Stop Mucking About June 11th, 2017
Well, that was funny. An election that went contrary to everything I predicted but has essentially left us in exactly the same position that we started from.
The most important constitutional issue of a generation has reached a critical point and we are still none the wiser about what the hell the country plans to do next. The process of leaving the European Union was largely dodged by both main parties because their policies are pretty well identical.
Much time and effort has been expended on the nebulous concepts of hard and soft Brexit and whether or not one party intends to be softer or more merciless than the other. This debate has been facile, there is no such thing as a hard or soft Brexit. The European Union has been telling us this for the last year but we seem to resolutely want to ignore it.
There are three options open to us.
- We can leave the single market and customs union and negotiate some sort of deal about how we trade in the future.
- We can retain membership of the European Economic Area much like Norway or a variation such as Switzerland
- We can stay in the EU.
These are the only options and we need to decide which one we want. There is no more time to talk in abstract terms because we need to go to the EU and tell them what we are aiming for so we can all plan how to get there. As far as the EU go it doesn’t look like they’re really bothered which one we go for as long as we go for one of them.
We also need to recognise there are consequences for each and we need to be fully aware of what these are. What we can gather from the Conservative Party manifesto and from Labour statements, the aim of everyone is to pursue the first option. You can dress it up any way you like but this comes down to being the hardest option possible, with the most severe consequences. With over 80% of the electorate having voted for parties that want to pursue this extreme solution I suppose that’s what we’re going to do.
In a way, it’s understandable that this is the preferred option. Although it’s likely to cause the most harm it is going to be the easiest to resolve with the EU. We’re basically asking for nothing and they can easily give us that. Although it will be the easiest diplomatically it is far from easy to achieve.
I believe that to date, both the Conservatives and Labour have been less than honest in spelling out the consequences of their shared policy and all of the stuff that needs to be done within the next two years.
- We need to design a proper legislative process to unpick forty years of law
- We need to recognise that all policy objectives, set out in the election, are secondary to rebuilding our legislative system.
- We need to build regulatory systems to replace the EU ones we’re leaving.
- We need to build a customs system that can work at scale at every point of entry.
- We need to be explaining to businesses what their obligations will be in terms of new bureaucracy.
- We need to model the economic impact of doing all of this.
- We need to put systems in place to pick up those people that will fall out of work.
Even a few percentage points drop in trade has a significant impact on whether or not businesses are viable. That means jobs go, tax take goes down and welfare needs go up. Pretending there is a glorious free trade future is insulting our intelligence. If we all knew what we were voting for, in any number of the votes, we’ve had recently, then slap a real cost on it. It’s very rare that you get advanced notice of a recession, but as we’re planning one I want to know what will be put in place to protect those most susceptible to it.
As far as I can see no political party has yet scoped out the work that will need to be done to get any of this to happen in the time we have to do it. Which is worrying. If the negotiations with the EU go as planned by both Labour and Conservatives then all of these things need to be done.
We’ve spent too long dodging the issue of how we leave the EU by knocking out vacuous phrases, engineering leadership battles and having spurious elections. We need to have a plan and each of us needs to know what the consequences of that plan are going to be for our day to day lives. It isn’t just for Government to sort out. If you run a business then you have to prepare. If you work for any company that trades across the EU then you better start looking for other options. It will not all just get sorted out.
So far we’ve seen both of the major parties refuse to come to grips with this; instead choosing to use chaos to attempt to achieve their own political goals. This has been unfair to all of us. We’re adults, we know that nothing is consequence free so be up front and tell us what we need to do when we need to do it and how much it is going to cost.
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