Thursday 11 May 2023

The Blob

I think Brexit has become a kind of Time Machine. A lot of older voters wanted to take us back to the sixties. Jacob Rees-Mogg probably preferred to return to the eighteenth century, to the age of deference. But we appear to have gone back much further, beyond the Enlightenment and the European Renaissance, to the early Middle Ages before science and reason, where even educated people explained things away by reference to a fictional super-being, the devil in that case. Now, everything is being blamed on an amorphous ‘blob’.

The passage of The Great Repeal Bill, for example, has been thwarted by this mysterious civil service “blob” that Brexiteers blame for all their problems. This is according to The Telegraph last night with a headline to fire up the Brexit faithful: Whitehall ‘blob’ thwarts bonfire of Brexit laws. It follows an article by Kemi Badenoch where she admits the end-of-the-year sunset date for 4,000 EU laws will be missed - badly.

Badenoch claims 1,000 EU laws have already been revoked or reformed since Britain left the EU but the dashboard only shows 671 and she says another 600 (as I understand it) will go before the end of the year. A list of these 600 new ones is apparently to be published first as a sop to help get the bill through the Lords with as little damage as possible, I think.

The ERG is up in arms, as you might expect:

"Mr. Rees-Mogg, the former Brexit secretary, said: 'This is an admission of administrative failure, an inability of Whitehall to do the necessary work and an incapability of ministers to push this through their own departments.

"'It is a victory for the ‘blob’ over a specific promise from the Prime Minister. Deregulation that could have reduced prices, lowering inflation has been abandoned because of idle civil servants and inert ministers.'

"The climbdown has angered Tory Brexiteers, with 20 backbenchers meeting Simon Hart, the Chief Whip, on Wednesday to vent their concerns. The Government is expected to publish a list of 600 Bills that would be scrapped as part of the Retained EU Law Bill imminently."

JRM accuses ministers (i.e. Badenoch) of being incapable of 'pushing' the legislation through their own departments, which is probably true. I am sure when he drafted the bill as a previous business secretary the sunset clause was against civil service advice, this is where the problem stems from. They knew it was impossible and probably warned him what would happen (a humiliating climbdown) but he went ahead anyway.

The Libdem peer Lord Fox said the Conservatives had "dug themselves into a hole" with the bill, adding: "While they may have stopped digging, they're still in the hole".

Dave Penman, the hard case chair of the civil servants' union the FDA, said he read Badenoch's article, as a criticism of an "artificial deadline" championed by JRM. He told the BBC:

"If you set an artificial deadline, what is a government department going to do? It's going to focus on the things that need to be retained in government."  He said this would "inevitably" take precedence over focusing on what needs to change.

"Government is about 'doing things, it's about protecting people, it's about making sure business can work,' he added."

In her article, Badenoch dangles a little bit of red meat for the ultras, which they probably don't want to hear. She says, "The government would consult on changes to the Working Time Directive, such as watering down the requirement for firms to record how long people work."  

She also said, “We will consult on cutting unnecessary red tape on recording working hours, streamline engagement with workers when a business transfers to new owners, and provide up to five million UK workers greater freedom to switch jobs by limiting non-compete clauses.”

"There will also be changes to so-called Transfer of Undertakings (Protection of Employment) rules that regulate what happens when staff are taken over by other companies. Red tape could also be cut around holiday pay."

The dreaded word 'consult' appears twice note. You can bet after the 'consultation' business and industry will opt either for no change or very minor amendments. This is well-known outside ERG circles.

The extent to which the Tory party was captured by the idea that all of these laws, the very backbone of our consumer, product safety rules, employment, and environmental regulations, and a mass of other things, can be ditched just-like-that can be seen in that Sunak video from last year.

He didn’t accidentally pledge to scrap 2,400 laws (as it was then) in his first 100 days in office during a pressured face-to-face interview, he actually had a video made showing him and a shredder! Not only has he not done it in his first hundred days, but he’s also not going to do it in his first 433 days and probably not at all.

Guy Hands, in a New Statesman interview, hits the nail on the head when he says, “What Brexit was largely about was people at the top being able to employ the rest of the country for a lot less and pay a lot less tax.” 

“I thought Brexit was frankly completely nuts. It was an assumption that the British population would suddenly become New Singaporeans, and there is nothing in the character of the British [that is] similar to people in Singapore. It is just like night and day. The concept that Brits were going to suddenly start working 60-80 hours a week, were again going to have a saving ratio of 20% plus, were going to accept extreme discipline in society, is just not the way the UK is.”

The REUL Bill fiasco hasn't been entirely a waste of time, it will, I believe, prove to be a watershed for Brexit. By 2024, eight years after the referendum, the government will be unable to show any substantial benefits whatsoever for leaving the EU. There may be minor changes, some old irrelevant EU laws will be repealed, and some may even be improved but not in a way that might provide a tangible benefit to voters.

In the end, the differences will be negligible and will reveal once and for all that EU laws were never the big issue shackling Britain that Brexiteers have always claimed.

To see the truth in this I noted on Twitter that France has again come top in the latest Ernst and Young League of the most attractive European countries to invest in for the fourth year running:

France beat Germany and Britain is described as being 'hampered' by Brexit. 

Regulations are the future, not the past.  The Time Machine needs to be reset.

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