Home ›› 06 Oct 2021 ›› Opinion
Brexit might not be done after all. Fuel and labor shortages, triggered at least in part by Brexit, overshadow the Conservative Party’s annual gathering, which kicked off in Manchester this weekend and will last until mid-week.
Meanwhile, a big row about checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland — which the UK prime minister signed up to as a consequence of his 2019 Brexit deal — risks fresh fighting between Johnson’s government and Brussels.
Johnson is still struggling to move on from the battle against the EU he is most famous for, and some in the bloc believe the Tories actively want Brexit to stick around as an issue, because it allows his party to stay in permanent campaign mode.
“It plays well into the political rhetoric,” said one senior EU official. “Because if you do nothing, you can always continue complaining and play the blame game with the European Union being bureaucratic, not flexible enough and all those fake and not very useful statements.”
Adding to the conspiracy theories was the conspicuous absence of the bloc from Liz Truss’s first keynote speech as foreign secretary, EU diplomats said, with Truss instead calling for closer ties with allies including the G7, NATO and the Commonwealth. “It is almost as if they did not want to recognize the EU as a legitimate partner,” an EU diplomat said.
Many frontline Tories appear to be fully embracing Brexit at conference with a Monday morning main stage speech and a string of fringe event appearances from de-facto Brexit minister David Frost. Other key ministers involved in the Brexit fallout, including Cabinet Office Minister Steve Barclay and Transport Secretary Grant Shapps, are set for time on the main stage later in the afternoon.
“All history, all experience, shows that democratic countries with free economies, which let people keep more of the money they have earned, make their own decisions, and manage their own lives, are not just richer but also happier and more admired by others,” Frost will tell the party faithful. “That is where we need to take this country. The opportunities are huge. The long bad dream of our EU membership is over. The ‘British Renaissance’ has begun.”
If that “British Renaissance” is off to a bumpy start, Johnson’s hardly letting it show. Indeed, the prime minister seems keen to squeeze political capital out of Britain’s truck driver shortage and fuel worries, which have been blamed by industry on a combination of tough post-Brexit immigration policy and a Covid-19 delay for tests for new drivers. Quizzed by the BBC on Sunday, Johnson suggested the HGV crisis plus a lack of abattoir staff and butchers — a shortage that risks seeing tens of thousands of animals incinerated rather than used for food — were mere teething problems on the road to a brighter future.
“What we had for decades was a system whereby basically the road haulage industry … was not investing in the truck stops, not improving conditions, not improving pay, and we relied on very hard working people who were willing to come in, largely from European accession countries to do work under those conditions,” he told the Andrew Marr show.
“When people voted for change in 2016 ... they voted for the end of a broken model of the UK economy that relied on low wages and low skill and chronic low-productivity, and we’re moving away from that.”
Chris Rogers, principal supply chain economist at freight forwarding firm Flexport, likened Brexit to the Force in Star Wars — “it’ll be with you always,” he said. “All of those areas across policy, across logistics and visas are going to continue to have an impact, not just in 2021 but also, well into 2022.”
As the Tory conference unfolds, Johnson’s party also wants to keep the EU guessing over its latest move in the long-running row over the post-Brexit Northern Ireland protocol.
Checks on goods moving from Great Britain to Northern Ireland — required under the protocol — have caused turmoil for businesses, and sparked anger among unionist politicians in Northern Ireland, who see the post-Brexit set-up as driving a new wedge between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK
The Tories want to renegotiate the agreement, while unionist parties on the island want it scrapped. But the EU, which is weighing up its response to a UK paper on the issue, has insisted only small tweaks are possible.
That’s left London dangling the prospect of using Article 16, the nuclear clause in the protocol which allows either side to suspend some of its functions. Frost will on Monday repeat his line that the “threshold” for triggering Article 16 has been met, and there were fears the government might use conference to pull the trigger. UK officials have, however, briefed journalists this will not happen.
For now, the EU has some tentative confidence Johnson’s government won’t go there this week — not least because negotiations are ongoing and it would seem unreasonable to jump the gun and then risk losing the blame game.
Ireland’s Foreign Minister Simon Coveney said over the weekend it was his understanding the British government was “not likely to trigger Article 16.”
The EU also takes heart from the visit Johnson paid to the White House last month during which US President Joe Biden urged him again not to risk peace in Northern Ireland. “We hope there might be, thanks to St. Joe in Washington, a conversion on the way to Damascus,” said the EU official quoted at the top of this article, who hoped Johnson would use the conference to “change the narrative and actually try to fix the problems that derive from Brexit, starting with the protocol.”
Others think the government isn’t too fussed about what Washington thinks. Raoul Ruparel, a former Downing Street adviser on Brexit, urged commentators to “stop talking about the US” because it has “no impact on the UK’s decision making or approach” on Northern Ireland or Article 16.
Some in the European Commission fear Britain’s supply chain crisis and the Article 16 row could collide in a piece of high-stakes political theatre.
“The prime minister might decide he needs to distract the attention of public opinion,” said the EU official, noting that Johnson is a “keen historian” who might opt for a Roman approach. “Whenever there was a political problem, they would open the Colosseum, throw big parties, distract the crowds; do something to stop them thinking about the problems.”
Just in case, EU leaders have in recent weeks put pressure on Commission Vice-President Maroš Šefčovič to come up with a plan to respond. Triggering Article 16 would force the Commission to reactivate two Brexit lawsuits against the UK, paused since July to allow space for negotiations. If that fails to persuade Britain to implement the agreement, the EU would then move to retaliatory measures, with tariffs and a possible trade war on the table.
In public, Johnson is not giving the EU much cause to relax. Asked over the weekend whether he might pull the trigger on Article 16 this week, he told BBC Northern Ireland he wanted to see a “real negotiation” — but left the door wide open. He said the options were “fixing it or ditching it.”
Politico
