Brexit Phase One: Predictions and Reflections from an Accidental Pundit
This is going to be very long, at times personal, and an actual blog post instead of a trade explainer. Like a goods exporter contemplating the end of the transition period, you have been warned.
So that just happened.
The United Kingdom has ceased to be a member of the European Union. The two can now look forward to a friendly and uncomplicated relationship, in the same way divorces famously become constructive and amicable as soon as the papers are signed.
I have some thoughts. They’re not necessarily in any particular order. Even I don’t know what my overall point is. I won’t tell you whose communication style this approach is modeled on, but a cat called Larry lives with them.
Thought One: A Car Well Caught, Bulldog
Leaving the European Union was largely premised on the idea that the United Kingdom could be made a better place if the government had more power. That wasn’t on any of the buses, but that’s what it was.
The European Union acted by placing (overwhelmingly with their consent and buy-in) certain restrictions and onuses on the governments of its members. To support Leave is to believe the UK would be better off in whatever way matters to you if the government regained the authority it ceded or shared, even if doing so meant losing access to the benefits of EU membership.
Up until now, opposition to the EU could take place largely in the abstract. You didn’t necessarily need to present politically viable, economically sane or even internationally legal examples of what the government might do if freed from European Union restraints, you need merely argue that the crucial question is the freedom itself.
There’s certainly something to that argument, and the appeal of sovereignty as an ideal in and of itself clearly captured hearts and minds across the UK.
Except the argument is over now. The sovereignty is here. The dog has caught the car.
Now granted, the dog may not have expected to catch the car. Few could have predicted that the Remain campaign would largely keep the car in neutral and rely on stern pronouncements about macroeconomics and calling the dog a stupid racist.
Similarly it was hard to anticipate Jeremy Corbyn, who had been watching with complete disinterest from the sidelines as the dog floundered at the last hurdle, appearing out of a nearby brush and terrifying the car into reversing back into the dog’s jaws.
But here we are.
Freedom has been seized and with a tire firmly clutched between its mighty canines the dog must now decide what to do with it. Every hard choice avoided. Every pair of impossible to reconcile promises made. Every trade-off and compromise. They all await.
For all that however, I’m unsure if the hard choices ahead will prove as difficult as they should because…
Thought Two: Brexit Phase 2, Electric Snooze-aloo
Brexit will now enter a new phase which will test the attention span and appetite for detail of the UK public and the press corps.
Let me count the ways.
First, questions up for discussion in phase two won’t be as important as those in the Remain vs Leave knife fight of the last three years.
The UK has dismantled its frictionless trade with the European Union. Nothing on the table in upcoming FTA talks can undo that. Goods travelling between the UK and Europe will now have to bear the often considerable costs and potential delays of being true export movements. That’s simply a fact. The UK’s heroic rejection of Brussels bureaucracy is about to unleash a mountain of paperwork so high Sir Humphrey Appleby would put it on the New Years Honors List.
Services, a critical part of the UK’s future as an exporting partner are likely to be marginally covered by a Free Trade Agreement at most. Even deals done in calmer days without looming deadlines rarely actually liberalize services trade in any meaningful way. The UK FTA is unlikely to prove an exception.
This is not to say the EU FTA talks are unimportant. Should they fail to produce tariff free trade, select sectors of the UK economy (as well as some in the EU) will find themselves locked out of their biggest, and sometimes only, historical export market. This would prove devastating to businesses and in some cases, entire regions, that aren’t exactly booming even with the benefit of access.
The biggest ship however, that of true regional integration, has sailed.
For the immediate future at least, the question of whether the UK should be part of and shape the European Union project has been resolved in the negative. No doubt discussions about the comparative merits of that decision will rage on for some time, but with the possibility of actually reversing the decision in the next few years virtually non-existent, I suspect these may fade into the background.
Second, the political heat just isn’t going to be as intense in the next year, which means a good chunk of the UK media will get bored and wander off. With some worthy exceptions, these are professional political journalists who have spent the last three years looking at every issue through the very specific lens of “What will this mean for the power rankings in Westminster?”
The answer to that question on just about any topic for the foreseeable future is “nothing.”
The Conservative Party hold the lower house by about a million seats, having largely purged their ranks of anyone without a blood pact to Boris Johnson. Short of reintroducing Freedom of Movement or saying something nice about Meghan Markle, there doesn’t seem to be anything he could do to lose their backing.
The Labour Party is, to put it mildly, going through some stuff. So far their reflections on the election appear to be that if anything Jeremy Corbyn was too perfect and that they were thwarted by the billionaire owned traditional media. I look forward to their return to the political fight when more nationwide media outlets are owned by working-class folk from Birmingham.
The Brexit Party hold exactly as many seats in the House of Commons as I do, and have in large part lost relevance having achieved their raison d'être. The “Thanks For Brexiting, But Do It Harder Party” doesn’t have the same ring to it.
To the extent that the SNP are able to get anywhere with their own independence project, it will only detract from and not focus attention on the Brexit negotiation process. Scottish Nationalist objections to Brexit go well beyond any individual thing EU and UK FTA negotiators may agree.
I’m sure the Liberal Democrats and Greens will continue to be a presence in all the places your vegan almond latte comes deconstructed and your barista prefers the term “Froth Artisan.” If they couldn’t break through when they were the only Remain party with a Brexit position you didn’t need an Enigma Machine to decode, their prospects for relevance between now and the next election seem bleak.
There simply seems to be no credible threat to the Tory majority or the Boris Johnson Prime Ministership, and without a threat there’s no drama and thus no story. I hope the lobby proves me wrong.
Third, we’re about to head into the part of the negotiation process where everything becomes murkier and more difficult to understand. If you think you heard a lot of answers beginning with, “Well, it’s complicated…” in Phase 1, wait until real trade negotiations commence.
The public has in many ways been conditioned to expect negotiations with countries like the EU and UK to provide visible, incontrovertible outcomes either confirming or alleviating their concerns. They’re likely to be disappointed.
Whatever the Boris Johnson administration actually concedes in the negotiations, the US FTA isn’t going to include the lines:
“UK agrees chlorinated chicken is A-Ok yum yum okey dokey;”
“The NHS will upon entry into force of this Agreement become a wholly owned subsidiary of Monsanto”
“Drug prices in the UK will be whatever you tell us they should be, sir!”
Even were Boris Johnson to concede on all these issues in ways well beyond anything he’d ever actually contemplate, the commitments would be captured in impossible dense language around scientific testing methodologies, government procurement rules, transparency and services market access provisions.
Instead of bold ‘gotcha’ moments where the Prime Minister is either vindicated or revealed to have deceived the public, you’re going to get impenetrable debates between legal experts and dissembling from politicians. You know, for something different.
When the first border checks appear on the new border in the Irish sea, do not expect to see contrite apologies from humbled politicians who vowed to avoid them. Rather, expect some combination of outright denial and dissembling over what constitutes a check, what constitutes a border, and whether the very concept of objective truth isn’t a bit Greek and thus of the EU and so suspect.
We’re increasingly in a post-truth world, and the complexity of the subject matter isn’t going to make life easier. Even if truth did somehow cut through, it might not matter because…
Thought Three: We’re All Culture Warriors Now, Kid
There have been multiple studies about how over three short years “Remainer” and “Leaver” became more firmly held identity tribes than “Tory” or “Labour” had been in years. In doing so, it seems obvious to me they also outgrew their definitions as identifiers of where one stood on the narrow question of the UK’s EU Membership and became shorthand for sides in the broader cultural conflict.
As with all such attempts to divide the vocal part of a population numbering in the tens of millions, these labels are insultingly simplistic and mostly idiotic in the caricatures they imply. Yet they are tribal markers all the same.
There’s a reason you can pretty reliably pick how a person voted on Brexit based on whether they use “woke” as a slur.
There’s a reason most of the people who think exactly alike on every other wedge issue of our time also agree on Brexit.
The teams have been assembled, the lines drawn and the enemies named. Truth isn’t meaningless in this fight, but it is increasingly of only selective relevance. Truth is great when you can weaponize it, otherwise it’s best left in the box.
Which brings me to…
Thought Four: Experts and the World of Tomorrow
It’s fair to say many of us who sometimes get labelled ‘trade experts’ found the last few years a bit weird.
The traditional response to telling someone you work on international trade is a puzzled look and the question, “So like what do you buy and sell? It is not asking Sam Lowe for a selfie.
When I was a delegate to the WTO, I always experienced a strange, abstracted awe when picking up my country’s flag (it’s actually just a sign that says “Australia” because no Chair can be expected to remember what 164 different flags actually represent). I would watch myself, a dorky kid in his late 20’s whose fridge contained a single jar of pickles, take the floor in an international body and speak on behalf of an entire continent. It was humbling beyond measure, and frankly still is.
I experience that same removed awe when I’m asked to speak on television or a reporter from something like the New York Times calls me for a take. It is beyond imposter syndrome, it is imposter-imposter syndrome. I don’t feel like I’m smart or talented enough to even be in a situation where I’m staying up at night wondering if I’m smart and talented enough to be doing what I’m doing.
I don’t know if any of the others along on this ride feel the same, and I wouldn’t share their anxiety with you if I did, but it’s how I feel.
One thing that makes me persist is it feels like we very occasionally make a difference by shining light on truly dangerous ideas or introducing things into the conversation that might otherwise lie hidden in the shallows of public debate.
I’m a comparative newcomer to the Brexit debate. When I first engaged in early 2018, it was because a popular narrative had emerged that WTO rules meant a No-Deal Brexit would leave trade completely unchanged.
Again and again, dangerous fantasies which risked misleading the UK into reckless choices and lulling businesses and consumers into complacency emerged and were dismantled. Collectively, we take some small share of the credit for that.
If you’ll permit us. Please. We need this. We’re so tired.
Though some among the “Trade Expert Crew” (as literally no one calls us) really are fervent Leavers or Remainers, for the majority what drives most of us isn’t outrage at the choice itself, but at the way the complexity of our field is routinely exploited to provide a smokescreen for the choice’s implications.
This puts us in a perilous space.
The battle of ideas isn’t being waged in the pages of prominent academic journals. Nor, increasingly, is it even being waged in the Op-Ed pages of major national newspapers.
It is instead fought on television, and radio. In popular podcasts. It is the back and forth of twitter, the viral moment on Facebook and most recently (and horrifyingly) the academic Tik Tok video.
In a lot of ways, that’s bad.
Take it from someone who knows, the incentives for ‘experts’ on Twitter are broken as hell. Yes, Twitter rewards simplicity and accessibility, as well as interactivity and being willing to engage and answer questions. That’s all really useful.
Except you know what it rewards more? Conflict. The sassy made-for-virality burn.
If the first tweet in your thread throws an elbow at someone or something of importance to the culture war, it’s going to get picked up and retweeted. Again, and again, and again.
Experts should not be focused on brawling in the trenches, and yet to leave the trenches entirely is to let them be (more) overrun by charlatans, grifters and chancers.
On the one hand, the neutrally worded rebuttal paper published four months after a terrible idea is implemented and read by three people including the author’s cat helps no one. On the other, just trading wicked barbs on twitter with professional contrarians and schlock merchants is probably best left to the comedians who at least have the skills for it.
I work every day to try and get that balance right, and I fail on more days than I succeed. I’m moved beyond words so many of you have stuck with me on the journey.
Final thought: Look out for one another
Both Leavers and Remainers are in for a challenging time.
For Remainers, every good news story for the country will come with a nigh unbearable round of gloating from the most shrill and unpleasant elements of Team Leave. At the same time, no bad news story (which no one should be rooting for anyway) will ever be enough to draw an “I was wrong” from those voices whom Remainers most want to hear admit contrition.
For Leavers, once the heady rush of victory wears off the reality will once again manifest. I speak not of the reality of Brexit itself, but rather of how the challenges and anxieties which drove so much of its support will remain. Yet now, every complaint no matter how legitimate will be met by the voices Leavers most loathe with howls of schadenfreude and derision. Misfortune reinterpreted as the just wages of the referendum’s original sin.
Social media, pundits, populists and yes, occasionally mouthy Australian former trade negotiators, will stoke these fires, and it’s up to ordinary people to moderate how much they stare into them.
Try to be kind.