More on Brexit
- This topic has 493 replies, 22 voices, and was last updated 1 year, 4 months ago by
.
-
Posts
-
Brexit has reared its ugly head again and the media will be full of it for the next few days and no doubt we’ll be discussing it here too.
But one thing is clear whether or not there’s a deal. Come 1 January, the only benefit that being in the EU had for workers in the UK — more or less free movement with the 28 members states — will come to an end. From then on workers will still be free to visit EU countries but it will no longer be hassle-free as it won’t be for capitalist exporters either. Those who have got only a UK passport will have to have more papers and pay more. It’s a step backwards that will make life under capitalism a little more difficult.
To be quite frank, even from a capitalist point of view this must be one of the riskiest (not to say counterproductive) measure ever taken by a capitalist state. Giving up a bird in hand (hassle free access to a big market on their doorstep and a say in its rules) in the hope of catching two in the bush (increased trade through yet-to-be negotiated trade deals with further away states). It’s hard to see them pulling this off. But that’s their problem. Meanwhile workers in Britain suffer the collateral damage of decreased freedom of movement.
It looks as if a post-Brexit trade deal is being held up over two issues, neither of which is of any concern to workers — the UK demand for “sovereignty” and the EU ‘s demand for a “level playing field” (fisheries is said to be an issue but it’s so insignificant economically that it alone wouldn’t hold up a deal).
A political area is said to be “sovereign” if its rulers have the final say in matters concerning it. In reality the only thing that states have complete control over is the use of their armed forces. Beyond that, when exercising their “sovereignity” they are in the same position as Marx said humans were in making history. They do exercise sovereign rights but not “as they please”, not “under self-selected circumstances, but under circumstances existing already”. Those circumstances are capitalism which is a world system, the operation of whose economic laws means that states are restricted in what they can in practice do. From a political point of view they have the “right” to make the final decision — and exercise their “sovereignty” to make it — but it will be a decision ultimately circumscribed by these economic laws.
Even apart from this, all inter-state agreements involve surrendering a degree of their decision-making power to some other instiution to make final decisions on whether or not the agreement has been infringed. In the case of the post-Brexit trade talks it was never going to be the European Court of Justice but it will have to be some other body whose decisions both parties will accept.
It should be quite obvious that the arrangements a state make to exercise its “sovereignty” are of no concern whatsover to workers.
The EU’s concern is more pragmatic. They want a “level playing field”, by which they mean that the UK, no more than its own member states, should not have a competitive advantage in selling on the Single Market by subsiding (state-aiding) any of its industries or imposing less onerous standars on them (as over workers rights or the environment). The main problem seems to be over future changes. The EU wants a binding committment from the UK to make roughly corresponding changes. The UK is refusing to commit itseld to this in a treaty as it regards this as limiting its sovereignty. They probably will keep up with changes but as a “sovereign” decision by an “independent” state, not something they are obliged to do.
In theory some pragmatic arrangement should be possible. It seems to depend on how insistent the UK Vote Leave government under Johnson is on having (or appearing to have) full, formal “sovereignty”. Will they give priority to something symbolic over being pragmatic? Will they turn out to be the prisoners of the rhetoric that helped them win the referendum? We’ll see.
Criag Murray appears to see a pragmatic course through:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2020/12/sorry-johnson-will-not-disappear/
“As a former professional diplomat, I am going to be astonished if there is not a Brexit deal announced very shortly. It is plainly highly achievable given the current state of negotiations. The EU have moved very far in agreeing that an independent UK body, as opposed to the European Court of Justice, can be responsible for policing UK compliance with standards regulation to ensure against undercutting. The “ratchet clause” sticking point, where a mechanism is needed to ensure the UK does not undercut future improved EU regulatory regimes, can be resolved with some fudged wording on the mutual obligation to comply with the highest standards, but which does not quite force the EU to simply copy UK regulation in the improbable event it becomes more demanding than the EU regime. By making the obligation theoretically mutual the “sovereignty” argument about UK subservience to EU regulations and standards is met, which is the ultra Tory Brexiteers biggest fetish. Fisheries is even simpler to solve, with obvious compromises on lengths of agreement periods and quotas within easy grasp.”
Just heard Johnston say again that, in the event of a no deal, Britain (British capitalism) will “prosper mightily”. I bet the capitalist class are hoping that he doesn’t really believe this but is bluffing as a negotiating tactic.
Looks like there is now going to be a deal in case of no deal:
It looks as if Boris really is going to put into practice his aside made while still Foreign Secretary in 2018 of “fuck business” and put nationalism before commerce. It seems incredible from a government that is supposed to look after the interests of the capitalist class but we will know by Sunday, apparently, if it’s true.
From Financial Times of 29 June 2018;
Boris Johnson’s Brexit explosion ruins Tory business credentials
The foreign secretary’s outburst reveals commerce has lost out to nationalism.
”Fuck business.” Never was the Brexit manifesto more succinctly captured than in Boris Johnson’s impromptu aside. As slogans go, it has everything. It surfs the populist wave of anger towards elites. It is easy to understand. Hell, it’s even shorter than “take back control”.This from George Monbiot is quite good actually: that it’s a conflict between two sections of the capitalist class.
The ending is a bit weak as he seems to be arguing that more democratic decision-making procedures in themselves are what is needed, whereas this is not enough, in fact not up to much unless on the basis of the common ownership of resources.
So, the Royal Navy is going to patrol the channel to keep French fishermen out, not that they will be able to prevent them blockading the port of Calais with all the economic consequences that will have. The last time the Navy took on foreign fishing boats was in the Cod War with Iceland in the 1970s. Iceland won.
“Iceland won” as a result of a NATO-brokered agreement in 1976 when the UK accepted Iceland’s establishment of a 12 nautical mile exclusive zone around its shores where only its own ships could fish and a 200 nautical mile Icelandic fishery zone where other nations’ fishing fleets needed Iceland’s permission.
The UK abandoned its ‘open seas’ international fisheries policy and declared a similar 200 nautical mile zone around its own waters. Since 1982, a 200 nautical mile exclusive economic zone has been the international standard under the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.
This map is instructive:
Note the misleading nature of the headlines about chasing French fishers out of the Channel, Britain only has half.
Threat and counter-threat:
If it comes to it, the French fisherman are in a stronger position than the Royal Navy.
Interesting — and accurate — observation in an article in Thursday’s Financial Times about the “sovereignty” that Johnson and his backbenchers are braying about:
”the Brexiters’ fatal confusion between sovereignty and power is about to be exposed. Untrammelled sovereignty sounds alluring, but in a world in which each nation’s security and economic wellbeing is inextricably connected to those of others, it turns out that it does not confer real power.”
Exactly. “Sovereignty” is something that exists only on paper and which does not confer the power on a government to do what it likes. Its exercise is limited by external circumstances, notably the workings of world capitalism which places severe limits in what a state can do.
In fact, its exercise in opposition to capitalism’s tendencies — as with reformism but also the attempt to turn the clock back that Brexit is — risks making things worse rather than better.
If Johnson really believes that it is better for capitalist Britain to trade on Albanian terms rather than being an integral part of a large frictionless pan-European single market and gets a chance to try this, then he will soon find out the limits of “sovereignty”. As will his deluded followers and supporters. And most of the British capitalist class will never forgive him.
Peter Cruddas, who Johnson has just made a Lord in defiance of a negative opinion by the committee which vets such appointments, was one of the maverick financiers who bankrolled the Vote Leave campaign.
No wonder Johnson feels he owes him a debt. Cruddas will be pretty happy too — he has avoided his financial dealings being regulated by the EU and has become a member of the House of Lords (sometimes called the House of Frauds). A symbolic reminder of which section of the capitalist class won the Brexit referendum.
The EU’s first explainer on the deal:
(I think the circles sort of count as ticks, the EU wants to talk up the downsides of leaving, but still, we can see what the substantive differences are, as ALB suggested earlier, the big loss is our freedom of movement…)
- You must be logged in to reply to this topic.