Opportunities can also be a threat
LAWYER Alastair Sutton knows about the ways and means of handling the European Union. He used to work for it. Then he became a legal expert on it, and served Guernsey, Jersey and the Isle of Man for 30 years with significant expertise as the Crown Dependencies’ EU connections grew from the basics of Protocol 3’s goods arrangements, into financial services, and eventually, the repeated dodging of blacklisting threats and tax bombshells.
Senior island politicians will recall that when Professor Sutton speaks, it makes sense to listen.
Writing earlier this year, Professor Sutton said that the Crown Dependencies should use their constitutional autonomy to act in their own best interests in the post-Brexit landscape.
As many have before him, Professor Sutton said Brexit presented an opportunity for the islands, especially in the context of doubts about whether the UK government's interests always coincide with the islands'.
Senior government figures will recall the shockwaves caused in the spring of 2019 when it seemed, for a while, that the UK might force the islands, along with the Overseas Territories, into introducing public registers of beneficial ownership. So this ‘opportunity’ can also be a coded way of reading ‘threat’.
Professor Sutton says that while nothing much has changed for the islands so far following Brexit, the UK’s determination to go its own way on financial services policy and law should have an impact. So now is a good time for the islands to agree what's in our best interests.
Professor Sutton is clearly concerned about the UK’s long-term relations with the EU, especially France in relation to fishing, and its knock-on impact on the islands.
During the UK’s EU membership, it was not immediately obvious that the islands’ interests in the field of direct tax were always defended by the UK in the Council of Ministers, he says.
But with EU relations still conducted through London, when Professor Sutton declares ‘the onus on individual jurisdictions to promote and defend their identity and reputation in their external relations will be greater than ever’, it sounds as much a threat as an opportunity for the islands.