Our MP Nigel Adams published his New Year Westminster Update in the local paper last week, which you can read HERE. After a short preamble he gets on to the main topic, which is Brexit. As a junior minister he is bound to follow the government line but I note he doesn't actually say if he thinks the PM's deal is a good one or not. In fact he seems to deliberately steer clear of making any comment on the deal itself.
There are a few statements in the epistle that are worth recording for future use. For example:
"For the avoidance of doubt, the Government has been clear that Article 50 will not be withdrawn"
"A further referendum is not needed as the public have already spoken"
"The Withdrawal Agreement will see the UK take back control of its laws, borders and money. It will mean an end to free movement, the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice coming to a close and vast budget payments to the EU ending once and for all"
"from March this year [2019] we will also be out of the Common Agricultural Policy and the Common Fisheries Policy".
"In the Political Declaration, which has already been agreed by both sides...."
"It is important to deliver the referendum result in full, and I do not believe this should or will come at the expense of the UK's long term prosperity".
He may have spoken too soon on the possible withdrawal of Article 50 and the second referendum and I am not even sure why he thinks we will leave the CAP and the CFP this year. This will only happen if we exit catastrophically without a deal. If we get a transition period we may technically be out of both policies - but it won't feel like it. We will be in but without any means of influencing anything at all.
And he doesn't "believe" Brexit will come at the expense of our long term prosperity. This is mostly at odds with his own government's forecast which is that we will be worse off under every Brexit scenario up to 2033 (HERE page 16) - on WTO terms this would be up to 10.3% of GDP, roughly £200 billion.
As for the Political Declaration being "agreed by both sides" it is only an agreement to try and reach an agreement and has no legal standing whatsoever.
I notice he is using statistics from PwC (one of the big accountancy firms), Forbes (an American magazine for the wealthy investor) and the 90% growth outside the EU is a European Central Bank estimate. He doesn't use any figures from his own government. Amazing. I assume it's because they are too gloomy.
We shall see how the next few weeks pan out.
Incidentally, the Selby Times isn't published on line so I had to type out Adams' New Year message. I may have made errors so before you quote from my text directly you might want to check it's correct by looking at the picture below:
Or download it (HERE).
