Monday 9 March 2020

EASA: could the UK remain a member if it wished to?

Raoul Ruparel, described as a former adviser to Brexit Johnson and DEXEU, has been trying to defend the government's position on the EASA decision. He talks of people suggesting the UK asks for full membership of the EU agency, something he says is impossible outside the single markey. He tweeted about it on Saturday.

Here's the tweet:
I am not sure this is true. The EASA has 31 members including the EEA, which is part of the SM and Switzerland, which is not. The position is not as he claims, that somehow the EU is preventing us becoming an EASA member due to SM rules. Rather the UK is deliberately excluding itself because of pure dogma and possibly to avoid giving the EU more leverage in the  trade negotiations. It would not surprise me in the least if the government did not apply for EASA membership as soon as a skinny FTA was agreed. The EU are no doubt aware of the possibility.

More than two years ago, in December 2017, the American FAA was demanding the UK stay in the EASA otherwise the FAA would have to start inspecting and certifying British aviation manufacturers and airlines if they were to continue flying and supplying parts to the US.  I don't see or hear the Americans complaining now, so I assume some talks have been going on to avoid all this extra work (and delays) for the FAA. But you never know.

With ten months to go, Grant Shapps suddenly makes the shock announcement. I can't believe he would do it without the CAA, the FAA and the EASA having some sort of contingency plan. But again, everything this government does on Brexit looks, and often is, irrational, self-harming and perverse.

Theresa May in March 2018 was suggesting the UK could and should pursue associate membership.  Had she remained in power I think we may well have found a way to retain most if not all of the benefits of the EASA. 

It was Johnson's decision to damage the UK aviation industry and impose serious long-term costs on the UK to set up and fund its own totally unnecessary agency.

We are certainly in strange times. Government's around the world usually strain every sinew to attract new investment and high-tech foreign manufacturing companies. Many would offer a nice package to attract an Airbus wing manufacturing factory.

Making wings in Wales for aircraft assembled in Toulouse does not seem altogether efficient anyway, but introducing two separate certification regimes plus border and VAT formalities is only going to add further costs and drive Airbus away. It would be a surprise if they were not looking at moving some operations to France.

Raoul Ruparel incidentally is the man who had a big problem answering Gary Gibbon's question about which sector or sectors of the UK economy actually wanted Brexit. The answer was - as you can see in this video clip - none.

I also note Simon Fraser, former Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office & Business Department and previously Chief of Staff to an EU Trade Commissioner, tweeted about the UK's strange position vis-a-vis the EASA and independence:
Plenty of people have questioned where this is leading since Britain is also a member of the UN, NATO, the WHO and host of other international bodies. We cannot seriously be contemplating withdrawal from all these institutions in order to exist in splendid isolation. Which makes me think the EASA decision is tactical not strategic.

Rishi Sunak (known by a neighbour as slum dog millionaire) appeared on Sky TV yesterday. Sophia Ridge asked if the transition period could be extended to help businesses. She pointed out some may be struggling to cope with the fall out from Covid-19 and then face having to prepare to navigate the biggest change to their trading relationship for decades. The answer was no.
When Northern Rail introduced a new timetable in 2018 it caused absolute chaos. And they had control of the whole network plus the benefit of a plan - not a very good one as it turned out, but nevertheless a plan. What the government is trying to do is far more complex, without overall control of the thousands of travelling individuals and companies shipping goods through the Dover-Calais route and with new systems, border officials and an untested plan - assuming there is a plan.

A few days ago someone pointed out it was much harder to introduce friction into a supply chain than remove it. This is not unlike opening a gate and allowing traffic to begin passing through at their own pace. Closing it, even partially, while in full flow is another matter and fraught with problems. You have no idea what might happen, how individuals will behave, where the pinch points are, how the upstream systems will cope and so on.

So, given the massive uncertainty, I don't believe the transition period will end in December.

ELECTORAL REFORM

Finally, the Electoral Reform Society has produced a report on last December's election. I'm not sure what the thinking is but they examined what the result would look like if some form of proportional representation (PR) had been used instead of our first past the post system (FPTP) - something which in Europe only the UK uses. That in itself tells us a lot.

The ERS use a method known as the Deviation from Proportionality (DV) score to measure the extent to which an election result deviates from proportionality, i.e. from what it would look like if seats were proportional to votes gained by each party.  There is, as you might have guessed, a big disproportionality index - in England (17.5) and Wales (14.2) it's not too bad, but in Scotland (36) and NI (30) there is quite a discrepancy. The ERS claim 22 million voters in the UK are essentially disenfranchised.

So, with the help of YouGov they looked at three different PR systems and how the election might have turned out under Party List Proportional Representation (List PR), the Additional Member System (AMS), and the Single Transferable Vote (STV).

The results are striking. In every case the opposition would have been able to form a government. The Tories would have LOST a lot of seats under any PR system:
  • List PR (-77)
  • AMS (-81)
  • STV (-53)

Interesting isn't it?  FPTP must surely soon be coming to an end.  It is no longer providing a government for all of the people. The slow return to normality must include reform of our voting system.
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