Sir Ivan Rogers' speech at University College, London last Tuesday is a terrific exposition of our current hopeless position on Brexit. You can read the entire thing HERE. At 31 pages and written in Sir Ivan's peculiarly punctuated and convoluted style, it takes a bit of reading but well worth a few minutes of anyone's time. He is rather good at putting his finger on the nub of an issue and does so quite a few times.
How the PM's FoM redline has created her difficulties:
The logical process goes like this:
- The PM's red line on FoM means we must leave the single market and the ECJ
- She committed to having no hard border in Ireland
- She promised the DUP no regulatory divergence between NI and GB.
As Sir Ivan points out you can have any 2 out of the 3 but not all 3 because they are mutually exclusive. It was this contradiction that led to Ireland demanding the backstop in the first place.
The potential for a future trade deal to render the backstop nugatory:
"The Prime Minister still talks as if the need for a backstop will automatically fall away the moment a full trade deal is struck. And that therefore all that matters is cast iron commitments from the other side to expedite and complete a free trade agreement. But this is manifestly untrue unless the deal were such as to render the backstop otiose. And that is not the sort of trade deal to which even she aspires".
Leaving without a deal:
"It’s never been a credible threat [leaving without a deal] in EU eyes, because the consequences are obviously so damaging to a Government that inflicts a “no deal” outcome on the country when an alternative negotiated outcome is available, that they are relaxed that no Government could do it and survive".
However, he doesn't entirely discount it happening "by accident, indecision or incompetence".
The farce of Mrs May seeking legal assurances against the use of her own provisions:
"The last several weeks have therefore been dominated by the Prime Minister seeking political, and ideally further legal, assurances that the all UK backstop, which, to repeat, she herself deliberately sought as a centrepiece of the Withdrawal Agreement"
The problem with any deal:
"The Prime Minister’s proposed deal is now suffering precisely the same fate at the same hands as did continued EU membership in the referendum. It is there: concrete and attackable. Everyone can specify what they do not like about it. Which is plenty. To both sides, it seemingly looks worse than what we are leaving".
The fantasy of Brexit as a prerequisite for Global Britain:
"Sure, increasing our trade with fast-growing parts of the planet should of course be a major U.K. goal. And that will, over time, further shift U.K. patterns of trade. But that shift is happening – as it happens, faster – for “global Germany”, “global France” as indeed everyone else within the EU and everywhere else in the developed world. Which is why German trade flows with China earlier this decade for the first time surpassed those with France, when, 20 years previously, they had barely registered on the same scale.
"And flows from both Germany and France to both China and India have long - vastly - surpassed Britain’s. The idea that it is impossible to have a global, Atlantic, Asian or African vocation from within the EU is, again, just crass".
Using GATT Article 24 to help with a no deal Brexit:
"Just one slight problem with this. It’s a wilful and awful misinterpretation of Article XXIV. As those dreaded trade experts keep pointing out. But in common with other such claims, despite being rebutted as nonsense by people who actually understand WTO rules, the claim is never retracted".
The future outside the EU:
"...we have to understand how the EU works and negotiates, because we shall, like it or not, not ever be floating free of ties and responsibilities in the mid-Atlantic. We shall, like an outsized Switzerland, be negotiating on everything – from fish to financial services, from food and farming to fundamental rights, and that is just the “fs” - for as long as both UK and EU exist".
