whack-a-mole…
Yes, we all know Brexit means Brexit but, with precious little buyer’s remorse, there ain’t no going back, and at times it’s all starting to feel somewhat like a grown-up game of Whack-a-Mole. Immigration? Up it pops and whack it back in the hole. Customs union? Quick, crack it one. Border control? Thwhack. Out of the ECJ? Whoops dropped the mallet. Transition period? Damn, missed. Final payment terms? Gotcha! And it’s because, as we’re finding out, the devil is in the detail and it’s the detail we’re all still waiting on.
Whilst Mrs May performed competently in China last week, I would be keen to know how many of those much trumpeted international deals were instigated post-referendum? How many came from exporters who had intentionally and recently realigned their efforts from Europe to the east? Exactly how many came from the small to medium sized manufacturing enterprises that had been established & initiated post-Brexit? The old saying in sport is just as apt in business: trophies are won in winter and collected in summer. There’s absolutely no harm in courting new relations around the world but when it comes to trade, geography is almost everything. We are now chasing our tails to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership at the same time that we are turning our back on a perfectly functioning trade agreement with an export market five times the cumulative size of the collective eleven TPP members. Go figure?
Which makes me consider the next mole-in-the-hole, the Irish border and the parliamentary majority held by the DUP. The arrival of the EU single market, along with the Good Friday Agreement, heralded the permeable seamless border that exists today and numerous cross-border trade initiatives, including that of its most famous son: Guinness, brewed in Dublin, is sent north to be canned before returning south to be exported.
Fast forward and, whilst all parties, Ireland, Britain and Brussels, insist there should be no return to a hard, closed border, the EU believes the only way to avoid detailed customs checks is for all parties to understandably observe the same rules of engagement. Mrs May, in thrall to the pesky hard-Brexiters, has now had to rule both THE single market/customs union, and ANY single market, out of bounds as it would prevent us organising the terms & conditions with the likes of the TPP. But nor can Northern Ireland alone remain in the EU as the Democratic Unionists will not allow, in any way, anything that separates the country from the UK and that would mean BIG trouble in the commons. An impasse exists.
Kicked into the long-grass just before Christmas, the tentative agreement was couched with “In the absence of agreed solutions, the UK will maintain full alignment with those rules of the internal market and the customs union”. However, following this week’s pronouncement, it’s difficult, if not impossible, to envisage how this can now come to pass? Ducker & Diver Davis hopes we’ll be allowed to set our own rules to pick what we want and choose how we go. The EU, fronted by Bluff Barnier, appears highly unlikely to cede this level of control, and it resisted to do so with both the US and Canada.
With its own laws, its own banknotes, its own corporate tax-regime in the offing (a reduction from 19% to 12.5%) and its own unique way of doing business, my money’s on the DUP somehow agreeing to the whole of Ireland being treated as an island, but it’s a risky strategy to put your shirt-on. And at what price to the rest of the union? At some point in time, Mother Theresa and her parliamentary team are going to have to stop winging it with slogans, sound-bites and knee-jerk reactions in favour of real-life, realistic and concrete specifics on how to achieve the ambitions they claim to want. Cards-on-the-table time is fast approaching and we may well look back and view these days as the calm before the storm. Whack!
