Brexit: overtaken by madness

09/10/2017

I remarked in an earlier piece that it required no great insight to realise that Mrs May had essentially given up on the Brexit negotiations. Unable to take any initiative that would break the impasse in Brussels without mortally offending one or other of the factions in her party, the indications have been that she is frozen into immobility.

Latterly, though, we have The Times (no paywall) tell us that the Prime Minister is today to use a statement to the House of Commons to warn European leaders that the UK will make no more concessions on Brexit until they compromise on opening trade and transition talks.

Mrs May will, we are informed, tell other Member States that "the ball is in their court", thus implicitly warning of the risk of talks breaking down. She will call for both sides to be constructive and "prove the doomsayers wrong".

Senior government sources, The Times report continues, have said the prime minister's statement makes clear that she has "offered what we were going to offer" in her speech in Florence. It is now up to the EU leaders to decide whether sufficient progress had been made to move the talks on at next week's European Council meeting.

This stance is not incompatible with the first. This is not a serious attempt to negotiate: the "colleagues" have already dismissed the Florence speech as not constituting a negotiating position, Therefore, Mrs May (or her advisers) must know that the EU negotiating team cannot respond positively to her statement.

This means we are drifting inexorably towards a "no deal" Brexit – not the result of any conscious action but a default option arising because no one knew how to stop it, or is prepared to take the necessary steps to engage constructively with the EU. We end up with the worst of all possible worlds, the "accidental Brexit" which no-one ever wanted.

One might have thought that the very prospect of such an outcome might serve to concentrate minds and provoke a flurry of focused activity, aimed at preventing something which will undoubtedly prove economically (and politically) disastrous. But such is the unreal state into which UK politics have descended that no serious moves are being made to head off the disaster.

Instead, we read in the Telegraph the claim that Mrs May "has decided to commit billions of pounds on preparing Britain to leave the European Union without a deal".

This is supposed to be a ploy to save her premiership as the spending, which will be "unlocked" in the new year if no progress is made with Brussels, is intended to send a signal to pro-Brexit MPs that she is serious about regaining the upper hand in the negotiations.

The cash, we are told, will be spent on new technology to speed up customs checks at the borders "if the UK has to revert to a World Trade Organisation tariff system, and a range of other measures". And, we learn, the Government is already working on plans to deal with air traffic control and migration in the event of a "hard Brexit".

However, if we are to take this at face value, the ploy appears not to be a serious attempt to deal with the consequences of a "no deal" Brexit. In truth, no amount of money thrown at this problem will have anything but a marginal effect on it. Once we walk away from the EU, the solutions no longer lie in our hands.

Instead, this fits in with an utterly mad idea expressed in a Telegraph editorial.

The political embarrassments of the conference season, allied to several errors made by the Government over the past year, says this newspaper, mean that many in the EU think Britain is weakened – that Brussels can just sabotage the talks and that Britain will ultimately take whatever it is given.

To this, in the mind of the editorial writer, "there is an obvious answer to this crisis: the UK must make it crystal clear that it is prepared to walk away without a deal".

Readers might be comforted to learn that this "should absolutely not be our primary objective". The residual sanity left in Telegraph towers does at least acknowledge that a no deal Brexit "would be very costly, for us and the rest of Europe". "But anyone with any experience of business", it goes on to say, "will tell you that the best way to win a negotiation is to have a serious fallback option".

Sadly, this preposterous idea seems to have taken root at the highest levels of government, without the realisation that we are not dealing with a business negotiation, but with arrangements between the UK and 27 other nation states, represented by the European Union, as to our post-Brexit relations.

Right from the very start, there have been those who have seen these negotiations in terms of bartering for a cut-price Turkish carpet in a souk, whence the "walk-away" strategy is entirely valid. There is always another seller with whom one can do business.

In this case, though, it is inconceivable that a mature, developed nation should not have a complex of relationships with its neighbours, spanning a vast range of issues, with formal agreements which establish rights, obligations and procedures. And, inasmuch as the Brexit talks are about restoring such agreements after the fracture of our withdrawal, failure is not an option. We cannot walk away without an agreement.

Despite that, the children in the Telegraph assert that it is "maddening that while the Government insists it has been preparing for a no deal outcome, it hasn’t been spending serious money to do so". Britain doesn't want to abandon the Brexit talks, say these children, "but, if it is seriously prepared to do so, the threat of walking strengthens our hand". Crucially, they say:

… it would also focus minds in Europe. If Britain has done too little to prepare, the EU has done next to nothing. They too would have massive problems with their financial systems and they too would face queues of lorries waiting to go to take goods across the Channel. Several member states would suffer more as a share of GDP from a no deal Brexit than we would.

Outside the purview of the Telegraph, though, we have a report from the Irish broadcaster, RTE, which tells of an internal report by the Revenue Commissioners which has "spelled out the enormous physical and economic impact Brexit will impose upon both Ireland's customs infrastructure, and on the tens of thousands of companies who trade with the UK".

This as yet unpublished report, we are told, sets out in stark detail the vast increase in paperwork, human resources and physical space requirements at ports and airports. And, in a devastating rejection of the fantasies of Tory politicians, it declares that an open border between Northern Ireland and the Republic will be impossible from a customs perspective.

It is interesting that the Irish Revenue Commissioners began exploring the potential impact on the customs interface between Ireland and the UK, a full year before the referendum. Then, of course, our own people should have been doing the same, but they didn't.

In terms of scale, 91,000 Irish companies trade with the UK. After Brexit, their customs declarations will create an eight-fold increase in paperwork volume. There will be special permits, extra investment, more paperwork and potential delays. Ports and airports will need extra infrastructure, such as temporary storage facilities for customs clearance. The Revenue itself will need a big increase in staffing levels.

For traders, the report says, the administrative and fiscal burden cannot be underestimated. Even the Ploughing Championships will be hit, since heavy equipment brought over from the UK will need to be declared under a Temporary Importation Procedure. Extra staff will be needed for the Irish postal service, An Post to manage customs checks on parcels coming in from the UK. Even smaller regional airports will now need customs infrastructure.

The report goes on to says that every day 13,000 commercial vehicles cross the Irish border and thus, a completely open border is not possible from a customs perspective. It would be naive to believe a unique arrangement can be found.

Something you simply do not see in UK references is then stated with utmost clarity: "Once negotiations are completed ... the UK will become a third country for customs purposes and the associated formalities will become unavoidable". And, of course, not only will this affect Ireland as the only EU country to have a land border with the UK, it will affect all other Member States.

Looking at this aspect, if the UK Government is beginning to acknowledge that billions must be invested in customs services to keep trade flowing (albeit not as freely as when we were in the EU), then it follows that other Member States, and especially France, Belgium, Holland and the others which have direct shipping links, must do likewise.

Addressing the myth that technology in any way provides an answer, the Report explores certain hi-tech options. There could, it says, be e-flow style number plate recognition allowing goods vehicles to move without having to stop in cases where a pre-departure/arrival declaration has been lodged and green-routed.

A vehicle could be identified by the ANPR system associated with a particular pre-declared consignment and signalled as to whether clearance has been provided. However, it says:

For a system of this nature to work with maximum effectiveness it would require an interface between both countries' electronic systems and it is unclear whether any such system could be commissioned and installed in the time available. A detailed analysis of the cost/benefit and the associated technical challenges is required before the practicality of such a regime can be evaluated.

Regardless of any efficiency arising from an ANPR system, the inevitability of certain consignments being routed other than green and goods or documents having to be examined would still require investment in suitable facilities at all designated crossing points.

To return to unreality, we had yesterday Justice Minister Dominic Raab being asked by the BBC why there was no visible sign of preparations for no deal - such as the recruitment of more customs officers and more infrastructure at ports.

This buffoon responded by saying that the planning "goes on", but: "What we don't do is run around advertising it demonstrably. Why? Because we want to send the right, positive tone to our EU partners. So we don't go talking about what happens if we end up with no deal, but quietly, assiduously, those preparations will be in place".

Once again, we see this naïve parochialism, where any thinking – such that it is – stops at our border. Not a single synapse is employed to consider what might be happening on the other side of the Channel where, as far as we can ascertain, no preparations at all are being made for Brexit.

On reading the lengthy extract from the Irish Revenue report, it is absolutely clear that a "no deal" Brexit is a non-starter. No matter how many billions the UK Treasury might throw at the problem, this is not going to resolved the deep-rooted problems that come with "third country" status. If the UK persists in following its current non-strategy in Brexit talks, we are headed for disaster.

The Dominic Raab nostrum, therefore, is one of utter foolishness. Commission officials, and especially M. Barnier, will have a very good idea of what a "no deal" Brexit involves. Using it as a negotiating ploy is akin to telling the EU, "give us what we want or we'll shoot ourselves".

One can scarcely believe just how badly these negotiations are being managed, and how dangerously exposed we are. Yet, as the UK negotiating team travel to Brussels today, we see no sign of any acknowledgement that the talks are on the brink of irrevocable failure - not least as Mr Davis is, apparently, not even bothering to turn up until Thursday.

If there is no breakthrough at this week's talks – and none is expected – and the October European Council refuses to move to phase two, the next realistic chance of the matter again being considered is in the March Council. For all that could then be achieved before the deadline, we might just as well disband our negotiating team.

Such is evident from the article written by Bernard Jenkin in the Guardian today, which charts our descent into madness. As long as there are people close to power who believe that a "no deal" Brexit is an option, we are doomed.