EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

Here's David Allen Green's piece in today's FT:

Assessing Theresa May’s two announcements about Brexit
David Allen Green
| Oct 03 11:14 | 18 comments | Share
Theresa May addresses the Conservative party conference

Sunday was a good day for Leave campaigners, perhaps the best day they have had since the referendum result.

The announcement of two things by the UK prime minister Theresa May at the Conservative party conference brought good cheer to the Brexiters. On social media and elsewhere there was triumphalism — even gloating — as it seemed more real than before that Brexit is going to happen.

The first thing we were told is that there will be a “Great Repeal Bill” in the next Queen’s Speech, expected next April. This will repeal the European Communities Act 1972 as and when the UK leaves the European Union. EU law will be placed on a UK law basis and will then be repealed as and when appropriate.

This looks more impressive than it is, at least in respect of the possibility of any Brexit. There has never been any doubt that leaving the EU would require the repeal or at least substantial amendment of the 1972 legislation, as well as other statutes implementing EU law. There could be no other way of having Brexit. This has been openly stated by Brexit minister David Davis and his predecessor Oliver Letwin before select committees.

What Mrs May has said, in large part, is that the repeal or substantial amendment of the 1972 Act means the repeal or substantial amendment of the 1972 Act. Adding “Great” to the title of this inevitable legislation is mere spin.

But there is something to be concerned about in this announcement. The government is seeking to have what it calls “flexibility” in being able to amend or repeal primary legislation — Acts of Parliament — by statutory instruments. These are through the so-called “Henry VIII clauses” that enable the executive to make huge legal changes with little or no parliamentary scrutiny. Statutory instruments, a form of secondary legislation, are devices by which the government can legislate without troubling the legislature. Such legal means have been roundly criticised by judges such as Lord Judge, the former Lord Chief Justice.

So, under the cloak of the referendum result there will be a power grab by Whitehall from Westminster. Those rejoicing at “taking back control” should be careful what they wish for. The executive is, as usual, wanting to take control away from parliament.

The second thing is perhaps more important for Brexit. Mrs May announced a deadline for invoking Article 50. This will be done, she said, before the end of March next year. Unless there is some agreement to extend time, this would mean that the UK would cease to be a member of the EU by 2019. For many, this meant Brexit suddenly looked real. There are now actual dates.

But again, there is little new about this. Only a couple of weeks ago, Mrs May told the European council president Donald Tusk that the Article 50 notification would be sent in January or February next year. If anything, yesterday’s announcement shows there has been slippage of a month in just a fortnight.

That said, an announcement of a deadline to party conference is about as high-profile an announcement as a political leader can make. Comments about Article 50 timings to a foreign leader such as Mr Tusk may not get widely noticed but a conference speech will not be forgotten. If the March 2017 deadline is not complied with, there can only be adverse political consequences.

Neither of the announcements are any thing other than words, even if the words appear significant. And neither of them addresses the numerous serious and complex issues of making a Brexit work in practice. The government has done little so far to grapple with the problems of Brexit. The obstacles and the hurdles all still remain. What we learnt on Sunday was that regardless of the severe difficulties of making Brexit work, the government is minded to go ahead and do it anyway, and at speed.

David Allen Green, a lawyer and journalist, writes the FT’s law and policy blog. He has been commissioned by Oxford University Press to write a book on Brexit.

Watching all this from abroad. Can only describe the feeling today as completely unreal. Why the hell, wtf is going on, etc. Keep imagining what if it happened here in tiny Sweden, we'd be so fucked. I really hope the UK can manage all right 'on it's own' as there's more people in it.

Serious question. We've lived in the UK for >12 years. Have lived abroad (non EU) for the last two. Private and state pensions are in the UK but our passports are EU.
How fucked will we be?

We were constantly regaled by varieties of Leave campaigners that 90% of UK businesses did not export. I suspect that would be a low estimate of the %age of MPs, let alone Tory brexitter MPs who have no experience of exporting.

The increased cost of imports is the real fucker that is having a big effect. The impact hasn't been felt yet. Sooner or later, businesses won't be able to keep the problems at arms length.

Having read the David Allen Green piece in the FT as well, the fact that the govt is trying to keep the ability to use secondary legislation to repeal EU laws following exit is a huge worry. This is all just an exercise in preventing parliament from being able to debate the issues; putting more power to the executive. All in the name of sovereignty!

I am finding this whole process sickening; seriously thinking about whether I can emigrate.

On the upside, my department does most of its billing in USD. I've become about 15% more efficient in the past few months.

On the downside, attempting to find an affordable hotel in New York is pretty much a non-starter.

Not a clue but I don't know if anyone else has a clue. Not much you can do about it either. Wait and see or take proactive action by moving stuff abroad if poss. I'd probably do that if it was possible. Which will in itself be damaging enough to the country.

I have never been so glad that I'm eligible for an Irish Passport...

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37538459

£ falls again. You'd think certainty is good for markets, but not if you announce you leave the single market!

I guess I should start putting 20% more in my pension the way the £ is going... O_o

I guess I should start putting 20% more in my pension the way the £ is going... O_o

More than 20%. We're all going to live so long on the extra money the NHS is getting!

This pulls no punches.

https://www.ft.com/content/7b78f276-8940-11e6-8cb7-e7ada1d123b1

Us it worth subscribing to read?

Ft article ^^

The UK prime minister announces she will trigger an exit from the EU before getting any guarantees
Theresa May has one great advantage as a politician. She looks serious and responsible. But appearances can be deceptive. If you examine how the UK prime minister is handling Brexit, a different sort of politician emerges.
By announcing that she will start the formal negotiations for Britain to leave the EU by March 2017, the prime minister has walked into a trap. She has given away what little leverage Britain has in the negotiations — without receiving any of the assurances that she needs to achieve a successful outcome.
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The announcement of the decision about when the UK will trigger Article 50 — the process by which Britain gives formal notice that it intends to leave the EU — was made in a statesmanlike fashion. But the actual content of the decision is reckless and driven by politics, rather than Britain’s national interest.
Once Mrs May triggers Article 50, she has precisely two years to negotiate a new deal with the EU. Senior civil servants have told the prime minister that it is highly unlikely that the UK will be able to negotiate both the terms of its divorce and a new trade deal with the EU within the two-year deadline. As a result, they warned the prime minister that she must have assurances on what an interim trade agreement with the EU would look like in the long period between the UK leaving the bloc and a definitive new deal being put into place.
Mrs May has chosen to ignore this advice. In doing so, she has knowingly placed Britain at a massive disadvantage in the forthcoming negotiations.
As soon as Britain triggers Article 50, the EU can simply run the clock down — knowing that the UK will be in an increasingly difficult situation, the longer the negotiations drag on without agreement. At the end of two years, Britain will be out of the EU — and would face tariffs on manufactured goods and the loss of “passporting” rights that allow financial services firms based in the City to do business across the bloc. The economic damage from this kind of “hard Brexit” would be severe, blowing a hole in the government finances as tax revenues from the City shrink, ushering in a new period of austerity.
The most ardent Brexiters claim that this is all scaremongering. Why, they ask, would the EU contemplate the restoration of tariffs when this could be damaging to its own economic interests? The Leavers can answer that question by looking in the mirror. It is clear that the main motivation of the pro-Brexit camp in Britain is political, not economic. And the same will be true of the EU side in the negotiations.
In the British case, the political goal is to restore parliamentary sovereignty and to regain control of immigration. On the EU side, the goal will be to make sure that Brexit does not lead to the unravelling of a European project that has been built up over 60 years. That will mean making sure that the UK pays a clear and heavy price for leaving the EU. As a result, both sides will accept some economic damage rather than sacrifice their political goals.

The difficulty for the UK is that the economic damagethe EU will sustain is likely to be smaller and more manageable than that borne by the British side. The fact is that the EU represents a far larger market for Britain than Britain represents for the rest of Europe. Britain sends 44 per cent of its exports to the EU, while the UK takes only about 16 per cent of EU exports.
The negotiation process itself is also likely to be stacked against the UK. While the British will need a quick deal to minimise uncertainty for investors, the EU can afford to spin things out. Even if this is not a deliberate strategy on the European side, the realities of trying to secure a common position among 27 nations — and then secure ratification in all 27 countries, plus regional legislatures and the European Parliament — will be long and laborious.
Some in Britain speak blithely of relying on the rules of the World Trade Organisation after Britain has left the EU. They ignore the fact that Britain is a member of the WTO under the auspices of the EU. Creating an entirely separate British WTO membership requires another set of complex negotiations.
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That is a much bigger problem for Britain than the EU, since the longer the process is dragged out, the longer Britain is likely to be suspended in a legal limbo that will discourage long-term investment. For that reason it was absolutely vital that Mrs May should get some clarity on what happens after two years of negotiations — if and when the EU and the UK have failed to reach a definitive new deal. The obvious solution would have been for Britain to remain inside the EU’s single market, but outside the EU until such time as a new deal was struck. By failing to get that assurance, the British government has severely weakened its position — even before negotiations start.
So why has Mrs May been so reckless? The short answer is politics. If the prime minister had delayed triggering Article 50 any longer she might have faced a revolt from Conservative MPs, who would have feared that she was backsliding on Brexit. By making her announcement just before the Tory party conference, she has also guaranteed herself some favourable headlines and applause in the conference hall. She may have bought herself another couple of years in 10 Downing Street. But she has also significantly increased the chances that Brexit will cause severe damage to the British economy.

Lasagne doesn't taste as good as sovereignty feels.

There's a bit of contradiction in the above articles. One is saying that announcing when Article 50 will be kicked off is reckless as we haven't got any guarantees in advance.

The other is saying that the EU is taking the stance, and sticking with it, that no negotiation is possible until Article 50 is triggered.

Admittedly that's just keeping up with the trend of no-one knowing what's going on.

"But the actual content of the decision is reckless and driven by politics, rather than Britain’s national interest."

Given that the whole Brexit decision is reckless and driven by politics, rather than Britain's national interest, I'd say that was inevitable.

Leaving the EU and going in the EEC is a lot less risky than giving yourself a very short deadline to leave the whole of the EEC too. It was never going to be ideal no as the EU holds the cards, but you can give yourself time for diplomacy and try to reach a compromise, appeal to common goals etc...

This is just grandstanding.

Trying to convince my in-laws to apply for dual citizenship in France. They've been there 5 years and have nothing here.

They need to be convinced?

They're lazy. I think.

Your in-laws or the French?

True, but as an observation it really crystalised something for me.

The conservatives tried to portray themselves as the party you could trust with the purse strings. They're the economic party, rather than the ideological one. (I personally never believed that but it's why they've won elections for the last ten years, so someone obviously did.)

But with Brexit, that's no longer something they can push. They're clearly ideologically driven, it's no longer hideable. I hope Labour are smart enough to exploit it.

...but...but...immigrants! sovereignty!

I'm exaggerating here, but can Labour reconcile that group?

Does it have to, or will the "in the middles" go with them as there are more of them?

Even a mate of mine, thinks "immigration needs to be controlled" due to the problems in parts of England with trains being bunged etc. That piece of propaganda runs very very deep.

[the problem is of course too many people in an area for the facilities, if you swap all immigrants with UK people the problem persists, but hey...]

It is all ideology, they talk about smaller government and getting more for your money but always wind up spending more than the opposition and they still get away with it... Fear and lies, works great for all Neoliberals around the world...