He supported leave because the EU ‘imposed’ regulations on former communist countries which he thought was “disastrous” although none seem unhappy enough to leave the EU themselves. In fact there is overwhelming support for it. He can’t seem to get his head round the fact that regulation is needed and to help trade it makes sense to align regulations with your neighbours. To Paterson it’s a macho nationalist thing to deliberately draft standards which are different to everyone else.
Paterson claims Davis became Eurosceptic because of the EU’s action against Greece during the 2009 Greek financial crisis. But as somebody pointed out Greece went bankrupt least six times before joining the EU in 1981. Greece needed the fiscal discipline and once again there is no chafing in Athens to quit.
Perhaps these are the reasons they thought the bloc would fragment as soon as the UK voted for Brexit.
He appears to be confused about the difference between May's deal on NI and Johnson's. He claims he thought the NI protocol was temporary while May's earlier 'backstop' was permanent. In fact it was the reverse.
This part illustrates his 'thinking' (my emphasis):
OP: I quoted Michael Collins actually, whose comment on the first treaty with Lloyd George was that – it’s a very good quote, sorry I’m paraphrasing it – ‘We’ve bought the freedom to win our freedom’, which I think was applicable in this case. I felt we had to swallow the inequity of the Protocol. I voted for that on the strict understanding that it would go, that it would be washed away in a comprehensive free trade agreement and it was only temporary. It never occurred to me it would still be around.
UKICE:
But from the EU point of view, it could only be washed away by something going
back towards Chequers, couldn’t it? I mean where did you think those
negotiations could conceivably go that would supersede the need for the
Protocol?
OP:
No, because we’d done all the stuff on the Alternative Arrangements. You know,
we’d got into the Selmayr stuff which we’d learned going to Rotterdam. We’d
begun to raise this idea of mutual enforcement by then, so there were lots of
ways of sorting it out.
UKICE:
So you thought that was negotiable?
OP:
Yes, the whole thing on the Irish border was wholly, wholly exaggerated.
"We have the deepest respect for the Single Market, and if we sell into the Single Market in the future we will match your standards. If we sell into the Chinese market, we will match their standards. If we sell into the United States, we will match their standards. How we get there is entirely our problem, but we will guarantee that we match your standards"
It's a wonder she didn't burst out laughing.
I don’t even know what he means by ‘match’ and I suspect he didn’t and neither did Ms Weyand. If he meant ‘meet’ then this is no different to anyone else and it still means a border where goods need to be certified and checked. But I suspect he means they won’t ‘meet’ the standards but we will claim our's are just as good - something no country in the world could possibly accept. It's tantamount to sub-contracting the safety and well-being of your citizens to another government which is legally out of reach if something goes wrong.
At one point he spouts off about something he calls ‘mutual enforcement’ where “you don’t need to have borders because everything can be done electronically.” Needless t say he doesn't produce any examples, mainly because there are none.
On Scottish and Welsh devolution, he is adamantly opposed and said it was a “disgrace that only 15% of the UK population had been consulted on the potential breakup of the UK.” Incredibly, he thought there should have been an “all UK-referendum on whether these devolved institutions should continue.”
I wonder how he would have reacted to an EU wide vote on whether the UK should leave the EU? I assume he wouldn’t accept it. As for worrying about the break-up of the UK, nothing has done more for that cause than Brexit.
Asked if a Eurosceptic could ever make the case against Scottish Independence he said they could “because Scotland benefits massively being part of the UK” which sounds an awful lot like the messages that used to come out of Brussels. Barnier has said on umpteen occasions that nobody has ever convinced him of the added value of Brexit - it's the same thing isn't it?
To me it shows how ridiculous Brexiteer thinking was and is.
On German car companies pressurising Merkel, we get this (my emphasis):
UKICE: One of the things that people seemed to always think was that, at the end of the day, Germany would come to the UK’s aid and push through some changes because of its trade interests in the UK economy. You clearly understand Germany and France, you’re one of the few members of Parliament, I think, who speaks fluent French and German, and you’ve done loads of business in the EU.
Did you think that the UK negotiators were not understanding the EU, and the EU was not understanding the point of Brexit? They’re not getting the Leave argument about what Brexit is supposed to be trying to achieve.
Did you think the two sides were talking past each other most of the time, or was it more wilful than that?
OP: I think that always was a real problem. They just couldn’t understand it at the political level. I remember I went to Berlin with John Longworth to address the Toenissteiner Kreis, which would’ve been possibly January 2019, when things were getting far on. You had an extraordinary array of the great and the good of Germany, so there were MEPs and there were people from the Bundestag and people from the Länder. All the big business organisations were there. There was, just, this extraordinary unity.
I think, probably, at the beginning, we were at fault. We always thought that ultimately German businesses would use their clout on the political system. We had all these figures, ‘One in seven German cars is sold here’, and all the rest of it. There are huge German interests in continuing to sell goods to the UK. I think we could be criticised, as we always felt that those interests would turn. I think we underestimated the extraordinary grip the political project has. They didn’t budge.
Paterson and Longworth and Davis and Digby Jones really thought Britain was so powerful that Brexit would allow us to have continued access to the single market - on the same basis as a member - but outside the customs union and not bound by the rules.
BMW and Mercedes and VW weren't in the 'grip of a political project' but simply calculated the single market was worth a lot more to them. Paterson's ideas would have spelled to end of the EU, the single market and the CU and THAT would have been disastrous for German car makers.
Just as Brexit will be for British manufacturers.
In the end the EU didn't break up, Britain didn't get a special deal but Paterson and co still believe Brexit will somehow be good for the UK. It will not and sooner or later they will all have to admit it.
