09/09/2018
We live in surreal times. Britain totters ever closer to a "no-deal" Brexit yet, on the very day Lord King, the former governor of the Bank of England, complained that the government was unprepared for its "disastrous consequences", the lead headline of the
Daily Telegraph was "Calorie counts to be listed on menus".
This still leaves Theresa May persisting with her Chequers plan despite it being rejected as unworkable by virtually everyone else. But, even if we drop out of the EU with a "no deal", the talking cannot stop there. Despite the difficulties, we would still need to cobble together a host of what the Brexit minister Dominic Raab calls "side-deals", simply to keep much of our economy functioning.
With this in mind, Booker in his column this week (no link) lists just three of the problems which, as the European Commission has repeatedly warned, we will face if we fall out of the EU to become a "third country", causing a myriad legal authorisations and arrangements to lapse .
One structure we shall drop out of is the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA), which provides the legal framework for members of the EU and neighbourhood countries to fly freely in each other's air space, subject to their complete conformity with EU aviation rules.
On becoming a "third country" we could not apply to rejoin it, to allow continued air traffic between ourselves and the EU, without lengthy negotiations; and even then only if we have established a framework of "close economic cooperation" with the EU.
A second institution, about which Booker first wrote in March 2017, is Formula One motor racing. With seven of its nine teams based in Britain, driving cars largely designed and manufactured here by an industry turning over £9 billion a year, it would be severely disrupted.
New border controls would make it so difficult to maintain the rapid movement involved in transferring thousands of tons of equipment between Britain and the seven other EU countries which stage
Grands Prix that teams might have to relocate to the continent.
A month earlier, in February 2017, Booker had written about another arrangement that would lapse. This will be the tripartite agreement between Britain, Ireland and France which allows racehorses to move freely between them.
Without this agreement, crippling border controls will make it impossible for Irish horses to run at Cheltenham or in the Grand National, because it would take too long to get them home (as no one should be more aware than Aintree's chairman Rose Paterson, married to ultra-Brexiteer Owen Paterson MP, who is presumably quite happy about a "no-deal").
As with many other examples, these only potentially arise because our ministers have never shown any awareness of what damage we could suffer if we leave without a proper agreement. And, as Sir Ivan Rogers noted recently, no amount of last-minute "side deals" can hope fully to remedy.
The thing is, it wasn't difficult to work out the consequences of leaving without a deal, and I was posting articles on this subject before Mrs May had even given her Lancaster House speech.
Now, though, we learn that chickens are coming home to roost, with the
Sunday Times reporting that "police chiefs are drawing up contingency plans to deal with widespread civil disorder at the country's borders and ports in the event of a no-deal Brexit".
A document prepared by the National Police Co-ordination Centre (NPCC) warns that the "necessity to call on military assistance is a real possibility" in the weeks around the UK's departure from the EU. "Widespread leave embargoes" will be required and some forces, such as Kent, are expected unilaterally to cancel rest days and leave immediately after 29 March.
Even more than this may be required as disruption and civil disorder may last for three months either side of 29 March, rather than the six weeks being planned for by the government.
It is also anticipated that a no-deal Brexit could lead to a rise in crime, particularly theft and robbery, as Britain suffers food and drug shortages with the "expectation that more people will become ill". The document notes that: "There is an expectation that crime not directly connected to Brexit will rise, as acquisitive crime will habitually rise in the event of restricted availability of goods".
Worryingly, the NPCC also refers to Operation Stack, when publicly the government says that this has been replaced by
Operation Brock. One wonders whether the report authors are fully up to speed, especially as it warns that the queuing system will have to be "enacted in every UK port" requiring a "heavy police commitment".
In this blog, we have discussed ideas on how traffic could be kept flowing â specifically by regulating lorry traffic at source, preventing commercial vehicles starting their journeys unless they can demonstrate that their loads will be cleared at their destination ports.
Then, if the flow of lorries into UK ports is matched with the rate at which they are cleared at the other end, then there is no reason why there should be any serious congestion on the roads â or any shortages of foods or medicines.
If this document represents the best that the police have to offer, then it would indicate that they are as incompetent as other branches of government. However, there may be some mitigation here, as they complain that the ability of forces to plan for a no-deal Brexit is being "undermined by a perceived lack of communication between the policing unit of the Home Office and the Department for Exiting the European Union".
At the same time,
George Hamilton, chief constable of the Police Service of Northern Ireland, is also complaining that ministers have failed adequately to prepare for the impact of Brexit on the peace and security of the province.
Hamilton acknowledges that the UK is still negotiating exit terms but said the consequences of resurrecting the Irish border should be anticipated and planned for. For instance, any physical infrastructure or border officials would become targets for dissident Republicans and require police protection.
"The purpose for which those checking points and border controls would be put in place would become less and less relevant because they would move away from issues of trade or movement of people to old-fashioned security on a national frontier. That was done during the period of the Troubles rather unsuccessfully, and was sadly the subject of attacks and many lives lost", he said.
Cross-border smuggling - already rife over fuel, alcohol and tobacco - would escalate as prices and tax rates diverged, Hamilton added. "We can make the sensible assumption that violent dissident Republican groupings and organised criminals will seek to exploit that. It's already tricky enough policing that high-threat border".
Significantly , revenue and customs and the UK Border Force have received thousands of new officers to handle Brexit but the PSNI has yet to receive an answer to its series of increasingly detailed requests for more resources. Until last month it lacked even a designated interlocutor in Whitehall. One source described the process as "wading through treacle".
That is as good a description as any for the entire Brexit process, and as deadly as Boston's 1919
molasses flood (pictured), where hard information on government intentions is almost impossible to obtain, while delusion and misunderstanding seems to be rife.
Unsurprisingly, we thus see the
Independent on Sunday report that the Brexit talks are "at risk of collapse". The claim is that EU officials believe they have struck upon "the only way" to bring the two sides together on the Irish border in a bid to secure a withdrawal agreement later this year, but their proposal has already been outright rejected by at least two cabinet ministers. One has gone further, branding the EU's proposal "bollocks".
There is apparently nothing new to the substance of the proposal. The EU is still insisting the backstop must be in the legal text of the withdrawal agreement, but it is now being suggested that the agreement could be accompanied by a non-binding political statement to be agreed with London, that would say the backstop would never be needed because it would be superseded by an eventual trade deal.
The declaration itself would then be suitably vague on the broader future relationship to give the prime minister more flexibility over how a future trade deal would evolve during the transition period.
This is almost exactly what Sir Ivan Rogers warned against in his Dublin speech, making the response utterly predictable. With just 200 days to Brexit, we are thus that bit closer to March and no further forward. And next week, doubtless, we will be saying much the same.
