The House of Commons Committee on the Future Relationship with the European Union this morning issued their report on the Bill that Parliament will undoubtedly approve today. They said of it:
The Agreement is necessarily complex. It will take time for people to analyse it fully and understand its implications. It will be important that the Agreement and its implementation and application are subject to ongoing scrutiny.
We regret that the timing of the deal means there is not enough time for our Committee to scrutinise the deal more fully; we intend to report again in January with more analysis but this will be without the benefit of having had time to take extensive evidence on the deal.
Members of the House are being asked to read the deal (published on 26 December), to read the Bill brought forward by the Government to give the deal effect in UK law (due to be made available on 29 December) and to form a judgement on its contents in time to debate and vote on the Bill on 30 December. There is no alternative given where we are but that both the Government and the EU Commission have put parliaments in this position is a matter of deep concern.
I am not convinced that the Commission are much to blame, but that, presumably, kept the Tory members of the committee happy. The rest is an admission that Parliament will today pass a law having no idea what it is, what it might do, and who is accountable for what. This could not be further from taking back control than would have been possible if anyone had engineered the outcome. But, then, maybe they did, for just that reason.
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It is absurd to make law in (almost) complete ignorance.
However, it is also tricky to know how international agreements are best negotiated. How does one balance the practicalities of a negotiation? Serious Parliamentary scrutiny would require continuous participation in the discussions but this would be cumbersome and we know that it would deliver entrenched positions and public posturing which are the enemy of necessary compromise.
The EU has certainly found a better way than the UK but, ultimately it was better because (by and large) they had common purpose, they selected the right person to lead the negotiations, trusted him to do a good job and then accepted the result. The UK did not have common purpose or confidence in our negotiators for 3 years. It took the arrival of Johnson to impose “common purpose” on us and he did find a person (Frost) to deliver an agreement that will pass in Parliament. You and I hate what has been delivered but in the narrow sense the PM has been successful…. success in the narrow sense that Mussolini made the trains run on time.
Finally, in the face of a tight deadline the EU Parliament had sufficient backbone to say “in our own time, thank you”. Could the UK not have adopted a similar approach? No, not with the Lobby Fodder that we currently have as MPs.
Agreed
We also too easily forget that Britain has not negotiated any major trade deals directly for over forty years. The Civil Service does not have the culture, the sophistication, the knowledge, the experience required to do the very specialist job (in all its endless complex ramifications), on a par with the EU. The EU possesses the ‘Rolls Royce’ of trade negotiating machinery in the world; with the depth of talent and experience that only the US can contmeplate matching. It is a very uneven contest, and the detail needs even closer scrutiny in Britain than in the EU, for these very reasons. And lo, we waive through a critical 2,000 word trade deal as if it was one page of A5.
In Britain we are now going to require to set this critical trade bureaucrcay up virtually from scratch, and pay for it; and still not ever dream of matching the EU. This is yet another reason why Scotland would be much better in the EU and that reconciles much closer to Scotland’s long standing aspirations for its people; to say nothing of the wonderful career path for young Scots to aspire to forge in their personal future – now that is ‘freedom’ with real utility.
This is in my opinion the first of many such ‘Shanghaiing’s’ by the ‘crimps’ of this Parliament.
The absurdity is even writ large by the Hansard Society.
https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blog/parliaments-role-in-scrutinising-the-uk-eu-trade-and-cooperation-agreement
That identifies clearly the whole lot of railroading this whole process has been and will be.
It is clear to me that we are being readied so we cannot complain as the raft of all the stinky deals are brought home and equally ‘rubber stamped’. The country is being ‘Trussed’ up, for a jolly rogering.
I look forward with dread to the treaties she drags in;
Including turning us into the nuclear bin (a part of the country being softened up for it that I know well – A card up the sleeve in future negotiations not really that well hidden).
Flip-flop ‘Starmer’ is playing the Benjamin Franklin’s role that will ensure ‘we all hang together’ as a loyal servant of the Establishment.
That’s what Sir Keir is doing by not abstaining today when it would make no difference to the rubber stamping. He is making sure that he and the Labour Party will not be able to stop all the bilateral treaties and their nastiness ready to unload their rancid cargoes as we are fully put back in our place after our postwar gains.
Bagehot separated the working of the British constitution into two parts: the dignified (for show) and the efficient (where the power is). This disgraceful episode demonstrates clearly that Parliament is now but another dignified element.
Well put
And painfully true
As the Hansard Society says: “Parliament’s role around the end of the Brexit transition and conclusion of the EU future relationship treaty is a constitutional failure to properly scrutinise the executive and the law.”
https://www.hansardsociety.org.uk/blog/parliaments-role-in-scrutinising-the-uk-eu-trade-and-cooperation-agreement
This is all about vested interests taking control in the name of national sovereignty.
That’s it in a nutshell.
Pilgrim
that is brilliantly condensed into one sentence.
While I’m here (and I hope not trespassing on our host’s good will ) I often wonder what the heck ‘Pilgrim Slight Return’ refers to.
‘PSR’ came about because I used to come here under my real name but I work in the public sector and decided that that was bit risky because you are supposed to be professional by being neutral – even towards bastard politicians who seem to want hurt people.
The ‘Pilgrim’ bit refers to me being on a journey to understand the things that affect our lives in the hope that we can make them better but also having conversations with people who don’t know this blog exists and seeing if that helps raise awareness. ‘Slight Return’ comes from my love of Jimi Hendrix but also the fact that sometimes in feeling completely useless I disappear from time to time to ponder my ineffectiveness. But it is hard to keep away from such an essential blog that asks such stimulating questions about why things are as they are.
So there you are. It sounds more dynamic perhaps that it actually is. Or just silly. Whatever. But the way I write is the real me – for good or bad.
And you are also the most prolific commentator I think – that was your 4,103rd
Thank you!
Disappointed with Starmer. He said the choice today was to either vote for the deal or against it, the result being no deal. That’s not true (liar Boris would be proud of him). The third option was to abstain on principle. Let the Tories own their deal. The opposition abstaining would not have stopped it being passed, but would have made it clear that Johnson’s deal is a bad one and rests with him and his Tory Brexiteers. Voting for it suggests that he is afraid of the right wing media backlash that would come. He seems to have joined in the right wing chorus of we are all in this together now so let’s have some false unity, supposedly in the national interest.
Agreed
So what happened to the idea that by leaving the EU Britain would be taking control of its own law making? If you’re passing such an important piece of legislation without proper scrutiny you can’t be said to be exercising control can you?
And the attempt to blame the EU Commission is pathetic. The EU was prepared to offer an extension to the transition period to allow more time to negotiate a post Brexit treaty – the UK government turned it down, for purely political reasons.
Neither can our government be surprised that the negotiations came so close to its own self-imposed deadline that it hasn’t had the time for proper scrutiny. The Brexiters themselves have always said this is how the EU negotiates; it is a formidable deal-making machine.
Dishonesty and incompetence. The hallmark of UK government 2020.
Well exactly! What date does Starmer intend to “take back control” and do his job by subjecting Tory legislation to a “fine tooth comb” examination as far as the EU trade deal is concerned? Presumably never from his attitude which pretended there never would be overwhelming Tory MP support for Johnson’s deal therefore the deal going forward was on a knife edge:-
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2020/dec/29/labour-will-not-seek-major-changes-to-uks-relationship-with-eu-keir-starmer
Sickening display by Labour yet again!
I am afraid so
Well Helen, as I’ve said before re English politics these days: The Conservatives – corrupt and incompetent. Labour – useless and treacherous.
The point of Brexit would seem to be to get the Henry the 6th laws on to the books. Once that’s done the Charter/Enterorise Cities can be introduced. I note Raab has been in India talking with Modi. I note too Boris is heading out there soon. Modia has expressed the desire to set up 100 Charter Cities in India. I suspect the point of their talks is to have Modi supply coders, programmers, engineers etc for Charter Cities here. They’d work at minimum wage (and be thrilled to get it too as it would far surpass what they’d get back home), pay no tax or national insurance, and be excluded from the immigrant count too. I get this idea from discussions about Mode 4 Immigration, years ago. Britons, meanwhile, would be struggling to survive doing manual work inbetween bouts of universal Credit. You get what you vote for. It’s going to be a lot of years before the country recovers from this.
Apparently Parliament has no right to stop the agreement coming into law only to vote on how the Executive implements the Treaty. The Government takes power under Royal Prerogative and Parliament has no right of approval.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/uk-eu-agreement-parliament/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+BritishPoliticsAndPolicyAtLse+%28British+politics+and+policy+at+LSE%29
So the symmetry of the Brexit fiasco is complete. It began with of the concealment of the implications of Brexit and ended with the concealment of the implications of Brexit. Why would we expect better from this ‘government’?
“The Agreement is necessarily complex” — difficult not to snigger at that point. The agreement could be characterised as a EULA — end user license agreement (there is an amusing moment in Good Omens when Crowley explains to Hell how they could usefully imitate a EULA). One example of the complexity is the linking of fishing to electricity (I am not exaggerating). Should the Fat-Fraud/Toryscum try and pull a fast one, the UK (or whatever it is called in 2026) will find that UK access to European electricity markets i.e. the ability to import EU electricity, suddenly becomes vastly more difficult. The UK imports circa 8% of its needs and absent any sudden bouts of competence on the part of the toryscum with respect to the electricity system this proportion is likely to rise.
More fun will follow because, and I speak from advanced knowledge, Euro wholesale electricity markets will be reformed. 3rd country access to said markets will be made conditional on matching that reform. So UK (or Ingerland or Toryscumland ..??) will thus be a spectator on EU reforms and have no choice but to follow them, if it wants enough ‘leccy to keep the lights on. UK serfs were groomed to vote a) for Brexshit and b) last-year the toryscum party. Over the next couple of years the consequences of this will be some chickens coming home to roost.
Brexit has massively inconvenienced me (I did not even have a vote). However, I am in the happy position to influence events in the EU that will cause grave discomfort to what passes for the UK elites. The nice thing is, these elites now have no voice in the EU institutions. By contrast, by luck and judgement, I do and I intend to use it and there is nothing whatsoever Fatso and his ghastly crew can do about it. They will discover the joys of being forced to dance to a “Brussels tune”; Nemesis without exception follows Hubris.
I am sure the EU planned this coincidence and Frosty never noticed
Mike, thanks for that; it’s rather cheered me up on a gloomy New Year’s Eve. I’m sitting here sniggering at the base stupidity and arrogance of the Brexiters which has meant that the UK, entirely due to their pathetic ‘sovereignty’ obsession, lost any input into vital issues such as electricity supplies.
Your 2nd para in particular sums up my feelings exactly. Both in regard to the Brexit political elite and the gullible fools who vote for them.
BTW, may I ask, and if its not giving too much away on your part, how you can influence events in the EU? It looks as though you’re going to be enjoying a fair degree of schadenfreude. And I don’t blame you.
Thanks for the question. I will be part of the team writing the legislation. The end result will be to roll back much of the market nonesense (in the electricity sector) which was largely driven by the toryscum. Wording will be such that the option for the Brits will be to comply or face blackouts. It is my intention to may sure that compliance will be within months. To say that the EU has Uk elites by the short & curlies is an understatement. SSE is the only UK power company all the rest are non-UK owned. The Uk makes almost no compenents for renewables and the sector is dominated by non-UK companies. Of course there is many a slip twixt cup & lip, but 2021 looks good for market reform and which will be rammed down the UK’s throat (& the cherry on the top for UK serfs is that the reform will lead to a 10 – 20% drop in ‘leccy bills – dear oh dear, Brussels making UK serf’s life better – whether they want it or not).
To answer why the reform would lead to a 10 – 20% reduction in consumers bills is complex, but in summary, relates to how electricity markets have been bodged to accomodate renewables. The re-design will remove the bodges and make the “managed market” fit for a renewable future. Toryscum will hate it. Good.
Go to it Mike…..
I don’t suppose he did Richard; after all, as John notes:
“We also too easily forget that Britain has not negotiated any major trade deals directly for over forty years. The Civil Service does not have the culture, the sophistication, the knowledge, the experience required to do the very specialist job (in all its endless complex ramifications), on a par with the EU. The EU possesses the ‘Rolls Royce’ of trade negotiating machinery in the world; with the depth of talent and experience that only the US can contemplate matching. It is a very uneven contest, and the detail needs even closer scrutiny in Britain than in the EU, for these very reasons. And lo, we waive through a critical 2,000 word (you meant page John) trade deal as if it was one page of A5.”
Apparently Frost was once very pro EU, in his earlier career as a middling civil servant. It’s only recently that he seems to have ‘discovered’ his ‘patriotic’ credentials as a full blown Brexiter waving the union flag and accompanying it with the usual whining about the EU bullying poor old Blighty. Could it possibly be that this Damascene conversion came about through careerism?
I mean, it’s got him a knighthood already.
To say that Labour are treacherous is being a bit harsh.
I see them as capricious – their whole ideology /reason for being has been knocked side ways since 1979 and I think that they are genuinely confused.
But that is because being modern politicians they are hopeless at dealing with complexity – they want to over simplify things and go along with the Tory stories about how we got where we are.
Labour needs to go back to the 1970’s and tell the real stories of what happened and build a new narrative (one closer to the truth) and then from that would emerge a genuinely helpful and real Labour narrative to hopefully propel them into office.
PSR, when I say Labour is treacherous, I am referring to several things:
1) The factionalism that sees the right and left wings of the party fighting a civil war for control of the party, and that, for example, saw Corbyn continually attacked by the Labour right to the extent that some of them colluded with Labour’s right wing enemies and actually said Johnson would be a better PM, which is appalling. And I don’t say this as a Corbyn supporter; I think he would’ve been a very poor PM, but not as bad as Johnson.
2) Labour’s tribalism. The refusla to make any attempt to overcome the regressive and anti-democratic FPTP system by entering into electorla pacts with other progressive parties. Their arrogant ‘we’re the only party who represent progressives’ attitude and consequent inability to win elections is a betrayal of progressive politics that has helped get us into the mess we’re in now.
3) Labour dropping their intention of electoral reform in 1997 because, wow, the rotten FPTP system had given them a big majority was a massive betrayal of progressive government. And I see no sign of any interest now that they’re going to change tack under Starmer.
As I said; Labour, useless and treacherous.
Mike, thanks so much for that. I can only second Richard..go to it. Looking forward to a reduction nin my bills then (I’m with Good Energy) thanks to the EU, and you.