The promise of Brexit was that when we left the EU we could make trade deals with other countries. Currently have a free trade deal with one of the largest markets in the world and trade deals with 60 or so other countries - all of which we will lose when we leave the EU. So how we are likely to fare if we do cut ourselves loose, can we do better?
Before you make a deal you have to ensure your own side is in agreement on what is wanted and what is on offer.
Yet Mrs May failed to do that. She fronted up to the Irish border negotiations promising the DUP was happy with the talks so far. Which they promptly denied, and she had to halt talks to go back and negotiate with them before she could return to the EU negotiators.
When you make a deal you need to know that what you are getting is worth having.
The fabled 'sector analyses' turned out to be no such thing - and we only know that because the government were forced to publish the documents. We still has no idea what the real consequences of Brexit are going to be - with it only a few weeks away.
A deal is a promise and relies on trust and honesty. You are expected to do what was agreed - to keep your word. What you don't do, especially if you are actually in charge of the negotiations, is make a public repudiation of the agreement your side has just signed.
Mr Davis (the Brexit secretary - referring to the Irish border agreement): "This was a statement of intent more than anything else. It was much more a statement of intent than it was a legally enforceable thing.”
Mr Gove (environment secretary): “If the British people dislike the arrangement that we have negotiated with the EU, the agreement will allow a future government to diverge.”
The message is clear: if we decide we don't like some agreement we will simply change it - and you just try to sue us, Sunny Jim. Hardly a surprise if the EU aren't interested in giving us wriggle room on the backstop.
Ineptitude and farce. We need competent negotiators, but who do we have?
We have Mr Davis, who was in charge of our side in the negotiations and who over six months only spent four hours talking to his opposite number. This is the negotiator who turned up without his homework on the first day. Mr Davis doesn't even understand what EU members can offer. He said we would be able to strike a unilateral deal on cars with Germany - apparently not realising that we are leaving so we can make such deals, but Germany will still be in the EU...
He said we would start trade negotiations around the world on September 9th 2016 and two years later we still haven't started. He even said we would have a 'Canada-type' deal ready to sign as soon as we have officially left the EU. That option isn't even mentioned now.
We haven't negotiated our own trade deals for 44 years and even so Mrs May has felt constrained to use Brextremists to head up negotiations - politicians full of empty promises and no ideas. Vote Leave ran on a platform of reducing immigration and sovereignty. The campaign's cake-ian economics promised EU+, keeping our free trade with Europe and adding more deals for ourselves. Reality didn't come into it.
Why should they care? Crashing out of the EU and defaulting to WTO rules is a preferred option for many of them.
They should care because this unprofessional and insincere approach to the negotiations will make post-Brexit trade deals far harder to secure. Those fabled global trade deals they promised us would await us in the sunny uplands of Brexit can only happen if we can negotiate effectively.
The jokers we have clearly can't.
No comments:
Post a Comment