The State of the European Union 2017

THE STATE OF THE EUROPEAN UNION

110

resulted in a significant rise in support for Sinn

Fein, and saw the Unionist parties lose their ma-

jority in the Northern Ireland Assembly for the

first time. Meanwhile, the Scottish government

is threatening to call a second independence

referendum if, as seems likely, the final outcome

of Brexit fails to represent Scottish demands for

a settlement that reflects pro-European senti-

ment north of the border. On top of this, Ivan

Rogers, UK Permanent Representative to the

EU, decided to resign after warning about the

potential consequences of the confused and

contradictory statements issued by different

members of the Cabinet.

The structure and composition of the new

Cabinet reflects the Eurosceptic hegemony

within the Conservative Party. May has put

three of the most fervent supporters of with-

drawal in charge of the departments responsi-

ble for Brexit and its consequences: she made

Boris Johnson Foreign Secretary, appointed Liam

Fox as Secretary of State for International Trade,

and named David Davis as head of the newly

created Department for Exiting the European

Union, which will be responsible for overseeing

the withdrawal negotiations. These decisions

show that May’s priority is to consolidate her

control of the party by entrusting the mission of

making Brexit a success to the party’s most hard-

line Eurosceptics (and thus limiting internal criti-

cism should the process end in failure). The fact

that May is sharing her Sherpa for the negotia-

tions with her “Minister for Brexit”, David Davis,

also suggests that the two are in harmony.

Since July 2016, the British civil service has been

mandated to start preparing the government’s

Rogers, I.: “Letter to staff in full”,

BBC News,

4 Janu-

ary 2017. Available at:

http://www.bbc.com/news/uk-poli

tics-38503504.

negotiating position.

Every department has

launched a wide-ranging consultation process

with interested parties to define the risks and

opportunities raised by Brexit in its field of re-

sponsibility, and to identify the best and worst

scenarios. These departmental reports will then

be used in a bottom-up process to establish a

detailed negotiating position by March 2017.

The government has had to recruit a huge num-

ber of people in areas such as international

trade negotiations to provide the technical

knowledge and expertise required to handle

Brexit.

Although the British government’s official

negotiating position has not been set out in de-

tail, it is possible to deduce a number of basic

principles from the Prime Minister’s various

speeches and the contents of the White Paper

presented to Parliament in February 2017,

which would appear to clear up some of the

confusion generated by the contradictory state-

ments of different Ministers.

These principles

are: returning control of laws to Westminster

and to the devolved parliaments; taking back

control over decisions regarding migration into

the UK; guaranteeing the rights of EU citizens

living in the UK and of British nationals in the EU;

maintaining close cooperation with European

partners in the fight against crime and terrorism;

and establishing the freest possible trade in

European Union Committee - House of Lords:

Brexit: par-

liamentary scrutiny, op. cit.

, p. 12.

House of Commons:

Oral evidence:

The UK’s negotiat-

ing objectives for its withdrawal from EU. Witness: Rt. Hon.

David Davis MP, Secretary of State for Exiting the EU

, 14

December 2016, (HC 815).

House of Commons - Foreign Affairs Committee:

Oral

Evidence:

Implications of Leaving the EU for UK’s Role in

the World. Witness: Rt. Hon. Oliver Letwin MP,

5 July 2016,

(HC 431).

HM Government:

The United Kingdom’s exit from and

new partnership with the European Union,

2017 February,

(Cm 9417).