What an odd week it has been. I wrote last week of how the Tories’ best option would be to have a big rethink about how they are approaching Brexit, and what they expect to achieve. It felt more than ever that, whatever anybody's personal opinions on Brexit may be, we were reaching peak "they are going to screw this up for everybody, aren't they?" This led to the podcast we recorded last week being absolutely the most depressing yet. I’m not saying any of this has changed, but something interesting seems to have happened.
The idea for this week’s podcast had been to outline how we would do Brexit and to explain what we think we might get out of it; a positive and productive episode to offset the doom-mongering of last week. Broadly, we would outline how our opinion on this hasn’t changed in 18 months, and that the only way to do Brexit successfully is through membership of the EEA and EFTA. At the end of last week’s blog, I mentioned how this strategy had started to come back into the conversation. Michel Barnier seems increasingly keen to make it obvious that this route is a good idea and an acceptable compromise. EFTA representatives are suggesting they would be happy for us to become a member, and there are rumours of increasing support for the idea within the government. Then of course, we had the 2nd official round of negotiations, and everything looked depressing as usual. It was reported that there were significant disagreements over citizens’ rights, in particular because the rights of those citizens will have to be overseen by a supranational court - normally the ECJ, but this would cross one of the Tories red lines and so no agreement was reached. The talks were totally unproductive, it would seem. Then, Barnier was asked a few questions about ways to resolve the issue:
The idea for this week’s podcast had been to outline how we would do Brexit and to explain what we think we might get out of it; a positive and productive episode to offset the doom-mongering of last week. Broadly, we would outline how our opinion on this hasn’t changed in 18 months, and that the only way to do Brexit successfully is through membership of the EEA and EFTA. At the end of last week’s blog, I mentioned how this strategy had started to come back into the conversation. Michel Barnier seems increasingly keen to make it obvious that this route is a good idea and an acceptable compromise. EFTA representatives are suggesting they would be happy for us to become a member, and there are rumours of increasing support for the idea within the government. Then of course, we had the 2nd official round of negotiations, and everything looked depressing as usual. It was reported that there were significant disagreements over citizens’ rights, in particular because the rights of those citizens will have to be overseen by a supranational court - normally the ECJ, but this would cross one of the Tories red lines and so no agreement was reached. The talks were totally unproductive, it would seem. Then, Barnier was asked a few questions about ways to resolve the issue:
V interesting from Barnier when asked what other country accepts jurisdiction of foreign court over its citizens: Cites Norway & EFTA court.
— Nick Gutteridge (@nick_gutteridge) July 20, 2017
Reinforces that EFTA court is a sensible compromise, at least for a transition period, as it's an independent body but recognised by the EU.
— Nick Gutteridge (@nick_gutteridge) July 20, 2017
Reinforces that EFTA court is a sensible compromise, at least for a transition period, as it's an independent body but recognised by the EU.
— Nick Gutteridge (@nick_gutteridge) July 20, 2017
Once again, he made it clear that EFTA was a sensible compromise. The usual response from our side would be to completely ignore the suggestion, as they did, but then something else happened. Our side appeared to readjust their expectations. There was this scoop from the Huffington Post setting out how both Fox and Davis appear to have concede to Hammond’s idea of an implementation period, but more importantly, that freedom of movement would continue for at least two years after 2019, likely until 2022. Now, if that is the case, it would follow that this means single market membership until 2022, wouldn’t it? Then there is this article in the Guardian, where Fox again suggests that a transition period will go onto 2022, and there is this line: “Last week, senior cabinet sources suggested the government was united in its need to seek an “off-the-shelf” transitional arrangement, in which Britain would likely remain in the single market and retain free movement for at least two years after the UK formally leaves the EU in March 2019.” Then there was this article in the Telegraph, reporting that a group of Tory MPs have been meeting Labour MPs in order to push the Norway Option. There seems to be clues everywhere, we are now just waiting for one of the Brexiteers to explicitly address the EEA/EFTA possibility, and put the strategy firmly back into play.
For me, this is Barnier gently suggesting a role for the EFTA Court... as a compromise https://t.co/x984VAaZxT
— Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) July 20, 2017
This seems like Barnier is offering UK a clue or hint? https://t.co/gHvhNcJ6Xu
— EFTA 4 UK (@EFTA4UK) July 12, 2017
Meanwhile, Jeremy Corbyn has been on TV saying that “The single market is dependent on EU membership”, which is just bizarre. He then supported his statement by saying that they are “inextricably linked”, which is just completely untrue. I’m pretty sure everybody knows this now, I mean, even a totally uniformed person could disprove this in about 20 seconds. The question is, does Jeremy not actually know what he is talking about, or is he deliberately employing the tactics of say, Vote Leave, in brushing over some important details in order to justify his increasingly untenable position on the single market?
I’ll leave you with a few things to read. The big one is this report from The UK in a Changing Europe, which is a great overview of the horrors that no deal might entail. I wouldn’t say it does a comprehensive job in that regard, but it certainly exposes some of the rubbish still being pushed by some on the same topic, like this. This article in CapX is brilliant on why Norway is the way to go, and Stephen Bush in the New Statesmen is good on the possibility of a transition. Finally, this piece in The Conversation and this in the LSE blog explore the possibility of joining EFTA.
@GMCC_Alex
I’ll leave you with a few things to read. The big one is this report from The UK in a Changing Europe, which is a great overview of the horrors that no deal might entail. I wouldn’t say it does a comprehensive job in that regard, but it certainly exposes some of the rubbish still being pushed by some on the same topic, like this. This article in CapX is brilliant on why Norway is the way to go, and Stephen Bush in the New Statesmen is good on the possibility of a transition. Finally, this piece in The Conversation and this in the LSE blog explore the possibility of joining EFTA.
@GMCC_Alex
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