An Ireland Worth Working For E-Book

Tom Healy

• Herausgeber: New Island
• Kategorie: Fachliteratur
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Beschreibung

At the First Dáil Éireann on 21 January 1919, a new Democratic Programme was announced and then swiftly abandoned. The central goals of this highly aspirational manifesto were 'Liberty, Equality and Justice for all'. A century later, Tom Healy, director of the Nevin Economic Research Institute, explores the economic policies of both the Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland and meticulously shows how they failed generation after generation. Proposing an alternative economic order for the next 100 years, An Ireland Worth Working For tackles the major challenges – technology, demographics and environment – facing the island of Ireland in a changing EU. With radical goals for work and wages, public services and taxes as well as new enterprises, Healy presents a credible vision for Ireland in the twenty-first century, a place where every citizen of this island can enjoy a life of dignity, security and respect. Praise for the book

Leseprobe

An Ireland WorthWorking For

An Ireland WorthWorking For

Towards a New DemocraticProgramme

Tom Healy

AN IRELAND WORTH WORKING FOR

First published in 2019 by

New Island Books

16 Priory Hall Office Park

Stillorgan

County Dublin

Republic of Ireland

www.newisland.ie

Copyright © Thomas Healy, 2019

The Author asserts his moral rights in accordance with the provisions of the Copyright and Related Rights Act, 2000.

Print ISBN: 978-1-84840-724-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-84840-725-1

All rights reserved. The material in this publication is protected by copyright law. Except as may be permitted by law, no part of the material may be reproduced (including by storage in a retrieval system) or transmitted in any form or by any means; adapted; rented or lent without the written permission of the copyright owner.

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

www.NERInstitute.net

New Island Books is a member of Publishing Ireland.

Dedicated to all who are working and caring for the future of the island of Ireland.

Without a vision the people perish.

– Proverbs 29:18

You see things; and you say ‘Why?’

But I dream things that never were;

and I say ‘Why not?’

– George Bernard Shaw

At the time of publication, the matter of Brexit and the details of the United Kingdom’s transition to a new relationship with the European Union was unresolved. Nevertheless, throughout this book, the author has assumed that the United Kingdom will leave the European Union one way or another.

Acknowledgements

While I write this book in my capacity as director of the Nevin Economic Research Institute (NERI), it does not necessarily reflect the views of the NERI or those of trade unions in general. I wish to acknowledge the support, advice and feedback of the NERI and other colleagues, including the following: John Barry, David Begg, Patricia King, Tom McDonnell, Louisa O’Brien and Michael Taft. In particular, I acknowledge the financial contribution towards this publication by a number of trade unions. I am also grateful for the help of colleagues of the institute for a stream of published articles and working papers that provided most of the empirical evidence required in preparing this book. Finally, I would like to thank the team at New Island Books and Djinn von Noorden for their diligent professional help in the editing and preparation of this book.

Contents

Foreword by President Michael D. Higgins

The Democratic Programme, January 1919

Introduction

PART I HOW WE GOT HERE

1 Why the Model Failed

2 Three Big Ideas to Change Ireland: Democracy, Equality and Sustainability

3 What Sort of European Dream for Ireland?

4 Three Big Challenges: Demographic, Technological and Environmental Change

PART II PROPOSALS FOR A NEW ECONOMIC ORDER

5 Taking Work Seriously

6 Raising the Social Wage

7 Taxes – the Price of a Civilised Society

8 New Enterprises

PART III WHERE WE GO FROM HERE

9 The Case for Intellectual Promiscuity

10 The Case for Hope

Towards a New Democratic Programme

List of Figures

Sources

Endnotes

Index

About the Author

Foreword

The inaugural meeting of the First Dáil Éireann took place on 21 January 1919 in a world recovering from World War I, a collision of empires that caused the deaths of millions and injured countless more. It was a war that was slow to end and it was followed by the Great Flu, which swept away further millions in Europe. Yet for all the suffering and sadness that had been endured it was a moment of hope, a moment in which peoples across the world were imagining a new future, one founded on the right to national self-determination and upon economic and social justice.

From Belfast to Berlin, the trade union movement was on the march, winning new rights and confronting ancient injustices, advancing the rights of workers and expanding the horizons of the possible. From India to Egypt, peoples sought national independence, not for its own sake, but to define a new, more expansive vision of freedom.

The Democratic Programme of the First Dáil formed part of, and was a response to, those great movements of thought and action. It remains a foundational document in our democracy, one inspired by the spirit of James Connolly and the rhetoric of Patrick Pearse. Yet, despite the pragmatic and systemic nature of the Democratic Programme, it remains, in many respects, a promise yet to be fulfilled.

The last decade has been a difficult one for the island of Ireland. We have witnessed the failure of one model of economic and social development, in Ireland and in the European Union, but have yet to resolve or decide, collectively, upon a new, alternative path towards economic and social progress. The challenges we face today are immense and they are as pressing as those that confronted our forebears a century ago. Our resilience is called for now, as well as a sophisticated evaluation of our founding models and assumptions. We need to acknowledge the limits of models that cannot bridge the appropriate relationship between the market and social security, cohesion, sustainability, justice and rights not fulfilled.

Our society is still marked by grave inequalities of income, wealth, opportunity and power, which prevent many of our citizens from realising their full potential. Our economy still reinforces some of those inequalities instead of mitigating them. Our people and our planet are threatened by the biodiversity loss, environmental degradation and, above all, by the potentially catastrophic consequences of climate change.

Now, more than ever, we need a renewed study of economics and political economy, one capable, in a gendered, socially fulfilling way, of analysing and understanding these challenges and of mobilising informed public action to address them.

This volume is an important contribution to the debate in which we must now engage on our shared island. It provides an analysis of how and why our economic model failed and constructs a framework for understanding how our economy functions – and should function – as well as an incisive perspective on the future of our relationship with the European Union and the changing relationship between labour and capital.

Most importantly, Tom Healy offers a series of proposals to realise the Democratic Programme in the twenty-first century. These proposals are comprehensive in scope, covering industrial policy, social protection, taxation, healthcare and education. I hope they will be debated and discussed both within the trade union movement and wider Irish society and, above all, that they will inspire action on policy and trigger the sort of engaged participation we need.

We must seek, as a great philosopher once said, not only to understand the world but to change it. We must strive to do so with creativity, informed intellect, generous sharing and warm hearts. May there be many more publications like this valuable contribution and the widest debates.

Michael D. Higgins

President of Ireland

The Democratic ProgrammeJanuary 19191

We declare in the words of the Irish Republican Proclamation the right of the people of Ireland to the ownership of Ireland, and to the unfettered control of Irish destinies to be indefeasible, and in the language of our first President, Pádraig Mac Phiarais, we declare that the Nation’s sovereignty extends not only to all men and women of the Nation, but to all its material possessions, the Nation’s soil and all its resources, all the wealth and all the wealth-producing processes within the Nation, and with him we reaffirm that all right to private property must be subordinated to the public right and welfare.

We declare that we desire our country to be ruled in accordance with the principles of Liberty, Equality, and Justice for all, which alone can secure permanence of Government in the willing adhesion of the people.

We affirm the duty of every man and woman to give allegiance and service to the Commonwealth, and declare it is the duty of the Nation to assure that every citizen shall have opportunity to spend his or her strength and faculties in the service of the people. In return for willing service, we, in the name of the Republic of Ireland, declare the right of every citizen to an adequate share of the produce of the Nation’s labour.

It shall be the first duty of the Government of the Republic of Ireland to make provision for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being of the children, to secure that no child shall suffer hunger or cold from lack of food, clothing, or shelter, but that all shall be provided with the means and facilities requisite for their proper education and training as Citizens of a Free and Gaelic Ireland.

The Irish Republic fully realises the necessity of abolishing the present odious, degrading and foreign Poor Law System, substituting therefor a sympathetic native scheme for the care of the Nation’s aged and infirm, who shall not be regarded as a burden, but rather entitled to the Nation’s gratitude and consideration. Likewise it shall be the duty of the Republic of Ireland to take such measures as will safeguard the health of the people and ensure the physical as well as the moral well-being of the Nation.

It shall be our duty to promote the development of the Nation’s resources, to increase the productivity of its soil, to exploit its mineral deposits, peat bogs, and fisheries, its waterways and harbours, in the interests and for the benefit of the Irish people.

It shall be the duty of the Republic of Ireland to adopt all measures necessary for the recreation and invigoration of our Industries, and to ensure their being developed on the most beneficial and progressive co-operative and industrial lines. With the adoption of an extensive Irish Consular Service, trade with foreign Nations shall be revived on terms of mutual advantage and goodwill, and while undertaking the organisation of the Nation’s trade, import and export, it shall be the duty of the Republic of Ireland to prevent the shipment from Ireland of food and other necessaries until the wants of the Irish people are fully satisfied and the future provided for.

It shall also devolve upon the National Government to seek co-operation of the Governments of other countries in determining a standard of Social and Industrial Legislation with a view to a general and lasting improvement in the conditions under which the working classes live and labour.

Introduction

We live and work on a relatively small island in the far north-west of Europe. We are part of a global chain of commerce, movement of people and ideas. Most of us speak a language that is spoken daily by at least another 400 million persons across the globe. Our future is tied up with that of our neighbouring island as well as those countries that currently make up the European Union.2 Yet many of the challenges we face are truly global, from the obvious effects of climate change to the less obvious effects of Brexit and the many political conflicts and humanitarian disasters that appear on our doorstep.

This book about how Ireland can be transformed by a new democratic programme. It is is for the general reader as well for trade union members. The trade union movement accounts for over 700,000 members across the island of Ireland and proudly traces its history to a time when labour asserted its rights and dignity against the dominance of capital. Our goal is to persuade and win support for a radically different society which is not only possible but desirable and achievable in this century.

This book is about the future of Ireland – its economy and society and its people. It sets out a vision for the whole of Ireland that goes beyond sectarian or political agendas. But is a vision enough? What we need is a credible and carefully worked out strategy to move towards a shared vision, a strategy currently lacking in the market for ideas and contest of programmes. Referring to different models of economic, social and political development in the recent past or abroad may be helpful but what worked then or elsewhere may not work so well now or here. We do not need a blueprint for the future because we cannot know what events and surprises await us. What we do need is a set of pointers to guide the direction of policy, action and public conversation.

One hundred years ago this year, a brave new Ireland was imagined by men and women in a gathering of elected representatives in what was the first meeting of the First Dáil or parliament on 21 January 1919 in Dublin. The Democratic Programme, which was endorsed at that meeting, was a radical document founded on the principles of equality, justice and self-determination. An earlier version drawn up by Tom Johnson, leader of the Irish Labour Party and Trade Union Congress, with the assistance of Cathal O’Shannon and William O’Brien of the Irish Transport and General Workers’ Union, envisaged workers’ control of industry and ‘the elimination of the class in society which lives upon the wealth produced by the workers of the nation but gives no useful service in return’. This version was submitted by Johnson on the eve of the first meeting of the Dáil to an organising committee. The document was significantly adjusted, and the socialist content diluted to remove references to objectives such as the elimination of the capitalist class and workers’ control. It appears that the re-editing was done by the late Seán T. O’Ceallaigh TD, who later became President of Ireland. The revised document was read out in Irish as Clár Oibre Poblacánaighe (Working Programme of the Republic of Ireland) on the afternoon of the following day when the First Dáil met (Daly, 2017).

Even in its edited version, the revised Democratic Programme contained many important ideas and aspirations which, if they had been acted on, would have produced a very different Ireland to the one that we know today. Failure to implement these ideas reinforced an unequal society where fundamental human rights were not honoured and where private property and class interests prevailed over the common good.

We must remember that the Democratic Programme was drafted in a revolutionary world traumatised by World War I and against a background of gathering conflict and sectarian division in Ireland. Not only was it one of the founding documents agreed at the first meeting of the Dáil, it was also the basis for an appeal for support for Irish independence by leading Irish trade unionists at the international socialist movement gathered in Berne, Switzerland in February of 1919.

What emerged following the events of 1916–22 was a bitterly divided country and the establishment of socially conservative administrations in Northern Ireland and in the Irish Free State. Failure to implement radical social change as well as to establish a strong native industrial sector in what was to become the Republic of Ireland delayed the economic transformation that could have happened much earlier and, in a way, that better vindicated fundamental human rights. In large part, the Democratic Programme remained an aspiration rather than a programme of action to transform society.

In the recent past, the inherent weaknesses in native Irish capitalism have been exposed. We have emerged from a bruising experience of recession, banking collapse and reduced living standards. While many have benefited from a recovery in employment and wages, others remain mired in poverty and precarious work.

With Brexit, all bets are off when it comes to the future of economic and political relationships within and between the islands of Ireland and Great Britain. The Belfast Agreement3 of 1998 is under threat. The all-island economy – fragile as it has been – is precarious, with Northern Ireland particularly vulnerable. Austerity has not gone away and the slow erosion of its manufacturing base has chipped away at community morale.

Three times in my lifetime, so far, a boom in incomes, prices and living standards has been followed by a major downturn. The consequences were devastating for many hundreds of thousands of people forced to subsist on poverty incomes or seek work abroad. The choice from here on is not between ‘stability’ on the one hand and ‘chaos’ on the other but between continuing with the same policies that have characterised Ireland over the last fifty years or taking a radically different direction based on lessons learned from other small Northern European societies.

We must find an ‘Irish way’ that breaks free of the shackles of overdependence on foreign capital and no longer models itself on the neo-liberal approach which has seen an erosion in equality, public service and labour rights. In particular, the model of social and economic development in Northern Ireland is not sufficient to raise standards of living, redistribute wealth and heal the wounds of sectarian conflict over many generations. We need a new departure.

Had the Republic of Ireland adopted a Norwegian approach to natural resources it could have harnessed these resources and built a strong economic position apart from the EU as Norway did from the 1970s onwards. But it is far from certain that the potential of gas and oil finds up to the present time would have provided a sufficient buffer for the Republic of Ireland to survive outside the EU. We would have needed an alternative model or strategy that was not available then and is unlikely to emerge any time soon.

We must look forward in decades and not just a few years to the next political event or election. Let us cast the net out to the middle of the century: only 30 years away, short enough to permit us to mark out a realistic strategy and vision within a manageable time scale roughly equivalent to a generation and long enough to allow for the necessary sea change in political and institutional culture.

Although this book focuses on social and economic change within Ireland, we should not forget the importance of solidarity at a global level. Climate change, poverty, migration and human rights concern everyone around the world. Ireland is in the top group of countries in terms of gross domestic product (GDP) per capita, giving us a moral duty to show leadership and initiative in promoting human and labour rights, fair trade, investment and overseas aid.

We need to change the language and thinking around ‘economic growth’. What matters is sustainable human development across a range of domains encompassing nutrition, health, education and work. Growth, captured in a narrow statistical concept such as GDP, must become a secondary public policy goal subservient to other measures that reflect the quality of economic activity. In the first, discarded draft of the Democratic Programme, Johnson wrote: ‘The Irish Republic shall always count its wealth and prosperity by the measure of health and happiness of its citizens.’ If only this sentence has been left in! And if only social policy in the following decades put as much emphasis on promoting and measuring health and happiness as on GDP.

We have no clear idea of how the world will look beyond 2020 – although we can assume that it will be hotter on average, especially if the limited and under-ambitious climate change targets are further undermined by the new politics of the US. What we can be sure of is that there will be further recessions or significant slowdowns and that the environmental and social pressure of millions escaping war, terror, droughts, famines and persecution will not abate but increase.

Populist and far-right forces can build all the hard borders, walls and controls they like but nothing will stop those desperate enough to risk their lives aboard flimsy boats in rough seas or locked up in containers. They have nothing to lose, just like the millions of Europeans – including many Irish – during the eighteenth and nineteenth century who made the hazardous journey by sea to the New World. Well-managed migration is of benefit to a host country generating diversity, dissemination of new ideas and social innovation.

This book is divided into three parts and ten chapters, starting with an analysis of what can be learned from recent Irish economic history. From there, in Part II, I outline a vision for Ireland as part of a Europe in transition. Part III suggests new ideas and approaches resulting from a long overdue debate. The reader is invited to contribute to this debate with friends, colleagues and family members.

PART I

HOW WE GOT HERE

1

Why the Model Failed

The story as it unfolded over the last century

Those who do not learn from the past are doomed to repeat it, as Winston Churchill once said. Although partition in 1922 marked out two separate jurisdictions, it did little to help economic development. Excessive external dependence and the lack of a vibrant domestic political and economic culture left the entire island in a position of peripheral vulnerability, dogged by sectarian politics in Northern Ireland and the lack of a progressive social vision in the Irish Free State. In the years following partition, the Democratic Programme of 1919 remained a curious tract full of pious aspirations, its commitment to the nation’s children, for example, remaining largely unfulfilled even today.

Ireland minus its north-east corner in the early twentieth century had more in common with the economic landscape of the mid-nineteenth century than 2019.4 Partition created divergent economic histories reflecting the politics of industrialisation. A vibrant and confident new economy flourished in the Republic of Ireland, driven largely by foreign direct investment in the 1960s, while Northern Ireland remained heavily UK focussed. Service industries replaced declining manufacturing industries. The period of the Troubles (1968–98) further stimulated public service growth as many external firms were reluctant to locate or invest in Northern Ireland.

In the 1930s, the new Irish Free State adopted a major focus on native manufacturing enterprise, protected behind tariff walls and supported by a network of finance, advice and supply chains. New semi-state companies drove economic activity. This process of ‘enterprise behind the walls’ reached its height in the 1950s. It was considered a failure by the late 1950s. Economic policy in the Republic of Ireland swung from extreme protectionism to an outward-looking strategy based on tax competition, grant-aid and preparation for entry to the European Economic Community (EEC). Membership of the EEC in 1973 for both parts of the island marked a moment as historic and significant as the decision by the United Kingdom (UK) in 2016, to leave the European Union.

The dismantling of many features of the Western European post-war settlement from 1980 onwards – first in the UK and then gradually across what was then the European Community – represented another important moment with far-reaching consequences. Gone or substantially diminished in the UK were a range of post-war attainments, including protection for labour, universal social goods free at the point of use and the existence of a significant commercial state enterprise economy encompassing key utilities and parts of banking and manufacturing. Added to these trends was an almost universal dismantling of many of the regulatory controls on banking as well as restrictions on international capital flows in the name of free movement of finance capital. This huge social shift in Europe, the UK and the Republic of Ireland was a profoundly regressive counter-reform with consequences that went far beyond most people’s understanding or expectations in the late 1970s or early 1980s.

By the beginning of this century the Republic of Ireland had become one of the most open economies in Europe (as measured by the relative size of imports and exports in total output). The impact of the recession of 2008 was modified by the relative strength of existing and new inward investment. The construction sector, along with retail, were the first to suffer the initial shock. The problem then was not the foreign multinational sector itself but the weakness of the domestic sector to sufficiently take advantage of the ‘green shoots’ of growth from 2013 onwards. Moreover, the continuing reliance on foreign investment before, during and after the recession does not constitute a sustainable plan.

While the success of the Republic of Ireland’s economy can be credited to international factors, internal policy choices have also made a difference (Healy and Slowey, 2006). Not least of significance in this mix was the success of sustained investment in the secondary and tertiary levels of education in the period 1968–2000, which laid many of the foundations for future economic success. This looked very appealing until the crash of 2008. So appealing was it, in fact, that many of the European Union new accession states, which joined the EU in 2004, sent delegations of academics and public servants to study the success of the Irish model.

Prior to 2008 the Republic of Ireland was formally compliant with EU fiscal rules in relation to the government deficit and the overall level of debt. Public expenditure did increase rapidly, but from what had been a low base. In the run-up to the crash of 2008 the Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) published two landmark books entitled Bust to Boom: the Irish Experience of Growth and Inequality (2000) and Best of Times?The Social Impact of the Celtic Tiger (2007). Concerns were signalled by some economists, including those at the ESRI, that a large asset bubble was forming and would not last. Even so, the term ‘soft landing’ was invoked as the most probable outcome once growth slowed down. Nobody could have predicted such a sharp decline in GDP, a rapid and catastrophic collapse in the Irish banking system and an escalating fiscal crisis as revenues stopped or slowed down. It was a perfect storm and in a matter of months the Republic of Ireland went from being a poster child of liberal economic policies to a complete economic failure where, by 2010, international lenders no longer had any confidence in Irish financial institutions or in the solvency of the Irish sovereign. This followed the sovereign’s socialisation of an enormous amount of private debt, much of it ultimately foreign related. The intervention of the Troika (the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund) in late 2010 paved the way for prolongation of fiscal austerity and many problematic social reforms.

The Republic of Ireland recovered gradually from 2012, due in no small part to the buoyant nature of the foreign sector as well as more benign conditions in global markets. However, the pace of economic recovery was driven by a slow recovery in demand and employment in the large domestic economy. A significant facilitating factor in global and therefore Irish economic recovery was the positive role of UK and US administrations in undertaking monetary and fiscal stabilisation measures in the earliest years of the economic downturn (mainly in 2009 and 2010). A gradual return in capital market confidence in Irish sovereign bond issues was helped by large-scale purchases by the extraordinarily influential fund manager Michael Hasenstab in the summer of 2011. He took a huge risk on low-value Irish government bonds on the secondary markets and it paid back handsomely some years later.

It is misleading to claim that the whole of the Republic of Ireland was living beyond its means in the years leading up to the crisis of 2008. The public sector was close to balance in the years prior to the crash and went into significant deficit only after the economic collapse. The Irish balance sheet recession was amplified, for a time, by excessive fiscal austerity and an expenditure-loaded fiscal austerity strategy.5

The impact of recession in Northern Ireland was less severe than in the Republic of Ireland. There was a particular spillover from the sharp downturn in construction on both sides of the border. The overall impact of the global recession was less partly due to UK-wide considerations including stimulus spending and monetary easing.6 Also, the strength of public spending and employment in Northern Ireland provided a certain buffer against the adverse effects of a collapse in external and internal demand. Nevertheless, the collapse in construction activity did have particularly adverse spillover impacts in Northern Ireland as evidenced by a relatively large fall in property prices compared to other UK regions.

The economy of Northern Ireland remains embedded in a large UK market where it avails of economies of scale, significant fiscal transfers from the UK government and unified regulatory and pricing structures for many lines of economic activity. Its degree of integration with Great Britain is much stronger, economically, than is the case with the Republic of Ireland, although particular sectors such as agri-food – as well as small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) – are relatively more integrated in the all-island economy of Ireland. In common with northern regions of the UK, Northern Ireland suffered a deficit in productivity only partially ameliorated by fiscal transfers that reduced the gap in living standards across the UK.

David Begg (2016, p. 202) reminds us that, ‘In the 90 years or so since independence Ireland has looked into the abyss of economic destruction four times.’ It is unlikely that there will be only four such occasions: we have yet to encounter the fifth abyss. The one constant theme in recent Irish economic history is that of external over-reliance coupled with a weak internal and domestically owned enterprise base.

An overdependence on external support

A large-scale dependence on inward investment and export share, especially in leading sectors such as pharmaceuticals and IT services, leaves the economy highly exposed to sudden downturns or medium-term trends in investment location.

A noticeable feature of economic development in both parts of Ireland has been a consistent failure by domestically owned enterprises to seize a commanding position in generating economic growth, innovation and export performance. The result has been a lopsided reliance on foreign direct investment in the case of the Republic of Ireland and, in the case of Northern Ireland, a high dependence on public service employment and direct financial contributions from the UK government. Some foreign direct investment activity – particularly in the Republic of Ireland – has involved a high degree of ‘re-exporting’ where companies buy most of their inputs from abroad (frequently other branches or subsidiaries of the same international company) and then export the bulk of what is produced. In these cases, there is often a limited linkage to local producer supply chains.

Nevertheless, large-scale inward investment by foreign multinationals has brought a welcome flow of additional investment and revenue as well as income and employment. Continuation of such investment is highly dependent on the medium-term location decisions of large multinational companies. But while some manufacturing plants and IT services are here for the foreseeable future, we cannot be sure how developments such as Brexit, for example, will impact on location decisions of some major international players.

US tax policy as well as continuing pressure in the EU for a common consolidated tax base (CCTB) indicates that the opposition by the Irish government and some other EU member states to reform in this area is not tenable. CCTB is a proposal to create a single set of rules to calculate corporate tax liability across member states. The strong preference of many EU states is to base tax liability on where profits and sales accrue. The proposal for an EU digital tax envisages that profits of digital companies are taxed where revenues accrue rather than where profits are booked for the purposes of avoiding the payment of corporate tax.

Indeed, a bargain may yet be sought on EU support for Ireland on the detail of a long-term Brexit transition in return for greater flexibility on CCTB, support for an EU digital tax and related matters. There is also a long-term reputational concern for governments to work together to regulate corporate activities and ensure that multinationals are not taking advantage of loopholes or targeted tax measures to relocate parts of their activity in various parts of the world. The use of such measures as ‘knowledge boxes’7 are dubious in this respect.