I have argued consistently that we will never leave without a deal. The consequences would be catastrophic for the nation, the party in government and the prime minister who took the decision. We should not underestimate however the men who are pushing for just such an outcome. Martin Howe QC is one of them. He has co-authored a 48-page paper for Politeia, which has been endorsed enthusiastically by Steve Baker (HERE) who described it as 'superb'. Well he would, wouldn't he?
It has the title: The Withdrawal Agreement - Avoiding the Trap How to Move on from the Withdrawal Agreement
Howe is one of the lawyers for Britain, legal specialists who have always been behind the hardest of hard Brexits. He has appeared on this blog several times (HERE for instance) and once argued that Gina Miller's Article 50 Challenge would be thrown out by the High Court. In other words he's not very good.
He is making the same proposals that he has always made (for although he only co-authored the paper I think the ideas are all his). That we should leave with no deal. After looking at the prospects of the EU renegotiating the Withdrawal Agreement (basically nil) he asks:
"The other side of the equation is to ask ‘what is there in the WA which the UK needs or wants?’ The answer is that, with the highly debatable exception of the transition period, there is nothing in the WA which the UK particularly needs or even wants" (p24)
What follows is an argument for refusing to accept the Withdrawal Agreement and leaving under WTO rules which is the same as saying leaving without a deal. The authors set off on a fantasy journey where the UK and EU agree all sorts of mini-deals to allow trade to continue tariff free and more or less as it does now.
It talks of a 'determined' prime minister and both implicitly and explicitly suggests they need us more than we need them. There is no acknowledgement that in such a case, where we to opt for no deal, the EU would essentially be voluntarily giving up all of their negotiating leverage. It is all total fantasy.
I won't bore you with all of it but I take this section (page 43) to illustrate their 'thinking':
Mutual recognition and services exports
The WTO Agreements (notably the TBT and SPS Agreements mentioned above) provide greater protection for goods exports than for services exports. The UK is a big net importer of goods from the EU but a services exporter. So, the UK has a very strong interest in pushing for continued recognition of UK based service providers as complying with EU rules so long as relevant UK or EU rules and standards are not amended in such a way as to cause divergence.
As already mentioned, the default position under the 2018 Withdrawal Act is that EU-based service providers would continue to be recognised and able to provide services to UK customers, unless and until the rules are positively changed.
So, a third element of a temporary arrangement with the EU while a more permanent FTA is negotiated should be a general continuation of the rights of EU-based and UK-based service providers to export cross border, unless and until rules in the relevant sector are changed by either party.
With this they seem at last to recognise how important trade is to the UK but to overcome the problems created by Brexit they propose a 'general continuation' of things until some unspecified future date!! This is pure bred unicorn stuff.
They say the £39 billion divorce bill should go to international arbitration, despite our own Brexit Secretary, Stephen Barclay explaining that the bill was incurred under EU Law and the bill would have to be settled under the same law - which is our own law, until we leave. Martin Howe is supposed to be a lawyer specialising in this area. It's like being found guilty of a motoring offence and insisting on international arbitration.
Our own Attorney General has confirmed in the House there is a public international law obligation on us to settle our historic debts.
Does anyone (anyone) outside the benighted walls of Lawyers for Britain and the ERG believe the EU, after we unilaterally withdraw from talks, will agree to the divorce bill going to some other international court and then further agree to various mini-deals in sectors which benefit Britain's trade? Come on. This is not how things work.
And as for the Irish border, there is not even a peep.
It is simply going round the same circles that we have been going round for three long years. We NEED a trade deal, leaving on WTO terms would be deeply damaging. This is what the last two years of negotiating in Brussels has been about for heaven's sake. We are desperate for a deal. The EU has known this from well before the referendum yet we cannot face up to it. Desperate people may try to avoid the consequences of their own action but eventually must face reality and that meeting is scheduled for October.
Leo Varadkar, the Irish PM, talking about Theresa May said this yesterday (HERE):
"She probably got the best deal that she could get given that a country leaving the EU doesn't have much leverage. The fact that the failure of the House Of Commons to ratify the Withdrawal Agreement somehow means they are going to get a better deal, that is just not how the European Union works,"
This simple and obvious truth will finally be accepted very soon, even by Martin Howe.
