Ivan Rogers has been talking about what happens after 31 January 2020.
‘Not a great deal will happen in the next few months, heading for the rocks by the summer and towards a major crisis in autumn 2020.’
Some key points from his @ForumEurope interview with @duncanrobinson
‘Not a great deal will happen in the next few months, heading for the rocks by the summer and towards a major crisis in autumn 2020.’
Some key points from his @ForumEurope interview with @duncanrobinson
2. “London is going to be less passive under Johnson than it was under May: it will compete more on the communications strategy and it will be more belligerent. There is obviously a risk that the reaction here will be more belligerence and we are in a spiral of decline.”
3. IR thinks EU underpricing no-deal, by assuming trade talks Oct 20 will repeat Irish protocol Oct 19 script. i.e "‘All we need to do is to confront him with the realities of a thin, quick and dirty zero for zero, plus level playing field deal' . That is "a dangerous reading".
4. He thinks EU fears of Singapore-on-Thames are overdone and that EU “may overdo the demands on dynamic alignment”. i.e. requiring the UK to update rulebook to match rising EU standards.
5. Boris Johnson, IR said, wants more divergence and distance - that's obvious.
IR thinks Johnson's economic policy so far more of throwback to 1960s Butskellism, with echoes of Chamberlain. Not Thatcherism, nor Singapore on Thames.
IR thinks Johnson's economic policy so far more of throwback to 1960s Butskellism, with echoes of Chamberlain. Not Thatcherism, nor Singapore on Thames.
6. He sees political problems with the transition period. “Being a vassal state was always going to be politically difficult” and worried him when he was perm rep in 2016. No vote, no voice, but still paying in.
7. He criticised European leaders for not presenting / discussing long-term vision for EU relationship with UK in ten or fifteen years time. "It has been brilliantly organised as a technocratic process [but] it’s not a trade negotiation like any other."
8. "The EU is brilliant at running processes… and the natural thing may be to do the same thing again.... The danger if [the trade deal] is genuinely that thin…. You end up without an agreement and the whole thing collapses.”
9. The typical EU response to this complaint (that I have heard) is
a. What are the alternatives - the risks of unravelling the single market, the insider/outsider problem.
b. The EU never does long-term big thinking, it's not how the European council works.
a. What are the alternatives - the risks of unravelling the single market, the insider/outsider problem.
b. The EU never does long-term big thinking, it's not how the European council works.
10. Some of these points have been made before, but seemed worth sharing on 30 January 2020.
