Outfoxing Mr. Fox

 

We are back to the Brexit issue again, no surprise! Indeed, it is no surprise when we see how we are bungling forward to the ultimate fudge of the century. We are now getting near the date when both the EU and UK should agree on the final terms of Brexit, but matters are never the same from one month to another. Let’s take the changing scene of the planned UK’s exit from the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice.

At the Conservative Party Conference in 2016 Mrs May announced, “We are not leaving the European Union only to return to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. That’s not going to happen”. A bold and clear statement, you may add, without any need for an explanation. Indeed, Mr Johnson, Mr Gove, and Mr Davies would all applaud in support. But what is happening in reality?

Well, in the summer of 2017, we were introduced to a new phrase that none of us had heard before, ‘indirect jurisdiction’. Yes, direct jurisdiction was to end, but ‘indirect jurisdiction’ was to take its place. What this phrase means, nobody knows exactly. Then Mrs. May attended the Security Conference in Munich in February of this year and she told the assembled audience, “When participating in EU agencies, the UK will ‘respect the remit’ of the European Court of Justice. But what does ‘respect the remit’ actually mean? Is this phrase the same as the phrase ‘indirect jurisdiction’ used in the summer of 2017?

The mystery doesn’t end there. In her Mansion House speech this year, Mrs May once again used the term, ‘respect the remit’, in such areas as aviation and medicine. Recently we heard the phrase again, this being applied to all EU agencies that the UK participates in.

But still the pro-Brexiteer ministers are telling people that the European Court’s jurisdiction over the UK’s affairs will end when the UK exits the EU. Mr Liam Fox, for example, one of the leading Brexiteers, is adamant that ‘Brexit means Brexit’. As the British negotiators crawl towards their end game, the rest of us are left in confusion and ambiguity, which invites us to ask the question, ‘Is the UK purposely telling everyone what they want to hear, and leaving the public lost in ambiguity?’ Or are these phrases a way in which the clever Whitehall mandarins, such as Mr Oliver Robbins, are leaving the door to the EU open for the greatest fudge of the century?