Offshoring 'national' spirit

Tweet

Taking a walk in the sun in Calais over the weekend, I saw one of P&O’s ferries coming in to dock.  I was aware, of course, of the story that they were reflagging their ships in Cyprus as a result of Brexit uncertainty.  But actually seeing this particular ship with its new home port proudly painted under its name somehow summed up the reality of Brexit in a single image.  It now reads:

Spirit of Britain

Limassol

A British company registering a ship called the Spirit of Britain abroad – in a place it’s never been and is unlikely ever to go – struck me as an interesting metaphor for where the Anglo-British not-nationalists-at-all have taken us.

Even a century wouldn't be long enough

Tweet

Just for once, I agree with Theresa May about something.  Talking about a potential delay to Brexit over the weekend, she said that delaying the UK’s departure by a couple of months would do nothing to resolve the current impasse over the backstop arrangements.  She’s absolutely right on that; the problem with the backstop isn’t a lack of time, it’s a combination of her own red lines, the agreement to keep an open border across Ireland, and the inability of the Prime Minister or anyone else to come up with alternative arrangements which can make two incompatible aims compatible.

In that context, the suggestion apparently doing the rounds in the EU – of a two-year extension to the Brexit end date – is an entirely logical and rational proposal (which is probably part of what makes it so unpalatable to the Brexiteers).  It has been clear from the outset that the only way to avoid using the backstop is to negotiate a future relationship which doesn’t require it, and a two-month extension is wholly inadequate to negotiate that.  Even two years looks tight to me, but if there were to be a different Prime Minister, a rubbing out of a few red lines, and general good will all round, then it might well be possible to negotiate a deal on the future relationship which does not require the use of the backstop.

So why are the Brexiteers not at all enthusiastic?  The stated excuse is a fear that the situation drags on even longer than that, or becomes permanent, in effect cancelling Brexit.  I suspect that the real reason, though, is that they will never accept any deal which enables the backstop to be circumvented.  They know full well that their objectives for Brexit are completely incompatible with keeping the Irish border as open as it is today; they could have a hundred years to negotiate and they still wouldn’t be able to come up with a solution.  In truth, they don’t want to; the aim of the Brexiteers is – and has been from the outset – to destroy the EU as a project.  It’s the only context in which Brexit ever made sense.  A delay of sufficient length to negotiate proper thought-through arrangements would expose, even more than is already the case, the essential vacuity of their rhetoric.

Threat as standard procedure

Tweet

I’m not at all sure that last week’s ‘threat’ by three members of the cabinet to vote against a no-deal Brexit was all that the media have claimed it to be.  The Brexiteers seemed pretty angry about it all, demanding that the three should resign for what one referred to as “rejecting government policy”.  But is that what they are really doing?

Insofar as I understand the government’s current policy, it is that parliament should approve the deal Theresa May first said was the only deal then said wasn’t and is now (I think) back to saying it is albeit with a few fancy words around it.  And the tactic to get to that point is to threaten all MPs who favour either scrapping Brexit altogether or else negotiating a much closer relationship with the EU that if they don’t support her deal they’ll end up with no deal, whilst simultaneously threatening the mad men and women of the ERG that they’ll end up with no Brexit at all if they don’t support her deal.  Trying to threaten two opposite groups with two opposite outcomes at the same time hasn’t worked terribly well for her to date, not least because both sides can hear what she’s saying to the other.  What better way to achieve her aim than to ‘outsource’ those threats to different factions in her own party?

In that sense, the apparent ‘threat’ by three cabinet ministers looks entirely consistent with the PM’s strategy – they are ramping up pressure on the ERG to fall into line.  According to unnamed EU sources reported by the Guardian just the previous day, “Barnier added that May had the option of threatening the Brexiters with an extension of article 50, and a delay to the 29 March Brexit day, to win them round to her deal”, and right on cue, up pop three ministers trying to do exactly that.  Sack them for going against government policy?  Give them promotion, more like.  Whether the planned vote on Wednesday is being postponed because she's afraid of the 'rebels', or whether it's all part of the same attempt to ratchet up the pressure on the ERG is an imponderable.  And one to which she herself will only decide which is the correct answer after events have played themselves out.

It’s a devious, dishonest, and utterly dishonourable way of treating parliament and dissenting opinion – so wholly in line with standard May operating procedure.  But will it work?  I don’t know.  The anger of the ERG crowd suggests that they might be taking this threat seriously, but I tend to the view that she’s left it too late.  Opinions have become too deep-rooted, too strongly expressed, too difficult to row back on.  Human pride and self-respect often make it difficult for people to cave in, even when they know that they should, and it seems likely to me that making the ERG bunch even angrier than they already were is more likely to be counter-productive at this stage.  The three ministers might well end up being forced to do as they 'threatened' to do - but with so little time left, the PM is more likely to see that as a friendly act than a rebellion.  'Some big boys (and a girl) made me do it' might just play better to her ears than 'It was my fault'.

Failing to understand

Tweet From the outset, Brexiteers like David Davis have consoled themselves with the belief that the EU would roll over at the last moment and give the UK whatever it wants.  It’s a belief to which they are still clinging, alongside the fiction that no deal would hurt the EU more than it would hurt us.  The idea that the EU ‘always’ compromises at the last moment is a pervasive one, and not without some truth.  The reality, however, is that this generally applies only in internal negotiations between the member states, when compromise is required to get everyone on board.  And that’s natural enough – the interests of member states all need to be considered and allowed for as far as possible.  However, when it comes to dealing with ‘third parties’ – which is what the UK voted to become – the negotiating stance is much tougher, and the EU is quite willing to walk away without agreement.  The assumption that the Brexit negotiations fall into the former category rather than the latter is just another example of ‘cakeism’ – the idea that the UK can have the advantages of being treated as a member whilst avoiding any of the obligations.

It is, as a result, a serious mistake.  The Taoiseach, Leo Varadkar, has made it clear that anyone expecting that the EU27 is simply going to blink and change the withdrawal agreement is in for a nasty surprise.  That’s the ERG and half the cabinet then.  The assumption that it could be otherwise owes more to the Anglo-British not-nationalists-at-all sense of exceptionalism than to a hard analysis of where the EU sees its best interests.  And that latter point is key.  Perhaps it’s understandable after 45 years of membership during which the UK has become accustomed to trade-offs between fellow members, and has had no real negotiating capacity or responsibility of its own, but there has been a complete failure on behalf of the UK government to do something which is absolutely fundamental to any negotiation – understand the motivations and concerns of the ‘other side’.

May and her team – let alone the lunatic fringe of her party – have managed to give the impression (probably because it’s true) that they are completely deaf to what is being said to them, and lack all empathy with the EU27.  They hear what they want to hear and see what they want to see as though there is no possibility of any objective reality outside their own perceptions.  Even this week, we have May still saying that the talks are going well whilst the EU27 have stonewalled her and repeatedly stated that there is no possibility of giving her what she’s asking for (not least because she doesn’t really know anyway).  There’s a complacent assumption that they will budge eventually – the UK just needs to play a waiting game and hold its nerve.  The PM herself continues to pretend that it’s possible both to sign an agreement containing an open-ended backstop and at the same time find a form of words which says it isn’t open-ended.

The ERG members are unlikely to accept anything that doesn’t get rid of the legal commitment to the backstop, and I can understand why.  Any backstop is only intended by all involved to be only temporary, and it doesn’t really matter how many ways that is stated; the point is that getting out of it, no matter how determined all concerned are to do so, is contingent on getting a trade agreement which does not require the backstop.  The ERG and their friends have no intention – ever, in any circumstances – of agreeing to the sort of trade deal implied by that.  And it is that – the intransigence of those determined to seek a trade deal of a very different nature – which turns the backstop into a potentially long-term arrangement.  It’s not the Irish or the EU causing the problem; it’s the determination of Brexiteers to exit, completely and permanently, from the single market and customs union, interpreting the referendum result in a very specific way.

They claim that it is about free trade; that freed of the EU, the UK can negotiate its own bilateral trade deals across the world.  There has always been something very strange about the idea that the way to get more free trade in the world is to leave the world’s largest free trade area (an area which expands further as the EU pursues its goal of negotiating ever more agreements) and sign less favourable bilateral deals.  Whatever that is about, it isn’t global free trade.  I’ve suspected from the beginning that it’s more about ideology than trade.  At the heart of the EU’s approach is co-operation and agreement amongst the members to gradually expand the envelope of free trade across the globe.  At the heart of the Brexiteers’ position is the demand that countries should compete aggressively with each other by offering different terms of trade.  They believe (wrongly in my view) that the UK can do better by competing than by co-operating.  And that isn’t just about having a distorted view of the UK’s place in the world, it is also about an ideological commitment to competition.  Sadly, it’s a commitment shared by the leadership of the Labour Party.

More of the same?

Tweet

In all sorts of ways, Brexit is an epoch-defining moment, whether it ends up happening or not.  Tied up in the debate is a whole series of issues about what it means to be Welsh, British or European, whether the future lies in international co-operation or competition, and whether the UK has adapted, or ever can adapt, to its diminished status in the world.  I am in no doubt that it is, in its very essence, an Anglo-British not-nationalist-at-all attempt to turn back the clock to an age when, from their perspective at least (even if not in reality), people knew their place, the world kow-towed before the might of Britannia, and this glorious little island stood united against its enemies (especially, of course, the dastardly Germans).  It is precisely because the project is of that nature that I oppose it; people who voted for this strange vision of a ‘great’ British past really should not be surprised that it is accompanied by blatant attempts to rebrand everything with the Union flag.  I’ve argued before that the choice facing us in Wales is not between the status quo and complete independence; it is between a gradual transition to independent member status in the EU and being stuck on a small off-shore island dominated by the Anglo-British not-nationalists-at-all.

Even if the big underlying questions referred to above aren’t really being discussed, they underpin the debate, and coupled with the utter incompetence of both the Prime Minister and the Leader of Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition, the strain on those members of the two main political parties who possess a few brain cells between them has been intense, to the point where some have chosen to break away and form a new grouping.  Given the importance of this one issue, which will determine our future for a generation or more, if this was all just about Brexit, I’d be egging them on and hoping that more would follow them.  There are times when single-issue politics has a role to play, and this is such a time; if splintering the existing monolithic parties is an essential precondition to changing course, then so be it.  And I would, of course, give a more general welcome to anything which smashed the two-party politics which has dominated the UK for far too long, in which context a move to proportional representation is also essential.

But…  For all their fine words, I can’t help wondering how much of what drives them is a real desire for a change of direction and a change in the UK’s politics and how much is down to personal ambition or discontent with particular leaders at a particular point in time.  “Centrism” is paraded as though it is something inherently virtuous, neither one thing nor the other, whilst the Brexiteers on the one hand and Momentum on the other are presented as though they were dangerous extremists, despite the fact that (with the sole exception of Brexit) there is little in the policies of either which would be out of place in mainstream parties across Europe.  “Extremist” is just an insult; a label to avoid engaging with the substance of what others say.  And, at one level, it suits them all to play a game of pretending to be more different than they are in reality.

On any objective analysis, the UK has been dominated for the last 70 years by two broadly social democratic parties, the difference between which has mostly been of emphasis rather than of real substance.  Both support a capitalist economy, both support the existence of the NHS and the Welfare state (disagreements being limited to issues such as the scale and the role of the marketplace), both support the development and possession of weapons of mass destruction - the list is endless.  Minor disagreements are blown up into great issues of principle largely in order to differentiate between two very similar positions and world views.  We need change, we need to shake up the system, but do we really need yet another flavour of social democracy?  I think not.  If the unimaginatively-named Independent Group can be a movement for bringing some reality back into the Brexit debate instead of the Corbyn-May demand for the impossible, then all well and good.  If they can be a catalyst for electoral reform which opens out more future possibilities, then all power to their elbow.  But once those two issues are resolved there is no role or purpose for another party of ambitious politicians repeating the same old messages.

When 'trust me' isn't enough

Tweet

Chutzpah: a lovely little word to describe the audacity involved in making outrageous statements or claims, one of the few skills which ministers in the UK Government seem to be honing to a fine edge.  Yesterday, it was the Foreign Secretary’s turn to try his skills, claiming to EU leaders and officials that the departure of 7 MPs from the Labour Party meant that they should not trust the Labour Party, because that party is badly split.

But the real chutzpah comes in the claim that they should instead trust the Tories.  This is a government to which the real opposition is another party operating inside it, a government which is in office but no longer in power, a government whose leader is reduced to making increasingly desperate pleas to its own party’s members for support – pleas which are largely being laughed at by those to whom they are addressed.  It is also a government with which the EU27 spent two years reaching an agreement on which it is now trying to find a way of reneging.

In the position of the EU27, I’d certainly be wary of trusting Labour, but ‘wary’ is a wholly inadequate word to describe how I’d feel about dealing with the Tories.  Their chutzpah skills may be improving, but they still have a lot to learn about not taking it so far that it just makes them look stupid.

Direct and indirect causes

Tweet

Different people have reacted differently to the announcement by Honda that it is to cease production and close its plant in Swindon, depending largely on their views over Brexit.  Opponents of Brexit have been quick to claim that Brexit is clearly a factor, whilst Brexiteers have, quite rightly, pointed out that Honda’s statement placed no blame on Brexit; indeed, it specifically stated that it was not a Brexit-related issue.  That statement may not be quite as definitive as it sounds, though.

It’s certainly true that there have been major changes in the industry, and that the move away from diesel cars is happening faster than many would have predicted.  And it would be surprising if Honda, like other manufacturers, wasn’t looking more to a future which depended more on electric vehicles.  In that situation, ending production of a vehicle whose life-span is nearing its end anyway is an entirely normal, non-Brexit-related business decision.

More interesting, though, is the question which is not being asked as a follow-up.  As far as I can see, the company is not planning to produce fewer cars in total, merely changing the emphasis away from one type of vehicle to another.  And those new cars need to be produced somewhere – the company has decided to do that in Japan.  So, the question which hasn’t been widely asked is this: given that you already have a factory capable of producing vehicles with a trained and experienced workforce, why close that and invest in new capacity elsewhere instead of repurposing the existing facility?

The company’s own statement gives us the answer to that when it says that it is due to the relative size of the market in different locations.  Now we know that the original investment in the UK was part of a strategy to target the EU market from the inside rather than across tariff barriers; and we know that the new EU-Japan trade agreement facilitates trading with the EU directly, without needing a base within the EU.  We also know that the terms of trade between the UK and EU post-Brexit are a complete unknown at the moment, but there is no conceivable Brexit scenario (other than cancelling it completely) which will not make trade between the UK and the EU more difficult than it is at present – and potentially significantly more difficult than simply supplying the market directly from Japan.

So, in taking the short-term decision to stop production of the current model, I can well believe that Brexit was not a significant factor.  But in making the longer-term decision as to where to put future investment, not only can I not believe that the changes which Brexit is leading to are not a factor, but I also believe that if they weren’t, then the directors of the company would be guilty of a grave dereliction of duty.  And this matters; it matters a lot.  We are going to see a lot of changes happening, and in many cases it is going to be extremely difficult for anyone to say, with absolute certainty, that this decision or that decision was a direct result of Brexit. 

At the level of individual decisions, the Brexiteers will have a degree of what Nixon once called “credible deniability”, and they will attempt to use that to deny any causal link between their project and the economic damage which it does.  But we shouldn’t lose sight of the fact that whilst the changes resulting from Brexit may not be the direct cause in many individual decisions, they will undoubtedly be part of the context considered when those decisions are being made.  The influence of a deliberate decision to place the UK outside the world’s largest free trade area will not always be direct and obvious, but it will be extremely pervasive overall.

Who'd have thought it?

Tweet

Apparently, if you want to do a trade deal with the world’s second largest economy, a country which just happens to have the world’s largest standing army, threatening them with military action in two years’ time when your big new boat is finally ready is likely to prove counter-productive.  Who’d have thought it?  Not the Defence Minister for sure.

It seems that if you live on an offshore island which trades heavily with its nearest neighbours, it is highly likely that the shortest and easiest sea crossing route will be vitally important to your economy.  Who’d have thought it?  Not the ex-Brexit Secretary, certainly.

If a large group of countries of which you are part spends several years negotiating a close trading arrangement with another large economy, and you then decide to walk away, then that country is likely to see your now much smaller size and negotiating leverage as an opportunity to claw back some of what they had to give away when negotiating with the larger block.  Who’d have thought it?  Not the International Trade Secretary, who cannot understand why they’re not offering better terms rather than worse ones.

And if you want to find an alternative route to transport goods between the UK and the EU, choosing a port with no facilities and a company with no ships is apparently not the best way of going about it.  Who’d have thought it?  Not the Transport Secretary, who thought it was a jolly good way of helping a start-up company.

It’s easy enough to see all this as being just down to good old-fashioned incompetence, seasoned with a good dose of Anglo-British exceptionalism and a delusional belief that things can go back to the way they were when the Empire ruled the waves and the natives did as they were told.  Alternatively, maybe it’s just the cumulative effect over the last two and a half years of the cabinet having been served Theresa May’s home-made jam tarts, complete with psycho-active mould.

We need to find a trusty dog

Tweet

It might be at least partly down to advancing years.  Policemen are definitely getting younger, and that’s supposed to be one of the more reliable signs, isn’t it?  I don’t think it’s down to rose-tinted nostalgia, though – I mean, I’ve always known that politicians will say one thing to get elected and then do the opposite when they’re in power, even if it took a while to realise that no party is exempt from that rule.  The first elections in which I took any interest were those of 1964 and 1966.  I was too young to vote, but had I been old enough, I would have voted for Harold Wilson’s Labour Party.  They were going to bring about radical change, to re-forge Britain in the “white heat of the technological revolution”, and above all, they were going to scrap Polaris.  They didn’t of course, and (apart from a brief period of hope under Michael Foot) I’ve never trusted anything the Labour Party has said since.

But if I can’t explain it in those terms, then perhaps it really is true – there has never been a time when politicians told such outright and easily demonstrable lies on the scale which we are witnessing today.  The Prime Minister lies on an industrial scale, even if MPs are told off for pointing it out.  But the fact that it is contrary to parliamentary rules to call the PM a liar doesn’t mean that she isn’t.  Day after day she opens her mouth and what comes spilling out is in complete contradiction to objective, provable truth.  It isn’t just her, of course; but we’ve reached a stage where mere ‘facts’ are no longer relevant; her nearest thing to a saving grace is that she hasn’t yet reached the level of Trump, who seems to feel himself bound to utter six demonstrable untruths before breakfast.

She told the House of Commons this week that she’s spent two weeks ‘negotiating hard’ with the EU when, in reality, they are still waiting for her to define what she actually wants.  There are no negotiations – as some EU officials put it this week, the UK is only “pretending to negotiate”.  What she asked parliament to agree to yesterday was to give its approval to continuing the pretence for another two weeks; she still hasn’t a clue what it is that she’s trying to achieve or how it is in any way different from that which she herself solemnly declared to be impossible just a few short weeks ago.  It would be a foolish person who was prepared to wager that she won’t go back to parliament in a fortnight, declare that she’s still ‘negotiating hard’ but needs yet more time to define what it is that she wants.

In the worst days of the old Soviet Union, when the economy increasingly resembled a basket case, one factory manager was reported as saying of the workers “they pretend to work and we pretend to pay them”.  The UK seems to have reached a point where the government pretends to govern, the opposition pretends to oppose, and parliament pretends to have some influence.  Where’s Toto when he’s needed?

Never mind Brexit - what about some jam?

Tweet

In “War of the Worlds” there comes a point where the narrator is playing cards with the artilleryman whilst the Martians ravage the outside world.  As Wells put it “…with our species upon the edge of extermination or appalling degradation, with no clear prospect before us but the chance of a horrible death, we could sit […] playing the “joker” with vivid delight”.  It’s a surreal reaction to the horrors of the outside world.  There was a strange parallel this week, when it was revealed that, in the midst of the shambles which Brexit has become, the Prime Minister discussed with the Cabinet the edibility of jam with mould on top.

Apparently, she simply scrapes the mould off and eats the jam underneath, which is, she claims, perfectly edible.  There is some division of opinion amongst the experts as to whether this is or is not advisable; it seems to depend on the type and colour of the mould and whether you also scrape out the underlying few centimetres where the spores can be lingering, but I wonder if the PM hasn’t inadvertently let us know why the government is in such a mess.  Some moulds produce psychoactive toxins which can cause all manner of problems in the brain, including attentional problems.  Someone who has consumed such toxins might well forget what was said to her yesterday and see nothing wrong with repeating the same words and activities day after day, Groundhog-style.

It’s a better explanation than many that I’ve seen.