I watched some of the debate in parliament on the impact of Brexit on the economy yesterday. It was depressing stuff. You are struck by the poor quality of our present cohort of MPs. I left Secondary Modern school aged 15 with no qualifications yet I do not see men or women in the House that I would feel I had to look up to intellectually. We are not well served at the moment.
As a lifelong Conservative (until 2017) it was enlightening, if rather sad, to see that virtually all of the contributions made from the Tory benches amounted to nothing more a lot of recycled hot air and wilful fantasy while those on the Labour side were models of realism and good sense. What a fool I've been.
John Baron is one of those serial Conservative Europhobes and ardent Brexiteer. He spoke in the debate and tabled an amendment giving the UK the right to unilaterally pull out of the backstop. It has no chance of being accepted by the EU27 whatever parliament decides so it was a complete waste of time anyway. His thing is being able to sign free trade deals outside the EU and almost anything which gets to this goal is okay with him. He would accept the deal if only the backstop wasn't in it. This is his contribution:
"Some saw Brexit as a problem to be managed, but it should have been an opportunity to be seized. I believe that that opportunity is still there. We have the prospect of trade deals around the world, and we do prefer constructive trade deals to WTO terms—of course we do. We also have the opportunity of introducing an immigration system that no longer discriminates against the rest of the world outside Europe—we currently have to sign up to such a system as members of the EU" (HERE - 2:41pm)
It's puzzling what benefit he sees in foregoing the relationship with the EU, our nearest and largest export market, in exchange for some yet to be negotiated trade deals with faraway countries. I had a look at Mr Baron's Wikipedia entry to see what it was in his background that caused him to think so. Was he in manufacturing with a long and proud record of producing world class goods of some kind, exporting them around the world? Was there something that allowed him to see things that I can't or haven't after a lifetime in industry both here and in Europe?
The answer I am afraid is no. He was in the army and then a merchant banker with Rothschilds.
"After university, Baron was commissioned into the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers on 3 January 1984 as a second lieutenant (on probation). His commission was confirmed and he was promoted to lieutenant with seniority from 8 August 1984.
"On 3 January 1988, he transferred to the Regular Army Reserve of Officers. This signalled the end of his military career but he remained liable to call up. He resigned his commission on 1 June 1997.
"In 1987, he became a merchant banker: working as a fund manager then director of Henderson Private Investors Ltd (later Henderson Global Investors) and Rothschild Asset Management".
I assume the British army offered courses in merchant banking at the time. We live in strange enough times don't we?
This intrigued me so I begain to check on one or two more wildly pro-Brexit MPs who spoke in the debate:
Sir David Evennett talked about 'looking beyond Europe' where there are 'trade deals to be done'. He was firstly a teacher and then an insurance broker so not much industrial experience there.
Up then came the odious Sir Christopher Chope who was a barrister and then council leader in Wandsworth. He harked back to the PMs oft repeated mantra "that no deal would be better than a bad deal".
Bill Wiggin told the House that "the default position is trading on World Trade Organisation terms—no deal, or a clean global Brexit, as it should be known". The mad keen Brexiteer was a platoon commander in the Territorial Army and then a foreign exchange trader. The man with zero experience of industry, manufacturing or trade told the near empty chamber:
"People who say that that would be a disaster—the consensus on the Opposition Benches is that it might be—are, generally speaking, people with whom I disagree, usually because they are wrong. Our exports to countries with which we trade on WTO terms have grown three times faster than our trade with EU countries since the 1990s. We currently run a surplus on our trade with our biggest national export market, the United States. By contrast, we run a deficit on our trade with European single market partners"
What he didn't say is that Germany runs an even larger surplus with the USA but aren't daft enough to want to leave the EU to increase it. WTO terms are the way to boost your export trade in Wigginworld. I wonder if he's told Liam Fox? Incidentally, we don't trade with any country solely on WTO terms but that's what we would have to do in a 'clean global Brexit'. Wiggin is quite mad.
The oddly youthful looking William Wragg said that, "Leaving the European Union is not a matter of left or right, Labour or Conservative; it is about a sovereign United Kingdom having the confidence to govern itself. It is as simple and—dare I say it?—as noble and beautiful as that".
Wragg, born in 1987, and obviously with no experience of life pre-EU, was a primary school teacher and then a case worker for a Tory MP so his knowledge of industry is basically zero. I hope his constituents thrown out of work because of problems with EU trade find life just as noble and beautiful after Brexit as he does. He can perhaps expound more on his theory when he meets them at the food bank.
What this made me realise is that the less you know about our lack of competitiveness the better. To be a true Brexiteer you need to be completely ignorant about the real state of the great British trade machine. You need to believe that UK business really is held back by EU regulation, rather that being propped up by European know-how and investment. When exports begin to falter as foreign investment goes elsewhere they may realise that ignorance is not always bliss.
