#3623
Post
by animist » July 19th, 2018, 11:24 am
I watched last week's "Question Time", which is increasingly and predictably dominated by the Brexit mess. I would just like to focus on one argument over the "no-deal" scenario. This is that Britain must appear - and become - prepared for this outcome, because to fail to do so would undermine our negotiating status, and this was the argument of panellists Charles Moore, Piers Morgan and, I think, of the Tory minister present. I've written this little piece below as I think that Remainers may be failing to deal with the Leave argument as they should do.
The Leave argument is that any negotiation process requires that the home side can show that, although it desires a deal with the opposite side, it does not need it. My contention is that normal negotiation rules do not apply to Britain over Brexit for the following reasons:
1 In fact we in Britain are not preparing for no-deal, just talking about it (I don't know that the EU is preparing much either, but then it has barely been involved by the British negotiators, so how can it know what to do? Is it supposed to waste money on making preparations which some new turn in British domestic politics makes unnecessary?) So any reasonable onlooker would conclude that the no-deal preparation tactic is mere bluff. The very fact that, in broad daylight, this argument is being made severely weakens it: what I mean is that one cannot hope to convince the other side in an antagonistic negotiation that one is strong if one makes it blindingly obvious that this is a deliberate negotiating ploy. The EU knows how divided we are and, I imagine, will take full advantage of this knowledge - although I have sufficient faith in the good sense of the EU negotiators to believe them when they say that they would find it easier to negotiate with a stable and united partner than one which exhibits the chaos of the Tory party at present.
2 But more centrally still, Brexit differs from normal business negotiations IMO because in the latter - and let's take the recently completed trade deal between the EU and Japan as an example - both sides really do have an option to walk away from the negotiation. Neither the EU nor Japan is radically attempting to change their position in the international arena by entering into a possible deal with the other, and so neither side actually needs a deal - both sides will be much the same if the dealmaking were to fail. But Britain has no idea where it is going and therefore really does need a deal with the EU. It has no idea of what dependence on WTO rules would mean for its international trade (on which its industries depend) and it must know that no-deal means a largescale decrease in the trade with the EU which has been central to its trading relations for many decades. It has made no real progress in securing new partners for potential international trade deals, and the most obvious candidate for a new trade deal, the USA, is led by an egotistical and unstable President who is actually stifling international trade by erecting new tariffs. How then can "no-deal" be an option for a sane government? But then, do we have a sane government?