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Varoufakis: The Brexit clock must be run down, not re-set – op-ed
The overwhelming defeat that
Britain’s Parliament inflicted upon Prime Minister Theresa May’s Brexit plan
was fresh confirmation that there is no substitute for democracy. Members of
Parliament deserve congratulations for keeping their cool in the face of a
made-up deadline. That deadline is the reason why Brexit is proving so hard and
potentially so damaging. To resolve Brexit, that artificial deadline must be
removed altogether, not merely re-set.
Leaving the European Union is
painful by design. The process any member state must follow to exit the EU is
governed by Article 50 of the bloc’s Lisbon Treaty, which, ironically,
was authored by a British diplomat keen to deter exits from the EU.
That is why Article 50 sets a two-year negotiation period ending with an
ominous deadline: If negotiations have not produced a divorce agreement within
the prescribed period – March 29, 2019, in Britain’s case – the member state
suddenly finds itself outside the EU, facing disproportionate hardships
overnight.
This rule undermines
meaningful negotiations. Negotiators focus on the end date and conclude that
the other side has no incentive to reveal its hand before then. Whether the
allotted negotiation period is two months, two years, or two decades, the
result is the same: the stronger side (the European Commission in Brussels in
this case) has an incentive to run down the clock and make no significant
compromises before the eleventh hour.
Moreover, this realization
affects the behaviour of other key players: Tory government ministers opposed
to their prime minister, the leader of the Labour opposition, Jeremy Corbyn,
members of Labour’s front bench who are opposed to Corbyn, and the German and
French governments. Every significant political actor in this game has an
incentive to sit back and let the clock tick down to the bitter end. With fewer
than three months left, the prospect of Britain falling out of the EU without a
deal is, understandably, terrifying. A natural response is to call for an
extension of Article 50, to reset the clock and give negotiations more time.
That instinct must be resisted.
Any resetting of the clock
would simply extend the paralysis, not speed up convergence toward a good
agreement. Giving May another three months, or even three years, would do
nothing to create incentives to reveal hidden preferences or to drop fictitious
red lines.
Indeed, the worst aspect of
May’s deal, which Parliament emphatically and wisely rejected, was that it
extended the transition process until 2022, with the UK committing to paying
around $50 billion, and possibly more, to the EU in exchange for nothing
more than unenforceable promises of some future mutually advantageous deal. Had
Parliament voted in favour of May’s deal, it would have prolonged the current
gridlock to a new cliff edge three years hence. The only plausible reason for
resetting the Article 50 clock is the aspiration to hold a second referendum on
whether to rescind Brexit altogether. But, unlike the first referendum, which
could be framed as a yes-no leave-stay question, there are now multiple options
to consider: May’s deal, a softer Brexit keeping Britain within the EU’s single
market, a no-deal Brexit, remaining in the EU altogether, and so forth.
Agreeing on the precise form of preferential voting between these options is no
easier than agreeing on Brexit in the first place.
To synthesize competing
views into one coherent position, Britain needs more than a voting scheme:
it needs a People’s Debate that the ticking clock makes impossible,
even if reset. The standstill and the phoney negotiations will thus come to an
end only if the made-up deadline is allowed to expire by a Parliament willing
calmly to say “no” to unacceptable deals negotiated by May and the EU. Allowing
the clock to run down is now a prerequisite for resolving the Brexit conundrum.
What will happen if the
impasse continues until March 29, without a formal extension of the Article 50
period? The threat from Brussels is that the EU will shrug its shoulders and
allow a disorderly Brexit, with substantial disruption to trade, transport, and
so forth. But it is much more likely that German business, along with the
French and Dutch governments, would be up in arms against such a turn, and
demand that the European Commission use its powers indefinitely to suspend any
disruption in Europe’s ports and airports while meaningful negotiations begin
for the first time since 2016.Once we are at, or close to March 29, heightened
urgency will dissolve tactical procrastination. May’s deal will have bitten the
dust, and Remainers will be closer to accepting that time is not on the side of
a Brexit-annulling second referendum, perhaps turning their attention to the
legitimate aim of a future referendum to re-join the EU.
At that point, government and
opposition will recognize that only two coherent options remain for the
immediate future. The first is Norway Plus, which would mean Britain would
remain for an indeterminate period in the EU single market (like Norway), and
also in a customs union with the EU. The second is an immediate full exit, with
Britain trading under World Trade Organization rules while Northern Ireland
remains within a customs union with the EU to avoid a hard border with the
Republic of Ireland. Narrowing it down to two options will enable Parliament to
choose.
Once MPs acknowledge that
freedom of movement between the UK and the EU is a red herring, the most likely
outcome is Norway Plus for an indeterminate, deadline-free period. Then and
only then will Parliament and the people have the opportunity to debate
the large-scale issues confronting Britain, not least the future of the UK-EU
relationship.
Norway Plus would, of course,
leave everyone somewhat dissatisfied. But, unlike May’s deal or a hasty second
referendum, at least it would minimize the discontent that any large segment of
Britain’s society might experience in the medium term. And, because minimizing
the discontent, along with a deadline-free horizon, are prerequisites for the
people’s debate that Britain deserves, the overwhelming defeat of May’s deal
may well be remembered as a vindication of democracy.
Varoufakis: Britain needs a People’s Debate, not a second Brexit referendum
Britain is teetering on a
knife’s edge: about to crash out of, or back into, the European Union. Either
outcome would represent a defeat for democracy in the UK and in the EU.
Crashing out would inflict substantial economic hardship on the weakest in
Britain. It would boost jingoism and parochialism, drive England further apart
from Scotland and Ireland, and expose the UK to the vagaries of a Trump administration
eager to divide Europe and to liberate US corporations operating on British
soil from all social and environmental constraints.
Crashing back into the EU (for
instance, via the revocation of Article 50) would undermine trust in democracy
among many in Britain, while on the continent it would strengthen the hold of
the EU’s staunchly anti-democratic ruling technocracy. An unintended
consequence would be the reinforcement of Europe’s xenophobic “nationalist
international”, whose power is proportional to the EU establishment’s capacity
to continue business as usual
If Brexit has an upside, it is
that it has revealed the need for a “People’s Debate”, not only regarding the
UK-EU relationship, but also the festering wounds that the British establishment
has kept out of sight: the disenfranchisement of rural England, an archaic
electoral system, the UK’s ailing economic model, and the Irish and Scottish
questions. Crashing out of, or back into, the EU would negate this opportunity
by thwarting such a People’s Debate.
Remainers are right to disdain
Brexit. In 2016, while representing the Democracy in Europe Movement 2025
(DiEM25) in the run-up to the referendum, I stood side-by-side with Caroline
Lucas, John McDonnell and others in a joint campaign for radical Remain. In
DiEM25’s language, the message was: “In the EU. Against this EU!” The
main reason Brexit won was that the Remain campaign was dominated by the
Cameron-Clegg-Osborne-Blair roadshow, fronting for the institutions of global
financial capital, for whom an anti-democratic EU was perfectly serviceable and
consistent with their capacity to rule on behalf of the privileged few.
Arrogance and inanity combined with Project Fear to drown out voices for a
radical Remain.
An elderly lady in Leeds
put it succinctly to me at one of the meetings I addressed: “I agree that
staying in the EU to fight for democracy would be best. But, my dear boy, you
are not in 10 Downing Street, and neither is Jeremy. Cameron is. A victory for
Remain is a victory for him and his mates.”
While I would relish having
access to a time machine in order to fight Brexit more effectively, if I had a
magic wand by which to annul Brexit now, I would not use it. For what would I
tell the lady in Leeds? She fully understood the costs of Brexit. She was not
duped by Cambridge Analytica or Facebook. Her vote was intended to strike a
blow at the establishment that did all it could to take the demos out of
British and European democracy. By annulling her choice today, in order to
avoid Britain crashing out of the EU, I would be betraying her in a way I could
not justify.
Proponents of a second vote
ask: why is giving her a chance to reconsider, having factored in new
information, an act of betrayal? The first referendum was agreed to by both
sides with plenty of time for debate. Yet a second referendum would have to take
place without the consent of half the country and with a countdown clock
ticking ominously in the background. Moreover, a parliament unable to agree on
Brexit will, equally, never agree on any plausible wording of the referendum
question, or on a voting mechanism for selecting between more than two options.
Might securing EU agreement
for a long extension to Article 50 (which expires on 29 March 2019) create the
space for the comprehensive People’s Debate that Britain needs? Not really. Any
extension beyond June means that the UK must participate in the May 2019
European Parliament elections – for even if Brussels and London agree that the
UK should not, British citizens will almost certainly win in the European
courts if they sue for their right to vote. DiEM25 would be delighted to
include the UK in its pan-European electoral campaign. But I cannot countenance
looking the lady in Leeds in the eyes and telling her that, despite the Leave
result in 2016, she must now vote in the European Parliament elections.
Moreover, any agreed extension
would shift the deadline without removing the deadline effect. Theresa May will
use the additional time to continue peddling her hopeless deal, run down the
clock anew, and blockade herself in No 10 until an exhausted public is yet
again faced with another 11th-hour crisis. A delayed deadline will extend the
standstill and the Prime Minister’s tenure, rather than enable compromise.
The lady in Leeds, I must
confess, has had a major impact on my thinking: if we want Britain to stay in
the EU but to fight against the European establishment, and if we want a
People’s Debate, we should not want the revocation or extension of Article 50, or
a second referendum. What we should want is a progressive in Downing Street.
Given our current predicament, there is only one way to speedily get May out
and Corbyn in: let the clock run down.
On 29 March, the European
Commission will undoubtedly use its emergency powers to stop the clock
indefinitely, not merely to extend the deadline. A general election then
becomes inevitable, giving the people an opportunity to vote for a government
that can allow them the great debate that they deserve regarding the UK’s
long-term relationship with Europe and with itself.
CO2 levels expected to rise rapidly in 2019, Met Office scientists warn
Josh Gabbatiss
This year will see one of the
biggest CO2 surges in more than six decades of measurements, according to the
Met Office.
Rising emissions due to the
world’s continued appetite for fossil fuels will combine with reduced
absorption of greenhouse gas by withering grasslands and forests.
Describing the prediction as
“worrying and compelling”, scientists said it was an urgent reminder that the
time to cut out carbon is now.
CO2 levels will be at a record
high once again after emissions reached unprecedented levels last year, dashing
hopes the world had finally hit “peak carbon”.
Besides fossil fuels pumping
out the harmful gas, natural weather fluctuations will exacerbate the problem
as they hamper the ability of carbon sinks to store it.
In 2019 an upward swing in
tropical Pacific Ocean temperature will make many regions warmer and
drier.
As drought sets in and plants
dry out, they will be less capable of sucking CO2 from the atmosphere, and
massive deforestation in places like the Amazon is making this problem even worse.
The new predictions were based
on monitoring at the Mauna Loa observatory in Hawaii, which has registered a 30
per cent increase in the concentration of CO2 since 1958.
“Carbon sinks have saved us
from what has already happened – the future rise would have been about double
if it wasn’t for the sinks. So we are lucky they exist, to be honest,”
Professor Richard Betts of the Met Office Hadley Centre told The
Independent.
“But the sinks themselves are
affected by the climate, and that’s an important thing because it shows that as
climate change continues in the future it may affect their strength.”
If emissions continue to rise,
a major concern is that the carbon sinks currently storing carbon will cease to
function, potentially leading to uncontrollable warming and a scenario dubbed
“hothouse Earth”.
Last year Mauna Loa
observatory recorded concentrations of over 410ppm in April, marking the
highest level that had been reached in at least 800,000 years.
This year CO2 levels in the
atmosphere are likely to hit 411 parts per million (ppm).
The Met Office forecast
predicts the average increase in CO2 will be around 2.75ppm, the third largest
annual rise on record, matched only by two years in which El Nino Pacific
warming events took place.
CO2 is by far the biggest
contributor to climate change, and global efforts to prevent environmental
disaster largely focus on transitioning away from industries that pump it into
the air.
Scientists welcomed the new
data collected in Hawaii, describing it as “a call to innovate with rapid and
radical responses” to the looming crisis.
“We need to reduce emissions
from fossil fuel use, increase soil carbon sequestration to ‘lock-up’ CO2,
decelerate deforestation and land conversion, and promote less polluting more
sustainable agriculture,” said Professor Nick Ostle from Lancaster University,
who was not involved in the Met Office research.
“It’s a massive challenge but
there are real opportunities to make an impact individually and globally.”
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