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Here is a good, succinct demolition of the argument that if the UK leaves the European Union on World Trade Organisation-based terms, rather by some “Brexit-in-name-only” fiasco, there will need to be a hard border between Northern Ireland and the Republic. From the very start, I have suspected this issue was being exaggerated considerably by those trying to derail UK independence from the European Union, and the detail here proves it.
This is all contextual: where there are amicable relations, technology, goodwill and a certain degree of co-operation, it means border posts and the rest are not needed, or not used all the time. A case in point is Switzerland: it has access, via scores of bilateral treaties, to Europe’s Single Market, but also has the freedom to do its own trade deals with nations far beyond Europe. When I have driven from France to Switzerland, or over to Germany, there were no border controls I was aware of. Switzerland is in the Schengen Agreement area, which removes the need for passports. Now there’s no theoretical reason why the UK could not also come to a specific agreement on such a basis with Ireland (although it might still reserve the right to require passports to be produced where necessary).
Sometimes situations can change: a few years ago, after the 2015 November mass murders in Paris, border controls were enforced on the Swiss-French border. Also, there are customs checks but these don’t all require “stop at the border and let a bloke search the truck” sort of process. This Q&A guide is an example of what happens.
Now, this being a classical liberal/libertarian blog, some people are going to complain that there are any kind of borders, requirements of passports, period. As a minarchist (minimal state, not anarchist) I take the view that one cannot have a jurisdiction of law without knowing what the boundaries of that legal network are, and so there is a border, even if only expressed as a squiggly line on a map, rather than a wall, fence or something more technically snazzy. England has its Common Law, while the continent has a Civil Code (Napoleon and the Roman legal heritage) and there is therefore a boundary between them, even though in many ways mutual recognition/equivalence agreements can and do take quite a lot of the friction out of where these codes come into contact. (There are some parts of the world with both legal traditions at the same time (such as Malta, which was once run by the French before the Brits kicked the buggers out). And these boundaries may also require people to prove where they reside as citizens, if only to know that they cannot run away from certain legal agreements they have entered into by fleeing to another jurisdiction.
Just got back from supper with friends to find myself being urged by my Facebook Friend (and actual friend) Tim Evans to read Corbyn’s road map to a communist Britain by Giles Udy. This piece, says Tim, is “spot on”.
Sample quote:
At no point is there any question of the revolutionary Left’s presumed right to overthrow the existing order and impose its own socialist system. Indeed, it claims it represents “the interests of the working class and the whole population” – an intriguing conflation given that the Monster Raving Loony Party gained three times the votes of the CPB in the 2015 general election and the fact that all the far-left parties combined scored just 0.02 per cent of all the votes cast. But the arrogance is pure Lenin: the revolutionary elite must take power because the people do not know what is good for them. When the Left says it opposes rule by tiny elites, it exempts itself.
Did we, at the last General Election, reach Peak Corbyn? Have enough voters who thought they were voting for an amiable geography teacher now get that Corbyn is a far nastier piece of work than that? I wish I could be sure enough about this to remove the question marks. Nevertheless, were the Corbyn tendency to win power at the next general election, I would not only be aghast; I’d also be surprised. It cheers me up, as it must cheer up any anti-Corbynite, that Labour are now doing rather badly in the polls, despite facing a Brexit-deranged Conservative government.
But, does Corbyn even care about winning the next general election? What matters to him, surely, is him and his comrades first getting total command of the Labour Party. What does make chilling sense is that a financial melt-down may occur, any decade now, at which point the Corbynite take-over of the Labour Party will have been completed and communistic stridency (designed to gather all the comrades into one political organisation) will have been replaced by much more organised and conventionally presented duplicity (with all the comrades on message). At which point, all the horrors described in the article linked to above may start seriously to happen. Voters, worrying about far more than mere Brexit turbulence, may then take, in sufficient numbers, whatever bait is dangled in front of them.
Of course, I fervently hope that this is wrong. And actually, if I had to place a bet, I’d bet that it is wrong. But betting is one thing. Being sure about that bet is quite another.
Earlier this afternoon Guido posted a list of the amendments* to be voted on in Parliament this evening:
(a) Jeremy Corbyn – calls on the PM to rule out no deal while, predictably, keeping all options on the table
(o) Ian Blackford – notes that the SNP don’t like Brexit, calls for no deal to be ruled out and Article 50 extended
(g) Dominic Grieve – suspends normal Parliamentary procedure on six dates in February and March allowing MPs to hijack Brexit
(b) Yvette Cooper – suspends normal Parliamentary procedure on 5th February to allow MPs to bring a Brexit-blocking Bill in
(j) Rachel Reeves – calls on the PM to seek an extension to Article 50
(i) Caroline Spelman – notes that Parliament rejects leaving without a deal
(n) Graham Brady – calls for the Northern Ireland backstop to be replaced with alternative arrangements to avoid a hard border
As Guido said,
However, of all the amendments, only Grieve and Cooper have any legal effect as they would actively change the Standing Orders of the House, upending centuries of precedent. All the others, including Brady, are only statements of the Commons’ preferences.
The votes have now taken place. All the amendments failed except Spelman’s and Brady’s. That is, the only amendments that passed were to authorise the writing of two new (and largely contradictory) entries on Parliament’s wish list. I was glad to see that the amendments by the Tory Dominic Grieves and Labour’s Yvette Cooper, both of which aimed to stop Brexit by procedural tricks, were voted down by larger than expected majorities, including fourteen Labour rebels voting against their Whip on the Cooper amendment.
Much of what we saw tonight was tail-covering. Spelman’s amendment passed so that if No Deal happens and the zombies come, MPs can say, “Don’t blame me, I voted against zombies”.
Regarding the successful Brady amendment, the EU side has repeatedly said it will not re-open negotiations, so I assume its main purpose is to put the guilt of being the last people to say “No” onto them.
All in all, not a bad night’s work.
* “Amendments to what?” you ask. No idea, unless “Theresa May’s Brexit Plan” is the name of a Bill.
They dislike the treaty but fear a clean Brexit,
They hope that – in more ways than one – they can fix it.
Too statist to say, even at their most livid,
“Take back control? Look at us, to whom you’ll give it!”,
Instead, as the fast-nearing date makes them manic,
Their failed Project Fear has become Project Panic.
Campaigning, they pledged they would honour the hour.
Elected, and climbing the greased pole of power,
They cling in death-grip to their fear-calming view,
“We’re the wise – VoteLeave’s win showed the folly of you.”
In parliament’s past, you at many times find,
It avoids doing wrong by not being of one mind.
So if “House fulfils pledge” seems a doubtful prediction,
Let’s hope for “House deadlocked in fierce contradiction”.
“Have you considered masterly inactivity?”, replied Sir Humphrey Appleby when newly-appointed Prime Minister Jim Hacker asked what he should now do. Alas, so polarised is politics today that even – indeed, especially – Sir Humphrey would likely oppose inactivity in this case. We hope parliament will in fact do nothing supremely stupid during the next two months, but my most confident prediction is that whatever they do or don’t do will not appear masterly.
Mike Smithson of politicalbetting.com says that:
The Telegraph is reporting details of at telephone conference call earlier this evening by about a dozen ministers who are pro-European. They include Amber Rudd and Greg Clarke the Business Secretary.
Basically they want the PM to commit to securing her Brussels deal within just two weeks. If that doesn’t happen then they will resign.The paper’s Steven Swinford notes:
“Ms Rudd and other Cabinet ministers have previously warned that as many as 20 ministers could quit so they can support the amendment tabled on Tuesday by Yvette Cooper, a senior Labour MP.
In the old days a Prime Minister who had ten ministers quit on them would have resigned out of sheer embarrassment, but given that Corbyn remained as leader of his party despite at least twenty of his Shadow ministers resigning the day after the referendum, why should Theresa May care about the loss of a mere ten?
It will save her the trouble of trying to keep sweet those foot-stampers who issue such meaningless demands as wanting “the PM to commit to securing her Brussels deal within two weeks”. If she were capable of securing a deal just by “committing” to it she would have done so by now. Unfortunately for her, deals involve two sides, and she has even less power over the EU side than she does over the side jokingly referred to as “hers”.
I am sure Mrs May will find ten up-and-coming MPs willing to take up the vacated positions.
While on the subject of deals with two sides, another politicalbetting.com article well worth a read is this one from Alastair Meeks: “Disastrously successful. The EU’s Brexit negotiation”. It starts with an apology for “going all Godwin on you” and then launches into a discussion of the Treaty of Sèvres after WWI. Never heard of it? You’re not alone; it was so harsh to the Turks that Atatürk and the Turkish nationalists rose up in outrage and overthrew those who had signed it. It was never implemented. As Meeks said,
The best outcome is one that will actually stick, not the one with nominally the most favourable terms.
Here is my cunning plan to avoid a hard border in Ireland.
Don’t build one.
The UK doesn’t want it, Ireland doesn’t want it. Problem solved, I’d have thought, but the EU does not agree:
No-deal Brexit would mean hard Irish border, EU confirms
The EU has injected further pressure into the Brexit talks by confirming it will enforce a hard border on the island of Ireland in the event of a no-deal outcome, despite the risk this would pose to peace.
It will enforce? Er, with whose… personnel will that be done?
Last night I attended a meeting, and although I did not have any arguments with anyone about fake news, I did meet with Vera Kichanova, and learned from her that her Adam Smith Institute “report” (aka: argument in favour of) micro-housing was to be published today. Good. I’m for it.
ASI announcement by Matthew Lesh here. The entire thing can be read here.
I don’t agree with Vera’s title, “Size Doesn’t Matter”. I think that when it comes to where you live, size matters a lot. You don’t want somewhere too big for you, or too small for you. Perhaps the ASI is hoping that, by having a silly title, they will sucker many of those who hate the idea, and who would otherwise ignore it, into instead denouncing it because of its title, thus spreading the word about it. The Trump technique, in other words.
For many, “micro” would indeed be way too small. But, for quite a few others, micro-living would be much preferable to a long commute. I am in favour of people having choices along such lines rather than at the far end of a line. And I am in favour of entrepreneurs having the freedom to bet their time and money contriving such choices.
I’ve not yet read Vera’s piece yet (this being one of those something now rather than something better but later postings), so I don’t know if she makes this point, but one very good reason why many might now be okay with a much smaller living space is that home entertainment and home education can now occupy a tiny fraction of the space that they used to, about one or maybe two generations ago. You can literally now carry your entire entertainment system, and your entire library – words, music, movies, TV shows, the lot – in a small bag. In other words, you can now not merely eke out your existence in a tiny dwelling space, you can actually have a life while living in such a micro-home.
One final point, before I hurry back to the rest of my life. Vera Kichanova works for Zaha Hadid Architects, which is all part of why I believe it to be important that Zaha Hadid Architects thrives.
I just watched the first twenty minutes of this speech to camera by Scott Adams, about a piece of CNN fake news. Kudos to Adams who, having dug himself into a bit of a hole by believing some fake news, stopped digging and climbed out, and then filled in the hole by deleting his earlier and wrong interpretation of the story.
This is part of a much bigger story, I think, about how the media are now fragmenting into … well, fragments. Time was when (a) CNN might have valued their reputation for impartiality enough not to be this brazen and this fake in their “news” presentation, and when (b) if they had been this brazen and this fake, nobody else would have been able to do anything much about it. As it is, each part of the shattered ex-body politic now has their own version of these events. Mine is what you’ll see if you watch that second Scott Adams wideo, the one I just watched. If I encounter someone this evening who thinks CNN got this story right, and the event I will be attended means that I very well might, the polite version of how I might respond is: That’s not how I see this. The ruder version might also happen and here’s how that will go: You’re wrong.
Don’t call … them the “mainstream media” because they are not this any more. They’re (we’re) all just media – CNN, Scott Adams, Uncle Tom Cobley on YouTube, me and my pals posting and maybe you commenting on Samizdata – churning out stuff for the kind of people who see things the way they (we) do, and want the kind of news – true, false, dazzling, daft – that they (we) want to offer.
It used to be that you only discovered what liars and nincompoops journalists were capable of being when you were in the middle of one of their stories and actually knew what lies they were telling, if they were. Now, we can all see this whenever we want to, by whistling up a contrary opinion more to our own tastes.
This is a very important change, which has already given the world Trump and Brexit and much else besides, such as, most recently, here in Britain, that already famous Question Time Roar, and all the sort of people who regret Trump and Brexit and The Roar are intensely aware of this. They are fighting back vigorously.
But here is a big opinion about that fight-back, very hastily expressed because I must soon be out. No amount of censorship or bias – by Google, by credit card companies, YouTube, Twitter, Facebook and the rest of them – can even seriously reverse these liberalising (in the true sense) developments, let alone put any sort of complete stop to them.
There should many more links in the above paragraphs, and another page of explanation of that big opinion, but I am out of time. Also, maybe I could be persuaded that free expression, in countries like mine, really is seriously threatened, if anyone can convince me that the fight-back is going to be savage enough. But, gotta go.
Discuss.
I have begun reading Leo McKinstry’s book about Sir Jack Hobbs, whom he describes in his book’s subtitle as “England’s Greatest Cricketer”. So, greater than W.G. Grace then? That’s what McKinstry says, and he emphasises this by telling, at the beginning of his book, on pages 5 and 6 of the Introduction, about how Hobbs surpassed Grace’s record for the number of centuries scored by a batsman in top class cricket (“first class” cricket as we cricket people call it), and of what a sensation this caused in England. This happened several decades before cricket was toppled by soccer as England’s greatest sporting obsession.
Hobbs began the 1925 county cricket season scoring heavily, and the centuries piled up, a century being a personal score of a hundred or more runs by the one batsman. But as Hobbs neared Grace’s record of 126 centuries, and as press and public interest grew, the nerves cut in and started affecting the performances of the usually nerveless Hobbs. The centuries slowed to a trickle. Once, when he got out for 54 (which would normally be rated a decent score), Hobbs walked back to his home pavilion at Surrey’s Oval cricket ground in complete silence, so deep was the gloom and disappointment of the spectators.
But, Hobbs having got stuck within one century of the Grace record, Hobbs’s team, Surrey, were playing Somerset at Taunton. On the first day of that game, August 15th 1925, Somerset were dismissed cheaply and Hobbs reached 91 not out, just a handful of runs short of reaching the record. And the next morning, he inched his way to century number 126. Equality with Grace was apparently what mattered, rather than doing one better, and with the pressure off, Hobbs’s first class century number 127 followed in the second Surrey innings of that same game.
Cue the celebrations:
Across the nation, Hobbs was acclaimed as the greatest sportsman of his age. ‘Jack Hobbs has taken the sporting world by storm. In two days and the same match he has equalled and surpassed the greatest feat ever performed in the annals of cricket; declared the Daily Mirror. Even King George V, a monarch notorious for his gruff reticence, sent a fulsome message of congratulations from Balmoral via his secretary Lord Stamfordham, expressing ‘much pleasure’ at Hobbs’s ‘remarkable success, whereby you have established a new and greater record in the history of our National Game’. Nor could the non-cricket world ignore the event. ‘Britain welcomes a new cricket hero; the New York Times told its readers, explaining that, ‘England has been in something akin to ferment this summer.’ …
But then comes this:
… A ferment of a different sort arose in Britain’s Indian Empire in the wake of Hobbs’s triumph. On the day that Hobbs beat Grace’s record, the Star published a cartoon by the brilliant New Zealand-born illustrator David Low, later to be renowned for his savage depictions of the European dictators of the 1930s. This 1925 cartoon, which perfectly captured the Hobbs mania that had gripped Britain, showed the Surrey player, bat in hand, towering over a series of other historical figures, including Columbus, Lloyd George, Caesar and Charlie Chaplin. Fatefully, Low also inserted in the line-up the Prophet Muhammad, standing on a pedestal and gazing up at Hobbs. When the image appeared in the Indian papers, it caused fury in the Muslim population, not just because Islam regards any portrayal of the Prophet as sacrilegious, but also because Muhammad was placed in a position of inferiority to a mere cricketer. According to the Calcutta correspondent of the Morning Post, the Hobbs cartoon ‘convulsed many Muslims in speechless rage. Meetings were held and resolutions were passed.’ So serious was the problem that the Indian Viceroy, the Marquess of Reading, wrote to the Cabinet in London to convey the feelings of Muslim outrage.
I note with approval that the internet allows us to see what all this fury was about:
Google quickly showed me this cartoon reproduction, which is apparently to be found at the Mohammed Image Archive. There are many other depictions of Mohammed (that being the third version in this posting alone of how this personage is spelt) on view at the other end of that link, but I could not find the above cartoon, although presumably it is there somewhere.
Nor have I been able to determine whether Indian Muslims issued any death threats, against David Low or against anyone connected to or working for The Star. From the reference to “meetings and resolutions” I get the impression: not, or the death threats would have got a mention also. But I would love to know.
Because they’re thinking about it the wrong way, says Anand Menon in the Guardian.
There are moments in life when your heart sinks. I had one last night, right at the start of my terrifying debut on Question Time. Isabel Oakeshott had just said we should leave the EU with no deal. And the audience cheered. Not a subdued, start-of-the-evening, not-quite-warmed-up cheer. But a roar. A loud one.
Professor Menon goes on to give his reasons. They are quite well expressed, and it is good to be aware of opinions contrary to ones own, so I do urge the generally Leave-supporting readers here to take a look.
Now, having said that, will I get away with pretending that my main reason for posting this was something other than the fact that the moment he’s talking about during last night’s Question Time put an enormous silly grin all over my face?
(Hat tip to Guido for the video clip.)
Edit: Take a look at the comments to that Guardian piece in order of numbers of recommends. As I said, Professor Menon himself seems well meaning, but many of the most popular comments talk of their fellow citizens as a Victorian “Nordicist” would speak of the Andaman Islanders:
The Brexit mindset is anti-intellectual – the Brexiteer is proud of their ignorance.
Reasoning with them is useless.
A case in point, Brexiteers (and yes, I am generalising here) claim to be anti-elitist yet put their trust in Boris, Farage and Rees Mogg – the epitome of privilege and elitism.
Think I’m being rude? Good.
That was from someone calling themselves “stinky”. As I write this that comment had received 126 upvotes. There are times when I think I should give in to the Guardian‘s constant begging and give them some money, just to ensure that as many people as possible read these comment threads. As the next comment says, “When people ask me why they should support Leave, I tell them to read the comments on a Brexit CiF article.” Lord knows the British electorate has some wrongheaded views, but it has shown before now that it instinctively knows one of the great truths of politics: that it is unwise to place yourself in the power of those who despise you.
The Telegraph has a scoop. This might not go down too well in the working class areas:
Exclusive: Philip Hammond tells business chiefs MPs will stop no-deal Brexit
Philip Hammond told business leaders that the “threat” of a no-deal Brexit could be taken “off the table” within days and potentially lead to Article 50 “rescinded”, a leaked recording of a conference call reveals.
The Chancellor set out how a backbench Bill could effectively be used to stop any prospect of no deal. He suggested that ministers may even back the plan when asked for an “assurance” by the head of Tesco that the Government would not oppose the motion.
He claimed next week’s Bill, which could force the Government to extend Article 50, was likely to win support and act as the “ultimate backstop” against a no-deal Brexit, as a “large majority in the Commons is opposed to no deal under any circumstances”.
A recording of the call, passed to The Daily Telegraph, recounts how the Chancellor, Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, and Stephen Barclay, the Brexit Secretary, spent nearly an hour talking to the leaders of 330 leading firms.
They included the heads of Siemens, Amazon, Scottish Power, Tesco and BP, all of whom warned against no deal.
The disclosure reveals the close nature of the relationship between the Treasury and some of Britain’s biggest businesses, and how they appear to be working in tandem to block a hard Brexit. It will also add to suspicions that Mr Hammond has been orchestrating attempts to soften Brexit.
Mr Hammond assured the business leaders that the Government would stop spending money on no-deal preparations “as soon as we know we are not going there” and give businesses “a resumption of normal service”.
So the Chancellor of the Exchequer sees himself as serving the heads of Siemens, Amazon, Scottish Power, BP and Tesco, among others. Perhaps I am reading too much into one ill-chosen word, but that is not a good look. If he had not used that word it would still not be a good look. The whole conversation, the whole meeting, reeks of the sort of black-tie cronyism that gives capitalism a bad name.
I think that this is a very revealing Tweet about last night’s House of Commons EU vote, from Lord Deben, formerly John Selwyn Gummer, and not in a good way:
So we leave all decisions to others and remove our major opportunity to influence and to work for a better world. We decide we are indeed just a nation of shopkeepers whose customers and suppliers decide and we obey. That instead of being the driver of the EU. What a come-down!
Lord Deben thinks that “we” were “the driver of the EU”, to which I would say that this “we” was only … a very few of us, and that also other EUropeans did quite a bit of driving. And, Lord Deben thinks that the best way to “influence and work for a better world” is to do politics, and EU politics at that.
Does Lord Deben think that Britain leaving the EU is not going to have any “influence” upon the world? I put it to him, as my trial lawyer ancestors would say, that this will have a big influence, provided only that it does happen. Just not the sort of influence that Lord Deben will like. It’s a lot to hope for, but I really do hope that Lord Deben is, approximately speaking, right about the sort of nation that Britain will become. Although, I can’t remember ever having “obeyed” a shopkeeper, unless they were the kind that collaborate with people like Lord Deben to restrict me in what I can buy.
When I think of the good that has been done for the world by inventors and entrepreneurs, and yes, shopkeepers, I think that Lord Deben’s is a very restricted view of the world and its possibilities.
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Who Are We? The Samizdata people are a bunch of sinister and heavily armed globalist illuminati who seek to infect the entire world with the values of personal liberty and several property. Amongst our many crimes is a sense of humour and the intermittent use of British spelling.
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