In praise of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act

It’s been blamed for a multitude of sins, but has done more good than harm during the Brexit process

Constitutional conservatives often say that obsessing about how we’re governed changes no lives. As a reformer myself, I think this underplays how much the rules which govern who holds power and how they can wield it matter. But I accept you can get too fixated upon the abstract and forget that politics isn’t just about its rules.

Oddly, constitutional conservatives’ obsession with the Fixed-term Parliaments Act (FTPA) reverses the stereotypes. The FTPA removed the Prime Minister’s power to advise the Queen to dissolve Parliament and call an election. Instead, it offers two ways to trigger an early election. Two thirds of MPs can vote in favour of one. Or a simple majority can pass a specific motion of no confidence and not pass a specific motion of confidence within 14 calendar days.

The poor old FTPA has been blamed for a vast array of Brexit obstacles. It gets blamed for May’s early election, sinking her deal and general political paralysis. All manner of ministerial and parliamentary chicanery is laid at its door by its critics. And I find it hard to think of a more poorly-evidenced charge sheet.

Empowering the executive?

In 2017, the FTPA was mocked for strengthening, not weakening, Prime Ministers against Parliament. Theresa May vaulted over its provisions with ease — 522 MPs voted to hold an early general election in 2017. Scores feared for their seats, but feared being seen to reject an early election too. It was undoubtedly called for political reasons, and far earlier than we would normally expect in the UK.

But in the end, MPs had the right to reject an early election and decided not to exercise it in their own interests. Had the FTPA never existed, Theresa May would simply have advised the Queen to dissolve Parliament. There is no question that the Queen would have accepted that advice. I’ve seen some argue a sense of propriety might have dissuaded May from asking for a dissolution. I’m far from convinced that any self-denying ordinance applied, and nothing since 2016 suggests one would have been honoured.

And more than that, Theresa May had a decent case for seeking an election in 2017 — one I appreciate more now than I did then. No government can choose a Brexit outcome without a large enough majority to have some rebels and ignore them. The failure of the Withdrawal Agreement on three occasions makes that painfully clear. So there was a reasonable case for an election, the FTPA makes provision for early elections in some cases, and the House of Commons agreed to one. No one can blame it for how the parties campaigned or how the votes fell.

Engendering indiscipline?

More recently, the FTPA’s critics have blamed it from freeing MPs from responsibility — decoupling the government’s survival from that of its programme. In the past, a government could have made a particular policy choice a matter of confidence. Its MPs would then have been, the argument runs, under pressure to back the Government or face the voters.

I see the theory. But it places far too much weight on constitutional fixes for political problems. The Government lost its meaningful votes by 230 and 149. Even a vote solely on the Withdrawal Agreement fell by 58. When John Major resorted to making his policy on the Social Chapter a matter of confidence — which he did by choice, not constraint — he had only lost by one. I concede that even some of the three-time rebels might back the Government in some circumstances. I think it’s inconceivable that every single one would have done if it hadn’t been for one Act.

So in reality, the ‘vote of confidence’ as a device to resolve Brexit would have fallen apart in any Prime Minister’s hands. She would have known her MPs would vote her deal down anyway, read the runes when it came to facing the voters and backed off. The logjam of a Prime Minister and House of Commons would have remained unbroken.

Evading elections?

Self-evidently, the FTPA blocks some elections which a Prime Minister would otherwise hold. We are now in exactly that position. Boris Johnson would prefer to fight an election in time to make good on his pledge to leave the EU, with or without a deal, on 31 October. Parliament wants him to try to take No Deal on 31 October off the table and has legislated to force him to do so.

Clearly, our current MPs cannot find a majority for any positive Brexit policy. Without the FTPA, Johnson would probably have advised the Queen to dissolve Parliament by now. As it stands, he has to wait — seemingly until we either have, or definitively will not get, an Article 50 extension. No Deal wouldn’t be ruled out in a November or December general election. Nothing but revoking Article 50 or ratifying a Withdrawal Agreement can do that. But the prospect of a mid-October election with days to go has been ruled out.

I can see a democratic case for putting ‘31 October, do or die’ to the people. But the case that 31 October and 31 January are so different that all other considerations must go by the wayside is weak. With an election on 15 October, the UK would have had to try to make full-on crisis preparations for No Deal in the middle of the campaign. Whether any real application of purdah or any real attempt to manage the crisis would have given way I don’t know. I do know it’s not a sensible choice to make. More importantly for these purposes, I think my MPs should be able to decline to force that choice.

So if we only hold an election once an Article 50 extension is secured, in my view the FTPA will have done its job. It will have strengthened the House of Commons against a Prime Minister which wanted to pre-empt it. It will have allowed MPs to prevent Boris Johnson’s congenital irresponsibility from badly damaging any hope of mitigating the damage of No Deal, triggering an election where the normal democratic conventions would have been shredded by No Deal preparations, or both.

Find another alibi, politicians

So in short, the FTPA didn’t stop the 2017 election — but probably for good reason. Any theoretical tool it denied Theresa May before she fell from power would have broken in her hands anyway. And at the moment it’s playing exactly the role it should: stopping an irresponsible Prime Minister from abusing his position to manipulate the electoral calendar.

To blame the FTPA for our current crisis, in whole or even in part, is to make the exact mistake constitutional conservatives usually mock. It ignores political failings — of both MPs and governments — and blames them on the rules. It is a neat irony, if nothing else. But it remains misconceived.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 14 September 2019.

Ends and means

Social democrats have every right to reject Corbynite guilt-tripping

Even by its prodigious standards, the hard left is being aggressive to ‘centrists’ this week. For the Twitter-uninitiated, these days ‘centrist’ includes everyone from actual centrists through to socialists on the radical left who oppose the Corbynites on democratic grounds. In particular, the hard left are accusing ‘centrists’ of enabling Boris Johnson and telling us all we have to rally behind Jeremy Corbyn to stop him.

After years of being told to fuck off and join the Tories, I suppose we could see it as refreshing that the Corbynistas want our votes again. But consider what they’re telling decent social democrats to support. They demand anti-racists vote for a leader with a lifetime’s history of anti-Semitic tropes and views, who with his allies reduced Labour to being investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over institutional anti-Semitism. They expect reasonable people to support a leader whose every instinct — even when British people are killed on our own soil at the behest of a foreign power — is to excuse our enemies and decry our allies. They want democrats to set aside the records of extremism and the deep-rooted nastiness of the hard left.

And of course, they want pro-Europeans to support an incoherent mess on Brexit. I wanted Labour to seek a soft Brexit compromise and then, as the options narrowed, I wanted MPs to vote for the deal on the table. Most Remainers rejected meeting the other side halfway long ago. But Labour hasn’t even argued for a coherent compromise. And even now, when it’s calling for a referendum it mumbles. Labour won’t sing Remain or Leave’s tunes or stand up for meeting people halfway. It is of no use to anyone.

In return for moral collapse and strategic ineptitude, we are expected to be grateful for a domestic policy pitch rooted in nostalgia and a benefits policy to the right of the Liberal Democrats. So, out of arguments to persuade moderate social democrats their project isn’t toxic, of course the Corbynites seized on Johnson’s premiership. The hard left delight in being able to tell social democrats the hard right have captured the Tories and so they’ll just have to get in line. Sadly for them, other people have principles too. I regard Corbyn as a dangerous threat as well as Johnson. I want both of them gone, and failing that I want both of them kept in check in Parliament.

But there’s a cold strategic as well as principled logic to withdrawing support from Labour now. In my view, it is now clear the median Labour member won’t reject Corbynite politics because they’re wrong. I recognise the current median Labour member is probably still on the pro-Corbyn bit of the soft left, not the true hard left. I’m sure they wish anti-Semitism weren’t an issue in Labour ranks. I imagine they probably think the hard left sometimes has a point about foreign policy, but I don’t think they actively want to throw the Baltic states to Putin. I don’t think they like the viciousness that comes with Corbynism.

They just don’t see it all as a red line. Not really. Certainly not if it doesn’t lose Labour enough votes or overlap with something they really care about personally. (Which is why Brexit causes Corbyn so much more trouble internally than anti-Jewish racism.) I don’t think they ever will. Worse, I think plenty will minimise or excuse it to suit themselves. And I don’t think they’ll really and truly believe it costs enough votes for them to draw the line unless a general election proves the point.

As a citizen, I therefore have one weapon left: my vote. If Labour wants it, it will have to actually take anti-Semitism on, not deflect headlines and protect the Corbynistas’ friends. It will have to assure me that, in office, a Labour Prime Minister will take our NATO obligations seriously and in good faith. And it will have to convince me that the people it puts into Number 10 are committed parliamentary democrats.

Self-evidently, none of that will happen so long as Corbyn, McDonnell, Milne and Murray run the show. Nonetheless, Labour, that’s my price. I will not be guilt-tripped into lowering it. You can pay it or not as you see fit.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 28 July 2019.

Uncompromising compromisers

The self-inflicted fate of Labour’s referendum sceptics

Since the EU referendum, I’ve thought our least bad option was to implement it in moderate fashion — to meet each other halfway rather than poison our politics or burn down our economy. I still think that. It may be the third choice out of three on first preferences. But I prefer universal grumpiness to pleasing one half of the country, enraging the other and filling both with mutual loathing.

So I’ve had a lot of sympathy with Labour’s reasonable second referendum sceptics. I think Lisa Nandy is right to fear the damage it could do to our politics. I completely understand why Ruth Smeeth and Gareth Snell worry about killing off the alliance between Hampstead and Hull. I see the People’s Voters’ confidence of winning a referendum and think hubris begets nemesis. I don’t want the UK to become an embittered cuckoo in the EU nest.

But at some point a diagnosis requires a prescription. And Labour’s sceptics have almost all refused to grasp, still less follow, the logic of their views. That logic was fairly clear. Save for Kate Hoey (with whom I have no sympathy), their problems with May’s Brexit related to the future relationship, not the Withdrawal Agreement. It was and is abundantly clear that the Withdrawal Agreement is the only one on offer and the Political Declaration is not binding. Quite rightly, almost no Labour MPs are prepared to countenance No Deal. They therefore needed the Withdrawal Agreement, and as much input for MPs into the future relationship as they could get.

Further, many of the Labour sceptics didn’t want a Brexit all that different from May’s. They usually wanted to end free movement. They wanted a customs union, and they usually wanted more regulatory alignment than the Tory Brexiteers. The Northern Ireland backstop entails a customs union for the foreseeable future anyway, so the real differences were relatively minor. Dynamic alignment on employment law rather than a level playing field is not a stake for which anyone should gamble the country.

In fairness, five current and two ex-Labour MPs did, at some point, vote for what they said they wanted. Kevin Barron, John Mann and (no longer Labour) Ian Austin did from the beginning, along with Frank Field (who’d left already). Caroline Flint did from the second meaningful vote. And Rosie Cooper and Jim Fitzpatrick voted for the Withdrawal Agreement on 29 March. No other Labour MP in favour of an orderly Brexit has cast a single vote to concretely advance their cause.

They may have voted for one or more non-binding options in the ‘indicative votes’. But any option they cared to name required the Withdrawal Agreement first — the Agreement they refuse to help ratify. And it rapidly became clear that even when the Government offered the main procedural requirements they could reasonably have hoped for on MPs’ input into the future relationship, it wouldn’t be enough for them.

By then it was far too late not to hold the European elections. And in holding them, we gave new shape to the radicalisation of British politics on Remain/Leave lines. The Labour sceptics gave their internal opponents the electoral argument they’d always lacked before: that if Leavers would punish a reversal, Remainers would punish a compromise. The result? More Labour MPs now fear losing votes to the Liberal Democrats than to the Brexit Party.

Sealing the fate of the Withdrawal Agreement also, finally, sealed the fate of Theresa May. Obviously Tory MPs had far more to do with her political demise than Labour MPs, who could hardly be expected to sustain her. But the likelihood must be that our next Prime Minister will be more, not less, hardline than she is. And if the Withdrawal Agreement is dead in Westminster, Brussels has no intention of allowing another to be born.

Partly as a result, the middle ground is dying. MPs who want a deal and a compromise — rather than a culture war grudge-match via a second referendum or an accelerationist, destructive No Deal — have no viable leaders and no concrete offer. Unless a genuine pragmatist wins the Tory leadership election, the Withdrawal Agreement seems dead. We are staring down the barrel of a No Deal or No Brexit choice.

I’d have voted for the Withdrawal Agreement. And until lately I’d have voted against a second referendum. But I can’t call myself a realist and argue for all MPs to resist a referendum when MPs who say they want a deal have shown they’ll never vote for a real, not imagined, Brexit. Our legal default remains No Deal. And so we can either seek to reverse Brexit or be dithered off a No Deal cliff.

I prefer a second referendum to revocation with no democratic mandate and to No Deal. I really don’t want one. I don’t want to turn our politics into something like America’s without the checks and balances. If the chance for compromise re-emerges, I’ll be relieved. But for now, I see no such hope.

The diehards on all sides must take their share of blame. But a special responsibility rests with those who said they wanted a compromise and never followed through. They have no right to blame moderate Remainers who seek other ways to stop disaster.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 4 June 2019.

No Outsiders: on living together

I guess I can understand why some observers of the row over No Outsiders classes in Parkfield Community School, and now four others in Birmingham, might tell metroliberal gay men in London to calm down about it a bit. Mine is one of the luckiest gay generations in British history. I have the good fortune to live in one of the most socially liberal cities, and indeed countries, in the world. There are few better places to be out and gay. And today the House of Commons has voted by a landslide to approve guidance for compulsory, LGBT-inclusive Relationships and Sex Education in England.

Growing pains, growing gains

Of course, in relative terms Britain’s been one of the best places to be gay for a long time. But in absolute terms, it still amazes me how far and how fast things have come. I’m (just) young enough to have gained from most of the final legal barriers, and a vast array of social barriers, collapsing at the very beginning of what I thought (and my parents were kind enough to, mostly, tell me) was my adult life.

I left school in 2004, one year after Section 28 was repealed. To me, gay people didn’t seem to officially exist. Students definitely knew we existed, of course: many described us in glorious Anglo-Saxon technicolour. I do remember one time when a boy in my class was being taunted as a ‘queer’ and a teacher called it out on those grounds. (Mrs Beattie: thank you.) We once had a whole day dedicated to sex and relationships education (don’t ask me why we went that far). I don’t think anyone in authority used the words ‘gay’ or ‘homosexual’ once that day.

I want to emphasise I didn’t have that hard a time. In fact, I imagine my experience was better than that of many gay people my age — let alone the generations before. Sure, I got called ‘queer’ or ‘batty boy’ a few times. But I think that had more to do with being a bit too studious (and a bit too ‘not from here’ at first: I’d come back from six years in American schools) than any actual suspicion. I didn’t come out, but then in my generation people generally didn’t until they got to university.

Still, while it’s hard to distinguish the personal from the general, the shift in attitudes from around 2003 to 2006 seemed revolutionary to me. Civil partnerships felt like the state was saying society was basically on our side. As a second-year student, I remember walking through town holding hands with my then boyfriend. I glanced across the square and saw an elderly couple looking askance at us. I remembered it was 2006. I deliberately made eye contact; I held it. They looked away; I didn’t. I think things might well have gone differently five years earlier. By 2013, equal marriage felt like confirming something which had basically already happened.

Would a class acknowledging that gay and bi people existed have made a difference to me? Would I have cared had schools made a point of saying they were normal and welcomed? I’m pretty sure I would. When I was a teenager, I was stubborn enough to be in the minority and argue for gay rights. I wasn’t stubborn enough to say it was personal. I’d like it to be different for kids in future.

Spring forward, fall back?

I’m going on at length because I want to explain this is visceral for a lot of gay people. Our gains feel miraculous and fragile in equal measure. Even to people like me, who really didn’t have it that hard. Our legal and (growing) social equality are too recently won to take for granted. So I can’t see hundreds of people outside schools with placards bearing slogans like ‘say no to promoting of homosexuality and LGBT ways of life to our children’ without a shiver running down my spine.

To recap: parents have been protesting outside Birmingham schools over the No Outsiders programme. As the name suggests, it’s about promoting acceptance and inclusion of people whatever their background — including race, religion, disability and sexuality. The programme is age-appropriate — saying some children have two mums or two dads is hardly an anatomy lesson.

Nonetheless, hundreds of parents withdrew children from obligatory lessons. Protests with truly awful slogans and chants — things I hoped we were working to remove from playgrounds, let alone school gates — have sprung up. At the time of writing, five schools have suspended No Outsiders pending ‘open dialogue’. Some protestors also seem to have demanded that a head teacher resign. The parents are overwhelmingly Muslim, and they have made a point of saying object as Muslims. We should, though, note that hardline orthodox Jews and evangelical Christians have also appeared in support of the protests.

I was appalled, and a bit frightened, to watch Shabana Mahmood, a Labour MP, claim that people have legitimate and reasonable concerns that a programme which covers gay people’s mere existence is ‘age-inappropriate’. Acknowledging that we exist is no more age-inappropriate than same-sex couples picking up their children from school. It is fair and important to say that Ms Mahmood also condemned the homophobic protests. It is also disingenuous to claim the objections really stemmed from process.

We need to be frank about what the objections actually boil down to. Fatima Shah, one of the most publicly vocal parents at Parkfield School, says ‘children are being told it’s okay to be gay, yet 98 per cent of children at this school are Muslim.’ That is a homophobic objection. Elsewhere, she expressed her concerns that children would be taken out of school altogether. I share her concern, but it’s not some act of God. It’s an act of parents.

I don’t object to an open dialogue with parents. But I do want to know the principle of gay and bi equality won’t get thrown under a bus. If in the end it turns out a few hundred people with homophobic placards can force a latter-day Section 28 through, how secure should I, or any other gay or bi person, feel? Section 28 wasn’t so long ago. It existed for over half my life.

I’m pretty much at the bottom of the list of LGBT people affected, of course. What about gay parents at any of these schools? And how should LGBT Muslims feel if the liberal state won’t support them when it comes to education? The children whose parents oppose No Outsiders most are probably the ones who need it most. LGBT Muslims are often among the people most strongly opposed to conceding the point now. They also rightly point out that Muslim communities are not monoliths.

For me, this is a test. A clear homophobic demand has been made of the state — almost certainly not for the last time. The correct response to that demand is ‘No, and while we’re happy to talk, the law will be upheld — and if needs be, enforced.’ Will that be the response in the end? Is the equal worth of gay and bi people a core value in the public realm? Or is it up for grabs if people rail against it enough? Does the British state understand the difference between the rights of people and the merits of ideas well enough to face people down when they demand that religious conservatism be allowed to dictate what a school does and doesn’t teach?

Liberalism and pluralism

Today’s vote suggests it does. But the relative silence about recent events (where is the Education Secretary, apart from the odd distinctly wary statement?) might well suggest otherwise. This issue will play out again. If the state fails to stand firm, it will set a baleful precedent — for LGBT people and, in a different way, for all minorities.

At the moment, liberal social attitudes and support for cultural diversity and fairly open immigration tend to go hand in hand. But what happens if people who’ve gained most from social liberalism start to conclude that those two things don’t go hand in hand? What happens if some of them start to fear they’re directly opposed to each other?

This isn’t a pure hypothetical. At the risk of being misconstrued, it’s partly how politicians like Pim Fortuyn happen. British observers mostly know Pim Fortuyn as a populist, anti-immigration politician in the Netherlands who helped trigger an unpleasant shift in Dutch politics, and so he did. But he was also a gay man, loudly supportive of LGBT rights. He labelled immigration a threat to a freewheeling, socially liberal Dutch society. He came second in the Dutch elections of 2002. Dutch politics has never been the same since.

Populist and far right parties are referring to homophobia when attacking Muslims more and more often. Obviously people like Marine Le Pen (no friend of gay rights) are exploiting the issue. Obviously they want to demonise people who are, were or just look foreign, not protect gay people. But gay people, and otherwise socially liberal people, can and do vote for the populist and far right. In fact, some evidence suggests people who support LGBT rights but hold nativist views are more likely than nativist-minded people who don’t to vote for them. I’ve focused on LGBT issues here, but you could tell some very similar stories about women’s rights.

I am not arguing for pulling the drawbridge up or for turning against diversity. Quite the opposite — I want to defend all those things. But to defend liberal immigration and a society where people can rub along together, you need to uphold some basic liberal norms. You need to tell gay people the state will stand behind them, and mean it. You need to tell women the state will back them as equals.

You also need to be able to challenge prejudice from wherever it comes. That holds for minority communities who themselves face prejudice too. In this specific case, you need to be able to say that if 52% of British Muslims believe that homosexuality should be illegal, that indicates a problem. And we should never for a second say that can’t change, or erase liberal and gay/bi Muslims from the conversation. We shouldn’t ignore people like Fiyaz Mughal arguing for LGBT-inclusive education. Nor should it ever come at the expense of supporting Muslims facing hatred and violence. The horrifying attacks in Christchurch make the need for that grimly clear.

The same values make LGBT equality non-negotiable and the right to worship in peace sacred, in a secular as well as religious sense. Consistency matters. Liberal values matter. They should serve us all. But to serve anyone, they have to be upheld.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 27 March 2019.

Blame games

Prime Ministers rarely acquire nicknames like ‘the Maybot’ without reason. We’ve mocked Theresa May’s inability to engage on a human level. We’ve despaired at her refusal to engage meaningfully across party lines. We’ve derided the Political Declaration she’s come back with as an incoherent mess. And we’ve condemned her hectoring, lecturing tone.

The Prime Minister’s faults are legion. In fairness, she inherited a deeply divisive task with sky-high stakes and a divided, complicated, multinational state. But for most of her premiership, she spoke only to the hardliners in her own party. She’s presided over perhaps the worst failure of expectation management in postwar British political history. She set red lines she couldn’t defend, retreated without admitting it, harangued people without persuading them and confused truculence with principle.

Wednesday’s statement was in many ways a classic of its genre. The woman who coined ‘will of the people’ and ‘citizens of nowhere’ showed as little ability to reach out as ever. Her pitting the people against Parliament has been greatly exaggerated, but it’s not a framing any Prime Minister should deploy. More than that, she launched a broadside against the people she needed to persuade. It was worse than outrageous: it was stupid. It is no wonder she came as near as she was able (being Theresa May) to apologising the next day.

And yet, I can’t help feeling the outrage misses a fundamental point. Like it or not, Theresa May is right that Members of Parliament have a clear, crucial choice to make. She is also right that they are declining to make it. Their indecision carries a heavy cost. Uncomfortable though it may be to say so, our government’s (extensive) faults are getting too much of the blame and our legislators are getting too little.

It’s not good enough to bemoan an unenviable choice forced upon the legislature: the legislature voted to have it forced upon itself. MPs voted by 498 to 114 to authorise the Prime Minister to trigger Article 50. It was no secret that would start a two-year countdown. They still gave her that power without conditions and without constraint. Of course many of today’s angry MPs voted differently, but literally hundreds of representatives who voted to give the executive carte blanche are now throwing up their hands in horror because the executive took carte blanche.

Since then, MPs have periodically taken the opportunity to block things. They’ve often taken the chance to express their dislike of certain outcomes — pretty much every outcome at some point or another, in fact. But they have so far proven totally incapable of supporting anything themselves. They’ve also failed to take the reins themselves: presented with two opportunities to seize control of the legislative agenda from government, they buckled. Yes, the votes were whipped. If it’s as important as that and the executive is as outrageous as that, then break the Whip.

Why haven’t they? To a large extent, because they don’t really want to be responsible either. The truth is that denialist fantasy is just as prevalent in Westminster as in Whitehall — if not more so. By default, we have 19 days until we leave the European Union with no legal relationship in place. The package deal on the table includes a legally-binding Withdrawal Agreement, a non-binding Political Declaration, an interpretive Instrument relating to the Northern Ireland backstop and a Unilateral Declaration on the UK’s view on when and how it can leave it. The road to any negotiated Brexit — any negotiated Brexit at all — begins with a Withdrawal Agreement. Short of carving it into the French coastline so we can see it from Dover, I’m not sure how the EU could make it clearer they will not renegotiate that Agreement.

That means that MPs who say they want a deal but won’t vote for this one are either rejecting any deal without having the courage to say so or gambling with the cliff to change, essentially, a very solemn press release. The EU have been perfectly clear, furthermore, that the very solemn press release can be built upon and evolve if the UK’s red lines change. They’ve also made it clear that delaying Brexit eats into the transition period, so we’re not gaining any time at the other end of this process by dithering now.

To add insult to injury, the ideas being thrown around by MPs are often either a joke or too difficult to square in a matter of weeks. The ERG’s absurdist fantasies and daydreams of No Deal liberation have been eviscerated elsewhere, and as I never expected any better from the ERG I’ll take them as read here. But the official Labour position dances around every possible issue. It promises a customs union with a meaningful say in EU trade deals, which we know can’t happen much beyond some souped-up consultation. It makes a customs union in the Political Declaration a red line when the backstop in the actual Withdrawal Agreement mandates one in all but name. It calls for a strong relationship with the single market and fails to tell us what that means.

‘Norway Plus’ or ‘Common Market 2.0’ is more carefully considered than many alternative plans. But what is their plan for making sure EFTA members will back UK membership of EFTA together with a derogation from EFTA’s fundamental purpose as a free trade association? Why is a bespoke arrangement laden with special exceptions being promoted as something we could join by the summer? What happens if customs duties are never sorted out via technology? They say the backstop is unlikely to be used, so what’s the plan for free trade in agriculture and fisheries, VAT for goods and excise? They argue for an ultra-soft Brexit by saying we’d be far more robust in using our EEA rights than Norway. That’s inevitable given our size and political culture. I agree the EFTA EEA members seem willing to accept us in the EEA as a constructive member. Are they going to accept us as a pre-pledged cuckoo in the nest?

Meanwhile, far too many People’s Voters are trying to shoot everything else down to try to force their option through and gambling with the cliff just as much as May. Even if they’d win a referendum, which I doubt, they’ve given no thought that I can see to what happens after an inevitably narrow victory. Do they have anything to say about the impact on the EU itself? What about the operation of our politics? Why are some MPs who say No Deal would be a catastrophe hinting at putting it on the ballot? Many of the MPs involved originally said they believed the referendum result should be upheld and told their constituents so in 2017 — so what changed their minds? Why do they blur the lines between the Withdrawal Agreement and the Political Declaration when it suits them and shout about a ‘blind Brexit’ when it doesn’t?

At the time of writing, we’re in too advanced a state of governmental and parliamentary chaos to be sure about anything very much. It looks like we will at last get a series of indicative votes, in the hope of finding something Parliament is prepared to support. It looks like we will at last get a series of indicative votes, in the hope of finding something Parliament is prepared to support. But if we’re going to do that, we need an honest debate, and MPs show little sign of having one. It’s not good enough for the ERG to prattle on about a free trade agreement for the UK, not Great Britain, as if the EU’s demand for the backstop can somehow be waved away. It helps nothing but Jeremy Corbyn’s electoral prospects (and possibly not even those) for Labour to carry on pretending that its Brexit plan is radically different from the Tories’. It’s no good for people to argue for soft Brexits on the basis that we can be suitably disruptive if we feel we need to be and expect the EU not to react. It serves no one to sell a refusal to take ‘Leave’ for an answer as a democratic boon.

For me, the reaction of some MPs to Theresa May’s statement by saying they were now less likely to vote for the deal was the final straw. Fine: the Prime Minister is as sensitive as a tank and as consultative as Sir Humphrey Appleby. Perhaps we could focus more on the fact that our country is still on course to crash out of the European Union with no deal in 19 days. The idea that deciding to let that happen in a glorified fit of pique bolsters liberal democracy is an insult to our intelligence. And as a citizen, I have had enough.

MPs should spend more time proving Theresa May wrong and less time moaning about her domestic diplomacy. They can do that by engaging, seriously and urgently, with the choices before them. They can recognise that any deal requires this Withdrawal Agreement, and cooperate with the Government in getting a Withdrawal Agreement Bill passed. That buys more time while we debate any changes to the Political Declaration, if we really have to threaten the country with No Deal just to change a glorified press release. (If we must go through a second referendum, its coming into force can be dependent on the result.) MPs could even surprise me by actually following through on the result of an indicative vote in binding votes.

If they can do some of that, they just might give the rest of us some reason to take their collective amour propre more seriously. There was a time when I believed in politics and defended politicians’ profession. I am almost out of faith. Please, Parliament, give me some reason not to become just as cynical as everyone else.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 24 March 2019.

The Brexit Deal: avoiding the worst comes first

MPs should choose the dispiriting, but safer, course

Brexit’s endgame has been announced many times since 2016. Each announcement’s proved premature so far. The UK will wrestle with Brexit, in one form or another, for many years to come. But the Withdrawal Agreement and Political Declaration signal a turning point. Accepting them — or not — is a frighteningly big choice.

I am grateful that I don’t have to make that choice. But were I an MP, I would with enormous regret vote with the Government on Tuesday.

Why reject a second referendum?

I still think I was right to vote and campaign for Remain. I think Brexit will have baleful consequences. And my country is abandoning a noble ideal. Still, I’m deeply sceptical of any second referendum. My opposition rests on electoral, democratic and strategic grounds.

Would it succeed?
Polls have shown a gradual drift towards Remain since 2016. Some suggest Remain could win as much as 55% of the vote. Most Britons think Brexit is going badly. Leavers themselves sell an ever less cheerful prospect for the future as the months go by.

Looking deeper, though, not that many Leavers or Remainers are changing their minds. The main driver of the shift seems to be people who didn’t vote in 2016 — especially young people. As a veteran of many campaigns, I generally believe young non-voters’ promise to vote when I see them on polling day.

I also think the optimists are ignoring how any campaign would unfold. The rumoured slogan for any Leave Mark II campaign — ‘Tell Them Again’ — would be very powerful. Frankly, I think ‘We Told You So’ would be crushed. I see no reason to believe warnings of the consequences would work this time when they didn’t in 2016. And Brussels has hardly endeared itself to British voters since then.

Finally, and with apologies to people who mean well, I don’t think Remainers have got any better at talking to swing voters or soft Leavers. Many seem worse — promising things no one will believe (EU-wide curbs on free movement), complaining about the 2016 vote (that bus, Russian money) or talking about Leave voters as if they’re stupid or bigoted (blue passports, maps covered in pink).

Would it be right?
Referendum re-runs aren’t inherently undemocratic. The rights and wrongs depend on national context and particular circumstances. And nothing can be wholly permanent in a democracy — though we do normally expect to implement democratic decisions before we reverse them.

But the UK context and the nature of the 2016 vote make a re-run uncomfortable at best. We’ve only had two UK-wide referendums. The AV referendum has of course been upheld. The EEC referendum wasn’t followed by another for 41 years. We tend to see referendums as rare, ‘rules of the game’ events. And we did tell people this result would be decisive in 2016. (I handed out the leaflets saying there’d be no going back myself.)

There comes a point at which Parliament can fairly draw a line. There’s no democratic duty to risk food or medicine shortages, or an electricity crisis in Northern Ireland. And the form of Brexit is squarely for Parliament to decide. But while politicians have no duty to rush to disaster, voters have a right to expect them to try to carry out their instructions competently.

Would it be good for our politics?
We should also ask ourselves what a second referendum could help do to our politics. I’m not playing the ‘there’ll be riots’ card: Remainers are right to disdain dodging a vote for fear of violence. But the ever-growing, polarising ferocity of our democratic culture worries me. A healthy liberal democracy depends on not pursuing every political fight to the finish. It relies on an understanding that losers as well as winners must consent.

That is one reason I regard the rise of the Brexiteers on one side and the Corbynistas on the other with such deep unease. But I have watched too much of the Remain movement take on some of the same characteristics. When some Remainers talk about the Biased Brexit Corporation and high-profile Remain figures blame foreign corporate interests for Remain-minded newspapers advocating compromise, it’s no longer just the fringes of left and right which have a problem.

I don’t want to see the UK become the US without the checks and balances. I believe we need to rediscover how to meet each other halfway. And I have no wish to be dragooned into a cultural cold war in the name of reversing a referendum result.

Would it be good for Europe?
Suppose a second referendum were won. Does anyone think the UK would suddenly become a comfortable member of the EU? Did 1975 turn the British into keen Europeans? I am well aware my country is eurosceptic at heart. It has been throughout the postwar era. Smarting in defeat, Remainers deride 2016’s risk-averse, bloodless campaign. I think we’d have lost by a far greater margin had voters not believed Brexit had risks attached.

The median British voter wants the economic benefits of the EU without the political institutions which make them possible. But the truth is that European integration is and always has been a profoundly political project. It grew out of most Europeans’ bitter experience of what nation-states could do. The British aren’t inherently better on that score, but they’ve mainly been luckier. As a result, while other countries saw a project which helped tame murderous antagonisms, entrench democracy after dictatorship or free them from the orbit of an overbearing neighbour, Britain never really could. I believe in the actual European political project. But I doubt more than 15% of my fellow citizens truly agree with me.

If we won a second referendum while fudging that fact — and we’d have to fudge to have any hope of winning — we’d just store up trouble for the future. How could a country which only voted to say in the EU in a second time because the alternative was too risky play a constructive part in its proceedings? How long would it be before a Conservative Prime Minister called a third referendum? Is any of that in the interests of Europe as a whole? Unless and until our people are prepared to accept that the EU is a profoundly political project and endorse it on that basis, British membership will be profoundly unstable.

If we end up in a position where the only alternative to a guaranteed No Deal Brexit is another referendum, then I agree we would have to pursue it. But it should be a genuine last resort.

Is the Withdrawal Agreement liveable?

If we reject trying to reverse the 2016 verdict, we need a Withdrawal Agreement with the EU. The Political Declaration is a glorified press release, designed to accommodate a range of possible outcomes for now. The Withdrawal Agreement is the legally binding and crucial thing — the key to avoiding a No Deal Brexit. It’s also abundantly clear that it’s the only Agreement on the table.

For me, the main question here is the Ireland/Northern Ireland protocol — the so-called backstop. I am, frankly, indifferent to the section on financial liabilities: we were always going to have to pay, and the costs of No Deal would dwarf them anyway. I would like the Agreement to go further on citizens’ rights, both for UK citizens in the EU and EU nationals here — but it is incomparably better for both than No Deal.

A UK-wide backstop?
Theresa May made a customs border down the Irish Sea a red line. Her focus on customs (only the source of 30% or so of border checks) was always rather arbitrary. Still, the backstop now includes a shared customs territory covering the EU and the UK. The EU had significant concerns about including this, so it’s a genuine concession on their part.

The EU was probably most concerned to stop the UK undercutting EU members in any customs union. The new backstop therefore sets out level playing field commitments not to row back on good practice in taxation, environmental standards and labour and social standards. On state aid and competition, the UK would apply existing and future EU law. These are surprisingly limited requirements. That might be a mixed blessing for the centre-left, but then the line that the EU should be used to save the UK from itself was always democratically dodgy.

But within the single customs territory, ‘the customs territory of the EU’ includes Northern Ireland, and ‘the customs territory of the UK’ is code for ‘Great Britain’. Northern Ireland would have to apply the full Union Customs Code. The EU’s ultimate right to apply customs duties if it considers the UK in breach of its duties applies between Great Britain and the island of Ireland.

Northern Ireland would apply EU law on goods, VAT on goods, excise, agriculture and fisheries (but not the CAP or CFP) and wholesale electricity. In Great Britain, a UK authority would be responsible for state aid. In Northern Ireland, it would be the European Commission.

In short, the principle of different treatment for Northern Ireland has not meaningfully changed. Great Britain has just been allowed to form a customs union with the EU and Northern Ireland to soften it a bit.

The best of both worlds?
The EU and the UK say trade within the UK will be protected. While trade with Ireland is far more important for Northern Ireland than for anywhere else in the UK, Great Britain remains its main market. I can see how significantly reducing damage to trade with Ireland and minimally increasing barriers to trade with Great Britain might be economically better than none of the latter and a vast amount of the former. But that only holds if East/West barriers actually are minimal.

The EU and UK say they will be for two reasons. First, the protocol says it doesn’t stop the UK from ensuring unfettered market access to Great Britain. Second, it requires the EU and the UK to use best endeavours to facilitate trade between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. That includes minimising checks at ports and airports in Northern Ireland.

The first point guarantees nothing in itself. The second depends on Great Britain not diverging very far and the EU making a good faith effort to minimise checks. In the short term, the impact on East/West trade probably would be minimal. But barring a very soft Brexit or a much firmer British commitment than usual to Northern Ireland, I can’t see how you’d avoid a ratchet effect — and that has economic consequences.

The backstop and the Northern Ireland settlement
I understand the fears evoked by new Border infrastructure on the island of Ireland. Avoiding physical reminders for Border communities is an enormous advantage of the backstop. The UK Government didn’t take the issue seriously and didn’t engage with the ambiguity in its own commitments in December 2017 until far too late.

The backstop avoids the Scylla of a hard land border poisoning relations with nationalists. But I fear we’ve sailed into the Charybdis of poisoning political unionism’s willingness to re-engage with Stormont. You can say the backstop in no way changes the constitutional status of Northern Ireland, and formally that’s true. But most of Northern Ireland’s trade and much of its economy would be governed by EU rules with no say at its neighbour’s behest, despite its membership of the UK.

The backstop is also designed to minimise any risk of any Northern Ireland Assembly or Executive influencing how it works. Most backstop-relevant EU rules will take automatic effect in Northern Ireland. The UK would only have to agree to new rules when they neither amend nor replace ones already in the backstop. Even there, there would be no domestic legislation — so the Assembly’s consent would be moot.

EU membership underpins much of Strand Two of the Good Friday Agreement (North/South cooperation). Together with security normalisation, it allowed a wholly open land border. But while Brexit risks that context, the backstop poses a different risk to the Northern Ireland settlement. The 1998 Agreement provided for a carefully defined North/South dimension which could grow by mutual agreement. This one would be enacted over unionists’ heads and is designed to make it near-impossible for them to influence. It partly rewrites the balance of the settlement in a deeply sensitive area.

Is the alternative worse and can we mitigate the backstop?
That said, a No Deal Brexit would be particularly disastrous in Northern Ireland. If the backstop could undermine the settlement there, the impact No Deal could have on that settlement should be self-evident. From a unionist perspective, No Deal’s effect on support for the Union should be taken very seriously. It also looks like most in Northern Ireland support a backstop over a harder Brexit.

For Great Britain, the backstop makes failure to agree on the final relationship in time for 2021 or 2023 less painful than it would otherwise be. It would protect parts of the economic relationship via the customs union. For Northern Ireland, that is also true. But the truth is that Brexit offers Northern Ireland no good options. The interaction between Dublin’s priorities (which I in no way dismiss), Brussels’ red lines (which I think have gone too far) and London’s inattention and incoherence (which are damning) has presented us with a particularly painful choice.

If it passes the Withdrawal Agreement, the UK can do three main things to reduce the impact of the backstop. It can press its case on minimising checks vigorously if and when the backstop comes into force. It can help that case, and reduce unionist concern over divergence, through sticking to EU rules in the areas covered by the backstop. Theresa May has said she would not expect Great Britain to diverge in those areas. In my view, the UK should do what it can to give that commitment legislative force, at least in the absence of devolved consent. (An Act could require ministers to introduce secondary legislation to align Great Britain with Northern Ireland in some areas. It might also include a declaratory section covering primary legislation, drawing on the Scotland Act 2016.) And finally, the softer the UK’s Brexit end state, the less impact the backstop will have.

Do we really have a choice?

If I thought a safe alternative to accepting the deal on the table existed, I’d argue for it. This current Deal probably points to a customs union, less alignment and market access than I want and some checks in the Irish Sea to which I object. Of course, any new Prime Minister will want to revisit the final relationship anyway. I’d like MPs to steer towards a softer Brexit than the Political Declaration suggests. But I’m under no illusions that that’s a sure thing.

But the Withdrawal Agreement is the priority now. The EU is not going to meaningfully renegotiate it. (Even some cosmetic renegotiation may well be a non-starter.) It might tweak the Political Declaration. But risking a disorderly Brexit to reword a solemn press release we’ll ask to redraft later on anyway strikes me as rather pointless.

The idea that Parliament can take No Deal off the table is dangerous complacency. Yes, Dominic Grieve has given MPs an easier way to say what they’d like to be done if they reject May’s Deal. But MPs’ machinations only matter in EU law if they serve to ratify a Withdrawal Agreement, seek to extend Article 50 or require its revocation. Only the third of those avoids the need for a Withdrawal Agreement. And it’s far from clear that a second referendum or any specific and achievable final relationship could command a majority among MPs.

It looks frighteningly plausible that all the factions in Parliament will continue to gamble that someone else will blink so they don’t have to. Some may even think they stand to benefit from No Deal. Tory hardliners welcome it. Some Corbynites think it might radicalise voters and let them go further in government. Scottish nationalists might hope it could carry them to independence.

Many who want a second referendum are happy to salt the earth for anything between No Deal and No Brexit. Doing that makes it very hard to keep just rejecting the Deal off the ballot in any second referendum. But we can’t afford to let No Deal happen. We have no time to prepare for it, insofar as we ever really could. There’s no societal consensus which could make the pain and the sacrifices politically tolerable. The short-term consequences would probably be somewhere between severely damaging and outright catastrophic. And the ultimate potential outcomes include a prolonged and dangerous geopolitical rupture, rapidly accepting the same terms or worse, or both.

Parliamentary brinkmanship is too much of a gamble for me now. I’ve had enough of gamblers in British politics. There is one sure route, and only one, to avoiding a true public policy disaster on 29 March 2019. Reluctantly, and with a very heavy heart as both a Remainer and a unionist, I think MPs should take it.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 10 December 2018.

Cashing in on discontent? National gripes, public finances and a fractured Union

Nations are as liable as humans to squabble over money, and the four countries of the United Kingdom are no exception. Arguing over GERS in Scotland is one example; moaning about Barnett in England is another. Part of our problem is that these things are hard to measure. Another is that, as ever with money, all sides have an axe to grind.

So inevitably, our press loves stories implying that one country or another has its hand in the till. The Times ran a particularly good example a couple of weeks ago. The central claim was as follows:

Government efforts to reduce the budget deficit since the financial crisis have been delivered almost exclusively by England, which is on track to balance its books this year, while the devolved administrations continue to borrow heavily, according to official figures.

This is deeply misleading. For a start, devolved administrations mostly don’t control how much revenue is raised in their areas. With major exceptions in Scotland and moderate exceptions in Wales and Northern Ireland (mostly recent), they’re funded by block grant. They have very limited borrowing powers. The Times’ ‘borrowing’ is really the gap between UK and devolved spending and revenue. That gap has been mostly controlled at UK level throughout this period.

Still, it’s true that the gap in England has narrowed much faster (a 92.2% drop) than it has in Scotland (3.1%), Wales (16.6%) and Northern Ireland (9.9%). So have the four countries been getting radically different spending settlements since 2009/10? The figures for total public spending show they haven’t.

Chart derived from Office for National Statistics ‘Country and regional public sector finances’ data.

England has actually had the highest percentage rise in public spending, at 11.2%. Scotland came in at 11.0%, Northern Ireland went up by 10.6% and Wales rose by 9.6%. Leaving aside whether that’s fair for reasons of population growth or relative need — and differing spending among the regions of England — this is not where our ‘England is paying off the deficit’ story comes from.

The story seems very different when we look at government receipts. Here we do see some major differences. England’s revenue growth (36.4%) is somewhat higher than Wales’ (30.5%), quite a bit higher than Northern Ireland’s (26.7.%) and over double Scotland’s (15.2%). What’s going on here? The first clue comes from which regions of England’s receipts are growing fastest.

Chart derived from Office for National Statistics ‘Country and regional public sector finances’ data.

The wider south east of England is, as you’d expect, way out in front. Wales isn’t out of step with most of England; only Scotland seems vastly out of kilter. So the story isn’t one of Westminster largesse flowing to the devolved nations at all. Instead, it’s one of UK growth being greatest in London and the south east, as it usually (and worryingly) is. To paint this as the former rather than the latter is strikingly unhelpful.

Some may wonder why Scotland is so far behind. It isn’t usually the worst performer in the UK by any means, so what’s happening here? But again, the answer is mostly pretty clear. These figures include a geographical share of North Sea revenue — Treasury gains from oil and gas — most of which is allocated to Scotland. And, famously, oil and gas prices have plummeted in recent years. Strip out the oil and Scotland’s growth looks much more normal. That’s especially true when you remember England’s population is growing faster.

Chart derived from Office for National Statistics ‘Country and regional public sector finances’ data.

So The Times’ story of England tightening its belt while the rest of the UK lives high on the hog makes no sense at all. Public spending has gone up by fairly similar amounts in the four countries, southeast England’s economy has grown the most, and Scotland’s tax take was hit hard by a collapse in oil and gas prices. And anyway, the other three countries’ fiscal envelopes were mostly set by Westminster.

Does this matter beyond due concern for fair reporting? I think so. Were I to single out one thing which could unravel the UK, I might well choose competitive grievance. PG Wodehouse’s unkind quote is often echoed for English audiences, in varying levels of poor taste. The SNP’s opponents in Scotland regularly accuse it of hunting for grievances — sometimes fairly, sometimes less so. But if we diagnose a grievance culture in Scotland, we’ll have to diagnose one in England too. It’s often aimed at Scotland, but also at the rest of the UK more generally.

This is a serious problem for the UK. A multinational Union needs give and take and general reasonableness to work well. That’s especially true for a Union made up of one very large nation and three much smaller ones. Constant diatribes about how hard done by England or Scotland (or Wales or Northern Ireland) are do nothing to help and much to hinder that process.

Since 2014, Scotland’s public debate has demanded much of the rest of the UK while paying relatively little attention to its views. England’s public debate, such as it is, always seems to reduce in moderation as it gains in prominence. Wales and Northern Ireland struggle to be heard, and the latter often attracts ill-concealed irritation when it cuts through. It may or may not prove sustainable: it definitely isn’t healthy.

Not all the UK’s gripes focus on cash, but quite enough do to be going on with. We could improve our public discourse by at least giving a fair picture of the sums. As it stands, unionists may well live to regret letting our four countries regard each other as burdens rather than partners.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 1 October 2018.

Brexit and a balanced backstop

Anyone who thought about Brexit should have known the border between the UK and Ireland would be a knotty and crucial issue to solve.

The common travel area allows British and Irish citizens to cross borders freely. We also share a customs union, regulatory framework and VAT/excise arrangements. These remove the need for sea or land border checks between the UK and Ireland. Brexit puts an end to the customs, regulatory, VAT and excise arrangements, with huge social, economic, political and constitutional implications. Ireland has made the land border its priority, and the EU26 back them to the hilt.

A combination of its red lines and hubris, Northern Ireland’s needs, Ireland’s strength of feeling and the EU27 position on the single market presents the UK with a huge problem. We have to have an agreement, and so we have to agree a backstop. But an economic border with Great Britain violates the spirit of the Belfast/Good Friday Agreement at least as much as checks on the land border. I am not sure Brussels understands what undercutting unionists like that might mean. I’m not even sure Dublin (very much alive to nationalists’ concerns) fully grasps the implications. (And you don’t have to let London, which remains primarily responsible, off the hook to say so.)

The main practical elements of the border problem are:

  • the EU customs union
  • the EU VAT area
  • EU arrangements for excise duties
  • the EU acquis in goods — including agricultural and fisheries products, together with sanitary and phytosanitary rules (but not the CAP or CFP).

Is there any way to square the circle? Below I suggest a possible way through. I’m not saying it’s foolproof, or necessarily right. But it might help us pick our way through.

Customs, VAT and excise: the UK follows the EU

The first step would be to agree an all-UK customs union, as well as the UK adopting the EU’s rules on VAT and excise duties. These aren’t seen as part of the single market and so don’t breach the EU’s ‘four freedoms’ red line.

The EU doesn’t object to an EU-UK customs union in principle. The UK would need to accept the common external tariff for all goods and the full Union Customs Code. That’s fine: we’ve basically conceded it for backstop purposes anyway. The Commission claims Article 50 cannot extend it to Great Britain, but the EU would probably agree to it via some legal means.

The harder question is whether the EU27 would be willing to treat VAT and excise similarly. No non-EU state has secured this except Monaco (thanks to its special relationship with France). The role of the CJEU (note that the EFTA Court doesn’t deal with the acquis in VAT or excise) would need clear protection. But it doesn’t breach the EU’s position on the four freedoms.

Goods regulation, part one: Northern Ireland follows the EU, but what about Great Britain?

The toughest issue is regulatory alignment in goods. So far, the EU27 have said the single market cannot be cherry-picked for goods and the four freedoms cannot be split.

The first concern is that the UK could deregulate its services, produce goods more cheaply and then exploit its single market access. But this is essentially a question of getting ‘level playing field’ issues right. These are mainly state aid, employment, health and safety and environmental standards, and they can also be addressed in any backstop. Indeed, the Commission’s draft backstop does cover them for Northern Ireland.

That leaves the divisibility of the four freedoms. For the final deal, the UK hopes to end free movement of persons by forgoing free movement of services. Its position implies something similar for the backstop. In public, the EU27 have consistently rejected the idea. Whether, and to what extent, public pronouncements match private reality remains hotly disputed. In any event, banking on such a climbdown to square the backstop is quite the risk.

Goods regulation, part 2: Great Britain follows Northern Ireland, and checks are selective

Still, we might be able to pick our way through the Commission’s Northern Ireland-only backstop and the Government’s view that it should be UK-wide. The Commission says alignment between Great Britain and Northern Ireland is for the UK to deal with. Now, I think that’s pretty disingenuous in the context of a Northern Ireland-only backstop. Both sides need to agree that standards, customs, VAT and excise are similar enough to avoid border checks.

The Commission’s choice of words offers a possible clue. A couple of stories have suggested the UK is exploring whether ‘parallel marketability’ might help solve this problem. Parallel marketability has already entered the Brexit debate (for Scotland and Northern Ireland). It’s how Liechtenstein squares EEA membership with its customs union with Switzerland. Goods made to either EEA or Swiss standards can circulate there. Liechtenstein then has to take steps to keep goods which attract Swiss tariffs or don’t meet Swiss standards out of Switzerland.

This system works for a principality of 38,000 with one open border. (The Austrian border is checked.) Major divergence would probably test it to destruction if Northern Ireland accepted goods made to both EU and UK standards. There’s a land and a sea border, both politically fraught and one with a long tradition of smuggling. But if the whole UK forms a customs union with the EU and adopts EU rules for goods, VAT and excise, many concerns fall away. There would be no divergence in goods standards to monitor. The UK would apply the common external tariff, so tariff differences wouldn’t be an issue.

So if Great Britain aligns in full, could parallel marketability avoid systematic checks on the land and sea border? We would still have checks between Great Britain and the EU26. (Whether we’d have them between Great Britain and Ireland or between Northern Ireland and the EU26 is an open question.) The risk would now be one of principle, not practical impact.

Could we make it work?

The volume of trade between Great Britain and the EU26 would make major trade diversion via Northern Ireland fairly obvious. (That holds, to a lesser extent, for trade between Great Britain and Ireland.) The current draft protocol includes a specialised EU-UK committee to oversee it. In this model it could monitor reported traffic flows, receive reports from UK and EU/Irish authorities, and require action. Spot checks could be carried out within Great Britain, Northern Ireland and Ireland, and on a intelligence-led basis at ports and on land. VAT records could also help track some re-routing of goods.

Legally, the Commission claims Article 50 can be used for a Northern Ireland backstop, but not a UK-wide version. I think that’s dubious. EU-UK relations cover more than the contents of a backstop, so I don’t think it pre-empts the conversation about those relations. The idea that the EU’s Article 50 competence is geographically limited also seems weak. (The Belfast/Good Friday Agreement argument that Northern Ireland can be covered, but not the whole UK, rests on a one-sided assessment of that accord in my view.)

But the EU27 can’t be persuaded on the law, is there another option available? Could the backstop in the Withdrawal Agreement could include a commitment to amend it via Article 218? This is the legal basis the Commission cites for UK-wide elements. We could publish those amendments with the Withdrawal Agreement and ratify them during the transition.

Why should anyone do this?

For the UK, this option beats the current backstop. It addresses the Northern Ireland issue. We’ve already accepted a customs union for any fall-back arrangements, so we don’t lose much from a global trade point of view. In practice we’d adopt most EU goods standards anyway. Border checks would still exist for Great Britain unless a wider deal scraps them, but shared standards and no rules of origin helps business.

For the EU, this squares a tricky circle, delivers for Ireland and upholds its stated principles on the single market pending a wider deal. The UK aligning in goods, not services, works nicely for a union which is a net exporter of goods and a net importer of services vis-à-vis the UK, so long as level playing field rules are robust. The UK will be seen to pay a price. And it forestalls a regulatory competitor in goods, where the single market is most developed.

And overall?

We’d have a UK-wide backstop framed to fit the language of the Joint Report. The whole UK would align with the EU on customs, VAT and excise. Northern Ireland would align with the EU on goods. Great Britain would align with Northern Ireland on goods. And the EU27 would do the minimum required to avoid borders between Northern Ireland and either Great Britain or Ireland.

It’s not ideal for anyone. But the backstop is supposed to be a last-ditch solution. We’re seeking tolerable imperfection. This might fit the bill.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 6 September 2018.

Red lines

I should probably start this piece by apologising for writing it. There have been too many leaving Labour blogs already. But I’ve told many people to vote Labour over the past few years. I’ve spent a lot of time and energy fighting for decent Labour since 2015. I have many friends I’m leaving behind politically (though I hope not personally). I feel I owe them an explanation.

I understand the people who stay to try to fight. Anyone who thinks this is an easy choice hasn’t thought about it enough. You will get no attacks on people trying their best to hold back the hard left tide from me. But this is why I felt I had to draw a line.

Anti-Semitism

In Corbyn’s Labour, each new anti-Semitic incident follows a pattern. Despicable views and behaviours emerge. The alarm is raised. Corbyn supporters blame it on attempts to undermine the leadership. The leadership delays. Corbyn claims to oppose anti-Semitism — in delphic terms which avoid telling anyone to do anything about it. Incidents are dealt with reluctantly, kicked into the long grass or ignored altogether.

The left had a problem with anti-Semitism before Corbyn rose to prominence. The problem went beyond the hard left, too. But it was always strongest there, because the hard left has specific susceptibilities to anti-Semitism. Suspicion of capital lends itself to tropes about Jewish capital. Conspiracy easily shades into international conspiracy. If your politics are formed in an ‘anti-imperialist’ crucible with Israel as the ultimate enemy, people who hide their racism under an ‘anti-Zionist’ carapace will be willing and eager to stand beside you.

Corbyn comes from that world, and both he and his inner circle are deeply and personally culpable. This is a man who spent years in a Facebook group filled with vicious anti-Semitic rhetoric. This was a group he’d commented in, for which he’d organised events, whose organiser he knew personally: a group spewing hate he can’t possibly have failed to see. This month, we found out he suggested ‘the hand of Israel’ was behind terrorist attacks in Egypt in 2012. There was no evidence — just a shadow conspiracy speculation (‘theory’ is too grand a word) involving the world’s only Jewish state. And this week, we discovered this gem about ‘Zionists’: ‘having lived in this country for a very long time, probably all their lives, [they] don’t understand English irony’. I am a British Zionist. Corbyn was not talking about me.

Corbyn’s record proves he will at the very least live with anti-Semitism to promote ‘anti-imperialism’. Worse, he has repeatedly used anti-Semitic tropes himself. He will do nothing serious about anti-Semitism on the left: to do so would be to damn himself. It is no surprise that Chris Williamson’s sharing platforms with Assad apologists and belittling the anti-Semitism crisis merited a vague pledge of investigation, while Margaret Hodge and Ian Austin were threatened with disciplinary action for calling anti-Semitism out. It is frankly untenable even to think Margaret Hodge was incorrect.

A Labour Party led by Jeremy Corbyn will never tackle anti-Semitism, because to Jeremy Corbyn Jews are dispensable. I will not tell voters he’s a consistent anti-racist. I can’t even say I don’t believe he’s an anti-Semite. And a man who, so far as I can tell, most British Jews regard with disgust, anger and sometimes fear would be utterly unacceptable as prime minister.

Anti-Westernism

Commitment to your country’s security should be a political prerequisite for running it. Corbyn has worn his hostility to the West on his sleeve throughout his career. He opposed defending the Falklands in 1982. Falklanders didn’t want to submit to a military junta, but the UK had to be in the wrong. He opposed enlarging NATO after 1989. Eastern Europeans wanted to join the Atlantic world after decades of Soviet oppression, but NATO had to be in the wrong. He described the Russian invasion of Crimea as ‘not unprovoked’. Ukrainians wanted to move towards the EU, and the EU had to be in the wrong.

The man who called for NATO to be shut down in 2014 campaigned on a 2017 manifesto which supported NATO membership. But it’s a bad faith pledge he undermines at every turn. He has never once committed to defending NATO members under attack. Instead, he dodges the question. He thought the run-up to Donald Trump (a fellow NATO-sceptic) becoming US President was the moment to suggest demilitarising our allies in the Baltic (never mind their views on the topic). Corbynites might say this displays an admirable preference for exhausting peaceful avenues first. I suggest Vladimir Putin would say it meant NATO’s second military power was no longer committed to collective security.

This year, we had yet more proof that Corbyn’s first instinct remains to blame the West and excuse our enemies. People were murdered with chemical weapons in Salisbury. All the evidence pointed to Russian responsibility — Moscow didn’t even offer a plausible lie in response. Corbyn allowed Seumas Milne to imply that rogue elements in MI5 might be trying to blame Russia and raised the possibility of mafia involvement (despite experts’ view that this sort of chemical attack required state-level involvement). He only acknowledged the likelihood of Russian responsibility through gritted teeth. Most recently, on tougher sanctions against Russia he said: ‘We cannot just have a building up of tensions on both sides of the border.’ It seems responding to the murder of our citizens makes us the ones ‘building up … tensions’.

I do not believe a man who has hated the West all his life has had a Damascene conversion. Jeremy Corbyn’s promises on NATO aren’t worth the paper they’re written on. I believe in international solidarity quite as much as he claims to. But my international solidarity includes Estonia. I believe in a Europe whole and free. I oppose people who think imperialism is best opposed by consigning free democracies to some Russian sphere of influence.

I will not tell voters they should trust the Labour leader with the UK’s or the West’s security when the chips are down. Everything we know about him, and his circle, shows they cannot.

Anti-parliamentarism

Corbyn’s hostility to the West has deep roots on the hard left. So does his acolytes’ intolerance of dissent and their contempt for parliamentarians’ link to their voters.

Corbyn has a populist appeal I never foresaw. Still, the Corbynites’ democratic centralist understanding of the world doesn’t lead to a ‘let a thousand flowers bloom’ approach to politics. It produces a politics of bullying, intimidation and heresy-hunting. MPs and Haringey councillors can attest to that. (So can I. I’ve been in the meetings.) It subverts MPs’ accountability to their constituents in the name of subordinating them to their local General Committee. It takes power away from voters and moves it to self-selecting activists.

John McDonnell exemplifies the hard left’s contempt for parliamentarism. This is a man who joked about lynching a (female) political opponent. This is a man who saw ‘students kicking the shit out of Millbank’ as a positive, exciting thing; a man who saw fit to give speeches about how ‘sometimes you feel like physical force — you feel like giving them a good slapping’. More recently, this is a man who wanted mass demonstrations to force early elections mere days after the last one.

Meanwhile, Seumas Milne was a ‘tankie’, deeply involved with the Communist Party of Great Britain — with a long history of minimising Stalinist crimes, of mourning the demise of the USSR and East Germany, of defending or equivocating over every odious regime so long as it hated the Americans. When the Council of Europe condemned the crimes of communism, Milne said: ‘For all its brutalities and failures, communism in the Soviet Union, eastern Europe and elsewhere delivered rapid industrialisation, mass education, job security and huge advances in social and gender equality.’

I do not believe that these people have changed their views after a lifetime of extremism. And I cannot stand behind them. I believe political power derives its legitimacy from our elected Parliament. I believe politicians have no business trying to rouse the streets to eject democratic governments. I believe in liberal constitutionalism and the rule of law. And I do not trust Corbyn, McDonnell or Milne to guard them. Their worldview is profoundly anti-parliamentary and would be dangerous if it ever controlled the state.

I cannot and will not go on doorsteps and pretend that a government with Jeremy Corbyn in 10 Downing Street, John McDonnell next door and Seumas Milne whispering in his ear would leave our democratic culture uncorroded. The fabric of our democracy already feels thinner than it did: a Corbyn Government would pull more threads out.

Standing by, not standing up

The decent left should be casting Corbynism out. Instead, Corbynism is being normalised. Like latter-day DDT, the levels of poison in our political bloodstream are building up as we swim along.

In a banal but crucial sense, it’s true that ‘centrists’ lack answers and complaining about Corbyn isn’t doing the job. Moderate politics is clearly failing to persuade people it can tackle their problems. Disliking Jeremy Corbyn, Jacob Rees-Mogg or Brexit does not make a programme for government. (Corbyn doesn’t have one either, but leave that aside.)

But the trope also shows how decent people can make the unconscionable unremarkable. Suppose centre-left politics is bloodless, soulless and visionless — technocracy plus tax credits. Do people who dislike Corbyn but think we’re complaining too much about him honestly believe enabling anti-Semitism is better? Are we even going to put them on the same moral plane?

People say that ‘we don’t like Jeremy’ isn’t enough. OK, it’s not a manifesto. But anti-Semitism alone should be enough to rule ‘Jeremy’ out. Much of the non-Corbynite left is forgetting that in the name of boxing clever. I want to reassert it.

Power and principle

People should think long and hard about the consequences of a hard left government. The UK has far fewer checks and balances than the US under Trump. We have no written constitution, veto-wielding second chamber or federalist constraints upon central government.

Only Labour MPs could prevent disaster if Corbyn won a majority. And having watched most of them kowtow most of the time since 8 June 2017, I am not sure they will resist his worst impulses. Anyway, backbenchers can’t make Corbyn’s word his bond on collective security: it would be too late by the time they acted. And the intimidatory style of politics — mob dressed up as movement — which characterises Corbynism could be much more dangerous with the state behind it.

So of course I don’t want Jeremy Corbyn to be Prime Minister. Of course I don’t want Seumas Milne advising in Number 10 or John McDonnell at the Treasury. The idea sends shivers down my spine. It must not happen. I will not help to make it happen. And if it’s the price of getting rid of the Tories, it’s a price I cannot pay.

That leaves me no choice but to resign from the Labour Party. Someday, I hope there will once again be an anti-racist, internationalist, reliably constitutional social democratic party worth joining.

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 24 August 2018.

Exciting vision or doctor’s mandate? The problem for the centre-left

I wasn’t at the Progress Conference on Saturday. I’d promised my friends (and myself) a broadly non-political weekend after the past couple of months. But it seems that at least parts of the Conference were in ‘tell hard truths to our own side’ mode. In particular, Stephen Bush’s speech has attracted much comment:

There’s clearly plenty of truth in this. It is indeed wearing to hear social democrats talking about being divisive as if that were the issue. Quite clearly it isn’t. The issue is that we dislike Corbynite politics and want something different. Some allowance needs to be made for moderates’ exhaustion from trying to hold the hard left off. But to return Labour to its mainstream tradition, you need to persuade and inspire people who currently like Corbyn. Alternatively, you need to get people in to outnumber them. And no, Labour moderates can’t easily shout about electability in our current state.

But I’d make two main points in return. First, the Corbynite left can cross lines social democrats can’t. I’m not calling for a naive form of ‘straight-talking, honest politics’. (Bush is quite right there. Note to self: stop doing it.) But it’s hard to counter an entire prospectus based on the pretence that middle-class corporatism equals redistribution, sums we know don’t add up and a foreign policy which sells parochialism as ‘peace’ once people have bought into it.

If people believe fantasies, they’ll always sound better than messy trade-offs. In that case, how do you pit realism against the big lie mode of politics and win? I’m sure a sufficiently charismatic and inspiring leader could do a great deal to address that. And no doubt much more can be done to frame the issues differently. It’s still a huge problem.

The second problem is the unappealing truth of where we find ourselves. The UK faces several crises which we need to address, with limited state bandwidth to devote to them. Fortunately for all of us, I have neither any prospect of becoming Prime Minister nor any desire to try. But were I in charge, I have a rough idea of what I’d prioritise.

I’d need to find a substantial amount of money just to keep core bits of the public realm from falling over. The NHS, social care, councils, welfare and the justice system desperately need cash. To be clear, the cash injection wouldn’t even be to make things (much) better: it’d mostly be to stop them from getting worse. As we’re talking tens of billions of pounds of current, not capital, spending (and we’d better have some room for manoeuvre to prop the economy up if Brexit goes disastrously wrong), this means broadly-based tax rises. By all means try to hit the very rich too. But there’s a reason social democratic paragons have higher VAT than we do, not just higher top rates of income tax.

I would, of course, try to minimise the damage from Brexit. This means delivering the softest version compatible with electoral acquiescence and political reality. Unfortunately, a Brexit with a severely constrained trade policy and free movement probably won’t stick. If that’s true, it gets worse. The least-worst Brexit is different in Great Britain and Northern Ireland — but the consequences of substantial differentiation between the two are unacceptable. And it may well be that neither of these least-worst options can be agreed. Whatever the result, the question is how much worse off we end up — not what we gain.

I’d also look to our east and west and conclude we as Europeans were dangerously exposed. We have a currently indifferent hegemon across the Atlantic and a dangerous revanchist at the other end of the North European Plain. Democratic Europe should be planning for a real security crisis in which Washington abandons it. It shows little sign of doing so. The UK is of course one of Europe’s best defence and security performers. That doesn’t make it anywhere near good enough, and the 2% of GDP floor has ceased to be high enough. Unfortunately, we are in no position to advise others on pan-European policy and expect to be listened to. But Europe needs to make a start. To get anywhere, the UK will need to commit serious additional resources of its own.

I am well aware both that climate change is rapidly reaching a tipping point, if it hasn’t already, and that the UK can do little on its own to turn things around. We’ve long since reached the point where we need to talk frankly about adaptation and mitigation. This includes our responsibilities to the wider world, most of which got much less than we did out of the emissions which created the crisis. By all means try to push the wider world towards keeping climate change in bounds. But don’t bet the mortgage on the wider world responding.

I’d look to bolster our institutions and our constitutional safeguards. When the extremes seem on the rise and more and more politicians seem happy to pull threads out of our liberal democratic fabric, this is now urgent. There are many possible ways to do this. We could have a stronger and more democratic second chamber, no longer vulnerable to prime ministerial packing or easy charges of illegitimacy. It could have a power of veto over amending certain key statutes. (Better yet, we might try to require a parliamentary super-majority of some sort to do so.) Ideally the Commons’ voting system would make it harder for one party to control it, if reform could pass a referendum. (It wouldn’t. I know better than to try to hold one now.) But frankly, even a reliable defence of the roles of the BBC and the judiciary would be a start.

And finally — the one potentially cheery thing on the list — I’d want to start doing something about the housing crisis. That might mean planning reform, dropping the ‘every sperm is sacred’ approach to every acre of the Green Belt (can we all please note the M25 is in the Green Belt and stop confusing it with AONBs, by the way?), major capital investment in housebuilding (a much better use for public money than renationalising water and creating public option energy companies), untying local authorities’ hands and a dash of statist ‘use it or lose it’ when it comes to land banking. We could even tie a land value tax (or a property tax of some kind) to providing ongoing revenue for housebuilding.

The problem is obvious. This is a daunting list, quite possibly more than any government can realistically manage in five years while keeping everything else ticking over. It’s also a pretty cheerless prospectus, with one significant but deeply divisive exception. (Let’s not kid ourselves that the voters are going to hear ‘property tax’ and think ‘a home for my kids’.) Essentially, it amounts to ‘stop things from falling over, implement a bad decision tolerably and try to protect ourselves in a dangerous world’. But right now, I honestly think a sensible government needs to play doctor more than visionary.

Clearly, Labour members and quite a few British voters want to be inspired. Unfortunately, damage limitation doesn’t have much of a heroic arc. I’m not sure the centre-left has often, if ever, managed to win a doctor’s mandate. And I’m not sure there’s an obvious way to square the circle. Can the centre-left make making the best of things sound hopeful?

This post was originally published on Medium.com on 8 May 2018.