There are some things that have to be taken as given in life. Right now Theresa May would be wise to assume that amongst the list of givens are:
- The EU not changing its conditions for trade talks to commence;
- Ireland not changing its demands;
- The DUP not changing its position;
- The hard-Brexiteers not going soft.
This then means:
- There can be no Irish border for customs purposes;
- Northern Ireland cannot have rules distinct from the U.K. (except when it suits the DUP to do so);
- There can be no border in the Irish Sea;
- There can also be no border at Calais or elsewhere - because what happens on the Irish border has to also happen elsewhere, because that is how common markets work.
In effect May conceded all of this on Monday. Or she did so if she wants talks to continue, and I have no doubt she does.
So, if that's the case there is only one party left in the negotiation that can change its mind. And that is the UK.
And there is only one thing the UK can change its mind on. And that is the customs union. I stress the Single Market is not an issue as yet: that is what the next round of talks is about. Right now we're simply discussing border controls. And borders without controls - which have to happen now or progress ends - mean a customs union. And the EU has one. And it is not going to create a new one for the UK. Add that to the list of givens, if you like.
So Theresa May has a simple decision to make. It's take it or leave it time for her on the customs union. She previously, and without good reason, said no to it. Or rather, she did so to appease the Tory hard-right who think there is a better customs union in the rest of the world although there is not a shred of evidence that this is true.
So Theresa May has an implicit second decision to make. Does she keep the EU, Ireland, the DUP, most UK businesses, most UK people and most of the House of Commons on side, or does she appease Jacob Rees Mogg?
There is, of course, only one viable answer here. And if Tory civil war breaks out, so be it. As I have said before, she must show the courage Michael Collins displayed in Ireland in 1922, and do what is best for the country. Collins paid with his life. I sincerely hope May only loses nothing more than her relationship with some in her own party with whom she has never been much in sympathy. She could not lose credibility: that departed long ago.
But will she do what is required? I do not know. I am not sure she can decide. You can only seek high office if you want to make decisions, and she appears wholly unable to undertake this most basic task of her job.
So we are still left with some givens. May can:
- Decide to stay in the customs union, and alienate her party but keep talks going;
- Decide to leave the customs union and fail the DUP and see her government fall as an Irish border will happen;
- Prevaricate, which amounts to the second option in practice.
It's either / or time then. And I am still not sure she has a clue as to what to do.
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There is another key decision point for Jeremy Corbyn. If the DUP withdraw their support from Theresa May, will he back her to save Brexit or force a general election which will then expose even worse divisions in the Labour about party? He obviously wants power but would inherit a poisoned challice as Brexit descends into even more chaos Probably not the legacy he is looking for. Hard to see any way out of this bind unless the Irish accept some degree of increased border surveillance, or the Labour Party abandons its support for Brexit.
We can do Brexit
So long as we stay in the Customs Union
And maybe the Single Market
As was promised by Leavers during the campaign
That is true: but, both the C.U and the single market a governed by rules set by the EU and ultimately enforced/judged by the ECJ (European Court of Justice)
The Brexit bunch don’t want any ECJ control: ipso facto there can be no membership of the C.U or “membership” of the single market.
One can conclude that the Brexit bunch did not think things through – but that would be to ascribe to them a function (thinking) which given current events, I’d suggest they lack.
or
they knew that no-ECJ control meant no Single Market etc membership and did what they have historically done: lied.
Yes but EU have made clear that freedom of movement is one of the four basic principles of access to the single market, so that takes us back to square one. The only solution I can imagine is one I have proposed on here before where UK should be allowed to charge employers a higher NI contribution for EU nationals working here. This allows them to lean against immigration but without restricting freedom of movement. However, this idea seems to offend everyone, so the more likely outcome is that we crash out with a hard Brexit and a hard border dividing Ireland. Eira would do well to consider this before drawing their own impossible red lines.
“…..One can conclude that the Brexit bunch did not think things through ….”
Well I think that’s right, Mike. They didn’t believe they were going to win the Brexit referendum. Like a dog chasing a car they have no idea how to drive it when they’ve caught it.
Well, Turkey has a customs union (for some goods, anyway) without being a member of the EU, like several smaller jurisdictions such as Andorra, Monaco, Liechtenstein, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man…
As I understand it, it is not entirely satisfactory for Turkey, as Turkey has to allow in goods from the EU, which includes goods imported to the EU from other countries with which the EU has negotiated free trade agreements, but Turkey does not get the benefit of exporting to those countries (because it is not a member of the EU). But no doubt the bespoke UK agreement could include “country of origin” rules, which will necessarily require some rules, bureaucracy and checks.
But Norway and Switzerland are not in the customs union, yet seem to have reasonably porous borders. How does that work? Perhaps we should have known the answers to questions like that before voting, or ruling out remaining in the customs union, or notifying under Article 50, or starting negotiations.
Norway has ‘alignment’ and is a member of the single market (near enough)
So too is Switzerland (near enough)
Perhaps a fudge that gets us “near enough” could work for us too, at least as an interim measure.
I’m still reading Werner’s ‘Princes of the Yen’ and the tale that unfolds is basically one of a central back manufactured crisis that was meant to remodel the Japanese economy that benefitted America above all else.
The parallels between this story and our own present troubles resonate.
We too have a central bank with a Government committed to austerity (not printing real money or enough of it after a credit glut) into the economy, lower wages, anti union legislation, hyper flexible working conditions etc.
Gillian Tett has spoken often about how America used to be able to expand its economy within its own borders. The present greed-motivated form of North American capitalism has meant that with the American middle class shrinking (a profit base if you like) , US corporations must expand abroad more than ever before to gouge out profits.
I know that some of you will say that the Americans are already here but it seems to me that a hard BREXIT will do nothing but to further help American business get an even stronger foothold in the UK. They will be here BIG if we get a hard BREXIT.
And many a pro-Hard BREXIT Tory will benefit personally from that I wager as well as the odd pro-BREXIT Lib Dem and New Labour.
So the rabbit hole that May will consider going down is a hard BREXIT and opening up the UK to America (and others). Trade is trade right? That is how she will look at it and as a woman of considerable independent means, why should she be bothered about what happens to the rest of us as long as the bottom line is ‘inward investment’?
It will be interesting to see what might happen about the single market issue.
The prospect of this is appalling.
I’m with you on the appalling consequences of closer trade links with the US, Pilgrim.
The lack of control we experience, and which infuriates the Brexit mob, in our relations with the EU, will be as nothing if we lay ourselves open to a reliance on the US as a principal trading partner.
We will have absolutely zero influence or input into US decision making. We’d be exchanging bent bananas for chlorinated chicken.
CETA is Canada’s biggest bilateral initiative since NAFTA. It was hatched as a result of a joint study “Assessing the Costs and Benefits of a Closer EU-Canada Economic Partnership”,[20] which was released in October 2008. Officials announced the launch of negotiations on 6 May 2009 at the Canada-EU Summit in Prague.[4][21] This after the Canada-EU Summit in Ottawa on 18 March 2004 where leaders agreed to a framework for a new Canada-EU Trade and Investment Enhancement Agreement (TIEA). The TIEA was intended to move beyond traditional market access issues, to include areas such as trade and investment facilitation
It has been 13 Years and CETA was nearly dropped by Merkel to save her Government.
It has to be ratified by 28 Parliaments.
Why not look at CETA as an exanmple of the time it takes for a Traty with the EU.
Is this a joke?
David Davis said, very clearly, in the Commons yesterday that the deal offered to the EU was for some kind of regulatory alignment (fudge) across the whole UK.
The DUP say that is the only kind of deal they could accept, but they killed the deal being offered by the PM.
That leaves two questions in my mind –
1. Was David Davis telling the truth?
2. If not, and the fudge offered to the EU was for Northern Ireland only, when did the DUP find out the about the deal being offered? Were they consulted beforehand and misunderstood, or did they only find out by way of a leak.
What bothers me about Question 1 is that nobody in the media scrum seems to have asked it!
David Davis may have been telling what he thought was the truth
But that may have only been the truth whilst he was saying it, or for the last hour or two beforehand, to subsequently be altered by facts he discovered as he left the Chamber
Has Davis ever been telling the truth? If so, where are the impact assessments? I gather there’s no evidence of them in the materials offered as such to MPs, this on display only under the harshest of security conditions.
Davis claims he never used the phrase “impact assessment”, merely “sectoral analyses”. He’s just been repeating that in committee 20 minutes ago, while apologising for not correcting Seema Malhotra who used “impact assessment” in several questions put to him previously.
You couldn’t make it up.
Agreed
So let’s see the 50-odd sectoral analyses that were apparently started before the end end of 2016 and completed in first half of 2017, then.
Here is a helpful summary of who said what and when: http://jackofkent.com/2017/11/the-early-history-of-the-58-brexit-sector-analyses/
Very interesting
He has lied
For what it may be worth, my take on what’s happening in the UK and the USA is that the neoconservatve elite are now playing for chaos. Break the system completely and have a backup system ready to reassemble the ruins to suit their agendas.
You know Phil, that is my conclusion as well.
Depressing in the extreme.
Is that what Rees-Mogg discussed with Bannon?
http://www.breitbart.com/london/2017/12/02/steve-bannon-meets-grassroots-leader-populist-conservative-movement/
Like a coup; gigantic and hidden in plain sight.
It seems that Theresa May could only make decisions with the support of Nick Timothy. But the decisions she made with him (allegedly including the one to leave the customs union and single market) were mostly awful.
To maintain the present situation on the Irish border, both the customs union and the single market (UK and Irish Republic) need to be maintained.
The first definitely
The second, probably