Brexit: he got it done

Boris Johnson said he’d get Brexit done. And he has. With just seven days to go (after four and a half years), he’s agreed a new trade deal with the European Union. Britain can leave with a deal in place, avoiding the mess of a no-deal Brexit.

The deal has a great title. “The Christmas Eve deal”. That has a fine ring to it, like “The Good Friday agreement”, that brought peace to Northern Ireland. But does it do as much good?

Johnson hails the deal
A typically modest and self-effacing gesture

Johnson is trumpeting the outcome as a major success, but then, who would expect otherwise? The problem is that Johnson has, as the police would say, form in this kind of thing. Remember when he was asked in November 2019 whether businesses in Northern Ireland would have to complete paperwork to send goods to Britain? He announced that if anyone was asked to fill in such a document, they should phone him, “and I will direct them to throw that form in the bin”.

To preserve the benefits of the Good Friday Agreement, the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic has to be kept open. But that has implications, as the BBC reported on 9 December:

Northern Ireland will continue to follow many of the EU's rules, meaning that lorries can continue to drive across the border without having to be inspected.

However, there will be a new "regulatory" border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain (England, Scotland and Wales). That's because, unlike Northern Ireland, Great Britain won't have to follow EU rules in future.

This means some checks on goods moving between Great Britain and Northern Ireland will be needed.

If nothing else, that divergence between the Prime Minister’s promises and what actually happens, ought to teach us some caution. So we might do well to be a little sceptical when he tells us: 

This European question’s been going on for decades. I think this gives us the platform, the foundation for a really prosperous new relationship.

What the agreement has given us is the right to keep on trading with the European Union without tariffs or quotas, but with a bit more in the way of bureaucracy and checks. In other words, things won’t be much worse after Brexit. But a “really prosperous new relationship”? It sounds like a relationship a tad less prosperous than the old one.

Besides, it only concerns trade in goods. Everything is still to be negotiated when it comes to services, which represent some 80% of British GDP. All the present deal does is create an atmosphere in which those negotiations can take place without too much bitterness. But what reason is there to suppose that an eventual deal will be better than what we have now?

Meanwhile, the sticking point for many months, according to many of the principals involved (but can they really have meant it?) was fishing. It represents 0.2% of British GDP. Truly insignificant. But this became the key question on which negotiations might founder? It seems extraordinary.

Johnson claimed that he’d come back with a great outcome for fishing. Sadly, the British fishing industry doesn’t agree. Barrie Deas, Chief Executive of the National Federation of Fishermen’s Organisations, said:

In the endgame, the prime minister made the call and caved in on fish 

Doesn’t sound as though Johnson has much to boast about, even on a question that had somehow been promoted far beyond its real importance.

The key question for Brexit, though, was ‘taking back control’. Johnson followed his claim about a new and prosperous relationship with another: 

We have taken back control of laws and our destiny … We have taken back control of every jot and tittle of our regulation in a way that is complete and unfettered.

Well, perhaps, up to a point. Tariff and quota-free access is dependent on maintaining a ‘level playing field’ between British and EU industry. That means Britain has to stick to regulatory standards and state subsidies that don’t give it a competitive advantage against the EU. Johnson’s success was only to have a British enforcement body judging whether Britain is in breach. Either side can, however, apply punitive measures if it feels there has been non-compliance. How is that “complete and unfettered” control of “every jot and tittle of regulation”?

What goes is freedom of UK citizens to move anywhere in the EU. Professional qualifications will no longer be automatically recognised. UK citizens will need visas to stay over 90 days. What’s more, the Erasmus student-exchange programme is closed for British students, because the last thing we want is for our most educated young people to have spent any time living amongst, and getting to know, their fellow Europeans.

The least one can say for the Christmas Eve Agreement is that it isn’t as disastrous as we might have feared. Sadly, that’s also about the most one can say for it. It does no one any good, just a little less harm in certain areas than might otherwise have been the case.

Le Carré: wisdom as well as brilliance
We’re going to miss him

Just a couple of weeks ago, we received the bad news that John le Carré had died. This Brexit deal reminds me of what one of his characters, a fisherman, says in A Perfect Spy, about material that seems promising at first, but is disappointing when viewed more closely.

[It] looked good on the plate, but when you came to chew it over, nothing really there… Same as trying to eat pike. All bones.

A description that perfectly fits any statement made by Boris Johnson, for whom the expression “overpromising and underdelivering” could have been invented.

Let’s see how this Christmas Eve deal plays out.