1/ The “new customs partnership” (NCP) has become one of the most bizarre, linguistically confused, conceptually multi-layered concepts in the Brexit debate. A brief analytical thread.
2/ One of the reasons the debate is functioning so badly is that that there are currently three different understandings of what the NCP actually is.
3/ The first is what I’ll call “face value NCP”: NCP as its authors defined it. UK authorities collect EU tariffs on goods entering UK, track them to their destination and, if they are destined for UK, refund the importer the difference between the EU tariff and the UK tariff.
4/ The second is what I’ll call “sham NCP”. According to this theory, the “NCP at face value” doesn’t actually exist and never will. The NCP is a sham for a permanent customs union with the EU, since the tracking and refund mechanism is obviously impossible.
5/ Third is the “logical conclusion NCP”. Under this theory, the point of the NCP is to avoid infrastructure at the Irish border. So if you take it to its logical conclusion, it must involve whatever alignment w the single market is needed to avoid infrastructure at the border.
6/ “Logical conclusion NCP” is what you’ll find in Shanker Singham’s column in the Telegraph the other day, and in Jacob Rees-Mogg’s statements about customs. In JRM’s own words, he opposes the NCP because “to be effective it would have to keep us in the single market as well”.
7/ But this is why the debate is so confusing. Hard Brexiteers aren’t actually opposing the face value NCP. They’re generally opposing the logical conclusion NCP or, in some cases, the sham NCP.
8/ By objecting to what would be required to make the policy "effective", they are actually opposing the objective. They don’t want the UK to make good on its commitment to avoid new infrastructure at the Irish border.
9/ This, in my view, is one of the most fascinating phenomena in political debate: proxy issues. “We gave away too much in December and should renege on our promises” is too uncomfortable to say. So those who hold that belief have built a proxy for it: “ditch the NCP”.
10/ But, when those hard Brexiteers say “New Customs Partnership”, they don’t mean what Downing Street means when it says “New Customs Partnership”. It’s a weird little dance. /ends
