Brexit

Is it 'irresponsible' for the Royal Navy to plan to protect the fisheries of the UK’s Exclusive Economic Zone (EEZ) when the Brexit transition period ends? The chairman of the House of Commons Defence Select Committee thinks so. The BBC made much of it. But Tobias Ellwood is wrong: it would be irresponsible not to talk now of a deterrent credible in the eyes of prospective trespassers. And who might they be? Given the importance which France attaches to our punishment on leaving the EU for reasons which have nothing to do with fish, but with much bigger psycho-dramatic issues that Robert Tombs and ‘Caroline Bell’ have recently explained, French eyes and minds should be the primary target.

Ursula von der Leyen and Boris Johnson spoke this evening to try and give the negotiations a shove. The statement that the Commission president has released after their call makes clear that fishing is now the biggest obstacle to a deal. She says ‘big differences remain to be bridged, particularly on fisheries. Bridging them will be very challenging’. The Number 10 statement is more downbeat. In a clear attempt to pile on pressure, it declares that ‘Time was very short and it now looked very likely that agreement would not be reached unless the EU position changed substantially.

SNP tempers were running high this afternoon, as the Commons debated amendments to the Internal Market Bill, which deals with the UK’s goods and services after Brexit. The Scottish nationalists have described the Bill as a ‘full-frontal assault on devolution’ because it hands some EU powers back to London. That might explain the poor behaviour of one SNP MP this afternoon. Ahead of the amendments being voted on, the Nationalist politician Drew Hendry decided to make an impromptu intervention. Despite having finished a five-minute speech on the Bill moments before, Hendry clearly decided that his voice hadn’t yet been heard enough and used the opportunity to launch yet another diatribe at the government.

The UK-EU trade negotiations have heated up again, albeit from a very cold state. Boris seems to have conceded ground on the 'evolution clause' to the European Union, making a path to an agreement on the level playing field issues at least plausible. The UK has accepted that divergence should come at some cost — although the details of how that cost should be managed appear to still be a live issue. With that comes the last hurdle: fishing. Boris Johnson has allowed himself to be snookered by the EU. More than anything else I could point to, leaving fishing to the very end demonstrates the folly of Johnson’s overall negotiating strategy.

There is an intriguing pattern in our relationship with European integration. A Frenchman vetoed our attempt to join. A Frenchman threatens to veto our attempt to leave – or at least to leave with an agreement. General de Gaulle said we were too remote from Europe to join. Emmanuel Macron says we are too close to Europe to leave. I think de Gaulle got it right. I hope Macron doesn’t turn out to be right too, so that we end up stuck half in and half out, neither ‘at the heart of Europe’ nor ‘global Britain’. How individuals and nations react to the project of European federalism is determined not just by their calculation of what’s in it for them (though this is clearly paramount for some) but also by their notions of history.

Currency speculators at some of the hedge funds in Mayfair may be feeling quietly pleased. Trade experts will be relieved that their lucrative consultancy gigs will keep on coming. Heck, even financial columnists can safely pontificate about the possible outcome for a while yet, while the FBPE mob on Twitter can carry on predicting the apocalypse every time Nissan adjusts its production schedules. There are a few people for whom today’s agreement between Boris Johnson and European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen to carry on discussing a trade deal will come as a relief. For the wider economy, however, it is little short of a disaster. It is hard to know exactly what there is still to discuss between Britain and the EU.

No, the Channel isn’t going to erupt into naval warfare, and neither is the Prime Minister engaging in ‘gunboat diplomacy’ by deploying Royal Naval vessels to keep French fishing boats out of UK waters in the event of Brexit transitional arrangements ending on 31 December with no trade deal. Yet that seems to be the view of Tobias Ellwood the Conservative chairman of the Defence Select Committee, who protested to the Today programme this morning: ‘This isn't Elizabethan times anymore, this is global Britain - we need to be raising the bar much higher than this.’ Actually – although it may be news to Mr Ellwood, even in his role holding the government to account over defence matters – it is not really a new deployment at all.

At the moment, the biggest single obstacle in the Brexit talks is the so-called ‘ratchet clause’. This is what Boris Johnson is complaining about with his slightly torturous analogy that the EU wants to treat Britain like a twin with the right to punish the UK if it doesn’t get the same haircut or buy the same handbag. As I say in the Times this morning, the problem with this proposed ratchet clause is that the EU wants the right to unilaterally impose tariffs in the circumstances where it has tightened its regulations and the UK has not followed suit. There would be no obligation to show that the UK’s different standards were distorting trade. The EU would simply be able to act. But the UK would not be able to hit back.

The negotiations are still underway in Brussels. But both the UK and the EU are now talking far more openly about no deal. The EU published its contingencies plans earlier and Boris Johnson has just met with the Cabinet and released a clip saying he has told them to ‘get on and make those preparations’ for leaving without a trade deal. Johnson’s argument is that he can’t sign the deal that is currently on the table because of the EU’s demands on the level playing field and fish. He complained that ‘whatever new laws they brought in we would have to follow or else face punishment, sanctions, tariffs or whatever.’ This is the problem of the so-called ratchet clause.