Brexit means… [insert in March 2019] ?

Last week, a few hours after 81% of MPs voted to reflect the will of 27% of the people, the Government published their long-awaited White Paper on the UK’s exit from the EU.

I rashly decided I would read all 77 pages for myself. There is of course plenty of “professional” coverage from across the political spectrum, including the Guardian (the white paper is delusional), Independent (the white paper is contradictory), FT (the white paper is suggestive), Daily Mail (the white paper is too immigrant friendly), Telegraph (the white paper is optimistic). But, just in case you’re interested, below is the result of my more amateurish approach.

David Davis MP, the very trustworthy looking man responsible with getting Brexit right…

I am not a big reader of Government white papers. In fact, I think this was my first time. I was struck by quite how little it says. That might be normal, but I’d venture to guess that it is not often something so anodyne has been produced in response an event so momentous.

The document covers the same 12 “strategic objectives” that Prime Minister May had laid out in her speech at Lancaster House a couple of weeks ago. These are:

1. Providing certainty and clarity;
2. Taking control of our own laws;
3. Strengthening the Union;
4. Protecting our strong historic ties with Ireland and maintaining the Common Travel Area;
5. Controlling immigration;
6. Securing rights for EU nationals in the UK and UK nationals in the EU;
7. Protecting workers’ rights;
8. Ensuring free trade with European markets;
9. Securing new trade agreements with other countries;
10. Ensuring the United Kingdom remains the best place for science and innovation;
11. Cooperating in the fight against crime and terrorism; and
12. Delivering a smooth, orderly exit from the EU.

It doesn’t take a constitutional lawyer to work out that, simultaneously achieving these things, would be act of diplomatic ingenuity without parallel. Having to reach a cordial arrangement with a publicly shunned, more powerful counter-party makes it even harder.

Rather than go through each of these “objectives” in turn I thought I’d explore five overarching themes

Imprecision:

For a document that gives off an air of authority it is surprisingly imprecise. There is a good example in Section 2 (Taking control of our own laws): “[w]hilst Parliament has remained sovereign throughout our membership of the EU, it has not always felt like that.” (2.1) That is a remarkable sentence.

Firstly, it acknowledges sovereignty was never held anywhere other than Parliament. That means the electoral soundbite of “taking back control” was nonsense. Secondly, it suggests what is really at play is whether it “feels” like that. Quite how one legislates for that feeling is still anybody’s guess.

This is followed by a comment about how 1,065 EU-related documents were deposited for parliamentary scrutiny in 2016. Sounds daunting. But this isn’t very useful if you don’t have a comparable. For instance, there are currently 7,607 “live” documents currently available on the Government website. In that context it doesn’t sound like so many. All that parliamentary scrutiny also fails to leave the impression decisions were being unilaterally imposed, by unelected foreign bureaucrats.

There is another even more arresting example in Section 5 (Controlling Immigration):

“In the last decade or so, we have seen record levels of long-term net migration… [this] has given rise to public concern about pressure on public services… as well as placing downward pressure on wages for people on the lowest incomes… [i]t is simply not possible to control immigration overall when there is unlimited free movement of people to the UK from the EU.” (5.2).

There are plenty of things worth reflecting on in this. It is a startling admission that Theresa May’s seven years at the Home Office were a failure by her own definition. The assertion that immigration places “downward pressure on wages” is provided without any accompanying evidence. The academic research on this is far from conclusive. It at least suggests that such generalised comments cannot be substantiated. This matters because immigration was the key issue in the referendum. These baseless assertions risk fuelling misconceptions about the costs and benefits of migration, at exactly the time that the Government should be trying to raise, not lower, the level of debate.

A clear demonstration of that fact that immigration has increased, mainly from outside the EU….

Imagination:

This paper is highly imaginative. I’m not confident this was the intention, but it comes across most strongly in the introductory statements. Theresa May concludes with:

“when future generations look back at this time, they will judge us not only by the decision that we made, but by what we made of that decision. They will see that we shaped them a brighter future. They will know that we built them a better Britain”

The first half of this is undoubtedly true. The second half is far from guaranteed and, many would argue, far from likely.

David Davis goes even further; he claims, rather boldly,

“[t]he referendum result was not a vote to turn our back on Europe. Rather, it was a vote of confidence in the UK’s ability to succeed in the world — an expression of optimism that our best days are still to come.”

I’m struggling to find any evidence to back up this rewriting. The “No” vote was — by definition — a vote against the status quo. The “Yes” campaign disastrously failed to force a definition of what voting “No” actually meant. This allowed the likes of Johnson, Gove, Farage, Hannan and Davis to each describe utterly incompatible versions of life after the EU. The disingenuity of Davis’s statement would be laughable, if it weren’t for the fact it is prefacing the most important Government document of the last, or the next, decade.

Wistfulness:

Throughout the White Paper I was left with a profound sense of how great the EU sounded. Even as an ardent remain voter, I hadn’t appreciated the sheer scale of our involvement with our continental neighbours. I was ignorant of how much we’d achieved through collective action. Section after section lists out the EU’s role in ensuring the rule of law, facilitating trade, funding science and innovation, funding agricultural communities, fostering cultural understanding, securing rights of working people and minority groups, undermining organised crime, and the driving important action on the environment.

Throughout the UK’s central role in these achievement is rightly celebrated. I imagine this detail is designed to suggest it is in the EU’s interest to maintain close relationship. Instead, for me, it leaves a nostalgic sense that the UK used to be a major voice in the world’s most enduring, and powerful, supra-national union.

There is a through away line at the end, “the EU will continue to be, for many of its Member States, a key driver for positive change and reform.” Even the condescending tone of the sub-clause isn’t enough to prevent me feels a bit mournful that we’ve turned our backs on said positive change.

What the UK needs is a solution tailored for it’s own needs, rather than being stuck with everyone else. Oh hang on…

Listing out all the things the EU has achieved, also reminds the reader quite what an elephantine task leaving the EU is actually going to be. Given it has taken eight months to get to this point the idea it will be done in two years is naive at best. To defend against this we are promised a set of transitional arrangements (eminently sensible) or, if the negotiations don’t work, simply walking away: “the Government is clear that no deal for the UK is better than a bad deal for the UK.” This is flawless logic with one small wrinkle. “No deal for the UK” would be a suicidal “bad deal for the UK.”

Continuity:

One of the major ways the Government will try to make leaving easier by is not changing very much. The primary tool will be the Great Repeal Bill. This bill, announced back in October and confusing misnamed, will be an essence a giant copy and paste exercise to “preserve EU law where it stands at the moment before we leave the EU.” There is a huge amount of sense in this. It prevents a sudden fracture in our legal system, preserves much of what is good about the EU, and means organisations can make long-term decisions.

There is just one small issue for the Leavers. It is pretty pricey. In order to provide said continuity the Government has made a series of financial commitments (Section 1, page 13). This includes:

1. All European Structural and Investment Funds (ESIFs) projects
2. All agri-environment schemes under the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP).
3. A guarantee to the agricultural sector that it will receive the same level of funding that it would have received under Pillar 1 of CAP until the end of the Multi-annual Financial Framework in 2020.
4. Bids made directly to the Commission by UK organisations institutions, universities and businesses (including for Horizon 2020, the EU’s research and innovation programme and in funds for health and education)
5. Reassurance for devolved governments in relation to programmes they administer, but for which they expected to rely on EU funding.

Later in the paper, this list is expanded to include commitments, as yet un-costed, to continue to be part of EU schemes to fight organised crime and terrorism, as well as ensure energy security. Oh and, of course, that’s not to forget the costs associated with all those pesky bilateral trade deals, likely to vary on a sector-by-sector basis, that are going to be required.

All told these commitments, designed to ensure that nobody is left feeling too frightened by the “Brexit cliff”, start to feel pretty expensive. This is not, in and of itself, an issue. Being part of any club is expensive — especially if you opt out of setting the rules. It is only a problem when you’ve already promised millions of people that you’ll spend all that money on their health service. It’s especially embarrassing if that promise was painted in size 400 sans serif on the side of an obnoxiously red bus.

Hopefulness:

Wistfulness might be my bias at work, but the hopefulness on the part of the Government is very apparent. It is most obvious in repeated refrains. Obviously the Government cannot, at this stage, be definitive about almost anything. Nevertheless the frequency with the phrases “open” (20 times), “as possible” (18 times) and “frictionless” (12 times) are used does leave the impression that the authors are trying to wish those things into being. There is very clear example, at the beginning of Section 8 (Ensuring free trade with European markets):

“[t]he Government will prioritise securing the freest and most frictionless trade possible in goods and services between the UK and the EU. We will not be seeking membership of the Single Market.”

If the Single Market isn’t the “freest and most frictionless trade possible” with the EU then I’d love to know why not and what is. Just because saying one thing, and meaning the opposite, is currently in vogue doesn’t make it good policy.

This hopefulness is perhaps most clearly on show in the very first line of Prime Minister May’s: “[w]e do not approach these negotiations expecting failure”. Fingers crossed.

It is easy to thrown stones at this stage. Clearly the Government do not yet know how leaving the EU is going to play out. They couldn’t even they wanted to. Any attempt to provide extra detail is inevitably going to leave some commentators demanding more. To that end it is unlikely that the White Paper, even if it had been released in time to be read ahead of the debate, would have satisfied everyone.

However, I think this Paper missed a trick. It is an extended exercise in trying to convince us everything is going to be fine. All we have to do is keep calm and carry on. For those who voted to leave they thought that already. For those who didn’t there is nothing concrete enough here to change their minds. With a little more humility, this might have been a chance to face into the manifest challenges that the referendum result poses. It may have even helped co-opt a wider set of people to try and solve these challenges. There is no shame, or lack of democracy, in enlisting the brightest and the best to try and fix this mess. Parliament has to be involved. Frankly we are going to need all the help we can get.