Select Committee hears Britain's Brexit woes

The Business and Trade Select Committee heard evidence about the ongoing impacts of Brexit from various stakeholders on Tuesday. It served to reawaken and reinforce everything we knew and know about the disastrous impact Brexit has had on UK-EU trade. Liam Byrne’s committee members heard from the RHA, Associated British Ports, UK Steel, a Haulier specialising in chilled and frozen meat, the NFU, the TUC, CBI, National Grid and Airbus. Nobody had a good word for Brexit or had seen any benefits from the reset announced last May. It was a catalogue of delays, extra costs, increased paperwork, bureaucracy, lost exports, and inefficiency. Byrne described it as a World of pain. 

The Farage clause

It’s being reported, and not denied, that the EU is demanding a clause in the agreement being negotiated for an SPS agreement to reduce border checks, that Britain will compensate the Bloc if Farage becomes PM and tears up the deal, as he is very likely to do. The amount they want to receive if we pull out is £4.7 billion, which is the amount Brussels paid out to member states affected by Brexit to allow them to build and staff new border posts. UK diplomats say this is normal in international agreements, and we will get money if the EU withdraw.  I think it might be normal in commercial contracts, but not in intergovernmental agreements. It smacks of suspicion and lack of trust.

Trump is turning the world into a 'den of thieves'

The world has completed a 180-degree geopolitical U-turn in my lifetime, with most of the rotation coming in the last year under Donald Trump. I was born just after the Second World War, when the US was helping to prosecute the appalling war crimes of the Nazi leaders in Nuremberg. America was then  on the side of democracy, the rule of law, peace and justice, along with Britain and most of the free world. This week, things have reached such a state that German President Frank Walter Steinmeier felt the need to give a speech in which he talked about America, Germany's most important ally, having “broken with the values it helped to create.”

Helios Solar Farm

I wrote about the Helios Renewable Energy Project back on 7 December, and you may have noticed reports in the local and national press that there are moves afoot to challenge the decision via a judicial review (JR). I don’t hold out much hope, but I do support the effort. The odds are heavily stacked against objectors. You have just six weeks after the very lengthy and detailed recommendation report plus the long decision letter by the Secretary of State have been published, to go through the decision, find some potential ground for the JR, enlist the help of the legal profession and raise thousands of pounds to fund it all.  It is quite a task, next to impossible. 

Trump's Maduro problem

So now we know why Trump launched an attack on Venezuela on Saturday morning. He snatched President Nicolás Maduro Moros and his wife from a secure compound in Caracas in what looks like a textbook operation involving multiple ships and 150 aircraft. Goodness knows how much it all cost. Anyway, Maduro and his wife are now being held in some New York prison with an indictment published accusing him of drug smuggling offences and "possession of machine guns and destructive devices." But, Trump’s Maduro problems are just beginning.

Trump attacks Venezuela

Trump, the man who was desperate to get a Nobel Peace Prize a few weeks ago, seems to have launched a war on Venezuela this morning. The BBC are reporting explosions in and around the capital, Caracas. The man elected to get America out of wars and who claims to have stopped eight so far, is now starting new ones. He attacked seven different countries in 2025. The extrajudicial killing of around 100 men in small boats off the coast of Venezuela has now expanded into a full-scale military assault. We still don’t know the extent of it, or what targets were hit, but I think it’s pretty clear this isn’t just one strike. This is just days after threatening Iran with military intervention. Trump has now gone totally crazy. 

A Brexiters lament

Some things are calculated to drive us remainers absolutely barmy. You stumble across them occasionally, don't you? A Brexiter writes something so mind-numbingly stupid that you can hardly believe the words came out of the mind of a functioning human being. For me, the latest came in an article in The Critic by Eliot Wilson. Mr Wilson, admits to being an advocate of Brexit before Brexit became a thing. He decided being in EU was bad for us when he was at Oxford University in the 1990s. He is that rare beast. An educated Brexit supporter. Which means he’s actually thought about it and come to the bizarre conclusion that it's a benefit. Which demonstrates that Oxford isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.

More calls for UK to rejoin the EU customs union

I took a break from posting on this blog over the Christmas period, and I may not be able to post as much in the New Year. I’ve been working on this blog since 2017. This is the 3,350th published post. But, I’ve other things that I’m working on, and it’s difficult to find the time to do it all. In some ways, it’s been a frustrating eight years. Brexit was never going to produce all (in fact, none) of the promised treasure, as we knew in 2016. Remainers have been proven right, time and time again.  It has been a long experiment that has now comprehensively failed. Unfortunately, hope is always the last thing to die, and among the Brexiters it still clings on.

Trump's lawsuit is a self made disaster for the president

The BBC’s US legal team, in the defamation suit Trump filed in Florida a few days ago, has put the knuckledusters on. The unstable 'genius' has jumped out of the frying pan into the fire while simultaneously shooting himself in both feet. There will soon be his most humiliating climb down ever, heavily disguised as magnanimity or a great win. But it will be a massive climb down without a doubt. The Mirror has the story of how the corporation’s lawyers will be demanding discovery (the handing over of documents, messages, phone records, etc) about what he was doing around 6 January 2021.They will also depose him, that is get him to face questions under oath, even before the case gets to court.

BBC to defend itself against Trump

I’m pleased to see the BBC have decided to defend Trump’s defamation lawsuit. I didn’t think they would, but credit to them, they have been very clear about it. A former controller of BBC Radio, Mark Damazer, said it would be "extremely damaging to the BBC's reputation not to fight the case". He told Radio 4’s Today programme: “This is about the BBC's independence and, unlike American media organisations which have coughed up the money, the BBC doesn't have commercial business interests that depend on President Trump's beneficence in the White House.” A spokesman for the corporation said they would not comment further on the legal action.