The Guardian confirms this morning what many have suspected for some time, which is that the government simply has not got the capacity to manage Brexit and its consequences. In its morning email it says:
Britain does not have the capacity to negotiate new free-trade agreements (FTAs) and is headed for a “cut-and-paste” Brexit where existing EU pacts are replaced with “copycat” deals that continue the same arrangements. The admission by senior government sources increases pressure on Theresa May to broker continuing membership of the single market and customs union.
"We can't do 40 FTAs, we haven't got the capacity to do that,” the Guardian has been told by insiders. May and Japan's prime minister have agreed to strike a “copycat” post-Brexit trade deal, and No 10 hopes more of these can be reached with other nations to help secure continuity and confidence.
This is now, I hope, becoming readily apparent. The government wants to leave the single market but mirror it. Ditto with the customs union. The ECJ must lose its influence to be replaced by a new body looking suspiciously like the ECJ in another guise. Now trade deals are to replicate and even copy EU arrangements.
Three thoughts follow. First this shows the poverty of thinking amongst Brexiteers. What is becoming increasingly apparent is that they were all about branding but had nothing of substance to say or offer when demanding we 'take back control'. The hollowness of that phrase now strips it if even the veneer of dogmatic belief: it was always just a sham.
Second, there is also a poverty of competence on display here. Copy and paste seems to be an appropriate term, but what it suggests is an inability to innovate at a practical level. That there is no belief behind Brexit was always clear, but there's no technical skill either.
Third, there is a poverty of aspiration. We're leaving the EU and the best that we can hope for is what we had. As ambitions go that's pretty desperate.
All if this is worrying in itself. It reveals that those with a certain political philosophy are even more intellectually bankrupt than even the most sceptical of us thought. More worrying is what follows. Actual poverty will increase as a result of these failures. And that matters.
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I’m afraid government & Brexiters hope to delude a) themselves and b) us EU27 later on by maintaining:
“We have the same FTAs as you do – so it is only logical that we have a right to participate in your single market with no restrictions”.
… which of course is only true in regard to the facade of these FTAs: the UK wants to leave out and deny ALL controls that are a vital element of the EU – but sadly “take back control” here means “slam the door shut”…
‘intellectually bankrupt’
Indeed.
Brexit means “CutandPasteit”.
And once we have constructed a world which exactly mirrors the one we have left behind are we then to shadow each amendment made over time.
This is ” Alice in Wonderland” stuff; procurement systems and procedures are constructed around FTA realities – all this just to get back to where we started!
As the Guardian also says, the EU will almost certainly not allow these ‘cut and paste’ deals and the crashing out without a safety net’ scenario remains a possibility.
I worry that you are correct. The ‘Crashing out’ scenario may well appear politically advantageous to anyone who can present it as a patriotic gesture of defiance; and much of the British media are eager to take a lead in this particularly ‘patriotism’.
The problem with such convenient fictions is that systems constructed to facilitate the useful lies become a labyrinth of damaging and dangerous ones.
Consider, say, a British trader who is – in a convenient fiction – a contract employee under French law of a company domiciled in France who “from time to time” conducts company business in a French legal entity’s temporary trading floor in London.
A convenient fiction that mitigates the disruption of the loss of ‘Passporting’ and acccess to the Single Market. How convenient, that the owners of that trading floor were able to lease it to an entirely separate and distinct legal entity – perhaps, even, their parent company – domiciled in the EU!
I do not doubt that such convenient arrangements can be made for other, non-financial, businesses – if there is a political decision to permit it.
Now consider what types of tax evasion, fraud and money laundering could be hidden in a process and a legal system structured – deliberately – to deceive and to conceal from scrutiny.
Consider what the professional advisors who construct such things will turn their hand to, as good money and good business are driven out by the bad.
There are hidden costs to a ‘Brexit in Name Only’ of convenient fictions.
Sorry, it will say “Copy and Paste”, but the other countries will not accept – the british market is not as big as EU. So they will ask for another/better deal than the one with the EU. Britain will have to accept changes in the deals to the favour of the Counterpart in the contract.
Where is the politician in England or Wales who is brave enough to say “this is the most colossal mistake and waste of resources and time imaginable when there other more pressing social, economic, and political issues to resolve. Let’s call a halt to this madness.”?
Caroline Lucas
But what exactly is a free trade “deal”? “If you don’t force your residents to pay extra for our goods, then we won’t force our residents to pay extra for your goods”? But we can unilaterally decide not to force our residents to pay extra for foreign goods by simply chosing not to force our residents to pay extra for foreign goods, regardless of what other countries choose to do.
I am continually baffled by the concentration on tariffs when talking about trade deals. Of at least equal importance is the recognition of standards as our dim-witted International Trade Secretary discovered when he landed himself in the chlorinated chicken soup.
Everyone talks about the opportunities for export quietly forgetting that the counterparty wants something too. How popular will relaxed visa arrangements for Indian workers be to Bozza’s fan club?
Agreed