It has to be added, that however much one might object to the rules that govern the structure of the EU, the fact remains that any such treaty is a rules based system, this applies to NAFTA, ASEAN or the as yet to be established TPP. It should therefore have come as no surprise that the EU would take a ‘rules based’ approach to the negotiations, and stress that it was the UK’s right, as well as its choice to leave the EU, but that the UK also needs to accept that post Brexit EU/UK arrangements cannot be premised on exceptionalism. The latter applies perhaps most acutely to the issue of the border between Northern Ireland and the Irish Republic.


One can only observe that the UK’s position on the latter looks to be rather cavalier, both in the context of the ‘customs union’ rules, as well as the obvious fact of the Irish government’s effective veto on progressing talks to trade arrangements, if it is unhappy with whatever solution is proposed. The fact that the current UK government is dependent on the votes of Northern Ireland’s (unionist) DUP party to pass legislation only serves to make this issue all the more challenging. There has been the suggestion that the ‘hard’ border between Sweden and Norway could ‘easily’ be adapted as a model, but this ignores the fact that Norway is a part of the European Economic Area, which the UK clearly does not intend to be. It does however also demonstrate a non-negligible element of denial, which also applies to the point that many of the economic and structural problems that the UK faces are / were ‘Made In Westminster’, be they related to education, housing, the NHS or the country’s woeful transport infrastructure. None of these will be ameliorated by leaving the EU, however some UK politicians might opine on the subject.


Be that as it may, the fact that so much time has elapsed with little sign as yet of material progress leaves businesses of most types, whether domestic or foreign, increasingly under zugzwang, i.e. increasingly under pressure to act without being in possession of all the details that would ideally be available to inform their decisions. Unsurprisingly the focus in the media has been on the financial sector. Banks have been at the vanguard in terms of announcing their plans to relocate some of their business units to countries within the Eurozone, and are clearly under some pressure from the European Central Bank, with Lautenschlaeger emphasizing that the ECB will not accept “more inventive set-ups”, and had “serious misgivings about banks setting up an EU subsidiary with as UK branch”. It has to be added that some of the likely job losses will in fact be unrelated to Brexit, and rather to banks’ efforts to cut costs, most visible in the shift of IT, middle and back office jobs to Poland, most notably among others. However it is the move by Deutsche Boerse and a group of banks to attract a larger chunk of EUR clearing business with a scheme to share more revenues from its Swaps and related derivative business with its banking customers, which may require closest monitoring.


9 | ADMISI - The Ghost In The Machine | November/December 2017


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