Turkeys don't vote for Christmas. Of course this is only a general rule, to which there are always exceptions. I'm sure sometimes in the past the odd turkey thought rumours about what happened at Christmas were just scaremongering. With this in mind let me turn to Charlie Elphicke, Conservative MP for Dover and keen Brexiteer. In July 2017, he produced a 50 page report (HERE) with the title: "Ready on day one". It was supremely optimistic, reading like a script for a film by DreamWorks, complete with a lot of CGI. In Elphickeworld, Britain would have everything prepared for Brexit by March 30th next year, looking smugly across The Channel at the disorganised EU.
Oh dear! How different things look a year later. Sky News have a copy of reports by Dover District Council and Kent County Council painting an utterly woeful picture (HERE) of government preparations for Brexit.
In July last year, Elphicke said, "If on day one no trade deal has been agreed, Britain must be fully prepared. This means planning for the transition now" and "The M20 lorry park must be progressed urgently and delivered on schedule" with "on schedule" meaning March 2019. The lorry park won't even be submitted for planning permission until 2019 and it won't be ready until 2023 "at the earliest". The first planning application was pulled after opposition from local residents. They didn't want immigrants in 2016 but lorry parks are even less popular. And this isn't the worst example, the council's are desperately worried about all sorts of things, and let's not forget, they are Tory run.
They include the fact that the Port Health Authority don't have powers "to physically stop vehicles"; that officials "in the main are blind as to what is entering the port"; the layout of the port means there is "nothing to stop vehicles leaving" Dover; there are "inadequate facilities to inspect and store food" and "no facilities to park vehicles waiting for examination" plus shortage of workers, uncertainty about funding and dozens of other issues.
Elphicke himself is now quoted (HERE) saying, the report underlined the case for investment in border infrastructure and roads, adding, "The government has not done enough to prepare in the two years since the EU referendum." It's all somebody else's fault see.
He complains of lack of preparation but the DCC report clearly says:
However, despite these [government position papers] (and a significant body of speculative research on Brexit), there is unlikely to be sufficient detail available for councils to take a more informed view until the following is known:
• The nature of the deal to leave the EU,
• Our future trading relationship both with the EU and the rest of the world, and
• The criteria for the Shared Prosperity Fund, intended in part to re-purpose the UK’s former EU contributions
• The criteria for the Shared Prosperity Fund, intended in part to re-purpose the UK’s former EU contributions
In other words, they can't plan until they know what to plan FOR! This is how Kent Live sees it (HERE). All good stuff if you're the local MP I'm sure. So, you see some turkeys actually do vote for Christmas.
By the way, when the government announced Operation Brock, the plan to manage Kent's roads in the event of problems at the Channel ports to replace the old Operation Stack, they said it was not connected with Brexit. Now it turns out Brock stands for Brexit Operations Across Kent!
Faisal Islam, Sky's political editor, writes (HERE) about the problems at Dover and links to the full DCC report (HERE). Coincidentally, a day or so before, the Road Haulage Association (RHA) published an absolutely blistering report (HERE) about the same issues at Dover in which RHA chief Executive Richard Burnett said:
“The Dover Strait handles 10,000 lorries each day and processing them through the port is currently seamless.
“The Dover Strait handles 10,000 lorries each day and processing them through the port is currently seamless.
“The stark reality is that if customs controls are put in place, it will take an average of about 45 minutes to process one truck on both sides of the channel. If that happens then the queues of HGVs in Kent will make the jams seen in the summer of 2015 appear as little more than waiting for the traffic lights to change.”
"In March this year Transport Secretary Chris Grayling MP said: “We will maintain a free-flowing border at Dover, we will not impose checks at the port, it is utterly unrealistic to do so. We don't check lorries now, we're not going to be checking lorries in the future. I’m clear that it cannot happen.”
And Mr Burnett then asks the obvious, "But what about the French?
"If they put customs processes in place in March 2019 to check all lorries travelling between the UK and the EU, hauliers will be faced with the prospect of coming over to the UK and having to wait for days – even weeks, before they can return home. This will be a huge deterrent to them making the journey at all".
Pascal Lamy (HERE) the former WTO Director General told Ireland recently to prepare for the worst and in the most telling comment said, "If you exit the internal market you have to have a border." "So the notion that there would be no border is pie in the sky,". This was in the context of Ireland but it also has big implications for Dover. There is the mistaken belief we can exit the single market and the CU and somehow maintain the same frictionless trade through Dover. We can't. As Lamy says, it's pie in the sky.
An unnamed senior cabinet minister is now saying that a no deal exit could spark a recession (HERE). I love the use of the word "could" but it's enough to send The Sun into paroxysms of fury!
What will they be saying next March?
