The leak of the Operation Yellowhammer planning assumptions by The Sunday Times yesterday is still reverberating around the world's media. Some are clearly shocked that a modern, liberal western democracy is prepared to put itself through food, fuel and medicine shortages and general chaos in order to break away from the world's largest and richest trading bloc. It looks insane from the outside, it is insane from the inside - but that's Brexit for you isn't it?.
The government has dismissed the leak as a worst case scenario and amazingly it was described as 'scaremongering' by one of its own ministers. This must be the first time any government has accused itself of scaremongering. Brexit still has the power to surprise, eh?
There is a furious government operation going on this morning to push back, to claim the document is 'old' (it was prepared a month ago) or that it is a worst case scenario, despite the sources saying explicitly that it is the 'most likely' and not the worst case.
Anyway, is it true? We don't really know. It was prepared at the highest level, the cabinet office, with all of the available information to hand so we assume it is at least 'credible', as Lord Kerslake, former head of the civil service has said. Perhaps it is worst case, perhaps not. The problem for me is that nobody really knows since there are so many imponderables. It does however, suggest a huge risk and governments are usually extremely risk averse so we are entering a period of great uncertainty.
Richard Murphy at the Tax Research blog asks if it is all true, what is the government doing about the likely shortages? How are they to be managed and he answers his own question:
"The brief answers are that the shortages will not be capable of
management: only rationing might do that, and that would require more
planning than we have time for. Real shortages will follow then, and
those least well off will almost certainly be hit hardest: that's the
rationing system that the market always imposes.
"I think this will result in civil disorder. Parents unable to feed
their children do not sit quietly by. I can see no way that the police
or army might contain such disorder if it was widespread, not least
because their families will be impacted alongside everyone else.
"Can a government survive a state of chaos that it has deliberately
created? I very much doubt it, even if Johnson did manage to get an
election and win on or around Brexit day. I cannot foresee a large
majority for him in such an election, even if such a victory were to
happen. The swing in sentiment would rapidly move against any government
that deliberately delivered chaos to this country, even if it had a
majority".
I think this is right, it cannot be managed and some civil disorder is likely, even probable.
The Sunday Times had five pages devoted to the story and included a small piece about the Brexit department advising local councils earlier this year to reject FOI requests relating to Brexit planning. The People's Vote campaign has now written to Elizabeth Denham, Leader of the Information Commissioner's Office to complain about 73 councils withholding information. No wonder I've had problems getting no-deal Brexit plans out of Selby District Council. I too have complained to the ICO and have yet to hear back.
If, as the government claims, Operation Yellowhammer is scaremongering, out of date, worst case or plain wrong why do they insist on so much secrecy?
I suspect all is not what the government say it is and in practice, it could be even worse.
PMP Magazine cover the comments a few days ago of Vernon Bogdanor who suggested there could be retrospective legislation brought in by a remainer parliament after Johnson is toppled (as he will be in very short order if the no-deal Brexit turns out badly) to rule that Britain had never left the EU. I covered it at the time HERE. Far fetched as it seems at the moment, I think this is a possibility. Depending how bad things get, it is far from inconceivable that we might even accept the euro and Schengen in the longer term. It could be any port in a storm.
We are in a weak position but we should get used to it. This is our post Brexit future. China tells us to keep out of Hong Kong and we meekly agree, Iran seizes our tankers at will, America will force its food standards on us while the EU adopts a hard line on Brexit and will soon force us to accept an inferior deal to the one we have now.
Stephen Barclay made great play of signing an official instrument repealing the 1972 European Communities Act, saying on Twitter that our exit from the EU was now 'set in stone'. Needless to say he had done no such thing, the signing means very little since the exit date can easily be changed or Article 50 revoked. It changed nothing.
Yet Barclay must have been aware of the Operation Yellowhammer warnings but was perfectly happy to pose for a picture signing a 'commencement order' which in his words, sets the consequences - the food, fuel and medicine shortages - 'in stone'. This is what happens when ministers pursue an ideological course without bothering about the people who will be impacted by the result.
Finally, a couple of items elsewhere caught my eye. At Brexit Central (always good for a laugh) the Tory MP Henry Smith talks of giving ourselves a "flying start to our post Brexit future" by cutting air passenger duty in half - something we could have done inside the EU anyway! He admits our APD is twice that of Germany which is itself the second highest after the UK.
Then in The Telegraph, the ever loony Owen Paterson writes that Brexit will free us to 'build the farms of the future' using gene editing and robotics. I wasn't aware the EU prevented us doing either. There is no Anti-Farms of the Future Directive. Gene editing is permitted by EU law albeit with more safeguards than in the USA, but as for robotics there is certainly nothing at all to prevent us building a farm of the future now.
This is what we are apparently going through ten years of turmoil for. To do things we can do now anyway.
