Business First December 2017 December BF Digital | Page 42

THOUGHT LEADERSHIP
Wishful thinking and Brexit
by Pamela McCreedy, Chair, Chartered Accountants Ulster Society
he fourth round of Brexit negotiations
concluded in Brussels at the end of
September, with the EU warning that
sufficient progress had not yet been made.
Prime Minister Theresa May’s speech in
Florence in late September had aimed to ease
tensions and had sparked speculation that a
breakthrough might be possible, but it
apparently came to nothing. All just wishful
thinking it would seem.
At the time of writing, the fifth round of
talks is about to get underway, soon to be
followed by an EU Summit where an
assessment will take place of whether enough
ground has been covered in the negotiations
to move on to the future trading relationship
between the EU and UK. It’s a stage which the
UK is keen to get to.
The Prime Minister has recently been vocal
about ‘the British Dream’ and since the
summer there have been a flurry of
Government policy papers on various aspects
of Brexit including customs, the jurisdiction
of the EU Court of Justice and of course,
Northern Ireland.
The British Government policy papers
attracted a fair degree of attention and
comment, both officially and unofficially,
without any great sympathy for the British
position. EU Commission President Jean­
Claude Juncker and EU Chief Negotiator
Michel Barnier both stressed how carefully
they were being read and considered, but this
was against a backdrop of leaks from EU
sources apparently dismissive of the role of
the UK’s David Davis.
According to many commentators, so far
the UK Government could be accused of an
impressive degree of wishful thinking.
The policy statements coming from the UK
Government have offered up a great many
solutions which seem very much at odds with
EU law, treaty and politics.
Of course the British civil service knows the
EU rules and considerations as much as any
organisation anywhere in the EU, but these
statements could be seen as the
establishment thinking aloud, an internal
debate justifying a position that it is Europe,
not Britain, which will suffer post­Brexit.
T
So what about those UK policy
papers?
Well, clearly it is not possible to have a
single market involving the free movement of
goods without involving the free movement
of people. It’s a contradiction in terms.
You cannot have a customs union among
countries permitting cross­border trade
without tariffs or indeed tariff checks, while
40 www.businessfirstonline.co.uk
at the same time allowing individual customs
union members to do side deals with
countries outside the union.
It is all very well proposing flexible and
imaginative solutions, but if those solutions
are so flexible and imaginative that they
change the whole character of the game, who
will want to play?
Clearly not the EU institutions. EU Council
President Donald Tusk has said that there
will be no more of the UK ‘having their cake
and eating it’ and that the only alternative to
a hard Brexit is no Brexit at all.
Let’s take one of the central
questions of the negotiations so far,
and the one which perhaps affects
us most directly –the question of
border controls.
Taoiseach Leo Varadkar has said that
Ireland will not accept physical infrastructure
at the border. The UK Government has
suggested random spot checks, not requiring
physical infrastructure, could be the answer.
Meanwhile, the European Parliament has
prepared a draft resolution which states that
if there is to be no physical infrastructure on
the Irish border, Northern Ireland would
have to remain in the Single Market and
Customs Union. MEPs have concluded that
this is the best solution to ensure that there is
no border on the island of Ireland.
This EU proposal would mean that customs
checks would take place at all ports. It would
mean continued free movement on our island,
but it is at odds with the UK Government’s
position of leaving the Customs Union.
Some commentators have judged the UK’s
MOREINFORMATION
Chartered Accountants Ulster
Society is hosting a half-day
Conference ‘Brexit – What Next
for Northern Ireland’ at Titanic
Hotel on 14th November.
position on the border question and the
Customs Union as ‘being in fantasy land’. UK
and EU officials have said that they want to
preserve the Common Travel Area but as yet
it is only wishful thinking, it is unclear how
this will be achieved.
So what happens if no deal is reached? The
UK has said that it is prepared to leave the EU
without a deal if talks fail.
While apparently softening the “no deal is
better than a bad deal” stance, this statement
shows that the UK is still willing to walk away
from the Brexit talks and in fact have
reportedly begun contingency planning.
While negotiations continue, businesses
across the whole island of Ireland will adopt
the position that they cannot afford to rely on
wishful thinking – they will be working to
prepare for the worst, while hoping for the
best.