Why Brexit?

Background

The 2016 referendum only asked peoples preference between the well defined "remain"; and many different, contradictory, and vague versions of "leave".

And because of this, the many different versions of Brexit are undeliverable.

We should remember Jacob Rees-Mog said "We could have two referendums. As it happens, it might make more sense to have the second referendum after the renegotiation is completed" - this at least allows people to know what the leave option will be.

With the result so far...

Comparing two key people from Vote Leave campaign; Boris Johnson voted multiple times against Theresa May's withdrawal agreement (while campaigning on continued access to the single market); and Michael Gove voted for it.

This is a withdrawal agreement that's very unpopular with everyone, including politicians who have voted it down 3 times - 202 vs 432 (32%); 242 vs 391 (38%); and 286 vs 344 (45%).

It turns out that Liam Fox was wrong to say a trade deal would be "one of the easiest in human history".

Or David Davis saying that "there will be no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside".

Or Michael Gove saying "The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards, and we can choose the path we want".

And since then, we haven't had anyone come up with any solutions that work, which seems to be why we've been looking at the un-defined "No Deal".

But looking back at the 2016 Leave campaigning, I can't find anyone suggesting No Deal, it was all about how we would get a better deal, and it would be easy - there really is no mandate for No Deal.

The No Deal option seems to have come from Theresa May's speech in January 2017 saying that "No deal for Britain is better than a bad deal for Britain" (forgetting Northern Ireland isn't part of Britain). This later morphed into "No deal is better than a bad deal" slogan from Richard Tice in March 2017.

We are now in this difficult position were many people don't know what they want (just to leave), and they seem to be more focused on "winning" than what they actually won - which I find very concerning, and is my main worry with there being a second referendum.

Asking people what they disliked about the EU...

There is sovereignty, and the laws the EU imposes on us. Yet no one can say which laws they dislike. Instead they talk about vague things the EU has done, most of which have their basis in "untruths" which started when Boris Johnson wrote for The Daily Telegraph - of which Chris Patten said he was "one of the greatest exponents of fake journalism". For the record I'm against the new EU copyright directive, but unfortunately our MEPs voted for that.

Sometimes people refer to "unelected bureaucrats" - but MEPs are elected by us; MEPs vote for the Commission President (unlike UK party leaders, such as the Prime Minister); and the 33,000 in the European Commission, are similar to our 400,000 civil servants who work on a wide range of tasks.

Some are concerned about immigration, in particular "freedom of movement", often unaware that many UK citizens use this themselves (for work or retirement); or the limitations that can be applied (e.g. needing to have a job after 3 months, or having sufficient resources not to become a burden). And because EU citizens are a net benefit to the country (in that they pay more in tax than they use), and because the cost of enforcement isn't justifiable, politicians have chosen to not enforce all of the rules the EU provides.

And some refer to the money sent to the EU, where few people realise it's only 0.9% of public sector spending, or what that money is spent on (mostly agriculture, typically as a way to reduce the cost of healthy food), or how much it will cost for us to duplicate that work within our own country - e.g. having our own Medicines Agency, Space Agency (Galileo), Euratom, etc.

We did not consider...

The EU helps us reduce paperwork - e.g. VISAs, customs, some aspects of VAT, etc.

Standardised rules/regulations - so we know purchased items should meet those minimum requirements; and it makes it easier to sell products to different EU countries.

Students being able to easily study in other EU countries (Erasmus).

Police information sharing, European Arrest Warrant, and deporting criminals to their country of origin.

Fundamental worker protections, such as the Working Time Directive (which simply stops employers forcing people to work more than 48 hours on average per week).

Roaming charges for mobile phones.

Banning hidden charges with credit or debit cards (the Conservatives had nothing to do with this, even though Theresa May implied that it did).

We also overlook how well the EU has done in avoiding wars within Europe (as a "peace project").

Most people in the UK have only ever heard of complaints about the EU (which is not perfect), but most of these complaints are fictional (bendy bananas), and most people don't know what they will lose when they stop being a member of the EU.

If we do leave with No Deal, aka on WTO terms...

The day after leaving with No Deal, if we want to re-start negotiation talks with the EU, they will simply start with the current withdrawal agreement, any payments/agreements we have reneged on (which will also be considered by other countries), the Irish border, long term EU citizens rights, etc - all of these things we can't agree on now.

Regarding air connectivity, the UK will be able to continue "all-cargo" services for 5 months, and 7 months for scheduled air services. After that, the EU will not trust UK certified/licensed aircraft or pilots to use their airspace or airports without new agreements in place (as noted by the draft regulation from the EU on the 27th February 2019).

Fortunately it looks like we will be able to have VISA free travel to the EU (so long as we reciprocate), but border checks are likely to to become stricter.

For lorry drivers, we will probably need to use permits (different ones depending on destination), and there will be additional checks and paperwork at the borders.

As to the future...

I can only see two solutions to the Irish border, either a Customs Union on the island of Ireland (which the DUP will insist it should apply to the whole of the UK), or the re-unification of Ireland. If the latter happens, it will make a very good case for Scottish independence, which I really don't want to happen, but seems to be inevitable at this point, especially as Scotland has so much invested in EU markets. This might lead to a hard border with Scotland, and will also raise the question of what happens to Gibraltar.

When people talk about the WTO, we must keep in mind Pascal Lamy, the Director-General of the WTO between 2005 and 2013, who considers Brexit a bad idea, where WTO was not designed to be the primary way to trade, or in other words "The internal market is the top league. The WTO is the bottom", later saying that the "WTO regime is the common denominator between Bangladesh and Canada".

There is only 1 country that only trades under WTO rules (Mauritania, but they do benefit from the "everything but arms" EU initiative) - all other countries have their own free trade agreements.

Typical Free Trade agreements take many years to negotiate.

The UK currently benefits from the EU's trade agreements with 38 countries, 49 partially in place, and 25 pending; the EU also has an estimated 759 separate bilateral agreements that are relevant to the UK. All of these the UK will lose after leaving the EU, where the 9 signed agreements that Dominic Webb reported on the 26th of April 2019 do not look promising (Chile, Faroe Islands, ESA, Switzerland, Israel, Palestinian Authority, Fiji and Papua New Guinea, Cariforum, Iceland and Norway).

When we do try to negotiate new trade agreements, after training up new negotiators to replace those who don't want to stop working for the EU (largest trading block in the world), we must remember we are a much smaller market compared to the EU (just looking at population alone, thats 513m vs 66m). This will explain why Liam Fox had to report the UK won't be able to roll over the new EU trade deal with Japan or Turkey, as they expect "tougher concessions". So we will need to start making new trading agreements, in a weaker position, like the one the EU started with Japan in 2013 (6 years ago). This will also matter when the UK tries to negotiate a trade agreement with the USA (population of 327m), who will expect us to lower our standards (highly relevant to the border in Ireland), and protections we have over our NHS.

You just need to look at the £4.2 billion provisioned for EU leaving preparations, in particular the No Deal planning (e.g. Seaborne Freight), to see this isn't going well.

In the mean time, Brexit supporting James Dyson, is moving production and head quarters to Singapore, which was announced shortly after Singapore and the EU agreed a free trade agreement, but in theory this has "nothing to do with Brexit".

The current suggestion by Patrick Minford, the primary economist in favour of Brexit (associated with the "Economists for Brexit", and lobbyists at 55 Tufton Street, in this case the "Taxpayer's Alliance"), suggests the UK should use low tariffs via the WTO, on the basis that we might get cheeper imports (which are really just lower quality, as the importers will keep the profits). And the effect of this on UK agriculture and manufacturing, in his words, "You are going to have to run it down. It will be in your interests to do it, just in the same way we ran down the coal industry and the steel industry. These things happen".

As we can begin to see with Nissan, Honda, Jaguar Land Rover, Michelin, Airbus, etc.

It is also effecting the financial sector, which benefits from EU membership due to Passporting, and includes clearing Euro transactions.

We must also discredit anything said by Nigel Farage, funded by Arron Banks, who never provides a solution to any of these problems. During the referendum campaign he kept on saying we could be like Norway and Switzerland - the counties that are obliged to follow EU rules (with no say in making them), and are in Schengen (even more open boarders than we currently have), which is at complete opposite of everything else he promised.

And I'm not going to discuss the connections between Boris Johnson and Steve Bannon, Nigel Farage and Julian Assange, Cambridge Analytica, Russia, Trump, etc;

After 3 years, I still don't know what "Brexit means Brexit" means - as in, any details.

Nor does there seem to be a single thing that will be improved by Brexit.

Which brings us back to the observation that most people (including myself) were simply not qualified to vote on EU membership.

Craig