Tuesday 11 April 2023

The REUL Bill is headed for the long grass

The Guardian reported on Sunday that the government has begun a "full-scale retreat" from the Retained EU law Bill which is drifting aimlessly at present in the House of Lords. The 19 April date for the start of the report stage has apparently been abandoned. It looks like the 4,000 EU laws due to be repealed, amended, or retained by the end of this year are getting a last-minute reprieve from the noose erected by Jacob Rees-Mogg. This should come as no surprise to anyone with a functioning brain cell.

However, the reaction to the news at least enables us to point out the unfortunates who aren't so well equipped in the old grey matter.

One such is David Campbell-Bannerman:

Another is John Longworth:

Finally, Nile Gardiner, once an aide to Mrs. Thatcher:

But the top prize for sheer idiocy must go to Darren Grimes:

He blames the Lords, a body that is apparently stuffed with remoaners or as he likes to call them EU-loving technocrats, among the Blairites, Lib-Dems, and Cameron's Cronies. The Civil service is also packed with pro-EU faint hearts who are intent on throwing spanners into the Brexit works whenever they can.

Do you ever get the idea that there is a shrinking number of deranged ideological cranks ranged against the rest? The Tories used to be known as the Conservative party, constitutional stick-in-the-muds with a name that derives from 'conserving' things. Now they're unrecognisable from particularly energetic nihilists who want to lay waste to everything before them. Their current mantra is all creative destruction.

As the Brexit ship sinks the last voices we'll hear are those of Longworth, DCB, Gardiner and Grimes. 

There was no way that legislation could or should pass through the upper house without serious amendments to address the democratic deficit (stripping ministers of the right to decide which laws are to be ditched or amended) and the completely ludicrous time scale.

Even if all the Lords suddenly went to sleep and the Bill sneaked through unscathed, it couldn't get on the statute book much before June probably. That would give civil servants seven months, let's say about 140 working days, ignoring the recesses, to review these 4,000 laws (or however many there are, there is still doubt we've captured them all yet) slashing them down left, right and centre at the rate of about 28-29 per day. 

Even if they worked weekends and Bank Holidays, we are still looking at 20 per day.

Which country would do that?  And why?

And don't forget for a second that in the nearly seven years since the vote, not one of the Brexiteers has said which laws are so egregious, so seriously impeding growth, that we must dump them with all possible haste. It is truly mad.

I imagine at some point a senior Mandarin has taken the cabinet through what the task that Sunak stupidly committed himself to last August would mean in practice.  These laws are not stand-alone, they often cross-refer to each other. You may scrap one but accidentally render others useless. It is a recipe for absolute legal carnage if mistakes are made.

This is to say nothing of the sheer uncertainty that the REUL Bill would create for inward investment. What is the likely legal framework on 1 January 2024?  Nobody can say for sure. The deadline in the Bill could be extended until 23 June 2026 - the ten-year anniversary of the referendum, meaning growth-destroying uncertainty could last another three years.

I also don't even mention the pressure the EU would put us under.

Every PM since Cameron has come in promising to 'stand up' against Brussels until the reality of trade is brought home to them. The NI protocol and the Windsor Framework are living monuments to Britain's weakness in any and all UK-EU negotiations.  It's as if the global behemoth bestriding the world's stage is constantly humiliated and unable to understand why.

If we held all the cards and could choose the path we wanted why have we now got a customs border running inside our own country?

According to The Guardian, "a group of Labour, Tory, Liberal Democrat and crossbench peers has been meeting in secret for weeks to discuss how to amend the bill."

And this is said to include pro-Brexit Conservatives such as former Tory minister Archie Hamilton and leading remainers, such as Patrick Cormack and former transport secretary Patrick McLoughlin.  In a speech at the second reading of the bill, Lord Cormack apparently described the Bill as a “constitutional monstrosity”.

A cross-bench peer and a former deputy president of the UK supreme court, David Hope tabled a series of amendments and told the Observer he was not interested in scoring political points, or arguments involving Brexit versus remain, but was acting for the good of the country.

“I do not have a political agenda with regard to this bill, but my general concern is with the accuracy and workability of legislation, and the way this bill is currently framed it is not capable of doing the job it is designed to do,” he said.

It will soon be unrecognisable from the Bill that Rees-Mogg introduced last September and the poor misbegotten thing will soon be kicked into the long grass.

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