Everything you need to know about the Brexit white paper in 5 minutes

Theresa MayLeon Neal / Getty

• Freedom of movement could continue beyond 2019.
• UK may continue paying significant sums into the EU.
• Elements of single market membership’ could be maintained.
• No solution has been found to the Northern Ireland border problem.
• European Arrest Warrant could be here to stay.

LONDON — The government today published its much-anticipated white paper on Brexit. It’s 75 pages long and mostly contains information that the government has already released. Britain plans to leave the single market, European Court of Justice and the Customs Union. The government remains committed to becoming a bigger player on the global stage.

However, there are several genuine pieces of news in there. Let’s go through them one by one.

Immigration isn’t coming down anytime soon

The white paper commits the government to reducing immigration but quite how and when the government will do that remains completely unclear. The document states that “implementing any new immigration arrangements for EU nationals and the support they receive will be complex and Parliament will have an important role in considering these matters further.”

In other words, the government doesn’t yet know either how immigration will be controlled post-Brexit, or what benefits and rights EU nationals living in the UK will have once we have left.

But the big concession contained within the white paper is that the government has left the door open for freedom of movement to continue for a transitional period after we leave.

“There may be a phased process of implementation to prepare for the new [immigration] arrangements,” it states.

“This would give businesses and individuals enough time to plan and prepare for those new arrangements.”

This is hugely significant. The government has been under intense lobbying pressure from business not to implement a new immigration regime that will hurt their ability to recruit people with the skills they need.

However, while this is understandable, it is difficult to square with May’s promise to meet widespread public demand for much lower levels of immigration. While a transitional arrangement which leaves free movement intact makes perfect economic sense it would also mean that there is no noticeable decrease in immigration for years after the original vote to leave the EU. This could prove to be a hugely toxic combination for May.

Don’t expect that £350 million a week back

Remember that promise on the side of the bus that a Leave vote would allow us to claim back £350m a week from the EU to spend on the NHS? Well, don’t count your pennies just yet, because today’s white paper suggests that much of that money will stay in Brussels.

The paper states that while we will no longer make “vast contributions” to the EU budget, we may still make “appropriate” contributions for “European programmes in which we might want to participate.”

These “appropriate” contributions could be on everything from our membership of the cross-border policing organisation Europol to wider security arrangements as well as joint scientific and research bodies. That Europol commitment could prove tricky for May as it implies continued compliance with the European Arrest Warrant — something which has proven deeply unpopular with some Tory MPs and sections of the press. More significantly it could also mean continued payments to maintain privileged access to the single market.

There’s also the small matter of the bill for things we’re already committed to. Former UK ambassador to the EU Ivan Rogers told MPs this week that we should expect an exit bill of anything up to €60bn. It increasingly looks like the NHS will have to look elsewhere for that cash they were promised.

The government doesn’t know what to do about Northern Ireland

One of the dogs that never really barked during the EU referendum campaign was the question of what would be done with the border between Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland if we left. There has been a Common Travel Area (CTA) between Britain and Ireland since 1923 and its continued existence was a pre-requisite of the Northern Ireland peace process. Brexit and the government’s commitment to leave the Customs Union suddenly throws that all into question.

Brexit secretary David Davis has previously admitted that the economic and political difficulties to the CTA caused by Brexit are “difficult” yet he remains committed to overcoming them. The problem is that all of the possible solutions, which includes moving the border to the Irish Sea, are hugely controversial and fraught with difficulty. Sadly, today’s white paper doesn’t suggest they’ve yet found the answer. “When the UK leaves the EU we aim to have as seamless and frictionless a border as possible between Northern Ireland and Ireland,” it states. The use of “we aim” and “as possible” are not terribly reassuring.

‘Digital technologies’ will save us all

The government remains determined to leave the Customs Union — the EU-wide arrangement through which European countries trade seamlessly and tarrif-free while maintaining a common tariff for all external nations. The reason given for ending this arrangement is that continued membership of the CU would hinder us from striking up new trade deals with the rest of the world. Instead the government suggests that we will construct an entirely new and independent customs arrangement. This is a massive task and quite how we plan to achieve this in just two years remains bafflingly unclear.

Today’s white paper doesn’t help matters much. According to the document: “We have an open mind on how we implement new customs arrangements with the EU and we will work with businesses and infrastructure providers to ensure those processes are as frictionless as possible, including through the use of digital technologies.” As with other areas when governments run up against intractable problems — such as how to regulate what children can access on the internet — the magic elixir of yet-to-be invented “digital technologies” is thrown out to save the day.

We’re not really leaving the EU

In fact the most striking theme of the white paper is how much of our current EU arrangements the government seems determined to hang onto. On everything from trade, to security, to customs arrangements, the government essentially want to keep things basically as they are.

Even on the single market, the area where May has explicitly stated that we want to leave, we could end up essentially mirroring many of our existing arrangements. According to the white paper our new trade deal with the EU “may take in elements of current Single Market arrangements in certain areas as it makes no sense to start again from scratch when the UK and the remaining Member States have adhered to the same rules for so many years.”

The white paper also commits to keeping all existing EU trade schedules. Schedules are essentially a description of our trading relationships, which list things like how much we pay in trade tariffs and our commitments on export subsidies. All of our schedules are currently contained within the EU and the government plans to essentially copy and paste them back over to the UK.

In many ways this is inevitable. Even if it were possible for the UK to create entirely new trading arrangements in just two years, it would leave us open to a whole stream of international trade disputes that we have neither the capacity nor the time to deal with.

While this makes perfect economic sense, it also defeats one of the main reasons for leaving the EU as pushed by Leave campaigners. For decades now Brexiters have complained that the EU strangles British business because it forces regulations on us which are not in the UK’s interests. Today’s white paper suggests that this isn’t going to change any time soon.