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Hard, soft and BRINO: the Brexit glossary
LONDON, March 11, 2019 (BSS/AFP) – Britain’s long goodbye to the European
Union often seems to be spoken in unintelligible code.
Most know the process as Brexit — a child of the term Grexit that was
coined by economists when it looked like debt-laden Greece would exit the
eurozone in 2012.
Greece stuck around but Britain is leaving the EU after a 2016 referendum
that soon spawned its own lexicon.
Here is a look at some of the terms — both real and invented — politicos
are using to describe a split that could very well run past its March 29
deadline.
– Article 50 – The basics begin with the 2007 Lisbon Treaty that updated
the bloc’s governing rules.
Article 50 provides a “withdrawal clause” — a two-year notice that Prime
Minister Theresa May sent to European Council president Donald Tusk in 2017.
The problem is that most British lawmakers have serious issues with May’s
version of Brexit.
If they reject her plan for a second time on Tuesday, they are expected to
vote on Thursday whether to request an extension of Article 50.
This must be unanimously backed by the remaining 27 EU presidents and
premiers.
– Withdrawal agreement –
May and the EU member states crowned nearly two years of mind-numbingly
complex negotiations by putting their names in December to a 585-page tome
spelling out the legal fine print of the divorce.
UK lawmakers voted against it by a historic margin on January 15, sending
May back to Brussels to renegotiate.
But the EU has refused to amend the text, saying it is the “best deal”
London can get.
– Single market, customs union –
These are the dry economic essentials of how the European Union works.
The existing bloc is part of a “single market” — an even broader area
that also includes non-EU members such as Norway and Iceland.
It removes internal borders so that goods and money can move around freely
and people can live and work where they please.
One set of consumer safety standards governs everything from chicken wings
to washing machines.
The EU also forms a “customs union” — a body that applies a single set of
quotas and tariffs on non-members such as China and the United States.
– Backstop –
Now comes the tricky bit where the customs union and single market come
into play.
Brexit creates an EU frontier between bloc member Ireland and Britain’s
Northern Ireland.
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But the troubled province is governed by a 1998 peace agreement that
removed a physical border between Ireland and the North.
The “backstop” tries to get around this — and keep the peace — by making
all of Britain part of the customs union until a new EU-UK trade deal is
reached.
Northern Ireland additionally adopts most parts of the single market.
This lets it trade freely with Ireland while remaining part of Britain.
But May’s Northern Irish coalition partners hate the backstop because it
treats their region differently from the mainland.
– Hard and soft Brexit –
Exhausted Britons sometimes joke that Brexit comes in every which way but
scrambled.
A hard version of Brexit is championed by EU haters — the so-called
Brexiteers — who say that fears of a clean break from the bloc are
overblown.
This is the “no-deal” scenario many businesses dread.
A soft Brexit would only nudge Britain partially out of Europe.
Some want to copy the arrangement Norway reached with Brussels that keeps
it in the single market.
Others want both that and the customs union — a Norway “plus” option that
looks a lot like what Britain has now.
– BRINO –
The acronym arch-Brexiteer Jacob Rees-Mogg adopted for May’s strategy in
January 2018.
It means “Brexit in name only” and implies that the UK will leave the EU
on paper only.
– BOBs –
Foreign Secretary Jeremy Hunt admitted to the BBC in November that “many
people are bored of Brexit” and want the whole thing to go away.
The acronym BOB struck a nerve in a tired nation that has been debating
the same points about Brexit for the best part of three years.
– Maybot –
The nickname a scoffing reporter from The Guardian assigned May for
invariably using the same stock phrases. Her favourites include “Brexit means
Brexit” and “no deal is better than a bad deal”.
The moniker’s use jumped when May suddenly broke out some stiff dance
moves during an August tour of Africa.
The robotic hand motions and thumping footsteps returned when she
sauntered on stage to ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” at an October party conference.
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