My initial
reaction to the lack of resignations from Brexiteers following Friday’s ‘agreement’
by the UK cabinet was that they were so confident that the plan would be
rejected by the EU27 that agreeing to the ‘plan’ was not so much
a concession on their part as a prelude to the no-deal crashing out which they
crave. It certainly appeared as though
May’s rebadging-with-conditions was putting down a series of conditions to
which the EU27 could never agree; and her demand that the EU now start to be
flexible sounded like the usual Brexit demand for the EU27 to abandon at least
some of the basic tenets of the single market. But yesterday’s
resignation makes me wonder whether at least some of the Brexiteers are
starting to realise that the plan does actually contain the outline of a
possible deal, if we regard it as a two-year late opening position, rather than
a last minute set of immutable demands.
Take the “combined
customs territory” for instance. It
sounds a lot like a new name for a customs union, and the chief difference between
the two seems to be that the May plan assumes that the UK will have the right
to negotiate different tariffs from those set by the EU. This is obviously fraught with difficulty;
apart from being a smugglers’ charter for any goods where EU tariffs and UK tariffs
are different, the proposed use of technology which doesn’t yet exist to
control where imported goods end up looks like being completely impractical
when one considers raw materials turned into components turned into finished
goods. Without a physical border check
to determine whether the contents of a lorry are what the electronic ‘paperwork’
says they are, the potential for UK firms to gain an unfair competitive
advantage is something that the EU will never allow. But what if the ‘right’ to negotiate different
tariffs was accompanied by an agreement that the ‘right’ would never actually
be used? That’s hardly an unusual
approach from the EU, and it would leave the ‘combined customs territory’
different only in name from the customs union.
I can’t see the EU27 being particularly averse to allowing the UK to
call it something different.
Or take the
proposal to replace freedom of movement with a ‘mobility framework’. If the only difference between the two is
that the UK starts to apply restrictions already allowed for in the EU treaties (or can be negotiated to that point) – something which successive governments have decided not to do – then why
would the EU object to the UK simply using a different nomenclature?
Or consider the ‘harmonisation’
of rules instead of membership of the single market for goods. If the UK is prepared to guarantee that it
will follow all relevant EU rules for goods (in which the EU has a trading
surplus with the UK) and accept that the interpretation of those rules is down
to the ECJ, whilst excluding services (in which the UK has a surplus with the
EU), then why, in principle, would the EU27 not be willing to discuss the
details of how that compliance is guaranteed and implemented?
The amount of money
which the UK will need to pay into the EU budget will be something of a
sticking point; it will certainly be higher than the May plan envisages. But a little bit of creative accounting under
which it becomes a series of individual payments for specific services will allow it
to be presented as something other than a contribution to the central EU budget
– again, as long as the amount they receive is consistent with other deals and
meets their requirements, why would the EU 27 be particularly bothered about
what the UK decides to call it?
The only way in
which May’s plan can be considered to adhere to any of her red lines is by
assuming that those red lines apply only to what things are called, not to what
they achieve. The plan, as Brexiteers
are coming to realise, not only ignores the substance of all those precious red lines, but might
also provide a sound basis for negotiating something which will end up looking an
awful lot like the Norway option which Brexiteers correctly characterise as
Brexit-in-name-only, and under which the UK would follow the rules whilst having no input
into them.
If only we had an
alternative government-in-waiting which was prepared to look at all of this and
ask one simple question: “Why bother?”