Another bust-up over Brexit — or just a storm in a tasse de thé?
(Photo by YVES HERMAN/POOL/AFP via Getty Images)
How worried should we be about the latest brouhaha over Brexit? Very, according to Alain Catzeflis, the former news editor of the Financial Times. In a piece for TheArticle, he compares the row, which he blames entirely on the British, to the Falklands War: a dangerous tactic to divert attention from the sharp rise in Covid-19 cases. Critics claim that what the UK calls “minor clarifications” of the Irish protocol to the Withdrawal Agreement are in fact a serious breach of that agreement. Some suspect a plot by Tory hardliners who prefer a no-deal Brexit. Others blame Boris Johnson; one non-EU foreign minister, quoted by Rachel Sylvester in The Times, calls him “shifty”.
The measures, to be announced tomorrow, will apply to Northern Ireland regardless of the outcome of trade talks. The fact that they are unilateral has ruffled feathers in Brussels, which expects to be consulted about such matters as state aid and the “level playing field”. Michel Barnier is demanding an explanation when talks, now at a sensitive stage, resume today. A Commission source threatens that a free trade deal, already in doubt, could be derailed, adding: “This is a matter of trust.”
Perhaps all concerned need to take a deep breath — and be careful with their historical comparisons. Margaret Thatcher did not engineer the Falklands War as a diversionary tactic: she had no choice but to defend British sovereignty against an invasion by the Argentinian dictatorship. Are Europhiles really happy to be cast in the role of General Galtieri?
As for the spike in Covid cases: it is worrying, but still far below the levels in some European countries such as, for example, Spain. Is it really plausible that British trade negotiators would throw all their toys out of the pram because of a pandemic that everyone knows is unpredictable but which seems to have done its worst, at least in Europe?
As for the British measures themselves: we shall see what they amount to, but there does appear to be merit in the Government’s explanation that the protocol on Northern Ireland and the Republic will have to be aligned with UK law before it comes into force next year. They see the issues at stake, over state aid in the Province and which goods can be imported across the Irish Sea, as essentially domestic matters. The EU may beg to differ, pointing to the risk that cheap goods from the UK might find their way into the EU via the Northern Irish border, or that the British Business Secretary might not abide by EU rules on subsidies. Yet these are issues that, were they to arise, could indeed be resolved through the arbitration process foreseen in the Withdrawal Agreement. For Barnier to provoke a bust-up now over disputes that may never happen looks like an egregious example of the bad faith of which he accuses the British.
This week’s shadow-boxing is merely the prelude to the hard pounding that has yet to take place over much bigger stakes in the trade talks themselves. Over several years of Brexit negotiations before the UK was finally allowed to leave the EU last January, the consensus was that Team Barnier ran rings around their British counterparts. The public despaired of watching a glum Theresa May emerging empty-handed from EU summits, having invariably been stitched up before she even arrived.
Now, however, the lanky, patrician Frenchman has met his match. David (now Lord) Frost is proving to be as tenacious as his namesake, the interviewer, as chief British negotiator. He is as tough as old boots and ready to go to the wire. Unlike his predecessor, Sir Oliver Robbins, “Frosty” is sneered at by fellow diplomats behind his back. It probably won’t bother him too much that he is accused by a “well-connected former mandarin”, quoted by Rachel Sylvester, of being a bad listener, or that “he seems deliberately to engender mistrust.”
Ah, that question of trust again. There is nothing new about the (mainly French) stereotype of “perfidious Albion”. It goes back at least to the Hundred Years’ War and it is wheeled out every time there is friction between the recalcitrant islanders and their Continental neighbours. The British cannot be trusted, it is said, because they are selfish and unscrupulous: in the words of a Victorian Prime Minister, Lord Salisbury, “if our ancestors had cared for the rights of other people, the British Empire would not have been made.”
Though this cliché, like all clichés, contains a grain of truth, it could only be seen as the key to understanding Brexit by someone who was determined to ignore the wood for the trees. In all their dealings with the EU, the British have asked only one thing: to be treated like any other sovereign state. That is precisely what has not happened. Instead, Brussels has been obsessed with the notion that Britain might become a larger Singapore, undermining the European social model by creating a low-tax, free-market offshore haven.
That might or might not happen one day. In the meantime, both sides are bound to engage in all the wiles of brinkmanship until a deal is done. As they do so, Michel Barnier should beware of having the rug pulled from under him by none other than Emmanuel Macron. The French President is talking directly to the British Prime Minister; their entente is apparently quite cordiale. Both leaders want a trade deal and they are unlikely to be deterred by this week’s storm in a tasse de thé. Will the middleman be cut out?
