The concession amounts to the government, at the last minute, or even after the last minute, as David Davis admitted a couple of weeks ago, allowing Parliament to vote on whether to accept the deal it has negotiated with the EU, or else of not accepting that deal, and thereby crashing out of the EU without a deal at all! In parliament, Davis was asked by a Tory backbencher whether that was the situation, and he muttered “yes”. No wonder he muttered his response that had to be reiterated by the Speaker, because it is a disgraceful approach to take.
But, the reality is that much debate is now being taken up around the question of what the nature of this vote, might be, and when it might take place. These are the wrong questions. Even if Parliament was given a vote, say, in October of next year, it would effectively be too late. The EU have said that any final deal must be reached by around that time, so that the European Parliaments and the parliaments of the other 27 nations can discuss it, and agree it. Suppose the deal came to Parliament at that time, and rejected it, what then? The issue is not just whether the government would say well, in that case its no deal, but is how would they negotiate further at such a late stage, when the EU itself requires that agreement be reached by no later than next Autumn?
Realistically, Parliament would need to be able to vote on any proposed deal no later than say June next year, so that it could send Davis and co. back to renegotiate if it did not accept the terms arrived at, and so as thereby to allow a final deal to be arrived at to put to the European Parliament and other member states in the Autumn. But, no one believes that any such deal is going to be arrived at even by next Autumn, let alone next June! That means that realistically, the government must accept that it requires a transitional agreement with the EU, during which time Britain stays in the EU, for say an additional two years, during which these negotiations could be conducted on a more rational basis.
May cannot accept that, because she is already under pressure from the right-wing Brexiters on her backbenches, and so government policy making is geared to a continual balancing of trying to reconcile these irreconcilably warring factions within the Tory Party. No wonder sections of capital are getting increasingly frustrated, and making that frustration known.
The ramblings of the Brexiters, including those of reactionaries like Frank Field, are becoming more and more removed from reality. Field in one of his more hysterical utterings the other day said that the EU depended on Britain to finance its budget, and so if Britain threatened to walk away it would force them to come forward to do a deal. This is completely absurd. The EU is a $14 trillion economy with 500 million people, whereas the UK is a $2 trillion economy with 70 million people. The idea that the EU budget is dependent on Britain is just a repetition of the same kind of colonial era arrogance that the Brexiters have spouted throughout. Yes, if Britain's budget contributions are withdrawn that will have to be made up out of the contributions of the other 27 members, but to suggest that this is some kind of decisive, make or break issue, in nonsense.
The EU's budget is €143 billion, which amounts to just 1% of the GDP. Given the rate at which the EU economy is expanding the idea that a fraction of an additional 1% of GDP is going to make any significant difference to the EU, is laughable. By contrast, because Britain will suffer the opposite of economies of scale, it will find itself having to cough up lots more funding out of its GDP to finance all of those functions, which are currently undertaken out of the EU budget. Take aviation. Currently, all airlines have the safety of their planes certified by the European Aviation Authority, in a similar way to US airlines do with the FAA. Having aeroplanes safety certified in this way is a condition for being able to land your planes in other countries. If Britain is no longer covered by the European certification process, its planes will not be able to land in airports across the globe, although the planes of these other countries will be able to land in Britain, thereby rapidly destroying British based airlines who lose passengers to these foreign carriers.
Britain will need to set up its own certification authority with all of the costs and bureaucracy that involves. The cost of doing so will not only be much greater proportionally for Britain in relation to its much smaller GDP compared to the EU, but will be absolutely greater due to the fact of not enjoying the economies of scale. If say the EU certification authority costs €200 million a year to run, to cover a much larger number of planes certified, whereas Britain would pay €100 million a year to run its own authority, the cost to Britain would be absolutely much larger because it would have to bear all of this cost out of its own budget, whereas currently it only has to bear its proportional share out of the EU budget. That applies to dozens of similar certification and regulatory bodies, such as Euratom and so on.
The fact is that Davis and co. have not even made any progress on resolving the simply things such as the items of the EU budget which Britain will have to agree to fund into the future, or the question of citizen's rights, let alone the irresolvable issue of the Irish border, never mind getting on to these questions of trade, and membership of various European agencies. They are clearly incapable of doing so, not least because of the divisions in the Tory party itself on those questions. The process is headed for a real catastrophe, which is why various large companies, such as the banks, car companies and so on are now panicking, and beginning to make plans to move out of Britain.
Davis himself has said that the chances of no deal are now around 50:50, and many in the Tory Party like Rees-Mogg would welcome such a situation, as would reactionaries like Frank Field. Its clear that the Brexiters will not have settled the issue of the budget or citizen's rights within the next couple of weeks, let alone the question of the Irish border. That means no discussions on the second stage will be possible until well into the next year. We also now have the prospect of various Brexiters getting their collars felt by the authorities following on from the US investigations into the role of Russia in the US elections, and now the follow on from that in the involvement of Russia in the EU Referendum.
Labour needs to separate itself much further from this impending disaster, and begin to argue far more openly and decisively for an opposition to Brexit.
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