Gecko Towers 7th September 2020
Nearly twenty-five years before the turn of the new Millennium, I was in college. During the second year of my law degree course, we studied Revenue Law – a fascinating subject. One of the key qualifications for determining the enforceability of a particular tax was the overriding demand that the tax needed to be “certain”. It had to be collected in a uniform way from all those who owed it. Certainty needs to be delivered by the government as the body seeking to impose the tax on its electorate.
Brexit and its application, of course, has far wider implications that the administration of a new tax. However, I would argue that the UK electorate – including those who choose not to live in the UK – deserve the certainty of knowing what Brexit is and how it will impact on them, enabling them to plan accordingly.
The headlines in recent days have not celebrated the progress on the negotiations of a Trade deal with the EU, far from it. Wasn’t it, after all, according to then EU negotiator, Dr Liam Fox, “one of the easiest in human history” to achieve? No, the media has been screaming about the changes to the negotiating team with the eleventh hour arrival of Tony Abbott, a former Australian PM and the subject of some unsavory allegations, who, no doubt, has been charged with the job of delivering a so-called “Australian-style” or “Canadian-style” trade deal with the EU.
At the same time despite an appropriate level of posturing it appears that the lead negotiators, Lord Frost and Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, are determined to tread water. Why? I’d suggest to enable the clock to run down to the inevitable expiry of the Withdrawal Agreement at at 31st December 2020. Instead of celebrating the good riddance of one of the most miserable years on record, our New Year’s Day hangovers will be exacerbated by the continued misery of uncertainty of a No Deal Brexit. It will, in my opinion, bring nothing good to either the UK or the EU.
Boris has been quoted as saying that politicians should not overlook one key issue. They work for the electorate. In a Parliamentary Democracy the government’s conduct is subject to regular performance reviews by the electorate at the ballot box. The threat of dismissal at a General Election, should sit hawk-like on the politician’s shoulder, despite the size of the current government’s Parliamentary majority.
You may have seen last week that both the Tory and Labour Party’s approval ratings, among the UK electorate, sat at about equal.
Listen, I was firmly anti-Brexit but even I have to accept that the democratic will of the UK was to leave and Boris has only one job, to deliver Brexit. Indeed his landslide victory on a single policy ticket delivered a mandate to negotiate and to achieve what the majority requested. Has he done that? Can he do that? Or is the UK being led to believe the achievable is simply unachievable.
So with just over 400 days into Boris’ Ministry, having been elected on the “Get Brexit Done” ticket, where are we?
I don’t like the word “squabbling” as it suggests a picture of juvenile petulance and intransigence that delivers, as history may well show us, a complete nothing. I would suggest that while this may serve the dark purposes of a fine slither of UK politicians and their cronies, it is far from an acceptable arrangement for the vast majority of the UK’s citizens.
Yes, it is a huge concession that we have had a Covid-19 pandemic to deal with so naturally negotiations will have slowed. There was an opportunity to pick up the slack by seeking an extension to the Withdrawal Agreement for orderly negotiations but that ball was also dropped.
The media posturing has continued unabated but not even the staunchly Tory Press has managed to capture the attention of a disbelieving public who are exhibiting all the signs of Brexit Fatigue. Each side believing the other will blink first, has resulted in a classic stale mate.
The Donald has made a variety of stupid comments over the years but as a “business person” he has given an interesting and probably correct observation that if the deal is wholly unacceptable and irredeemable then the party not liking it should simply walk away. In this scenario it, of course, envisage that the parties to the EU negotiations have actually crowded round a table, a Zoom or Skype call and the proposals from either side are clear. I am just not at all certain after all this time, despite Dominic Raab’s assurances, that either side is entirely clear on what the other is offering/countering.
I can see from the EU’s point of view, who, when there was a chance that the UK electorate would vote in the General Election to effectively cancel the results of the 2016 Referendum, that dragging their feet may have been an option, but they didn’t. Now the EU has to make a Trade deal with a vitally important European partner in the UK. Of course, the EU has to avoid giving such concessions that would encourage other members to consider leaving, but they surely wouldn’t want a No Deal Brexit.
I can only assume that Boris has decided either that the UK electorate best interests are served by a No Deal Brexit – which by the way was not the Mandate he was given in Summer 2019 – or that his team is simply so inept that they have been unable to secure any form of arrangement that is even remotely acceptable. The latter says probably way too much about the quality of those entrusted with such a task. The nature of a negotiation is a two way process of willingness and compromise none of which is on display in these dealings.
The losers in this vacuous game of political chess will inevitably be the UK Electorate, wherever they choose, as is their right, to live. They have elected a Government that has not delivered on the single purpose of getting Brexit done. A vote of No Confidence looms but in the meantime the confusion and stress faced by UK citizens everywhere results from the controlling interests of the politics of fear and is fundamentally cruel. This despicable disinterest in the mental health, economic welfare or social wellbeing of UK nationals is, frankly, shameful.
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