This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.
Had I been a Brit, I would have voted ‘Remain’ rather than Brexit (or ‘Leave’). Instead, I have been bemused by the comic theatre of British politics, fascinated by what the Brits actual think and professionally interested by the revelations of the complexity of the interactions between Britain and the (rest of the) European Union.
The complexity is summarised in the 2000-plus page agreement (and many loose ends which, when settled by negotiation, will add even more pages). It comes to three times the length of my Not in Narrow Seas and that is covering only 650m years of New Zealand’s history.
I never imagined how complicated was the totality of UK/EU relations. I began wondering what would have to be negotiated supposing there was a standoff between us and the Australians – something I hope never happens. It would not just be repealing the CER agreement but would involve a wide variety of other dimensions, which are beyond my competence to list, together with numerous informal arrangements – for instance, our attorney-general attends meetings of the Australian state attorney-generals.
I doubt the majority British voters in 2016 expected a 2000 page agreement signed at the last minute. They had been told that the deal was easy. What do they think now? Actually, it is not clear what the majority ever thought. The 2016 referendum gave 52 percent for Brexit but there was so much disinformation that it was unclear what was happening. More voted in the 2019 British election for parties which supported Remain than for those parties which supported Leave (say 55% to 45%). However the eccentricities of the British Front Runner electoral system gave the pro-Leave Conservatives a comfortable majority in parliament.
At the heart of the Brexit rhetoric was the demand that Britain exercise its sovereignty and ‘take back control’. ‘Sovereignty’ is a complicated term. On many matters – sometimes described as ‘cultural’ – Britain already had it. A country can decide on such matters as the choices at the end of life or how to regulate cannabis. That is true for member states in the EU which has a governing principle of ‘subsidiarity’ – that decisions should be made at the lowest level possible.
However subsidiarity does not work once exchange between economies is involved, as is well illustrated by the 2000 pages. Suppose one country has some regulatory standards. It will be reluctant to allow imports from another country which does not have these standards. It would be a fat lot of good, for instance, taking domestic measures to restrain carbon emissions and then consuming imports from a country that did not care. Similarly, as a general rule, one country will not allow another to subsidise exports to it if it compromises its local industries.
As a consequence, the EU requires Britain to maintain similar standards for its exports if they are to be tariff-free. So rather than take back control, the British freedom to regulate on such standards is limited. Norway and Switzerland, countries outside the EU but with earlier trade deals with it, complain they are bound by EU regulations despite having no say in their formulation. Britain might have a fraction more wiggle room, but it has hardly taken back control.
One stream in the Leave thinking was neoliberals who objected to the EU standards and thought that if Britain was in control it could set lower levels of consumer, environmental and worker protection in a no-deal option in which trade would be simply regulated by WTO rules.
It is unlikely that the vast numbers of those who voted Leave would favour the elimination of these standards – they were not neoliberals. Their concerns were about sovereignty in a wider, almost cultural, sense. One irritation was from the free flow of people between EU countries. Brexit restricts EU citizens’ right to live in the UK but the offset is that Brits lose rights of free movement throughout the EU.
In my judgement, the case for unlimited people mobility across borders is not as clear-cut as some economists argue. (I am less laissez faire in this regard than was the Key-English Government.) I can see that unlimited mobility is necessary in continental Europe with its permeable borders. Once the principle was there it was harder to justify restricting flows across The Channel/La Manche. There may be some gains here for some Brits if there be losses for others. The measures will impact unevenly. Now those on short-term holidays on the continent will have the ignominy of having to queue with us at points of entry.
Behind this is a British view that their country is more important than it is. Almost all countries claim to punch above their weight – we do too but we are still flyweight. Perhaps because of its imperial history British claims are excessive. The promise to out-negotiate the EU was absurd. Some 45 percent of British exports went to the EU but only 15 percent of the EU’s went to Britain (the latter proportion excludes member states’ exports to one another). This is not surprising given that the EU after Brexit produces more than five times as much as Britain. On the other hand, the EU’s structure of a confederation means it is not as politically cohesive as Britain, although sometimes that can be an advantage.
In contrast to its ambitions, Britain may find itself quite lonely in the world. Even New Zealand with its sentimental ties to Britain will prioritise the EU. Can Britain gather the equivalent of the 27 votes in the UN and the economic power that the EU has? It will be prone to be bullied by even a Biden-led US. That the EU rolled Britain makes it very vulnerable to the next bully who comes along to negotiate an FTA. We are offering one, of course, but this flyweight will insist on concessions for agricultural access.
Nor is there much expectation that the British economy will boom, although PM Johnson has claimed that. (That he has claimed to have done the EU deal better than promised does not give one confidence for this claim either.) The key factors may be the structural change which will become necessary and the rise in transaction costs across borders. Brexit has not simply been a neoliberal ambition, but I am reminded of the claims of the Rogernomes who confidently promised huge economic gains while knocking off 15 percent from our GDP.
Behind the comedy of British politics and the tragedy of the outcome, we can treat Brexit as an experiment – the first trade pact to reduce the flow of trade. Outsiders watch it to learn but, sadly, if one is fond of the best of Britain.
Brian Easton, an independent scholar, is an economist, social statistician, public policy analyst and historian. He was the Listener economic columnist from 1978 to 2014. This is a re-post of an article originally published on pundit.co.nz. It is here with permission.
56 Comments
Check the history. In 1973, GB did not join the EU. It joined the European Common Market. As laid out in the agenda set in 1948, this evolved by a series of manoeuvrings into the EU, whose job was to be the single government of all member countries. GB voters finally woke up to this, and wriggled their way out, and as one politician said, reverted back to being an island nation off the coast of Europe, as before. However, they did have to gift the EU some of their fish to do so. Not particularly complicated.
GB was founded and thrived as a mercantile nation. That has been inhibited by them being sucked into the bureaucratic quagmire of the EU. GB already had enough of that dead hand governance on their own for a start. But the biggy was open slather immigration. Why else would the North of England, switch and vote for the Tories so emphatically last election.
But the biggy was open slather immigration. Why else would the North of England, switch and vote for the Tories so emphatically last election.
Because they didn't know the government already had the power they wanted, but wasn't using it, and the government didn't bother to tell them.
https://ukandeu.ac.uk/we-can-control-eu-migration-we-just-havent-done-i…
One of the biggest issues in the referendum was the perception that unrestricted immigration meant migrants from the continent were putting a burden on the economy.
Furthermore, the refugee crisis was at its peak in 2016, with Nigel Farage’s fearmongering ‘Breaking Point’ poster and David Cameron’s warning of a migrant “swarm” only adding to the narrative that our borders were open and unchecked.
What people – even, seemingly, the government – did not realise is that, since 2006, the Free Movement Directive (to give it its formal title, EU Directive 2004/38/EC) has given us exactly the control over immigration that voters demanded.
...
I finally received an acknowledgement of the directive in writing from a government whip in November last year, after bringing this up in Parliament several times. He confirmed:
“Where admission is permitted, an EU citizen may remain in the UK for up to three months from the date of entry, provided they do not become a burden on the social assistance system of the UK.
If an EU citizen does not meet one of the requirements for residence set out in the Directive [employed, self-employed, self-sufficient, student] then they will not have a right to reside in the UK and may be removed.”
The UK is free to implement this policy as it sees fit, and yet it does not, while other countries – including Belgium and Italy – use this legislation to repatriate thousands of EU migrants each year.
There is little more basic to national identity than who is allowed in to your country. Most of us have a similar attitude to our home - we may like guests in our house but the decision to let someone into our house is ours alone. 'My home is my castle.'
It is noticeable that the places in Britain that were most anti-immigration were the places with least immigrants. However I can understand a UK voter preferring the policy to be set in UK parliament rather than by the less democratic EU bureaucracy. I have plenty of problems with NZ immigration but I'm willing to accept the decision of the majority of New Zealanders - my attitude would change if the policy however wise was being made by some political and economic community such as ASEAN.
One minute you're signing a free trade agreement. The nekminnit you realise you've surrendered the entire country to German control. Something for NZ people to think about when signing up secret trade deals with China.
Hopefully the Covid pandemic will have driven home to Brits the benefits of domestic manufacturing and agricultural production, and more self sufficiency is on its way. Covid has just proven that globalisation has rather severe limits.
This level of ignorance should be behind us. Come on, Interest.co. This is an economist; no mention of Limits, of overshoot, of the inevitable societal retraction as a result of same.
When I challenged the writer (Pundit site) he clearly didn't 'get it', Limits-to-Growth and energy-wise. Just a nice older fellow too immersed in a constructed creed (like the religions of old) which made sense until it didn't.
For those who don't know what I'm on about, the first 4 posts here:
https://surplusenergyeconomics.wordpress.com/
explain it fairly well. Add in this to the Royal Society of Australia (ours has become a tad less questioning, of late):
https://royalsoc.org.au/images/pdf/journal/152-1-Turner.pdf
Brexit, the angst which voted with two fingers for it (the same angst which voted Clinton out) and the increasing global refugee pressures, are all parts of the same thing. Yet we still give no-limits economists, oxygen. We should be saying: Thanks, but we have moved on. Maybe, if they continue their mantra-chanting, we could ask what it is that is being traded? the answer, of course, is: Processed parts of a finite, and rapidly shrinking resource-wise, planet.
We will see more and more Brexits, there is no tide coming back in.
Time we wrote the new narrative; how to live maintainably long-term. After all, the alternative to maintainable is?
History-wise, Britain was an Empire, sucking resources from all over the planet like an octopus. But she had to defend that stance, which exhausted her and a more-energised pretender took over. That Pretender is now in decline, indeed it can be argued that the whole First World became a resource-sucking Empire and is now in decline..... So Britain is doing what the Romans did when they split into separate States and debased their currency. Which didn't work because they weren't addressing the root cause.
https://www.visualcapitalist.com/currency-and-the-collapse-of-the-roman…
Food for thought for the rest of us.
They did. The Roman Empire was dependent on conquest. Once there were no easy neighbours left to conquest and steady flow of spoils of war to pay for their soldiers, and the rest of their way of life, it left them hollowed out and weak, allowing the visigoths to sack them.
Exactly right. There's a whole raft of macro economic factors crystallising, many of which you describe. Rome C 210AD looks very similar to the post WWII western alliance in 2021. Many academics seem so overwhelmed with their personal politics and echo-chamber peer groups they're completely removed from the zeitgeist proving themselves irrelevant.
He aha te mea nui o te ao
He tangata, he tangata, he tangata
I'm a kiwi. Have spent many years in the UK (Inc during the referendum).
The whole process is a complete embarrassment.
Its simple though, 50% of brits hate foreign workers, that's why they all voted leave (mostly aimed at their dislike of Eastern euros like the Poles etc). Pure xenophobia, but hey whatever. Probably the same way most kiwis feel about the Chinese immigrants here.
This sentiment has been hijacked by right wing tabloids and polititions who dislike EU finance regulations, think tax avoidance, and anti competition rules (Google murdoch sky TV bid & research the history).
The irony is that average British who voted leave, in order to take away the freedom of foreign workers, have now lost some freedom that the EU was put in place to protect.
The EU was never about losing or gaining sovereignty. When pressed for specifics, Most people who support leave cannot name any specific EU law or venture that they oppose that was forced upon the UK without UK consent. There aren't any.
The EU was setup to try and stop the constant wars on mainland Europe. People who trade together are less likely to fight. Now 80 years since a major conflict, something of a record that stretches back what 2000 years?? Roman times???
Another pillar of The EU is to stop people from being exploited by tyrannical govts (or being put into concentration camps).... Freedom of movement anyone? Oh yeah you just voted to take back control of this...
For me The question comes down to.. Do I trust my life's freedom more with Michel barnier, or Boris Johnson... Personally I'd go with the guy who has not previously been fired from a job for dishonesty.
But hey... Your business is your business. Enjoy your blue passports, new visa requirements and absolutely no change to immigration levels. Totally worth it.
When I was a UK citizen I voted to join the EU. I still have family with French and with UK citizenship. If Mr Barnier is a saint and Boris is a fathead then my sister's can vote against Boris and remove at the next election (in fact my younger sister hates him and did so at the last election). How do they get rid of Mr Barnier? So if I was still a UK citizen I probably would have voted for remain but I can't help respecting those who voted for Brexit against the advice of most of the media and the experts.
Michel is perhaps the wrong example, ie I should quote a EU law maker name (as in elected) vs say a back office/govt official (as in barnier). But the point is the same. Its movement towards one set of principals (tory), and away from another (EU).
Again, freedom of movement works both ways. Assuming your sister has no passport alternative, it's now harder to leave the fat head for greener pastures.
And we should not call him fat head (discrimination). Perhaps just 'incredibly self absorbed and duplicitous'
Please quote the name of an elected EU law maker. They have a European Parliament but its MPs cannot produce policy only approve policies. That is a big difference.
I lived in England pre-EU membership. Travelling to France was not that difficult. Living and working in France is easy if you are an EU citizen but I assume much harder post-Brexit. But this point brings us back to the point that leavers are more likely to identify with their country than remainers.
I predict that in the long term more apparent democracy will creep into the EU and the UK (or maybe it constituent countries) will rejoin. I'm not likely to live that long.
"" hate foreign workers"" - that is not true. The UK is the same as NZ - we like the doctors, engineers and sportsmen from overseas. What is not appreciated by the bottom of any society is foreigners willing to work for less pay and endure worse conditions.
Immigration has been great for the wealthy but crap for the poor.
British workers (ie minimum wage or just above) are very aware of the impact of cheap Polish labour. Its half the reason for the anti EU sentiment.
But again, economics of foreign workers is not the reason why this agenda was pushed by the EU sceptics inside the tory Party.
My understanding is it was largely a reaction to a million Polish people arriving in a short time, prepared to work twice as hard as any Brit for peanuts. They also made a handy scapegoat for the austerity policies of the Conservative Party which caused shortages of services.
> Its simple though, 50% of brits hate foreign workers, that's why they all voted leave
I am glad you have developed physic abilities and can read the minds of all UK citizens to tell exactly why they voted to leave. Can you tell me how you got this remarkable skill.
The truth is nobody knows why people decided to vote to leave, It is easy to assign stupidity or evil to the side you don't agree with, they voted within the rules so they left. Assigning some reason as to why is pure speculation.
I was anti-Brexit but, who knows, if Macron loses to Marine Le Pen et. al. then France may well be next and that may well finish the EU in effect. Unfortunately the EU is currently cutting the governments that supported it off at the knees with their slow approval process and high level of incompetence: https://www.dw.com/en/biontech-admits-it-will-struggle-to-fill-covid-va…
Brexit is yet another example of the two party system trying to avoid implementing the will the electorate.
The referendum was held in bad faith by David Cameron (he wanted it to fail and it was intended to) to fright of the electoral threat of UKIP (UK independence party) and then it turned into a mess as establishment tried to reverse it. The counterfactual of what would have happened if Cameron and the Tories had wanted to leave will never be known.
All those consequences don't matter compared to the political ones of a parliament conspiring to overturn the result and intent of the referendum. The electorate eventually worked this out and made it happen, the only way out was though. Now it's mostly done the UK can figure out how to make the best of it.
The EU is a neo-liberal corporatist state as economist Prof Bill Mitchell likes to describe it. A state designed for the welfare of big business but not the common man. It suffers from high levels of unemployment and poverty much of which is do to the failure of the Euro currency which has been an unmitigated disaster for Greece.
No country should ever give up its own currency. Why Scotland would ever wish to rejoin can only be described as stupidity or political ambition by Sturgeon. .
I am a Brit and would have voted to leave. Europe is dragging England down a hole. If your the top country or at least second then its all bad for you as countries like Greece go down the toilet and your left holding the can. Thankfully England never opted for the Euro dollar and can cut ties. Free immigration is killing England, they now have control of their boarders. New Zealand is always 20 years behind England in its decisions and just doesn't learn from their mistakes.
England's success was based in colonialism and invading neighboring territories. Trade with both the colonies and other countries was the main reason for it. In joining the EU the UK as a whole decided to leave a dying past behind and look at the future as part of something bigger. The project has not worked that well for most countries in the EU except for a few exceptions such as France, Netherlands, Germany and yes, the UK which benefited by providing financial services which would otherwise stayed in Frankfurt. Leaving the EU was an act of stubbornness promoted by the idea that England is still somehow different to the rest of its neighbors. Must ask scots what they think about this now.
Success came first and colonies came later. Many colonies were a drag on the home countries economy. Wales and Ireland were not invaded for strong economic reasons but for security. Compare with the Dutch and Portugese empires that largely predate the British Empire - the cost of maintaining and defending a colony is high. Do the Chinese make a profit out of Tibet? Note the use of 'many' because some colonies did generate profit
Both above comments miss the point. It wasn't 'colonisation', it was annexation. The acquisition of resources, including land, minerals and water (grain/wool from Australia to UK was external water commandeering.
Then there's 'make a profit'. No, it's a matter of having access to resources. Only an economist (or one trained by such) would see it in 'profit' terms.
And yes, PDK, the issue of resources, climate change, trade and immigration are only going to become more fraught. China, "the engine of the world's economy" can't even feed itself. One of the biggest flaws of human nature is how short sighted we are. I mean, Trump was going to "clean coal" for the love of God. He would literally say anything to appease his voter base and cared nothing for future energy and resource crisis. So people will short sightedly vote for a Trump or a Boris because they have promised to protect their interests ("drain the swamp", "deliver on Brexit"), without really thinking about the slightly longer term impact and issues slightly over the horizon.
B21, Every country, nation and tribe has colonised. It's human nature to colonise. The Brits invented a f*&k tonne of tech. The spurred the Industrial Revolution with ingenuity, science and engineering. They did a helluva lot more than just colonise. Do we dismiss all the Ancient Greek, Egyptian, Islamic or Roman Empire's ideas, ingenunity and creativity because they colonised? Yes, at times the British played dirty during the era of colonisation (which most of Europe was also engaged in) but they certainly were no worse than anyone else in their behaviour,. Honestly, I role my eyes at the lazy stereotype of British colonisation as if everyone can just point at a "ye olde bad white guy". No one ever talks about the colonisation that different African countries and tribes continue to do and have done to each other. It'll be called a tragedy, maybe there'll be a movie about child soldiers, but even though it's colonisation (people stealing resources. land and dominating each other), because it's black on black, it's not colonisation?
You know that the word slave comes from Slavic? Because the rich countries of North Africa, Middle East etc loved white slavic thralls, to the extent that the Slavs became synonymous with slavery?
The British are far from perfect but lets stop using them as the woke-white scapegoat for the worlds race problems. The world has many complex problems, mostly caused by the many flaws in human nature, not one country or nationality and certainly not a little wet island off the coast of Europe, that has been conquered and invaded perhaps more than any other during its history.
As for Brexit? I'm much more concerned about how badly the country is being managed during the pandemic. Most Brits are very over Brexit (even though they are a long way from having finished on negotiations and Services haven't been agreed yet). I voted Remain, so did my Kiwi husband (who also has a British passport) but I just don't care anymore. I want Brexit to succeed, for both the EU and Brits. They have to make it work and necessity is the mother of invention, it'll just take awhile.
All you say is true yet it does not contradict my point. Something being part of human nature does not justify it as an action and even with all that technology you mention, which by the way most was developed at the time pretty much in parallel in various parts of Europe, the British empire would have not become what it did without the help of the colonies . Being myself originally from a country which similarly to the English built an empire to later on see it fail I understand the frustration that as a country this can cause as well as that it can easily be used to promote nationalisms of the worst type, yet it is not a solution to break up with your neighbors just to feel how special you are when you actually need them the most.
Who decides what is justifiable? Ethics, values, morals and norms are constantly in a state of flux. Human beings are constantly revisiting and re-inventing what is acceptable and what is taboo. You create a false paradigm when you apply a modern lens to a different culture with different values.
Cultures are constantly recreating stories about who they are and were. Brits are busy recreating stories the same as every other group of people. It may have good or bad outcomes, probably both.
All I am saying is, there is a preponderance to referring to British colonisation, as if it were different, exceptional or notable. But there wasn't anything worse about any European or "white" colonisation other than the British one was just more recent and more impactful because they were more successful at it (for a time), so that our language and our history books have been the stronger more enduring meme. But that will change in time.
Whether that is justifiable, rests entirely on what you perceive as justifiable. Most cultures are very good at creating stories to justify things that benefit them at the expense of others. Again, that's not a white problem. All cultures have done it and continue to do it. There have been many genocides, many cultures wiped out, some accidentally, some on purpose, some just a natural extension of human influence and new tech. Human beings being arseholes to each other and taking natural resources for granted is multicultural and perennial. Every culture, everywhere has always done it at some point. If we look at evolutionary psychology, biology/neurology it's all there, we have an evolved nature, with instincts and drives. Those instincts and drives aren't going anywhere, we just like to fantasise that we have some kind of better control over ourselves than a dog or cat, but we only marginally do.
Until we stop using scape goats and look at human nature as the source of our problems, we are going to keep repeating the same mistakes and wreaking the same havoc. Alas, scapegoating also appears to be part of human nature so we are probably f&%*ed and doomed to continually be vile to each other on a regular cycle, making up some justification du jour and destroying the planet.
I read it somewhere that if the UK had maintained its share of exports to non-EU markets as existed pre-EU, its export industry would be 50% greater than it is now. By focusing only on the increasingly insular EU the UK cut itself off from participating in free trade agreements with many of the Commonwealth countries, China, and the Americas. Joining the EU did them no favours.
The UK has been desperately forging an FTA with Vietnam. The EU is years ahead of them. An agreement was signed recently. Boris Johnson says:
"It is true that coffee prices are currently low; but that is the fault of the Vietnamese, who are shamelessly undercutting the market, and not of the planters of 100 years ago."
To me, that is incredibly out of touch and ignorant (MNCs control the coffee price in Vietnam). Good way to start a trade relationship.
https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/boris-johnson-colonialis…
It will be interesting to to see how the value of the pound changes because its gone down the toilet ever since they joined the EU. When we left England in 1974, it was over triple the value of the NZD and at one time it approached quadruple to the NZD and now its not even double.
Seriously, that isn't the question.
We - along with the rest of the planet - are failing to properly account. So worrying about what that improper account counts, doesn't count.
How will we cope when resource supplies are curtailed, when our habitat requirements are compromised and when entropy forces triage of our infrastructure? THAT is the question. And it's a doozy.
Actually, you'll find the First World right behind that; repressing via the IMF, the World Bank, and shonky puppet governments often coup-helped into power.
Then the First World virtue-signals to itself with Band Aid and World Vision etc, giving dribbles while extracting torrents.
And blames them for being economic basket-cases.
:)
It appeared to me then, as it does now; neither miniscule not pathetic, just a total misunderstanding of the human predicament.
I'd read The Limits to Growth ten years before that.
And Catton's Overshoot some years before, too.
And we chose replacement-progeny only, two years later.
Equality is indeed the only sustainable model (dog-eat-dog just depletes everything) but we'd have to be down to 1 billion or so, for sustainability to work
https://vickirobin.com/crashed-planet/
http://energyskeptic.com/2020/paul-chefurka-more-thoughts-on-sustainabi…
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0921800919310067
There were only 4 billion in 1980, 4.8 by 1985. Geldorf's effort should have gone on condoms. There are no 'Rights' for a species which irrupted itself on the basis of a once-off draw-down; the UN SDG's interestingly contain 5-7 which do not qualify as 'S'. There will be a descent, one way or another, to sustainable population levels. And it won't be pretty.
https://www.populationmedia.org/2012/04/04/the-meaning-of-sustainabilit…
Hardin had put the problem pretty honestly, back in the mid-70's:
https://hardinlifeboatethics.weebly.com/formal-essay-analysis-of-lifebo…
Makes one think :)
Referring to the nations descended from the two legs of the Roman Empire (Both Middle Eastern and European Countries):
"This mixture of iron and clay also shows that these kingdoms will try to strengthen themselves by forming alliances with each other through intermarriage. But they will not hold together, just as iron and clay do not mix."
~New Living Translation~
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