Brexit: Politicians and Fish

In the US, politically conscious folk have been so absorbed of late in our own national soap operas --about the Putin-Trump relationship, about an open Supreme Court seat, about real or alleged discussions of the 25th amendment, about the political implications of the latest version of A Star is Born, about the midterm Congressional elections -- so much on our plates that we may have lost track of what is going on in the Mother Country.

Some fascinating and dramatic developments are underway there, as the effectuation of the Brexit vote of 2016 comes to a head.

I'll simply offer you some pertinent links today.

If all goes according the schedule, Great Britain will cease to be part of the European Union in March 2019.

What if you want to move some products across the Channel in April? How will this matter to you then? That remains surprisingly unsettled. The underlying idea in the minds of many of those who supported a "Leave" vote was that Britain could adopt a status analogous to that of Norway. Norway has access to the EU's common market by virtue of its membership in the "European Economic Area," EEA, but it is not a full member, does not vote in the making of EU decisions, and is not subject to EU regulation.

To understand why this matters (to Norway and the UK) , consider Norway's fishing industry. Were Norway to become a full member, its fisheries would fall under the EU's common fisheries policy, designed to prevent over-fishing in order to preserve fish stock for the waters off of Europe over the generations. But Norway's powerful fishing industry doesn't want to be told how many fish it can take each year.

Britain's fishing industry casts its nets into the North Sea, perhaps alongside Norwegians and alongside fisherman from EU countries that also border those waters. There are three-way talks underway amongst the EU, Britain, and Norway about mutual access to waters and markets. The structure of these talks already indicates why Norway prefers not to be a member of the EU as a power political matter. Because it is not, it is one of the three participants in these talks with its own seats at the tables, rather then being a relatively small part of the decision making process within the EU.

The gist is: Norway has a deal that allows it more sovereignty in certain respects than it would have were it a full member, but allows it also the benefit of access to EU markets. My understanding is that much of the sentiment in GB is for membership in the EEA, which would amount to a "soft Brexit" from the EU.

But that expectation has been disappointed. Many on the continent don't want to allow Britain a soft Brexit, because they fear the demise of the union if everybody tries to pull out of the obligations while staying in as to the benefits. Hence the use of the term "cherry picking."

In July of this year, May's government issued a "white paper" laying out the position it is taking in the continued talks. It essentially proposes the Norway model, including departure from the common fisheries policy and other common policies, along with a continuation of "the UK's and the EU's frictionless access to each other's markets for goods, protecting jobs and livelihoods on both sides."

One problem for May is that although as I say SOME of the Brexit voters probably presumed a Norwegian solution, others, and the most fervent activists, want something more definitive: a more complete break. May has been trying to throw sops to them while assuring her EU bargaining partners that they don't matter, "pay no attention to that sop."

I'm still trying to get a handle on all this myself. Thank's for staying with me, dear readers.

Oh, and here is something about the Scots and Brexit.

A Story About Coleridge

This is a quote from a memoir by Dorothy Wordsworth, reflecting on a trip she took with two famous poets, her brother, William Wordsworth, and their similarly gifted companion, Samuel Taylor Coleridge. We sat upon a bench, placed for the sake of one of these views, whence we looked down upon the waterfall, and over the open country ... A lady and gentleman, more expeditious tourists than ourselves, came to the spot; they left us at the seat, and we found them again at another station above the Falls. Coleridge, who is always good-natured enough to enter into conversation with anybody whom he meets in his way, began to talk with the gentleman, who observed that it was a majestic waterfall. Coleridge was delighted with the accuracy of the epithet, particularly as he had been settling in his own mind the precise meaning of the words grand, majestic, sublime, etc., and had discussed the subject with William at some length the day before. “Yes, sir,” says Coleridge, “it is a maj...

Searle: The Chinese Room

John Searle has become the object of accusations of improper conduct. These accusations even have some people in the world of academic philosophy saying that instructors in that world should try to avoid teaching Searle's views. That is an odd contention, and has given rise to heated exchanges in certain corners of the blogosphere. At Leiter Reports, I encountered a comment from someone describing himself as "grad student drop out." GSDO said: " This is a side question (and not at all an attempt to answer the question BL posed): How important is John Searle's work? Are people still working on speech act theory or is that just another dead end in the history of 20th century philosophy? My impression is that his reputation is somewhat inflated from all of his speaking engagements and NYRoB reviews. The Chinese room argument is a classic, but is there much more to his work than that?" I took it upon myself to answer that on LR. But here I'll tak...

Recent Controversies Involving Nassim Taleb, Part I

I've written about Nassim Taleb on earlier occasions in this blog. I'll let you do the search yourself, dear reader, for the full background. The short answer to the question "who is Taleb?" is this: he is a 57 year old man born in Lebanon, educated in France, who has been both a hedge fund manager and a derivatives trader. He retired from active participation from the financial world sometime between 2004 and 2006, and has been a full-time writer and provocateur ever since. Taleb's writings for the general public began where one might expect -- in the field where he had made his money -- and he explained certain financial issues to a broad audiences in a very dramatic non-technical way. Since then, he has widened has fields of study, writing about just about everything, applying the intellectual tools he honed in that earlier work. As you might have gather from the above, I respect Taleb, though I have sometimes been critical of him when my own writing ab...

Jamesian Philosophy Refreshed

Search This Blog