The Brits and the EU Cut a Deal

For John, BLUF:  The report is an overly long Brexit agreement with the European Union, but the guarantees of sovereignty are in there.  Nothing to see here; just move along.

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The small print of Boris’s Brexit deal makes for reassuring reading

From The Spectator, by barrister Steven Barrett, 27 December 2020.

Here is the lede plus three:

The new UK/EU Treaty is needlessly long and turgid in its prose:  this document was not drafted by people who think the law should be understood by all.  Close inspection of the small print reveals that none of the details undermine sovereignty.  It has been restored and the UK has the power to control its own laws.

To understand what’s happened, consider the last two big treaties.  Under the Maastricht Treaty the EU’s ability to control UK law was extended on what came before but was confined to specific areas only. That was called 'spheres of competence'.  The 2007 Lisbon Treaty vastly expanded the EU’s power and the idea of restricting EU writ to areas of its competence fell away.  Marina Wheeler has written in The Spectator about the Lisbon power grab and its huge implications:  it’s worth re-reading for a sense of what Lord Frost was up against.  And what he has successfully uprooted.

The Brexit deal takes things back to where they were before Maastricht.  The EU is limited now in any meddling to very specific areas indeed.  It ends the oddity where because circa seven per cent of UK business trade with the EU, 100 per cent have their laws made by the EU (although that is a bit more blurred in supply chains).

In the small print of the deal, the remnants of failed EU attempts to fetter British sovereignty can be seen.  Consider the ‘precautionary approach’.  This slides in via footnote 49, disguising itself in footnote 52.  But by the time it gets in as actual law (article 1.2 page 179) it’s clear that it has lost the battle; its words have no force. British negotiators seem to have seen to that.  As long as one side has a plausible scientific argument, it may do as it likes.  There are other failed EU power grabs in the text, none carrying force.

This is good news.  I am happy to see Britain free from the Brussels Bureaucracy that runs the European Union.  Power to the People.

Maybe now the Brits will be more sympathetic to the Anglo-Phone People in Cameroon.

Hat tip to the InstaPundit.

Regards  —  Cliff