There is speculation that if May is jettisoned, David Davis could become a caretaker leader to get us through Brexit. Tories should be very careful. He wrote an article in The Daily Mail (HERE) last week giving his current thoughts on Brexit. If there was anybody left in this country in any doubt about his total unsuitability to do paid work of any kind the article should convince them. One has to read it and be amazed to learn he was the former Secretary of State at DEXEU.
I suppose we ought to be grateful that he resigned when he did, but worried that he is now going public with his idiocy and he could actually become PM, shocking though it is.
This is what passes for thinking in the Davis mind:
"....the Prime Minister appeared to tacitly endorse the idea of extending the Brexit implementation period beyond December 2020. That, in effect, would delay Brexit by another year for no apparent gain".
Nobody believes the 21 month "implementation period" will be anywhere near long enough to negotiate a free trade deal and it will have to be extended - whatever happens - and probably by much more than one year. Davis is still in denial about how long these things take.
"In the event of no deal, our currency would adjust, making EU goods such as German cars about one third more expensive than before 2016 – leading to a drop of German car sales to the UK of about a third".
This is an admission that the price of things is going to increase after Brexit due to currency shifts. If German car prices increase by a third, of which 10% is tariffs, it means most other imported goods, will increase by 20% or so. Daily Mail readers may not have noticed, perhaps under the illusion that only German car makers will be affected, rather than the buyers of everything imported into this country.
And as somebody pointed out, of BMW's global output only 9.8% comes to the UK, so a fall of a third will mean a drop of 3.3% - hardly a disaster for them. In the event of no deal, BMW might also close or reduce the size of the Mini plant in Oxford but he ignores that.
"We already know that any aggressive threats of discrimination against our goods and services would be illegal under World Trade Organisation rules (and indeed Article 8 of the EU’s Lisbon Treaty!)"
The EU will not (indeed cannot) discriminate against our goods but this doesn't mean trade will carry on as before as he appears to imply. We will be treated exactly as any other third country which means tariffs, Rules of Origin checks, SPS checks and a whole host of extra paperwork that we didn't have before. Exports of products of animal origin to the EU will fall to zero from day one until we are approved as a third country supplier, a process that takes at least six months - long enough to put most Welsh sheep farmers out of business.
"Neither should we forget that, in the event of no deal, there are forces we can unleash to kick-start our economy. British companies have cash reserves of £613 billion. Investment of just three per cent of that is equivalent to £18 billion, or one per cent of GDP. Getting UK companies to spend this in the next two years while Brexit takes effect would help provide a sharp increase in British growth, productivity, employment and wage levels. This would encourage UK companies to invest here rather than elsewhere".
"So there is a strong case for increased investment tax incentives for the first two years after Brexit Day to encourage UK businesses to invest in Britain. There are other taxation measures we can take to stimulate the economy".
Davis doesn't explain what is stopping us "kick-starting" or "stimulating" our economy now. The inference is that the EU is blocking us by some directive or other. The truth is we could have done this at any time in or out of the EU. And boosting the supply side of your economy at the same time as erecting barriers to the demand from your biggest customer seems totally contradictory.
"A brighter future needs smart regulation, not deregulation, and global standards, not EU standards, to make us more competitive. Any problems will be short-term. We should not be deterred from transforming the UK into a global trading power".
Probably because he doesn't know, Davis fails to explain what the difference is between global and EU standards, often they are exactly the same thing. How we will be transformed into a global trading power without complying with EU standards is one of life's mysterys. Germany is already a global trading power inside the EU.
As Sir Ivan Rogers said in his Cambridge speech:
"But core Brexit advocates [i.e. Davis] also believe, bizarrely, that in the one area the EU HAS genuine superpower capabilities - the regulatory and trade domain which we were central to building via the Single Market project - it will not exercise its superpower muscles when dealing with us as a former member".
Time and again, Brexiteers like Davis overestimate the UK's global power. We cannot create our own standards and the EU, which will continue to be our biggest export market, are not going to accept our "smart" regulations, particularly if they confer an advantage which their manufacturers don't have. It is fantasy writ large.
Davis has a lot of bluster but not much in the way of hard truths. He is the last person we need to lead us. We are approaching the time for clear thinking and realism. Davis has neither.
