This was another week in post-Brexit Britain that felt like the relative calm before the storm in terms of our relationships with the EU and its members states. In terms of domestic politics, however, an autumn storm made landfall with full force.
The Paterson Case: British politics under the Brexit government
This week’s political news coverage was dominated by the chaotic handling by the government and the parliamentary Conservative Party of the parliamentary Standards Committee’s call to suspend Tory MP Owen Paterson for having repeatedly broken lobbying rules. On the face of it, the Owen Paterson corruption case (because that is what we would call “paid advocacy” if it happened in any other country than our own) does not seem to be Brexit-related. Brexit did not cause Paterson to take half a million pounds from two companies to use his public office to try and influence the Food Standards Agency in their favour. At one level, however, what Paterson did and the way the Tory party and the Prime Minister defended him is very much in line with a broader pattern of behaviour that has everything to do with Brexit. In fact, the case reminds us that Brexit was fundamentally a means in the pursuit of a broader political end, which rallies a heterogenous elite of kleptocrats and plutocrats around the objective of reshaping the British political system in a way that better serves their interests. Making corruption harder to control is in line with that.
In an extraordinary move, the government not only issued a three-line whip to Tory MPs to vote against the suspension of Paterson, but to support an amendment put forward by Andreas Leadsom that turned the vote into an attack on the Standards Committee instead. Indeed, rather than suspending their colleague, the majority of Tory MPs voted to subject the standards regime to a review by a new, conservative majority Select Committee.
Many Tory MPs reportedly voiced concerns and had personal misgivings about being instructed to vote for the amendment. Still, a majority followed the party whip allowing Paterson to avoid suspension. Yet, less than 24 hours later, Johnson performed one of his trade mark U-turns when he realised the public backlash against his support for a corrupt colleague. Johnson’s change of heart led to Paterson’s resignation and wide-spread condemnation; not just from the usually toothless opposition, but also from senior Tories such as former conservative PM John Major.
There are many possible explanations of what moved Johnson to initially support Paterson and the Leadsom amendment. Thus, some sources suggest the PM was simply distracted by the COP26 summit, or gave in to the staunch lobbying in favour of Paterson by Tory grandees like Ian Duncan Smith. Yet, it seems difficult to ignore the parallels between the behaviour of the government and senior Tories in this case and other recent governmental initiatives. Thus, Dominic Raab’s attack on judicial independence and human rights, for instance, seems perfectly in line with what increasingly looks like a plan by the government to not just ‘unchain’ Britain from EU rules, but also liberate the governing elite in the UK from any responsibility and accountability.
In light of this, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that the Leadsom amendment was a conscious attempt by the PM and senior Tories to weaken the Standards Committee and its head Commissioner Kathryn Stone. Of course, it may be exaggerated to see Johnson’s actions in this case as part of a well-crafted and thoroughly thought-through plan. Rather, it becomes increasingly clear that whenever Johnson has to make a decision his instinct leads him to undermine liberal democracy in order to maintain his grip on power or benefit his allies.
LBC’s James O’Brien in a truly brilliant comment on the Paterson case explained the strength of public backlash by the fact that after 11 months of real existing Brexit, the promise of ‘getting Brexit done’ can no longer be used as a trump card that excuses any level of wrongdoing and corruption in the name of saving the country from the EU – as Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng was still trying to do on Thursday morning after the Paterson vote and just hours before Johnson’s U-turn.
It increasingly looks like rather than banking on the promise of getting Brexit done, the government puts all its effort into making sure it comes undone.
Fishing licences row
Regarding the row over fishing rights with France, early in the UK government was still ratcheting up the rhetoric, warning France that it will not ‘roll over’ and Foreign Secretary Liz Truss issuing an ultimatum for France to suspend the threatened retaliatory action. More licences to French fishing boats were eventually issued by Jersey and France did suspend the threatened retorsion measures against UK boats. The pro-Brexit press talked about Liz Truss’s ‘masterstroke’ and a ‘sensational’ climb-down by Macron.
As Chris Grey’s Brexit & Beyond blog this week shows in its usual thorough and nuanced way, the fishing licence row is more complicated than what meets the eye. What does seems clear, however, is that – with all due respect to the fisherman and -women involved – this row over a rather trivial issue in the bigger scheme of things will not have any winners. Rather, it puts an unnecessary strain on UK-French and UK-EU relations and could have considerable implications for international politics and the negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP).
The Northern Ireland Protocol
In terms of the ongoing discussions between the UK and the EU over the NIP, for the first time one gets the impression that the UK government actually has a plan – albeit only a short-term one.
Indeed, it is becoming increasingly clear that the UK government is not just using the threat of triggering Article 16 of the NIP as a negotiation strategy, but is actually preparing to do so after COP26.
Triggering art. 16 does not solve anything of course. As Katy Hayward and David Phinnemore argue, art 16 was designed as a safeguard “to create a temporary breathing space to resolve serious issues arising out of the implementation of an agreement and in such a way that allows that agreement to persist.” Johnson and Frost – and the DUP – are of course not interested in seeing the NIP persist. So, all triggering art. 16 will do is require more negotiations with the EU, which of course are already ongoing and not going anywhere and are unlikely to go better in an even more acrimonious atmosphere. So, what is the government’s plan?
According to several observers it involves time travel: The UK government seems to be under the impression that triggering article 16 will allow them to “re-wind the clock” and get the chance to negotiated another Brexit deal. More specifically, the government will let the discussions with the EU over the NIP go nowhere, decry the EU’s lack of flexibility – despite considerable new proposals –, trigger article 16 and hope that this will somehow allow the government to have another go at negotiating a new Brexit deal.
Indeed, the government seems increasingly to be driven by the view that the deal that it did get is not what it wanted. The Withdrawal Agreement and the TCA that Johnson lauded when he signed it as a ‘have our cake and eat it’ deal is now being portrayed as the basis for the ‘the wrong kind of Brexit’ that the government had no choice but to sign due to mistakes made by Theresa May (in the form of the “Joint Report” of December 2017) and Parliament (in the form of the Benn Act).
The right kind of Brexit that the government wants, of course, is having all the benefits of EU membership, but making none of the contributions; and having all the rights of a member state, but none of the duties that come with it. Needless to say, that outside the Brexiters’ fantasy world, everyone would agree that getting such a deal is an illusion. Most observers seem to agree that triggering art. 16 in the hope of renegotiating an new deal is a massive miscalculation with no chance of success.
This seems to be supported by EU member states’ reaction to the UK’s intransigence. Even rather placatory ones like Belgium openly support strong EU action including suspending the TCA. That will not put off the Johnson-Frost duo who probably see such threats only as a hardball tactic that the EU will not be able to follow through with. Even if it were, the suspension of the TCA seems like a price the government is willing to pay in the hope for a chance to ‘get Brexit done’ a second time.
So, we risk getting trapped in a dystopian Brexit groundhog day where the government continues to pursue the impossible, settles for a deal that it first sells as prove that having your cake and eating it is possible, but when reality kicks in starts blaming external forces for the very same deal, proceeds to renege, undermine, and torpedo it in the hope of having better luck next time.
The economic impact
While the government is busy pursuing its ‘Brexit undone’ strategy, the economic impact of Brexit continues to look grim.
The government finally unveiled the new Shared Prosperity Fund (SPF) which will replace the EU’s structural fund supporting poor areas in April next year. Considered as part of the so-called ‘levelling up’ agenda, it seems increasingly likely that the areas who previously benefitted from EU funding will take a financial hit. Thus, the Welsh government complained that instead of receiving at least £375m annually the announcement seems to confirm that Wales will receive just £46m.
Regarding trade, a recent article published in the Byline Times cites government figures that show a decline in trade with top European trading partners equivalent to £515m a week. These figures need to be treated with caution as they do not clearly distinguish between the impact of Covid and the impact of Brexit and include trade with non-EU member states like Switzerland. Still, there seems to be an increasing acknowledgement by officials and government bodies that the UK will take a hit due to Brexit which the Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) with non-EU partners will do very little to compensate for.
Brexit’s economic impact does not look pretty in other respects either. Ryanair has announced that it considers delisting from the London Stock Exchange to comply with Brexit. Meat producers have started exporting carcasses to Ireland and the Netherlands for processing, before reimporting the meat for sale into the UK. This increases costs for producers and means that pork for instance cannot be labelled as ‘British pork’ after reimporting; but producers see it as the only way to get around the labour shortages in the UK and take advantage of the plentiful workforce in Ireland and the Netherlands.
Given the negative impact of the current post-Brexit arrangement, it is perhaps understandable that the government is doing everything it can to undermine the agreements it has signed with the EU in the hope of rectifying the ‘wrong kind of Brexit’ in a second attempt. The problem, of course, is that triggering art. 16 and risking the suspension of the TCA is hardly the ‘right kind of Brexit.’