Sir Ivan Rogers: Where did Brexit come from and where is it going to take the UK?

so good evening ladies and gentlemen and welcome to UCL my name is Otis Tiger I direct the European Institute here at UCL and it is my great pleasure to be welcoming here in the UCL Faculty of laws for tonight's event under normal circumstances one would have assumed that just under two months before brexit day there might have been a slight fatigue setting in but these aren't quite ordinary circumstances of course and we have a very extraordinary speaker with us tonight so I'm not surprised so many of you have turned out to hear him speak I'm delighted that survivin Rodgers has taken time out of his schedule to talk to us about where brexit coming from and where it is likely to take us and I'm also very grateful for a UCL's president and provost Michael Arthur to be chairing tonight's discussion before I hand over to the to just a few housekeeping things if I may first of all you will have seen there is Wi-Fi here and a hashtag as well to go with it so you're welcome to tweet otherwise might I please ask you to remember to put your phones in silent you will otherwise be showing up on live stream and film and also with regards to the fire exit I've been asked to say that this would be the fire exit door you have to go up the stairs around the corner and across the street should that occasion arise other than that just to say sir Ivan will be speaking for about an hour and then we will have half an hour's time for question and so with that without further ado over to Michael thank you [Music] good evening ladies and gentlemen for those of you who don't know me I'm professor Michael Arthur and I have the great honor of being the president and the Provost of UCL and it's my pleasure to welcome all of you and our guest speakers rival Rogers to this event nice by way of introduction sir Ivan was educated at Baylor College at the University of Oxford I guess we'll have to forgive him that and also they call normal superior before going back to Bailey off for three years and then he applied for a place on the civil service fast track and chose at that time the Department of Health and Social Security in 92 he was seconded to the Treasury didn't return to his former department he served in the Treasury including time as private secretary to Kenneth Clark then Chancellor of the Exchequer he was then seconded to the European Commission as chief of staff to see Leon Brittan returning to be director European strategy and policy and later director of budget and public finances under Gordon Brown in 2003 Sir Ivan was chosen to succeed Jeremy Heywood as the principal private secretary to the Prime Minister Tony Blair and after three years in this role Sir Ivan left the civil service for a while and he became head of the UK public sector group at Citigroup and then transferred to be head of the public sector industry group UK and Ireland of Barclays Capital from 2010 to in 2012 so eivin returned to the civil service as the Prime Minister's advisor for Europe and global issues and then became head of European and global issues Secretariat based in the Prime Minister's office at number 10 he then of course went on to the role which I think makes him uniquely qualified to give this evening's lecture and that of course was role as a senior British civil servant who was permanent representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union from 14 November 2013 until his resignation on the 3rd of January 2017 siren you are very welcome at UCL we are very grateful to you for giving us your time for coming along to give this lecture this evening which we have been looking forward to absolutely massively where did Brett's it come from and where is it going to take the UK those are two really good questions I have to say thank you very much [Applause] [Applause] thank you very much for inviting me and for those very kind words of invitation and welcome as you'll detect from that account of my CV virtually everything I have gone to and touched hers in the end gone badly so so I don't know what you can deduce from that of course my line to take is that would have been even worse without me but I'm not sure how convincing that is on the question of prexy as you say you you asked me to talk for about an hour on where brexit came from and where it may take us I'll try and cover both although it would take much longer than an hour and an answer questions later but given the intense political crisis for an area now I want you to focus primarily on where we now are why we're there and then look again at what our real options are we desperately need clear honest thinking about our choices not just in the weeks ahead but years and decades ahead and I'm afraid I continue to think that our political debate is bedeviled by what at the time I resign I term muddled thinking and by fantasies and delusions about what our options really are in the world as it is as opposed to the different worlds people on different sides of the debate would prefer to inhabit to be clear at the outset I do think these fantasies which one would have hoped might be dissipating by now in the face of reality are still being propagated on all sides the denialism I think is pretty universal but if we're to take good decisions about our future it's now genuinely urgent we get beyond the myth making I'm not going to speculate pointlessly here tonight about the votes next week but I do want to set out why we've reached an impasse why I believe the risks I'm afraid our appreciably higher than either the markets or the comment area believe so let me begin to answer that question of why are we at a severe moment of political constitutional and then potentially economic crises let me first remind you of an old friend of all negotiators the so-called Zuppa any negotiation has in negotiators jargon a zipper the zone of possible agreement which is defined by where the interest since and bottom lines of the sides can intersect from the Prime Minister's point of view the Diggle struck on November the 25th with EU is in the zipper he did it the only deal acceptable to her which could be and it was indeed in the zipper for the EU as well it's a good deal for them which I'll come back to which meant it was not at all hard to line up Michel Barnier and the heads of state and government to say it was the only deal they would do the Prime Minister knows I say they've decided that her best course was to reach the zipper with the EU which was consistent with her red lines though we should bear in mind she's revised her red lines during the negotiation I'll come back to that and then basically seek to drag her party and/or a majority of the Commons to the realisation that she'd done the only deal that could be done and thus reached the only sofa that actually existed and by this means to convince her party at a commons majority that the choice it's my way or the abyss was real and not contrived that's our old friend the teener strategy tina of course standing for there is no alternative now the abyss was different of course depending on whom she was addressing to her own right wing it was the abyss of the cancellation or reversal or exit as advocated by many on the left so to them it was I'm delivering hard brexit leaving the single market leaving the customs union resuming national control over laws borders and money to the moderate Labour MPs whom she wanted still wants to detach from their leadership it was the abyss of the hardest possible No Deal brexit as advocated by the right so to them it was I'm delivering a compromise brick suit which involves long-term commitments to align UK rules with EU ones in the most sensitive sectors for many of your constituents the message to both extremes in the debate was is you risk ending up with your worst nightmare world if you push your first preference all the way you must accept my compromise it's the only compromise which she says to the brexit ears delivers brexit over the line and renders it irreversible except by a fresh accession process to the European Union even if it's not the brexit you want and to the remainders she says it avoids a disorderly no deal brexit and delivers a softer brexit than many in my party what now if that's your strategy and it is her strategy you of course refuse and she does refuse to take no deal off the table as having it on the table has been completely central all along to attempting to force - through the deal you want but let's be honest the other party in this negotiation the EU has never for one minute believed that the UK would go through with No Deal as itself evidently a lot worse in economic terms for the UK than the deal and a lot worse for the UK than it is for the EU they can see just about that we might do it by accident or indecision or incompetence but why would you do it on purpose the EU side has however in my view persistently under M s underestimated the accident risk and it's insufficiently understood that from the outset but for reasons I explained later a lurch out to a WTO in the world which both leaders and technocrats think is an obviously wholly irrational course could be attractive to a sizeable chunk of the governing party it's never been a credible threat to you to EU eyes because the consequences are obviously so damaging to a government that inflicts the No Deal outcome on the country when an alternative negotiated outcome is available their relaxed that no government could contemplate doing it and then wouldn't survive nothing in the last two and a half years have shaken that mindset indeed much as reinforced it say constant repetition we've had it again this weekend from past and current cabinet ministers of the proposition that keeping no deal on the table is our strongest card with EU is and always has been discounted as total nonsense why would a government which was seriously prepared to go for no deal be pressing them so strongly from late 2017 onwards for what is clearly a deeply unappealing status quo without voice transition for two years unless it knew that no deal is in the recent words of both the foreign secretary and the business secretary cataclysmic and disastrous now my experience if the other side's threats in a negotiation make no sense and contradict all the evidence that you have in front of their eyes as to what they're doing you just ignore them and indeed no one who was genuinely contemplating a No Deal outcome in 2006 seaton whilst of course having assured the public it would never come to that would have wanted to trigger article 50 in the way and at the time that we did they should have wanted to be sure that we would by the end of any two year article fifty process be as ready as we ever could be to jump without a deal now of course they are far from the only ones who appear to have been completely taken by surprise as to what the article fifty process covered and what it does not I'll come back to that later now mystically if you're pursuing the prime minister's strategy you would of course talk up the credibility of No Deal in order to concentrate minds that it might be a genuine policy option to try and force people towards your deal in preference despite knowing really that it's a grossly irresponsible choice for which neither private nor public sector is ready the private sector is not ready I talk to the private sector all the time I March and they're not ready after all primarily because you yourselves in government have consistently told them that there will be a transition that they can completely rely on and so companies don't need to take precipitous action because you're desperate they do not act as you know they would if there would be net if there was no deal as that would hit the economy and the public finance begging the private sector which ministers have been doing not to activate contingency plans for No Deal because you will not allow it to happen but then allowing it to happen would be an extraordinary act of folly and self harm by a government whose reputation with the investors would never recover and wouldn't deserve to the problem at political level though is that it's simply not a sufficiently convincing threat for any camp to shift their position time might still make it so in the next two months if the prime minister could metaphorically take the ball to the corner flag and run down the clock but the widespread belief in the House of Commons that that's her intention aside from profoundly annoying the private sector which has no reliable basis on which the plan and therefore increasingly has to assume the worst because it now gets no reassurance that there's a plan to avoid the worst that merely persuades parliamentarians that they must take the ball offer those who don't want No Deal think it's so self-evident the self-harming on a grand scale that no responsible government will do it they think they easily have the numbers in the House of Commons to stop it happening anyway they think the more that No Deal homes into public view the greater their chance of persuading the public that bricks it's going badly Rome and may prove a disaster those who do like the idea of No Deal are delighted if know if serious No Deal contingency plans are visibly commenced because they think that helps their prospects of selling to the public the proposition that No Deal is perfectly viable it won't be so bad can be managed and at least it's proper brexit unlike the dog's breakfast that is the Prime Minister's deal so they want to capitalize on the public appetite really for the whole Sharada the last two and a half years simply to end so neither side has really reacted in the last two months in the way the Prime Minister hoped and presumably expected and calculated they've just dug it and it's it as if those reactions on both wings of the debate were not bad enough those in the thin tie through an either hard brexit ears nor reverses also don't accept the Prime Minister's it's my way or the abyss argument they think they have much superior softer bricks it compromise options to hers to offer and therefore don't accept that hers opa is the best let alone the only one and they think that their options for the future relationship have a better chance than the Prime Minister's now of commanding a majority in the Commons when it comes to the next or final meaningful vote now of course it's in the interest of the prime minister but also of the right wing of the Tory party who advocate No Deal managed or not and of the people's vote Lobby to demonstrate that all middle-way options don't work and I hope that time plays in their favor in the next few weeks and there's therefore nothing really more vicious in UK politics right now and that's quite a high bar then the attack by the people's vote supporters on the proposed Norway plus option for the assaults by the European research group on the right of a banach on in anyone on their party who might count on supporting a permanent customs union we've reached the point in what I've previously described as a brexit revolution which I think this is when it's essential for both the revolutionaries and the counter-revolutionary to extirpate any compromises now that's a pretty common feature I think of revolutionary politics it's just that the UK is not very used to revolutionary politics in which polarization progressively narrows the space for compromise and indeed compromise which is always a fairly dirty word in UK politics becomes a term of abuse the revolutionaries declare that every version of brexit bar their own is not truly brexit and the people's voters declare every soft brexit version playing on variants of either a customs union or a common market without political integration is an unacceptable compromise and that only reversal of the referendum result will do on the brickster side we're left with the bizarre spectacle and it is a bizarre spectacle a brick city as many of whom used to argue that exiting to norwegian or Swiss style destinations would be a vast improvement on remaining in the EU because these were vibrant parliamentary democracies whose peoples have bravely spurned European political integration in favour of free trading relationships from outside you now have these people arguing that if the UK now escaped only to such a destination it would be a terrible betrayal it would be brexit in name only as bad or as worse than the Prime Minister's lousy deal a triumph for the deep state that had been wanting to sabotage brexit from the outset now whatever one thinks of the Norwegian Swiss models I've got huge problems with both of them in terms of their destination the UK to characterize Norway and Switzerland as countries which despite their sovereign votes not to join the EU in some way failed to make good a genuine escape from European political integration is basically absurd I can't possibly argue that Norwegian or Swiss type models are not British at all unless one is also arguing that the integration is ratchet which is Euroskeptics believed was pulling us into where we didn't want to go a perfectly arguable case incidentally unless that applies equally to Norway and Switzerland but that view is absurd and this bombardment of propaganda from those saying that anything other than the so-called clean break breaks it is not really brexit comes from the very people who before and immediately after the referendum promised the voting public that a preferential trade deal with the EU was in the back this was always piffle to use no more impolite a term but it does reveal an underlying an important truth in this debate which always worried me when I looks well before the referendum and straight after it at how best we could get on and deliver bricks if the public voted for it which I always thought was rather likely Euroskeptics despite the narcissism of small differences could always hold together when we were in the year because they didn't have to define a post brexit destination or crucially an exit route and method they could unify around the need to escape the integrationist more of EU and decide that they could cross the bridge of what to do next in the unlikely event that they ever succeeded in getting an in/out referendum people some very senior names in the cabinet some former very senior members of the cabinet who are now permanently on the so-called clean break brexit were within the last three to four years to be heard proposing continuing the single market and customs union membership aft after we left or arguing as I've said for Norway style European Economic Area options plenty said so to me personally when I was sharper and permanent representative their real beef after all was political union monetary union potential fiscal union with European citizenship and its implications and with the sense that issues progressively got sucked away from the capital from national level to supranational level and never came back even Nigel Farage can be heard in 2015 TV interviews toying with the European Economic Area type destination he now completely anathematized this as a total betrayal of the purposes of Brits this is as I say what happens in revolutionary moments the Institute of Economic Affairs indeed off at a large prize once David Cameron's Bloomberg speech had dangled the realistic prospect of an in/out referendum to help define an agreed destination and exit path because the IEA could see the looming crisis over what on earth brexit ears could ever coalesce around both as the destination the path to reach it the most thoughtful skeptic attempts to map an exit route embodied I think in a rather lengthy tome called flexi which is at least a genuine serious attempt to grapple with what insider experts like me you were inordinately complex issues this was spurned by mainstream brexit ears despite some brief dabbling by the likes of Arian Patterson why I'm afraid the answer that's quite simple because as soon as you have to define what you do really do post one post brexit as opposed to what you really don't want as soon as you have to map out a genuinely viable very complex path to exiting an organization you've been part of for forty-five years and which has inserted itself in every domain of UK life which is exactly what you hate about it the unity on the Euroskeptic side completely fragments and small differences about where we actually want to go between large ones Dominic Cummings better known these days obviously is Benedict Cumberbatch when chairing vote leaves it truly deliberately avoided proposing any plan and focused the entire campaign on what it didn't want and ensuring that that resonated with a maximum number of voters who might find brexit appealing but would have radically different ideas of what it would deliver for them the last thing he or the political leaders of the would leave campaign wish to do was to set out a proposed destination and a route map to reach it that would have completely torn the fragile coalition apart and it would have exposed the desirability of the destination in comparison to the status quo in which much of the public had had very good reasons to feel unhappy to close scrutiny and that's why now again with the road running out and time running out and under the pressure of simply having now to specify where one wants to end and how to get there the option of WT only which all serious leave thinkers and politicians had themselves disparage before the referendum has now emerged in various guises as the preferred option of the hard brexit ears as one astute commentator who voted leave incidentally push it rather superbly this weekend this is the I have no solutions and can't be asked to think option in all honesty it's a gross dereliction of responsibility and a huge failure of leadership under cover of increasingly empty demagogic rhetoric about betrayal now you campaign in poetry and your governing prose as the saying goes and the campaigners on both sides because I'm afraid this now applies to the remain Lobby to still vastly prefer to carry on campaigning in poetry than having to govern the approach the brexit ears again avoid having to say anything serious or precise about what their destination means and how it works they just assert loudly its freedom and it's not some ghastly toxic sordid compromise that the Prime Minister has made with 27 other countries negotiating realities the adjectives now flow freely in the newspaper columns and the indignation about the nation's humiliation is knocked up a level every passing week but as to solutions they advance us better than the horror they think the Prime Minister's proposal is we only get vacuous proposals we hear that all links with the past troodon should be severed in one go and it will be free from horrible entanglements and thus of course from having to acknowledge that there are very difficult trade-offs own life after a brexit will be bedeviled with one long difficult negotiation after another with our nearest neighbours and biggest trading partner and that those negotiations will force very hard choices on us as they forced those choices on the Swiss for example but to jump to WTO any freedom of course makes no sense particularly from people who say we must leave the EU in order to pursue our sovereign free trade deals with other trade bloc's or countries which indicates that trading either on WTO terms or only via those preferential trade deals struck by the EU when we were in it as we do now is no use and is holding us back but if the supposed route to prosperity for post brexit global Britain lies through a global latticework of preferential trade deals you can make that argument I don't I don't buy it but it's a route to some further growth how can one possibly seriously argue that the only bloc with which one doesn't need a free trade deal is the one with whom we do easily the largest volume of trade and if a preferential trade deal with the EU is in practice essential entities then you obviously gain nothing by tumbling out completely to WTO rules and then having to try and scramble your way back up the hill to a preferential deal under huge time pressure notably in those many sectors and issues on which a resort to WTO rules gives you nothing anyway you just hand the perfect negotiating hand to the other side so let me repeat that just in case you're wondering whether this can possibly be right or whether I'm spoofing you we're now being flaunt the proposition by senior ministers and ex senior ministers that in order to move from a deep preferential agreement the supranational political juridical reinforcement aspects of which you deplore but which gives you much the better trading terms with the block above all in sectors in which you're very competitive in order to move from that to a less deep but normal EU preferential trade agreement which gives you substantially better access than WTO terms the best route is to go all the way out to WTO terms first because and why because that's this is going to go parently going to give you the whip hand in negotiations with a bloc for which the absence of that any preferential deal covers a vastly lower proportion of its trade than it does of yours and the bloc can nevertheless is going to come begging you for a new preferential deal drop completely its demand for the backstop except the technological and administrative solutions to the Irish border suffice when they have previously repeatedly made clear that they don't and settle for much less British money than the UK prime minister has already agreed to pay if she got an acceptable withdrawal agreement which she now publicly agrees she has I mean this stuff would make snake oil salesmen blush the reality is that you would in ex-team to WTO terms reset the baseline for future free-trade agreement talks in the worst possible place for UK negotiators whatever you think of the Prime Minister has proposed outcome one can see that the whole purpose of all UK backstop aside from escaping her impossible but self-imposed predicament on a northern island specific backstop is precisely to avoid that at least on goods I'll come back to that and she wants to start from a baseline on goods of the status quo and negotiate on how far if at all liberalisation needs to be wound back from its current deep level because we're leaving the legislation adjudication and new forcement machinery of the bloc now on services as I say the prime minister because of her free movement absolute redline is reconciled to starting from a tabula rasa and from WTO terms indeed the political declaration text is explicit on the point both sides will begin with their WTO commitments or the use side with its commitments in existing FTAs and work up from that baseline the political declaration accompanying the withdrawal agreement cites article 5 of the GATS the general agreement on trade and services which just sets out the basic requirements for two WTO members trading solely on WTO terms which seek to embark on free trade agreement negotiations now as I say this is entirely thanks to UK red lines but it's about an unambitious as it can get there's a sizable gap between WTO commitments and the services regimes which in feelyou applies to third countries and the EU free trade agreements essentially concentrate on closing that gap rather than seeking to get anywhere close to extending the level of services trade liberalization which you get when you're in the single market so again let's be clear exactly what we're doing here because nobody is telling you exactly what we're doing here thanks to our own choices and red lines we're starting from the most an unambitious tabula rasa baseline possible on the sectors of the economy in which we run a trade surplus with the but we are seeking Anki good sectors in which we want run a massive trade deficit with EU to start from the baseline of membership and with the objective on of building and improving on the so-called single customs territory whilst somehow simultaneously developing a fully independent trade policy so if you look at that in the round it's not too surprising that the EU side thinks this is a very decent basis for itself for the next round of discussions and is prepared to stretch its principles to deliver an all UK backstop which one has to presume the prime minister told them is the key to unlocking a deal even though actually if you're them this marks a bit of a splitting of the so-called four freedoms indivisible four freedoms to buy - why are they prepared to do it because it's heading for an asymmetrical trade deal in their favour as for Westminster though we're deep in Alice in Wonderland I'm afraid where the vast bulk of our peculiarly antiquated debate about our trading future has been focused on goods and territories issues where tariffs outside the world of Agriculture where they remain very steep are actually very low with very few exceptions as they are in the US and other major player where services represent 80 percent of the UK economy and tradable services tradable cross-border services are much the fastest-growing elements of our trade and where barriers to trade in services are all about regulation and regulatory art architecture now to be clear the Canada deal that people talk about is actually a good free-trade agreement by world standards but it doesn't deliver the Canadians a uniform position in the market or vice versa the general provisions it has on services liberalisation are counteracted by more than 500 sectoral or regional exemptions often relating to corporate form to the necessary qualifications of the service providers or to discrimination on grounds of nationality none of which is legal internally in the EU but all of which can and will be applied to UK service providers when we leave the EU all of which is perfectly legal under WTO rules whatever those people who wit on endlessly about the marvels of WTO terms tell you because they don't understand or they don't wish to the difference between those terms and single market terms it cannot be repeated often enough and I certainly intend to carry on repeating it for one because we're about to find out the hard way in trade negotiations that leaving the single market makes trade notably in services in which we are world class less free much less free because we're closing off ways in which our world-class firms can provide services seamlessly across borders what's did them all I'm afraid about our political debate at the moment is the inability to start that debate and even recognize those facts until that trade negotiation is a pause so let's revert to goods the Prime Minister wants to build on and improve the single customs territory and deliver deep and lasting regulatory alignment on a common rulebook more properly known as the EU rulebook but never mind while simultaneously delivering a fully sovereign trade policy across both goods and services now how one pulls off this amazing three card trick he's understandably not fleshed out in the political declaration because the internal contradictions as soon as you do you try to do so would be painfully obvious if we aspire to have friction free trade prime minister is obsessed with saying it's got to be friction free and regulated goods sectors need friction free trade delivering minimal checks on cross-border trade we obviously pursue the maximum possible regulatory alignment in the jargon which was not removing the need for border checks will limit their scale and we will also take on so-called level playing field commitments in the jargon of brussels to guarantee the other side that this alignment will persist and that we won't engage in regulatory arbitrage when we're out of the European Union and go Singaporean but that entails a major political sacrifice because that drives a Cochin horses through the taking back control agenda on goods trade and regulation prime ministerial euphemisms and afraid the promises quite good at euphemisms like a common book can't conceal that to retain market access and minimize frictions in goods trade and hence to prevent the relocation of major businesses from the UK into the EU we are impact is going to have to bind ourselves voluntarily to align on the u s-- law book and implement masses of rules and norms we shall have had no part in setting now that infuriates the sovereigntist s-- to the prime ministers right because it manifestly will Trammell the UK's trade policy on goods and it will limit the free trade agreements the UK can ever pursue to partners whose regulatory orders are not fundamentally at odds with the European Union's well welcome to the world sovereignty in these domains as in bata flowers and other services in procurement is not unadulterated even if you're a sizeable player which we are but we're not a global rule setter and for those of djenne whose agenda is essentially both sovereigntist and geostrategic this withdrawal agreement points in the direction they view as anathema because as they see it it's driven by business interests which are beholden to a model of business predicated on a close economic relationship with the well business as someone once said someone very blonde once said to avoid having to debate the reality of what their stance means for the UK economy and for our fiscal position we get to rhetorical devices in both in my view the bluster fails to conceal the absence of substance first we get the we've got to go global and not parochial little Europe reteam sure increasing our trade with fast-growing parts of the planet should of course be a major UK goal and that will over time further shift patterns of UK trade but that shift is happening it's actually happening faster for global Germany and global France as indeed everywhere else in the EU and everywhere else in the developed world which is why German trade close with China earlier this decade for the first time surpassed German trade close with France when twenty years previously they barely registered on the same scale the idea that is impossible to have global Atlantic Asian or African vocation from within the Union is just crass the case for strengthening trade ties beyond the EU also in no way makes the argument that deeper trade liberalization within the EU and deeper liberalization notably on services in which cross-border liberalisation of trade is much more difficult to achieve than on tariffs and it's always easier within a block than it is with the markets outside you in no way does it make the case that that agenda should be abandoned nor is it true although constantly repeated by ministers and ex ministers that geography no longer matters on services trade look at the data our reality is that UK services exports into the EU in the year of the referendum Amandla amounted to about 90 billion sterling that's as much as our exports to the next eight biggest export markets put together it's just factored us to suggest that when you're immediately substantially worsen your terms of trade in services with massively your largest market instant trade deals with other fast-growing regions will on services substitute for that loss I've not met a single senior executive in a major services firm either any service sector in the UK who believes this and understandably the loss is immediate sizable and certain because one's legal position changes overnight the moment you've left the EU the potential gain from other trade deals is speculative and in the middle distance and on that the evidence before company CEOs and chairs eyes is clear the UK government is struggling as it was always going to even to stand still in the short term with third countries with whom via EU membership we have trade deals out of which we inevitably slipped when we leave that's internet ly not a criticism of those doing formidable hard-working white walk there's an immense volume of technical work even to Ange standstill not to roll backwards in the next few years second rhetorical device from the brexit ears you attempt to de-risk No Deal to the public by claiming it's not really an alarming No Deal but a Liberatore managed no deal that no deal set of mini deals or multi deal the new euphemisms keep on coming virtually every day now with one band this in able to avoid the backstop avoid paying over the money or at least much of the money that the Prime Minister pledged in return for an acceptable withdrawal agreement and it's going to deliver us all the certainty and continuity all sectors of the economy need on terms which completely suit us well stop me if you've heard this one before but I gather that the you 27 will be so desperate when we finally walk away from the table but they'll be running after us for a new preferential deal and junking all those tedious preconditions they've spent the last two years agreeing unanimously so how do you achieve this incredible feat of prestidigitation given that the WTO prescribes that any preferential deal has to cover substantially all trade and therefore rules out sexual many deals which is why cake-eating partial single market partial Customs Union deals could never fly as indeed we were explaining to ministers every week well before I resigned how do you get out of this you invoke article 24 the WTO to argue that you can jump out to WTO terms but then have up to a 10-year interim period in which you do not have to impose reimpose tariffs across the channel which would of course wipe out sizable chunks of the UK food industry for example you don't have to do it because you're in the process of negotiating an FTA just one slight problem with that argument it's a willful and all for misinterpretation about what article 24 of WTO actually sets as those dreaded trade experts keep on pointing out but in common with other such claims despite being rebutted as nonsense by people who actually understand WTO rules the claim is never retracted it also takes to to negotiate an FTA and in circumstances where the UK has walked away from withdrawal agreement is refusing any agreement with a backstop in it and saying that money it has previously agreed to pay is now withheld until any final trade deals which I'm not making this stuff up it's all there from the last to brexit Secretary's on the record within the last two weeks it will be difficult at all for the EU to adopt a common position in reaction to that I can tell you and nor will be you in the event of that No Deal share the latest brexit ear fantasies all we need to do is float the WTO's so-called most favored nation principle and carry on according each other trade preferences across the channel and refusing to levy tariffs as if nothing a change and it's really bizarre listening to the stuff coming from British politicians self-styled defenders of the liberal international order suggesting this nonsense under WTO law you simply can't do that and non reciprocal preferential trade we just do it ourselves is simply illegal so we can't do it either but let's be honest and to return to what I said earlier no deal has become the latest canvas really for brexit ear dreams none of this really actually has to be true it just has to sound compelling and reassuring to people when we're assured by the former Foreign Secretary that aren't I quote ample balanced and pragmatic mini deals will be prepared in a jiffy once we've just said no to the current deal he knows full well it isn't true it's just a pale repetition of the same old tired rhetorical tropes we heard from him in office in 2016 17 18 and that EU common position which will be very easy to strike believe you me poster collapse of the Rizal agreement will not be them begging us for the spear mediate start a free trade agreement choice it'll be a calm repetition that there is a readiness on their part to open free trade agreement talks the moment the UK makes good on its promises on the backstop and the money coupled with a whole set of unilaterally decided measures unilaterally at the twenty seven to assure continuity where the EU must requires it of course there won't be a complete termination of trade and investment flood flows or of every flight that goes from the UK to the continent but what there would be who already exists is shelves of legislation EU level and national to deliver continuity where most matters to the 27 and to deliver I hope public safety and health here but to deliver enough serious comp discontinuity and pain where it matters to force the UK back to the negotiating table to agree the same or worse but to move to the opponents and the proponents of reversing the revolution before the mandate from the referendum has even expired or being fulfilled they are I'm afraid now likewise utterly determining not to compromise that's the nature I think of the British political debate at the moment the guns of the people's voters are therefore trained on all softer versions of brexit involving close and deep relations with the EU from outside it nothing is worse for the people's vote Lobby than either the norway plus proposals which have been running a bit on both sides of their house in the last few months or the kind of association agreement type models advanced actually by Federalists like Andrew Gough who accept the fact of brexit and want to find pragmatic solutions for a post brexit relationship which might work and might keep the post brexit relationship team amicable and robust because the people's vote lobby think that if they can eliminate all softer brexit options from the field they would face a straight fight with the Prime Minister's deal which the avid brexit ears will have helped them discredit and demolish but this we have to be honest means that if they don't succeed in stopping brexit in the next few weeks bar a new referendum they will spent much of the last year attacking the type of post brexit relationship which they will then want to advocate in the next two years as the post exit trade negotiations get underway unless the only option they can support after exit that is is a campaign for immediate react session to the EU using article 49 in which case I rather fear we're seeing a mirror image of the brexit ears strategy for the 20 years before the referendum a sort of masochistic hope that things go as badly as possible for the country but I also fear I see in the incipient campaign to stay in a reformed Europe many of the British Exceptionalist delusions which are run through pro-european Union circles at least since Maastricht in this country the key reason David Cameron shifted over time from his Bloomberg vision the Bloomberg speech vision of January 2013 of pan-european reform and flexibility in a blueprint for the whole of Europe to a narrower focus on entrenching key bits of a Suey generous unique British steel walls he once put it to me direct most of these people he said to me my fellow leaders that is they don't really agree with me on much of that and with their highly ironic certainly in today's circumstances exception of trade liberalisation on which actually they didn't largely agree with him and on which the British of view has largely prevailed in the European Union and the same applies actually ironically of course to single market liberalisation within the year he was largely right on that they didn't really agree with it and pro-european campaigners at the moment are not facing up to the reality of where we stood in the European Union and how unique our own conception of it was there the proponents of middle-way brexit options to the prime minister's proposal say again with justice in my view that the agreement she reached with the EU is purely a function of the preferences the red lines she took into the negotiation and that hers isn't actually a soft brexit at all it's clearly a hard break see which altum Utley involves leaving both the single market and the customs union and thus guaranteeing that there will be less trade and a worse terms with EU than their own alternatives be that a permanent customs union which is essentially the Jeremy Corbyn position or a European Economic Area based deal were Norway plus customs union proposition that Nick Bowles and others have been propagating in recent weeks so they say she just postponing elements of that transition she's offering false temporary comfort to regulated good sectors the ones I referred to earlier they'll still face a truck further down the line when she does leave the customs union and she's offering no comfort at all to those sectors hit worse by the unequivocal decision to leave the single market and on that of course miss Giovanni a and EU leaders back them up because they've said insistently that were the prime minister to exhibit flexibility on her red lines different by which they mean economically preferable for the UK economic and trade deals would be durable in other words it's the Prime Minister's own preferences which are constraining the level of trade preferences and market access on offer to us after brexit well they would say that on the European side of course it's your choice and you must finally decide what you want has been be used negotiating stance throughout but it's essentially accurate and the Prime Minister has herself after all publicly accepted that her own positions on the need completely to aid the free movement of people which is a very Cardinal thing for the Prime Minister she wants to wait for you movement of people and to escape the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice mean that we shall leave the single market what we all know after the last two and a half years or you know anybody who doesn't know hasn't been listening but more importantly the you knows it too is that the single most important objective for the Prime Minister which is dictated where her Zopa was has been ending free movement of people and having complete national control over which Europeans are not just non Europeans ever get the right to settle in the UK now the Prime Minister after months of in my view completely pointless effort trying for morals of post brexit services trade which it was obvious the EU would never agree for a third country which did not want a European Economic Area type field involving Friedman and she had by the time of the checkers proposal decided that the game was up so she put the needs of good sectors and notably EU regulated manufactured goods sectors much higher up and accorded them greater importance than their needs of service sectors and this is frankly rather bemused EU elites with whom she negotiates because they're used to a British political elite who they think basically correctly have never really thought about being you anything anything other than purely economic and mercantile terms and suddenly you're dealing with the Ucayali which seems not to be deriving its negotiating positions anymore from any analysis you recognize or remember of the UK's vital national interests and that's really what's led us to this very bizarre customs union debate of the last couple of years bizarre because it's important the customs union but it's not the most important thing and yet we've obsessed far more about trading goods and the customs unions and we have about anything else now why the Prime Minister came under very strong pressure from key successful manufactured goods sectors autos pharmaceuticals aviation chemicals many others all of whom told her that their commitment to remaining heavily present in the UK depended on perpetuating a business model constructed on the basis of customs union membership an adherence to harmonized single market rules in their sectors all of these sectors are mass exporters to be you all currently operate under EU level regulatory frameworks we don't have UK level regulatory frameworks we're going to have to develop them if that's where we want to go none has an appetite for regulatory divergence from the EU it's clearly senseless for them as to market their goods on the EU market they will post brexit have to demonstrate compliance with precisely the same rules and standards national sovereignty in these sectors for them is really purely notional and in a world of trade bloc's the EU US China perhaps Japan but those three other big ones which set and impose extraterritorial outside their own boundaries their own standards an autonomous UK is not a big enough market to become a global standard set so this put the Prime Minister in an extraordinarily difficult position she knew that the right of her party and the primary enthusiasts for brexit in it attach huge importance to having a fully autonomous and sovereign trade policy and were completely determined to leave the customs union and abandon the common external tariff for the new 27 and she promised them will leave the customs you she simultaneously promised Dublin that somehow or other the move to a completely different trade and regulatory regime and Jefferson tariffs plus all the other issues like rules of origin and anti-dumping provisions that don't worry that will never necessitate the erection of a hard border across the island of Ireland because I'm against that and then when after the election finding she was in a weaker position rather than the stronger one she promised the Democratic Unionist Party on whose vote she depends for her the government's survival that she would not permit customs and regulatory divergence between Northern Ireland and the rest of Great Britain which the Democratic Unionist would regard as a major step on the slippery slope to Irish unification now the fact is that these three promises are manifestly not all deliverable at once one can deliver any two of those three but self-evidently not the third as they're mutually conscious wasn't one of the more popular things I ever said that they're mutually contradictory but they are and that's I think commonly recognized now that led Dublin rather understandably to think that unless it secured legal guarantees that regardless of whichever trade deal the UK ended up with with EU there would be no hard border it would find its own interest subordinated to the other two commitments and a hard border would be be inevitable result and the more it heard from both the Prime Minister and from the right-wing opponents of the Prime Minister the more it had this view confirmed because the only trade agreement these people would ever do with the EU would as Dublin saw it clearly guarantee the need for a hard border and so they pushed hard and successfully this is much resented by the British political class but the Irish were extremely successful in pushing it for agreement on a backstop provision in the December 2017 agreement and when that got translated as was agreed and inevitable into a legal text for incorporation into the withdrawal agreement the Prime Minister reacted as we all saw all quite violently and sit and said no Prime Minister could ever sign up to a backstop that looked like that and the only way the promise to thought once she saw that text that she could render it remotely palatable to the Democratic Unionist was by promising could never come into force and therefore by turning the backstop into an all UK backstop which would remain in force unless and until a different solution was found to avoid the need for a hard border but that very commitment to an all UK backstop solution from which I think there was no escape from December 2017 I have to say you know I've been saying to the private sector since December 2017 I don't see how this thing passes there are some Commons and I think there's a much more severe risk of no deal than you all understand but that very commitment to an all UK backstop solution which must have felt for the Prime Minister like a breakthrough to a deal which the EU had after all previously said it wouldn't do as part of the article 50 process that didn't actually enhance her prospects of getting the withdrawal agreement through that has if anything it made matters considerably worse for the right an all UK backstop with no unilateral way in which to exit it risk condemning the UK in perpetuity to a closer economic relationship with the youth and they wanted to have and depriving the UK of the ability to run a fully autonomous trade policy Eve even after the end of the period of so-called vassal state transition so it seemed to them to be heading in extra Bleacher precisely the same policy as that of the leader of the Opposition of permanent custody so there are several weeks if not months have been dominated by the Prime Minister seeking political and ideally further legal assurances that the all UK backstop which to repeat she herself deliberately sought and percent a piece of the withdrawal agreement not simply a political aspiration for the accompanying political declaration that that is not intended to lock us in perpetuity into an arrangement which precludes us ever assuming full sovereignty over trade policy in goods as well as service now there's political assurances were forthcoming in the exchange of letters between the Prime Minister and the presidents of the Commission and the council the day before the meaningful vote but as we saw they made absolutely no difference to the devastation scale of defeat and although I believe the EU side is genuine and I do believe that it not wanting either an all UK or an island specific backstop to be in place for the long term the reality is that the backstop would come in to and would remain in force and lessen until it's replaced by some other arrangement which makes it unnecessary to erect a hard border and on here I'm afraid we remain firmly in the world of make-believe and fantasies the Prime Minister still talks as if the need for the backstop will automatically melt away the moment of full trade deal is struck and that therefore all that matters for her to get now really is cast iron commitments from the other side to expedite and complete a free trade agreement but this is manifestly untrue unless the free trade deal was such as to render the backstop ot owes and that's not the sort of trade deal to which she actually aspires to her right we have brexit ears arguing that we shall be able to use administrative measures and technology to solve the Irish border issue without the need for a backstop at all you get this endlessly from the European search group but also others like you know piece of newly drawn bread with any of the rest and seemingly believe that there can be some sort of bilateral agreement between the UK and Ireland which takes the backstop completely off the table total fantasy in no way that the Irish will agree that but administrative measures can never do more than reduce than reduce border frictions they never eliminate them and they haven't done so even at borders like the Norway Sweden border which by definition is a border between an EU member and a European Economic Area member who are therefore much more closely integrated than hard brexit advocates ever want the UK to be with the EU and therefore that border the Norway Sweden border requires fewer administrative measures than an Irish border would if we conclude any trade deal of the type that they want again if you want less integration with the new economy that's a perfectly legitimate thing to argue for but then don't tell us that there'll be friction free trade and seamless borders because there can't be and there won't be and technology as yet unavailable technology instead even when it does exist can address any of the customs issues a plethora of other favourite ranks necessitated legally by having different regulatory regimes and the enforcement machinery wants me we leave the single market never going to be solved by technology or water is not simply about checks on customs and people and so it's even more disingenuous frankly I would say dishonest to say as again the hard brexit ears do that after resolving the Irish border a Shrieve are administrative measures and technology the whole UK would be able to enter into a Canada style free-trade agreement of the type they say suggested by Donald Tusk the reality is that Donald Tusk made no such a proposal he said that a Canada style agreement could be offered to Great Britain and Great Britain not Northern Ireland but that to obviate the need for a hard border that the Prime Minister had committed to avoid Northern Ireland would if the UK chose which was its sovereign right to go for a Canadian type option Northern Ireland would need to remain in a much closer economic relationship in telling of course the customs border in the Irish Sea which the UK government rejects as a threat to the integrity of the Union perfectly understandably so tusks actually say a medial Canadian or closer was necessarily dependent on the UK signing the withdrawal agreement with the backstop image so this is in other words this be clear almost the exact opposite of what the former two former brexit secretaries in the former Foreign Secretary allege has already been offered to the UK to be completely clear no deal along the lines touted as already having been offered to us to the UK has been or whatever will be a Canada style deal which looks very different from the proposition they espouse and is in my view seriously bad for the economy could be offered to Great Britain only but the very thinness of that free trade agreement which I described earlier entails guarantees that radically different arrangements would have to be agreed for Northern Ireland and say you haven't escaped the entire nexus is there you don't escape the backstop issue simply by wishing it away let alone by fantasizing about bilateral deals with Dublin when the policy competence for customs issues resides on the other side of the negotiating table at the EU level anyway so after this long and gloomy exposition one I'm sure you'll be in need of a stiff drink and two you'll be asking so given that we've actually arrived here what on earth should we do now to get out of this hole now before Christmas in our lecture I gave in Liverpool I suggested nine lessons that might usefully be applied to the situation that I think we'll face for the next few years we were told yesterday the Prime Minister has in the last several weeks since reaching agreement with her new colleagues but not coming close to the persuading the house but it's the right agreement has learned six lessons well whether she's learned any of the right lessons time rolls on and Plan B evidently bears an uncanny resemblance to plan a so let me conclude my rather less snappy animate versions tonight by distilling just a few lessons from what I have said tonight and I've gone for these four firstly article 50 can for all its older teas and they're quite a lot of oddities in Asian my probably work as an exit route for leaving the European Union and let's be honest as Democrats countries do have to be able to exit the European Union if that's their Democratic choice if the UK can't manager and we're the size of the two-thirds of the smallest member states put together there really is a huge pop but article 50 only works if the exiting country has worked out where it's exiting to and is very clear cited and basically United about what it wants to gain and what it's prepared to lose and neither of those things applies in the UK at the moment we still have a political class determined not to look reality in the army there'll only in my view damage their reputation with the public further over the next several years if they continue to fail - and we have very little user - rather less probably than we had 30 months ago with growing risks both to social and national cohesion indeed with the growing risk that the UK will in the next decade break up we need a political discourse that recognizes there's no single perfect on so there never was a single perfect on set inside the EU or outside the EU not a discourse in which all sides are now playing the everything by my own version of reality is a humiliation of betrayal or a complete disaster and we need a political process which enables the public actually to see the choices all we shall have made motion I'll have many very bitter years ahead in which we'll only really hear from the losers as trade deals and other things that are concluded and huge trade-offs are coming and those trade-offs need to be explained properly to the public so that they see what they are and what decisions have been made and why second lesson we have to actually understand how the EU works and negotiates because we shall like it or not not be floating free of ties and responsibilities in the mid-atlantic we shall like an outsize Switzerland be negotiating on everything from fish to financial services from food and farming to fundamental rights and that's just the apps for as long as both the UK and the EU exist there's no leap to freedom which permanently enza's it's just exactly what intensity of relationships one once and why one once there that needs deciding he doesn't pay to be starry-eyed or naive in negotiation with the EU machine and for all the belligerent talk and now the fists waving No Deal rhetoric senior ministers have been poked and they've been rolled over repeatedly in the last two years the EU is a difficult negotiation partner I say this as somebody who's worked within it and an outside outside it it's treated this process is essentially a technocratic process of DX session I would call it in other words the reverse of the process of accession when you join the European now that style works on exceptions because it's basically an inevitable grinding process of convergence on a known destination and the known destination is the voluminous EU law book and the EU then dictates the entire game and exhibits quite a lot of strategic patience but we are heading to an unknown destination and a contested destination and the EU style of negotiating is inflexible and in this negotiation technocratic overreach in the departure of a major member state may still end badly and the EU side at leader level I think has to think harder about why this is happening and why we're in this mess and about where it's going with the UK in the longer term needs to think strategically repeatedly saying as the use ion has and we never get anything coherent from you in London even if that's very often true is not really enough third the baselines in any negotiation where you start from matter we started this one in a way in my view calculated to land us exactly where we've landed I've explained on the impending trade negotiations assuming we ever get there why would profoundly not want to start from the double u-turn the baseline and why the current withdrawal agreement already tilts the playing field very nicely in the EU's direction for the talks to come and to revert to that Canadian example I gave demonstrating wire canada type deal gives services companies so much worse terms than the ones they currently have it's precisely this discussion and negotiation to try and winnow down the length of lists of exemptions and carve outs and national discriminatory rules that takes the time only ministers and ex ministers who personally got anywhere near a trade negotiation that alone conducted one think that this can be quick and easy if you start from the baseline of being a bog-standard third country with no preferences others will ensure you pay a heavy price within and beyond that sector for every step you take back towards the world you used to inhabit and the fact is that everything is and has to be connected and that's one reason why another reason why these sort of No Deal maxi Multimedia's or whatever the lace fiction is called won't work no one on the other side of the channel is going to sign off now on what they the UK most urgently wants until they banked an awful lot of what the UK doesn't want I'm sorry if that sounds rough but others have interests in politics too and it's time that we had a grown up debate about others having interests in 4-6-2 and if we end up seeking as we might for political reasons a quick and dirty trade deal to be done at all costs before the next UK general election unless that UK general elections in the next few weeks and we want to escape the vassal dome of transition the EU will use the pressure of the ticking clock in the next phase just as effectively as they have in this phase to extract concessions on the substance because that's what they'll do forth and finally one calm ruled out in the current chaotic circumstances an extension of article 50 whether a technical short one because we're too short sometime to get the legislation through the house in good order or a longer one because the whole thing remains such total mess and both sides at top political level conclude that a disorderly and bitter no deal at this point with better avoided so you can't rule it out and on one can well see on that kind of issue that leaders might have a rather different perception from technocrats and come out at a different place or there by and large actually a contrary to what UK politicians have expected by a large at every stage so far leaders are being rather less inclined to be flexible than Brussels Airport chicks but an extension of article 50 is not a given and it's not a UK decision I still encounter a lot of skepticism in other capitals about whether it serves much purpose if all it does is to license a prolongation of the same cell same old self observe or British debate which as I've said it seems to specialize at the moment of outrage about what we absolutely cannot tolerate but to be terribly short of proposals about what we could live with Eze brexit which have any chance whatever of actually being aggrieved and of the UK side actually wanting to adhere to them for more than a few months after its left so extra time in a negotiation is only of any real value if you make use of it to progress and change the national debate and there are no signs really at the moment of a progression and change in the national debate now I've said today as I said before Christmas that it's time to wake up I've said today perhaps more clearly that it's not just some one side of the debate which seems to be lost in its own dreams I understand why each of the alternative versions of reality is more attractive to those who wish to live there than the real world that I'm afraid I see and I know that the reality as I've understood it and lived it for many years in their kind of dark gray rooms of Brussels and other capitals with many companions in Whitehall who work so hard on behalf of the public and politicians and governments I know that reality is cold and boring and prosaic and people by desiccated gray suited technocrats you could always come up with some tedious reason why you can't have all you want all of the time I think that's part of the job of some technocrats now I I know that those who kindly you know cheered my remarks and comments over recent months and the last couple of years have been buoyed by the hope that I might be helping puncture those dreams peddled by their opponents and by the thought that they could sort of discern some lurking poetry in the dead hand of my bureaucrat pros but I'm afraid of what I can't do is to do more that I try and do for our lectures like this I'm able to throw a bucket of cold water on those who sleep on and on in the hope that finally they wake up and notice where they are on that the fire could consume them but that's all I could do thanks [Applause] [Music] Wow so let's jump that was a total force without going to this you

Channel: UCL

Views: 160,023

Keywords: UCL, University College London, Brexit, European Union, EU, United Kingdom, UK, referendum, vote, leave, remain, politics, Article 50, forum, students, staff, UCL European Institute, Sir Ivan Rogers, Diplomat, Civil servant, Government, Parliament, House of Commons, British, Britain, voters, Theresa May, Prime Minister, Provost, Professor Michael Arthur

Id: -PxpHNXIKnY

Length: 69min 11sec (4151 seconds)

Published: Tue Jan 22 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Newtonswig]

Former permanent representative to the EU and principal private secretary to the Blair administration, Rogers has an expertise that shines through every word of this hour long talk.

More than anything I have seen or read, this picks out the tensions and fault lines in the negotiation process, sparing neither side of any of the surrounding debates. Clear arguments, clear facts: can’t recommend enough.

(Not affiliated with anything to do with this lecture, just thought this sub might like it)