I signed up to a website called NewsNow (HERE). It summarises news stories from the press on the topics you choose. I check stories on Brexit, the Irish border and the customs union. The site obviously doesn't cover every press or media outlet but you tend to get a balanced selection of pro and anti Brexit stories. However, what is noticeable is the sheer number of completely lunatic pro Brexit stories from the Daily Express.
The Express isn't a newspaper I regard as serious. Let's be honest, it's a joke as far as serious news coverage is concerned but it still has a significant on-line readership although the print circulation is falling and was down to 364,000 in January this year.
It's readers, if they rely solely on The Daily Express, exist in a different world. Different even to the readers of The Mail or The Telegraph or The Sun and that says something.
Take this one about a Scottish UKIP MEP, David Corburn (HERE). The report says the MEP has issued a "GRIM warning" to the "Eurocrats delaying Brexit deal". :-
Mr Coburn suggested the European Union would have "a problem with employment throughout Europe" unless the bloc's negotiating team agrees to a deal with Britain.
Speaking to RT UK [Russia Today], Mr Coburn said: "They want us to be their friends, we’re the fifth largest economy in the world, they must be insane to declare economic war on the fifth largest economy right next to Europe.
"In terms to our links to the Commonwealth – which we will be renewing and engaging with even more – they are making war to the entire Anglosphere which on itself has the largest GDP than the European Union and that doesn’t include our former colony, the United States – also part of the Anglosphere."
The implication is that somehow, through renewing our links with the Commonwealth, we will either be able to help or hinder EU trade with our former colonies. Well, let's look at how much trade the EU does with India, the largest of these markets.
In 2016, the EU in total exported $39,669,564,591 to India (about $40 billion). Our contribution was $3.8 billion. Germany did $11.5 billion. Belgium did $7.5 billion and Italy did $3.8 billion. In other words 90% of India's imports from the EU came from countries other than the UK.
You can easily check this in the trade statistics for India (HERE). Oh, and incidentally, India's largest trading partner by far was "our former colony" the USA from whom they imported a little over $20 billion but exported $41 billion.
The world has moved on but Mr Corburn and the Daily Express haven't. We no longer have any influence on Commonwealth or Anglosphere trade. The British Empire has long gone. As for Eurocrats delaying the Brexit deal - where has he been?
He also talks about the EU "declaring economic war" on the fifth largest economy (the UK) - actually we were the sixth as the PM admitted in March last year (HERE Hansard column 392) - but he neglected to say the EU was the largest economy at $18.9 trillion. India will overtake us shortly and we will then be the seventh largest. To paraphrase Spike Milligan, a great little economy and getting smaller all the time, thanks to Brexit.
