Friday 3 May 2019

CHASING UNICORNS

I posted the other day about yet another group that has been set up to find 'alternative arrangements' for the Irish backstop (HERE) called appropriately enough The Alternative Arrangements Commission. Greg Hands and Nicky Morgan are to lead it. Now, Brexit Central have an article by Mr Hands (HERE) where he seem to be asking if anyone can help - for it's quite clear he has no any idea what these 'alternative arrangements' actually are. The article is titled: We need to use all the UK’s expertise to find alternative arrangements to the Irish border and make this the way forward on Brexit.

It ends with this appeal:

Anyone wishing to offer their expertise or to make a submission to the Commission can do so by emailing Greg Hands.

Peter Foster, Europe editor at The Telegraph, was not impressed at the news and tweeted that it was indeed a new unicorn hunt. He seems a decent bloke, probably pro-remain and so he gets a load of abuse from readers of his reports. Reports incidentally which are usually informative, logical and realistic. Things the average Telegraph leave vote just does not want.

Anyway, Peter Foster begins with this tweet:-
Someone quickly replies and so begins a long twitter thread which I have pulled together to make it easier to read. It is a tour de force of the arguments for why the backstop is not going to change and well worth a few minutes to read it in full:-

First the reply:-
Peter - genuine question - why lead with the pejorative “unicorn hunt” that was coined as a phrase by the EU to laughably dismiss and diminish UK negotiation actions? It might be “difficult” but why use a EU coined dismissal ?
So Foster spells it out as if totally exasperated at having to explain it for the hundredth time: 

It's a fair question....arguably too partisan/pejorative....but a Unicorn is a make-believe animal that doesn't exist. I was one of the original users/coiners of the phrase in order to try and make this a fact-based conversation not something based on wishful thinking.

But remember, this is not some new problem.

Before the joint report in Dec 2017 there was a massive scoping exercise involving EU/UK and Irish officials that totally came up against reality on the border question.

I have done multiple threads on this.Threads which, based on my visits to NI and interviews with NI businesses and officials in both Whitehall and Brussels who are actively engaged in trying to find solutions, reach the conclusion that there isn't a tech solution to the border. 

Recall that the original 'MaxFac' solution to the border required 80 per cent (80!!!!) of trade to be exempted. That tells you more than a little about how unrealistic the scheme was. It points to a key thing that UK politics fails to understand about EU thinking on border. 

The EU side DOES care about NI being a lacuna in Single Market. When I've seen readout of EU ambos [ambassadors] discussions on this, they care about SM integrity - really they do, much more than about Good Friday Agreement if we're honest. Recall one of those readouts where one senior EU ambo was joking about opening a business in Northern Ireland, if that was the plan. 

Perhaps I shouldn't use 'unicorn' label, but I have - frankly - lost patience with the Brexiteers absolute failure to grapple with the reality of the border. Why wouldn't @OwenPaterson  and the Malthouse Crew accept the invites of @ManufacturingNI @Freight_NI  and others?

Why will they never give serious answers as to how their 'solutions' (which exist nowhere in the world) deal with illegal trade? Sure they might work for big biz, but what about smugglers - and the border would be a smugglers paradise. And where you have smuggling, you have enforcement. And snitches. Where is that enforcement taking place? Who is stopping vans and trucks and where? And what happens to the snitches...when their legs get broken? Remember all that? 

How do you deal with something like the pork dioxin scandal? How and where are SPS checks (and enforcement) taking place in that border economy, if not at the NI ports? These are NOT new questions....we've been at this for TWO YEARS now.

The Brexiteer thinking is so lazy and wilfully ignorant (Shows another thread 

Even in the benign environment of Dover Calais (did I mention that all NI border constituencies are Sinn Fein controlled and, well, um remember an unhappy time no so long ago when the Brits did man that border?) the tech solution isn't ready til 2030. 

That's a decade away, and the plan admits, the govt's record of delivering this kind of project is extremely shaky. So on a technical level, I just haven't seen serious proposals from the Brexiteers. They are indeed 'unicorns'. Not even horses with shells on their foreheads. 

These people need to go the border and ask themselves why this customs park in Newry shut down in 1992 when the Single European Act came in...and if we needed it before the single market, why wouldn't we need it again after we've left? The maddest part of all, however, is that even the Brexiteers' political thinking seems to me half-baked. 

The dream, as I understand it, is to oust @theresa_may and install a true-believer to force 'alternative arrangements' into the Withdrawal Agreement bill as an ultimatum. Essentially challenge the EU to accept Brady or have the UK walk away in a 'no deal'....

Except that the one thing that Parliament seems agreed on is that 'no deal' isn't an option the House can accept. It won't happen. The EU knows it, has known all along. And if even it did (and now I'm starting to shout my self hoarse, I know) where does a 'no deal' lead to? 

At that point there is no transition deal, no legal roof over our heads to build a new relationship; ugly politics, massive asymmetries of leverage... .which leads to, a deal. The UK cannot exist in splendid isolation.

The conflation of the sovereignty and trade pieces of Brexit has fuelled harmful delusions among UK political class about the actual choices we have. 

For what it's worth, I don't, contrary to much Brexiteer opinion, shill for the EU. 

If it's useful background, I spent 12 years reporting from Asia (India, then China) and Washington DC, where I learned the truth about Britain's actual place in the world. But I've never advocated reversing #Brexit - unless there a clear shift of public opinion. But polling doesn't bear that out.

So do the deal (May's 48-52 Brexit) and move on. But it might be too late for that now. If so, more fool the Brexiteers for chasing unicorns :) 

The original Twitter thread is HERE

And to reinforce Foster's words have a look at this reply from someone at NI Biz to Marcus Fysh MP, Brexiteer and unicorn hunter. 
Having recently joined Twitter, I begin to see how tin-eared these Brexiteers are. Marcus Fysh tweets a link to the Brexit Central article claiming seamless arrangements are available. He then has dozens of replies similar to the one above either pointing out he is wrong or asking for details of how these elusive 'seamless' arrangements might work.

I imagine this is not new for Mr Fysh but presumably he either doesn't believe the replies or he doesn't read them. Whatever, the reason Brexiteers like Fysh, Paterson, Hands and all the others just breeze on regardless of facts or reality.
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