The lexicon of Brexit has a new entry: the \u2018Farage clause\u2019.\u00a0As part of Labour\u2019s \u2018reset\u2019 talks with Brussels, EU negotiators have reportedly floated a termination provision that would require compensation if a future UK government walked away from a new\u00a0deal designed to ease post-Brexit checks on food and agricultural trade. In plain English: if Britain signs up to reduce border friction now and then later blows the arrangement up, Brussels wants someone to pay the bill for putting the border back together again.<\/p>\n
Like lots of things involving Britain and the EU, however, this \u2018Farage clause\u2019 is not what it looks like. It isn\u2019t really about the Reform UK leader.\u00a0It\u2019s about puncturing Labour delusions about restoring British ties with Brussels.<\/p>\n
The point is not whether such an arrangement is legally \u2018standard\u2019 (the British side says it is and notes it would apply both ways). The point is that the European Union \u2013 supposedly chastened, supposedly eager, supposedly longing for a repentant Britain to come home \u2013 is acting in typical fashion.<\/p>\n
The EU acts, in negotiations, like what it is: a bureaucratic institution designed to defend itself: its single market, its legal order, its institutions, its member states\u2019 interests and its own political class. It does not act like a supporting extra in our national psychodrama. You would have thought we\u2019d have learnt this by now.<\/p>\n
\nThe EU isn\u2019t willing to pay any price to have Britain back<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
During the original Brexit negotiations, one of the most persistent British misconceptions \u2013 indulged by both unwise Leavers and imprudent Remainers \u2013 was that the EU could be bullied, emotionally blackmailed, or simply persuaded by reference to the febrile state of British domestic politics. If only Brussels understood how angry our backbenchers were, how cross our voters were, how fragile our prime minister was, then surely Europe would bend. This was a delusion that ended in humiliation and failure \u2013 just like the career of its greatest exponent, David Cameron.<\/p>\n
Brussels does not do \u2018help me out, mate; my voters are cross\u2019. The EU was built, in part, to demonstrate that national politics should be constrained by supranational rules and that countries prosper by adhering to rules and pacts rather than tearing them up whenever their domestic mood changes.<\/p>\n
This is why the Farage clause matters. It is Brussels politely \u2013 and not even very politely \u2013 inserting into draft legal language the thing British politics refuses to face: that our electoral volatility is not Europe\u2019s problem.<\/p>\n
Labour\u2019s leadership is increasingly keen to talk about closer ties with the EU.\u00a0Some (but not all) people in No. 10 and some (but not all) people in cabinet think this is good politics, in that it plays well with the sort of disaffected former Labour voter now leaning towards the Greens or Lib Dems.\u00a0To be clear, not everyone in government thinks this \u2013 some of them still, just about, remember the 2016 referendum, the views of Red Wall voters and the 2024 general election result.\u00a0But for now, those Labour voices are being drowned out by allies and advisors to Keir Starmer who, frankly, never really accepted the referendum result and still dream of reversing it.<\/p>\n
The prospect of a race to replace Starmer is a factor here too.\u00a0Potential candidates for the top job need to woo Labour activists, many of whom remain sad about Brexit.\u00a0Hence, Health Secretary Wes Streeting flirting with the idea of rejoining the customs union before Christmas.<\/p>\n
The Farage clause is a useful corrective to some Labour thinking on this topic, since it is a hard reminder of two salient facts. First, the EU is a tough negotiating partner that does not shy away from exploiting domestic political weakness to strike the best deal. Second, the EU is not desperate to have Britain back on any terms.<\/p>\n
The deal at the centre of this story is a veterinary\/SPS agreement: the kind of thing Labour has trailed for ages as a pragmatic fix to the very real, very boring damage Brexit has done to trade. Yet the reports suggest the EU wants that deal to involve dynamic alignment: Britain committing to follow the relevant EU rules as they change. It also reportedly wants legal and financial scaffolding to deter the UK from ripping it up at the next election.<\/p>\n
That should not shock anyone. It is exactly what you should expect from an EU that wants to maximise its interests and is institutionally sceptical of Britain as a partner.\u00a0Nor will that approach change in any of our future dealings with Brussels.<\/p>\n
The wider \u2018reset\u2019 package being discussed publicly is broad: linkage of carbon markets, electricity market integration, security cooperation, participation in EU schemes. The government has already announced an agreement for the UK to rejoin the Erasmus scheme in 2027, and ministers have set out further deadlines for other pieces of the reset.<\/p>\n
All of this has some plausible economic logic \u2013 having better relations with our closest trading partner is inarguably good for the UK economy. But it is not simple, and it is not free: the EU will not give market access or frictionless trade without the UK accepting obligations \u2013 money, rules, enforcement mechanisms, and the asymmetry that comes with being outside the room when those rules are made. This is the bit of reality that British politics keeps trying to edit out.<\/p>\n
Since the referendum, the political conversation about Europe has been dominated by two equally insular fantasies. The first was the Leaver fantasy: that the EU would fold because German carmakers would force it to, and that there was nothing to fear from \u2018no deal\u2019. That ended in tears, paperwork, and the discovery that \u2018sovereignty\u2019 is more complicated than it sounds. The second fantasy is now creeping back into vogue in parts of Labour and the broader pro-European ecosystem: that the EU is so keen to have us back that it will welcome a reasonable Britain with open arms, and that the main obstacle is those pesky British voters who keep failing to understand the obvious economic arguments here.<\/p>\n
Labour\u2019s current conversation on Europe is sometimes reminiscent of the \u2018unicorn thinking\u2019 that Brexiteers used to be \u2013 rightly \u2013 accused of over Brexit talks.\u00a0The harsh reality is that the EU isn\u2019t willing to pay any price to have Britain back and calculates that Britain needs the EU more than the EU needs Britain.\u00a0Hence, the deeper relationship that some Labour people dream of would only come at a very painful political price to the UK.<\/p>\n
No amount of nice words will stop the EU from being the EU, any more than press releases will stop the boats or speeches will increase economic growth. If this mooted Farage clause shoots Labour\u2019s EU unicorn, it will have done good service to all.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The lexicon of Brexit has a new entry: the \u2018Farage clause\u2019.\u00a0As part of Labour\u2019s \u2018reset\u2019 talks with Brussels,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":693139,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5226],"tags":[802,748,2000,299,5187,1699,4884,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-693138","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brexit","8":"tag-brexit","9":"tag-britain","10":"tag-eu","11":"tag-europe","12":"tag-european","13":"tag-european-union","14":"tag-great-britain","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115887790097543666","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693138","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=693138"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/693138\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/693139"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=693138"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=693138"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=693138"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}