As we enter the last weeks of negotiation between Britain and the EU, things are not looking good. All the possible outcomes look both painful and expensive for the UK. How did we get here? At the root of the problem is the British government’s definition of sovereignty, claims Nicholas Westcott (SOAS).
A peculiar notion of sovereignty underpins the three main reasons why the government will fail to get a good outcome. Firstly, very few British ministers, or Tory MPs, seem to have much understanding of how the EU works or negotiates. After 40 years inside the belly of the beast, this is surprising; but it seems to be a point of principle not to understand, nor to take advice from those who do.
Secondly, the government has sidelined Britain’s economic interests, except fishing, in the interests of what they declare to be ‘sovereignty’, a matter seen as quite distinct from the national interest as a whole.
Thirdly, their definition of “sovereignty” has made failure inevitable. It is a definition closer to that used by North Korea than to that of any other free-trading western nation. Real sovereignty is about protecting a country’s interests, not simply its borders and laws, and by that measure every form of Brexit now on offer reduces Britain’s sovereignty, and a ‘no deal’ Brexit damages it most.
The second point has been adequately analysed by others. This government has never accepted the economic, and business, reality that a domestic market of 60 million is too small to build world-beating businesses, whereas a domestic market of 500 million makes such businesses possible. Business interests, in particular, have been relegated firmly to the bottom of the heap by British negotiators – much to the surprise of the EU side and, indeed, of British business itself. Yet their protests have been muted, perhaps because they will need every penny of Treasury support they can get to weather the storm to come. I will therefore focus on the first two.
Negotiating with the EU
It is only right to recognise the extraordinary efforts of all those who have been involved with negotiating the 600 pages of detailed texts on Britain’s departure. The number of issues that needed to be settled has been massive, and the scale of work to achieve this by the deadline has been enormous. Credit where it is due, even if it has been unrecognised by a media and Parliament focussed solely on the areas of disagreement.
Of course, to have set a hard 31 December deadline, and then hold back from negotiating many of the details until so late in the day has made the task all the harder. Besides the Prime Minister’s nature to make no decisions until they become unavoidable, both he and Conservative MPs held unfailingly to a belief that the EU only makes concessions, only cuts deals, at the very last minute, so it is essential to hang tough on all key issues until the end.
This was a fundamental mistake, misunderstanding both the EU’s purpose and its methods. The EU is a cumbersome beast, and though on trade the Commission has sole competence, and therefore some freedom to negotiate, it still needs to be able to sell the outcome to member states, many of whom have serious political interests at stake. Any trade deal has, therefore, to be done through the painstaking building up of components over time, finding agreements in the context of an overall balanced package on which there is a consensus between the negotiators so that it can be sold to both the member states and the European Parliament on the EU side and domestic constituents in the UK. There will always be difficult areas of disagreement, but these cannot all be settled nor a deal cut purely at the last minute; it is a process of building consensus, not combat to the death. Cameron made the same mistake when he tried to bounce the European Council on a text in 2011 and failed dismally.
In particular, the Internal Market Bill has been a spectacular own goal. To renege on the Withdrawal Agreement and propose to break international law undermined the one thing that might have softened the EU negotiating position – trust. In undermining it, the PM has made it far more difficult for his negotiators to get concessions, and not just on the enforcement mechanism. The EU exists as a community of law, something the UK always defended vigorously in the past, so to play fast and loose with it on departure is taken as an intention of bad faith.
But this has just reinforced a more fundamental problem: that the UK set its red lines in a place that breached the two fundamental things on which the EU would not, and could not, budge – the integrity of the single market and the preservation of the Good Friday Agreement. The Brexiteers did this on the grounds that ‘sovereignty‘ demanded it, as explained in David Frost’s lecture in Brussels last February. In reality, sovereignty does no such thing. This is pure politics.
What is sovereignty?
The Brexiteers’ definition of sovereignty has always been the core of the problem. It is the greatest failure of the Remain campaign that they scarcely engaged, let alone won, this battle. It left them unable to expose the reality that Brexit meant throwing away control, not taking it back.
Trading across borders means regulating across borders, and the more you want to trade, the more regulation you need. This goes for services and data as much as for goods. ‘Sovereignty’ in this context means having control not only of regulation in your domestic market but in the markets you sell to and buy from. In the 1960s, Britain vividly experienced the drawbacks of having no control over the European market and too small a domestic market for its manufacturers. EFTA did not provide what was needed, so only membership of the EEC would enable Britain to defend its national economic interests effectively. It was less a case of giving sovereignty away than, by sharing it, extending our sovereignty to mainland Europe.
It is thinner sovereignty, less absolute than the North Korean variety, but more effective in protecting British interests because it gives us a far greater influence over the shape of regulation in our main market, as well as on the position of Europe in international affairs – an issue that matters more and more. It provided a de facto veto on both. That is, you won’t always get your own way, but you can prevent your neighbours from going the wrong way.
Ultimately, real sovereignty means having a seat at the table, a voice in the debate and a vote on the outcome. We have thrown all that away. We are left with paper sovereignty that sounds good but has no effect. We become a rule-taker from countries and Unions bigger than us, rather than a rule-maker.
Does that matter? Brexiteers argue that foreigners will have to listen to Britain anyway, and the costs membership imposed on Britain – to our budget in cash terms, and more particularly through the requirement for free movement – exceeded the benefits. But the cash calculation excluded the costs of separation, which are permanent, not one-off; and the reality is that to grow, Britain needs a regular supply of immigrants, and if they don’t come from Europe, they will come from elsewhere. As for listening, our partners will always do that, but in business and trade size matters and the bigger you are, the more they listen and better the deal you get.
Brexiteers would also argue that their assertion of sovereignty does reflect national interests. But this exposes the problem that their understanding of British national interest is identical to their party political interest. The fact that Scotland and Northern Ireland both needed membership of the EU to make the United Kingdom work for them was excluded from this calculation. The Brexiteers definition of sovereignty will therefore come back to bite them when – as we have already seen – they argue that Scotland’s interests dictate that it should stay in the British Union. The party political interest of the SNP dictates otherwise and therefore – using the Brexiteers own argument – they will declare that Scottish sovereignty demands separation from an English nation that gives them no say in fundamental decisions. The Brexiteers will be hung with their own petard.
The mantra of ‘taking back control over our borders, our trade and our money’ is therefore not only wrong but leading the UK into a blind alley of its own making. It will be no surprise when some members of the Union decide to cut and run back to the main road. Sooner or later, England will have to follow, dragging its precious sovereignty behind it.
This article gives the views of the author, and not the position of LSE Brexit, nor of the London School of Economics. A shorter version of this blog has appeared on the UK in a Changing Europe.
“…the reality is that to grow, Britain needs a regular supply of immigrants, and if they don’t come from Europe, they will come from elsewhere.” Anyone with a basic understanding of economics will know that this is true. But in the eyes of many Brexiteers, it is a tough pill to swallow. Great article. Thank you!
“Britain needs a regular supply of immigrants”
In the long term immigration is nothing but a Ponzi scheme. We use immigrant labour to address today’s needs and obligations, but new citizens create new future needs and future obligations which in turn creates even more demand for immigrants. This process cannot continue indefinitely. Eventually, the country will become overcrowded and unliveable and the number of people wishing to leave the country will equal the number wishing to join. At this point, the whole Ponzi scheme will collapse because it depends upon an ever increasing population.
Even now, I live in a village where the draft Local Plan proposes that the number of houses in our village should increase by be increased by over 160% in the next twenty years. The local motorway has 10 lanes but people are complaining that there isn’t enough capacity. Enough is enough.
Your village may, in your view, suffer inequitable growth. I suspect not through immigration directly, but perhaps through displacement. That says nothing for the balance of population growth nationally or the need for demographic rebalancing cannot be ignored if the economy is to revive and social welfare ne properly funded..
Fortress Europe and the EU Single Market was all about ensuring that capitalism obtained all the resources it needed, including labour. But is was always about boundaries, borders and protection of the European market. Expansion into Eastern Europe allows access to large reserves of skilled and highly educated labour for the most dynamic economies and firms, ensuring workers had the ‘freedom’ to get on their bikes and look for work – the freedom to work or starve. Advocates of the EU prefer not to mention the devastation migration leaves behind, communities hollowed out and families separated. But when the Eastern European labour reserves run low employers can always top up with immigrants from outside the EU, largely to do the dirty and least well paid jobs that European citizens are not prepared to do. But these Others are not treated equally and are not given citizenship. They instead have to accept their temporary contract via the guest worker system and are expected to leave once business no longer has a need for them.
It’s as big a mistake to see immigration as a Ponzi scheme as it is to assume that sovereignty means not committing oneself to multilateral obligations (both mistakes made during previous disastrous surges of populism by the way, for example in Germany in the 1930s). Obviously current immigration trends will not continue until the entire world population moves to the U.K. It will cease when the demographics of the U.K. population becomes more balanced (higher ratio of young to old, required to sustain the economy) and when the number of resultant low paid jobs that cannot be filled by British workers decreases (since 2008 GDP in Britain has increased but per capita GDP – the true measure of wealth – has not, primarily because the jobs that have been created have been low paid; this has occurred alongside a historic decoupling of wages and unemployment rates). The implication is that the U.K. will need to continue recruiting from abroad (most likely from Asia given our break from the EU) for some decades to come.
I’m not completely sure about this, but does not the post-Brexit immigration system put non-EU people and EU nationals on the same footing, so that there is no reason why future immigration shouldn’t be from inside the EU as much as from outside it? And all of it will be equally problematic – so economically debilitating?
“Obviously current immigration trends will not continue until the entire world population moves to the U.K. It will cease when the demographics of the U.K. population becomes more balanced.”
The first part is obvious but the second isn’t. Apart from anything else a more balanced population is a pious hope rather than an inevitability. I suggested previously that net immigration will cease when conditions in this country become sufficiently intolerable that as many people leave as arrive. This process is starting already. My son left to work in the US because he couldn’t afford a family home near his (then) job in London. If net immigration ceases due to the mechanism I suggest then there are two consequences. One is that life in this country will be so intolerable that people will be scrambling to leave. The other is there will not be a demographically balanced population and something will have to give.
Your view of the EU, and in particular people, is all too tragically typical of leavers.
Although the “We must leave to protect our lesser cousins” isn’t seen as often.
A great many Brits use their rights to move to and work in other countries. FoM of People is not one way. And even if it were, this idea “We should view these people as a means of production, serfs to do our dirty then send home before they want a shower” dehumanises people and reduces them to mere function.
You might be content to live in a world where that’s considered accepted practice, personally I prefer to fight for one where everyone is treated fairly, decently, and equally.
I think it is pretty well accepted by all that the country thrives on talented and skilled immigrants who assimilate well and who respect our values and customs. What the country doesn’t need are more immigrants who add no value, are a burden on the state, refuse to assimilate and do not respect our customs and values, thankfully Brexit will put an end to that.
The EU immigrants did integrate, did provide added value, did respect our customs and values, as they were in any case very similar to theirs. And they were net contributors.
Is Spain the country you are referring to?
Ah, Schrodinger’s dirty immigrant. Stealing our jobs while taking our benefits.
You do know, if you open the box, you’ll find they don’t exist, don’t you?
Not only that, there are EU measures which would ensure the very thing you claim happens can’t. We chose not to implement them.
oh that old chestnut…..
Its simple theres immigrants and there refugees.
A person won’t immigrate to take the lowest paid work
Refugees are coming due to their homes being bombed ( we’ll cover who makes the bombs in the next round)
My own experience is that even refugees bring value, not initially in the monetary sense, but certainly in the cultural vale sense. How many of those NHS doctors today are the children of those “burdens on the state” you reject so off hand.
And it has to be pointed out, refugees aren’t coming from EU nations. So brexit will not stop the flow of people fleeing wars, famines and authoritarian regimes. Unless you think the Tories becoming just that will make them turn away.
Brexit won’t put an end to it at all, it only changes where they come from. Since the vote my overseas employees come from Turkey, Africa and India, and not Spain, Italy and Greece. All Brexit does is change the mix – oh and I have to pay them more from next year.
Exactly my experience. We are still recruiting at the same rate from overseas, but where as they were from Western Europe, they are now from Africa, India and Turkey. The EU is a competitive employement market and EU workers now feel unwelcome so are going elsewhere.
More twaddle about the 60s and 70s uk being a poor deficit ridden backward outcrop. You forgot the ” sick man of europe” trope, when in fact the uk through the 60s and 70s was a world leading country and produced most of its own consumer products and agricultural.
“uk through the 60s and 70s was a world leading country and produced most of its own consumer products and agricultural.”
Sounds a lot like the USSR.
Or North Korea.
HAHAHA HA HA HA HA…..
oil leaks, cars that rusted out from new and Jelly Babies aren’t world leading.
The UK has for decades been a net importer, and can not produce sufficient primary produce to even feed itself.
“Very few British ministers, or Tory MPs, seem to have much understanding of how the EU works or negotiates.”
I think they do. That is why they are trying to leave. The more I see of the EU negotiating stance the less I wish to belong.
The notion that the UK government is behaving like North Korea is absurd and without reason.
Has North Korea demanded access to the fishing waters of another nation?
Did the EU insists upon access to Canadian fishing waters during its negotiations over CETA?
The problem is that the EU fails to understand what sovereignty means. Its very structure is designed to remove sovereignty from member states whilst giving them a few crumbs such as specific and limited powers, each of which are ultimately controlled by the EU.
The existence of the Infringement Procedure (or whatever name it currently uses) is proof of that.
With each passing day, the EU reminds us that membership should be avoided at all costs by developed nations such as the UK.
European fishermen are present within British waters for centuries. And British fishermen reciprocate (see shellfish in haie de Somme). You cut abruptly those access and you will have to manage the consequences.
Unemployed French fishermen will block Calais and Dunkirk, the resulting cost for UK will be interesting.
Defra issued new fishing rules which are ways more absurd than EU rules. They will prevent UK fishermen from selling their catch.
Defra also issued the new subvention rules for agriculture. Net losses for UK farmers.
City is presently absorbing some bad news about loss of equivalence.
SMMT is forecasting closures. Do you really see a world where UK will define auto rules when it’s own market is so limited?
Chemical industries will slowly close if they’re outside of REACH.
Hauliers are perplexed by customs and permit rules.
Even DUP is perplexed by HMG.
Being independent and sovereign. OK but where in the name of sovereignty you have to shoot in your own feet?
if North Korea had been sold the rights then yes they would demand access.
But lets have a discussion about something that’s barely 1/2% of the GDP
The problem is that you ENGLISH fail to understand what the Union is. And keep asking for privileges you cannot get
It’s not surprising that those opposed to Britain leaving the EU should now wish to re-define sovereignty. Having attempted to ignore the issue of sovereignty in favour of selling the economic benefits of trade, or rather the disaster that was supposed to unfold immediately after a vote to leave, the anti-Brexiteers hoped we might forget sovereignty. But sovereignty continues to remain on the minds of the electorate and project fear failed to get us to forget it. At the heart of the popular demand to break free of the EU was the idea of sovereignty, captured by the catchy election phrase ‘taking back control’ that seemed to resonate with the electorate. An attempt to re-define sovereignty towards a more vague and meaningless idea of ‘the country’s interest’ reveals a fear of democracy and a good old fashioned fear of the masses, a mistrust of those ‘deplorables’ and ignoramuses who we are told are unable to see beyond the misinformation the alleged Russian interference, Cambridge Analytica meddling, or a message on the side of a campaign bus. So why not re-define sovereignty so that ‘real sovereignty is about protecting a country’s interests, not simply its borders and laws’. Perhaps doing this, it is hoped, will expunge the democratic content of sovereignty. It suggests, as David Cameron suggested, ‘we’re all in it together’ and that we all have the same interests based on the economy, trade, security and defence. But of course the vast majority of British citizens do not own a multinational corporation that makes vast profits from trading within a protect EU Single Market. Very few of us are landowners benefitting from the subsidies of the Common Agricultural Policy. Some have more at stake in the current system than others – which is why democracy and universal suffrage are so fundamentally important. The significance of national sovereignty in terms of democracy is that it is about the laws of the land being made by a democratic and accountable Parliament. The historic struggle for, and gains from, universal suffrage and democracy can only be maintained if Parliament is sovereign. But through outsourcing legislative powers to the un-elected EU institutions it undermines Parliamentary sovereignty and therefore democracy and universal suffrage. Seeking a more international means to democracy sounds very worthy but in practice extending the legislative power to the EU entails a compromise of democracy. The highest level of democracy remains at the national level.
The essential malfunction in the Brexit debate, pretty much from the beginning, has been a misunderstanding of the concept of sovereignty. The Tories insist that every last scrap of it be reclaimed from the EU. There is an apparent failure to understand that virtually every international agreement, particularly modern trade deals, is in some way a voluntary limit on the exercise of sovereignty.
In trade agreements parties agree, at the very least, to inform each other of potential trade conflicts and consult each other on regulatory measures – particularly on matters of state aid. The Tory right, though, believes sovereignty to mean that we should be able to do as we please within our own borders and it’s no business of anyone else. That approach does not yield much in the way of cooperation from others.
The dispute with the EU is less a matter of limits to sovereignty. It is that EU membership requires the transfer of political authority. While you remain a member of it, you agree to submit to its rulings, directives and instructions.
The absolutist interpretation of sovereignty on the eurosceptic right, however, is born of a rampant paranoia, and a refusal to recognise that mutually binding limits to the exercise of sovereignty can be beneficial. It establishes the basis of trust upon which trade is built.
By way of our own refusal to set out in detail our own state aid regime, for example, leaves the EU wondering if investing in the UK is a safe bet or whether it will face unfair competition. If EU businesses face that kind of uncertainty, it cannot offer reciprocal access to its own markets. The Brexiteer prefers to believe that the EU’s requests for clarity and a “level playing field” are more to do with the EU’s desire to retain control of the UK after its departure – fearful that Brexit Britain could very well prosper and become a more attractive trade partner.
What the Brexiteer fails to observe is that the EU also seeks to safeguard its own sovereignty and customs integrity. If it were to relax its own frontiers and allow UK goods without assurances and regulatory guarantees, then the UK could then unilaterally set the lowest bar of market entry.
The thing about all this stuff is that you either get it or you don’t. And the Tories don’t. After a while Theresa May figured it out which explains her ill fated attempt to negotiate a “common rule book” and a goods only single market deal, but the closer she got to understanding it, the more alienated she became from her party. Thus I have a great deal of sympathy for her. The more I learned about trade the more Brexiteers accused me of being a remainer – just for pointing out the obvious. Maintaining Tory standard ignorance is a loyalty test.
This conceptual misapprehension on the right is ultimately what was driving “hard Brexit” – that and group conformity where to get in with the Brexit in crowd you must demonstrate how hard your Brexit is. You have to be macho to be in the club.
Tied in with the question of sovereignty that underpins the UK’s negotiating ethos is the insistence that we should not be a rule taker. This was one of the reasons that eliminated the EEA option. Anand Menon and Jonathan Portes (allegedly experts) of Uk and EU had been briefing against the option, telling anyone who would listen that Norway adopts all the rules with no say. There are volumes to be written on just how wrong this is, but what’s done is done. They won that argument. We’re leaving the single market.
The question of adopting rules, though, is one that does not go away after Brexit. If we’re not taking them from Brussels either directly or via Efta then we’re taking them directly from the source. The fact is that everyone in the age of globalisation and global governance, including the EU, is a rule taker. This is an age old debate happening the world over.
Published in 1995, Phillip Alston observes in his book, Treaty-Making and Australia: Globalisation Versus Sovereignty “In countries like Australia, national sovereignty has long been a thing of the past when it comes to many areas of business regulation. In the world system, Australia is substantially a law-taker rather than a law-maker. This process of globalisation of regulatory law has been accelerated by the General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT). Thanks to the GATT, our food standards will now, effectively, be set in Rome rather than Canberra or Sydney.”
The impact of the GATT, says Alston “is no more than an acceleration of what has been going on for a long time. For years, some of our air safety standards have been written by the Boeing Corporation in Seattle, or if not by them, by the US Federal Aviation Administration in Washington. Our ship safety standards have been written by the International Maritime Organization in London. Our motor vehicle safety standards have been written by Working Party 29 of the Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE). Our telecommunications standards have been substantially set in Geneva by the International Telecommunications Union.”
That much was true in 1995 and it’s especially true now. Global governance has exploded in scale and scope. Britain may have negotiated our future relationship with sovereignty at the forefront of its thinking, but that thinking was certainly not deep thinking. Global regulation greases the wheels of global trade and it is something with which we must contend. It is not going away and Brexit is only a partial remedy to our sovereignty concerns. We may have repatriated the decision making powers, but Britain must till navigate a galaxy of rules, standards and conventions, all of which place limits on the exercise of sovereignty.
This in particular was why the oft repeated assertion that “Norway has no influence” was wrong. Most regulatory initiatives coming out of Brussels begin life in the global bodies, and most of the standards invoked by EU regulations are global standards, often of UN origin on anything from vehicle safety and emissions rules through to aubergine marketing standards. Indeed, even those regulations on “bendy bananas” are of UNECE origin. The Single Window system that will eventually run the entire EU customs and compliance regime is of UNECE origin.
As Philip Alston remarks, “nations revel in the illusion that their laws are creations of their national imagination, of the capacities for problem solving of their local political institutions. Most political leaders do not realise that most of the time they are voting for laws that are nearly identical to laws previously enacted in other states (at the same time political scientists have documented systematic patterns of verbatim copying of laws to the point where even serious typographical errors get copied). That is because they are only dimly aware of the mechanisms of globalisation.”
Here it seems particularly absurd that Britain should steadfastly oppose the adoption of rules from Brussels having just rolled over a comprehensive FTA with Japan which also establishes those same international organisations as the basis of all future technical regulations. We are sacrificing a great deal of EU market access for a notional ability to diverge where realistic scope for divergence is minimal and without value. Very rapidly, the Brexiteers will discover that the sacred cow of sovereignty ain’t so sacred after all – and Brexit, of itself, accomplishes very little in the sovereignty stakes. Globalisation, global governance and global technocracy is here to stay. It’s the age old dilemma. You can have trade or you can have “sovereignty”. Both is improbable.
Of course, this dilemma is resolvable but only if the world comes together and acts in unison to roll back global governance. This, though, is not going to happen. A rules based order, though suboptimal, is better than the alternative. Moreover, a world dominated by European and American standards is better than a fragmented world where China calls the shots. In short, if you voted for Brexit for absolute regulatory independence then you backed the wrong horse. It doesn’t exist – and if it did, we wouldn’t want it.
This is not an argument against Brexit, rather these are facts we should at least have been aware of before commencing. What matters is where the line is drawn. Nobody is going to go to the barricades over aubergine marketing standards and test regimes for vehicle seatbelts but when regional and global technocracy encroaches on those areas of public life where decision making authority should reside with the public, then we have a problem with it. Hence Brexit.
Writing on LSE blogs, Nicholas Westcott (Research Associate at SOAD), asserts “Ultimately, real sovereignty means having a seat at the table, a voice in the debate and a vote on the outcome. We have thrown all that away. We are left with paper sovereignty that sounds good but has no effect. We become a rule-taker from countries and Unions bigger than us, rather than a rule-maker”.
This is the classic europhile mentality which knows of no other regulatory influence than Brussels. Outside of the EU, the UK is able to launch its own initiatives independently in any of the global regulatory forums (regaining its “seat at the table”) on everything from ship safety to solar panel standards. It is not longer obliged to adopt the common EU position, and is able to build up ad-hoc alliances in support of its initiatives, working to define rules and standards that the EU in turn will adopt.
Influence in these matters is as much to do with your level of market particpation, what intellectual resource you bring to the table and your willingness to finance your own diplomatic initiatives. With British research institutions appearing the the top ten of global rankings, where the EU is absent, there is every reason to expect the UK can continue to make its voice heard. As top donors in international development and with a respected presence in Geneva, the UK will continue to contribute to the development of rules and standards.
One suspects that making a big show of sovereingty in negotiations with the EU is more politicking than anything else. Playing to the Tory gallery. David Frost cannot be unaware of the global dynamic in standards and regulations, and what we’re looking at is more than likely a negotiating tactic to ensure a looser relationship than envisaged by the EU, and though one can rightly question the economic wisdom of such an approach, setting the UK up as a competitor rather than partner, sovereingty in this regard is not something to be sneered at.
There are any number of remainer articles similar to that of the LSE’s latest blog, all of which trivialise the EU’s influence on our statute book. We can accept that common food safety rules with our closest partners are a public good. We can accept that a global regime for vehicle safety is both necessary and desirable, but the EU has never been strictly a regulatory union for the facilitation of trade, as is often dishonestly implied by the likes of Westcott. The EU is geared toward the subordination of political authority in the nation state, removing its members from international affairs and replacing them with an EU presence. Retaining our visibility internationally is a major aspect of sovereignty – as is speaking for ourselves without seeking permission.
While sovereingty will remain a nebulous term, on a more macro level, Brexit is an international gesture that puts us apart from the EU, so that in our international endeavours we deal directly with international organisations and other countries. Such a decision carries serious implications for our trade, but sometimes defence of a principle must come first. This is something reaminers never understood, failed to address in the referendum and remains one of the main reasons why they lost.
In particular was the matter of “sovereignty over our borders”. Though this is a mangling of concepts, it deals directly with freedom of movement – or rather EU citizenship.
To this day, though those who opposed Brexit maintain it was really all just the xenophobia of little Englanders. Even if that were true, it is not an illegitimate point of view. Humans seek the familiar in their surroundings. Globalisation, particularly EU membership, erodes the rights that distinguish citizen from visitor, affording visitors and transients equal status to the settled community. An attack on the very idea of citizenship and belonging.
Such issues have always escaped the remain side, who saw it only in terms of labour mobility for themselves and the contribution of incomers to GDP. Perhaps the main reason they lost the argument in 2016 was their focus on the economic argument, which was a secondary consideration for those contemplating a leave vote.
There was also the sensitive issue of benefits. A system notionally predicated on contributions should not be open temporary workers from overseas. Though in law, EU migrants were citizens, as far as the leave voting public is concerned, if you don’t have a British passport, you’re just not. Thus the extension of entitlements to EU citizens was to subordinate entirely the concept of British citizenship. This is why the black/blue passport took on such symbolic significance. Essentially if you take the view that the nation state is the only level at which democracy can be meaningful, then EU membership is a subversion of it. EU citizenship as a concept is one designed to weaken the status of the nation state.
Many of these arguments escape the average hardcore remainer, who continue to demand from leave campaigners a list of material “tangible” gains from Brexit they can compare with the superficial rights and perks of EU membership. Intangible conceptual answers such a “sovereingty” are taken to mean there are no benefits to Brexit – or nothing that they themselves would assign value to. The shallowness of the remain argument often reveals itself in these such conversations. Seldom do you hear an honest principled case for ever closer political and economic union.
Cutting to the chase though, it boils down to the view, not unreasonably, that the British parliament should be making our laws and not implementing the EU integrationist agenda. Eurosceptics always feared that what was being done could not be reversed, subsuming the UK into a supranational bloc, losing ever more control over what they regarded as core levers of statecraft. To a very large extent, they were not wrong. We now find reversing what was done comes at an unimaginable cost.
The damage done by Brexit, therefore, is less to do with out decision to leave, rather it is a consequence of the arrogance of those who took us this far in without consultation or consent – which was ultimately an attack of the sovereignty of the people. Though our departure is marked by arrogance and incompetence, it only matches that same hubris that took us in to begin with.
Peter North you give a well informed and interesting view on the Brexit issue. To me this highlights the nature of the method of using a referendum to ask in simplistic terms to be ‘in or out’ then rely on a completely uninformed population who are subjected to emotive lies and false concepts (floods of Turkish Islamic terrorists arriving ,giving £350 million a week to the NHS etc ) You are well educated and well informed and are therefore able to make good choices ,unfortunately this is not the case for all the people in Europe (including the UK) who live in poverty on low wages or unemployed whom the EU has the task of improving there collective situation. The trade and sovereignty situation and the understanding of the technical machinations are all well and good but to me as a true European duel citizen I am having my heart torn out by the idea that the UK is somehow some sort of lone wolf with malicious intent on gaining superior wealth as a “global world beating nation ” . yes we have had some ‘levelling up’ of the poorer European nations and the UK with its financial clout has contributed to this ,but the whole point of the EU is to grow together .
This essay by Peter North is well-argued, but curiously treats the Tories as if they are acting in good faith. One would have thought that, from Cameron’s campaigning for Remain and ‘his’ government “losing” the referendum onwards, neither the Tory party or any other party, but UKIP and the English Democrats, has been straight with the UK electorate about politics in general and EU membership and Brexit-to-be in particular. One special mention for the brexit party, led by Farage. A few days before nominations for the December 2019 election closed last year, Farage pulled a swifty which essentially gave the Brexit Party vote to the Tories who had been shown they could not be trusted on doing as the Cameron government had said it would. Even before that election, Boris had been shown to be a person not to be trusted in this matter. Boris stayed the course set out by the Tories and Parliament (with a smattering of honourable exceptions) after the Brexit referendum, which was, obvious for all to see well before the end of Theresa May in charge, nominally, to sabotage Brexit by any means available and by any fudge they could think of to fool the Brexiteers and other democrats. Instead of planning for an orderly departure at the end of the initial negotiating period, every government since has played along with the EU’s stymying of Brexit. Four and a half years have been wasted playing along with an opponent who is dead-set on punishing the UK for choosing Leave. The EU never was negotiating in good faith. It had several overriding reasons to make these negotiations fails. Political reasons to do with her powers within and over the remaining EU members. The Tories knew this very well, yet they chose and still choose to play along rather than make a stand as an independent and soon-to-be-sovereign entity.
As I remarked well before the referendum, regardless of the outcome of the referendum, the political exigencies derived and deriving from the continued presence of the EU apparatus and its aims and acquis methods remain. The underlying political tensions are not only unresolved, even now, but fester and grow as time goes on and EU hegemonic intransigence gets worse. By and by people who have not yet twigged will get to know that the EU is part and parcel of the resurgent imperial drive by they who have managed to combine forces globally and monopolise political power, control over international high finance, trade, commerce, regulation, law making, its interpretation and execution etc., ect. The way democracy works, it is ever prone to be hijacked by partisan interests for partisan purposes. There is no neutral forum where debate may allow people to contest the political decisions taken by those in power, regardless of freedom of speech. If one’s speech is not heard by the public at large, it is not politically effective. If dissenting speech is punished, its effectiveness is much reduced. If governments choose to rely on self-selected sources of opinion to justify a pre-determined course of action and the mainstream media underwrites this by overwhelming support and dismissing facts, rational arguments and civil rights, well, you have a recipe for totalitarian rule. If a majority of the electorate in question puts up with this, it is majority rule, but is it democracy? The slighting of civil rights gives the lie to that. However, the people have to give the answer to any given situation where the authorities are unable to maintain a true consensus. How much dissent breaks a consensus? That will be decided by history. However, the EU and most of member states in Western Europe lost it decades ago, obviously.
I think you are absolutely correct. Why should we expect Boris Johnson and the Conservative Party to act at face value? The Conservative Party has always been the political party favoured by the establishment. The Conservatives took Britain into the EEC and later signed up to the Maastricht Treaty and very nearly signed Britain up to the Single Currency. They took Britain into the EEC to pursue the economic interests as Britain could no longer go it alone with its imperial interests. Britain had to throw its lot in with the other old colonial powers of Europe. The EU and later EEC also provided a useful mechanism for the political elite to bye-pass Parliamentary democracy. The Referendum in 2016 has produced an existential crisis among the ruling class of Britain, one single referendum has put them into spin and it has dominated the political landscape over the last 5 years or so. The popular vote to leave the EU was always about sovereignty and democracy and this is something those opposed to Brexit wished to avoid talking about. They feel much safer discussing the economy and the technicalities of trade deals and international law. And that goes for the Tories. They were never seriously interested in backing Parliamentary democracy and universal suffrage and how it is tied up with sovereignty. Of course we should not expect, or rely on, Boris Johnson to fight for democratic rights. He is only concerned with protecting the economic interests and investment of the rich and powerful, and the rich and powerful don’t need universal suffrage. A trade deal is all Johnson is interested in. Why should we expect him to defend Parliamentary democracy? Democracy was never handed to the people, it was taken by the people.
as some one who wishes for the UK to remain I in no way have avoided discussing Democracy or Sovereignty.
Indeed happy to with sound reason and example demonstrate how the EU is far more democractic than FPTP UK, and how by having seat and feet at the shared table we are in fact more sovereign.
as soon as local govt offices open I will be finalising the paperwork for my citizenship and be handing back my marron passport. My own UKexit
Peter North is right in his description of sovereignty, but when he continues on to denigrate Remainers I disagree with his analysis. He says, “While sovereignty will remain a nebulous term, on a more macro level, Brexit is an international gesture that puts us apart from the EU, so that in our international endeavours we deal directly with international organisations and other countries.”
To decide if this is right let us take the argument to extremes. Ignoring geographical considerations suppose we were all Americans discussing whether to join or leave the EU. In such a case I would say Mr North was right. But suppose we were citizens of Malta I would say he was wrong. So it is a judgement issue. Worldwide, there tends to be American standards and EU standards. Countries from elsewhere are usually content to take a look at them and accept one or other or sometimes both as convenient. It is a special case of misplaced arrogance to think there will be three rule setting standards USA, EU and UK.
I am what Mr North would call a hardcore Remainer and the starting point for such a view was the original concept. If you are trading you are much less likely to be warring. I see nothing wrong in the EC / EU club concept developing as it sees fit, as its members see fit, and when they found that they could exert a political influence in a troubled world I thought that was totally to be desired. The world is a very unfair place with very poor people and very rich people and people who are treated very badly by being bombed, imprisoned without trial etc. A powerful organisation that has clearly defined principles that we claim to support and applies those principles should be supported, and we could do more good as members.
Back in the days of WW2, unsurprisingly, citizens thought in terms of what they could and should do for their country. I believe war is the ultimate folly and the purpose of the state should be what it could and should do for its citizens.
If only the EEC could have stuck to the original concept as publicly mooted, but a lot of geopolitics has happened since 1990/1992. Besides, the plan was all along to force the European peoples into a techno-totalitarian straitjacket by hook or by crook, in a hurry. Looking at the history of Europe, one cannot expect that to come off without a struggle. And really, given that history, it has zilch chance of success except if Europe were flattened in the process.
The genetics are still there, and diluting the genetic base with illegal migrants from failed nations/states is not going to help. The Dutch state finally got going after an Eighty year war against Spain. The EU project should have taken a century to cover the ground it has in the last Thirty years. This project is not only super-ego-driven, but part and parcel of globalisation the totalitarian way. Also, take note, for the time being, the Chinese dictatorship is increasingly setting the standards everywhere except in North America.
“diluting the genetic base with illegal migrants from failed nations/states is not going to help”
Could you tell me what science (other than that of the Nazi’s) underpins this statement?
Perhaps you might want to reconsider or rephrase this comment to avoid being misunderstood.
Dear Edward. Your comment is without foundation and absolutely risible.
As for the science, I leave you to study the relevant matter at hand. Genetic programming, epi-genetic programming and everything that makes people tick on the basis of genetic factors is not all, but the rest is in the realm of the spirit/quantum physics, the which is belief for those who believe and knowledge for those who have extensively studied the spirit/quantum/sub-quantum world, but is dark energy and dark matter to modern science and impossible to prove the wherewithal and workings of by modern, that is, mainstream scientific method. Psycho-social, sociopolitical and cultural factors are imo determined by genetic programming. If you know better, do let us know. Also, have another look at European history over the last three thousand years.
You chose not to clarify what you meant by “diluting the genetic base with illegal migrants from failed nations/states is not going to help” but chose instead to just attack me.
Absent a plain English clarification, we are left believing that “diluting the genetic base” must mean you believe that Europeans are in some way genetically superior and that immigration from what you refer to as “failed nations” both increases genetic diversity but in some way diminishes or degrades Europe’s “genetic base”.
Your comment is very poorly written (what does “dilute” mean? what is the relationship between legal/illegal immigration, “failed nations” and the genetics of said migrants?).
But absent an explanation from you, I too assume you are advocating a Nazi-type racial theory and should not be on this blog.
Wow!
“genetics are still there, and diluting the genetic base with illegal migrants from failed nations/states is not going to help. ”
Hi please feel free to join the rest if us in the 21st century!
Wow Tim. I’m here. The resistance in the autochthonous populace in Europe to unbridled illegal immigration is building up. Are these large minorities in the nation-states’ electorates not in this our century? It’s a matter for the voters, imo.
Why you would deny genetics, civil rights and natural progression in the democratic scheme of things, amongst other things, I don’t need to know. For science, I side with the late Rustum Roy. For lessons on history, history as best can be understood.
Jacob your words say you’re in the early mid 20th, I’d narrow it down to about 1939, give or take a month.
Those sort of race/genetics comments are straight out of the play book of a nasty time in 20th century history.
And your use of “big words” and reliance on the language of Mosely and Farage indicates clearly who and what you are.
To be frank a nasty nazi racist
I wash my hands of you and your like and hope the author of this blog designed to create sensible and open conversation has the good taste to kick you to the curb.
“The Brexiteer prefers to believe that the EU’s requests for clarity and a “level playing field” are more to do with the EU’s desire to retain control of the UK after its departure.”
My view is that the likes of Ireland and Luxembourg are fearful that they might have to relinquish the privilege of skimming off profits from the likes of Apple, Amazon etc. (Or do you honestly believe that the GDP per head for Ireland is roughly twice that of the UK because they are twice as productive or twice as innovative? Likewise Luxembourg at almost three times higher GDP per head than the UK )
“For years, some of our air safety standards have been written by the Boeing Corporation in Seattle, or if not by them, by the US Federal Aviation Administration in Washington.”
For the record I was involved with a Eurocontrol study for ASAS (Airborne Separation Assistance System) funded half by EU funds and half by participating industrial and governmental parties. Once the final draft was written, it was rewritten by Airbus to align with their objectives. So my practical experience of EU involvement in this instance was that the UK made a financial contribution and had no say whatsoever in the final outcome which (if I remember correctly) was inferior to that determined by the funded study.
An excellent article which still produces “the fake news” response from the Leave camp.
We live in a global economy. The EU offered us a major trading block in which consensus rules. That consensus is created by a Council of Ministers. These Ministers come from their elected governments. And the consensus includes the European Parliament, of elected politicians which every Britain of voting age had the right to vote for. Just the same as they vote for Westminister MPs or the local councils. A small bureaucracy (notoriously called the “Eurocrats”) are responsible for drawing up draft legislation in the same way as British civil servants draw up draft laws – but there are fewer Eurocrats than the number of civil servants in Scotland.
Where are these “un-elected EU institutions”? Just Fake News fed to the gullible by those powers that would rather see a weak and humbled UK. Those powers that will profit from that weakness to drive home harmful trade deals, or who delight in instabilility for their own political or economic profit.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales will all be far better off to leave the United Kingdom and continue to be part of the European Union. They will have a real voice in policy making, they will benefit from being part of a major trade block (economies of scale); they will be able to achieve larger, more extensive structural funds for agriculture, industry, sevices. Instead of being entirely ignored by Westminster.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales need to move fast before Westminster drains them further in its frantic attempts to solve both the Brexit and COVID challenges – problems which this government has largely (and entirely in the case of Brexit) brought down upon itself.
Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales need to start holding “non binding referendums” now.
This is the soverign right of the people!
“Britain needs a regular supply of immigrants” – it is logically impossible for every country in the world to have net migration. If one country such as Britain is experiencing net migration then another country or countries must be experiencing net emigration but the author makes no mention of this or the effect that net emigration will have on the countries that supply the immigrants to the UK.
Hi Nicholas,
I read your article with interest.
I’m the editor of West England Byines, part of a national network of progressive online newspapers.
Would it be possible to feature your article in our next edition.
Dr Monica Horten has already written for us on security. Your thoughts on sovereignty would interest our readers.
We would of course give full accreditation to yourself and LSE-Brexit.
Please contact me at editor@westenglandbylines.co.uk.
Many thanks,
Jon
As someone who worked for many years in the sector, I can state with some certainty that the Brexiteers’ obsession with the UK’s ‘net contribution’ was always wrong-headed. It was never a net contribution. It was an investment. Let me give you an example from my working life. Ireland was an ERDF ‘beneficiary’. So if it wanted to build a £200 million stretch of motorway, it got money from the EU. Let’s say the UK, as net ‘contributor’, for the sake of argument. Except Ireland had to fork out 50% of the cost – £100 million it didn’t have. So it borrowed it. From the City. With interest. And Ireland didn’t have the capacity to build a motorway. So it outsourced the job: to the UK. So in came UK civil engineers, builders, architects, consultants, heavy machinery etc and out flowed the £100 million we borrowed, plus interest, as well as the £100 million the UK had ‘given’ us, back into the real UK economy.
The same scenario has been played out across central and eastern Europe. The UK’s £8 billion price of access, which the Brexiteers saw as a net cost, was actually producing tens of billions of £s worth of public procurement works. You don’t think those roads, schools, hospitals, training schemes were building themselves, do you? It is estimated that for every £1 of UK ‘net contribution’, the UK gained £8 in contract work. Well, it’s decided to keep the £1 in its pocket and forego the other £8 that small investment was making for it. A totally false economy. And do you know who was the greatest supporter of this money-spinner for the UK economy? Maggie Thatcher. She understood you needed sometimes to spend a little money to make more. Sadly, that lesson has been lost and the UK will be the poorer for it – literally.
“And Ireland didn’t have the capacity to build a motorway. So it outsourced the job: to the UK. So in came UK civil engineers, builders, architects, consultants, heavy machinery etc.”
So it is a win! win! If our UK workers remain in their own country there is less need for immigrants to fill the gaps that they leave behind and if less Irish people move to the UK under Freedom of Movement, Ireland will have the personnel to build its own motorways. Overall, a lot less families will be split and families will have to travel less to stay in touch.
I am in agreement with ‘Justawriter’ above. The less immigration we have, the less damage there will be to the countries who would otherwise supply the workers. The idea that “Britain needs a regular supply of immigrants” is a throwback to the colonial attitudes that we be beginning outgrow.
In the huge increase in net migration to the UK from 1997 to 2016, 60% was from non-EU origin.
Which raises the question for those who feel this increase was a mistake, why did we need to leave the EU to fix it?
We didn’t.
But we did have a political elite (including all major parties) committed to high levels of immigration for varying reasons.
In this sense, Brexit is – at least on the topic of immigration – a mistake, since a more responsive political elite could have addressed much of the concerns about immigration, had they listened to public opinion. They didn’t. So one could argue that finally the voters threw their toys out of the pram in June 2016.
“Britain needs a regular supply of immigrants” – it is logically impossible for every country in the world to have net migration. If one country such as Britain is experiencing net migration then another country or countries must be experiencing net emigration but the author makes no mention of this or the effect that net emigration will have on the countries that supply the immigrants to the UK.
The old “having a seat at the table” chestnut. UK interests, those things peculiar to the UK, have been widely ignored/disparaged/lampooned by the Europeans for as far back as my research is able show (since day 1 probably). We managed to avoid the worst of the snares set for us with vetoes etc, but as Cameron ably demonstrated when he asked for a fraction of the concessions the UK actually needed and was soundly rebuffed, the EU is a place that cares little for the UK so long as the money keeps rolling in. They chortled when they sent Cameron packing, I wonder how funny they think it is now?
‘Remainers’ constantly remind/exaggerate how much poorer the country will be, they may be right, but what they don’t understand is that we don’t care! I opted to be potentially poorer, but an independent nation that can hold its head high in world.
Please! You say, “The old “having a seat at the table” chestnut. UK interests, those things peculiar to the UK, have been widely ignored/disparaged/lampooned by the Europeans for as far back as my research is able show (since day 1 probably).”
There is this perception that just by saying something the objective is achieved and people will be persuaded. So let me try the same.
My research, which, by the way, is better than yours, shows that having a seat at the table makes a big difference.
https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/europpblog/2015/11/02/does-the-uk-win-or-lose-in-the-council-of-ministers/
It amazed me that the English failed to see how arrogant Cameron must have seemed when he effectively and very publicly said to the EU, “We want certain reforms otherwise we will leave.” The EU is continually taking fresh looks at its legislation and changing it when it democratically thinks it should. And there are appropriate ways of going about such procedures. To use the word ‘reform’ as if we knew better than the rest of the members surely epitomised our misplaced arrogance.
I am saddened to read that you don’t care about unemployment, and the fate of people who have lived here for 30 years and become part of society in every way being forced to fill in numerous forms to attempt to get permission to stay her. I for one feel ashamed.
Regretfully, the lse Brexit moderator has decided to cut me off from debate. This is fairly typical now, the times we live in. Being accused of nazi sympathies or, worse, accused of being a nazi, especially when one is absolutely opposed to nazism, fascism and dictatorship generally, and not being able to defend oneself is unforgivable, but of course that is how debate is steered away from issues which must not be questioned, and lo, there are people ready to work as attack dogs to stop a sensible discussion. So, best to leave it. The peoples in Europe will sort it. I’m stuck in New Zealand and have no idea when I’ll be back in Europe. Good luck, people, with your fascist methods of gaining control. History will be the judge.
You are not stuck in my home of New Zealand, there are flights leaving and you can buy a ticket and get on one heading back to the UK or many other points.
But no matter where you go not one of them, unless if a Blue Box with Police written above the door, is going to take you back to the time period you long for.
We don’t need to wait for history to judge you: We did already and the writer of the blog has had the final word on your place in it. Try GAB or Parler you might find your “genetics” type of rant more widely accepted amongst the Mums basements of the world.
Bye.
PS: You’re still commenting,…….
so much hurt for no actual reason other than to play the victim card.
I’m glad you are opposed to nazism and fascism.
But, you have had multiple opportunities to clarify the meaning of your comment “diluting the genetic base with illegal migrants from failed nations/states is not going to help”. You have chosen not to do so.
So far from “not being able to defend oneself”, you have instead chosen this path and now have the audacity to claim victimhood.
There are no attack dogs stopping a sensible discussion on this blog. No cancel culture. No woke. No SJW. Just clarify what you meant by the sentence you wrote.
“Regretfully, the LSE Brexit moderator has decided to cut me off from debate.”
As a Brexit supporter, I agree with this decision. You we doing our side of the debate no favours.
I write as an immigrant – a refugee to be precise. An immigrant from a supposedly failed state, Uganda. I have lived in England nearly all my adult life. I recently moved to Taiwan to keep a promise to my wife that we would have our primary home in Taipei. The above comments vindicate my recent blog-post, ‘History: Whose history is it anyway?.’ I think some of you might find it worth your while to read it. You may kindly look it up by visiting, https://thekamugasachallenge.com/history/
thanks
Ill read it in a short while and give some thought to the words.
But could we ask of you which words?
“But could we ask of you which words?” Answer: All the above comments taken in the round.
That’s a lot of words going back & forth. Often contradicting or disagreeing with others.
Some even verbose or wordy for the sake of it.
Any chance of narrowing the field to some key points to give direction?
“Any chance of narrowing the field to some key points to give direction?” Yes. My sense is we have a warped view of British history – hence the title, namely, ‘History: Whose history is it anyway?’ And in particular, touching upon the small matter of black immigration.
You have a good website. Your articles contribute a lot to my knowledge