This report from Reuters seems to have attracted little follow in news coverage, and yet sums up all too well just what the state of Brexit preparation in the UK really is:
Britain signaled on Thursday that its attempt to seal terms for its post-Brexit membership of the World Trade Organization by a fast-track procedure had failed, and it must now enter negotiations which are likely to be lengthy.
This followed objections raised by a number of other WTO states, International Trade Minister Liam Fox said.
An attempt to get fast track entry by copying and pasting the EU's terms of membership, through which we have WTO access now, failed. The result is that we will be in limbo for years.
The resulting question is a simple one, but surely the most important. It is whether any government anyone can think of has pursued a policy so self-determinedly destructive than this one is? I cannot.
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I think that this news is obviously fake, because it seriously ignores the fact that we were assured by the luminaries of the Leave campaign that exiting the EU would be the easiest thing in the world to do. I am further reassured by the plainly clear fact that the rest of the world is queing round the block to offer us phenomenally advantageous trade deals.
All of these points have been made much clearer and obvious to me since I was run over by a big red campaign bus……
Thank you, Karl, for the laugh! You really had me going, believing you were serious, until I read the last sentence 😀
… a Hell they can reign in…
Absolutely none – and I’ve trawled all my recollection of post Roman history. The statement put out by Fox is a trembling fig-leaf to cover the naked truth that, on top of the reported 20 objectors, the new Article XXVIII process opens the door to any other objectors who wish to, by direct or indirect diplomatic means, raise their own price(s) for agreement to whatever the UK asks for in its new schedules. This will run and run, and to widely varying malign effects in terms of trade and many other issues. The ‘costs’ will be far more than financial/economic. Welcome, Breximaniacs to the Pandora of Geneva. ‘Brussels’ looks more comely by the minute.
That’s an impressive, and I assume deliberate, distortion of the article.
The linked article specific state we are already, and continue to be, full WTO members, so how you can claim we “fail to join” the WTO is beyond me. It’s the schedules that are under debate.
It also says that this doesn’t necessarily have any relevance to the implementation of Brexit, as many countries trade without fully agreed schedules.
There’s plenty to criticise about Brexit without deliberate distortions and untruths.
We made an application
It was rejected
I am not sure how saying so is a distortion
I clearly need to understand this better. I have been trying to follow this Brexit fiasco but it seems I have totally misunderstood the WTO rules. From what I had picked up the WTO was a set of default trading rules which anyone who had nothing better to fall back on could use. Not great but at least available. But it seems that we are not going to be allowed to trade under that set of rules either. Is this as catastrophic as it seems? Is there somewhere I get a clear explanation of what this means? 3 Blokes in the Pub may cover it…..
Richard, it’s not correct that the UK will fail to join the WTO – it would simply trade on uncertified schedules, as the EU itself did for many years. Allie Renison had a good piece on this in the Guardian.
Fine
It’s not confidence inspiring though, is it?
So at last an admission that your post was misleading and incorrect. We all make errors of judgement..
I have no such admission
We are not in the WTO on the basis of the application we made
So I was right
James says:
“We all make errors of judgement..”
Some every time they use a keyboard it seems…… 🙂
Bruce I wonder if there is no legal framework for trade, would their cargoes get insurance and would carriers transport them without insurance?
A genuine question.
@ Bruce Sands
Allie Renison misses the point that global trading is about maximising leverage either as an individual country or member of a trading bloc and those countries that are objecting to the Tory government’s rapid rectification process will use Trading Rate Quotas as a lever to strong arm the UK. Still could one expect anything else with this intellectually challenged Tory government that believes it can operate a 19th century British policy of zero tariffs with other countries once it’s left the EU Customs Union and Single Market!
Here’s the Guardian article that better describes the WTO mess the Tory government has cooked up through its ignorance and facile arrogant assumptions:-
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/oct/26/russia-brexit-liam-fox-wto-plan-uk
Vote Tory – vote Sorry!
Thank you very much for this! Will read it at my leisure. I have also heard reports that some countries, who are now members of the WTO (China, Russia, Argentina, et al), have vetoed/blocked UK membership, which is why the application was denied. Our inept Government have managed to land us up sh1t creak without a paddle.
I believe one of the WTO members who raised objections was Moldova.
Given the UK’s treatment of a Moldova delegation recounted in this post from Progressive Pulse, one can hardly be surprised.
http://www.progressivepulse.org/brexit/hostile-environment-for-gb
HMG would seem not only to be incompetent, but perversely so!
We simply ask for trouble
Thank you for the read, I had heard about this, too!
Additionally we will now be the only nation in the world trading on simple WTO rules – as Mauretania, which was the only other contender, recently signed a trade agreement it appears. Meanwhile international transport arrangements not going well even in the opinion of the DfT!
http://www.progressivepulse.org/brexit/flying-solo
And so the Collapse of the UK Continues And once again the Truth Withheld From the Public,
@ Bill Glen
The real truth nobody wants to confront is the UK has a level of intellectually challenged zombie voters who fervently believe “truth and “Tory” are synonymous. This doesn’t harbor well for the future of the UK economy which needs to be light on its feet and above all “smart”!
“Zombie voters” may be a way to look at it. I’d call them zombified.
People all over the world can be zombified, given the right (or wrong) institutions and context, look at Brazil and the U.S. right now, the state of them.
Inexistent mandatory basic political, civic and economic education in schools, corrupt and decadent news providers, a political and financial class able and willing to exploit all this, and you have the perfect mix.
I may have forgotten to mention the Constitution and the Judiciary…I’m not sure how they’d figure in this toxic cocktail.
Any one country in the WTO, from Russia to Moldova, can impose their own veto on the tariffs and conditions we propose to deal on, and we’re in trouble.
The world is not our oyster, never has been, the illusion is about to come crashing down, even for Liam Genius Fox.
And we have not one political leader (as far as I can see) able or willing to stop it.
The zombies walk on, but it’s not just voters.
@ Marie Thomas
For the sake of brevity and implied reason I didn’t mention “zombie politicians” but clearly they have to be first put in power by voters. As Benjamin Franklin said over 200 years ago “The price of democracy is eternal vigilance” but many in our modern era have not properly grown up, properly individuated through inadequate parenting, and lazily and habitually prefer to be told what to do despite the increased variety of opinion on the Internet and huge increase of books available on a wide range of subjects.
All is not lost, apparently https://www.explaintrade.com/blogs/2018/8/11/why-there-are-objections-to-the-uks-wto-schedule-and-why-you-shouldnt-care I gather what it means is that we are currently WTO members in our own right but as EU members we use the EU group certified WTO schedules. As an ex-EU country, we’ll be needing our own certified schedules and it’s our proposals for these which have been rejected, and not surprisingly according to some. As an aside, what else can one expect where Fox is concerned? I gather too we’ll be able to trade under uncertified schedules so trade will happen, albeit at a snail’s pace of course because we don’t have the necessary infrastructure and anyway, who’d touch us with a bargepole after our politicians’ collective appalling behaviour? At some stage we must hope to glean the meaning of the advantages of certified over uncertified. I would hazard they reflect and work in favour of our individual circumstances more than do the generic uncertified we’ll be likely to stay lumbered with for some years. I’m coming to the conclusion too that many of the press articles we read on this highly specialised technical subject are written by non-technical non-specialists who don’t realise they’re talking gibberish, and neither do their subs nor their editors. Fun times 🙂
As I said, we are now in limbo…..
No surprise there
Not limbo, merely trading on uncertified schedules. That’d be OK-ish were we to have been prepared for it. I gather, reading around, other EU countries have made considerable preparation for us to go crashing out. We, by contrast, are nowhere near being ready. Stuffed is where we’ll be. And of course it could be by design to force us into the arms of America, as more people are realising these days https://www.newstatesman.com/politics/brexit/2018/10/liam-fox-s-american-friends
Hmmmm. I’ve been studying Scots Gaelic and discovered that the literal translation of the expression ‘Saor Alba’ is: Let’s get the fuck outta here pronto.
🙂
In response to Andy’s translation of “Saor Alba”, I prefer the marginally more polite version used by the late lamented Scots scriptwriter/comedian Hector Nicol to close his cabaret shows: “As they say in sheepherding circles: ‘let’s get the flock outta here'”
Though not technically a Government I suppose the stance taken by the 300 Spartans at Thermopylae might qualify.
This news, in principle, was out on and around the referendum date, when similar was broken by the WTO head via the FT and Guardian. We’ve been in since 1995 or 1939 if you include GATT. It was pointed out then we had to negotiate on everything with the EU and WTO countries as our unwinding also changed later WTO – EU relations. Various examples were detailed including beef. Today’s news is that Mable and her bunglers have paid only high-handed ignorance.
1939? I thought the UK was one of the first signatories of GATT in 1947, and it took effect from 1 January 1948.
The UK does not need to apply to join the WTO now. It has been a member of the WTO since it was formed in 1995, like all other EU member states, in parallel to the EU also being a member in its own right. The UK’s membership of the WTO will continue uninterrupted by Brexit, which means the WTO’s 60-odd agreements on products in different sectors will continue to apply.
What will be interrupted is the specific schedules listing the UK’s trade concessions. Unsurprisingly, some of our trade partners are using this opportunity to seek further concessions (or at least object to the EU’s concessions being simply carved up between the UK and rEU). So we will continue to trade on uncertified schedules until the objections are overcome. Perhaps that will result in a trade dispute, perhaps not.
Can someone explain to me why that matters very much? Other than, of course, indicating that this is going to be more difficult and take much longer to deal with than we were told.
We are technically in membership
But we have no agreement with it
And the only schedules we can work to are the default ones
If that is not limbo I am not sure what is
For all practical purposes, amusingly if it was no0t so ironic, we will be in the worst possible trading position in the world
Of the 20 countries blocking the Tory government’s attempt to do a fast-track deal with the WTO one is the United States, another China. So much for all the hype in the media the UK has a special relationship with these two countries. What a bunch of no-nothing fantasists in this Tory government!
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-trade-deal-wto-liam-fox-no-deal-international-trade-a8603811.html
The incompetence is staggering
Or deliberate. Hard to tell with so many of them, isn’t it?
So is the gross dishonesty. Fox was aware of the outcome sometime ago, and just continued with the lies.
Moldova was mentioned. This is from a person who played some part in negotiations for them.
An explanation of exactly what is required before negotiations commence
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Axm7ErLuw0
From the same meeting, Jason Hunter who follows Mr Brown
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OtkP3Hkc1cM
No worries there then. Only being blocked by the two largest economies on the globe.
What could possibly go wrong ?
all this international trade argey bargey and Johnny Foreigner getting uppity and vindictive about trading relations pales into insignificance when one thinks what this does to our future chances in the Eurovision song contest…….
We will have NO chance.
According to Larry Elliott Trump may be close to putting the WTO itself into limbo.
https://www.theguardian.com/business/2018/sep/02/trumps-world-trade-wto-threat-threat-matters-especially-britain
The more international organisations Trump detaches the US from the better.
The US is no longer meaningfully a member of the world of anything internationally cooperative.
Bye Bye Mickey Mouse. Die quietly please.
I am writing academic theory ion this right now
It’s not phrased quite the way you put it….