Tag Archives: European Research Group

Twas the week before Brexit

EdinburghEye on Ko-FiThis was first posted on Facebook on 23rd December 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

Christmas Eve Eve.

Here is where we are.

At 11pm 31st December, that is in less than eight days time from when I am writing this, the transition period ends, and the UK (except for Northern Ireland) is trading with the rest of the world (except where a new trade deal has been made already, which is … not many) on “WTO terms”. (This isn’t good.)

We’ve discussed at length earlier what Boris Johnson’s problem is trying to negotiate a deal: he needs to see everything in terms of winning and losing, and he needs to be able to present himself as the winner. This is not how trade deals work.

The European Parliament had its last plenary session on 17th December. No deal can be approved. The deadline to request an extension of the transition period passed on 30th June, even if Boris Johnson had been willing to ask for one.

The European Research Group are not enough MPs to overturn Boris Johnson’s 79-MP majority in the Commons, but they are likely enough MPs to trigger a leadership contest (55 letters is all it takes). The European Research Group are the MPs who want – who wanted all along – to be the winners and the victims simultaneously: to demand Brexit without defining Brexit, ot assert that only by leaving the EU and everything to do with it can they stop the EU from doing down the UK. It is impossible to make the ERG happy: if you gave them what they said they wanted, they would take that as a given and demand more and claim victimhood because they aren’t getting it.

If we crash out of the EU in no-deal Brexit on 31st December, the ERG MPs will still not be happy, because the UK will still have to trade with the perfidious countries of the EU, and collectively, they have far more economic clout than the UK did in its prime – and the UK is well past prime.

But crashing out in no-deal Brexit would have terrible and immediate consequences. The government’s “reasonable worst-case scenario” was laid out initially prior to the pandemic: when we are cresting a wave of infections for which the Tier 4 lockdown comes too late to prevent – this is, to put it blandly, an unreasonable worst-case scenario.

It is too late for a deal to be scrutinised by either the European or the Westminster Parliament before it is applied: it is not possible for the European Parliament to meet in plenary session now til January, and to be ratified by the EU, the 2000-page deal has to be translated into 27 official languages, voted on by 27 parliaments, and returned to the European Parliament. (I presume an emergency recall of Westminster Parliament could take place by Zoom, though Jacob Rees-Mogg has strenuously objected to such modern goings-on.)

If a deal is settled by close of day tomorrow, Christmas Eve, it is agreed the ambassadors of each country to the EU will meet, provisionally agree to it being applied to the UK-EU from 11pm 31st December, and an official letter (which is reckoned to take, by itself, four days to draft) will be sent out to each EU country for provisional approval.

The Westminster Parliament is likely to be recalled on Sunday 27th, two days in to Tier4 lockdown.

This will avoid, at least, the worst-case disruption – worse than that which a mere 48 hours of stoppages caused. The deal will still have to go through process for full ratification – and it is unlikely to make the ERG MPs happy: as noted earlier, it is unlikely that anything could make them happy. They have announced that as soon as the full text of the deal is public, they will convene what they refer to as their Star Chamber, and examine it in detail.

The Star Chamber was an invention of the Tudor monarchy, a court which had the power to punish crimes which might not be illegal but which loyal privy councillors to King Henry (7 or 8) felt ought to be illegal, and which English monarchs following found increasingly useful, to be able to declare something criminal and find people guilty and fine them, Sir William Blackstone notes drily in his Commentaries on the Laws of England (1765-1769) that it was abolished (1641) “to the general joy of the whole nation”.

It seems strangely appropriate that the Brexiter MPs should revive a legal name that had lived on only in metaphor for secretive procedings with no due process, and declare themselves the unlawful court of social and political oppression through the arbitrary use and abuse of power.

This convening of their Star Chamber means that when MPs return from recess in January and can scrutinise the 2000-page deal, which they have bound the UK to because it was that or crash out in no deal, the first Parliamentary scrutiny will be that of this semi-official group determined to find everything wrong with it they can.

Keir Starmer will likely have whipped Labour to agree to it: the SNP have already declared they will not vote for it: but with Labour MPs who obey Starmer and Conservative MPs who obey Johnson, the deal will pass.

But it is quite possible that, though Boris Johnson hopes to have this greeted as a grandstanding last-minute victory, now the deal is done and Johnson (and Starmer) can be held responsible for it, Johnson will be gone as soon as Tory MPs can figure out who they’re going to vote for to replace him.
So to be clear: if we hear a deal has been agreed to on Christmas Eve, we may stagger along a while longer – we will at least not be crashing out in no-deal Brexit.

If no deal has been agreed to by close of day Christmas Eve, then we really are finally out of time, and have a week left to contemplate what’s coming to us.

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Writing About Brexit: watch what they do, not what they say

EdinburghEye on Ko-FiThis was first posted on Facebook on 4th February 2020, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

Boris Johnson and his Ministers said a lot of stuff over the weekend about breaking the Withdrawal Agreement.

He may actually mean what he said, but we don’t know if he does, because we can’t trust anything Boris Johnson says.

And at the moment, this is all just words. Lots and lots of wild, distracting, frightening words.
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Writing About Brexit: Standing Order 24 passes

EdinburghEye on Ko-FiThis was first posted on Facebook on 3rd September 2019, with support from my Ko-Fi network.

Well, here is what is going on, as I understand it.

There is no majority for No Deal Brexit in the House of Commons.

Theresa May incompetent monster though she was, understood that. Whether she ever understood that there was no possibility that Brexit could ever be a “success”, we may never know.

There may or may not be a majority for Brexit with a deal in the Commons – a competent Prime Minister who wasn’t in hock to the DUP or in fear of ERG might have found that by instituting a cross-party Withdrawal Committee to work out the details of Brexit. But we had Theresa May.
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Theresa May: erg 0/year

Theresa May - 13th December 2018Theresa May won her vote of confidence 200-117 and is off to meet with the EU Commission, still Prime Minister – though having lost the confidence of nearly one-third of her MPs.

So, where are we now?

The deal the EU negotiated for Theresa May is the only deal they’ll accept. The EU have, jointly and severally, made that clear. Any talk of changes to the deal is uninformed rubbish. At this point in time, the House of Commons has three choices:

  • To ratify May’s deal and leave the EU on 29th March 2019
  • To refuse May’s deal and leave the EU catastrophically on 29th March 2019
  • To revoke Article 50 and remain in the EU

For many MPs, the fact that they have no ability to move the EU to a better deal is too unpalatable to be comprehended.
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Gone means gone, May means May

Steampunk vintage Octopus door handleLast night Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, counted 48 letters in his cupboard and let Theresa May know she’d have a leadership challenge this week. This morning he let the world know.

The system for Tories who want rid of their leader is primarily in the hands of MPs. If one-sixth of the Conservative backbenchers have written a letter of no-confidence in their leader to the chair of the 1922 Committee, a vote of no-confidence is called: if the leader wins that vote, they can’t be challenged again for another year: if they lose that vote, there is a leadership election in which the current leader cannot stand, voted on by Tory MPs only until only two candidates are left standing: the Tory membership then gets to vote on the last two candidates.

Tonight, 315 Tory MPs will get to have a second vote to see if they’ve changed their minds since 2016. (Most of them have been arguing that we shouldn’t get to have a second vote to see if we have.)
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Theresa May will be PM til after Brexit

Theresa May's P45According to rumour, Sir Graham Brady, chair of the 1922 Committee, has 45 of the 48 letters required for a vote of confidence against Theresa May in his cupboard. No one knows the validity of this rumour, but no matter how many letters he has, I don’t believe that May will be unseated now until after 29th March 2019.

David Davis, the former Brexit Minister, resigned on Sunday after the Chequers meeting: Boris Johnson, the former Foreign Minister, resigned on Monday. Both cited Theresa May’s plan for Brexit as their reason for resigning. The only minister left of the three Brexiters appointed to the Foreign Office by May in 2016, is disgraced former Defence Minister Liam Fox, who is still drawing a salary as minister for International Trade (without actually accomplishing a single trade deal in his entire time in office). For about 24 hours at the beginning of this week, it looked as if Theresa May might be gone within days.
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