Prof Goodwin, I will leave the politics to you but let’s focus on the trade deal itself. In any UK trade deal these are the questions to ask:
1. Where did the UK begin and where did it end up?
2. Have we added extra cash in the pockets of UK citizens?
3. Are they better off now than they were before?
4. Did the UK come out ahead?
Based on these questions, there is already is one winner: the EU. It has walked away with 90% of the deal.
Above all else, the relationship between the UK and the EU is about trade. Trade in goods and trade in services. Yes, I know Prof Goodwin, you wish to talk about the multiple other aspects to the relationship including politics, sovereignty, democratic accountability, and they are important but, at heart, a trade deal is about business.
As I see it:
a) The EU has an €90bn food and manufacturing trade surplus with the UK. The EU sells more to the UK than the UK does to the EU. The EU has secured a tariff/quote-free trade deal with the UK. The EU will continue to sell more to UK than the UK does to the EU.
b The UK has a €20bn services surplus with the EU. The UK sells more services to the EU than the EU does to the UK. The UK has failed to secure a deal on services with the EU. Inevitably, the sale of UK services to the EU will decline. For example, it is not clear if a UK based lawyer or consultant can go to a meeting in an EU country where they are paid by the client for advice without a work visa. The devil is always in the details.
c) The UK has ended freedom of movement which means EU citizens cannot freely move to the UK. Nor can UK citizens move freely to Europe. As a result, the UK will struggle to fill vital jobs across many sectors which European workers did until now. They will be reluctant to come back to the UK because of the new immigration points system and the declining value of the pound. The UK will continue to need immigrants. They just may be from somewhere else, other than Europe.
d) UK citizens will find it more irksome to travel to Europe, having to use the slower “Non-EU Citizens” lane at airports. Stays in Europe will be limited to 90 days in 180, meaning the many hundred of thousands who own holiday apartments and houses will find their time in Europe curtailed.
e) The continued free flow of personal data from the EU to the UK, on which a great many businesses are dependent, will be down to a unilateral “data adequacy” decision on the part of the EU. Yes, there is a grace period from January 1 of four to six months during which data can continue to flow freely, and businesses will be grateful for that, but long-term uncertainty still lingers.
On the UK plus side, over the next five to six years the UK will take back a greater share on the fish in its waters. Which means building up its fishing workforce. But where is the evidence of a pent-up demand on the part of young British people for a career at sea? If offered the chance how many young people would go back down coalmines? Not many, I suspect. Fishing, like mining, is one of those professions from the past now much romanticised but which young people, might walk away from when other life chances are on offer. If fishing is a Brexit “win” it’s not one the fishing organisations recognise. They are already crying betrayal.
As part of the EU’s Single Market and Customs Union the UK had free, frictionless, uncomplicated trade in goods and services with the EU. 16,000 trucks a day crossed between Dover and Calais with border checks taking mere seconds. That frictionless world is gone. The EU/UK deal is the first trade deal in history that creates barriers and paperwork rather than eliminate them. Barriers always come with a cost.
In one sense, Brexit will never be over. The relationship between the UK and the EU will be front and centre of UK politics for evermore. Every time the EU takes a step the UK will have to work out how to respond to that step. It will have no choice. The EU is the elephant in the UK’s back garden and you simply cannot ignore what the elephant does. Unless you want to get trampled on.
However, in one sense Brexit is finished. There is now an agreement in place between the UK and the EU, subject to it being approved by both parties. From here on, the EU will treat the UK as another “third country”. On January 1 next, in a few days’ time, the UK will have finally left the EU behind. The curtain will have come down on endless Brexit negotiations. For now.
But this deal does not close the door, nor does it bring negotiations between the UK and the EU to an end. In an interdependent relationship, negotiations never end. About ten pages of the UK-EU trade agreement are devoted to setting up, dozens and dozens of UK-EU talking shops committees, assemblies, working groups and so on. All with various powers and functions. Welcome to the future, Prof Goodwin, UK/EU negotiations without end.
