I read with interest today that the EU are beginning to decide what Brexit will look like. It is unsurprising that someone has stepped into the void where British leadership should be, but I guess someone had to.
The current Brexit planning seems to want no hard border with Ireland, but also no customs union. I think the two things are irreconcilable, and I’m not quite sure what Theresa May / David Davis are aiming for. Unless they are trying to scupper the whole shebang, maybe?
Michel Barnier said that the Brits are going to have to make some decisions, and quickly, if they want to get everything nailed down by the self-imposed March deadline. Now, he is saying that if the disagreements are not resolved, any transition period could be in doubt.
This is the issue though; the UK are throwing out some “blue sky” thinking, and desperately hoping that something sticks. The position papers they published last year were sent out into a vacuum, nor were they properly assessed or tested by analysts. Now, I expect, the negotiators are getting to the hard end of it, and the question should be “how will that work, precisely?”. But it seems that Davis and his team think that their function has been fulfilled – “we’ve given you a proposal, now make it work”.
Every time I hear a Brexity spokesman on the radio, they suggest that we will be out of the customs union, but we still want free trade with the EU countries. “We don’t want to impose tariffs on their goods, and we don’t see why they would want to impose tariffs on ours”, they say. Unfortunately, that isn’t how trade works; if we are outside the EU, then we will be subject to tariffs; this is the way it has to be, because the EU needs to treat all trading partners the same. If they don’t impose tariffs on us, the U.S. can open a trade dispute with the WTO, as I understand it, because the EU would not be treating their trading partners equally.
It’s all a big mess, and I don’t see any way out for this government. They have painted themselves into a corner with all their red lines (no ECJ jurisdiction, no hard border in Ireland, no customs union, etc.) and I don’t believe they can deliver what they promised. Let’s see how it goes, shall we?
TTFN.
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