'Get Brexit
Done'? The reality will be far more difficult and tortuous
The UK’s
departure from the EU would in fact be the starting date for a huge negotiation
Jennifer
Rankin in Brussels
Mon 25 Nov
2019 07.00 GMTLast modified on Mon 25 Nov 2019 07.02 GMT
Boris
Johnson has a political agreement with the EU, but Britain would still need to
reconstruct 46 years of trade, security and foreign policy ties. Photograph:
Frank Augstein/AP/AFP via Getty
It is the
title of the Conservative manifesto, plastered on mugs, T-shirts and the Tory
battle bus, while Boris Johnson doesn’t miss the chance to say: “Get Brexit
Done”. Like an earlier slogan on a bus, Get Brexit Done is deeply misleading:
the UK’s departure from the European Union is only the start of a new phase in
the Brexit odyssey.
The day
after
The day
after Brexit the UK will embark on arguably the biggest negotiation of the
post-war era: to reconstruct 46 years of trade, security and foreign policy
ties with the EU. Philip Rycroft, the former permanent secretary of the
Department for Exiting the EU, told the Guardian: “Obviously it’s going to be a
huge negotiation, probably four or five times bigger than the withdrawal
agreement negotiation and will absorb a huge amount of government effort.”
Trade is a
top priority for both sides. Rycroft, who oversaw post-Brexit planning at DexEU
ahead of the original 29 March deadline, said the government had already done a
huge amount of work. Some on the EU side wonder whether it will be enough.
Lotta Nymann-Lindegren, a former diplomat, who followed Brexit for the Finnish
government, said: “The discrepancy between the two sides will be bigger in
phase two because the United Kingdom has not negotiated any trade agreements in
the past 40 years or so.” That “experience gap” will be “a challenge for the
negotiations that will influence how fast we can go”, she added.
Deadlines
On Brexit
day, the countdown clocks will reset to a new deadline. If the UK leaves on 31
January, only 11 months remain to hammer out the basics of the future
relationship. Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, told the Guardian that
it would be possible to negotiate a basic free-trade deal in that time.
In private,
Brussels is much more sceptical. “Not in my wildest dreams would I imagine that
a possibility,” one senior EU diplomat said of the 11-month timetable, citing
the difficulties of agreeing a zero-tariff, zero-quota trade deal if the UK
seeks to diverge from EU standards on workers’ rights and environmental
protections.
To woo
Nigel Farage and Brexit party voters, the prime minister insists that he can
negotiate the deal in 11 months, with no extension of the transition period.
Labour wants a back-up plan and is pressing to avoid “the trap door to no deal”
on 31 December 2020. Under the transition, the UK remains part of the EU single
market and customs union, without decision-making power or representation. The
government has until 1 July 2020 to agree with the EU a one-off extension of
the transition period, until the end of 2021 or 2022.
If the next
government seeks to extend the transition, it could soon run into trouble.
Aside from a potential political backlash against “vassalage” and the
inevitable extra payments to the EU budget that come with a longer transition,
a decision on extension risks becoming hostage to a deal on fisheries.
The two
sides want to agree future fishing quotas by 1 July 2020. The French president,
Emmanuel Macron, once described fisheries as “a lever” in the future
negotiations – a sign of how seriously EU governments treat this small, but
politically-sensitive industry. EU diplomats do not exclude that a fisheries
deal may be a quid pro quo for extending the transition. “Given how France acts
now, it’s very likely that they will be a difficult partner,” another senior
diplomat told the Guardian.
It’s much
more than trade
Both sides
want to prioritise security, such as a replacement for the European arrest
warrant and access to crime-fighting databases that are used every day by
British police. While negotiators share the same goal, the terrain is strewn
with political minefields, such as Brussels’ insistence that database access is
linked to EU rules on data protection and the oversight of the European court
of justice, or Germany’s constitutional ban on extraditing its nationals to
non-EU countries.
Beyond
trade and security, there is … everything else. The political declaration
agreed between Boris Johnson and the EU reveals what lies beneath the tip of
the iceberg. The two sides want agreements or cooperation on aviation, carbon
pricing, anti-money laundering, illegal migration, data protection, sanctions
on rogue states, and much more.
The EU
The next
Brexit chapter could be more testing for the EU. During phase one, the 27 had a
shared interest in seeing the UK pay the Brexit bill and protect the rights of
their nationals in the UK. Under phase two, their goals diverge somewhat: “The
interests of the EU side are more diverse, whether [they focus on] industrial
produce, whether it is the labour force they provide, whether it is fisheries,”
suggests Nymann-Lindegren. Other Brussels sources are more optimistic about
maintaining unity, suggesting that member states will be united against any
attempt by the European commission’s trade department to run the British talks
in secret.
What about
schools and hospitals?
While
British officials are racking up Eurostar miles, the main parties hope to
return to the traditional domestic agenda on public services. But political
time and capital will be spent on creating a new immigration system, laws on
farming and fishing, competition and industry. Before the referendum, British
sources predicted Brexit could dominate the annual Queen’s speech for several
years after the vote. Under the withdrawal act bill, 46 years of EU law will be
copy-pasted on to the UK statute book. “It would be very odd if the conclusion
of all of that is we are not going to do anything about it,” Rycroft said. “It
rather obviates the point of coming out.”
Just as the
laws are repatriated, so are the controversies, especially over issues such as
farm subsidies, GM crops or state aid. An extra layer of complexity will be
tussles between Westminster, Edinburgh, Cardiff and Belfast (if the Stormont
assembly sits) over who gets to repatriate powers from the EU.
Looking for
Global Britain
So far, the
government has managed to negotiate 18 “continuity” deals covering 48 countries
and 8% of UK trade, according to the BBC. But these deals simply rollover
existing agreements the UK enjoys as an EU member. For Brexiters, the prize is
new trade deals, although the government’s own analysis shows that gains will
be marginal at best. Looking at these “speculative” gains in the middle
distance, the UK’s former ambassador to the EU, Sir Ivan Rogers, has said:
“There is just an immense volume of technical work, even to aim to stand still,
not roll backwards, in the next few years.”
Hard
choices
The saga of
withdrawal has obscured the debate on what Brexit means. EU officials worry
that there is no British consensus on the post-Brexit future: whether it is a
distant Canada-style free trade deal favoured by Boris Johnson, or the closer
ties sought by Labour. Without consensus at Westminster, negotiations in
Brussels could soon get stuck again. “The UK needs to have a majority for a
vision of Brexit,” the senior diplomat said. “Otherwise we face the same
problem. They need to know what their aim is.”
Donald
Trump’s verbal grenade lobbed into the British campaign was a reminder that the
UK has a choice: to follow European standards or embrace US regulatory norms.
It is the chlorinated chicken conundrum: if the UK chooses to allow imports of
US chlorine-washed chicken (and other produce) it will face much tighter
controls on the food it can export to the EU, as well as price pressure on
British farmers. There is no middle way between regulatory superpowers.
Those
unanswered questions are why those who were involved in withdrawal hope that
Brexit will be at the centre of the campaign. “I don’t think the public is
ready for [phase two],” Rycroft said. He hopes that politicians “will level up
with the public and give them a clear intention of what is coming down the
track, because this story is by no means at an end”.
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