The hypocrisy of the Brexiteers in government is revealed in the new agreement to join the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).
We are not, of course, a trans-Pacific nation. Unsurprisingly as a result we get a 0.08% gain in UK GDP from this deal. That is one fiftieth of what we lost from Brexit. There are no measurable upsides of consequence then.
But we accept lowered standards on food as a result. Hormone treated meat may be permitted.
We also reduce environmental protections, especially on palm oil, which the deal favours despite the serous harm it causes.
And we drop the precautionary principle on issues where we have traditionally said things are not permitted until they can be shown to be beneficial. The CPTPP way is for anything to be permitted until it is shown to cause harm.
Perhaps worst of all, we submit ourselves to secret courts that let companies sue our government for having such things as environmental protections and labour standards that those companies can claim cause them a loss of profits, meaning they can demand compensation. And all that will happen in courts that we cannot challenge, which was the great Brexit paranoia.
Unless Brexit was really only about racism after all, of course.
And there has, very oddly, been no referendum or even parliamentary debate on this. It was just signed using executive powers.
Taking back control? I don't think so. Handing it over to big business at cost to us all, more like.
This is a grim deal for which there can be no justification. At least, not if you care about the UK, its people and justice, that is. But the Tories don't.
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All that effort to avoid ISDS just a few years ago and now here we are in it anyway. Where was there any mandate for this?
As you say – an exploitation agreement, not a trade agreement.
The bravado on display is insulting to be honest but when you consider the widely reported funding the Tories seem to have attracted for the next election?
They are lauding the significant nature of this new agreement which will bring in such a puny amount of GDP, just a few years after leaving another much closer free trade area that was worth so very much more. And that free trade area offered so many more benefits to the serfs as well. The word hypocrisy comes to mind.
On another point they are now talking up the possibility of having much larger fines for those who pollute the waterways. That sounds great, but where are the investments in staff who will investigate those alleged instances of pollution, and are capable of imposing those sanctions?
This appears to be the so-called regulatory model which has served so well the interests of the financial sector – pass any number of laws but disable enforcement through lack of funding. Any fines which do get paid will be derisory and simply regarded as the cost of doing business.
Performative non-compliance I call it
Give the appearance of regulation but never use it
I like “performative non-compliance”. I believe this issue has been crucial to the success of neoliberalism; it is a political scam. It allows politicians to promise “the earth”, even to legislate, to huff and puff, to declaim their undying conviction in whatever law they have enabled; and then produce precisely no results, achieve nothing at all, and either spend nothing or blow a fortune on shuffling paper, or on handsome contracts to businesses-from-nowhere, for a PR exercise in window-dressing. The beauty of it is, nobody is watching, nobody is checking, and nobody notices. This farce (and it is farce – the Home Office are masters of the art), is reinforced by the pro-Conservative Press focusing the news agenda on deflecting attention from the failure of government and galvanising outrage at whatever miscreant they can uncover, however small, or irrelevant (and scarcely ever of material significance), to “prove” the preposterous merit of the government’s policy; migrants in boats just now, but we will back to the Daily Mail or Sun, and benefit cheats if that one runs out of steam; or “Europe” of course; always worth a cheap punt.
The failure of the phony legislation the Government can (and will) invariably blame on opponents, on the wasters or work-shy, the criminals, the traffikers, the courts; anyone who does not support them, or benefit from their abject laxity. Government is nothing to do with them. According to Sunak every Wednesday this disaster we are all living through is Starmer’s fault. I have no dog in that fight, but even I can see that the Conservatives are sitting in the offices of government; although Government does not come naturally to them.
I did a lot of work on this when writing on tax havens, where performative non compliance is the norm
Regulation relies on those being regulated having some level of ethics that means that they will make the effort to follow the regulations. The murky sectors of finance specialise in gaming the system as they have long lost any sense of ethics or morality. No amount of regulation will work in that situation. You could say the same about the water utilities and their attitudes to sewage and pollution.
You don’t tend to hear endless complaining about regulation from most decently run sectors, mainly because they tend not to want to kill, defraud or otherwise damage their customers. Tends to destroy your business as well. Boeing is a case study of the exception that went from a company with a fine reputation to one that has trashed it. Behind it is a story of regulatory manipulation with product quality and safety being dangerously compromised as a result.
I tend to the view that we need simpler regulation in the City but with brutal levels of fines and imprisonment, directly applied to directors and senior managers. The regulators need massively beefing up with greater powers. Not for nothing does the Eye refer to the Fundamentally Supine Authority, or Fundamentally complicit authority.
And now we have the government blethering about “unlimited fines” for the water companies (which have shovelled circa £1Bn to shareholders) for filling English rivers with sewage. I can tell you now the fines will not be £1Bn. The regulator will probably fine one company a few million and Government will ensure the Daily Mail, Express, Telegraph and Sun turn that into a a serious punishment that they will ensure they “learn hard lessons” or similar guff. And that brings me to Regulation. British regulation is designed to fail.
Every single regulator in British history has been designed to fail: Department of agriculture (gone – failed regulation). National Rivers Authority (gone – failed trgulation). Financial Services Authority (gone, spectacularly when the banks they were regulating tried to bust the country in 2007-8, while they slept at the wheel – the worst regulator). Buidling Regualtion? A disaster – Grenfell and thousands still living with fire risk cladding. Need I go on?
British Regulation is designed deliberately to fail. It is exactly what I have written here and on another thread; and which Richard tellingly describes as “Performative non-compliance”.This failure of regulation has been going on for multiple decades. It is a national scandal.
Signing international treaties is a prerogative power, which is not usually subject to Parliament – nor the possibility of judicial review. However, if a treaty conflicts with statute Law, statute Law has precedence, which would open this CPTPP to a judicial review.
https://commonslibrary.parliament.uk/research-briefings/sn03861/
Have the Tories removed enough of the conflicting legislation before signing? And the power of the courts?
Unlike the last time this subject came up, we aren’t in a trading bloc any more – no foreign trade union (like German TUs did) is going to step up to fight the battle on behalf of a competitor, is it? Brexit is the gift that keeps on giving – to the EU.
The stench of desperation is overwhelming.
CPTPP
Corporate Profiteering by Trashing the Public Purse.
Except that – the bulk of real business from SMEs to large companies, positively loathes Brexit and prefers to have a standard set of rules to play. The EU happens to have about the best set of rules to work to and we were in a position to influence them. And the EU happened to be the world’s largest market of similar economies to our own, right next door.
The sector that is most keen on lower standards and less regulation is of course that cess pit called the City. That applies both to their own businesses, and to the businesses that they own or speculate in where their idea of good management is to cut standards in every area to minimise costs and maximise what they can extract, regardless of the impact on their employees or wider society. No surprise to find that the Tory’s major donors come primarily from those sections of the City.
Plus the mad ideologues in Tufton Street who know diddleysquat about how real, sustainable, growing businesses are run.
PS For a detailed and hilarious (in a dark way) run down of the Tories’ last 10 years, in which Brexit is of course a major feature, can I recommend Russell Jones’ book, A Decade in Tory. Based on his Tweets ‘The Week in Tory’ which I suspect many here will know of.
Brilliant tweets
I have not got to the book
Decade in Tory is long, over 500 pages but he has referenced the source for every incident and quote that he mentions. Could be useful just for that.
I’ve found it unputdownable but when you see every bit of Tory dishonesty, corruption, cronyism, incompetence and the rest, all listed down, it is somewhat depressing. Perhaps we should just forward Russ’s weekly Tweets to our Tory MPs – would save composing the email!
Except the public purse can never be emptied. Unless the state fails.
Which it has.
It failed during Covid and it’s been made to fail since 2010 by not printing the money we have needed via the policy of Tory austerity.
Our state failed during BREXIT as well.
I mean Larry, go and look – there’s state failure everywhere – knock yourself out.
It is ridiculous (if it works) to increase trade with nations on the other side of the Earth, which if it is any volume will mean huge extra transport costs and so pollution and extra consumption of fossil fuels whether for ships or aircraft. Also completely pointless swopping “control” from Brussels to multinational corporate lawyers as you point out.
I just can’t make sense of that trading block even before we joined. Australia does massive trade with China which is not included. China is falling off a demographic cliff and now India needs to raise its game for the economy of Asia moving forward. India is not included.
It is Africa that is forecast to become a massive population in the future, if you don’t want to join the EU then do a deal with the African Union. Kemi is Nigerian
Anyone agree/disagree?
What about the EU?
David Byrne says:
From an extensive analysis undertaken by Kings College London (KCL) post-Brexit, the immigration card played by the atrocious UK, right wing media was found to be significant in achieving the leave result.
It appears that the new KCL Report, highlighted by you today, may be similarly impactful in educating the electorate in due course.
This March 2003 document deserves to be widely distributed and discussed on all social media platforms.
Thanks David
It’s a crude correlation but the areas with low levels of migrants tend to be the ones that voted for Brexit and have higher levels of racism. More susceptible to the argument that their problems are caused by ‘others’. Areas that are more diverse, notably the bigger cities were less inclined to fall for that argument.
Agreed
The ‘other’ is easier to dehumanise when you don’t meet them every day
So much for sovereignty. The Tories have been selling off our economic sovereignty since Thatcher.
Isn’t the intention to institute structural change establishing the use of secretive trade disputes tribunals as the model for resolving claims against states for taxing and regulating corporations. That is, it’s TTIP by the back door. Similarly the tories are rigging the appointments process to nominate stooges for public positions, selling off assets, contracting out long term services, granting tax breaks far into the future, promising tax cuts and generally queering the pitch for the next Labour government.
The next Labour government in the meantime promises to maintain “sound Money” and not to frighten the horses.
Fight or Flight?
Personally I’ve moved to France where they wouldn’t put up with this.
Notes on minimal reading about 1976 IMF Crisis which helps me view Brexit more clearly.
To Capitalism, the NUM strikes & x3-day week under Heath’s gov’t was fueling excessive wage increases in face of OPEC increasing oil prices x4. Before 1976 UK like most West x-imperial EU nations used IMF fund as its own deposit bank if sufficient deposited there. Suez fiasco without American support dented confidence. West Germany felt UK got preferential treatment re IMF loan rules. Labour won election with promises to Trade Unions & on public spend social contract. Value of £ against the $ fell. Treasury for increasing its reserves by selling £ hoping fall in its value would improve industrial competitiveness. Nationalized industries state backed. Far Right in UK & USA opposed this ideologically as ‘communist planning’ & state authority serfdom opposed to their freedom to make private profit no matter the cost to other areas of UK social life. The Labour Gov’t was split Left-Benn & Right-Healey. At first Wilson for implementing domestic election promises but unnannounced devaluation of £ against $ got out of control when Nigeria simultaneously started sell sterling reserves. So UK Treasury selling on a falling market & £ began steep fall. Bank of England support didn’t stop it. Agreed repayments of IMF loans loomed. Callaghan became PM. Conservative & more willing than Wilson to oppose trade unions. At Balckpool Conference he announced that country couldn’t buy its way out of a recession ie a fundamental change from Keynesian post WW2 policy focused on loe unemployment & productivity. OPEC big geopolitical earthquake. Context had changed.
Yeo characterised the June 1976 short-term loan as ‘bait’,
suggesting a planned and deliberate strategy ‘to hook the UK economy into IMF control when [the loan] had to be repaid’.
IMF negotiators took a tough line with UK stressing they had support of US & Germany finance ministers.
IMF managing director Witteveen said US Federal Reserve chair Arthur Burns was their position thus: “We have to keep to the rule of law”. He considered fund conditionality a kind of
international rule of law.”
US Treasury official Edwin Yeo told his counter-parts in UK Treasury & Bank of England, expenditure cuts in Britain were essential to ‘get your people back on the reservation’.
ie the working class & Left-Labour needed to be controlled & suppressed.
When France faced a similar crisis 1982-3 when Left leaning gov’t policies caused loss of confidence within capitalism’s ability to sustain its rates of profit, it turned instead to the EU to borrow & secretly negotiated with Germany over policy changes needed.
In UK America’s public humiliation of UK Labour seems deliberately designed as a lesson to the Global South that even our closest allies must obey capitalism’s strictures: loan confidence trumped all social considerations & cuts in social expenditure must pay for them, or else. Chile & Allende comes to mind.
Past two decades harsh borrowing terms almost exclusively were applied to Global South & post-communist nations.
The 1976 very public UK-IMF crisi signalled enforcement of private corporate finance law on UK against 1. any independent sovereign policy, without EU-USA support, & 2. most particularly against any international movement of the Labour-Left backed the international capitalist Right.
This makes the Brexit-US split & the Ukraine-NATO-Russia war clearer from a UK position.
It seems to me that capitalism’s contradictions are inherent. We can push for reform & a more humane & equitable circulation between the x2 opposed spheres (M-M+ & C-M-C) but the former is ultimately engorged by the later, whose subservience – ‘get back to the reservations’ – it must enforce, to survive within this system pitting our own species, against itself on a common habitable, increasingly fragile, planet.
Is an alternative to capitalism possible? They said chattel slavery couldn’t be overcome. As the crisis deepens, we need to at least prepare ourselves conceptually in the face of irrational-neo-fascist-gangsterism.
I confess I found your style very difficult to follow
I gave you the benefit of the doubt but on much of this it is unclear what you are arguing
Dear Richard
I think money itself is the problem. A fetish that reproduces all the contradictions that the Treasury, Labour Party, Trade Unions, trade agreements, Bank of England etc – will never solve, until this fetishism of commodities is grasped-overcome.
For me its like when Kepler-Copernicus proved that earth is not the center of the universe. Once you know it – you can’t pretend otherwise.
Why not cut straight to the chase rather than endlessly tinker & talk about ways of adjusting a fundamentally unjust system that’s opposed to itself?
I think war solves nothing, especially vicious class-war against the most vulnerable: refugees, low paid, homeless, underpaid, insecure work, collapsing NHS, OAP neglect, collapsing schools & overworked teachers as super-rich, secretive, hierarchical, tax avoiding corporations, hire think tanks to make policy, from climate collapse, new oil drilling, to, nerve wrecking insecticides, to cancer tobacco, to promoting gun sales in USA while ‘protecting’ unborn that’s killing adult women & kids in school shootings, aswell as in medical emergencies. Money greed profit drives & dominates it all.
That’s my argument.
Idealistic, true. But then so are Peace talks, as an alternative to mass murder of young conscripts with little say in whose interests, their so-called ‘sovereignty’ is represented.
The current system is all about: on the one side wage-slavery; on the other, accumulating wealth by the masters.
I can’t be clearer than that. Overcoming tax inequality & Brexit damage is, at core, for me, grasping what money is, how it hides slavery, including 1-sided conceptual slavery, under a veil of supposed neutrality, just as religious belief never questions its own core system.
I can see I’m not going to fit in on this blog.
All the Best