The fat, useless bag of wind who was foreign secretary until yesterday afternoon has resigned. I would like to say it's good to see the back of him, but I'm not sure that's true since he normally has his shirt flap or sometimes his a**e hanging out of his trousers. He has been a national embarrassment stumbling across the world stage like a character in a Brian Rix farce for much too long. People aren't even laughing anymore and his departure is well overdue.
His resignation letter and Theresa May's reply is (HERE). I think Max Hastings, former Telegraph editor, has described Boris Johnson as a man of extraordinary talents who lacks any sort of principle or scruple and I think that's right. Someone else in The Guardian described him as a man with a second class mind and a first class ego.
He has never understood or even tried to understand the EU, what it is and what it does. His comments about the truck windows that he wanted to change as Mayor of London is wrong anyway (HERE) and the rules on truck bodies are from the UNECE and not the EU at all as explained HERE. BoJo is still railing against the wrong body.
He has never understood or even tried to understand the EU, what it is and what it does. His comments about the truck windows that he wanted to change as Mayor of London is wrong anyway (HERE) and the rules on truck bodies are from the UNECE and not the EU at all as explained HERE. BoJo is still railing against the wrong body.
Yet, his resignation was mainly over the common rule book (HERE), the regulatory alignment that business in this country is desperate for but which the former foreign secretary doesn't understand and thinks is somehow holding us back. What would put the handbrake on the economy is to have different regulations to the EU.
He seems to think it a matter of national prestige to have our own unique standards, simply so we can claim to be a sovereign state. Don't worry about being out of step or reducing trade or increasing costs and complexity for business. Just celebrate the fact that our standards are not European. There is no advantage - except they're different - because, well because we must be different. It makes no sense whatsoever. Who is going to make special trucks for us?
The EU have enormous regulatory gravity, even to the extent that world standards are often EU standards. To imagine we can escape that gravity is a fantasy. Inside the EU we can shape the rules, outside we will almost certainly have to adopt them with no influence at all. Johnson says we will be "a colony of the EU" unless we go for a hard Brexit. But we will be in that position whatever happens. Sticking with EU rules will do the least damage to trade and help to keep the Irish border open and trucks flowing smoothly through Dover. I cannot see the problem, yet both Davis and Johnson think it a resigning matter apparently.
For Davis this might just be true, although others might believe he is deserting his post now as the extent of the real problems are becoming clear and regulatory alignment is just an excuse. But BoJo doesn't really have any principled objections to anything and has seized an opportunity to get himself out of a job he was plainly unsuited to and at the same time become a rallying point on the backbenches for the Brexiteers.
"The Brexit dream is dying", he writes but it wasn't a dream, more of a fantasy that he helped to bring life into during the campaign.
Matthew Parris was on Newsnight last night and said each side of the Conservative party had a fatal problem. For Brexiteers there is no majority in cabinet, in parliament or in the country for the hard Brexit they want. For remainers, the third way outlined by the Chequers agreement would be infinitely worse than what we enjoy now as a member of the EU. I think this is a fair summary.
In essence, we are giving up a seat on the board of directors of EU plc, to become a sole trade and minor sub contractor to it. We might be more sovereign but we will still rely on the EU but have no influence over what it does or how it might impact us. We will gain control of the sub contractor but lose influence of the larger events that shape the environment we are operating in.
