Tories demand UK becomes landlocked

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The issue with the Northern Ireland Protocol is, and has been from the outset, that two areas with different regulatory and customs regimes need to have a border between them to control smuggling and tax and customs evasion. It’s a simple enough concept, although one which the Brexiteers are still struggling to understand, largely because many of them actually favour tax evasion and smuggling. Buccaneering, aka piracy, is what they’ve openly admitted that they want.

But the issue doesn’t just apply to the question of Northern Ireland – it also applies to so-called freeports. Logically, there has to be a customs border between any freeport and its immediate hinterland because two different customs regimes apply; without controls over what passes across that border, goods imported tariff-free into a freeport can simply end up in the rest of the UK, potentially undercutting legitimately imported goods. The proposal from a group of Tories that the whole coastline of the UK should become a freeport thus effectively amounts to a demand that the rest of the UK should become an entirely landlocked customs area. The fact that they are proposing, effectively, not to police the border doesn’t mean it isn’t there, just that crimes such as tax evasion, money laundering, and smuggling become easier to commit. If one of the problems with the border between the Republic and the North is its length and the number of crossing points, just imagine the consequences of a border which maps the entire UK coastline, but a few miles inland.

There is certainly evidence that establishing a freeport promotes the development of industry and jobs within its area, but there is no hard evidence to suggest that that economic activity is extra, rather than merely relocated. From the perspective of a capitalist, who wouldn’t prefer to operate in an area where they pay less tax and are subject to fewer regulatory restraints? Whether it actually benefits the economy as a whole, as opposed to only those who can easily relocate their businesses, is another question entirely. The evidence and experience is not good, which is why the government of the day – a Tory government – closed down the UK’s freeports in 2012. There is no obvious evidence that the current crop of Tories have learned anything from the problems of the past, and every reason to believe that it’s a get-rich-quick scheme for those prepared to play fast and loose with the rules.

There is another parallel with the Northern Ireland Protocol here, though. Those who believe that it is possible to set up separate customs regimes within a territory without policing the borders can’t understand why the EU doesn’t see things in the same light. The EU believes that borders between customs areas should be controlled; the UK government considers such controls unnecessary. That’s how they want to implement their promise that the UK outside the EU would pursue a policy of global piracy, although they preferred the rather vaguer term ‘buccaneering’. Same thing, though. One man’s criminal is another man’s ‘entrepreneur’; it’s hard to see how that gap between perspectives can ever be bridged.

Cheese, tea and uncomfortable chairs

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One has only to remember her infamous speech about cheese to realise that bizarre, Liz, and Truss are words that sit together in an entirely natural way. Indeed, any mention of the UK Trade Secretary without using such an adjective would be, well, bizarre. The story which emerged this week when the media were briefed by her ‘allies’ (and ‘bizarre’ would also be a fitting description of the thought processes of anyone who thought that such a briefing was a helpful act of friendship) that she intends to pursue the UK’s trade talks with the Australians by tying the Australian Trade Minister to an uncomfortable chair and making him face her for 9 hours of talks until he agrees to her demands is wholly credible – even including my little embellishment about the use of rope and knots. I’m not sure which is supposed to be the most punishing aspect of this – the uncomfortable chair or spending 9 hours face to face with Liz Truss discussing the import and export of cheese. On balance, I suspect that the uncomfortable chair is an unnecessary extra.

In fairness, the Brexiteers did promise us a buccaneering approach. Being ‘trussed’ to an uncomfortable chair could be considered merciful compared to being made to walk the plank or being keel-hauled, those methods of persuasion favoured by the buccaneers of old (although it’s possible that those approaches are merely being held in reserve). It’s an astonishing way to approach trade talks with a supposedly friendly independent state, although whether the Brexiteers understand that Australia is independent rather than still a colony is an open question. Attempting to bully other countries into opening their borders to UK exports whilst simultaneously demanding that UK purchasers only buy British-made products suggests that they have learned little since the imperial parliament unilaterally defined the terms of tea imports to the Americas. Perhaps one of Truss’s ancestors had a hand in that, too.

What 'prizes' does he have in mind?

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One thing of which we can all often be guilty is a failure to understand a different point of view. It’s easy enough to understand why – but things which are ‘obvious’ to one person are not so to everyone else. But however normal it might be, it’s something which politicians in particular need to be careful about. The current Prime Minister is not only not careful about it, he doesn’t even seem to understand that it can be a problem.

There is no doubt that the boost to ‘defence’ spending announced yesterday will be popular amongst Anglo-British nationalists, and there is also no doubt that there are significant numbers of people in Wales (although perhaps rather less so in Scotland) who fit into that category and will be delighted. But in presenting it as an example of the strength and power of ‘the union’, Johnson seems to have completely missed the point that not everyone thinks that way. Worse, his claim that “If there is one policy that strengthens the UK in every possible sense, it is building more ships for the Royal Navy” is based on an assumption about attitudes to the UK’s grandiose notions which rather overlooks the fact that his target audience isn’t those who are already convinced about the union, but those who are not. And in his usual inept and bumbling fashion, he fails to understand that for those opposed to UK military aggrandisement and adventurism, his announcement will weaken rather than strengthen his case - independence offers a way out of excessive and outdated militarism.

Still, shooting himself in the foot by not understanding that not everyone is going to swell with pride at the announcement of further investment in technology to kill and maim is at one with his cloth-eared approach to most other issues.

There was one phrase in his speech which was worrying to say the least. In talking about modernising the armed forces and giving them new weaponry, skills, and techniques, he said that in the future “…the prizes will go to the swiftest and most agile nations, not necessarily the biggest”. I struggle to assign any meaning to that, and particularly the use of the word ‘prizes’, which does not imply that he sees military power as being a route to extracting something from less powerful or less well-armed states in the world by use, or by threat of use, of force. I suppose we were warned from the outset that the Brexiteers wanted to see Britain as a ‘buccaneering’ (i.e. pirate) state, although many of us assumed that they just meant that they wanted the UK to be a state which declined to follow the rules by which others live.

It’s not mere coincidence that the amount of extra military expenditure bears a similarity to the amount which they have been briefing that they intend to cut from overseas aid. That’s another indication of an intention to switch directly from the use of ‘soft’ power to the use of ‘hard’ power; the commitment to spending 0.7% of GDP on aid put the UK among the leading aid givers in the world, and it was in 2015 (under a Conservative-led government, curiously enough) that the UK became the first G7 country to enshrine that commitment in law. The Brexit project has always been about an attempt to turn back the clock, to return to an imagined golden age in which Britannia both ruled the waves and waived the rules. This latest announcement looks like another step along that path, but the assumption that the rest of the world will allow, or can be coerced into allowing, the UK to do what it wants – which was more or less the case in the days of empire - is yet another example of failure to understand that not everyone else shares their view of the world - and in this case spectacularly so.

Inconsistent and incoherent are inadequate words to describe announcing a hopelessly overhyped and underfunded ‘green revolution’ one day and a commitment to an increase in spending on armaments the next. If the government was run using logic and reason, that much would be obvious, but then a government guided by logic and reason wouldn’t have put the UK where it is today.

Differing perspectives

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It was during my time in primary school, back in the 1950s, that I first learnt about Sir Francis Drake.  He was presented, of course, as a ‘British’ hero (despite the fact that ‘Britain’ didn’t exist as a political entity in his day: ‘English’ - incorporating Wales - would have been a more appropriate description), calmly finishing his game of bowls before heading off to defeat the Armada.  I suspect that that rather one-sided view of the man and his role in history remains the perception of most people in the UK, underlining the way in which history often depends on a selective interpretation of events.

He isn’t seen that way in other countries of course.  From a Spanish perspective ‘el despreciable pirata’ (the despicable pirate) is a more commonly used description.  It’s an accurate one as well; he spent many years attacking and plundering Spanish and Portuguese ports and ships, splitting the treasure thus captured with the then Queen of England, even though the countries were not at war at the time.  He was what is technically called a ‘privateer’; a pirate acting under licence from a state, in this case the crown of England.  And the stories we hear about him defeating the Armada rarely touch on the causes of it being sent towards these islands in the first place – one of which was the aim of putting a stop to the privateering of Drake and his ilk.  The man who British history tells us saved ‘England’ from the Armada was, from a more objective perspective, one of the causes of it being sent here in the first place.  He had also been a slave-trader, a fact generally glossed over when considering his role in history.

The point here is that ‘history’ isn’t simply an objective list of dates and events; events are selected and interpreted in a context and from a perspective, and the same events can be interpreted in wildly different ways.  The same is true for words and language as well.

In the context of Brexit, many of its Anglo-British nationalist supporters talk regularly about the need for the UK to foster a ‘buccaneering spirit’ in the way it faces up to the rest of the world from the position of glorious isolation in which they wish to place us.  But the words ‘buccaneer’, ‘corsair’, ‘privateer’, and ‘pirate’ are all near synonyms, and when one country talks about becoming ‘buccaneers’ we should not be at all surprised if others hear the word ‘pirates’ and suspect that what is being suggested is that the UK should revert to its traditional historical role of breaking all the rules, using underhand methods, and simply helping itself to the property of others.  The term ‘perfidious Albion’ didn’t come into use without considerable justification.  Sometimes I suspect that that is actually what the extreme Brexiteers want (especially when they start talking about tearing up the rule book by which others operate in order to gain advantage) albeit employing a little less violence than did Drake.  We really shouldn’t be surprised, though, if others are not exactly greeting the prospect with enthusiasm, let alone rushing to assist the UK in realising this particular ambition.