Brexit And Trade Agreements

Brexit: A(n Attempted) Political Analysis

A good friend of mine from university days says that there is something of a cat and mouse game going on in British politics at the moment, certainly in the Labour party at least. The EU referendum created a discontinuity in the country's politics, splitting traditional voting patterns down the middle. Two very relevant points are that a majority of MPs are known to personally favour staying in the EU and the government has an absolute majority of just 14.

It is almost certainly fair to say that in any forthcoming bye-elections Brexit will be an important factor. There is no way of knowing how many bye-elections there will be over the next couple of years or what the results will be but, at the present time, either 8 government rebels or 15 abstentions in any vote in Parliament could be enough to defeat the government. In other words, the government's hold on power is tenuous, to say the least. So how will MPs and their constituents be likely to vote in situations where Brexit is an issue?

It's almost certainly fair to say (again) that MPs' first loyalty is to themselves rather than their party. Their principal aim is to be re-elected. Now, part of the discontinuity created by the EU referendum is that people did not vote on party lines, so party loyalty among constituents can't be relied upon. Thus the stance taken by most MPs on Brexit will most probably depend on how they judge the mood among their constituents. Some, the hard-liners on either side, will stay with their convictions. The rest will judge the mood among their constituents and, according to that judgement, declare either that Brexit was a democratic decision and we should go through with it, like it or not, or that the government clearly can't handle Brexit and so we should abandon it. Either of these arguments would justify a pro- or anti-Brexit stance. This point will be modified in Parliament by the party whips. MPs had a free vote in the referendum but Conservative MPs at least are very unlikely to get one on Brexit matters.

If we look at traditional party loyalties the Labour party has been the home of the working class and intellectual liberals and the Conservative party the home of business interests and hard pragmatists. The Liberal Democrats have always been somewhere in the middle ground, where they remain but with a definite pro-EU stance. Both the Conservative and Labour party have a significant extreme element within them (the old fascist/communist divide) that the referendum has split out. The Labour party is divided between that, pro-Brexit, and its benign socialist element which is generally pro-Remain. The Conservative party is split between that, pro-Brexit, and its business interest component, with few businesses apparently regarding the prospect of a hard Brexit with enthusiasm (and it is difficult to see how even a soft Brexit could actually improve business prospects). Future voting will depend less on what parties traditionally stand for than on the numbers within each of these components in each constituency (and how well MPs judge the balance).

Very recently it seems to be becoming clear that Theresa May will go for a hard Brexit. If so, that will provoke the widest split among MPs and there must be some doubt as to whether she can get Parliamentary approval…..if she has to. Which produces a focus on the forthcoming Supreme Court ruling on the matter. If the Supreme Court says she can go ahead anyway she probably will; she won't care about her promise to let Parliament debate Brexit if she does not depend on the result of the debate. If not, she has a battle on her hands and Conservative MPs inclined to rebel can point to party sponsors who have said they will withhold sponsorship if there is no EU trade agreement as a counter to any accusation of party disloyalty.

Whatever happens, Brexit is going to change the political map of Britain for a long time and, for a while at least, throw the structure of the current three-party system into the melting pot. I probably shouldn't meddle too much in politics as I'm not close enough to the ground but, as the Chinese would say, we certainly live in interesting times.

Trade Agreements

I had another of my furious shouting at the TV moments when the BBC news reported that Trump had moved the UK to the front of the queue in negotiating a trade agreement. The commentator chose simply to comment on the effect this might have on EU attitudes, probably good but possibly not so good news. My fury was that, to my mind, this totally missed the point from a commentator who is supposed to expertly assess the situation. Front or back of queue, every country with which the UK will want a trade agreement will also want a trade agreement with the UK. Political sanctions aside, why ever not for Heaven's sake? The crux of the question, totally missed by the BBC “expert” is: on whose terms? Trump will presumably offer the UK the already defined TTIP agreement (or something worse) which the EU has already rejected because it hands power to US corporations over national governments. So the UK takes back control just to give it to US commercial interests? Why can't a supposedly informed commentator home in on this? Must the same happen now for every new mooted trade agreement for the UK? Greeted with fanfare with no questions asked as to the terms? Trump or one of his advisors has reportedly said now was the time to exploit the weakness of the UK's position, and that won't have been lost on the rest of the world. The crucial point with any new mooted trade agreement will not be whether it can happen but whether the UK will get screwed (again). I shall try to avoid looking at any such announcements until I find a commentator who has the wit to focus on this, if only for the sake of my blood pressure.