A brilliant assessment in Politics.Co.UK.
Brexit: The Never Ending Story
This is the evaluation of the deal that goes way beyond the mere nuts and bolts of who-got-what and looks at the deeper significance of the mechanics of Brexit itself, and how the future is likely to shape up.
Brexit........ the process...... is not over and never will be. It is going to keep coming back, and coming back, and coming back. Why..? Because Britain has painted itself into a corner that it can't get out of.
It's the messy divorce where the parted couple can't live with each other, and can't live without each other.
Britain might want to diverge completely, but business won't let them. The EU is, and always will be our biggest market because even Boris Johnson can't alter the geography and geology of the continent. We are where we are and continental drift will take umpteen million years to shift it.
OB argued that in five years time, the deal on fishing is up and Britain will be able to fish as much as it likes. But that is only PARTLY true.
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Legally, Britain’s position was completely sound. But it had a problem with leverage. Britain does not eat its own fish – 80% of what it catches goes to the EU. So if the UK refused to play ball, the EU would simply apply the tariffs on fish, which are very high, and make the sector unprofitable. You could catch all the fish you want, you just couldn’t sell them................
..................Boris Johnson claimed that after the five and a half year adjustment period is over, Britain could catch “all the fish that it wants”. In fact, this is incorrect. The deal clearly suggests that after this period the quota will stay at the point of the initial reduction. Of course, the UK can close its waters if it wants to, but tariffs will go up.
This dynamic is very similar to the one experienced by countries like Norway in the EEA agreement. They technically have a way of vetoing European law. It’s called Article 102 – the ‘right of reservation’. Norway even came pretty close to using it over the Postal Services Directive. But if they did it, it would neutralise that whole part of the agreement. So they never do, because the consequences are too dire.
This is the great advantage the EU has. It is an advantage of size, but also of solidarity. The UK can’t pick countries off and sell the fish to one of them if tariffs go up with another. The tariffs are the same for all. This is what gives the EU its strength. It’s why the UK mostly capitulated. And it’s why the dynamic is likely to remain the same in future. After all, this is the most messianically pro-Brexit government we’re likely to see. If they didn’t take no-deal in the face of EU leverage, how likely is it that a future one will?
There is ultimately no closure here. We are going to see the same dynamic in future that we have witnessed over the last four years: constant talking and bickering, with the UK facing the reality of EU leverage.
Throughout the whole assessment, one thing comes back to me time and again....... All the time we have these constant rounds of negotiating, haggling, bickering for a little bit here and a little bit there.... going round and round in circles.... British business and the British people are going to get bloody fed up with it. And the message that Brexit is never over and actually, we will never be completely independent of Europe being relentlessly pumped by people like me (and we are not going to stop).... then it will become increasingly obvious that Brexit has failed to achieve the one thing it has always said it was all about: Complete independence. You know.... this "sovereignty" thing.
And that, for rejoiners, is also leverage of a kind.
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So structurally, economically and politically, the winds blow in the direction of integration. It’s not conspiracy or magic; it’s just that people trade most with places that are close and big. And when they trade, they want less friction. Brexit has done many shocking things, but it cannot negate the objective reality of geography or trade flows., for
Even in the moment of Brexit’s triumph, it carries the seeds of its own failure.