Irish Border difficult? Just wait for the Scottish border!
There may soon be a bit more to it…
In the run-up to the Brexit referendum, political geeks like me kept banging on about the Northern Irish border. We pointed out that this was a big, insoluble problem and that the side proposing the change had a responsibility to explain how it was going to work.
We were swamped in a tsunami of distraction and nonsense.
Well, here we go again! It looks certain that yesterday’s Scottish Parliament election was won by the SNP promising a referendum on Scottish independence.
Every single issue that plagued the Irish border for five years is about to descend on the mainland.
Hadrian had nothing on this
Last time this was the boundary of a united Europe, the European side was the South…
When Scotland voted on independence in 2014, it was doing so on the basis that both Britain and Scotland were members of the EU. To an extent, therefore, there would be little practical objection to Scottish independence, as the situation that would have resulted would have been similar to the situation between Ireland and Northern Ireland, in which shared EU rules smoothed the need for any kind of border controls. Indeed, eliminating borders and the need for borders has been one of the most explicit aims of the EU.
But the situation today is fundamentally different. Nicola Sturgeon’s key argument for this referendum is that the Scottish people were taken out of Europe against their will and that an independent Scotland would rejoin the EU. That would make the border through Berwick an external border of the EU.
That is a very big deal.
What’s the problem?
The reason why this is a massive issue is that the EU has achieved frictionless borders by moving all the friction to the external border of the EU. As internal European borders get softer, so the edge of Europe becomes harder.
The Scottish border would leapfrog from being an internal border within one country, to being the external border of the EU: the hardest of hard borders.
Given that we are used to borders within the EU, people tend not to realise that these light-touch borders are the exception, not the rule. According to a report by Asian Development Bank in 2014, it takes an average of 32.6 hours to cross the average Asian border by rail. Lengthy, complex border crossings are the norm throughout the world: EU border crossings are the exception.
If Scotland left the UK and joined the EU, it would not only become the border of Scotland. It would also become the border for two further EU schemes.
1) The Single Market
2) The Customs Union
These schemes have separate memberships, though the vast majority of countries in the EU are members of both.
Going through them one by one:
1) The single market is a set of rules that EU member countries have agreed in order to prevent checks on internal EU borders. The famous ‘chlorinated chicken’ debate is a single market rule: the EU doesn’t allow chicken to be sold if the bird was washed in chlorine when alive. This is one of thousands of individual rules which make these checks particularly intrusive. Most of us have very little experience of these rules as we previously only experienced their enforcement when travelling by air to America or Asia; and then they were wrapped up in a whirlwind of airport bureaucracy.
These checks are far more intrusive than a ‘normal’ international border as the principle of the Single Market is to create a Europe-wide zone in which every country can have confidence that all the goods traded within it all abide by the same standards. The EU will never compromise the checks on any individual border, however inconvenient that border’s location might be, as the whole Single Market is predicated on the basis that every country can trust that every other country is enforcing the same things in the same way.
Every EU country is part of the single market, while other countries like Norway and Iceland have also joined.
2) The customs union is about tariffs and duties; largely taxes that need to be paid on goods crossing borders. To smooth the flow of trade, all tariffs and duties have been eliminated by the EU for internal borders (which is why we’ve never had to think about this stuff at St Pancras) but a vast tariff schedule remains for the external border. All relevant goods need to be declared and the relevant tariffs need to be shown to have been paid.
Again, most of us have only experienced this when travelling by plane long-haul. All EU countries are part of the Customs Union, plus a few others like Turkey.
There is a third EU scheme which is the Schengen area. This is all about immigration; checks on people, to make sure they are permitted into and out of the EU. Britain never joined this scheme, so we are used to Schengen checks when we leave St Pancras.
If Scotland leaves the UK and joins the EU, then the single market and customs union checks are absolutely certain. It’s probable that Scotland would escape the Schengen area. Technically, that’s impossible as only countries with a pre-existing opt-out (as the UK used to have) are permitted to stay out of Schengen, but I suspect that Scotland would argue the moral case that the UK opt-out should apply to Scotland; and I suspect this would be agreed.
Ireland is also outside Schengen, so this would leave the Scottish border question looking very much like the Irish border question.
How was this solved for Northern Ireland?
After five years of people like me banging on about how big an issue this was and people like Boris Johnson ignoring us, the deal that was done on Boxing Day last year was actually very simple.
In practice, Northern Ireland have stayed in the single market and customs union, meaning that the EU-UK border moved to the Irish Sea. Intrusive checks are hugely easier to undertake at a ferry terminal than on an Enterprise train.
Having said that, these are still intrusive checks and the consequences have been severe.
You can get a sense of just how onerous these checks are by the lengths hauliers will go to avoid them. Prior to Brexit, just 12 ferries a week sailed directly from Ireland to mainland Europe. The reason is that it takes 20 hours to get a lorry from Ireland to France via Britain, and 40 hours to do the same journey on a direct ferry. Going direct also costs significantly more, so virtually no-one did it. Yet that 12 ferries a week has now become 42 per day, with half of the hauliers opting for the slower, more expensive route - simply to avoid EU external border controls and the associated delays.
To give you a sense of just how tough it is to make these checks non-intrusive, let me show you a picture:
This picture isn’t the ‘before’ shot, showing the intrusive checks before mitigation. This is the ‘after’ shot: this is a visual of a proposal by Lithuanian Railways for the kit needed to attempt to streamline the checks on the section of the EU external border it manages.
So what’s the future for the English-Scottish railway border?
I really can’t say this loudly or clearly enough: if Scotland leaves the UK and joins the EU, the English-Scottish border will be very, very different to anything we’ve experienced before. Please believe me on this. If you’re a passionate Scottish nationalist, then by all means promote Scottish independence: but do so in the context of what it means in practice.
As I see it, there are roughly four options. These are:
1) On-train checks at a station
This is the norm for trains crossing the EU external border. The typical procedure is that the train stops at a control point on the EU side of the border (in this case, perhaps at Gretna) and officials come on board to check passengers and their luggage. Then the train rolls over the border to the ‘third country’ side (perhaps Carlisle) and British officials board to do their checks.
I have been through this procedure on the Hungarian <> Serbian border, the Bulgarian <> Serbian border and, before they joined the EU, various borders into Hungary, Poland, Czechia and Slovakia. I have never (ever!) known the train finish this procedure on time. All you need is for someone on board to have incorrect papers or for customs to discover a suitcase of illegal ham, and all bets are off.
Either the East Coast and West Coast mainlines would need vast marshalling yard-type constructions to stable all the trains while these procedures took place, or there would need to be a spectacular reduction in frequency.
Frequencies of trains across the EU border tend to be measured in numbers of trains per day, not per hour.
2) On-train checks on a moving train
The gold standard EU border crossing is the Allegro service between Finland and Russia. Instead of the train having to stop and wait, the checks all happen on board. The Finnish (EU) border guards board at Kouvola and do their checks until Vainikkala, close to the border. There the train pauses to allow the Finns off the train, then the train rolls over the border into Vyborg, where it pauses again to collect the Russian border guards, who then do their checks on the train to St Petersburg.
This is by far the most seamless external EU railway border crossing but it takes a lot of resource. Each set of border guards are on each train for an hour in each direction. With four trains per day, it all works, but it’s very hard to imagine the logistics flowing totally smoothly on the Scottish<> English border without vast investments in human resources. At the current timetable frequency, how often would a northbound train pull into Gretna only to discover that the Scottish customs agent was stuck on a delayed southbound train?
Moreover, this set-up is the result of a process of significant cooperation between two countries keen to make it work; with a single rail operator owned 50% each by the two Governments. If Scotland leaves the UK, will we have the same level of cooperation?
It’s also notable that the 19 mile run across the border is timed for 30 minutes. Even with on-train checks, the timetable still assumes a certain amount of hanging around.
3) At-station checks
Eurostar hasn’t faced all these problems as it has always had station checks. The checks required for the EU border are vastly more intrusive than the Schengen checks we’re all used to, but the process can be expanded. Indeed, that’s precisely what Eurostar are doing. Next time you go through St Pancras, prepare for queues!
Doing this on the Scottish border would mean that trains could continue to speed through Gretna non-stop as they do today, but the consequence would be to dramatically reduce the range of destinations. Eurostar is only able to pick up in stations that have the appropriate station facilities. That’s why Stratford International has never seen an international train, and why the Amsterdam service took such a long time to get off the ground. The only alternative is to do what Eurostar do with the Avignon route and make everyone get off at Lille in order to parade through passport control. Having done it, you do not feel like you’ve travelled on a direct train.
It is easy to imagine customs controls being set up in London, Edinburgh and Glasgow. Possibly also York, Newcastle, Birmingham and Crewe. But beyond that feels a stretch. Remember that these customs controls will need to be designed such that passengers boarding certain trains must go through them and no-one else can join the train, so you will probably need dedicated platforms (at least at times cross-border trains run) and the customs facilities to be on bespoke walkways connected to these platforms; rather like at Gare du Nord.
Through trains will become economically unviable as, for example, an Aberdeen to London train would need customs at every station on the Aberdeen mainline and no local passengers could be allowed to board. The reality would be that trains to England would simply start at Edinburgh and passengers would be asked to get a local train to Edinburgh and then parade through customs en mass.
(There is also the slightly bonkers system I once encountered on the Turkish <> Bulgarian border in which everyone has to get off the train at the border to go through checks in the station building, and then wait on the train while someone walks through to check that everyone was checked…)
Whichever model is chosen, it’s highly likely that a substantial reduction in rail frequency between Scotland and England will be the result - and a substantial increase in operating cost.
Surely it can’t be as bad as all that?
If anyone says to you not to fuss and it’ll all be fine in practice, ask them how. If they waffle, they have no answer.
We’re now about to see a straight waffle-swap. From 2016-21, the Brexiteers waffled. From now on, it will be the pro-EU Scottish Nationalists who are waffling, often using precisely the same waffle. But the exam question remains the same: how do you have seamless travel across the EU’s external border?
When waffle-spotting, here are four phrases to look out for.
1) Northern Ireland Protocol
Nicola Sturgeon has already said that the Northern Ireland Protocol could form a ‘template’. After all, it solved the Irish border question, so why not the Scottish?
Well, the answer is that the way it solved the Northern Irish problem was by the keeping the country on the non-EU side of the border (i.e. Northern Ireland) inside the EU’s single market and customs union.
Applied to the Scottish border scenario, that would mean putting Britain back into the single market and customs union, from which it’s just come out.
While it’s totally true that it would indeed solve the problem, the problem is that it requires Boris Johnson to effectively reverse Brexit. Even if that were likely (spoiler alert: it’s not), it’s not in the SNP’s gift.
2) The Common Travel Area
Over the next few years, you will hear constant reference to Scotland remaining members of the Common Travel Area (CTA) and so it’ll all be fine, won’t it.
The CTA dates from 1922 and is an agreement between the constituent countries of the British Isles (primarily Britain and Ireland) to allow free movement of people. The problem is that it does not override EU law on the border. The only way for the CTA to work in practice is for the member countries to ensure that the EU border doesn’t run through the British Isles. That is why the British and Irish Governments coordinated to ensure that both joined the EEC together on 1st January 1973. The CTA didn’t ‘solve’ the Northern Irish border because Brexit was, in essence, a breach of the CTA.
Everything, of course, has its exceptions, so someone may mention the Isle of Man, which has always been a member of the CTA but never joined the EU. This is true but largely irrelevant. Even though the Isle of Man didn’t join the EU, it largely enforced EU rules. In effect, this is the same approach as the Northern Irish Protocol, and won’t work for the same reasons.
3) Switzerland
Switzerland is not in the EU, yet trains roll across the border freely and at high frequency. Sorted!
Sorry, not so simple.
It’s only sorted because Switzerland is in the single market, even though not in the EU. And, by the way, the same applies to Norway. Indeed, Norway shows just how hard this is.
The Norway <> Sweden border is between countries in both Schengen and the Single Market, but Norway is not in the Customs Union whereas Sweden is. That means the onerous Single Market checks do not apply but customs declarations still need to be made.
To facilitate an open border, both countries have agreed that both sets of customs agents are empowered to enforce each others’ laws - with police empowered to work deep into each others’ territory. Can you see Nicola Sturgeon and Boris Johnson agreeing a similar approach?
4) Canada
“Canada and America are highly integrated, so it’s all fine.” That is what you’ll hear people say.
Actually, most crossings see just one train per day and either the train sits at the crossing for anything up to two hours while checks happen on board, or checks take place in the station at Vancouver and passengers need to check-in an hour in advance.
Canada adds nothing useful to the debate other than being somewhere sufficiently far enough away to be quoted as a model and for no-one to challenge it.
However, there is a serious point here. Canada and the USA have highly integrated economies. 90% of Canadians live within 100 miles of the border and many major cities are virtually cross-border conurbations. Both countries have operated under a formal Free Trade agreement (NAFTA and its successor agreement, USMCA) for a quarter of a century and yet they’ve made almost zero progress at enabling a high-frequency train service across an international border.
(Perhaps the confusion on this side of the Atlantic is understandable since it exists in the US as well. In the Friends episode “The Girl from Poughkeepsie”, Ross falls asleep on the train to Poughkeepsie and wakes up in Montreal. In practice, only one train per day links those two towns and it’s unlikely that Ross would have been on it, it’s a 10-hour journey and unlikely he’d have slept for that long - and he’d have had to have been woken for border controls. How painful to discover that Friends isn’t always realistic…)
Canada is a reminder, again, that because most of us have only experienced rail borders within the EU, we’re not used to the realities of what crossing a ‘normal’ international border looks like.
Why are we doing this again?
As with Brexit, Scottish nationalism is an emotional, not a practical project.
Virtually every argument that meant it was a bad idea for Britain to leave the EU also applies to Scotland leaving the UK. Even if the people arguing both arguments have reversed.
I’m obviously not a nationalist: I work in public transport because I believe in the power of transport to bring people closer together. I believe that shared human connections enable love, life, jobs and opportunities. Both English nationalism, in the form of Brexit, and Scottish nationalism are about breaking people apart. I’m not a fan.
I also think that, just as the Brexiteers massively underestimated the impact of unpicking 40 years of integration, so the Scottish nationalists are downplaying the consequences of unpicking 300 years of integration.
Just as farmers and fisherman voted for Brexit for its emotional attractiveness and have now been floored by its practical realities, so the same will be true of the consequences of Scottish nationalism as well.
It’s much easier to destroy things than to create them. Both the European Union and the United Kingdom are imperfect. Of course they are; they were made by humans. But I don’t think we will get a better future by breaking ourselves into ever smaller and smaller units. Last year, Shetland voted to progress “financial and political self-determination”, including its own Parliament.
Until every country is the size of Shetland, there’s always going to be someone at the edge who’s not happy. We were at the edge of Europe, so we voted to leave. Scotland’s at the edge of Britain, so is voting on leaving. Well, Dumfries then becomes the edge and, judging by the election result, may not be very happy about it.
How about we try uniting instead?
Well, that's not really the topic for this blog and if you’re a passionate Scottish nationalist, you will have your reasons and you’ll probably be starting from a very different emotional place to me.
But don’t be under any illusions: if Scotland does replace the UK with the EU, the border between Scotland and England will change dramatically.
That’s not emotion: that’s fact.
What do you think? Is there a way of preventing a tsunami of waffle? If so, for goodness sake, tell the world what it is! Starting with me, on LinkedIn
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