Brexit process

[UndercoverElephant]

Breaking news. The Times headline tomorrow reports that the DUP is threatening to abandon May in a confidence vote if she loses the withdrawal deal vote.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Dtchjx7WkAELV3p.jpg:large

Bizarrely, the DUP have now threatened to vote against her in a confidence vote if her deal gets through parliament, and to vote against her if it doesn't!!

[UndercoverElephant]

David Owen’s open letter to parliament: If Brexit vote is lost, we have one card left — the EEA

Your votes on December 11 are your choice and yours alone. This is about what the government and the UK should do if the Commons decides not to endorse the EU withdrawal agreement.

After losing a big vote, the government will be expected to give a considered response. It will be vital that world financial markets know immediately how the UK intends to act. For the government to allow speculators and currency markets to dictate a repeat vote on the agreement in the weeks following would be both disreputable and dangerous.

The prime minister and EU have repeatedly said the EU will not renegotiate the withdrawal agreement. Nick Boles and, it appears, Michael Gove advocate voting for the withdrawal agreement and then negotiating “Norway plus� to apply after December 31, 2020.

This proposal is different. It concerns only the situation if the withdrawal agreement has been rejected, and is about continuing as a member of the European Economic Area (EEA) after March 29, 2019. This allows an independent fisheries policy to start immediately and ensures that we have, if we judge the time to be correct, a clear legal exit procedure in which the EU has no involvement.

The agreement having been rejected, the UK must seize the initiative and stop being a supplicant under article 50 while paying strictly determined exit costs. We can thereby avert the other outcome of leaving without a deal in less than four months. It offers clarity and certainty.

Here is a suggested prime minister’s statement after the withdrawal agreement vote is lost: “As a consequence of tonight’s votes I am sending letters immediately to all the other parties to the EEA agreement: the EU itself, its 27 other member states and the European Free Trade Association states (Efta).

“The letters will state our intention to continue in the EEA as a non-EU member from the end of March 2019. We intend to do this because we signed the EEA agreement as the UK in 1992 and we have not as the UK given the 12 months’ notice in writing required to withdraw from the agreement.

“If Efta or the EU countries challenge our entitlement, then we will take our case to arbitration under international law using the Permanent Court of Arbitration (PCA), which was endorsed by all EU countries in the withdrawal agreement. I am writing to the secretary-general of the PCA.

“I hope this action will unite many different viewpoints in parliament. It has the merit of being very simple.

“We, like the three other non-EU members of the EEA, would not be starting out as part of the EU customs union, though we could pursue that. We could pursue our own EU-UK free trade association (FTA) on the lines of ‘Canada plus plus plus’, as Donald Tusk, president of the European Council, once proposed, and we will immediately start other FTA negotiations. There is no necessity for us to join Efta. We would not be fixing any time limit as to how long we stay in the EEA. Like the other three non-EU countries, we would continue to be bound, as are all parties to the EEA agreement, to give one year’s notice of leaving.

“We would not ask anything more from the EU than we are entitled to under the EEA agreement. That will be a good achievement. Norway has significant rule influence for a country its size. Liechtenstein even has strict immigration controls. The European Court of Justice does not hold sway, and there are no mandatory contributions to the EU budget (only to an EEA-Efta programme to reduce economic and social disparities, likely to be about £1.5bn per year).

“We would also be in a position to agree with the EU before March 29 many issues on which genuine agreements were made during the negotiations over the withdrawal agreement, and where appropriate we would be willing to pay for these. Continuing in the EEA agreement as a non-EU member requires no more than minor consequential legislative changes similar to those needed by Austria, Finland and Sweden in the opposite direction on leaving Efta to join the EU in 1995. In Ireland the border would become an EEA-EU land border like the one between Norway and Sweden, but with no infrastructure rather than partial infrastructure.

“We will urgently improve our transport links with the Continent and keep in place the legislation to leave the EU on March 29, agreed by both houses of parliament, though if we stay in the EEA we would have to adjust the EU Withdrawal Act 2018 a little.�

Lord Owen was Labour foreign secretary in 1977-9 and a founder member of the Social Democratic Party; lorddavidowen.co.uk

I'll take that.

[fuzzy]

Except that an arrangement that is designed for an exporting country is unlikely to help one whose only large exports nowadays are weapons and brain dead TV.

[Lord Beria3]

The eea option is a non starter - read the recent Norway briefing by eurointelligence.

Regarding hodges, he's been a long standing TM fan and his contacts within the Tory party are good. Not sure if he is right but makes sense that some Tory mps think like that.

[UndercoverElephant]

The eea option is a non starter - read the recent Norway briefing by eurointelligence.

Because it doesn't get rid of the backstop?

I don't think you read Owen's open letter properly. He is not suggesting Norway + backstop. He's suggesting we can do Norway without the backstop, because we are already members off the EEA. So we can crash out of the EU with no withdrawal agreement (and no backstop) but still remain in the EEA. Does not solve the Irish border problem, but makes a solution much easier than no deal does.

Latest eurointelligence post does not address that. It is only "politically impossible" because it fails to end FoM, but at this point people are desperate to find an alternative to TM's deal.

[Little John]

Remind me what the "Irish Border problem" vis a vis Brexit is again. Over and above that which has been attempted to be deliberately artificially engineered by the EU and remain-dominated UK political class, that is.

[Little John]

.....Latest eurointelligence post does not address that. It is only "politically impossible" because it fails to end FoM, but at this point people are desperate to find an alternative to TM's deal.

No

If freedom of movement continues, then the shit will go down. One of the primary reasons, if not THE primary reason, for voting leave for many voters was to end open borders.

[UndercoverElephant]

Remind me what the "Irish Border problem" vis a vis Brexit is again. Over and above that which has been attempted to be deliberately artificially engineered by the EU and remain-dominated UK political class, that is.

Getting a bit bored of this, Steve. Existing treaties require both the UK and Ireland to construct border infrastructure in the event of a no deal brexit, and both the UK and Ireland have said they simply won't do it. I suspect neither side is bluffing, and that would lead to an unprecedented (literally) international diplomatic/constitutional problem. There are no historical examples of such a problem, because nothing quite like this situation has ever previously occurred.

[UndercoverElephant]

If freedom of movement continues, then the shit will go down.

The shit will go down whatever happens.

Yes, FoM was a key driver of the vote, and if it does not end then there will huge political ramifications. Regardless of that, David Owen's suggestion is still better than agreeing to May's deal. It represents a compromise position between May's deal and crashing out with no deal at all (which you and I might go for, but far too many other people will not). Owen's suggestions fails to end FoM, but also means we don't have to agree to the WA - so no £39bn, and no backstop. Which, in turn, means we regain control of fisheries and Gibraltar, and end up in a position where the EU doesn't have a gun to our heads in future trade negotiations, because we have a unilateral exit clause.

In effect, what Owen has suggested leads to a temporary continuation of free movement, as the price of not having to do any of the following:

(1) agree to this terrible deal.
(2) cancel brexit.
(3) crash out with no deal (because EEA is some sort of deal).

You can't always get what you want, Steve. But if you try sometimes, you just might get what you need.

The EU won't want to agree to this. But they have limited options for disagreeing, because it is based on existing treaties. We are already a member of the EEA and have not said we are leaving. Therefore the EU would have to take it up with the permanent court of arbitration - in effect we would be taking the decision out of the hands of the ECJ and into the hands of an international organisation that the EU does not control. It's actually an oversight by the EU - they should have insisted that the UK officially declare that we were leaving the EEA, but they just assumed they didn't have to. They were not expecting a no deal at all, let alone that we'd follow it up by unilaterally declaring that we have not left the EEA. It takes advantage of a missing clause in the EEA agreement. When that agreement was drawn up in 1994, nobody considered what would happen if one of the EU states that signed it subsequently left the EU. That treaty does not say "If a signatory country leaves the EU, it automatically leaves the EEA."

It's quite clever actually. If this is what actually happens then it will be the tories who take the blame for not ending FoM. And the UK will retain control of what happens next: we can still end FoM eventually, we just have to figure out how to make it happen.

[Little John]

Remind me what the "Irish Border problem" vis a vis Brexit is again. Over and above that which has been attempted to be deliberately artificially engineered by the EU and remain-dominated UK political class, that is.

Getting a bit bored of this, Steve. Existing treaties require both the UK and Ireland to construct border infrastructure in the event of a no deal brexit, and both the UK and Ireland have said they simply won't do it. I suspect neither side is bluffing, and that would lead to an unprecedented (literally) international diplomatic/constitutional problem. There are no historical examples of such a problem, because nothing quite like this situation has ever previously occurred.

You are not the only one getting bored of it. Please define "border infrastructure" in the context, as you have already sated, of both the UK and Southern Ireland explicitly stating they have absolutely no intention of constructing an architecturally hard border for the Irish and British other than that which will be required to check goods in and out as is the case on any border. What do you think is going to happen? do you think the EU is going to send in an EU army to build the border? Or, are you suggesting that the checking in and out of goods is going to cause a constitutional crisis?

You see, you keep citing this crisis without actually explicitly stating what the nature of the crisis is other than the EU are going to spit their dummy out. But, this is not due to any necessity for them to do so. They have used NI as a dirty little bargaining chip throughout this whole process.

F--k the EU.

[Little John]

If freedom of movement continues, then the shit will go down.

The shit will go down whatever happens.

Yes, FoM was a key driver of the vote, and if it does not end then there will huge political ramifications. Regardless of that, David Owen's suggestion is still better than agreeing to May's deal. It represents a compromise position between May's deal and crashing out with no deal at all (which you and I might go for, but far too many other people will not). Owen's suggestions fails to end FoM, but also means we don't have to agree to the WA - so no £39bn, and no backstop. Which, in turn, means we regain control of fisheries and Gibraltar, and end up in a position where the EU doesn't have a gun to our heads in future trade negotiations, because we have a unilateral exit clause.

In effect, what Owen has suggested leads to a temporary continuation of free movement, as the price of not having to do any of the following:

(1) agree to this terrible deal.
(2) cancel brexit.
(3) crash out with no deal (because EEA is some sort of deal).

You can't always get what you want, Steve. But if you try sometimes, you just might get what you need.

The EU won't want to agree to this. But they have limited options for disagreeing, because it is based on existing treaties. We are already a member of the EEA and have not said we are leaving. Therefore the EU would have to take it up with the permanent court of arbitration - in effect we would be taking the decision out of the hands of the ECJ and into the hands of an international organisation that the EU does not control. It's actually an oversight by the EU - they should have insisted that the UK officially declare that we were leaving the EEA, but they just assumed they didn't have to. They were not expecting a no deal at all, let alone that we'd follow it up by unilaterally declaring that we have not left the EEA. It takes advantage of a missing clause in the EEA agreement. When that agreement was drawn up in 1994, nobody considered what would happen if one of the EU states that signed it subsequently left the EU. That treaty does not say "If a signatory country leaves the EU, it automatically leaves the EEA."

It's quite clever actually. If this is what actually happens then it will be the tories who take the blame for not ending FoM. And the UK will retain control of what happens next: we can still end FoM eventually, we just have to figure out how to make it happen.

Of course Owen's suggestion is better than May's deal. But, then , so is leaving on WTO which also happens to have the additional and not inconsiderable merit of actually adhering to the result of the referendum.

I also note you have started using the political class's rhetoric of "crashing out" of the EU.

[UndercoverElephant]

Please define "border infrastructure" in the context, as you have already sated, of both the UK and Southern Ireland explicitly stating they have absolutely no intention of constructing an architecturally hard border...

Steve...are you being dumb on purpose? because it looks like it.

The exact problem is that both the UK and RoI (nobody calls it "southern Ireland") have stated they will not build a border. The problem is that there is no border in the world between two different customs territories where the countries on both sides are refusing to build a border.

What do you think is going to happen?

I have no idea. As already stated, the situation is unprecedented. But if both sides refuse to build a border then there will be a major political problem, also unprecedented.

Or, are you suggesting that the checking in and out of goods is going to cause a constitutional crisis?

Both outcomes cause an unprecedented crisis. Building a border causes a crisis (for reasons you well understand, even if you pretend not to) and refusing to build one causes a crisis. Neither situation is sustainable. The first will lead to violence and the second leads to a major breach of existing treaties (by Ireland, and also by the UK if we aren't careful).

[clv101]

...explicitly stating they have absolutely no intention of constructing an architecturally hard border for the Irish and British other than that which will be required to check goods in and out as is the case on any border.

I don't understand what you mean, there are 208 road crossing - each (or we close most of them?) will need infrastructure to check goods. That's a hard boarder. What do you mean by 'architecturally hard border'?

(No one, ever, suggested a 310 mile wall!)

[UndercoverElephant]

Of course Owen's suggestion is better than May's deal. But, then , so is leaving on WTO which also happens to have the additional and not inconsiderable merit of actually adhering to the result of the referendum.

Owen's suggestion is also much closer to respecting the result of the referendum than May's deal (on sovereignty, which is more important than immigration on its own).

And the problem with "crashing out" (which is what it would be) on WTO rules is that there are far too many MPs opposed to it. Sure, they may not be able to stop it, but if they think they cannot stop it by any other means than cancelling brexit, then brexit might be cancelled altogether. Owen's suggestion might just be the only way to save brexit, Steve.

You clearly prefer Owen's plan to either May's deal or cancelling brexit. You think it is less desirable than leaving with no deal, but if people reject Owen's plan in favour of no deal, you'll probably get no brexit at all. And that is not one of May's idle threats.

No deal has too many opponents, so relying it to happen by default is a very dangerous game indeed.

[UndercoverElephant]

(No one, ever, suggested a 310 mile wall!)

How is that going to be avoided?