IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cdf/wpaper/2019-13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Post-Brexit Realism and international law: renegotiating a bad Withdrawal Agreement

Author

Listed:

Abstract

Some pro-Brexit MPs will not vote for the government's proposed Withdrawal Agreement because of its fine print: they think it will be written in indelible tablets of law that we can never change. But they forget that sovereign states will not indefinitely stay in treaties that do not suit them, if no one can force them to, as in general no one can, unlike in national law where the state can force us. That is just the plain economics of national self-interest, as deployed in game theory studies of international treaties. Our Agreement with the EU if we sign it will not last for long if it stops us from pursuing our interests in trade and regulation: no one, certainly not the EU, can force us to stay with it. It has been negotiated like a hostile divorce because the EU wanted to prove it does not pay to leave. But once the divorce has happened, it will be a new situation where, as with ex-partners in a divorce, they will want to live harmoniously with us in the long term. There will be sensible diplomacy so that we can accommodate each other's interests, in a process of adaptation. After leaving, we can push ahead with good policies on trade, regulation and migration that the government we vote for will pursue; the EU will cooperate as it will not wish us to move to default WTO rules.

Suggested Citation

  • Minford, Patrick, 2019. "Post-Brexit Realism and international law: renegotiating a bad Withdrawal Agreement," Cardiff Economics Working Papers E2019/13, Cardiff University, Cardiff Business School, Economics Section.
  • Handle: RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2019/13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://carbsecon.com/wp/E2019_13.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Patrick Minford, 2019. "The effects of Brexit on the UK economy," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 42(1), pages 57-67, January.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Nicholas Bloom & Philip Bunn & Scarlet Chen & Paul Mizen & Pawel Smietanka & Gregory Thwaites, 2019. "The Impact of Brexit on UK Firms," NBER Working Papers 26218, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    2. Matthew Smith & Yasaman Sarabi, 2021. "UK trading patterns within and between regions in the automotive sector—A network analysis," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 44(2), pages 510-529, February.
    3. Gai, Yue & Minford, Patrick & Ou, Zhirong, 2020. "Is housing collateral important to the business cycle? Evidence from China," Journal of International Money and Finance, Elsevier, vol. 109(C).
    4. Raffaele Giammetti & Alberto Russo & Mauro Gallegati, 2020. "Key sectors in input–output production networks: An application to Brexit," The World Economy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 43(4), pages 840-870, April.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:cdf:wpaper:2019/13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Yongdeng Xu (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ecscfuk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.