Brexit discussion thread XIV (Please read OP before posting)

That's the point; nobody does want to use it. All this fuss about sparkling British wine in pint bottles is just a dead cat to distract us from this fact.

Older boardies will recall that back in the dear, dead days beyond recall — between February and August in 2022, to be precise — Jacob Rees-Mogg was the UK's Minister of State for Brexit Opportunities and Government Efficiency. In September 2022, with her unerring eye for talent, Prime Minister Liz Truss promoted him to Cabinet as Secretary of State for Business and we are all vividly aware of his glittering career since them.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. Back when he was but a simple Minister of State, one of the wisest and most far-seeing of his many wise, far-seeing initiatives was to launch a public consultation on the reintroduction of imperial measurements. It's true that a few narrow-minded people criticised the consultation as obviously biased; it had questions like "“If you had a choice, would you want to purchase items: i) in imperial units ii) in imperial units alongside a metric equivalent?” People weren't asked if they wanted the choice of purchasing items in metric units, with or without an imperial equivalent.

But, damn the begrudgers! The consultation went ahead anyway. Doubtless because Sir Jacob had moved on to higher things, actually processing and publishing the results of the consultation took an extraordinarily long time; the result was not announced until 27 December 2023. Even more extraordinarily, it seems that the public were not in accord with the Will of the People as discerned by Sir Jacob; 81% of those who responded to the consultation wanted to keep the status quo, and a further 18% wanted a complete shift to metric units. Only 1.4% wanted either more use of imperial measurements (0.9%) or the exclusive use of imperial measurements (0.4%). So, with a heavy heart, the government announced that it would not be making any change to the weights and measures legislation.

Except for one tiny, tiny change — the one we are now discussing. It's a micro-change. Sure, you'd hardly even notice it going down. And no pretence is made that it's a response to any view expressed in the consultation; it doesn't seem that anybody actually asked for this.

So why is this change being made? So we'd all talk about it, is the answer, instead of talking about the response to the consultation, which the government very much doesn't want people talking about, because it's one more data point that shows how out-of-touch Brexiteers are with British society, British opinion and the British people.

First of all, we need to distinguish between (a) tariffs and (b) border controls. If you impose tariffs then you need mechanisms for enforcing payment, and border controls, inspections, etc are often among the mechanisms used. But border controls have a wider purpose than that; e.g. they are a mechanism for preventing the illegal importation of drugs, weaponry, etc, and for enforcing consumer protection measures - food safety standards, standards for electrical appliances, pharmaceuticals, etc. Even if you have no tariffs at all there is still a place for, and perhaps a need for, border controls.

So, the fact that Switzerland is reducing or abolishing tariffs on industrial goods, doesn't necessarily mean that they will abandon their border controls. Swiss consumers will benefit in that the industrial goods imported will be cheaper (by the amount of the tariff) and this will (hopefully) flow through to cheaper consumer goods produced by those industrial goods. But the costs associated with border controls won't go way.

The UK already doesn't have tariffs on most goods imported from the EU, so consumers already have that benefit. To the extend that the UK doesn't operate border controls, that also makes importing goods cheaper and quicker, and that's a benefit to consumers. On the other hand, it means the imported goods are of uncertain quality or legality, and that may be a detriment to consumers. It's also a detriment, obviously, to UK producers of competing goods, since they are regulated and have compliance obligations; they will feel they face unfair competition from effectively unregulated imports that don't face the same compliance costs.

As for the rules of origin on car batteries, there isn't really any dogma involved here. The Commission press release to which you link explains the situation:

1. EU is anxious to develop and maintain its own EV production capacity.
2. Brexit disrupted that, since UK production capacity was removed.
3. EU's response is to build up its own production capacity, but that takes time. A strategy to do this was put in place in 2020.
4. As an interim measure, UK batteries were to be treated as of EU origin until the end of 2023.
5. As the end of 2023 approached, it became apparent that the plan to increase EU production had not been delivered. This was ascribed (rightly or wrongly, I cannot say) to unforeseen events, including the Ukraine war, the Covid-19 pandemic and US subsidies for battery production.
6. The Commission has a two-fold response to this. First, extend the favourable treatment of UK batteries until the end of 2026. Secondly, increase investment in EU production to get the plan back on track.

I'm not sure that this is "getting less dogmatic". A neoliberal free market enthusiast would say that it's doubling down on the EU's dogmatic fetishization of becoming self-sufficient in EV production, and that to get less dogmatic the EU should extend its treatment UK batteries to batteries from all countries, and should do so permanently.

What it is is the EU acting in its own interests. This change was unilateral. It wasn't negotiated with the UK and the UK didn't give anything in return for it. It will be of benefit to UK battery producers, but that benefit is incidental; the change was made to benefit the EU, not the UK, and it will remain in place only for so long as suits the EU.

That's the thing about being a rule-taker. Sometimes the rules you have to take are not that bad. But, good or bad, you have to take them. You have no control over them.

Do the DUP really think that Labour - if it wins the British general election - will be sympathetic to them regarding the Windsor Framework?! If they do, then they are delusional.

The ultimate irony here is that the Tories weren't atavistically committed to a form of Brexit that requires the Windsor Framework* either but the DUP were instrumental in facilitating the ERG in dragging everyone down that route.

*obviously the WF didn't exist at the time but other work-arounds were circulating to deal with the problems a hard Brexit was inevitably going to create (Back Stop, followed by Front Stop).

There's layer upon layer of irony here.

The first irony, already pointed out, is that the DUP threw themselves wholeheartedly into the push for hard Brexit that led to the UK seeking the NI Protocol in the first place.

This might have happened anyway. The DUP aren't that influential in UK politics, and were only a fairly minor part of the assembly of arsewits who pressed for hard Brexit, so we can't say their participation was decisive. Still, it is ironic.

The second irony it that, because the DUP are far too politically and psychologically insecure ever to admit that they have made a mistake on any matter whatsoever, they still remain (at least formally) committed to hard Brexit, even though it's now abundantly clear that it's the form of Brexit most harmful to the Union that is their supposed political priority.

And this brings yet a third irony. Because the DUP can't acknowledge that the hated Protocol was a demand of the hard Brexiter-dominated UK government, they have to pretend that it is something imposed on NI by IRL or by the EU. They therefore demand that IRL/EU should alter their positions and sacrifice their interests in order to protect NI from harm which is in fact inflicted by the Westminster government. We have the irony of unionists looking to the Republic to protect them from the Union to which they are supposedly committed.

On one level this is all great fun. We all enjoy a healthy bout of schadenfreude and, God knows, if anybody deserves to be hoist on their own petard it's the DUP. On another level, it's potentially very dangerous. At the very least, the whole of NI suffers because of the DUP's dysfunction. This is not just limited to the suspension of Stormont. The episode illustrates the fundamental contradictions inherent in the DUP's brand of unionism, and the DUP are unable to face up to this. They remain in a state of existential terror, but in denial about the fact and so unable to do anything to change their situation. They'll become more and more unstable, and behave more and more irrationally, to avoid confronting reality. I don't want to be alarmist, but the history of NI suggests that that could lead to some dark places.

Which means, though it is beyond the DUP to do anything to get themselves out of the hole they have dug, the grownups are going to have to do it for them. Not only do the DUP have to be rescued, but they have to be rescued by means which don't require them to face reality. Because any strategy that requires them to acknowledge reality will fail.

The most promising route to this has to be a softening of the UK's Brexit, which opens the way for amelioration of the protocol. That in turn requires a change of government in Westminster. But, even then, it's at best a medium-term prospect. Labour's current position is that they'll "make Brexit work", and (at least based on their public statements) the differences between their approach to Brexit and the Tory approach are pretty marginal. They won't have (because they won't seek) a mandate for a more radical approach, so the "make Brexit work" strategy must be tried, and must be seen to fail, before any material degree of rapprochement with the EU becomes politically possible. I think we could be looking at the second term of a Labour government before any real shift happens.

NI is in for a rough few years, I'm afraid.

The first irony, already pointed out, is that the DUP threw themselves wholeheartedly into the push for hard Brexit that led to the UK seeking the NI Protocol in the first place.

This might have happened anyway. The DUP aren't that influential in UK politics, and were only a fairly minor part of the assembly of arsewits who pressed for hard Brexit, so we can't say their participation was decisive. Still, it is ironic.

While the DUP were only a fairly minor part of the assembly of arsewits who pressed for hard Brexit, they gave credence to the arsewittery of that assembly. Let it never be underestimated just how much they screwed themselves.

I don't think the ERG would have been able to pull off what they did without having the DUP objections, "we can't turn our backs on our brothers in NI". The other irony of course is that the vote in NI rejected Brexit.

The ultimate irony may be yet to come: this whole sorry episode results in a weakening in support for the Union in NI.

What did the ERG "pull off" ?

They had more control over the migration that English voters care about when they were in the EU and hence covered by Dublin III

They have completely failed to do any that were of any real benefit; and the one they want isn't happening - ever (US).

Those that they have agreed on are either damaging (Australia), worthless (NZ) or pointless faff to get the right wing tabloids salivating (Florida, who can't actually make trade deals).

Oh FFS are there actually people out there that still believe that "take back control" bollix.

If Labour do a new deal with the EU that is the Labour government doing a trade deal of its own free will.

If the benefits of an EU deal outweigh the benefits of deals with other countries then only ideological fools like the Tories would turn it down.

He's be finally able to close out the tricky Ceylon and Rhodesia deals.

Of course the DUP were a convenient scapegoat, that's exactly my point. For the ERG (and their friends in the right wing media), it was the proof that the EU wouldn't give up control or allow the UK to exercise it's own sovereignty. The EU was using NI to trap the UK or at least create leverage in a negotiation where the UK otherwise held all the cards. They even had some very angry people from NI to prove it.

What I was saying to you was that nothing else could have fulfilled the role the DUP played in getting us to where we are now.

Well they were centre stage for a few minutes and look where it has gotten us. They outrage and righteous indignation down to a tee. The ERG were a sideshow for a long time, until they leveraged the DUP to deliver a Brexit which nobody wanted.

The DUP was also used as a handy means for the Leave campaign to get around political funding/advertising rules - remember the pro-Brexit wrapper placed around the Metro freesheet in London, supposedly by the DUP? Nobody knew who the DUP was. But it would have been illegal for any non-NI political party to do that.

Honestly, I think you massively over-estimate the influence of the DUP in British politics. Several British politicians did mention the DUP's position when justifying their own opposition to various forms of Brexit, but they are pretty much all people who would have opposed those forms of Brexit anyway, as insufficiently hard. And when push came to shove — when they were offered hard Brexit for GB at the cost of shafting the DUP — with the solitary exception of Owen Paterson (who abstained) they all voted for Johnson's deal, which they certainly would not have done if their votes were genuinely influenced by DUP preferences.

Tl;dr: The Tory right will pay lip-service to the DUP when DUP positions align with theirs but they will do what they want to do, and they will not sacrifice any objective of their own in order to demonstrate support for the DUP.

(And the DUP are fully aware of this. You'll have noticed that the one thing the DUP do not demand should be done to alleviate the Protocol is that GB should mote towards a softer form of Brexit, even though this is obviously what needs to be done. They don't demand this because they know the answer will be "no", and they don't want to hear the Tories say out loud that hard Brexit is a greater priority than the health of the union.)

Look at the number of Tories who voted against the government in the meaningful votes - 118 in the first and 75 in the second. I don't think you can assume that those numbers were pretty much all people who would have opposed those forms of Brexit anyway, as insufficiently hard. Bear in mind that these were the pre Boris purge days so many weren't as far right as is the case today. 32 Tory MPs didn't stand in the 2019 GE plus the party gained a net of 48 seats in it so the party was quite different back then.

The DUP may not have influenced them directly but the dispute regarding NI was spun as an example of the EU trapping the UK, limiting them exercising their sovereignty, etc. Like I said, nobody ever had to present an alternative vision or suggest adjustments, the EU is using NI and here is my patsy friend from the DUP to back this up.

Oh, the issue was spotted, and was under consideration, well before December. There was a difference of opinion between France and Germany as to how to address it, and neither felt the need to compromise until late in the piece. I'm not saying the process was perfect, but the crucial point is that the views and interests of the UK didn't enter into the process as a consideration at all.

Will the Swiss abolition of tariffs reduce border friction? Yes, but 99% percent of the reduction lies in the abolition of the tariffs themselves. If you abolish (say) a 7.5% tariff on widgets, then importing widgets immediately becomes 7.5% cheaper. If in addition you have less paperwork or inspections, there's a further saving, but the value of this is usually trivial compared to the value of the tariff. The reduction in paperwork/inspections is usually modest anyway; paperwork is still required e.g. to prove that the widgets come from the UK and are not in fact Chinese widgets imported via the UK, and/or to prove that the widgets meet Swiss standards of widget safety and cleanliness and Swiss technical standards, and so on. And inspections are still required to prove that the container said to contain widgets does in fact contain widgets. All you really avoid is the paperwork associated with the actual payment of whatever tariff is due, and that's usually not a lot of paperwork.

Not sure which vote you are referring to but the first bit of Brexiting legislation which was voted through in Westminster happened after Johnson's Dec 2019 election. The composition of Tory MPs was quite different than to when the various votes took place during 2019. 32 didn't stand in the 2019 GE, 10 lost their seat and the party gained 58 additional seats. Those who left were mainly on the reasonable end of the spectrum, these incoming were mostly hardliners. It wasn't exclusively the same MPs voting.

NI was always an issue, we went through the Back Stop and the Front Stop before getting to the NIP. They have been trying to square that circle from the beginning. It wasn't even squared in the end, just enough Tories had decided the DUP had outlived their usefulness (which they had, DUP support was keeping them in government until they gained a majority in the Dec 2019 GE) and shafted them.