A core part of
the case for leaving the EU was that the UK could negotiate its own trade deals
with countries outside the EU, rather than being dependent on reaching a deal which
satisfied all 28 members. It’s one of those stories which is entirely ‘true’,
but which isn’t exactly the whole truth.
In the first
place, it obviously requires the services of a significant number of skilled
and experienced trade negotiators to hold simultaneous parallel negotiations
with a number of other countries and trading blocs; but in the second place, on
the question of principle, I never really understood why anyone would believe
that a country with a population of 65 million was going to get a better deal
with all these other countries than a trading bloc with an internal market of
some 500 million. It just seems counter-intuitive, somehow.
Anyway, back to
the question of these skilled and experienced trade negotiators. The first and
most obvious problem is that the UK doesn’t currently have many of them –
perhaps none. The simple reason for that is that we haven’t needed them for
most of the past 40 years; trade negotiations have been handled collectively by
the EU rather than individually by the member states. So we’ll need to recruit
some – but from where?
I quite liked this
story a couple of weeks ago. I suspect that the offer was made with tongue
firmly in cheek, but New Zealand was offering to ‘lend’ the UK its own top
trade negotiators for a while to see the UK through its immediate problems. That
might work, although the problem is more than a short term one. A long term
future outside the EU will require more than borrowing a few experts from the
other end of the world for a few years.
If I were looking
to recruit the right people for this role, I think I’d start in Brussels. That’s
where we find some of the most experienced negotiators, and many of them will
have the language skills as well. Poaching them might mean offering them more
than they’re currently being paid, of course. But the delicious irony here is
that the pro-Brexit ministers newly appointed to look after these issues, fresh
from a campaign in which they have been arguing for controls on immigration
from the rest of the EU might find that one of their first tasks is … to
recruit people from other EU countries to fill key roles in trade negotiations.
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2 comments:
We may not have many officials with a background in international trade negotiations given that for the past 40 years it hasn't been a UK govt function, but London does have lots of very experienced and highly paid international commercial lawyers so they should have little difficulty finding appropriate people needed to create the capacity
Seek the wise man in his cottage in Wales
Have we so little faith in our people that we feel there is no one here remotely capable of doing the job
if that is the case we are doomed as a nation
I beg to differ
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