United Kingdom: Backtracking on Brexit deal
Prime Minister Boris Johnson seems determined to turn Britain into a “rogue state,” said The Guardian in an editorial. Parliament this week began debating new legislation put forward by the Conservative leader that would nullify parts of the Brexit divorce treaty his own government negotiated with the European Union last fall. The Internal Market Bill takes aim at provisions intended to prevent the re-emergence of a hard border between the U.K. province of Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, an EU member. Militarized checkpoints along that border were flash points for violence during the decades of sectarian conflict known as the Troubles. So to keep the border open, Britain and the EU agreed last year that Northern Ireland would remain bound to some EU rules. Johnson now claims, without evidence, that his new legislation is needed because the EU is threatening to “blockade” food shipments sent across the Irish Sea from mainland Britain to Northern Ireland. EU officials have rubbished his claims, saying they simply want some imports to be checked to make sure they meet the bloc’s standards, and they are now threatening to walk away from negotiations over a long-term trade deal with Britain. Johnson’s willingness to violate international law paints the U.K. “as a country that does not act in good faith and cannot be trusted to keep its word.”
We can only hope this is all a bluff by Johnson, said Independent .co.uk, intended to force better trade terms from the EU. Britain formally left the bloc on Jan. 31, but existing trade rules remain in force until the end of this year—a transition period to provide time for a new deal to be struck. Eventually, Johnson will have to cave, because the loss of favorable trade terms with our biggest export destination will heap “further economic misery” on us “on top of the effects of Covid-19.” What is more important to British economic health, asked Patrick Minford in The Daily Telegraph: trade with the EU, which makes up some 40 percent of total trade volume, or trade with the rest of the world, at some 60 percent? As an economist, I’ve run the numbers and found that “fully eliminating the EU’s high trade barriers against the rest of the world would bring large welfare gains” for Britons. Once we are integrated into the world market, the EU will “surely, in the end, sign a free-trade agreement.”
The British establishment won’t take that chance, said Joe Murphy in the Evening Standard. Four former prime ministers have condemned the bill: the Conservatives’ John Major and Theresa May and Labor’s Tony Blair and Gordon Brown. And while the legislation this week passed a first reading in the House of Commons, it will face more trouble in the House of Lords. A “series of grandees” in Parliament’s upper chamber, including such staunch Brexiteers as former Conservative leader Michael Howard and onetime Chancellor of the Exchequer Norman Lamont, have demanded the bill be rewritten. Johnson may not care about Britain’s honor, but the Lords will not let it be sullied.