Cabinet split to inspire new Observer cartoon?

The Graun today has a story of that old-fashioned thing, a Cabinet split over Brexit

Liz Truss warns Boris Johnson over Brexit border plans

International trade secretary tells PM and chancellor plans risk smuggling and damage to UK reputation

Truss supported both sides at different times, I recall, during the Great Debate. 

Gove unveiled the new border Brexit regime last month for traders, announcing that customs and health checks required for goods imported from the EU would not be imposed immediately and instead be phased in over six months.

In a letter, leaked to a business website, and somehow finding its way to the Guran, Truss warns that:

.. the “staged approach” would “be vulnerable” to legal challenge by the World Trade Organization which could object to goods coming in from the EU being treated differently to goods coming in from elsewhere which are already subject to tariffs and quotas.

She also raises concerns over smuggling because full checks will not be in place for all goods coming into the UK at borders from 1 January....“I would like assurances that we are able to deliver full control at these ports by July 2021 and that plans are in place from January to mitigate the risk of goods being circumvented from ports implementing full controls,” she wrote....Thirdly [?this seems the same point], she is concerned that some unscrupulous traders from outside the EU could exploit the lack of controls and get their goods across the border without tariffs or checks.

She reveals that the digital application of the special tariff regime for Northern Ireland has been deemed “high risk” and “HMRC are planning to apply the EU tariff as a default to all imports in NI from 1 January 2021”....“This is very concerning as this may call into question NI’s place in the UK customs territory,” Truss wrote in relation to the potential imposition of tariffs.

Oddly, Barnier made the same threat recently 

I hope this will inspire the Obsever cartoonist to add another element to his cartoon template. We have had swinging demolition balls, cliff edges, bottomless pits, unicorns and ogres. Perhaps we shall see Truss wrapped in an NI banner, fighting off smugglers with substandard goods in their boats while a demonic Cummings suns himself on a beach in Northumberland with a sign pointing to Barnard Castle?

Halibut and guinea pigs as Barnier dines privately

 It's now got to 'private dinners'!

UK Brexit negotiator meets EU counterpart in bid to revive talks

David Frost and Michel Barnier will dine on halibut at Downing Street private dinner

Some privacy! The Graun found the menu 'perhaps surprising given that fish are one of the most contentious issues between the two sides'. I wonder if it will be piped in and served on Union Flag plates while racist plebs deplore French hygiene?

Being the Graun, we obviously get a preparatory Barnier press release, dutifully 'reported' by a Lords Committee:

the EU negotiator accused the UK of continuing to seek“the advantages of being a member state” but with the right to diverge on regulations....He also warned that no deal would mean a cliff-edge [welcome back old friend -- can a car crash be far away?] for British exporters from 1 January as the EU had no intention of phasing in border controls like the UK....“We will not delay things. As of 1 January, all products coming into the single market – coming from any third country anywhere in the world, including yours, because you are a third country – will be checked,” he said.

 Then on to another symbolic animal:

Meanwhile, MPs have heard that EU citizens settled in the UK are being used by the Home Office as guinea pigs for a future digital-only immigration system....They will also face “significant problems” after Brexit unless the government provides them with a physical card to prove their right to remain in the UK legally, parliament’s Brexit select committee was told.

 Is there any particular reason to think they will not be so provided?

The rights of EU citizens have already been enshrined in the withdrawal agreement signed in January but the Brexit select committee heard that anxiety about their future rights remained high.

 Entirely disinterestedly, a lawyer said:

 “There is a lot of mistrust in the way that government does things, particularly the Home Office, and that has come about … because of a legacy of mistakes and because some very, very bad things that have happened to human beings. And I think a lot of EU citizens are very worried that this will happen to them,”... “Words like angry, anxious, alienated, annoyed, unwanted, upset and unwelcome,” were the feelings cited in a [probably that old pre-Brexit] survey of 3,000 EU citizens, which also found that 89% said they wanted a physical card [never got in to digital stuff, these Continentals]

 A Home Office spokesperson noted:

“The EU settlement scheme also protects the rights of EU citizens in UK law and gives them a secure digital status which, unlike a physical document, cannot be lost, stolen or tampered with.” 

The symbolic politics of changed email addresses

We have seen many examples of how to combine issues like Brexit and covid into overall narratives and moral panics. This example shows that farce can be involved as well

EU commission rejects Raab's claims in medical procurement row

UK foreign secretary has said EU invite for Covid-19 scheme was sent to old email address

 A commission official said the UK was not included on the original email list because it had already left the EU, but added there had been “ample opportunity” for the British government to join four schemes to bulk-buy medical supplies launched earlier this year.

As always,there seems to be a marvellous flexibility over whether the UK has left the EU or not -- an enigma at the heart of a bureaucracy as someone might nearly have said.

The UK has since decided to join an EU procurement scheme to obtain intensive care medicines, such as antibiotics and anaesthetics, the Guardian has learned.

 After it emerged the UK had missed deadlines to join four EU procurement schemes, the UK increased its attendance at the EU’s H[ealth] S[ecurity] C[ommittee] meetings.... Raab said there had been “no explicit discussion at these [HSC] meetings of whether the UK would be eligible to participate”. He also said ministers had not been briefed ahead of the schemes being launched.

The Foreign Office’s most senior official, Sir Simon McDonald, said the UK had taken a political decision not to join and that “the UK missions in Brussels briefed ministers about what was available” – but later retracted his testimony. McDonald was subsequently asked to stand down “at the request” of Boris Johnson

On not being arsed

Another Observer, another Ridell cartoon. Guess what it is about? 

Barnier demands respect and offers weasel

Demands of the day job stopped me from reporting this yesterday (oh dear -- actually 2 days ago):

EU-UK trade talks break up early over 'serious' disagreements

EU Brexit negotiator Michel Barnier complained of lack of respect and engagement by UK

The bit that leapt out for me was the 'lack of respect'. What was this? Frost drunk and mooning in the  meetings? Not switching off his XBox? We are given no details, only that: 'the British government had been late in providing the necessary information to allow a decision to be made', relating to the thousand page questionnaire (see earlier blog)

On that issue:

 a row continues over the failure of both sides to provide “equivalence” judgements by the end of June to allow financial service operators to continue to work across the UK and the EU.

Apart from that, it is nearly all about Barnier, as per established Grau practice :

The former French minister said Brussels had “listened carefully” to Boris Johnson when he had told the EU’s institutional leaders two weeks ago during a videoconference he wanted “political agreement” over the summer on the terms of a deal....Barnier added that the EU recognised the British red lines of “no role for the European court of justice in the UK; no obligation for the UK to continue to be bound by EU law; and an agreement on fisheries that shows Brexit makes a real difference”....The EU has hinted at a willingness to drop its initial asks of EU state aid being incorporated into domestic UK legislation, non-regression from the bloc’s environmental, social and labour regulations and the effective continuation of the common fisheries policy.

But he suggested the EU’s willingness to be flexible on its initial demands in light of the British positions had not been met with similar understanding from Downing Street over Brussels’ red lines.

El Graun has not told us what these red lines are exactly, or how Barnier has 'recognised' the British red lines. Is it a matter of bureaucratic obsession for detail and small print? Or an eternal time scale? There is the unmistakeable scent of weasel, if you will pardon a mammalian substitute in the metaphor.

[it turns on] plans for how the UK’s domestic subsidy regime will work from the end of the year...[on] a “sustainable and long-term solution” on fisheries, taking into account the needs of European fishermen for certainty over their livelihoods and an effective all-encompassing dispute settlement mechanism to ensure both sides stick to their obligations....[and] parallel progress on all areas

Which is presumably code for some sophist's workaround, showing very little willingness to be flexible over the substance at all?

Death by thousand-page questionnaire

More glimpses into the background of the talks today

Both parties had agreed to complete assessments of the other’s regulatory regimes for financial services by Tuesday 30 June, with the expectation that they would deemed “equivalent”, allowing business to continue in the new year....the European commission and the UK government have blamed each other for the delay.

The tactics:

Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, told the Eurofi financial regulation thinktank that the UK had answered only four of 28 questionnaires Brussels had sent seeking information about the regulation of financial services....It is understood that the government received 1,000-plus pages of questions in April and May, with the last 248 pages arriving on 25 May....British officials are understood to be frustrated that the questions posed are fara [sic] broader in range than necessary for an equivalence decision to be reached.

I seem to remember that the City had just gone ahead with making arrangements to continue trading anyway (reported in this blog somewhere -- must find it when I'm not too busy).That seems to be confirmed by this:

The equivalence decision is outside the negotiation, but the two teams are seeking to agree on a form of cooperation on regulation of the financial services sector.

If persistent rumours of a planned Tobin tax are true, I must say I am with the EU on this one. This would be an issue that would require international cooperation too -- but not just with the EU, of course. But the sheer volume of preparatory work indicates it will be a massively unwieldy and toothless form of EU regulation in the end. A lawyer's paradise as usual. And I suppose it would mean submission to the ECJ. 

Meanwhile, serious news continues as promised (see June 15th 2019)

Penne for your thoughts: how to choose pasta shapes

Impartial Civil Service under attack

Two reasons why we should worry about the latest reshuffles First,

As Frost and his team of a dozen-plus negotiators headed to Brussels by train on Sunday, it was being revealed that Boris Johnson had given him a new role (and a peerage) as his national security adviser....The timing of Frost’s appointment could not have been more pointed. Although the vacancy has arisen because of the resignation of the cabinet secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, on Sunday night, giving the post to someone who is leading arguably the most important international talks since the Iraq war in 2003 sends a strong message to Brussels that the UK is prepared to walk away if a deal cannot be struck in summer talks.

A plaintive note to end, possibly indicating the dismay felt by all nice people with Johnson's determination:

Is there any hope?
Yes. It is hoped that five weeks of face-to-face meetings might yield results as they allow more nuanced discussions in informal meeting in corridors and over dinners.

Chaps will have a chance to just get along with other chaps and leave out all the nasty divisive stuff. KitKat anyone?

Vote Leave is now in Downing Street, [how did that happen I wonder] and Brexit is being repurposed to destabilise officials’ authority by casting their reasonable objections as signs of how out of step they are with voters’ mood

Pretty well unarguably out of step I would have thought -- but only with that misguided and racist majority who voted Brexit and then Tory.

If this ideological cleansing via hostile anonymised briefing is allowed to continue unchecked, it will blow away the defining qualities of the British civil service: political neutrality and recruitment on the basis of merit...

Who could disgaree with that assessment of the defining qualities? Poor old civil servants might even have to abandon their heroic and priestly mission

The departures at the top of the civil service in recent weeks will have a chilling effect on officials lower down the food chain, who may think again about speaking truth to power.

Pretty shamefacedly apologetic and uncritical all round, far from 'an analysis that has authority and integrity', although there is one sentence:

 It is true that these ideals have been chipped away for decades

I'll say. We can all see that now, of course, after such partisanship during Brexit.

The link alleging 'ideological cleansing' is to a piece by B Kerslake (president of the Local Government Association and former head of the civil service and permanent secretary at the Department for Communities and Local Government)

After decryig the cowardly business of briefing  against harmless civil servants who cannot answer back, and who never leak or brief themselves,  he says:

As well as specific briefing against Sedwill though, there has been another even more unpleasant line of attack: the performance of the whole civil service during the pandemic has apparently been judged and found wanting. 

I think the GUardian, Newsnight and C4 News might all be implicated in that, athough they have done their best to personalise it, of course.

The real problem, though is this:

Worse still, this government seems to be preparing to use the difficulties of delivering Brexit and the shortcomings in handling the pandemic as reasons for undermining civil servants’ impartiality [!]

 A pretty popular campaign if they do take them on, I would have thought