British Politics Guide

[zompist]

Couldn't the UK be targeted by terrorists (Muslim, Christian, FSB, etc.) based out of EU countries if they don't run checks on imports?
Even if not, then Brexiteers could still run that line anyway to force the government to do it. After all, no control of imports is a sign of lack of sovereignty! (looks at Vatican and Andorra)

Why would this suddenly be a problem on No Deal Day? I mean, the current situation is a common market where goods and people can move freely. If "terrorism" isn't a problem now, why would it suddenly become one when the amount of checks done increases?

[Richard W]

Time for a naive question... on a practical level, why would No Deal hold up imports? Countries usually don't check exports, do they? So the EU doesn't need to hold up exports on their end. And the UK could simply (haha, 'simply') declare that imports from the EU don't need any special checks for some period of time. What would the mere fact of Brexit do to slow down the customs process?

Through goods (e.g. from China on the Yiwu-'London' railway route) could need checking to ensure that what entered the EU from Belarus actually left the EU to the UK. Also, a current no-deal plan is to waive UK tariffs on the Irish border but not at Holyhead or Dover, though this can only be temporary, as it apparently breaches WTO rules. A recent work-to-rule by French customs led to many Eurostar trains being cancelled and advice against non-urgent travel! The French customs officials want more money for the extra workload being imposed by Brexit - and that's presumably with a deal.

Ireland has worries about goods from the Continent that currently pass through the UK, going from Dover to Holyhead.

[Richard W]

VAT refunds on export may be an issue. Claiming VAT refunds on non-existent exports is or was a well-known fraud.

[evmdbm]

Couldn't the UK be targeted by terrorists (Muslim, Christian, FSB, etc.) based out of EU countries if they don't run checks on imports?
Even if not, then Brexiteers could still run that line anyway to force the government to do it. After all, no control of imports is a sign of lack of sovereignty! (looks at Vatican and Andorra)

Why would this suddenly be a problem on No Deal Day? I mean, the current situation is a common market where goods and people can move freely. If "terrorism" isn't a problem now, why would it suddenly become one when the amount of checks done increases?

Security cooperation. The UK loses access to all the EU security databases and so yes, there might be more checks on goods coming in (but not people, because the UK is not in the Schengen zone, which is a separate treaty regarding common visa policy and passport-free travel for member states), but we won't know who we're looking for any more.

[Salmoneus]

The government has indeed talked about waving everything through at the borders (people will then declare what they imported through an online form after the fact), and this will indeed relieve the greatest problems. But it's not an ideal solution.

In the short term, it doesn't eliminate the risk of delays largely because the Dover-Calais crossing is already so congested, logistically, that delays one way can cause delays the other way. The big thing is that both the ferry services and the Shuttle (vehicle transport on trains through the Tunnel) are RORO. They can't leave Calais until the UK-EU traffic is off them, and the EU-UK traffic is embarked. If the lorries coming off the boat have to immediately go through customs checks, the boat has to wait around longer. The problem is apparently particularly bad at Dover because of the shortness of the crossing - freighters use long crossings to fill out their customs declaration forms, but there are concerns they won't be able to do that across the Channel (can't they fill them out in advance? presumably there's some problem with that, or at least it'll be a change of practice that'll take time to get used to). And then of course the road network is under strain - is Calais well-enough designed to let outward traffic flow freely even when inbound traffic is logjammed? I don't know, but Dover isn't.

There have been talks about getting the French to place their customs checks beyond Calais, to prevent the port getting logjammed, but there are issues with that, and it's unlikely to happen short-term if there's no deal. A big point to make here is that one problem with no deal is that because everyone says they don't want it, there's no preparation for it - certainly if we were actually leaving today, the French would not have set up new customs posts around Calais by tomorrow.

But I think it is fair to say that waving through traffic at Dover turns the traffic problem from "certain armageddon" into "possible nightmare", and some scare stories are exaggerated worst-case scenarios. Nobody really knows what's going to happen.


In the long term, however, waving-through doesn't seem feasible. There's through-traffic from outside the EU to consider, and smuggling across the border once there are tariffs, and the fact that permanent absence of checkpoints absent a trade deal is apparently illegal under WTO rules. But more broadly there's an ideological issue - a big part of brexit-related nationalism has been "Taking Back Control Of Our Borders", and the idea of implementing that by removing all checks at our borders is... counterintuitive to many people on the right.

[alice]

Metaphor of the day:

If British politics is a pack of cards, Nigel Farage isn't so much the joker as the card with the Bridge scoring table which keeps turning up when you want to play something completely different.

[Moose-tache]

I guess I was naive, but I thought the problem with imports continuing unchanged wasn't the threat of customs agents stopping all the baguettes at Dover, but that the baguette wholesalers had contracts that would suddenly be illegal. If you sell things across an EU border, and then it becomes a hard international border, can you still keep selling the same goods to the same customer, with the same contracts, regulatory paperwork, and registration?

[Salmoneus]

If nobody checks, it doesn't matter!

If they do check: it depends.

All contracts should in general still be valid. It's possible, however, that some contracts could become harder or more expensive to enforce due to jurisdiction complexities.

In the long term, the big problem would be regulatory drift - definitions of which goods are legal and how they must legally be described might diverge between two regulatory systems. However, this won't happen immediately, and the UK has committed to trying to minimise this at least in the short term.

The only hard issue will be around things like drugs, security-relevant technology, and nuclear materials. In these cases, it will be illegal to export some things to a country that lacks appropriate regulatory authorities with mutual recognition - I suspect you can't just ship medical heroin to foreign countries willy-nilly, and you certainly can't do that with plutonium. The UK would have to establish its own regulatory bodies and acquire recognition from the EU bodies, which in principle shouldn't be too hard but might take time. I'm not sure how many things will be affected by this, however.

[zompist]

Latest Brexit news. Hopefully Sal can expand on some of these...

• The 1922 committee has rejected changing the rules that prohibit a leadership challenge till December. That is, May is safe for now.
• May's talks with Corbyn seem to have stalled.
• Nicola Sturgeon is promising a new referendum on independence. If there's no deal, polls suggest she'd win.

[MacAnDàil]

As a Scottish independentist, I would say that Sturgeon's announcement was made inevitable in 2016. In 2016, it was said in the 2016 SNP manifesto that they would go for a second independence referendum if there were material changes. And they gave the example of if Scotland was taken out of the EU against its will.

At the time, I even thought about voting Labour for the first time in my life as I then considered a second independence referendum a long way off. But it turns out that this part of the manifesto was spot-on.

Also, we can remind ourselves of the gap closed by the independence side in the last independence referendum. There was like a 20-point gain in the 2-year campaign. Obviously, it's not necessarily possible to get quite as much a gain this time around, but even a third of that would bring us over the finishing line, even in the event of a sudden burst of competence on the part of Westminster.

But the remain-in-the-UK vote is largely a pro-inertia vote, as evidenced by the one poll where people were asked how they would if Scotland were already independent. The results are telling: more than 2/3 would vote to stay independent while less than a quarter would vote to join a union. And this means, as far as I am concerned, the independence side is more likely to gain votes, especially if the alternative is unstable (but claiming to be 'strong and stable'). The independence side stands more to gain AFAICT in a longer campaign as well.

[alice]

It would be nice, yes. But what if, as it's currently doing, Westminster refuses to allow another referendum?

[chris_notts]

Speaking as someone who lives in England, I imagine my feelings about Scottish independence are the same as many in the EU about Brexit. Namely, that it's clear that the question will never be settled until Scexit actually happens, because support is deeply established for at least a large minority, and any vote against will be treated as temporary whereas any vote for independence will trigger a permanent change in arrangements. That being the case, I just want the argument to be over. Better that Scotland does leave than go through the same pointless debate that never properly settles anything every 4-5 years for now until we all die of old age and/or the SNP finally get the answer they want. If the vote on Scottish independence were UK wide, I'd be voting for even though I don't live there.

And... if people in the EU are thinking along similar lines, then to be honest they're right. I'm convinced that Brexit will be a short-term disaster and a medium - long-term drag on the UK, given the poor quality of our leadership especially, and my personal preference was to remain. But the only way I can imagine now that the question might be settled would be to prove exactly how terrible an idea it is by doing it. No amount of indirect evidence or argument will convince a good 40% of the population, so we'll have to prove them wrong by suffering the decade long depression and then figure out how to fix the mess when support for the idiotic cheerleaders like Johnson, Mogg and Farage has died down to something more like 5% of the electorate.

A second referendum and remaining will just prolong the argument indefinitely. May's deal means a decade more wrangling and arguing about unicorns. What else can we do now but bite the bullet, and then make sure that the ring leaders never get anywhere near political office ever again?

[MacAnDàil]

I think you're right. I do think a general election could solve the deadlock though. This way, Corbyn would negotiate the deal and get, while not full support, at least more than May.

[Moose-tache]

The word you're all looking for is "accelerationist." Personally I don't think implementing a bad plan to show how bad it is makes a lot of sense, since... it's a bad plan. If the stubborn ~40% can't get that through their thick skulls, they're not going to accept that it's their fault when things go tits up. Belgium can always be blamed for recession, especially when that recession is caused by crippled trade with the EU. Brexiteers complain about having to abide by EU regulations when they help make the rules! How much easier will it be to cast blame when their exports have to abide by those same rules, but the British public have no hand in making them?

I'm not sure if pushing into a terrible plan has ever been a good idea. I don't even need to Godwin myself; just look at all the edgy Sandernistas who said the USA ought to have a president Trump to shake them out of their Clinton-voting apostasy?

[Travis B.]

That reminds me of when I considered voting Republican specifically to destroy America and the world faster and thus bring about social revolution sooner... The thing, though, is that people will never get it through their heads that they should really bring about social revolution, so accelerationism just turns out to be purely destructive in the end.

[Linguoboy]

No amount of indirect evidence or argument will convince a good 40% of the population, so we'll have to prove them wrong by suffering the decade long depression and then figure out how to fix the mess when support for the idiotic cheerleaders like Johnson, Mogg and Farage has died down to something more like 5% of the electorate.

Or wait for them to die?

As I recall, the Leave/Remain vote was heavily split along generational lines, with pensioners happy to vote to torpedo the economy that young people are relying on to provide them with jobs. I agree with Moose-tache that these folks won't be convinced regardless of how tits up everything goes. They're not voting based on empirical evidence but from emotion so a change in material circumstances is unlikely to reach the sources of those emotions. But in ten years there will be substantially fewer of them while--one hopes--the importance of getting to the polls will have been firmly impressed on a fresh crop of voters.

(Of course, we in the US have been treating racism, homophobia, and other forms of backward-looking bigotry as vices that will die out over time only to see a new surge led by the likes of the Charlottesville crowd in recent years. I hold out hope that this is a kind of "extinction burst" from adherents of an ultimately doomed mindset, but liberal societies have regressed before so it's hard to be confident.)

[Travis B.]

Before Trump I do not even recall there having ever been anti-Semitic terrorist attacks here in the US as far back as I can remember, and now we've had two in less than a year's time. (Actually, there was the assassination of Alan Berg, but I only remembered it after I wrote the preceding sentence.)

[MacAnDàil]

There was a generational difference in the vote, but over 80s voted remain like the young uns. (see at 12:20 here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9KGleM2Zagg)

On the other hand, what he said about the political situation in Norway doesn't seem to be true, so you may take that with a pinch of salt too.

[Moose-tache]

To get back to British politics, Labour is now saying that they will support a second referendum if all else fails (i.e. no deal, no new election, rivers to blood, etc). But some people seem confused on what that means. Lots of Brits on twitter appear to believe that if a particular deal goes to the public and they vote it down, then Brexit is cancelled, when in fact the wording of the referendum would probably be very clear that it's a vote between a particular deal and going back to the drawing board to try another deal.

Considering that no deal will ever satisfy the Leavers because it doesn't include free biscuits and a pony, and Remainers will vote against it because they're idiots and think it's a Brexit do-over, can any deal ever survive a referendum? Is giving the people a confirmatory vote the same as saying that No Deal is inevitable?

EDIT: Oh, and remember those ferries Salmoneus mentioned a while back? the ones that didn't have any boats?

[KathTheDragon]

Can any deal even get to the confirmatory referendum in the first place? You have exactly the same issues with MPs - the Brexiteers don't think the deal goes far enough, the Remainers think it goes too far.