No, which* E.U.* treaty made the whole Brexit thing impossible (or practically so) because that was the point at which this boil should have been lanced.
Brexit isn’t impossible; what’s impossible is a Brexit on the terms proposed from the UK - no Single Market, no Customs Union, no hard border with the Republic of Ireland. That’s not impossible because any EU treaty makes it so; it’s impossible because it’s a contradiction in terms.
Essentially, at some point Brexiters must choose between (a) no Single Market/Customs Union, and (b) no hard border, or they must find some middle ground between the two. But a relevant consideration is that choosing (b) involves undermining the Irish peace settlement, which was constructed by the British and Irish governments on foundations which include there not being a hard border in Ireland, which at the time was entirely uncontroversial.
The fact that Brexiters are only now coming to terms with the fact that what they have been campaigning for for many years involves undermining the Irish peace settlement and they somehow never noticed that indicates how astonishingly ill-thought-out and badly-planned the entire Brexit project has been.
Of course it is. Why would you think otherwise?
None of this is impossible, it just takes a little imagination and willingness to compromise on both sides. We have special cases already and UK/Ireland may need to be another. If the UK end up outside the E.U. there is no obligation on the UK to create a hard border. This is not the re-unification of Germany or the break-up of the Balkans.
Of course it is in the interests of both sides whilst in the middle of negotiations to use such issues as bargaining chips in order to extract the best possible outcome.
The two things that baffle me in this whole process is
a) why are people expecting the negotiations to be played out in public? That never happens in any major negotiations and you can guarantee that the public positions of all parties involved do not reflect their final positions.
b) why do people assume that voting to remain is to vote for everything to stay the same? No doubt that had the UK voted the other way, the E.U. would have taken that as vote for greater integration and the UK would have been pressured into going along with that.
Given the UK’s objectives with regard to Brexit, I think they do have an interest in their own border with the EU. Controlling immigration, setting their own standards for goods and services, and entering into free trade deals with third countries are all somewhat compromised, to put it no higher, if people, goods and services can all pour without restriction, limitation or even monitoring across the EU/UK border.
I take your point about imagination and willingness to compromise. So far, though, all the imagination and willingness to compromise has emanated from the EU - e.g. the sea border proposal. The UK’s part has largely consisted of affirming their desire for an open border, rejecting every proposed framework for an open border, and proposing no framework of their own.
As regards negotiations being conducted in public, of course there are private conversations going on as well, and of course it’s possible that there is some, ah, difference in emphasis between what each side says in public and what they say in private. But both are democracies and both will eventually reguire democratic legitimacy for whatever deal is agreed, so a degree of openness about objectives, priorities, parameters, etc is both necessary and desirable.
Yes, there is. More delusions on the Irish border. WTO most favoured nation rules will require us to provide every country we trade with the same access to our markets. Opening the border to ROI/the EU would require us to drop all tariffs with every other country.
We could try to get away with not following WTO rules. As the article points out, we would be trying to do that at the same time as trying to get other nations to support our new terms of membership with respect to, e.g. our share of current EU trade quotas, and generally establishing ourselves as new members. If you think the EU can be self-interested and not shy of throwing its weight about, wait till we’re dealing with China. Or the US.
Even if we did take the hit of unilaterally abolishing tariffs overnight, or of fighting the whole WTO, we’d still have border issues.
We have obligations under UN Charters, obligations under the WTO, obligations to our industries not to unilaterally and without warning expose them to supply shocks, and obligations to the British people to keep control of our borders.
So they have no tariffs with us, we have no tariffs with them. I still don’t see any obligation for a hard border. It would be a UK or EU choice.
So it looks like our government won’t fall as the minister that was causing the problems is going to resign. This had nothing to do with the border or brexit and surrounded an internal policing matter but would not have helped if an election was call.
Anyway back to your normal scheduled discussion about the huge mistake the UK has made by voting for something that the politicians have no clue how to achieve.
I’m from the US and have very limited knowledge of international trade agreements, and I saw that immediately. I must believe it was willfully ignored rather than never noticed.
Strictly speaking you are correct. If the UK decided it wasn’t going to have any tariffs on imports from anywhere in the world, and no non-tariff barriers (such as quality or safety regulations) on imports, and no border checks on immigration across this specific border, then that would put the Irish in a difficult position, since they would still have to implement a hard border for movement into the EU.
But this does somewhat beg the question don’t you think? Is the UK government planning to unilaterally abolish all barriers to trade on imports at every UK entry, and
have no immigration checks at the Irish border? I take the point about negotiations being held in private, but one might have hoped that such a breathtakingly radical proposal would have had some democratic discussion within the UK?
One does speculate if some Brexiteers think that because there are some circumstances where a hard border wouldn’t be necessary, then it must be easy to achieve that. Rather than effectively (but not strictly) impossible, given their other demands.
Still, given the UK government’s strong track record in coming up with innovative, imaginative and creative solutions to these problems, and its celebrated willingness to compromise, I’m sure a solution will be announced any day now. No time pressure.
Post script - it would also be good to announce how all the other difficulties in abandoning the Good Friday Agreement will be handled at the same time.
No, they’d still have tariffs on our goods. The fact that we’d chosen not to apply any to anybody wouldn’t create any kind of reciprocal obligation on our trading partners whatsoever. And the obligation would be to British agriculture and industry to avoid exposing it to a sudden massive supply shock. There is simply no way that the UK Government will allow this to happen.
But OK, screw the farmers. The majority voted for Brexit, after all, so I’m sure they won’t complain when vastly cheaper produce starts outcompeting them. That still leaves the other obligations listed in the article, regarding border security, human trafficking, environmental protections etc.
For example, here is the UN Convention on Transational Organised Crime:
Once we’re out the EU and shot of the associated commitment to free movement of people, we’ll be obliged to fulfill our responsibilities under the Convention and institute border controls to prevent and detect human trafficking.
There’s also the Rotterdam Convention on the trade of hazardous chemicals, the Convention on the International Trade in Endangered Species, the Convention on the Illicit Movement of Art Treasures and I’m sure more.
Even if you reject that Britain has any obligations to its own citizens to keep its borders secure, there are plenty of international obligations requiring us to do so. There may well be a creative and imaginative solution to the Irish border problem, but just leaving the border open is not it.
For the reasons others have pointed out, the notion that the UK would unilaterally leave its borders wholly unpoliced is simply not credible. The whole point of the Brexit campaign was “taking back control”; you don’t take back control over trade, immigration, tariffs, etc by unilaterally abandoning any attempt to control them.
Which the Irish government would have to implement as well wouldn’t they? They’d have the same obligation as the UK to monitor such issues as they’d have a border with a non-EU country.
Unless a special arrangement is reached (which will be the end game, for all the frantic bluster)
Yes, exactly. Plus they’d have to do customs at the border as well, even if we weren’t. The default outcome of Brexit is to create a hard border between NI/ROI.
Unless there’s a deal, as you say, which would involve some version of:
NI being in a customs/regulatory union with ROI, thus putting a customs/regulatory border inside the UK which has some fairly massive political/constitutional ramifications.
Or
The whole UK joining a special customs/regulatory union with ROI and by extension the EU, thus surrendering the intended benefits of Brexit re regulatory freedom. I don’t mind this because it’s as close as we’ll get to not actually leaving, but I suspect getting regulations from the EU by fax would be unacceptable to Leavers from Cabinet to grassroots.
It’s a trilemma. Every solution has a massive downside and limited upside. It’s wrong to blame Leave voters for not foreseeing this. But people who spent their entire political careers campaigning for Britain to leave the EU and yet don’t have a solution to this issue ready and waiting are a disgrace and embarrassment.
This is correct.
The thing is, though, that the choice facing the Irish government is not between (a) a default Brexit with a hard border and (b) a Brexit deal that Ireland would like, with an open border. It’s between (a) a default Brexit with a hard border and (b) a Brexit deal that the UK is willing to enter into. The lousier (from Ireland’s point of view) the Brexit deal that the UK is willing to enter into, the lower the opportunity cost to Ireland of vetoing that deal.
Which means, basically, if the UK sticks to its “red lines” of no Single Market, no Customs Union, no “sea border” between NI and GB, etc, and if the consequence of that is that there can’t be an open border in Ireland, Ireland doesn’t lose a lot by vetoing a deal on those terms
But the UK does. The UK’s Brexit strategy of nimbly entering into a network of wonderful free trade deals with countries as yet undiscovered under the sea that will lead to a sunny upland of British prosperity and a chicken in every pot is pretty much in ruins if, when push comes to shove, they can’t even conclude a trade deal with the EU, their nearest and largest neighbour, with whom they have just shredded the freest possible free trade deal, and with whom they do about half of their international trade. For prosperity and even for basic credibility post-Brexit UK really, really needs a good trade deal with the EU.
So look at this from Ireland’s point of view. If the UK gets an EU trade deal that isn’t compatible with an open border, Ireland is stuck with a hard border and the UK has what it most wants; the UK has no great incentive to move on from that. But if Ireland vetoes such a trade deal (or if the EU as a whole rejects it so that Ireland doesn’t have to exercise a veto) Ireland is still stuck with a hard border but the UK still badly needs a trade deal. They know that to get one they have to shift their position enough to enable an open border in Ireland, and they have a strong incentive to do that. From Ireland’s point of view, that’s the less bad position and, rationally, it’s the one we should prefer.
Which in turn means that, rationally, what the UK should do is seek to persuade Ireland/the EU either that their “red lines” are in fact compatible with an open border in Ireland, or that they will depart from their red lines to the extent necessary to make an open border feasible. So far they have not made much headway in either direction.
I’m afraid you are overestimating the extent to which Ireland, north or south, is anything more than an afterthought to most people in Britain. As remarkable as it may seem, it’s actually quite conceivable that the Good Friday Agreement simply never entered into their minds when they decided their position on Brexit.
It should be noted that one of the characteristics of the Brexit refernendum - one of the reason why it was such a complete and utter train wreck, to be honest, and a textbook example of How Not To Do It - is that the people were invited to vote on exiting the EU when there was no concrete proposal before them for how, or on what terms, they would do so, or what their ongoing relationship with the EU would be. There was no discussion of what Brexit would mean for the Irish peace process because there was no discussion of what Brexit would mean for anything. It was only after the Brexit refereendum that the UK government took a position on whether the UK would, or would not, continue to participate in the Single Market or in the the European Customs Union; the question put to the public in the referendum was consistent both with doing so and with not doing so. It was only after the referendume that the British fought out in court the question of whether implementing Brexit was a matter for Parliament or for the executive.
Basically, when the referendum result was declared, the EU country which had done least Brexit planning, and which had the least idea of what it might mean,was the UK. Although the Conservative government conducted the referendum, they were opposed to Brexit, expected ‘Remain’ to win, and refused to do any Brexit planning because that would look defeatist. The governments of other EU member states had given some though to the consequences of a ‘Leave’ vote; the UK government gave them none at all.
So the Irish implications were not the only thing that nobody had considered; most of the implications of Brexit were not teased out in any systematic or comprehensive way.
But after centuries of strife, Ireland and the U.K. becoming part of something larger, the E. U., was critical to finding a path forward, wasn’t it? Emotionally, I mean, a future in a third entity provided the mechanism for moving past the history with each other. I don’t think I’m explaining myself well here, am I? Never mind, I just find it all incredibly sad.
No I know what you mean. There was definitely hope in some quarters that nationalisms would die out under the EU, but this really hasn’t shown much sign of happening anywhere, and the “Little Englander” mentality behind Brexit was always resistant to the idea of becoming part of something larger anyway.
UDS is correct, there really was no planning because nobody thought Leave was going to win in the first place. Cameron promised a referendum just as a stunt to placate hardliners in his own party and draw support away from UKIP. History will remember him as the Jerry Lundegaard of British politics.
Indeed, in terms of intra-Irish relations, it was. For most of the rest of the UK, once the immediate problem appeared to have been solved, it came, as so often before in relation to Ireland, under the heading “file and forget”.