Whatever you believe reality to consist of in this fantastical era, you might maintain your sanity by insisting that words must have meanings on which everybody can agree. National political leaders are now behaving like professional con men, uttering lies and self-contradictions with such adamant fluency that you may be in danger of losing your grip.
Just keep repeating to yourself: US President Donald Trump really did say what you heard him say in the recording of that interview about UK Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan, ruling out a free-trade agreement with the US. Yes, he did. And furthermore, he was right. No amount of blather about what a wonderful person she is can change the definitions of the words in her policy. If we accept EU regulations on the trade of goods and food, then we cannot simultaneously have a trade agreement with the US in which we accept their (differing) regulations on goods and food. May’s insistence, stated with unequivocal force, that we are now able to “pursue an ambitious UK-US free trade deal” is simply false. Or rather, its only claim to truth hinges on the tenuous meaning of the word “pursue”. As in hounds pursuing a fox? Or the pursuit of an impossible dream?
The invention of meaning is becoming — forgive the cliche — truly Orwellian. Quite outrageously, May continues to insist that her Brexit plan puts a definitive end to free movement — even though in no recognisable sense does it do that. She is apparently advocating visa-free travel not only for EU tourists but for those who will be taking on temporary work. Well if you don’t issue visas to the EU citizens who come in to take up specific, time-limited jobs, how will you know when (or if) they leave? Without some kind of official permit system you have no way of monitoring their movements, their actual employment status or the length of their stay.
When I arrived in the UK all those years ago from America, I needed a work visa to take an academic post. It was strictly limited to one particular employer (who had to apply for permission to employ me) and, at the end of the year, I had to reapply for it to be renewed. That is what governments do when they are serious about keeping tabs on who is staying in the country and why.
If you have gone on holiday to America in recent years, you will know that the US operates a form of visa programme which applies to UK citizens who wish to travel there as tourists. Called the Electronic System for Travel Authorisation (ESTA), it provides a simple permit for crossing into the US for a short visit but demands information on your whereabouts and your length of stay. It explicitly does not allow you to do business or to work while you are there. That’s another thing that countries do when they are serious about keeping tabs on who is staying and why. For the life of me, I cannot see any unrestricted visa-free way to do this. Nor does there seem to be any provision in May’s end-of-free-movement promise for establishing clearly which EU migrants will be eligible.
Qualified doctors, nurses and electronics experts? Almost certainly. But what about the less well-educated fruit pickers and hospitality staff who are needed in those casual sectors of the economy? Will they have the automatic right of visa-free entry? If so, who will monitor their movements after their seasonal or transitory jobs are finished?
What on earth does this commitment to end free movement mean — if anything? Either entering the UK will become more complicated and conditional — or it won’t. If it doesn’t, then Trump was absolutely right to say that the Chequers agreement was probably not what people voted for in the referendum.
Trump obviously meant what he originally said about May’s failure to deliver on Brexit. His remarks were completely in character: she had committed the ultimate sin in Trump theology, of settling for a bad deal. She had failed to fight with aggressive conviction for her own people. None of the absurdly embarrassing gush that he heaped on her afterwards disproved that judgement — even if he did claim, for diplomatic purposes, that a UK-US trade deal was still “absolutely possible” (while carefully avoiding a press question about agricultural products). In the end, he just dismissed the whole issue with a kind of exasperation: “Al I ask”, he said, “is that you give the US a fair deal on trade.” He would say no more about this mess.
But it was too late. The message was already burnt into the consciousness of British politics. Nobody was going to forget that accusation: the prime minister’s nerve had failed and the game was lost. And it was all so unnecessary because there were other options as the president hinted: other sources of support and opportunity. There is a whole world out there with which we could be dealing if we were not mesmerised by the declining, protectionist EU bloc. Which, of course, is exactly what May is being told by so much of her furious party.
But what about the others? What accounts for that clutch of sincere Brexiteers who are going along with this charade? I am told that the principal players on that squad are holding to an article of faith with which readers may be familiar: that whatever we agree now can always be reversed or amended later after we have left.
It is perfectly true that nothing in international relations is permanent: treaties may be broken and trade agreements renegotiated. Indeed that is what Trump is energetically engaged in at this very moment. But such revisions and reversals can be hugely expensive and complex, as we have seen with our current attempt to withdraw from the EU. Given the bitterness of this present farrago and the national exhaustion that will be left in its wake, I wouldn’t want to rely on another round soon after this one is over. And who in that discredited political class would be left to fight it?
— The Telegraph Group Limited, London 2018
Janet Daley is a political columnist for the Sunday Telegraph. Her two novels are All Good Men and Honourable Friends.
