The Lib Dems and the SNP uniting to promote a general election in October was a huge surprise to me, because it seemed likely that this would clear the way for the Tories to take charge and finish Brexit very largely on their terms. I am glad that they did, but can they really be surprised by the outcome? Surely not.
It appears that Michael Gove has been tapped to be lead trade negotiator for the new Tory government. Not very many outlets are carrying this report, so it still may be premature. But it is right, this is an inspired pick. Gove was one of Boris Johnson's chief rivals for the leadership of the Conservative party. He contributed to taking Boris out at the knees during the 2016 contest, when Theresa May came out on top. During last summer's Tory election scramble, Gove started off reasonably strong, but Johnson was apparently predestined to take over this job, and now he has it. Gove is intellectually razor sharp and politically extremely talented. He is a real world class leader in a world that is has a major shortage of such people. Johnson refused to give Gove one of the top jobs in his government last September, which made sense considering the tensions that had been exhibited between them in past leadership contests. Fortunately, that short period "In the dog house" was apparently long enough and now Gove will be back in the true inner circle, if this promotion comes to fruition. Normally there are four major government minister posts (Secretaries here in the US), including Foreign Minister (State), Defense, Attorney General and Treasury. For the British as they come out of the EU, there will arguably be a fifth such position, as the UK will be required to rework ALL of its trade arrangements with other countries around the world. That fifth major government post for the UK over the next 5-10 years will be the Trade Minister. This will be a position of enormous power, importance and effect not only on the affairs of the people of the UK, but to a lesser extent, literally almost everyone in the world.
Gove has come out today as the first minister of Boris Johnson's government to reiterate the promise that the UK would leave the EU on January 31 and that the transition period for trade purposes would stop by December 31, 2020, which is the date enshrined in the Withdrawal Deal agreed to by Prime Minister Johnson and the EU, which is expected to be voted on and approved by the newly elected UK Parliament next week. Michael Gove promises Brexit trade deal with EU by end of 2020 Michael Gove has categorically promised the UK will have a trade deal with the EU by the end of next year, despite deep reservations in Brussels about whether this is possible. The senior minister became the first in Boris Johnson’s cabinet to repeat that pledge after the election, saying transitional arrangements would definitely stop at the end of December 2020. He said discussions on the UK’s future relationship with the EU “will be concluded next year”. Despite his confidence, EU leaders are considering a move to take the initiative and request an extension to the transition period, keeping the UK under Brussels regulations beyond 2020. Where to start.... First of all, the headline on the title of the article above is "Fake news" by the UK Guardian, from whom this article is sourced. Michael Gove did not promise a "Trade deal" by the end of 2020, although in as far as it has anything to do with him, I expect there will be one. What he said was: “Quite a lot of the details that we need to negotiate is already laid out in the political declaration, so a lot of work has been done. And as a number of people have pointed out, there are areas where the European Union’s interests and the United Kingdom’s interests are already closely aligned, so I’m confident that we will be able not just to leave the EU on January 31 but also to conclude all the details of a new relationship in short order.” As you can see, he did not put a time limit on the trade negotiations with the EU, although he clearly thinks they should be able to get such a deal done by the end of 2020, considering all the work that has already been done on this over the last 3.5 years. That being said, both Johnson and Gove do appear to be very aggressively insisting on adhering to the December 31, 2020 transition deadline. The transition basically keeps the current trade arrangements in effect, along with certain other aspects of the UK's current membership in the EU, although the details of that are not entirely clear to me at this point. As highlighted and underlined in red above, the shenanigans of the EU appear to be continuing into the trade negotiations phase. These people who run the EU are hardcore socialists, many of the school of Marx, which means that they are deep down irretrievable control freaks. They are still planning to try to keep their hooks in the UK by extending the "transition" as long as they can get away with it and they will not stop. Johnson and Gove need to realize that the EU leaders are likely to keep kicking this "transition" deadline down the road indefinitely, if permitted to do so. They would be smart to force this to some sort of conclusion by the end of December 2020, if at all possible. This saga is not over yet, people. Stay tuned.
Something worth pointing out after this election. Despite the theoretical argument that Brexit was about taking control of public policy from the EU and strengthening the Union, the Scottish Nationalists won the lion's share of seats in Scotland and for the first time, more Irish nationalists were elected than unionists. And more worrying is that the demographics of Northern Ireland continue to shift to the point where it will be majority Catholic in the next decade. I think it's fair to say that the EU was playing a key part in holding the UK together. In fact, a key argument in the Scottish referendum was that Scotland wouldn't automatically retain its EU membership after leaving the UK and Northern Ireland clearly relies on the EU Single Market and Customs Union to keep borders with Ireland open. Fortunately for Northern Ireland, I do think the Tories will end up in a place where NI stays in the Customs Union and Single Market (for goods) to keep the borders open.
Well the British got what they wanted, kick out all the foreigners, that includes the Scots and the Irish! MEGA! Go Johnson!
That date is fine and well except trade will be the problem. Exiting the Single Market seems inevitable by the end of 2020 (even with the major negative effects on the economy). But the Customs Union absolutely needs more time to replace. The Customs Union doesn't just apply to trade within the EU. It represents the UK's trade relations with the rest of the world as well. The UK will never recreate the EU's position in trade negotiations in a short amount of time. They need a much longer period of time to negotiate separate arrangements with non-EU trade partners (the US, China, Japan, South Korea, Hong Kong, Switzerland, and of course the EU itself). The EU in particular won't want to roll over on any trade deal so the UK better be ready to be involuntarily dragged back into EU environmental and labor standards.
The UK has already signed transitionary agreements with most of those countries, including us. These will basically keep the broad terms and conditions that were previously in place, in place after the UK leaves the EU. That will give Michael Gove and his team some space to work out these trade agreements with all of these countries and territories. The formal trade agreements with the EU and the US have to be the top priorities, along with China and Switzerland. In fact, here are the top 15 countries that the UK trades with in terms of exports: United States: US$65.3 billion (13.4% of total UK exports) Germany: $46.7 billion (9.6%) Netherlands: $33.1 billion (6.8%) France: $31.9 billion (6.5%) Ireland: $28.2 billion (5.8%) China: $27.7 billion (5.7%) Switzerland: $25.6 billion (5.3%) Belgium: $18.9 billion (3.9%) Italy: $14 billion (2.9%) Spain: $13.9 billion (2.9%) Turkey: $13.7 billion (2.8%) Hong Kong: $10.3 billion (2.1%) United Arab Emirates: $10.1 billion (2.1%) Japan: $8.4 billion (1.7%) South Korea: $7.8 billion (1.6%) The EU will likely try to drag this out indefinitely, just like they did with the Brexit extensions. If there is no hard deadline, it will never stop. The EU and the UK have been working on all the related details for such and agreement for the last 3.5 years. They can get this done by the end of 2020, if they set their minds to it. But if the priority is to endulge the usual bureaucratic dithering, then maybe December 2030 would be a better target date for this. No, the UK needs to hold the EU's feet to the fire and get this finished.
Prime Minister Johnson is amending the Withdrawal Bill Agreement (WAB) legislation to block any further extensions with regards to the next phase, which is the negotiation of a trade agreement and various other cooperation agreements. Johnson plans to block any delay to Brexit process The government is to add a new clause to the Brexit bill to rule out any extension to the transition period beyond the end of next year. The post-Brexit transition period - due to conclude in December 2020 - can currently be extended by mutual agreement for up to two years. But an amended Withdrawal Agreement Bill the Commons is set to vote on this week would rule out any extension. The PM told MPs it would put an end to years of "deadlock, dither and delay". Of course the WAB was passed by the previous Parliament, but they vetoed the timetable for its implementation, thereby blocking it, yet again. Now with an 80-seat majority, these kinds of shenanigans are no longer expected to be an issue. While the Parliament ruling out any extension of the transition period past December 31, 2020 will surely help to focus everyone's attention during the negotiation of these agreements, there is nothing stopping Johnson and the Parliament from passing another bill later changing their mind about this. But considering the political unpopularity of "extensions" with the UK public, specifically the Tory supporters, this would be a hard vote to explain. And PM Johnson is not going to want to stand up in Parliament to try to provide any such explanation. What seems more likely is that these agreements are negotiated in phases, somewhat like what we are seeing now between the US and China in their trade negotiations. Some of these agreements need to be done right away. Others can probably wait. Anyway, this is a good move by PM Johnson, as the EU will drag this process out over a decade or more if allowed to do so. It is time to start wrapping this process up to the greatest degree possible.
You mean because the British government couldn’t decide on what Brexit wanted? The EU is still be far the largest trading bloc with the U.K. despite you separating it out. The US and China should use their economic weight and hold the U.K.’s feet to fire to get the best deal possible, no? #internationalism#lol
PM Johnson is adding another modification to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB) from the last time it was passed and which will be voted on again this Friday. The lower courts are being empowered to overrule EU law, apparently starting on February 1, 2020. Lower British courts to overrule EU law Boris Johnson has split the cabinet with a plan to give British judges new powers to overturn rulings by the European Court of Justice, The Times has learnt. Theresa May’s government agreed to transfer all existing European Union case law into British law after Brexit, a decision opposed by Eurosceptics in the Conservative Party. The commitment meant that only the Supreme Court in England and the High Court of Justiciary in Scotland would be allowed to “depart” from EU case law. A new clause in Mr Johnson’s withdrawal agreement bill will let lower courts overturn ECJ rulings. MPs will vote on the bill on Friday. As noted above, Theresa May's Withdrawal Agreement (which was voted down three times) left these decisions to the British Supreme Court and the Scottish High Court. It seems to me that it was a good move to enshrine the last 40 years of EU law as part of the UK's own common law, as that has been the judicial arrangements that they have existed under until now. But the UK will almost immediately begin departing from these precedents, as the UK Parliament passes new locally based legislation to replace the EU laws and the courts also start making decisions based primarily on UK interests and priorities. So this was inevitable, if the UK was truly going to leave the EU, as this move again indicates that they definitely are.
The EU is apparently preparing for a "quick-fire" trade deal in response to the UK Parliament legally ruling out an extension of the transition period past December of 2020. Of course these people are nothing if not conniving and crafty. The UK would be foolish to presume they are acting now in good faith. That being said, this looks really good and I hope this is how they proceed. There is no need for every last detail to be finalized by the end of December 2020. But the critical elements of a trade agreement should be completed and probably the security and immigration components should be largely completed as well. EU draws up plans for quick-fire trade deal after Boris Johnson moves to legally rule out extending Brexit transition BORIS Johnson's move to legally rule out extending the transition hit home in Brussels as EU chiefs drew up plans for a quick-fire trade deal. EU negotiators will respond to the PM's ultimatum with phased talks that will see a tariff and quota free agreement on goods in place by the end of 2020. Both sides would then apply interim measures for other areas - like services and security - while the future relationship is fleshed out in stage two.
That being said, Nigel Farage poors cold water on this hopeful analysis in his article today in the Daily Telegraph, where he observes that it will now be the priority of the Chief Negotiator Michael Barnier and the EU to make sure that the UK "Cannot gain any competitive advantage over EU member states". Outlawing more Brexit delay is bold, but Boris Johnson must beware the EU's trade talks trap Barnier has laid a very clear trap for us. If this deal is passed then he, together with strong support from the new EU Commission, the European Parliament and EU governments, will be able to point to Article 184 of the new EU treaty. I know Barnier. He will not give an inch, believing that the British government would never carry out its pledge to leave on WTO terms at the end of next December. From the start, Barnier’s aim has been to make sure that Brexit Britain cannot gain any competitive advantage over EU member states. In this endeavour, he has the support of Angela Merkel, among others.” This is pretty intense. And I have to say as a third party observer, it is also a very rational perspective for the EU to take. As long as the status quo is better for the EU than whatever is being proposed for the agreement, or alternatively WTO trade terms, then they will be smart to try to maintain that status quo and to keep extending the transition period for as long as they can. If they EU does not believe that Boris Johnson will adhere to this new law banning any further extension of the transition period - and after the most recent extension they have every reason not to believe it - then all they have to do is not agree and then wait for the UK to buckle. Should be interesting. Next December Boris Johnson's boldness will be tested, yet again. Last time, he did not have Parliament on his side. Will he this time? Will enough of his Tory caucus (44 defections max) hold the line and refuse to extend the transition next December? Because that is likely what this will come down to. Stay tuned....
44 days from today. And there is not even a proposal on the table to stop it this time. If they pass the WAB on Friday, then it is effectively a done deal. So, the tic toc is really just the next two days until that vote. Two days to go. Tic toc.
