Get serious about Brexit

IT ISN’T the time of year, heading into the Christmas and New Year holiday season, when people, including policymakers, are overly concentrated on heavy issues, especially if these matters are not currently at their doorsteps and won’t, or so it seems, have a direct and immediate effect on their domestic affairs.

We are not surprised, therefore, that Jamaica’s Government, and the island’s private sector, including its trade-related organisations, don’t appear to be engaged with Brexit – Britain’s move to end its membership in the European Union (EU). If, indeed, they are paying attention, it’s not robustly so. There is no sense that Jamaica is planning for the post-Brexit environment, or even have begun to seriously think about these matters.

Even in this frittery period, they should be. For Brexit has turned into a chaotic undertaking, over whose outcome Theresa May’s government has lost control and has the potential to plunge the country into an even deeper political and governance crisis than already exists. Jamaica and its partners in the Caribbean Community (CARICOM), given the many thousands of nationals who live in the UK, and the free-trade agreement they have with the EU, have a stake in the outcomes.

When Britons voted two and a half years ago to exit the EU, it seemed, from a distance, especially if you listened to the Brexiters, a straightforward arrangement. The UK would be freed of direction from Brussels, retake control of its borders, and enter trade deals with other countries on any terms it wished.

Or, as Asif Ahmad, the UK’s high commissioner to Jamaica, expressed it in an interview with this newspaper 15 months ago: “It means that I can come and talk to your ministry here about the import of British meats.” As it has become clear, things are not so straightforward.

TRANSITION PERIOD

In fact, not even the Brits are clear on the outlines of life after Europe, the UK’s largest trading partner, with which, after more than four decades of a close encounter, its economy is deeply intertwined. Mrs May has no certainty that her Tories will vote for the exit agreement her government negotiated with Brussels or that her administration will last long after the Commons has its say on the matter in mid-January.

On all fronts, people are dissatisfied with the deal – either because Britain gave too much or got too little, or, for the remainers, will be too far out – and the framework it sets for the transition period while the UK negotiates a new relationship with the EU.

Particularly upsetting for the hard Brexiters is the scheme to prevent the reinstatement of a hard border between the Republic of Ireland, and British Northern Ireland, and the implication that would hold for a return to ‘The Troubles’, before the peace between the republicans and unionists on either side of the divide. They fear that Britain, if a new relationship is not achieved, could be held, over the long term, in a customs union with the EU, limiting the UK’s freedom of action and defeating the essence of Brexit.

Many of these are complicated issues with which Jamaica’s policymakers, on this country’s own account, and given its role as CARICOM’s lead on trade negotiations, should be deeply engaged. There is the expectation that, in the interim, CARICOM will continue to trade with the UK on the basis of the Economic Partnership Agreement the region has with the EU. But the volatility of the Brexit exercise removes certainty from any undertaking, even if Mrs May wins the Brexit vote.

Government policymakers, together with groups such as the Jamaica Manufacturers and Exporters Association and the Private Sector Organisation of Jamaica, with the support of academics, should be poring over the exit agreement to determine how it is likely to impact us and what our response should be, including if there has to be an implementation of the Irish backstop. And we shouldn’t be starting after Christmas.