Cliff Taylor: Calling Jacob Rees-Mogg’s double-bluff on Border

In the long-running British TV show Call My Bluff , one team of "celebrity" contestants presents an obscure word and gives three competing definitions, two of which are bluffs and one true. The other team must guess whether the word in question is, say, a lesser-known type of grain, a piece of equipment used in lacrosse or a Venezuelan sea eagle.

Jacob Rees-Mogg's claim that the UK should "call Ireland's bluff" on the question of the Border after Brexit is surely, itself, a bluff. It is a tactic to try to blame somebody else for the consequences of Brexit. And it is relevant because it shows the pressure Theresa May is under from a wing of the party which continues to claim, albeit a bit less loudly these day, that Brexit can be a success and that the UK can have it every way.

The UK should declare that, come what may, it would not put a Border on the island of Ireland after Brexit, Rees-Mogg has said. "And what would the Irish do if the EU insisted? I think that is a really interesting question. I think we should call that particular bluff."

It is a ludicrous argument. You might as well say England should turn up at the World Cup suggesting it be played with an oval ball, or croquet mallets. You have to have a border between two different trading blocs because that is what world trade rules demand. It is also a matter of common sense. How, for example, would you stop smuggling and various illegal rackets?

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You have to have a border between two different trading blocs because that is what world trade rules demand

You can trust Rees-Mogg on this, or you can trust a man called Pascal Lamy. Rees-Mogg says the UK can unilaterally declare there will be no border and all will be fine. Lamy told a House of Commons committee last year that if the UK leaves the EU trading bloc then " whatever the solution, it implies a border. The question on the Irish issue is where you have it." In other words there can be a border on the island, or in the Irish Sea.

Goods control

I would tend to go with Lamy, the fellow who was a former European commissioner for trade and head of the World Trade Organisation. He explained to the committee why border checks were needed if the UK left the EU customs union and single market. You need to check the correct customs duties are paid, for a start. Even if there is an agreement for no duties – or tariffs – after Brexit, you need to check the origin of goods. How else will you control goods coming not only from the UK, but from third countries into the EU single market?

Then there are checks on the standards of products and their technical specifications – as Lamy put it, the need “to check certification that your chickens do not have this disease, or your lighters have this certification”. These are particularly important for the movement of foods and live animals.

Of course every truck does not need to be stopped to check that the correct duties are being paid, or that there isn’t some dodgy beef hidden down the back. Advanced registration and technology can help. But you still need checks. Otherwise how do you ensure the rules are being met? How do you control the standard of goods moving into the EU’s single market? How do you stop people gaming the system?

And there is more. If, for example, the UK declares unilaterally that it will levy no customs duties on goods crossing the Irish Border before any wider EU/UK trade deal is negotiated, then under World Trade Organisation rules it must offer the same deal to importers from all other third countries. To take just one example, beef from Argentina entering the UK market without existing high levels of customs duties would wipe out much of the local industry.

Border conundrum

Rees-Mogg contends that WTO rules allow some exemptions from the need for border checks between neighbouring countries negotiating a trade deal. The only exemptions I can find are for local trade 15km each side of a frontier, in certain circumstances. It is a distraction, not relevant to the overall questions faced here.

So the Border conundrum remains. A paper put forward by London recently has been rejected by Brussels. Its key suggestion – that the UK stays in the customs union for a period after Brexit until another solution is found– would be welcomed in part by Dublin, though with the caveat that on its own it would not solve the Border issue. But Brussels does not like it, because it fears the UK is trying to use the Border to engineer favourable trade arrangements for itself after Brexit.

The Border conundrum remains. A paper put forward by London recently has been rejected by Brussels

So what will happen at the EU summit later this month? Despite Irish insistence that progress on the Border was needed by the June summit, this is not going to happen. Assuming British politics does not implode in the meantime,the UK will be ticked off and told to come up with something better. But there does not seem to be the mood in the big EU capitals for a row, with a lot of other issues on the summit agenda.

Perhaps a deal will emerge eventually, but this is getting very messy, not least for the Government, which will come back from the summit with little more than promises of continued “solidarity”from the rest of the EU. Important as these are, a chaotic and unpredictable period of negotiations then lies ahead in the run-up to the October deadline for a deal. It is the UK’s bluff which will eventually be called – and who knows where that will lead.