Sunday 19 July 2020

The ERG want to renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement

Setting deadlines for EU negotiations has become a habit for Boris Johnson. Even before the 2016 referendum many experts said the Article 50 process with its two year time limit was expressly designed to put all the negotiating power into the hands of the EU. Ivan Rogers was effectively sacked for advising Theresa May not to trigger Article 50 until she had a plan and since then we have consistently set deadlines without a plan - March 29, April 12, October 31, January 31 and now December 31. Has it helped us?  No, and we can see that by the reaction of the ERG and other hardline Brexiters.

The Centre for Brexit Policy is a 'think tank' chaired by Owen Paterson and with some of the dimmest Brexit nutjobs you can think of. IDS, Patrick Minford, Martin Howe, John Longworth, Roger Bootle and so on are either on the board or described as 'fellows' of the CBP.

They have prepared a paper attacking the Withdrawal Agreement as being not 'sovereignty compliant' and arguing that it should be replaced. Their website gives a quick summary of it all HERE. This might come as a bit of a shock to some people, especially in the EU, who were under the impression it was an international treaty.But no, the CBP say this:

Although the Government sees the revised Withdrawal Agreement (WA) as only transitional until the end of the TP in December, there remain serious threats to UK sovereignty that will have crippling economic and strategic consequences for years to come if they are not dealt with now. Exiting the TP with these threats still in place is unacceptable.

It is 'only transitional' and they think not only should we renegotiate it but that we have the right to do so.  The argument is that the government, " Given the time and political constrains of a year ago" was surprisingly successful in "eliminating the Irish Backstop" and getting us out of the EU they didn't quite manage it properly. This ignores the fact that the time "constraints" were self imposed.  Note this is similar to the Cummings line that there weren't able to do everything in the time available - but without mentioning it was because we set a deadline.

They claim we have the right to repudiate the WA for a variety of reasons but mainly because the "EU has been acting in breach of a material term of the WA, meaning that the treaty was entered into a false premise."  This is essentially that the EU are not giving us what we want.

This line (page 73) is fascinating for we Brexit-watchers for what it says about the Brexiteer mindset:

"In summary, given that the UK’s participation in the WA process was conditional upon the fulfilment of the obligation to achieve a sovereign future relationship agreement, the EU’s failure to deliver on this would invalidate the basis of the UK’s participation and thereby the WA as a whole."

It is apparently the EU's fault we have not achieved the sovereign future they had dreamed of.  So much for voting to 'take back control'.

The reason I mention this is that we appear to be on the verge of a repetition.  Nick Gutteridge, a Brussels reporter, tweeted yesterday that although the latest round of talks ended with little progress and no new ideas tabled to break the deadlock (he says Brussels is puzzled by our strategy) he thinks there are reasons to be hopeful because the two sides agree on about 80 per cent of what will go into the final text.  So, we are gradually creeping closer to a 'thin' deal which will almost certainly (I guarantee it) be totally unacceptable to the ERG and the CBP.

His thread is here and is well worth reading in full:

Gutteridge claims  that Barnier "has made numerous overtures. He's tabled middle ground proposals on fish. He's accepted the EU's demand of dynamic alignment on state aid isn't a goer, and acknowledged the UK's objections to the ECJ having a role in the trade deal. The EU feels it's made its move."

But there has been nothing on the UK side.  On fishing - "the UK sticks to pure zonal attachment, which produces 'disastrous' numbers for EU states. Barnier has repeatedly asked for the UK's plans for its post-Brexit state aid regime but has been met with silence."

"The UK has even refused to engage on non-regression of environmental and labour law, which it proposes in its own negotiating mandate. All this has the EU baffled. A source says: 'The mood music is frustrated because on a technical level quite a lot of things have been done'."


So, here we are with a little over five months to go, still digging our heels in but with no substantive progress on the big issues - and it is these issues, governance, level playing fields, fishing and so on that will cause all the trouble. They are being left to the last with little time to get the fine details right and the EU are much better at it than we are and hold all the cards.

On the WA, it wasn't until people went through the details that the cracks started to appear. The NI protocol was drafted to be disguised and it went undetected for a long time, not helped by Johnson denying the reality of what he had agreed to.


I suspect the same thing will happen again, but on a much bigger scale.
I note the BBC tweeted a clip showing Liam Fox talking about a "transition" after the December deadline:
The BBC are not clear but don't forget he is talking in the context of the UK allowing goods in from the EU without border formalities. There will be no transition for exporters unless the EU agree, and unless we accept their terms, hey will not agree. The shock will come as early as the first week of January.

Finally, a nice tweet of the FT editorial about harsh reality puncturing Britain's Brexit balloon:

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