In the 2016 Brexit referendum, a slightly larger proportion (53.7%) of voters in the north-west chose “Leave” as compared to the national average (51.9%). While Tory leader Kemi Badenoch described the agreement reached at the EU-UK summit on Monday 19th May as a “surrender”, implying that it undermined the principles of Brexit , I want to argue that actually, Leave voters worried about loss of sovereignty are likely to welcome this deal.
What has been agreed?
The relevant document is “A renewed agenda for European Union – United Kingdom cooperation” available on the Government web site . There have been loudly expressed complaints that aside from fishing, the document commits the parties to very little that is concrete. But that is the way these things work: first you agree the principles and then you get into the negotiations over the specifics of how to realise them. However, before delving into the document’s substance, in order to make my argument, I need first to be clear about what it is that Brexit supporters seem most to want.
Brexit was about sovereignty for many people
My research suggests that what many such citizens value more than anything else about Britain being outside the EU is sovereignty: the idea that regardless of the impact of Brexit (positive or negative) in any other area, it has given the UK “more control over its own affairs”.
So let us consider how the 19 May agreement affects this, considering what it has to say in the areas that have had the highest media profile: trade, defence, emissions trading, fishing and the youth mobility (or as the Government prefers to call it, the youth experience) scheme.
The trade-offs of trade
On the first of these, the agreement seeks to reduce trade friction by allowing “the vast majority of movements of animals, animal products, plants, and plant products” to be “undertaken without the certificates or controls that are currently required”, in exchange for “dynamic alignment”. This means that the UK would be obliged continually to update its regulatory standards in order to remain aligned with changes in EU rules over time – so giving rise to the complaint that it deprives the UK of control over its own regulations, thus compromising sovereignty.
This complaint reflects a misunderstanding of what “sovereignty” is. A state is said to be “sovereign” when it is the ultimate authority, able therefore to exercise decision-making autonomy, in or over a given territory. Dynamic alignment in no way compromises this. Brexit or no Brexit, importing into another country or trading block always necessitates having to comply with its production standards, regulations on food safety and so forth. The UK government has presumably decided that the benefits of such access outweigh the obligations of alignment and if, at some future date, it decided that this were no longer the case, then it could simply revert to the status quo ante.
Another, related, complaint is that the UK would have to follow rules it would no longer help to write. Again, this is untrue. The agreement states that the UK would be “involved at an early stage and contribute appropriately …. to the decision-shaping process of European Union legal acts in the fields covered by the obligation to dynamically align”.
Finally, sovereignty is said to be compromised because the agreement would be subject to a dispute resolution mechanism “that ensures the Court of Justice of the European Union [CJEU] is the ultimate authority for all questions of European Union law”. Once again, the inference is mistaken. Within the EU, European law takes precedence (is sovereign in that sense) over domestic law by virtue of the fact that citizens can challenge the latter before the CJEU, potentially invalidating it, on grounds of its incompatibility with the former. Nothing about the CJEU’s role in resolving disputes arising from this new agreement gives citizens access to the court to challenge UK legislation as they could when the country was an EU member state.
Agreement enhances our sovereignty in many ways
In trade, and the remaining areas, the agreement, on the contrary, enhances sovereignty, as this is about the capacity – or the power, vis-à-vis other states, to set your own rules. The agreement enhances this because by reducing trade friction it improves the prospects for growth; and generally speaking, wealthier countries are more powerful (have more sovereignty) than poorer ones.
On defence, the agreement enables the UK to participate in the EU’s €150 billion Security Action for Europe scheme. Thus, it will be able to collaborate with one or more EU member states on the development of joint defence projects, so enhancing interoperability. This, in turn, will help to reduce the massive inefficiency arising from the current lack of integration of European defence expenditures and so raise the level of European security (and with it, UK sovereignty) from the threat of Vladimir Putin.
On emissions trading (ET), the agreement provides for the potential linking of the UK and the EU ET systems (ETS). An ETS seeks to reduce greenhouse gas emissions by setting a cap on the total emissions allowable by covered sectors, allowing companies to buy a certain number of allowances (each representing the right to emit one tonne of CO₂ or its equivalent). Companies that emit less than their allowance can sell the excess, while those that emit more must buy additional allowances or face fines. Linking the two systems would enable allowances to be traded between them, so reducing firms’ costs and bringing with it an enhancement of the sovereignty that comes with enhanced prosperity.
Little needs adding about the two remaining areas. The agreement to extend EU fishing access to 2038 reflects the decision of a sovereign state to trade such access for the growth deriving from enhanced market access. The youth mobility (or experience) scheme, giving access to work and study in the UK to a limited number of young people for a limited amount of time, enhances prosperity and therefore sovereignty in several ways, not least through the resources they bring on arrival and through the future expansion of markets for UK goods that they create when they leave.
The beginning of a process of continuous negotiation
What then is the moral of the story? It is that sovereignty has to do with the capacity of a state and its citizens to influence the environment in which they are obliged to operate. It is that no one wants to be dominated and controlled by their environment. The desire to maximise sovereignty, then, is a legitimate and fully understandable aspiration. The question is only about the most effective way of achieving it. Britain’s relationship with the EU, is, always has been, and always will be, one of permanent negotiation. At some point, I suspect, even those citizens remaining convinced of the virtues of Brexit, will come to conclude that their power in such negotiations — their sovereignty – is greater by being inside the organisation where the UK can participate fully in its rule making, than outside where its capacity to exercise influence is more limited. And I suspect that they will become more amenable to the idea as the passions surrounding Brexit continue to wane, with opinion polls suggesting that it is now a salient issue for not more than a tiny proportion of the electorate . But that is an article for another time!
