The European Commission will be pleased with Yvette Cooper and Nick Boles’ amendment to Theresa May’s Brexit deal. They can point to it and calm the panic in member states. If they hold firm, then they know that all the leverage will again shift to them, and when we are faced with the same problem, the UK will be considerably weakened. If the Commission had to write an amendment to increase their negotiating leverage, this would be what they came up with.
For the UK, it is disastrous. Any hope of bringing the EU to the table for a sensible negotiation will be lost, and the process will drift on. Far from making a deal more likely, this amendment will make one less likely as those who voted against the Withdrawal Agreement will have no cause to change their votes for any new suggested deal, as there won’t be one. The chances of a schism in the Conservative Party will increase, as will the chances of a Corbyn-led government.
It doesn’t need to be like this. Fellow trade experts and I put an alternative text for the Irish backstop before the country on 12 December, and again in mid-January. We believe that this text delivers the “alternative arrangements” that Michel Barnier suggests need to be found in the event of Britain leaving the EU with no Withdrawal Agreement, in order to preserve the current arrangements at the Irish border. It is therefore the basis of the permanent arrangement on the Irish border. Logically, therefore, it should be the basis of a backstop.
But, any legally binding change to the backstop, whether our suggestion or a different one, will require renegotiation with the EU. We also discussed in our re-launch of A Better Deal in January how the negotiation mechanics might be used by the UK from here. We highlighted some key do’s and don’ts of trade negotiations – aligning your allies, ensuring maximum pressure on the EU at the back end of the negotiations and so forth. We also pointed out how the UK has violated these basic principles in its negotiations thus far. It has negotiated with itself so that it opens with an offer below its bottom line. It has simply accepted the EU’s opening offer, which is well above their bottom line.
The UK has not only failed to align but has in fact confused its allies who now doubt its ability to deliver in any meaningful ways the benefits they saw in a major G7 nation leaving the European regulatory orbit. The UK has made the cardinal error of assuming that it and the EU are on the same side of the negotiating table, attempting to solve a problem that the British people threw into both their laps. Finally, by separating the EU agenda from the rest of the world agenda, the UK has allowed itself to be trapped on a battlefield where it is isolated and almost certain to be the loser, and where key mistakes are being made in other fora – such as our WTO transition and the rollover of existing FTAs – because we are responding to the EU’s lead in these areas as opposed to taking our destiny into our own hands.
For this next negotiation with the EU to have any chance of success, we will need to maximise compression and pressure on the EU at the end of the negotiations. They must know that if we do not have a deal, there are consequences. We will have to open up our agricultural import quotas to all-comers and they will lose market share. The Republic of Ireland must be in no doubt that their market access into the UK of beef will decline dramatically, not because we want it to, but because this is the logical consequence of what we would have to do to control food price inflation in the event of no deal. Since 60% to 70% of our beef now comes from the Republic of Ireland, that loss of market share would decimate the Irish beef industry. The same is true for Bavarian dairy farmers and French farmers who are now beginning to vocalise their concern about no deal.
European member states will start to question why they should lose market share into the UK in this sector all because of the Republic of Ireland, and splits will develop between member states and the Republic of Ireland. There are some early signs of this even now, from the Poles before any new text has been tabled with the EU.
All these increasing fissures and pressures would start to emerge over time. But these negotiations are like a pressure cooker. Pressure is not generated overnight. It takes time to build. Enter the Cooper-Boles amendment. Just at the critical time towards the end of February, the European Commission will be able to tell member states that they know that the UK will request an extension of Article 50, allowing all the pressure to escape, and worse, reversing it, because any extension will come with conditions and demands for much more money from member states (something the Germans have already hinted at).
Brexit is difficult enough without parliament actively siding with the other side. This amendment favours the Commission and deserves to be defeated.
Shanker Singham is the CEO of Competere and lead author of Plan A Plus and a Better Deal