Brexit, Revisited

As I'm sure you've noticed, I'm fascinated by the politics of disaster. How governments and societies navigate their way through chaos and havoc has always been something I've been drawn to mainly because the primary strategy is to act like there is no disaster. Everything gets played off as business as usual which, of course, makes everything worse and any solution impossible. Over the last three years, the two primary examples of this dynamic have been the Trump administration and Brexit. The former I talk about all the time, so I think it's only fair I pivot to the latter.

I wrote a post about the referendum a few years ago, and, looking back on it, I'm still pretty happy with it. Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, said she wants to call another Scottish independence referendum by 2021; considering that a significant factor in the last referendum was the UK threatening Scottish admittance into the EU- a thing Scotland really wants to be a part of- isn't going to be at play anymore, I imagine the vote would be closer if not flipped if it happened again. Right now, the polls I could find on the issue usually fall between 49% opposed- 43% in favor with the rest undecided. It's a tight spread, one I can easily see being swayed by whatever shape Brexit takes over the next few years.

The other prediction I feel even more confident in though is that Northern Ireland will leave the UK and reunite with the rest of the island to make Ireland a whole republic. Because of how Theresa May pursued the Brexit project and the redlines that came with that position, I believe has only made Northern Ireland's exit an inevitability. 

 

To put this in context, May, as Prime Minister, set out to achieve what was called a "Hard Brexit" meaning that the UK would have no membership in the Single Market, or be in any way a part of any trade or customs agreement with the EU except those it negotiated after the UK left. This presents a problem because if the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland aren't covered by a shared set of laws any more, then there must be a border between them, which makes everyone really uneasy because any border with all the guard towers and military checkpoints that come with it will bring back the Troubles almost instantly.

So what to do? Well, the EU proposed, and the UK agreed to, a measure called the "backstop." Basically, it says that, barring any other options- which don't exist - when the UK leaves the EU, Northern Ireland will effectively stay inside the EU so it maintains all the same legal standards as the Republic, therefore eliminating the need for a physical border. The kicker of this arrangement, which May and the Democratic Unionist Party both complained about, is that instead of a physical border on the island, it creates an internal "sea border" between NI and the UK- meaning anything transported from NI would have to go through the full range of customs checks before it could be sold to the rest of the UK and vice versa.

How does this all tie together and make me think that the break up is inevitable? Because, at the end of the day, the consequence of Brexit for Northern Ireland is going to be one of two things- a return to sectarian partisan violence, or further integration with the Republic at the cost of isolation from the rest of the UK. If there's violence, all the old political questions of why do family's on the same island have to suffer border and military checks just to visit or do business with each other resurface in all the same ugly fashions. The other added wrinkle is that Northern Ireland voted overwhelmingly against Brexit and it's own domestic legislative body - Stormount - hasn't been in session for two years after the fallout of a corruption scandal involving the current head of the DUP, Arlene Foster. If violence does come, it will be because of policies pursued against the popular will, Catholic and Protestant alike, so I expect people to start asking rather pointed questions about why they should live in fear and die over a political project they didn't want to happen and was pursued with no regard to their rather delicate situation.

On the other hand, an internal sea border, by nature, would force greater cooperation between the Republic, Northern Ireland, and the EU, with the rest of the UK left out in the cold. This is why May, along with Foster, were so dead set against the idea of the backstop. It reinforces the idea that Northern Ireland has more in common, and more to gain, by being closely allied to Ireland proper while keeping the UK at arms length (Foster and the DUP as a whole have the added incentive of wanting to stay in the UK because that's the only way their regressive Protestant asses can stay in power.)

No matter how you look at it, whether it's a the problem is of returning violence or the wonky reality of trying to manage one country with two separate legal frameworks, the easiest, less convoluted answer to the Irish question is for Northern Ireland to just be Ireland. That reality is acting like a political singularity, pulling every discussion of the matter into its orbit until the crushing effect of its gravity brings the idea to fruition.

And while I believe that wholeheartedly, I don't want to put any kind of time table on when this will happen because of the major mistake I made in the first Brexit post I did. In that piece, I predicted that the EU would react with its general ruthlessness in enforcing its political agenda against what it saw as an existential threat. I was basing my analysis on the Greek debt debacle, where the EU Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund- collectively known as The Troika- ground the newly elected Syriza party officials into dust over the issue of Greece's debt repayments. Syriza's (correct) position was that the Troika's terms of austerity were madness, that imposing such drastic cuts to public budgets would only make it more impossible for Greece to repay its loans which would drive them deeper into debt, which would only make the Troika demand deeper cuts for further assistance etc. etc. This argument fell on deaf ears and the Troika went about setting and forcing the Greek government to agree to absolutely punishing terms to the point where Greece still hasn't recovered from the 2008 crisis.

I expected the negotiations with the UK to go much the same way. In the early days after the referendum, Theresa May was making moves that pointed to UK's strategy being basically cherry picking EU membership benefits; full, unrestricted access to the single market, but without accepting any of the four freedoms central to that market. Obviously, this wasn't going to happen, and I foretold a brutal negotiation process where the EU laid out in excruciating detail that the extended grace which kept the UK sitting at the adults table of international affairs was now over, and would forcibly show it to its proper place where the other hanger on powers belonged.

This didn't happen. It didn't happen because the UK has, for three years now, acted like a senile, delusional old family member who's only around to rave about politics at Thanksgiving. It's almost impossible to lay out in full the sheer incompetence and bad faith the government has shown over the last three years. From triggering the Article 51 clause to leave the EU without any clear idea what it meant, to insisting, repeatedly, that the EU would grant it special exceptions to allow UK products and financial services when the EU negotiating team loudly, publicly, and insistently said that under no circumstances would that ever happen.

While she was Prime Minister, May would constantly go to summits in Brussels, seemingly come to an agreement with the EU team, then, when news broke in Britian about whatever the agreement was, would immediately backtrack and denounce the very same provisions she had spent the weekend negotiating. She would also try to make an end run around the European Commission by going directly to the different European heads of state to get support for her half baked initiatives even though the heads of state and the Commission told her every single time that such action wasn't appreciated and was completely unprofessional if not outright disrespectful.

Look, if a member of a foreign government names their cat "Brexit" because the constant indecision about wanting to go outside or stay reminds them of your government,  you've lost all credibility past, present, and future.

 

The only good moment Theresa May had came last November after negotiations closed and produced the withdrawal agreement. She said that the options before Britain were her deal, no deal, or no Brexit. It's literally the only moment of honest reflection in her entire tenure and it mattered not at all. 

Three votes were held to get Parliament's approval for the agreement and each time the measures went down in flames.

The final defeat prompted May to resign, which means the UK spent three of the six month extension the EU gave it on a meaningless election that changes absolutely nothing. Her replacement, Boris Johnson, is a buffoon who's spent his entire career honing that natural talent to become a living spectacle worthy of P.T. Barnum.

Recently, Johnson said that the backstop was dead, that he wouldn't honor it, and that he plans to go back and renegotiate not only that provision but the entire Withdrawal Agreement. That the EU has said, repeatedly (again), that renegotiating wasn't an option, that the Withdrawal Agreement is the only deal on the table and that the only reason the UK was granted an extension was so they could figure how to pass the Withdrawal Agreement is, of course, entirely ignored.

All this means that the UK is more likely than not to crash out of the EU without a deal of any kind which, is absolutely insane.

At their core, countries are legal entities with shit tons of people and land attached to them. Relationships between countries, by extension, are also just elaborate legal agreements. This is why Michael Barnier, the lead negotiator for the EU, set up that Brexit chart- it's basically a staircase of "If-Then" scenarios that break down "If these UK redlines, then this outcome." It's as close as a man can come to sketching out the terms of the deal in crayon so the UK could fully understand the consequences of their choices. Alas.

In effect, deal or no-deal, it doesn't really matter because Britain is screwed either way. One of the main rallying cries for this whole project was that it was an effort for the UK to take back its sovereignty from faceless EU bureaucrats. I'm curious about what they're getting though. Does forcing an ambassador to retire because he pointed out the obvious about the Trump administration or acting as proxy agents seizing Iranian ships off the coast of Spain sound like the actions of a sovereign nation, or do they sound like a client trying not to piss off its lone sugar daddy?

This dynamic is going to play out in social policy, too. When Trump did his state visit in May, he talked about the possibilities of the new trade deals that would come in the Brexit wake. In his usual "say the quiet parts out loud" way, Trump mentioned that one of the new avenues the US was excited for was opening up the NHS to US healthcare companies. Many a British politician - including Tories - lambasted the idea that the NHS would be auctioned off for profit to foreign companies.

That's all well and good, far as outrage goes, but when that request comes, what, exactly is the UK going to do to say no? If they leave with no deal, they'll need whatever deal they can get and it's not like Boris Johnson has shown any inclination to take an aggressive stance against Trump, or any U.S. administration's, demands. There's also the issue that the Tories can't protest too much about privatizing and crapifying the NHS since they've been doing that for years.

Then, you know, there's the EU. If the UK wants to do business with the EU, then they have  to sell products that conform to EU standards; standards the UK complained were too stringent and now will have no say in crafting or implementing. Because nothing says sovereignty than having to match your entire regulatory framework to a power that you didn't elect and can't influence in any way. (This dynamic is why the UK joined the EU in the first place.)

In the end, none of this really matters. The minute the referendum results came in, the UK set itself up for a path where the only possible outcome would be a UK diminished, humiliated, and dependent on the world powers that filled the vacuum left in the disintegration of the British empire. The only question was how.

You do have to wonder, now that they've got the "independence" they thought was so cravenly taken from them, are they happy?