Plenty to (re)moan about

Events of recent days have confirmed what many of us thought all along: the UK government's original position on Brexit is untenable. And as we watch one red line after another being crossed, the credibility of its position is weakened further. This matters because in a negotiating environment, you only have a chance of achieving your goals if the other side believes in the strength of your position. Those of us derided as Remoaners have consistently highlighted that the idea of the UK threatening to walk away from negotiations was nonsense. The European Commission knows it too, so either we are headed for a car crash, or an exit on the EC's terms as I have long suspected. Of course, another alternative may be – and whisper it quietly – that the government realises the folly of the whole charade and is seeking to ensure that Brexit means "as little as possible, as slowly as possible" to quote Dan Roberts in The Guardian.

Where to start? I have already dealt with the Economists for Free Trade paper, which has been widely criticised for being at best a piece of wishful thinking (here). But for anyone interested in an alternative take, the view by Flipchart Rick is worth a read as he also lays into the latest piece by the Institute of Economic Affairs.

Another key event this week was the release of the government's position paper conceding that the European Court of Justice in Luxembourg could still play a key role in Britain after Brexit. This comes after Theresa May promised last year that “we are not leaving only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen.” But the government now recognises that some form of oversight body will be required to manage relations between the EU and UK and concedes that it will have to abide by many of the regulations passed down from the ECJ. Indeed, justice minister Dominic Raab noted that the UK would have to keep “half an eye” on ECJ rulings in future simply because it controls many of the non-tariff barriers which will be so crucial to any trade agreement between the UK and EU.

As the commentator Ian Dunt argued in a recent article, “the government's new Brexit position paper is actually pretty good” which as he acknowledges “isn't something I usually say.” He also makes the valid point that rather than criticise the government for adopting a course they have advocated all along, pro-Remain MPs should be “welcoming it and encouraging them to go further.” Indeed, as many people increasingly believe, there is an argument in favour of both sides engaging in more constructive dialogue rather than sniping at each other. I agree, but this is easier said than done given the blatant lies told by both sides during the referendum campaign, and the hardening of the rhetoric from the prime minister during last autumn’s party conference season.

Personally I have never understood the Brexiteers’ pathological hatred of the ECJ. I always thought they had bigger issues with the European Court of Human Rights, which did so much to block the extradition of convicted terrorists from the UK to the US. The ECJ has actually come down in the UK's favour in the recent past on the vexed issue of whether euro clearing could take place in London. I suspect that the two courts have simply become interlinked during the whole Brexit debate without anyone bothering to differentiate between the two.

The other issue which has enraged the Twittersphere this week is immigration. I will look more closely at the figures another time, but suffice to say that net migration to the UK was down to 246,000 in the year to March, from 327,000 12 months earlier, with most of the slowdown driven by a reduction in numbers from the EU (primarily the new accession countries). Those concerned about skill shortages in an economy running close to full employment – at least as measured by the unemployment rate – will take no comfort from that. Worse still, official figures revealed that fewer than 5,000 students a year stay on after their visa expires whereas the government repeatedly claimed the figure was around 100,000. As one wag put it on Twitter, it's a good thing we have not based a huge change in economic policy on figures which are so evidently flawed.

Just to round things off, 100 EU citizens this week received letters notifying them that “a decision has now been taken to remove you from the United Kingdom.” Clearly they were sent in error but as one of the recipients, a Finnish academic Eva Johanna Holmberg, noted "it shows the Home Office currently cannot function. It does not know how to obey the law or even its own rules. It is probably not able to deal with all the paperwork.” She added that this has made her "even less likely to trust anything Amber Rudd, Theresa May, or David Davis says to calm us EU nationals down". It certainly does nothing to promote the case of a Britain which is open to the world and in the long run could do a lot of reputational damage if these cases continue to arise.

Trust is indeed the key word here. Dysfunction seems to be endemic at the heart of government and it is hard to trust the current administration to manage Brexit properly. I have been accused of being a Remoaner but I prefer to think of myself as a realist. The complexity of Brexit was always far greater than either its proponents or the government acknowledged, and to waste part of the post Article 50 period with an unnecessary election campaign looks more ill-judged as time passes. I still find it hard to understand how the government can square the circle between what it promised and what it can deliver without doing great economic harm. The only way, surely, is to row back on some of the more unrealistic promises. That will undoubtedly enrage those elements of the Conservative Party that wish to see Brexit at any price. But it is time to make a stand based on economic rationality rather than ideology. And that is something else to which I will return in future posts.