Mar­i­ano Browne

“It’s good to learn from your mis­takes. It’s bet­ter to learn from oth­er peo­ple’s mis­takes.” War­ren Buf­fet

It is in­evitable that in the life of a coun­try, prob­lems of one kind or an­oth­er will arise. Be it crime, health care, eco­nom­ic growth or stag­na­tion, de­mo­graph­ic changes, or mat­ters of au­ton­o­my, all re­quire an ad­e­quate de­f­i­n­i­tion and the ap­pli­ca­tion of wit, wis­dom, dis­ci­pline, lead­er­ship, and man­age­ment to en­sure suc­cess­ful out­comes. How quick­ly the is­sues are solved or re­solved de­pends on the qual­i­ty of a coun­try’s lead­er­ship and how its re­sources are de­ployed. So how did “Great” Britain, a sov­er­eign coun­try with over 800 years of self-gov­ern­ment (us­ing the 1215 Magna Car­ta as a wa­ter­shed) finds it­self in such a mud­dle over Brex­it? And what lessons can we learn?

What is Brex­it? Brex­it is the term giv­en to the sep­a­ra­tion of the Unit­ed King­dom (UK: Eng­land, Scot­land, Wales, and North­ern Ire­land) from the Eu­ro­pean Union (EU) fol­low­ing the 2016 ref­er­en­dum. The EU, a col­lec­tion of 28 coun­tries op­er­ates as an in­ter­nal sin­gle eco­nom­ic mar­ket based on four free­doms which guide the har­mon­i­sa­tion of rules. It is the largest eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal block and elim­i­nates all bor­der con­trols be­tween mem­bers al­low­ing the free flow of goods and peo­ple, ex­cept for ran­dom spot checks for crime and drugs (CSME?).

Se­ri­ous con­sti­tu­tion­al is­sues have arisen. Since Britain does not have a writ­ten Con­sti­tu­tion, Brex­it has caused sev­er­al is­sues to be re­solved in court. The pow­er of the Ex­ec­u­tive (Cab­i­net) has been nar­rowed as the court ruled that the With­draw­al No­ti­fi­ca­tion could on­ly be made af­ter Par­lia­ment (West­min­ster) gave its ap­proval. There­fore, an act was passed set­ting out the mech­a­nisms putting Par­lia­ment in the dri­ver’s seat; any “deal” or “no deal” must be ap­proved by Par­lia­ment. Whilst the Cab­i­net was au­tho­rised to ne­go­ti­ate the with­draw­al agree­ment, it has had to re­port to Par­lia­ment on a con­tin­u­ous ba­sis sub­ject­ing any agree­ment to Par­lia­men­tary ap­proval.

This de­vel­op­ment is as mo­men­tous as the Tu­dor rev­o­lu­tion, the tran­si­tion in the Tu­dor years from the au­thor­i­ty of the king to the au­thor­i­ty of the king in Par­lia­ment, ul­ti­mate­ly lead­ing to par­lia­men­tary democ­ra­cy as we know it. Last week the mo­men­tum shift­ed from the Ex­ec­u­tive to the Par­lia­ment. Al­so note­wor­thy is the scale and mul­ti­plic­i­ty of the de­feats suf­fered by Prime Min­is­ter May and Cab­i­net, which ought to have led to in­stant res­ig­na­tion. In­stead, the Prime Min­is­ter has sol­diered on. It has al­so led to shift­ing af­fil­i­a­tions which have not based on par­ty lines.

The thorny mat­ter of de­vo­lu­tion and au­ton­o­my is al­so at the fore­front. The Unit­ed King­dom is an amal­ga­ma­tion of Scot­land, Wales, Eng­land, North­ern Ire­land, and the Chan­nel Is­lands de­pen­den­cies. It was formed by Acts of Union be­tween Eng­land and Wales (1536) and Eng­land, Wales, and Scot­land (1707), unit­ing the three na­tions un­der a sin­gle monar­chy and leg­isla­tive coun­cil (Par­lia­ment in Lon­don).

The 1800 Act of the Union merged the UK (Eng­land, Wales Scot­land) with Ire­land. Af­ter the Irish War of In­de­pen­dence, 26 of Ire­land’s 32 coun­ties be­came The Re­pub­lic of Ire­land. North­ern Ire­land re­mained part of the UK which was re­named the "Unit­ed King­dom of Great Britain and North­ern Ire­land" in 1927. This union saw the abo­li­tion of sep­a­rate par­lia­ments, the adop­tion of “West­min­ster” as the Par­lia­ment of the UK with the in­clu­sion of 100 Irish MPs as part of the House of Com­mons and 28 peers in the House of Lords.

The north­ern Irish bor­der is a con­tentious is­sue af­fect­ing the Brex­it with­draw­al agree­ment as the “back-stop” calls for the re-im­po­si­tion of a hard bor­der. Karen Bradley, the UK Cab­i­net Sec­re­tary re­spon­si­ble for North­ern Ire­land, has re­port­ed­ly warned her Cab­i­net col­leagues that a “no deal” Brex­it, in which the UK leaves the EU with­out a ne­go­ti­at­ed tran­si­tion agree­ment to soft­en the jolt of de­par­ture, could sharply in­crease the chances of the province vot­ing to join the Re­pub­lic of Ire­land.

A No-deal Brex­it with a “hard bor­der” could reignite vi­o­lence in North­ern Ire­land. The Good Fri­day Agree­ment peace deal in 1998, which end­ed 30 years of fight­ing, used Ire­land’s and Britain’s shared mem­ber­ship of the EU to soft­en the dis­pute over sov­er­eign­ty on the is­land of Ire­land. Con­se­quent­ly, the bor­der be­tween North­ern Ire­land and the Re­pub­lic of Ire­land dis­ap­peared. For 21 years peo­ple have been able to move freely to study, work, do busi­ness, and to iden­ti­fy them­selves as British, Irish or both by tak­ing whichev­er pass­port or pass­ports they want. The re­turn of a “hard bor­der” would be a se­ri­ous chal­lenge.

Scot­land wants to re­main in the EU (62 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion vot­ed against Brex­it and 55 out 57 Scot­tish MPs vot­ed to re­main.) In the face of the in­sis­tence of the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment’s “rights”, the court re­assert­ed the su­prema­cy of West­min­ster stat­ing that the Scot­tish Par­lia­ment is not a sov­er­eign body. Such pow­ers as it has, are sim­ply pow­ers de­volved up­on it from West­min­ster, the sov­er­eign Par­lia­ment.

In the con­text of T&T there can on­ly be one gov­ern­ment, the Gov­ern­ment of T&T, one ex­ec­u­tive, the Cab­i­net, and one sov­er­eign law­mak­ing body, the T&T Par­lia­ment. There is no “To­ba­go Gov­ern­ment”. So, what does more au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go mean?