The political class seems to be obsessed with the argument specifically and obsessively over BREXIT and in particular forcing the public to choose sides over an argument that should never have been one and an outcome that was ‘finally’ decided in 2016. This belies the clear nuances in assessing the adoption of such a treaty in the face of diverse and varying considerations and interests which makes such a choice necessarily complex and unsuited to such a blunt expectation – the actual debate that should have taken place to give proper consideration to the question never happened.
This seems to be the only open political debate put to the public where the political classes dictated that there were only two possible answers which you as a voter had to choose before committing to discussing the reasons for arriving at either choice which seeped into the culture of the debate, down to open argument between family and friends on the topic. It seems very convenient for politicians to keep trotting out the same nonsense to place a thin veneer over their very obvious failings.
The relationship between countries and supranational organisations has had an airing over the past few years and this scrutiny has focussed the mind in surprising ways. As actual wars, as well as confected trade ones, an unreliable global supply chain, draught, natural and man-made disasters, a lack of national resilience, nonchalant undermining strategic industries and an absence of contingencies has highlighted an absolute fact: each country can only rely on itself, which is predicated on the previous decisions of its political leadership. That, therefore, is the reality of the democratic mandate.
That reality of ownership of the immediate problem is especially true of Ukraine, which despite holding assurances from four other nuclear powers, finds itself fighting entirely alone against a fifth which also signed the same Budapest Memorandum guaranteeing its sovereignty. So how did that political commitment work out?
This underlines that natural scepticism should seep into all and every agreement that in the fog of global conflict, or trade chaos, or the blockage of shipping routes, all bets may be either off, or at least subject to sudden changes without notice. No matter what supranational organisation a country belongs to, none are guarantees nor is a guarantee reasonable – whether that be NATO’s article 5, the EU’s commitment to making and keeping its own rules, or an entirely reasonable expectation that the United Nations should stay on mission keeping diplomatic channels open in all circumstances, all of which have failed to materialise in practice. However, it is reasonable to expect reasonable compromises in respective national interests, but it does not excuse an absolute and obvious failure of political leadership to honour reasonable commitments.
This is why we have seen a growth in layered and demand-led bilateral treaties and agreements, which have mitigated some of the failures of national resourcing and existing treaties. Canada in particular has exemplified this in the face of the backfiring of its expectations of its relationship with the US in the face of open hostility from the current administration.
Back to the global supply chain, which has promoted the ideals of globalism, selling the idea that you can buy anything at any time from anywhere in the world, usually from your sofa at home. This expectation has been proven not to be the case and whatever Japanese supply chain architecture the global economy sought to emulate, it did not do it very well. Or at least, never well enough to ensure ‘just in time’ supply, as most shoppers will attest; the shops did away with something called ‘stock’ which was traditionally held as a buffer to take the kinks out of delayed deliveries, until accountants decided that indulgence was a waste of money. Some so-called industry experts have never been great at understanding, though, that there is a higher cost if shelves are empty – customers cannot buy what is not available for sale.
Many strategic industries in our own country have been affected by this mentality, vital industries that allow us to build, mine for resources and feed our population without buying everything in containers from foreign lands. Industry primarily needs cost effective energy, feedstocks for factories, materials that other countries hoard, skills which are difficult to stop going abroad and above all a political mentality which recognises the importance of controlling your own destiny and making the moves necessary when they are less obvious – this, with a motivated, empowered and productive workforce, are key to any thriving economy.
This makes the trends of the last decades more obviously silly – losing defence manufacturing capability, closing steel mills, blast furnaces, foundries, fertiliser plants, losing healthcare professionals abroad, importing expensive hydrocarbons from neighbours, promoting green cars which are not environmentally friendly, build wind farms and pay them not to generate electricity. This is all compounded with a tendency to not take responsibility for the initial error and to put a series of sticking plasters over the same defect until people forget it is there. That is, until the shock event – war, draught, Trump etc. and then a cry of ‘how was I supposed to know?’. The point is that you weren’t, which is why you had to plan for the unexpected but the entirely predictable.
If we move away from an emotive fault line like BREXIT and think more widely in the public interest: what is the EU good at? Where would it make sense to partner? What are the trade-offs? And the most important: Is it worth it? All bilateral negotiations should be accorded the same tests and an inelegant, possibly complex, but resilient overlapping Venn diagram of bilateral agreements reached with countries on whom the UK can rely, or at least agreements which are reliable because our partners are highly motivated for their own reasons to deliver on them. But, very importantly, this maintains several, not singular, options which will be resilient in the face of a range of unanticipated but predictable global shocks.
Looking then at a likely possible outcome of such negotiations, we could identify a clear pattern of partnership – the political behaviour which would give us comfort as to the efficacy and reliability of those agreements.
It is easy to be cynical, but we must hope that we can earn a class of politicians that are more than soundbites and can deliver on such a prospect – we should also learn to recognise the difference and vote accordingly.
The consequences of the above means that responsibility lies with national governments to behave in the public interest – or to be exposed by their electorates or by the absence of resilience and contingences in a changing world. If we can attract a political class worthy of that responsibility, it will actually be worth paying them well.
Now think back to that dog-eared discussion over BREXIT – how well does it ever go, treating any membership of (or departure from) any supranational organisation as a panacea for all domestic ills? It is just a basic lie and not a responsible attitude for any government. All such organisations have their idiosyncrasies and necessarily have to act in the delivery of their current self-interest or their wider stakeholder group, which can be wildly contradictory to our national interest. The trick is to know which ones to align with, when to ignore their generic pronouncements and how and when to fill in the gaps with other partnerships.