One of the most depressing concepts in physics is entropy – the principle that all systems tend toward disorder and breakdown. That’s all I could think of while reading today’s headlines praising the so-called “reset” deal between the UK and the EU.
I know the tricks of the EU’s trade – and “tricks” is the key word here
We’re being told this deal represents a new direction for Britain and its neighbour, a “new era”. It’s nothing of the sort. If anything, this “deal” is more of a repeat than a reset, a continuation of a long story of sellouts.
I can claim some experience here. Having served as the UK’s deputy chief negotiator in the trade talks with the EU in 2020, I spent hundreds of hours sitting opposite the EU’s negotiating team. I know the tricks of their trade – and “tricks” is the key word here.
Many commentators have expressed some surprise at the sheer paucity of Keir’s deal – and, indeed, it reads more like a glorified press release than a treaty. It’s not so much a contract as it is a set of pinky-swear promises between the UK and EU to hash out and sign a set of treaties in the coming months.
To my eye, the UK Government – desperate to announce they’d negotiated something – has fallen into a classic EU trap. And I don’t mean the obvious betrayal of fishermen but the fact that, littered throughout the document, are a set of principles that will inform the subsequent negotiations. Accept ECJ (European Court of Justice) jurisdiction? Tick. An obligation to follow EU rules? Tick. The UK should pay shedloads of money for the privilege? BIG tick.
This is EU negotiations 101. European negotiators know that elected politicians must get deals done as soon as possible to try and get headlines (an issue the unelected Commission doesn’t need to worry about). As one senior member of the EU negotiating team once told me, “elected politicians are temporary. We are eternal.”
By exploiting this, Brussels can get the other side to agree to a set of principles that will shape the subsequent talks and bind their negotiating partner. They famously did this to Theresa May, getting her to agree early on to the idea of “sequential talks” and a “Northern Ireland backstop.”
And now it appears that Starmer has walked into the same trap. Sure, he’s got many gushing headlines today, but he’s also bound himself to a set of commitments that the EU won’t let him wriggle out of. The upcoming negotiations will be characterised by reminders that the UK has already signed up to all sorts of horrors — with Keir Starmer, head in hands, being told: ‘But you agreed to this, Prime Minister.’
While I want to be enraged, I actually feel despondent. After all, the UK Government falling for the same trick for the umpteenth time is just another example of how successive British Governments have prioritised getting a cheap and easy headline over serious governance.
Remember, this is the same administration which is currently smashing up successful schools to please vested union interests, which is prosecuting British war veterans and paying to surrender strategic assets to Beijing’s proxies in a desperate attempt to flaunt its so-called “human rights” credentials, and which has been gaslighting its citizenry with announcements based on a fictional drama about incels while shutting down investigations into the real-life rape gangs.
That’s the real tragedy of this “deal”. It shows that British politicians – of all colours – remain profoundly uninterested in turning the country’s fortunes around. Chasing a sexy headline will always come before serious governance.
This country is in trouble. Productivity has been flat on its face for nearly 20 years. Crime is out of control. Every day, more and more successful businesses and entrepreneurs move abroad. We are beset with complex problems. While we were in the EU, it was impossible to meaningfully tackle these issues. But the last five years have shown that we face another problem: that both the Tories and Labour, despite now being free to make changes, are profoundly uninterested in doing so.
Decline is a choice – history is littered with examples of countries that turned their fortunes around. But until we get politicians who are prepared to take on the vested interests that parasite off our national malaise, who are prepared to make tough and unpopular choices, and – yes – who are willing to tell Brussels to shove it when they make a bad offer, things are going to continue to get worse.
So, sure, this deal is a bad one. The treaties that follow it will deliver little and will end with more of our money being sent to an international bureaucracy to be misspent. But at the end of the day, the fact Starmer has walked into such a blatant trap is just another example of how successive politicians, with their appalling short-termism, have turned entropy from a force in physics into the operating principle of the British Government.
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