EU Referendum


Brexit: the phony war continues


12/05/2017




Just occasionally, one can have sympathy for journalists covering events such as Corbyn's leaked manifesto and having to pretend one is in the least interested in it.

Ben Bradshaw, Labour MP for Exeter and one-time junior agriculture minister had it right in an acerbic comment to the BBC about being 20 points behind in the polls and the need to "get real", salvaging enough MPs from the wreck of a campaign to form a credible opposition in the next Parliament.

Bradshaw is one of those MPs who, on the face of it is fairly safe, with a 7,183 majority at the 2015 election, increasing his share against the trend. But his is a seat which saw the Ukip vote increase from just short of 2K in 2010 to over five thousand in 2015. With the collapse of the Ukip vote and a swing to the Conservatives, Bradshaw is actually vulnerable.

As to Corbyn's manifesto – well, who does care? But the irony is that his plans to nationalise the railways, energy and the post are made that much easier by Brexit – not that any of the disinterested hacks actually realised this. Perhaps this was Corbyn's coded message, saying he was in favour of leaving the EU – but if it was, no one noticed.

It's a pity though that Corbyn didn't add water to his list of renationalisation – not that it should be nationalised as such. Water was never owned by the national government which, in order to sell it off, expropriated municipal assets, stealing them from their rightful owners. The companies were never the government's to sell, and should be returned.

Apart from making wealthy Singaporean hedge fund owners even more wealthy, privatisation does not seem to have achieved much else. With talk of another drought in the air, the Guardian reports that customers are being asked to save water, but more than 20 percent of water is lost before it reaches homes and leakage levels are not declining.

Data from the water industry regulator Ofwat shows more than three billion litres of water leaks every day, a level unchanged for at least four years and just seven percent lower than the level in 2000.

Meanwhile, the Brexit action moved to Dublin where Michel Barnier was accorded the rare honour (unique for a non-head of state) of addressing the joint houses of the Oireachtas (Parliament) on the Brexit negotiations.

That is not to say that he actually conveyed anything new. He reaffirmed that Brexit changes the external borders of the EU and promised to work with the Irish "to avoid a hard border", but went nowhere towards telling his audience how this would be done.

One worries a little, though, when the man says that "Customs controls are part of EU border management" and that, "They protect the single market. They protect our food safety and our standards".

Strictly, they don't protect food safety. In the litany of protections, these "official controls" are veterinary and phytosanitary checks which are entirely separate and must be completed before relevant products are submitted for customs clearance.

If Barnier can't get this small but important detail right, then one wonders just how much a grip of the detail he really has, and whether he fully understands which is involved when the Irish border becomes the final frontier between the EU and the outside world.

The absence of such details are lending a surreal aspect to the Brexit non-debate, and crucial technical issues are placed "on hold", and what little discussion there was has evaporated. Beyond looking for "flexible and imaginative solutions", we're no further forward in finding a solution for the Irish border problem, especially if it has to "respect the integrity of the EU legal order".

Unsurprisingly, therefore, we got a nervous comment from Gabriel Fagan, chief economist of the Irish Central Bank. He states the obvious, that the Irish economy is particularly vulnerable to any new tariff or regulatory barriers with the UK, which may arise as a result of Brexit.

He warns that within 10 years of a "hard Brexit", the number of people employed would be 40,000 fewer, compared with a no-Brexit scenario. Some small and medium-sized Irish businesses are "likely to be among the hardest hit".

Yet all we actually got from Barnier was "motherhood and apple pie" sentiment, with the man telling us that, "if we put things in the right order, if we negotiate with mutual respect, without any aggression and naïvety, and if we are open to finding solutions, there is no reason why our strong Europe cannot maintain a strong relationship with the UK".

One notes the insertion of the word "naïvety" and wonders whether this was directed at Mrs May or her "Ultras", but if this was another coded message, it possibly conveys much the same as Junker was trying to tell us about the demeanour of Mrs May and her residence on other galaxies.

Today, Barnier is to visit an Irish dairy cooperative in the border areas of Ireland. Maybe we'll get more detail from this, although I somehow doubt it. Until the UK general election is over, we seem to have moved into a new phase of the phoney war.

Maybe it's just as well that, at this point, David Cameron should intervene to urge Mrs May to stand firm against her "Ultras". Campaigning in Crewe yesterday, he suggested that if she won a big majority she would be better equipped to fight for a "soft Brexit" – whatever that means.

"This is one of the most defining elections I can remember where it's so important that the Conservatives win and win well, so Theresa can negotiate that Brexit deal and stand up to people who want an extreme Brexit, either here or in Brussels", he said.

Perhaps, though, Mrs May has already made her mind up on this, having just appointed former European Commission official, Peter Hill, as her principal private secretary official.

Hill, who worked in Peter Mandelson's cabinet in Brussels when he was trade commissioner, has served as director of strategy at the Foreign Office since 2013. He is said to be one of the few people in the top ranks of British government with experience of trade negotiations. It is thought that his appointment will reassure critics of the Government's current stance on Brexit.

Others are also taking comfort from the indication that Mrs May is favouring candidates who support a "soft Brexit" agenda, blocking people such as Daniel Hannan and David Bannerman, Tory MEPs who are looking for a new home to replace the Brussels gravy train.

But, where one door opens, another slams shut – this one in the face of Sara Roebuck, who is doing a double masters in European politics at Sciences Po Paris and the London School of Economics.

She recently attended a careers event in Brussels with her university class to discuss job prospects at institutions like the European Parliament or the European Commission, only to be told that getting a job with European Union (EU) institutions will be "out of the question" after Brexit.

Instead, advisers at the EU department that recruits public servants told the 24-year-old she would have to obtain French nationality in order to have any chance of following that career path.

One hopes that the mention of French nationality was related to Sara Roebuck's current location in Paris, otherwise there is the fear that, with no British counterbalance, the French are going to take over running the EU – except that many already believe they do.

But this is very much a sign of things to come. What little influence the UK exerts in les couloirs of Brussels is likely to be further diminished, yet there is probably not going to be any compensating increase in global bodies until we've established a greater presence (with all the financial costs that that implies).

It would be nice to think that, already, the FCO (together with the Department for International Trade) are planning a massive uplift in recruitment, to staff posts in global institutions, although there is no sign of that happening yet. In fact, if we are to believe what we are told, the UK is going to have trouble recruiting enough people to match the team put up by Brussels to negotiate Brexit.

Perhaps if Mrs May continues to keep it vague, it will at least minimise the pressure on human resources and, when we go under, there will be fewer redundancy notices to hand out. There must be some reason for the prime minister's silence on Brexit – and this is more logical than most.