Wednesday in Brexitlalaland

Today, DD presented himself to the Brexit Select Committee, and there were the highlights, as reported by the Guardian:

Davis struggled with the first question from the committee chair, Hilary Benn, on whether there would be a draft legal text to make the pre-Christmas Brexit deal binding. Davis started by saying it would form part of the final agreement, but when pressed on whether parliament would get to see it, he said: “I hadn’t thought through when it would surface.”

Davis laughed off an article he wrote for Conservative Home in July 2016 that Benn quoted directly, which said: “I would expect the new prime minister on 9 September to immediately trigger a large round of global trade deals with all our most favoured trade partners.

“So within two years, before the negotiation with the EU is likely to be complete, and therefore before anything material has changed, we can negotiate a free trade area massively larger than the EU.”

The UK is not, and was not, in a position to negotiate new trade deals until it leaves the EU. Davis said: “I think that was before I was minister. That was then, this is now.”

Britain’s innovative jams reared their head again as the SNP MP Joanna Cherry questioned Davis over UK internal market regulations. This argument, Davis said, boils down to whether you can sell jam made in Somerset in Scotland.

In fact, much of the substance of Cherry’s questioning was about whether, in taking on responsibility for regulatory alignment in Westminster, the UK government was making a power grab of competencies from devolved administrations.

The DUP MP Sammy Wilson asked if regulatory alignment would be down to a Northern Ireland administration or Westminster. Davis replied: “It’ll be a bit of both, I think.”

Davis was confident a transition agreement could be concluded in eight weeks and expected a transition period to last between 21 and 27 months. But he then said he had no meetings set up to discuss it with Michel Barnier.

Davis rebuffed a question from the Conservative MP Stephen Crabb about where money saved from EU budget contributions could be reinvested. Davis reminded the committee that he used to be director of a public company, and would have been in breach of company law if he promised a dividend without having the cash to back it up. “I don’t talk about dividends until they are delivered,” he said.

However, in May 2016, Davis gave a speech titled the economic case for Brexit, in which he said: “Our trade will almost certainly continue with the EU on similar to current circumstances. In the highly improbable event that it will not, we can accommodate that with domestic policies using the money released by Brexit, the independence dividend.”

Davis, once again shrugging off his previous speeches and articles, said: “Basically I looked at the facts, and as the facts changed, I changed my mind.”

This declaration was immediately seized upon by supporters of reversing Brexit, people campaigning for continued membership of the single market and customs union, and those asking for a second referendum.

Conservative ministers appearing before a select committee can often expect some soft-ball questions. Not with Jacob Rees-Mogg. He asked Davis, if the UK is subject to European court of justice jurisdiction (ECJ) and paying into the EU budget on 30 March 2019, “are we not a vassal state?”

After Davis argued that accepting new rules during a transition period was not much of a worry, given that EU lawmaking was historically slow, Rees-Mogg asked: “Isn’t that a really rather weak argument?” The Tory MP posited that the EU might have an incentive to impose financial transaction taxes.

Addressing Hywel Williams, the Plaid Cymru MP for Arfon, Davis said “I remember during the cold war that the MoD classified the number of teabags it purchased”, on the basis that the figure might give away the strength of British troops. Williams had been asking for a list of Davis’s department’s work streams.

Davis told Rees-Mogg “any idiot” who goes into a commercial negotiation trumpeting their red lines ensures these will be the minimum they can achieve. Davis claimed never to use the phrase.

However, in the House of Commons in 2014, Davis asked David Cameron: “Will the prime minister tell us his intentions as [to] bringing to this house the red-line issues that will feature in his renegotiation, and can he give us a preview of some of those issues today?”

When Stephen Timms, the Labour MP for East Ham, asked Davis about the potential parliamentary obstacles to continued ECJ oversight during a transition period, Davis prompted laughter with his assessment that “it’s all been very straightforward so far, hasn’t it?”

Davis spent the final minutes stressing that he had to get to his next appointment. Closing the session, Benn wryly observed: “If you came more frequently, the sessions might be a bit shorter.”

Meanwhile, the German Government published a report that suggested that Brexit would take much longer than the two year A50 period and the extension/transition period. Interestingly, it also reported that there were German Constitutional issues with an extension, and the German High Court might have to pass judgement. And finally, it suggests that anything beyond 2019 would require Britain to pay as if it were a full member and without the rebate. I remember a clever chap talking about Hard Remain.....

As you can see from the above, May is negotiating more with her own party than she is with the EU as she strives for a broad agreement. It is likely that any agreement on Brexit or an extension/transition would be rejected by some in her own party meaning no such deal under terms set by the Eu is possible. No ratification means no deal, and that would mean if the first phase agreement is adhered to, that Britain would keep to the rules of the SM and CU without actually being in either. This is going to run and run until May and DD will have tied themselves up in knots. And still they don't know what they want at the end of it.

The BBC let a claim regarding the Brexit Bonus, i.e. the money saved from being out of the EU pass unchallenged, as no assessment thinks Britain will be better off, even a little bit.