May could not accept it without splitting her party. It appears to be designed to put pressure on Corbyn to accept the principle of a PV, sooner, rather than later.

This website has clearly set out the The Dangers of a Second Referendum, and understands the reluctance of Corbyn and many Remainers including Yvette Cooper – to embrace it.

It very likely would suit Corbyn, and many in the shadow cabinet, for the May deal to pass as the result of Labour abstentions – witness the lack of disciplinary action taken against the eight shadow cabinet ministers who defied the Labour whip to abstain on the 29 January Cooper amendment vote.

Labour could then focus on its domestic transformative agenda, while still blaming any adverse economic consequences on a Tory Brexit.

But if Parliament continues deadlocked, a PV could become the only (but elongated, indeterminate, and quite possibly counter-productive) way to move the log-jam.

An element of chicken and egg, however, is present. A primary reason why there is no parliamentary consensus for an alternative to No deal is the refusal of the proponents of a PV to endorse such an alternative: a going for broke mindset, mirroring that of the ERG on the other pole of the Brexit spectrum.

And Parliament could well still remain deadlocked, this time on determining the, and the order of, the questions, included in the PV ballot paper.

4. Alternative Norway-plus
Norway-plus, involving both an equivalent Customs Union (CU) and continuing UK membership of the Single market (SM), provides the closest possible fit to Labour’s previous six tests, ostensibly designed to secure the same benefits currently obtained by EU membership.

By allowing continuing frictionless trade in goods along with the minimisation of non-tariff barriers for services between the UK and EU, it would best mitigate the economic damage of leaving both long- and short-term, lifting the economic deadweight of uncertainty that currently is depressing business sentiments, investment, and the wider economy. It could be negotiated within the existing WA and transition period timetable.

And, as pointed out in a A Week in December , Norway-plus would meet the requirements of the overarching December 2017 NI backstop, rendering the WA backstop, with its separate regulatory treatment of NI, redundant.

But as also explained, it is unlikely to secure a majority in this Parliament – at least, a sustainable whipped one, in the event that the Commons was allowed to vote on alternatives to May deal.

The Labour leadership can be expected to shy away from whipping its MPs to support Norway-plus, fearing that MPs, at both ends of the party Remainer PV and Brexiteer spectrum, would rebel.

Its official adoption could, and crucially, also allow May to paint Labour as the party of Brexit-in-name-only (Brino) driving a potential parliamentary and electoral wedge between the party’s divergent Brexit constituencies.

Norway-plus, is more likely to muster an unwhipped majority; more so, if MPs had already voted to reject a PV.

Yet, May, as PM, then would be unwilling to progress Norway-plus as head of the government. Not just because of her fixation on migration and ending freedom of movement, but because she could not carry her own party in negotiating it with Brussels.

That could possibly change if she decided to resign, but her potential replacements, even if they willing to tack towards it – would also face heavy internal ERG and party resistance.

A new government with Hunt-Javid-Gove-Rudd at its centre of gravity might at a push take the plunge, but probably only by presenting the option again as a temporary rather than permanent arrangement.

Another general election would appear increasingly unavoidable. If that did come to pass, Labour’s Brexit manifesto stance is likely to be that it would negotiate with Brussels a new deal, broadly in line with its six tests.

If a majority Labour government was subsequently elected, something very close to Norway-plus is most likely what its negotiators would come back from Brussels with to ask the new Parliament to approve.

The burning issue as to whether – and in what form – that agreement should be ratified in a fresh referendum would still need to be settled, if that had not been defined in a fresh 2019 party Brexit manifesto.

5. Revised May deal merging into Jersey

The 6 February Corbyn letter to the PM demanded that the government should change its negotiating red lines within the PD.

This was with reference to five ‘negotiating objectives’ to be enshrined in law before the UK leaves the EU ‘to provide certainty for businesses and a clear framework for our future relationship’, including:

• a permanent and equivalent CU involving UK adherence to the EU customs code, the common external tariff, and commercial policy – subject to the UK having some ‘say’ in the detail of future trade deals; and continuing UK:
• ‘close alignment’ with the Single Market (SM); and,
• ‘dynamic alignment’ with EU worker, environmental, and consumer rights and protections, ensuring that such UK standards, as a minimum, keep pace with evolving standards across Europe, while providing scope for the UK to ‘lead the way’.

The letter fell short, however, of demanding full and continuing UK dynamic alignment with SM rules for goods. That, as a minimum, if full frictionless trade in goods between the UK and EU is to be maintained, would have to be combined with the equivalent CU that it did set out. The combination defines the Jersey option.

Its adoption, if sought within a revised PD, would then depend upon the EU further softening its core red-line on the indivisibility of the four SM freedoms. A very big ask.

Yet, to avoid a No deal exit that would itself would risk the re-imposition of a hard NI border, the EU could possibly bend at the last negotiating moment. It could even offer concessions, providing some prospect an independent UK trade and migration policy sometime in the future. That is far from certain, however.

Downsides of the option for the UK, in any case, include the economic cost of the loss of EU market access for services.

Norway-plus would also achieve frictionless trade in goods, much more surely and seamlessly.

More pertinently at a domestic political level, the adoption of full Jersey would require May, not only to merge with the official Labour Party position on the CU, but to dynamically align with EU regulations concerning goods, splitting her party. Is official adoption does not, accordingly, appear to be a runner, at this stage.

More likely is some government tweaking towards it in substance, if not stated intention. A longer transition period could be agreed that with an Article 50 extension extending beyond a May 2022 election date; keeping the UK, in effect, within a CU and SM until then.

A revised Political Declaration (PD) could also offer some genuflection to Labour’s position, particularly with dynamic alignment on standards.

The PM will need to delimit the precise offer required get enough added Labour abstentions and Conservative votes to offset the official Labour, Scottish Nationalist, and TIG opposition, which will joined by ERG hardcore rebels, numbering in all likelihood between 30-80.

If their number settles closer to 30, she could have a chance. The Private membership lists of the different ‘tribes’ of the Conservative Party, recently obtained by the Financial Times, suggests that if the existing Conservative payroll and existing Brexit group are joined by unaffiliated MP’s, such as Oliver Letwin, the government would harness just short of 220, requiring it still to capture a substantial mix of ERG returnees to the government fold with Labour votes and abstentions.

Even if a majority reliant on cross-party unwhipped votes is secured by a whisper, it would be an unstable one to base the piloting of the Withdrawal Bill and associated legislation through Parliament.

The WA backstop with its separate regulatory treatment of NI would also continue to hang over subsequent negotiations with the EU as a Sword of Damocles, perhaps, ruling out the DUP support.

It is, accordingly, quite possible that if a bare parliamentary majority was obtained for such a tweaked May deal, it could then be offered for ratification either through a general election or a yes/no binary referendum choice.

But if that principle was conceded, pressure would be intense for it to include Remain and No deal options.

Is there a way out?

With Brexit, the only certainty is uncertainty. The 60’s puppet show, Thunderbirds, always began with the clarion call that ‘anything can happen in the next half hour’: true for Brexit also, especially if the period is extended a bit.

Most MPs believe that a disorderly No deal should be avoided, but no majority exists as to how.

At one pole, hard-Brexiteers committed to what to they consider is a ‘clean’ No deal Brexit, are concentrated into the ERG faction within the governing party.

At the other, a similar number of hard-Remainers, wedded to a PV reversing Brexit altogether, are concentrated within the main Labour opposition.

Some MP’s representing often marginal constituencies, concentrated in the North and Midlands, that voted to leave, often by a large margin, will vote against any official backtracking on the 2017 manifesto commitment to respect the 2016 decision.

This polarisation within the parties between No deal and a PV has prevented a convergence towards a soft Brexit compromise that could secure a stable parliamentary majority, sustained by cross-party whipping.

The PM chose not to court cross-party support out of the real fear that would split her party; the Labour opposition, in turn, has resisted actually promoting a soft Brexit alternative to the government position that could best meet its six set tests, for fear that it would be accused both of supporting Brino – with continued EU control over UK migration and trade policy – and of betraying the 48% of who voted to stay, upsetting two key electoral constituencies that it will rely upon to secure power.

Both parties agreed to trigger Article 50 and to ‘respect the decision of the electorate to Leave’ in the 2016 referendum.

Subsequently neither Front bench has been honest about the trade- offs involved between taking ‘back control’ and protecting future UK economic prospects. A failure not unrelated to the fact that many of their respective supporters voted to leave out of ‘gut’ or ‘populist’ instinct, not ‘rational’ economic calculation.

Certainly, the parliamentary and mainstream media debate has seldom focused on evidential realities. The retention of an open border in Ireland, without the separate regulatory treatment of NI, requires the UK to continue within an equivalent CU with the EU combined with some measure of continuing dynamic regulatory alignment for the currently foreseeable future that cannot be time-limited.

Or the limited – at best – prospect of the UK negotiating free trade deals with the rest-of-the world could compensate for the loss of frictionless trade with its nearest trading partners, especially within a globalized world where regionally-based trading bloc agreements  have become predominant.

That failure contributes to continuing deadlock.

This spring, a deal tweaked towards a continuing CU and regulatory alignment in substance, if not stated intention, if combined with a limited Article 50 extension to May, seems to provide the politically most feasible route to secure at least an unwhipped parliamentary majority for a revised PD to be taken back to Brussels for negotiation linked to some tinkering of the wording concerning the NI backstop.

If that majority proved too unstable for the withdrawal legislation to be piloted through Parliament, the cliff edge would return. If Article 50 had to be extended again, a second referendum with all of its attendant dangers as well as opportunities, would appear inevitable.

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Filed Under: Brexit Tagged With: May deal, Norway-Plus, Second referendum

A Week in December

18th December 2018 by newtjoh

On Monday 10th December, cabinet ministers confirmed on breakfast-time radio that the scheduled Commons ‘meaningful vote’ on the Draft Withdrawal Agreement  (WA) would proceed the next day.

By lunchtime that vote had been pulled. This was to prevent its defeat on the floor of the Commons by a large enough margin to topple the Prime Minister (PM).

By Wednesday evening, May had faced and won a confidence vote in her leadership, albeit with 117 of 317 of her own MPs voting against her.

By Friday, her attempt to persuade EU leaders to provide sufficient comfort to the Ulster Democratic Unionist (DUP) members and the 80-100 Conservative hard-Brexiteers and European Research Group (ERG) MP’s within her own party to time-limit the Northern Ireland (NI) backstop provisions within the WA, or, at least set out a route map with legal standing as to how it could be escaped, had demonstrably failed, notwithstanding some vague assurances that its activation was not desired and that ‘further clarifications’ could follow.

On Monday 17 December, the PM confirmed that the meaningful vote will take place in the week of January 14. Debates on her deal would restart in the week of January 7, when MP’s return from their Christmas break.

Her 2018 December Summit line was reiterated: political and legal assurances on the WA Northern Ireland (NI)backstop line would be sought from Brussels.

The reasons why the WA backstop is futile and misconceived and contrary to the overarching NI backstop that she agreed to in December 2017 are set out and discussed below.

Her game plan still appears to go to the wire to put pressure on MP’s of both parties that simply want done with Brexit, avoiding both a second referendum and a No deal departure.

After the inevitable defeat in parliament, the government will have 21 days to report back as to how it intends to proceed, providing opportunities for MP’s to debate, put forward, and perhaps even secure majority support for one of the alternative options, discussed earlier. That period will end in mid-February.

That process is likely to be interrupted by an opposition no confidence vote in the government. Jeremy Corbyn will table a vote of no confidence in the PM today (Tuesday 18th December), but whether it will take place is uncertain.

Understanding the NI Backstop
This was defined in Section 49 the UK-EU December 2017 Joint Agreed Report on the Phase 1 Negotiation process, as follows.

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’

It is that commitment in the last paragraph of that provides an overarching NI backstop.

Coupled with the government’s (and widely supported) blood-red line ruling out an Irish Sea regulatory border and/or specially agreed other arrangements for NI, that NI backstop meant and continues to mean, in effect, that the UK would need to: (i) stay in an equivalent CU with the EU; and, (ii), cede continuing regulatory alignment with the EU for goods, at the very minimum, for the foreseeable future.

As explained in The May Agreement, the WA backstop, if activated, would not allow frictionless trade between the EU and UK to continue. The WA relies instead on the operation of a separate regulatory treatment regime for NI.

For that reason alone, it is difficult to discern how it could never be accepted by parliament without jettisoning the overarching principle of the December 2017 NI backstop.

Any reliance that a future trade deal will render that WA backstop unnecessary is a mirage.

Close to unanimous agreement exists among informed commentators that the time-frame for putting in place an alternative trade deal would extend far beyond 2020. Recent EU trade negotiations have taken far longer to negotiate and ratify. The Canadian Free Trade Agreement (CETA) took over six years.

To expect the UK to conclude an agreement with the EU, more comprehensive and deep than the Canadian one, in less than two years is widely unrealistic.

And that is after taking on board heroic assumptions that all the negotiation stars are all aligned to produce a treaty within, to all intents and purposes, 18 months.

It then has to be approved by the EU national and, as required, by some regional parliaments, such as Wallonia in Belgium, without, as the UK Trade Observatory recently put out, any quibble and delay.That proved not to be the case with both the recent EU Canada and Ukraine agreements.

Cutting to the chase, a future UK agreement is not going to finalized and approved soon enough to render the WA backstop, or an extended transition, unnecessary. Full stop. To assume otherwise is either dishonest or self-delusional.

Besides it remains unclear how a replacement Canada-style agreement could ever avoid the re-imposition of a hard border within Ireland. Technological fixes that could allow the UK to levy differential tariffs on imports depending on their ultimate destination will not come to the rescue in the foreseeable future, if ever.

In that light, Parliament’s unanimous December 2018 Brexit Select Committee report re-affirmed that a Canada-style agreement with the EU would not, on its own, ensure the type of friction-free trade with the EU that many UK companies with just-in-time manufacturing supply chains need, concluding that it is not a viable option, insofar that:

‘the commitment to avoiding a hard border enshrined in the Withdrawal Agreement will continue to shape the future relationship between the UK and the EU because it will not be possible for the UK to decide on customs and regulatory arrangements which negate that commitment’.

A time-limited NI backstop is a contradiction in terms, therefore, and can never be accepted by the EU in a legally tangible form within the current or any amended WA..

What should happen next?

The Hard-Brexiteers who voted no confidence in the PM on Tuesday, in any case, will not be persuaded to support the WA. They seek instead a disorderly no deal exit occurring by default, regardless of its impact.

The WA can now only pass Parliament with some measure of Labour support. The PM to secure it will need to tilt at the very least the Revised Political Declaration  (PD) towards a more permanent Customs Union (CU) and greater on-going regulatory alignment with Single Market (SM) rules.

But she continues to be boxed-in by the malign influence on the government that the hard-Brexiteers can exercise. This is through their power to determine the parliamentary selection of the two candidates to be submitted to the hard-Brexit-leaning rump party membership for the next Conservative Party leadership contest.

If either No deal or a second referendum is to be avoided, she must break out of that box and find a way to secure cross-party support for an option acceptable to the majority in parliament, with or without Labour whipped support, that will preserve an open border within Ireland.

Her difficulty is that could risk the break-up of the Conservative party in parliament, rather like the Liberals did over Irish Home Rule in the nineteenth century.

But, if she doesn’t, Tory Remainers are quite likely to jump ship at the prospect of a rigid, and, ultimately, an unelectable government beholden to the hard-Brexiteers and their accompanying neo-liberal economic and social policy agenda.

It did not help that some EU leaders were indicating post-December summit that they would still like to give Mrs May some comfort concerning the application of the WA backstop to help her to secure a parliamentary majority. That is a forlorn hope that will encourage May to extend the impasse or the agony, rather than to cut her losses and strive to strike a deal with MP’s.

The Labour front bench needs now to act in the national interest and hold Mrs May to account properly by highlighting her capture by – in the words of her own chancellor – extremist hard-Brexiteers, who are wedded to a no deal exit that would cause at very least considerable short-and longer-term damage to the economy, household incomes, and the public finances, undermine and even destroy the foundations of the Good Friday Agreement, before ushering-in a neo-liberal race to the bottom inducing greater inequality in market incomes amid further welfare state retrenchment.

May messed up by going back to Brussels in a self-defeating exercise to secure concessions bending to that destructive faction, living the lie that an alternative deep and comprehensive trade deal consistent with her December 2017 NI backstop commitment is negotiable with the EU within a time-limited period.

The only way, indeed, that a border within the island of Ireland and separate treatment of NI to the rest of the UK can be avoided and the industry supply chains integral to the protection of UK manufacturing industry and employment can be protected and fostered is by the maintenance of frictionless trade between the entire UK and EU.

That, in turn, as this website has consistently argued, requires an equivalent CU with no rules of origin checks along with continuing UK regulatory alignment with SM rules for goods  – at least until institutional and technological means can be identified and implemented that will allow the UK to levy differential tariffs on imports, depending on origin and destination.

The real impact of Brexit and the actual choices that are available continue to be obscured in the mainstream media Brexit debate, reflecting not only the government’s, but also Labour’s failure to demonstrate through forensic precision and focus that:

  • The current WA backstop, whether time-limited or not, is incompatible with the December 2017 overarching NI backstop;
  •  A comprehensive and deep economic partnership with the EU cannot be achieved in the short-to-medium term through the agreement of a Canada-style FTA;
  •  The future benefits of any future UK trade deals with the ROW will be miniscule compared to the economic damage inflicted by loss of frictionless trade with the EU;
  •  Frictionless trade, in turn, depends upon the maintenance of an equivalent CU with no rules of origin checks and continuing UK regulatory alignment with SM rules for goods into the foreseeable future.

The time for tactical posturing is over if either no deal or a divisive and, for the reasons discussed  in The Dangers of a Second Referendum quite possibly destructive second referendum, are to both avoided.

The Labour front bench needs to be up-front and hammer home each of the points above – evidenced by the government’s own published documents and supported by the mass of independent expert opinion – not only in the national interest, but for its own wider electoral and strategic political purposes.

Each potentially commands a majority in parliament, and could be subscribed to by at least a significant minority in the cabinet.

Informed political and media focus on them will help to drive a wedge between the sensible majority in parliament and the hardline ERG faction, who continue to peddle their no deal exit vision by falsehood and misrepresentation – for example, it would be feasible for the UK to unilaterally declare tariff-and quota-free access to EU imports.

Such a wedge would assist the government to tilt towards the Labour position and at least increase the likelihood of an agreement acceptable to the parliamentary majority being agreed that could then be taken back to Brussels.

It would also help to define the dividing lines for any second referendum process in the event that transpired as the only alternative to no deal, and would begin to set them also for the next general election, whenever that happens.

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Filed Under: Brexit Tagged With: Jersey option, Labour Party, Norway-Plus, Second referendum

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