Saturday 1 April 2023

CPTPP and a long hard road back for the Tory party

I make no apology for mentioning the CPTPP treaty again. We now appear to have completed the negotiations and reached an agreement with the eleven existing members. As anticipated, ministers are already proclaiming what a wonderful thing it is, to join a trade bloc thousands of miles away on the other side of the planet, far removed in both time and space from our neck of the woods here in Europe. Kimi Badenoch, the Trade secretary, couldn't wait to get on Twitter to announce the 'good' news.

All that is old hat now but there are plenty of Brexiteers proclaiming Brexit to be irreversible. It is nothing of the kind as I suggested yesterday, but it was nice to see it confirmed by Steve Peers, Professor of EU Law & Human Rights Law, at the University of Essex, who posted an image of the CPTPP text:

So, ignore all this stuff about Brexit now being cast in concrete. It is still a flimsy house of cards.

Secondly, I saw a post that suggested parliament will get to see a copy of the text of the CPTPP after it's signed. In other words, there will be a debate but no real scrutiny or process that might get in the way of it coming into force. Parliament will not have any role in decision-making, which seems very odd to me.  For all its limited economic benefits it is still a very big treaty.

I assume this is because it contains a lot of things that various sectors of the UK economy won't like. The government is sticking to the line that they have managed to 'protect' those parts which are most 'sensitive' which I take to mean agriculture, already reeling from huge increases in input costs and labour shortages. I suppose we'll know soon enough what the bad news is.

Not everyone on the Brexit side is convinced. An article in Conservative Home by assistant editor William Atkinson plays down the news and concludes:

".... CPTPP seems less of a bold new step into a post-Brexit future, and more of a huddling for warmth with fellow medium-sized economies against the three great industrial superpowers. Those crowing to Labour that Brexit is now impossible to reverse neglect the fact that Starmer and co are more attentive to these trends than they are."

And:

"‘Global Britain’ was always a flawed agenda. Whatever Asia’s future growth prospects, making Britain a beacon for free trade relied upon a healthy dose of nostalgia, and a great deal of wishful thinking. Unfortunately for Sunak, he seems set to be left banging the drum for free trade just as the rest of the world is changing its tune."

So, I can’t help but feel it’s all a rerun of 31 December 2021, when Britain finally left the EU completely and the Brexit-supporting media (ie most of it) was all triumphant. As we know it quickly turned bad with supply chain disruptions, extra costs, delays, and falling trade as barriers went up all around the EU.

I suspect the same will happen with the CPTPP.

Loosely connected with this is a poll conducted by King's College researchers and published in The Guardian yesterday. It will come as no surprise that people in this country are losing faith in politicians at Westminster, this has been so for a long time. But what is new is that this is mirrored by an increase in trust in the EU Commission.  Read it here:

Britons have more confidence in EU than Westminster, poll finds. Faith in bloc higher than that in UK parliament for first time in three decades of World Values Survey

The report says:

"Since the UK voted for Brexit, the proportion of people declaring confidence in parliament has slumped by 10 percentage points to 22% while there has been a seven percentage point rise in confidence in the Brussels-based bloc, to 39%. Confidence in the UK government also fell from 2017 to 2021."

I am not surprised by this since I've argued on this blog that our political class is really third-rate and can't be trusted to make any rational decisions, but the really key part comes down below:

"The former Brexit secretary David Davis said the marked shift was probably a result of a whiny, unpleasant, bitchy row' in parliament over Brexit since late 2017, 'which has been completely unproductive'.

"He said UK government crises over the coronavirus pandemic would have added to the slump in trust and suggested that since Brexit, the media – he named the Sun, Daily Telegraph, Times, and Daily Mail – have stopped 'kicking Brussels all the time' as they did in the run-up to the 2016 referendum.

“No one reads about square strawberries or straight bananas anymore,” he said.

And how true that is.  No one reads about it anymore because the goal of leaving the EU has been achieved so no need to keep pumping out all the myths and lies. 

But I think there's more to it. Voters have seen how the EU Commission has completely outclassed us in negotiating what THEY wanted out of Brexit. It has been a master class in how to do it properly. The Commission ran rings around us which is why we have ended up with a border in the Irish sea, dividing up our own country, and a shocking trade deal (Lord Frost hasn't commented yet on the Windsor Framework BTW). We look absolutely stupid. Which other nation would even contemplate it?

Don't forget two previous prime ministers told us in plain English on TV that no British PM could or would accept any kind of border down the Irish sea, even though one of them negotiated exactly that, but afterward denied it.

It is becoming ever clearer that Britain NEEDS the EU because we have lost the ability to govern ourselves well.  Those 'barmy EU Bureaucrats' so beloved of The Sun and The Mail turned out to be far too smart for Britain and I think that is what has altered minds. 

It's going to be a long hard road back for the Tory party.

Finally, I always like to keep you up-to-date with the poll: In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the EU? which has just seen its 264th survey, carried out on Thursday last.

The YouGov poll with a 2,002 sample size, shows we are at 63% - 37% thinking Brexit has been a mistake, not quite a record since it was 64% to 36% in November, but still closing in on the 2:1 advantage we had in 1975.

And it isn't just demographics which is driving the change of heart. Note that 89% of those who voted remain still think they were right to do so. Meanwhile, only 72% of those who voted to leave would keep to their choice.  This alone would be more than enough to reverse the 2016 vote handsomely.

Brexit is not going to last the decade out.

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