Brexit: where are we? What could happen next? Webchat with three experts on Tuesday 27 November at 1.30pm

[RowanMumsnet]

Hello

We’re pleased to announce a webchat on Brexit, the ‘divorce’ agreement, and possible outcomes, with three guests from The UK in a Changing Europe on Tuesday 27 November at 1.30pm.

Professor Jonathan Portes is senior fellow at The UK in a Changing Europe and Professor of Economics and Public Policy in the Department of Political Economy at King's College London. Previously, he was principal research fellow of the National Institute of Economic & Social Research. Before that he was chief economist at the Cabinet Office, and previous to that chief economist at the Department of Work and Pensions.

Professor Catherine Barnard is senior fellow at The UK in a Changing Europe; Professor in European Union Law and Employment Law at the University of Cambridge; and senior tutor and fellow of Trinity College. Catherine specialises in EU law and employment law.

Professor Anand Menon is Director of The UK in a Changing Europe and Professor of European Politics and Foreign Affairs at Kings College London. He has held positions at Sciences Po, Columbia University and NYU. He has written on many aspects of contemporary Europe and is a frequent commentator on national and international media.

Professors Menon and Barnard joined us before the Brexit referendum in June 2016 - you can check out that webchat here if you fancy refreshing your memory/reliving the heady atmosphere.

Please do join the chat on Tuesday. If you can’t make it, please leave a question here in advance. Do bear in mind the webchat guidelines - one question each (follow-ups allowed if there’s time), and please be polite. Also following recent chats/guest posts we’ve updated our guidelines to let people know that, if one topic is overwhelmingly dominating a discussion with a guest, mods might request that people don't continue to post what's effectively the same question or point. Rest assured we will ALWAYS let guests know that it's an area of concern to multiple users and will encourage them to engage with those questions.

Thanks
MNHQ

@Talkinpeece

Do you think that Brexit will actually solve any of the UK's Socioeconomic issues that led to the Leave vote?

• housing ; both social and private
• zero hours contracts / low pay / Universal credit
• austerity impacting on health, education and local services

If so how?

Not directly; indeed, since the likely impact of Brexit is to make us somewhat poorer, it may make it harder to solve some of these issues. And there's nothing at all about EU membership that stops us dealing with them now. But if it makes politicians take some of these issues more seriously and come up with policies that address these concerns, perhaps it could indirectly lead to some positive outcomes.

One of the many tricky questions. The genius of the GFA was that a lot of the difficult questions were avoided because both the UK and Ireland were in the EU. Given that the UK is leaving the EU, Ireland becomes the outer edge of the EU and so must protect the entry into the EU’s internal market and so there needs to be a border there in the absence of an agreement to the contrary. That is where the Irish backstop fits in which can be found in a Protocol to the Withdrawal Agreement. The EU and the UK hope the backstop is never used because a future trae agreement is negotiated which avoids the need for a border on the island of Ireland.

@Havanananana

Re; The Irish border question:

The simple reason is that it would mean a border in Ireland that both the UK and the EU have pledged to avoid. Under WTO rules there would have to be checks, as it would be a customs and regulatory border.

Despite the comments by David Trimble and others who believe that the Irish border was being used as a scapegoat by EU to ensure UK stayed in Customs Union – is it not the case that the GFA actually prevents the UK from leaving the EU (or a Customs Union) if this results in any hard border between the Roi and the UK/Northern Ireland?

Is it not the case that the only 2 options that allow the UK to leave the EU and at the same time fulfil the GFA obligations (which are embedded in an International Law) are:

• Northern Ireland leaves the UK and becomes part of the RoI or
• The RoI also leaves the EU at the same time as the UK does so.

Impacts on wages and jobs will presumably filter through to all people who consume public services as lower tax receipts will mean either cuts to services or higher taxes for those in work?

@lljkk

Can someone explain Canada-plus-plus in simple brief terms, why do some leavers (eg Michael Howard) like C++ so much, did a EU negotiator really offer Canada++ early on AND (most importantly) is there a version of Canada++ that would solve the Northern Ireland challenges while satisfying the Good Friday agreement terms & DUP's current demands for post-Brexit conditions?

There is no version of Canada (depending on what the pluses mean) that would solve the NI problem as we would be outside the single market and the customs union, so there would have to be a border either via a backstop between NI and UK or in Ireland. Canada offers more autonomy, which is why leavers like it. We would be more free to sign trade deals, and also not under EU laws. That being said, the impact on our economy would be greater.

@MyNameIsArthur

Also,

Two years has obviously not been a realistic time to unravel 45 years of EU membership. When the Lisbon Treaty introduced article 50 , was the two year period really a deliberate attempt by the EU to disadvantage any country that ever wanted to leave from getting a good deal because of the pressure to negotiate a deal in an unrealistically short period of time?

I'm not sure how much they thought it through as I suspect they assumed it would never be used. But you're right, two years is a dreadfully short period to do something this complicated.

@TheyBuiltThePyramids

What is to happen to those many workers who depend on cross border travel for work, or whose contracts are at risk once they are no longer EU citizens? Manu EU companies are obliged to hire EU contractors/firms first before looking outside.

"Frontier workers" are protected by the Withdrawal Agreement but the position is at best very uncertain for others who work in several different EU countries - they will lose their freedom of movement between EU countries on current plans.

Can parliament vote on an amendment for a people’s vote?if this came about would this be the default position rather than no deal?

@Talkinpeece

Tiscold I do not think anybody who has studied Brexit is impartial. Many are against it, many are for it, but only the utterly uninformed have no opinion. Hopefully the three people invited are extremely well informed and so may be able to answer some of the questions already listed.

Of course we have opinions, but we are employed to publish solid social science analysis and explain the findings. And the findings have, in the 3 years we have been in existence, been taken as pro or anti both sides, depending on the issue.

@arranfan

My follow-up question:

Does the panel have an opinion on whether the Brexit issues will effectively be moot if a near-time climate change-driven switch away from fossil fuels means the worldwide economy/trading will need to change radically and what those economic/social/political changes would look like?

Lots of things will change in the UK and global economy, but the shape of our economic relationship with the rest of Europe will remain very important to the UK under any circumstances - so I don't think Brexit will be moot at all. Remember more and more trade will be high value items or indeed services that don't have to be physically shipped, so it's not necessarily the case that more trade means a larger carbon footprint

@Hopedieslast

Why is it actually so difficult to go for a People's Vote? What does Theresa May have to lose? Why refer to the will of the British people if the will of the British people is now utterly disregarded? The public was deliberately misled. The most googled question the morning after the referendum was "what is the EU"? Please help me to make sense of this.

Several issues I think. First, there are genuine concerns about how damaging and divisive another referendum might be. Second, a large proportion of Tory voters are leavers and so the Government are concerned what another refererndum, if it voted remain (far from assured) would mean politically for them.

@MrsSHayward

Impacts on wages and jobs will presumably filter through to all people who consume public services as lower tax receipts will mean either cuts to services or higher taxes for those in work?

Correct. It's very difficult to estimate the distributional consequences of Brexit, but most analyses so far suggest the pain will be spread fairly evenly, although some areas that are more dependent on manufacturing exports to the EU might suffer more.

Thanks for the link to relative costs earlier, I look forward to examining these and drawing conclusions

Legally the People’s vote is difficult because it will take time, possibly up to six months (we are due to leave in three). As I said in reply to Landlockedboatmum, there is an issue over who can vote. But there is also an issue over the question: will it have two limbs (essentially leave or remain) or three ( leave, leave with the PM’s deal, or remain). The question will have to be considered and tested by the electoral commission. And there needs to be an Act of Parliament before there can be a second referendum. All of this takes time.

@Hopedieslast

Why is it actually so difficult to go for a People's Vote? What does Theresa May have to lose? Why refer to the will of the British people if the will of the British people is now utterly disregarded? The public was deliberately misled. The most googled question the morning after the referendum was "what is the EU"? Please help me to make sense of this.

@MrsSHayward

Impacts on wages and jobs will presumably filter through to all people who consume public services as lower tax receipts will mean either cuts to services or higher taxes for those in work?

Ultimately it's up to the Government to decide who feels the impacts most, but yes, there will be some stark choices - not least about public spending and taxation - to be made

An entirely personal and selfish question .....
Will any post Brexit version of the Erasmus scheme be as good for UK youngsters as the current version?
disclaimer, one child is currently on the Continent with Erasmus, younger child had hoped to do the same

@MrsSHayward

How is a further referendum un-democratic? Surely by that token, the only referendum result that would be binding was the one in 1975 to continue membership of the EC? Surely the fact that there was a further referendum in 2016 means that there is an acknowledgment that perspectives can change over time and the last two years have given us plenty of food for thought to change our perspective?

I wouldn't describe it as undemocratic. In our system, what parliament decides to do has been decided democratically. The reasons people tend to oppose a referendum are mainly practical (fear of divisions it would cause etc) and political

Thank you for answering Prof Catherine

The EU and the UK hope the backstop is never used because a future trade agreement is negotiated which avoids the need for a border on the island of Ireland.

But the elephant is still in the room - this is what the last 24 months of discussions have stranded on. The backstop just kicks the problem further down the road.

The GFA requirement for no border on Ireland and the desire to have 'a future trade deal' that is not the same as a Customs Union are mutually exclusive - unless the panel can give some indication of what such a deal might look like.

Does Theresa May’s deal deliver on the promise of ‘taking back control’? If not, how is it a better outcome than the status quo as we will be economically poorer?

@Talkinpeece

An entirely personal and selfish question ..... Will any post Brexit version of the Erasmus scheme be as good for UK youngsters as the current version? disclaimer, one child is currently on the Continent with Erasmus, younger child had hoped to do the same

Simple answer is we don't know. that will all be negotiated in the future. Though it's hard to see the EU giving us a better deal than we had as a member state!

@lljkk

Can someone explain Canada-plus-plus in simple brief terms, why do some leavers (eg Michael Howard) like C++ so much, did a EU negotiator really offer Canada++ early on AND (most importantly) is there a version of Canada++ that would solve the Northern Ireland challenges while satisfying the Good Friday agreement terms & DUP's current demands for post-Brexit conditions?

"Canada plus" really means a free trade deal with no tariffs - but not regulatory alignment or "frictionless trade" - you still need checks at borders. And the plus part is very vague. The reason some people like it is that - unlike staying in the customs union - it would allow the UK to do its own trade deals with third countries like the US with very few restrictions. It is (broadly) true that the EU did offer and indeed continues to offer Canada-style deal. But - your last question - no, because Canada implies customs checks between the UK and EU, Canada plus on its own implies either a hard border in Ireland or the Irish Sea. Hence the current mess!

Many of our arrangements are in place in respect of the WTO but some difficult questions remain. In particular how to divide up so-called tariff rate quotas which regulates how much, say, lamb from NZ can come into the EU duty free and how much can come in at a tariff. What share of the EU’s TRQ will the UK get? The UK also wants to partipate in the agreement on government procurement but some counties are raising objections.

@MrsSHayward

I don’t really understand how we can proceed on our course of leaving the EU without arrangements for our WTO membership (UK Schedule) in order. According to this article that is completely up in the air (www.heraldscotland.com/opinion/17232332.agenda-events-in-geneva-could-make-the-london-drama-pointless/?ref=fbshr). So why leave a trade area to negotiate a new one when we’re not even on the starting grid for the new trade deals?!

Hello - thanks for addressing my earlier question. I have read an article (by Ian Dunt of politics.co.uk) which claims the WA means that if the EU makes any FTAs with countries not currently covered, the UK will have to accept all tariff-free goods etc from these countries as it is covered by the customs union but these countries would not have to apply the same rules to the UK as it would not be part of the EU. This is my understanding of his analysis but I keep thinking I must have got it wrong as it is so obviously disadvantageous to the UK. Are any of you able to clarify?

@MrsSHayward

Does Theresa May’s deal deliver on the promise of ‘taking back control’? If not, how is it a better outcome than the status quo as we will be economically poorer?

To some extent. It ends freedom of movement - unless we decide to sign up for it again when we negotiate the future trade deal. And it reduces the authority the ECJ has over laws here. Brexit essentially boils down to a trade off between trade with the EU and autonomy (or control). And the deal represents something of a compromise between the two - so for instance we're sacrificing some ability to sign trade deals with other countries because of the customs agreement in the WA

@lalalonglegs

Hello - thanks for addressing my earlier question. I have read an article (by Ian Dunt of politics.co.uk) which claims the WA means that if the EU makes any FTAs with countries not currently covered, the UK will have to accept all tariff-free goods etc from these countries as it is covered by the customs union but these countries would not have to apply the same rules to the UK as it would not be part of the EU. This is my understanding of his analysis but I keep thinking I must have got it wrong as it is so obviously disadvantageous to the UK. Are any of you able to clarify?

That is my understanding too. It is the deal that Turkey have got and they hate it!