I wrote an article for the Spectator yesterday about how I thought Peter Mandelson was wrong when he overplayed the likelihood that the government were going to avoid no deal by getting something nailed down between the UK and the EU before the end of the year. Instead, I posited that I thought no deal Brexit was far and away the most likely outcome. Some people had a thoughtful response to this on Twitter: yes, all right, but why is the government going to do this? What is the reasoning behind going full tilt toward a no deal situation?
Part of the answer to this lies in another Spectator article I wrote about no deal. To summarise what I said in that piece: just because you and I are either convinced or pretty certain that no deal Brexit will be a disaster, that doesn’t mean this is a universal feeling. Not by a long way. Whether you think it’s a silly thing to believe or not, lots of people either think the fallout from no deal would be minimal – or they think it will actually be all positive. A lot of people just don’t see Brexit in the same terms that you or I do. It’s what makes some people Remainers and others Leavers.
But there is more to it than this. I only have to think back to before the referendum, to the debates I had with Eurosceptics about Brexit in 2012, 2013. I would always at some point bring up the question of “What happens if the EU won’t back down in negotiations? Won’t we end up in a no deal situation?” This question was always – and I do mean always – answered with the retort that we would go for a Norway type deal if that’s where the talks ended up. It would be Norway or something better, according to Eurosceptics – my talk of “no deal” was nothing but project fear. So, I know that this isn’t something they have always thought was where Brexit would end up. In fact, behind the scenes, a few of them are now worried about no deal being really bad, making people turn against Brexit and a re-entry into the Single Market in a few years then looms as a possibility, with full membership only being a matter of time once our situation as a rule taker with no say becomes politically unmanageable.
No, the fact that we’re heading for no deal is at least partially accidental – or at least, leaving the EU with no deal wasn’t the intention when Brexiteers first started going on about how no deal is better than a bad deal. It was a tactic, done with the naive notion that if no deal was talked up as something the UK might realistically do, this would alter the EU’s approach to the negotiations. In essence, they thought that by constantly mentioning no deal as an acceptable option, it would make no deal less likely. But now they are cornered. For a start, a lot of grassroots Leavers have taken the no deal is better than a bad deal mantra at face value and believe it to be completely and undeniably true. In making people believe this, the Eurosceptic Tory backbenchers have come to believe in no deal themselves, as this thought is bounced back at them via their activists and right-wing articles. In the face of getting a deal from the EU taking a decade or perhaps even more, during which we’d be in Brexit limbo, the transition going on and on for this whole period, only two realistic options began to emerge. One, go Norway, which they have long since decided isn’t real Brexit. The other is no deal. So, you decide then that no deal won’t be that bad given every other option has been effectively eliminated. Once you decide no deal won’t be that bad, you are granted a huge positive, at least in context: you can play this game of chicken with the EU as effectively as it is possible to be played from a UK perspective. Just keep driving at the EU’s headlights because hey, they’ll probably swerve and then we get what we really want, or it’s a head-on collision and we’ve decided that not only can we survive impact, we will be taken instantly to heaven.
Add to all this the political pressures that Boris Johnson suffers under. If he were to have extended the transition period, he would have had instant, massive problems with his own Eurosceptic backbenchers as well as Farage. The Leavers in the country outside Westminster would have been furious as well and given Farage’s political ambitions a new lease on life. Boris can’t back down now on his red lines with the EU; if he buckles at the last second and gives in to the EU on everything – because, that’s what it would come down to – he’s finished. Boris only has one move left to him: to drive forward without budging an inch, hoping that either the EU caves and gives him some wonderful deal or that no deal isn’t actually bad. This is why I keep saying Boris Johnson not being prime minister for very long is the most likely outcome: all his ways forward are extremely precarious. He’s going for no deal and praying it isn’t a disaster because that is the only move left to him. He exhausted any other possibility on his way to setting himself up to win the 2019 general election so handily. He achieved that goal, but ultimately put himself in a corner, the tightness of which few people seem keen on describing. Whether Boris is prime minister in a year’s time will very likely come down to whether a no deal Brexit is a good idea or a bad idea. I’ve told you before what I think is the mostly likely outcome from all this.
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I have a book out now called “Politics is Murder”. It follows the tale of a woman named Charlotte working at a failing think tank who has got ahead in her career in a novel way – she is a serial killer. One day, the police turn up at her door and tell her she is a suspect in a murder – only thing is, it is one she had nothing to do with. The plot takes in Conservative Party conference, a plot against the Foreign Secretary and some gangsters while Charlotte tries to find out who is trying to frame her for a murder she didn’t commit.
Also: there is a subplot around the government trying to built a stupid bridge, which now seems a charming echo of a more innocent time!
It’s here:
I have the gut feeling that you are correct and the UK is headed for a ‘no deal Brexit, which benefits billionaires, but ‘tanks the £GB and the economy of the country..
I am just grateful that I don’t live under a Tory government.
I think we already knew which way this was likely to go. If I recall correctly, about 12 months ago, during or after the Tory leadership contest, the PM’s sister, Rachael (?) Johnson confirmed in a tv interview that a No Deal Brexit would be the most likely outcome of a Johnson premiership because he was under considerable pressure from his backers to deliver one, and from which they stood to gain financially.
One, go Norway, which they have long since decided isn’t real Brexit
It wasn’t the Leavers who rejected Norway, it was the Remainers. They consistently blocked all efforts to go for a Norway model, specifically in the hope that by forcing the choice to be between no deal and abandoning Brexit, the country would back down and say, ‘Okay, we made a mistake in 2016, please forgive us, we promise to be good Europeans from now on.’
Even now I suspect Johnson’s government would go for the EFTA deal if it was suggested: it doesn’t cross any of their major red lines (the ECJ doesn’t have direct jurisdiction over EFTA countries, for example) and they would certainly go for a Switzerland-type deal.
It’s the EU which won’t go for a Norway-style deal, because they are afraid that they couldn’t dominate an economy the size of the UK the same way they do Norway, so giving the UK a Norway deal would enable it to out-compete the EU with its market access, without them being able to hobble it by having the ECJ rule against it.
It was inevitable that some leavers would blame remainers for the failure to go for a Norway-style arrangement but nothing could be further from the truth. Norway was ruled out by May’s Lancaster House speach which historians will record as the crucial misstep in a process which will certainly make Britain poorer and weaker and will likely culminate in the end of the United Kingdom before another decade has passed. If there is any one person who must take the blame for this misstep it is probably Nick Timothy, who was May’s trusted adivisor at the time.
Many on the Remain side would have accepted Norway before that point and many actually said so in public (I have the tweets to prove this in my case). I believe it would also have been acceptable to a majority of leavers. Indeed it would have been a perfect compromise for a country in which half wanted in and half wanted out but, after Lancaster House, a chorus of increasingly strident Brexitiers (followed by only some ordinary leave voters) insisted that any sort of deal with the EU about anything (not only trade but satelitte navigation, educational exchanges, PPE and – astonishingly – vaccine research) would be a pact with the Devil.
The country and its inhabitants are about to pay a very high price indeed for this folly. Hopefully, amongst the fallout will be the death of the New Conservative Revolutionary Party and the eventual rebirth of the Tory Party of old.
Norway was ruled out by May’s Lancaster House speach
Let’s accept for the sake of argument that that is the case. That means that the Norway option was ruled out by Theresa May.
Theresa May was a Remainer.
Ergo you have proved the point that it was not Leavers who ruled out the Norway option, but a Remainer.
I would add to my last post that it is also not true that the EU has ruled out a Norway-style deal. Indeed, it was explicitly listed on the menu of options that M. Barnier announced soon after the referendum. From the EU’s perspective it is probably the perfect solution because it would maintain the single market in its current form while preventing Perfidious Albion from meddling in EU affairs.
Indeed, it was explicitly listed on the menu of options that M. Barnier announced soon after the referendum
This would be the ‘menu’ that the EU has since repudiated, because it included ‘Canada-style FTA’ at the bottom and when the UK said ‘Okay we’ll have that Canada-style FTA off the menu then’ the EU started saying ‘no you can’t have that unless you also accept ECJ jurisdiction [despite that not being mentioned on the menu]…’
Yeah I don’t think that menu has turned out to be worth the paper it was written on, do you?
It is a matter of simple historical fact that the EU has not ruled out a Norway-style deal. If you know otherwise please provide a link to a statement from M. Barnier or the Commission saying that they have ruled it out (you can’t because they haven’t).
Norway is most lkely their preferred option for reasons that are so obvious that I am astounded that I have to enumerate them: (1) it would keep the UK in the EU’s regulatory orbit; (2) it would eliminate most border frictions which would be good for EU businesses; (3) the UK would nonethless be excluded from EU decision-making and therefore could not prevent the further integration of Europe; (4) it would be good – the least damaging option – for the UK itself. On the latter point, the EU are smart enough to know that economic chaos and suffering in a neighbour will do nobody any good.
There are some people in Europe who are sceptical about the Norway optian however – Norwegians. Several Norwegian politicians have made this point. They see the UK as subject to shockingly poor governance and they are afraid of what it might do if it became a large and influental member of EFTA.
I suspect there will be quite a blame game about who was responsible for the failure to find a Brext compromise in the years to come. Blaming the EU won’t wash – this is a self-made British catastrophe. Brexit is literally an act of national vandalism and, by the time it is over, Brexitiers will have caused more damage to the country than anyone since the Luftwaffe. Those who championed this idiocy at the outset, and made so many promises that have since been broken, are the real culprits.
It is a matter of simple historical fact that the EU has not ruled out a Norway-style deal.
Not explicitly, but isn’t it implicitly ruled put by a number of their demands, such as the dynamic ‘level playing field’ and the ECJ jurisdiction, none if which are features of EFTA?
If we had a Norway deal, there would not need to be a dynamic level playing field because we would be in the single market, following single market rules.
How is this difficult to understand? Unless you just don’t want to understand it and are desperate to scapegoat the people whose warnings about the impending catastrophe you blithely ignored.
If we had a Norway deal, there would not need to be a dynamic level playing field because we would be in the single market, following single market rules.
EU directives are not automatically incorporated into the EEA agreement, as the EU is demanding that new directives apply automatically to the UK as a condition of a free trade agreement; and disputes about EEA matters are decided by the EFTA court, not the ECJ, as the EU is demanding for the UK.
The EU’s demands in the current EU / UK negotiations go well beyond what is required for EFTA members.
How is this difficult to understand?
Stupid comments like this make be incredibly angry. BREXIT IS ENTIRELY THE FAULT OF IGNORANT LEAVE VOTERS. DO NOT TRY TO PLACE ANY OF THE BLAME ON REMAINERS. OWN YOUR OWN SHIT. OWN YOUR OWN LIES.
BREXIT IS ENTIRELY THE FAULT OF IGNORANT LEAVE VOTERS
It’s not our ‘fault’ because it’s not a ‘fault’. It’s a choice.
Look at the current crisis in the EU (there’s always in a crisis in the EU) with regards to coronabonds, debt transfer, etc. There’s only two ways out of this for the EU: either it falls apart, or it moves a step closer to being a federal state by establishing a common treasury and EU taxation.
If it falls apart, then we’re well out of it. If it takes a step closer to being a federal state, well, that is not something the UK ever wants to be part of. So in either case we had to leave.
Economic effects, or arguing over details of the deal or no deal, are secondary to that single overarching political point that the EU cannot survive indefinitely as it is currently incorporated: either it collapses or it becomes a proper federal state. Those are the only options. As we do not want to be part of a federal state, we had to leave. Whatever the economics.
And it was a dumb choice, as is now evident, so – yes – it was the fault of leavers who, even now, are hoping against hope that the loomng catastrophe will somehow just not happen (it will).
The EU will be fine. Five countries (small ones admittedly) are currently trying to join. Contrary to what leavers say, every member benefits financilly from membership and will continue to do so (the savings in customs costs alone dwarfed our annual pyments to Brussels). Brexit has provded a salutary lesson and polling reveals that support for the EU amongst its citizens is stronger than ever and is particularly strong in the young. It will evolve over time and may well slowly creep towards some kind of loose federalism (which would be a good thing IMHO). Meanwhile its single market model will contnue to be copied elsewhere (single markets are currently being developed in the Gulf, the Carribbean, South America, South East Asia and Africa).
I would worry about the survival of the UK if I were you. Leave voters in England have unleashed forces which, most likely, will literally tear the country apart. Do not say you weren’t warned.
It will evolve over time and may well slowly creep towards some kind of loose federalism (which would be a good thing IMHO)
Good thing or not for them, it’s not something the UK wants to be part of, which is the point.
…’..lots of people either think the fallout from no deal would be minimal – or they think it will actually be all positive..’…
Not being flippant but people are always free to ‘think’ what they like. A Government is charged with acting on evidence and rational procedure. Whilst there is abundant evidence that a recognisable framework between trading nations is necessary, there is none whatsoever for a series of relations which are dispossessed of a carefully-negotiated framework. The WTO does not provide that scope. However, the description ‘Norway Option’ is also unhelpful. A relationship by means of trade-only with the EU is not an off-the shelf package, it’s a bespoke arrangement covering areas of competence and other factors which both parties agree will be incorporated. That has to be overseen by agreed common regulation and in the case of Norway, the lesser-known EFTA court is utilised to a great degree alongside the ECJ.
One of the prime objections to retaining Single Market membership was apparently that FoM would be retained. Other Single Market member nations define FoM in different ways and even with shared borders, manage to eject unwanted arrivals with ongoing success. The only objection I would have is that a traditional UK Administration will prove notoriously lax in policing misuse of FoM. If Parliament – in particular the Home Office – could be entrusted to deal with the matter with greater proficiency and nuance this would never have become such an issue. This is one area where the Pro-EU side certainly hold joint culpability in their defeat in June 2016.
However, there is also a constant with the Conservatives. Bad memory and appalling situational awareness. The Northern Ireland matter was thrown away with abandon almost overnight without so much a disapproving murmur from Conservative MPs. In fact, I suspect that a large contingent still don’t know, to this day, that indeed anything has happened. There is still the potential for an unannounced overnight deal dropping on their collective laps and historically, they prove wholly incapable of mobilising opposition to such events. BoJo will know this, and that he has the personal predisposition to lie to his Parliamentary party egregiously. (As did Cameron and Major, similarly). Conservative MPs as a historic constant have form in reliably doing nothing whatsoever about it.
Nick
This is your best ever article
If Brexit no deal is as big a disaster as the PM handling of the pandemic
Then the tories will scapegoat him
The public will become weary of economic decline and huge poverty
Everyone makes a mistake even 52 per cent
REJOIN will happen to avert Britain becoming a failed state
Johnson is deadline driven, look at the Withdrawal agreement. A deal worse than the one he resigned over a year before, but it was a deadline he set and in his mind he met it.
He has the same problem this year, my guess is he will try and split the FTA into sectors, Finance, fisheries, motor industry. Asking for each one to be solved separately, and crucially at a later date.
That will be the FTA he has promised and the time spent over each sector which may be years will effectively be a Transition Period re-badged.
This will avoid disaster on 01/02 and allow him to claim his deadline is met.
The US election in NOV will be critical of course. If Biden wins he loses his only real ally, and any pretence a FTA with the US is imminent will be gone, esp as the Democrats will side with the Irish and the EU over NI.
Johnson is deadline driven, look at the Withdrawal agreement. A deal worse than the one he resigned over a year before,
It wasn’t a worse deal; he resigned over Chequers, because it would have ended up with the UK permanently stuck in the Customs Union. The eventual Withdrawal Agreement didn’t have that, so on that basis alone, it was superior.
He has the same problem this year, my guess is he will try and split the FTA into sectors, Finance, fisheries, motor industry. Asking for each one to be solved separately, and crucially at a later date.
That will be the FTA he has promised and the time spent over each sector which may be years will effectively be a Transition Period re-badged.
Won’t work. Any extension which leaves us potentially exposed to paying towards the EU’s coronavirus costs will be unacceptable to the vast majority of the country. He couldn’t survive that.
The US election in NOV will be critical of course. If Biden wins he loses his only real ally, and any pretence a FTA with the US is imminent will be gone, esp as the Democrats will side with the Irish and the EU over NI.
Trump hardly counts as an ally; he’s been pro-Johnson in rhetoric but actions to back that up have been conspicuously lacking, something that can’t have gone unnoticed in Number 10.
Really what we need is for the UK simply to unilaterally remove all tariffs. That gets rid of any MFN complications with trade deals, and can only be good as import tariffs always hurt the economy of the importing country that imposes them far more than they hurt the exporting countries.
“Really what we need is for the UK simply to unilaterally remove all tariffs.”
The intellectual gymnastics of die hard Brexitiers attempting to avoid blame for the worst damage done to this country since the last visit of the Lufftwafe is a wonder to behold. Dropping all import tariffs to zero would decimate UK industry and agriculture (even the ideologically crazed Mindford admits this) and will remove any leverage we might have in trying to persuade other countries to relax theirs.
There is no free lunch; no magic formula that gets us out of the EU and makes us richer. The single market was the best trade deal possible for the UK – ever. You have engineered the collapse of the United Kingdom and at some point leavers are going to have top admit their terrible mistake.
Dropping all import tariffs to zero would decimate UK industry and agriculture
Only the industries which are fundamentally inviable and being unhealthily propped up by protectionism anyway. It’s better they disappear so that the resources which are currently being wasted on them can be more usefully applied elsewhere.
and will remove any leverage we might have in trying to persuade other countries to relax theirs.
Why do we care if other countries harm their economies by imposing tariffs? Let them. We will prosper. Especially if our competition is a protectionist trade block grown fat and weak behind its tariff walls.
M, the reason that no deal combined with unilateral dropping of import tariffs to zero would decimate UK industry is that the EU and other countries aren’t going to suddenly follow suit. This will mean British exports will be subject to standard import tariffs, immediately putting British goods and services at a cost disadvantage. And non-tariff barriers may prevent British goods and services even being allowed across the border (examples of non-tariff barriers are mutual recognition of qualifications, farming and animal welfare standards, safety standards, environmental standards). Unless these are recognised by the EU as equivalent or better than EU standards we won’t be able to export our goods and services at all. Part of the mythology of the Brexit right is that we can easily undercut EU goods and services on price by applying lesser or no standards on safety, environmental standards etc and then, somehow, the EU will blithely accept these goods into the single market to compete with theirs. They won’t.