Ursula von der Leyen

Boris Johnson and the unelected President of the EU Commission, Ursula von der Leyen, have agreed to extend Brexit negotiations to the end of the month in the hope of coming to an agreement.

Why are we still wasting valuable time and resources on flogging this dead pferd?

Nothing the EU offers us will be to our benefit. They entered into negotiations in bad faith with the express intention of making sure any deal would be seen as a punishment to send a message to any other member states considering independence. Continuing to divert valuable trade negotiators away from negotiations with countries that want to do deals the right way is nonsensical.

Even if a deal was done by the end of this month nobody has got time to put it into action. Neither the civil service nor businesses here or abroad have time to make changes to IT systems and processes to make any of it work. The only deal now that can work is no EU deal and reverting to WTO terms.

Internal Market Bill

The British government has not “broken the law” with the Internal Market Bill.

International law does not apply in the UK in itself. The provisions contained in an international treaty the UK is signatory become law when Parliament passes an Act or Acts that give them effect.

The process for ratification of most treaties is fairly straightforward but a little disconnected. The power to sign treaties lies with the Crown but the Queen doesn’t actually sign them herself, it’s done by British Ministers exercising the Royal Prerogative (powers retained by the Crown which may or may not be devolved to the British government).

Once a treaty is signed it has to be ratified. This is when the UK agrees to be bound by the obligations in the treaty but at this point it is just an agreement between the UK and one or more countries or international organisations, it doesn’t actually change the law. This is where the disconnect is.

For the obligations in the treaty to actually apply to people (or bodies corporate) the British Parliament has to pass an Act of Parliament incorporating them into law. I very specifically say the British Parliament because this is not a power the devolved legislatures have. Only when this domestic legislation comes into force does what the British government signed up to actually become law.

But there is an important distinction to remember here: the treaty itself is not a law, the Act of Parliament is.

Now, the British Parliament has some limited powers in the ratification process. It doesn’t have the power to prevent a treaty from being ratified, for example. Technically. The British government are required to lay all treaties before Parliament for 21 days before ratification. If Parliament refuses to agree to ratification of the treaty the British government is required to make a statement on why they should be able to ratify it anyway. The process then starts all over again, effectively giving Parliament a veto.

The British Parliament is sovereign which, in short, means it can do what it wants. Literally anything. If something is illegal it can pass a law to make it legal. And because Parliament is sovereign it can repeal all or part of any law, even if it means the law no longer reflects treaty obligations. This isn’t illegal, the very act of doing it makes it legal.

Not a level playing field

What passes for negotiations between the UK and the EU on what the relationship between the two will look like from next year are floundering thanks to the intransigence and unreasonableness of the EU.

The EU is demanding unprecedented access to our fishing waters, the right to impose laws on us and for the EU courts to continue to have jurisdiction in the UK. They call this a “level playing field”.

There is a fundamental misunderstanding about what these negotiations are about. It’s not the UK negotiating from a position of weakness, asking for the price of doing a deal with the EU because we’re desperate. It’s the world’s 5th largest economy offering the EU the opportunity to continue doing business with its largest trading partner with fewer barriers and tariffs.

A level playing field means fair and equitable, not unbalanced and punitive terms to try and force us into a perpetually weakened position. The EU has acted in bad faith throughout this entire process, nothing they offer us will be to our favour. We need to stop wasting time on this sham negotiation, put the current offer back on the table a week before new year and walk away if the EU don’t accept it.

Braveheart

Scottish nationalists are up in arms because Boris Johnson said that the Scottish Parliament has no role in approving Brexit.

The SNP think the Scottish Parliament should have a veto over Brexit because of a convention that says that British bills affecting devolved matters should be approved by the Scottish Parliament.

There are three primary reasons why the SNP are wrong.

  1. It’s a convention not an obligation. There’s no law that says it has to happen. At a time when parliamentary conventions that have been around for centuries are torn up in the name of overturning democracy, the SNP really can’t complain when their own side’s tactics are used against them.
  2. The convention exists to seek the consent of the Scottish Parliament when the British government legislates in their place. Brexit is taking powers from the EU and giving them to the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Parliament can’t legislate on these things currently as they are EU competencies.
  3. Devolution is power shared, not power given away. The British government retains the right to legislate on all matters, devolved or not.

Boris is right: the Scottish Parliament has no role to play on Brexit and no amount of huffing and puffing by Scottish nationalists will change that.