I will separate those two important questions. The first question is about the negotiation process and what can be achieved in it. It is predicated on the idea that Boris Johnson is a master negotiator, which is an idea that, in a moment, I would like to demolish. The second question, which is significant at this moment, is about how the devolved Administrations would be involved in negotiations. I will come back to that.
On the first question, if we capitulate, it is always possible to get change. The backstop has become the frontstop. The day after the agreement was agreed, I said to a senior UK Government minister—who was lauding the fact that Boris Johnson had got the agreement and that the EU was enthusiastic about it—that the EU was sighing with relief because it has persuaded Boris Johnson to continue with the backstop and, in fact, to make it even more demanding than it was. Now the EU is sighing with relief because it thinks that it might get rid of him. Frankly, there is such an exhaustion in the EU about the process that it was willing to make what were, in my view, small concessions and for him to make big concessions, just to get it over with, because it wants to move on, but it is still not over with.
You could say that, rather than Boris Johnson being a master negotiator, even his capitulation did not produce the result that he wanted. You and I are not going to agree on that, but I do not believe that there was a master negotiator at work—quite the reverse.
On your other point, we might be closer to agreement. I am glad that you recognise the right of the devolved Administrations to be involved in the process. That has been a really big issue in the joint ministerial committee for the past two years. The question is: what is the relationship between the different parts of these islands? It was accepted—almost two years ago now, by the then Prime Minister—that there should be an intergovernmental review of the matter. The thesis is—you will have heard me say this before, and the Welsh have said it, too—that Brexit has been too heavy for devolution to bear and change is needed.
There are a lot of proposals on the table. Mark Drakeford and I gave fairly detailed lectures to the Institute for Government. The Welsh have published on the matter. We will publish our views at an appropriate time, and that will broadly reflect what I said to the Institute for Government earlier this year.
We have had enormous difficulty getting the UK to the table on this issue. The Johnson Government has added an extra dimension. We had an agreement with the previous Government at the British-Irish Council in Manchester in June. In the margins of that, we had a JMC meeting, where we finally agreed a timetable. We agreed that, by the end of September, we would have the initial outline of what should happen and that the work should be finished by the end of the year. That is not going to happen. We have not had the initial outline—we have still not seen anything, and it is almost November. In my view, there is no point in having that conversation in November, because the election will take precedence, and what will happen on this matter will be guided by what happens in the election.
There is a potential solution, which is to recognise that the detailed negotiations will involve devolved competencies. You could theoretically argue that the withdrawal agreement and the political direction do not involve devolved competencies. I disagree with that, but you could argue that they are covered entirely by the international relations reservation. The fact that the UK Government has had to seek legislative consent for the withdrawal agreement bill rather gives the lie to that, but that is in the past.
Undoubtedly, what will happen now is that negotiations will take place on devolved competencies. There is a model that we might want to apply, but the really interesting thing is that it is being interpreted in different ways. The model is the comprehensive economic and trade agreement between Canada and the EU. Canada negotiated CETA with the EU with the provinces in the room, because many of the elements in the agreement were being dealt with in that negotiation. The provinces were in the room for the simple reason that it meant that they could agree on those matters and the agreements would be binding.
That is the lesson that the UK Government should take from CETA: there should be an engagement with the devolved Administrations in which they are part of the process and can make decisions about what is done on the devolved competencies. There is no hierarchy of Governments—there is a hierarchy of Parliaments. There are things that are only ours. Regrettably, however, the UK Government has taken another lesson from CETA, which concerns what happened with the Flemish Parliament. At the very end of the CETA process, you might remember that the Flemish Parliament almost blocked the agreement because of its reservations. The UK Government does not want the devolved Administrations to go anywhere near the negotiations, because it is afraid of that happening.
Unless there is a linkage between the intergovernmental review and the process of agreeing on what happens in the next stage, we will simply have a repetition of where we currently are, and that would be a waste of everybody’s time. So far, there is not the slightest sign that the UK Government recognises that. In fact, I can tell you that the latest proposal from the UK Government on these matters, which was made at the JMC three weeks ago today, was rejected out of hand by both Wales and Scotland. Matters had progressed from where we thought that we had got to in terms of an agreement. At present, we are very far away from resolution.