Photo: Foreign and Commonwealth Office under CC BY 2.0
“Cameron gambled, lost. May gambled, lost. Tory party beginning to look like a casino.”
Tweeted by Dutch MEP Sophie in ‘t Veld this is a pithily apt analysis of the Conservatives’ two big calls over Brexit.
If David Cameron’s fateful decision to announce a referendum on January 2013 has achieved one of its primary goals – to siphon off support from UKIP – then it did so, quite unexpectedly, at the expense of his own premiership and the UK’s place in the EU.
Having embraced the referendum result – despite being a (somewhat coy) Remainer – his successor, Theresa May, then used Brexit as a pretext to strengthen her majority in the House of Commons against what the commentariat had deemed the least electable Labour leader since Michael Foot.
Now we have a hung parliament with the prospect of a minority Conservative government propped up by 10 DUP MPs.
Whatever your political leanings, few would deny that the prospects of concluding negotiations smoothly have now receded.
Whatever your political leanings, few would deny that the prospects of concluding negotiations smoothly have now receded. We’re nearly three months into the already narrow two-year negotiating window, Article 50 having been triggered on 29 March.
As an FT leader put it this morning: “Theresa May’s folly in calling a general election and then losing her overall majority means that the UK is now in an even weaker negotiating position than when it started […] There are few words to describe the sheer irresponsibility of the prime minister in triggering Article 50 only to follow it by calling a needless general election. A hung parliament, or even an overall defeat, was always a foreseeable (as opposed to predicted) potential outcome. It was the last thing a prudent politician should have done: there is now considerable uncertainty at the very point the UK needed certainty, as the Brexit talks are about to commence.”
Confusion at UK borders
And if negotiations do fail, what does that mean for national security?
The UK’s trade tariffs with Europe and the rest of the world would default to World Trade Organisation (WTO) terms, triggering a rise in the price of imports, with agricultural goods, for instance potentially as high as an eye-watering 30-40%. But because the UK lacks its own WTO ‘schedule’, there could be confusion over customs declarations and delays at UK borders.
This is an issue explored in depth in a white paper published on IFSEC Global this week. Commissioned by London First’s Security & Resilience Network, the report examines the implications of leaving the EU for the management of the UK’s borders.
“The cost of replicating the European Arrest Warrant outside the EU is expected to substantially exceed (by a factor of four) the cost of operating the EU measure. Norway and Iceland have been trying to negotiate a form of EAW with the EU but this has taken 15 years and is still to be ratified by every member state.” From a new London First report on Brexit and border security
From Europol membership to the Schengen Information System, the UK is at risk of losing access to a plethora of collaborative tools and databases that are important to immigration management, counter terror and border security, the report reveals.
Among other things Securing UK borders: An examination of the implications of leaving the EU for UK border management, which was written by leading experts in immigration, resilience, border security and European law, discusses:
- The prospect of confusion at the UK border as customs declarations slow down traffic. The Road Haulage Association has warned of “everything grinding to a halt”
- The complexities of new visa arrangements: “Questions must arise about the ability of Border Force to deal with the increased workload as well as the physical capacity of receiving airports and other points of entry”
- Brexit could represent “an opportunity to modernise current practice and technology and adopt best practices from elsewhere in the world to improve both border security and customer experience ahead of, or at, the border.”
- How a decade after New Labour shelved similar plans the introduction of identity cards could reemerge as a tool in border management
- The need to reframe the UK’s relationship with the EU over information sharing as Britain exits Europol and the European Arrest Warrant (EAW) and loses access to Eurojust, SIS II, the European Criminal Records Information System (ECRIS) and the Passenger Name Records (PNR)
The white paper follows an earlier report by the Security & Resilience Network that examined the Security and Resilience Implications of Brexit.
The report was launched at a London First briefing on 7 June 2017 and distributed at the IFSEC International 2017 exhibition (20-22 June 2017), which includes for the first time the Borders and Infrastructure Expo. UBM, the organiser of IFSEC, sponsors this report. Get your free badge for IFSEC now.