Saturday 31 October 2020

We aren't ready, they are and we don't know what we're doing

It's clear that we aren't ready for border checks and formalities in January - all the talk of 'maximum facilitation' in 2018 to ease the flow of goods across the Irish border has evaporated and if anything it looks as if we might have to resort to manual paperwork models everywhere as a fall back. We saw last week how the Association of Freight Software Suppliers have written to the government to say the IT systems won't be ready because they are still waiting for the government to define things.

Well, on Thursday Dr Anna Jerzewska, a trade consultant, held a webinar for customs authorities from Ireland, Belgium, Holland and France and they confirmed they are all ready with vehicle management systems, staff and infrastructure in place, trained, tested and raring to go.

She tweeted:

The ports and processes are all finished, vets recruited, SPS controls all set, guidance issued months ago and worst of all, they understand our Border Operating Model better than we do! It is truly embarrassing.  We called for Brexit, voted for it, elected two governments to carry it out, spent a fortune and are still unprepared. 

Ms Jerzewsak yesterday tweeted a link to a HMRC tweet which wrongly suggests freight forwarders and customs agent are one and the same:

It is all so amateurish isn't it? The humiliation is made all the worse when your opposite numbers in four different EU countries have all managed to do something you haven't, to prepare for something you asked for and they didn't.

My experience of continental companies is exactly like this. Serious people doing serious work and getting things done with speed and efficiency.

Meanwhile the trade talks continue in Brussels with intensive work being done on the LPF framework. This is also going to become a big problem, made worse by the fact the EU know we will need an extended implementation period and they don't. From Lord Frost's comments a week or so ago, it is clear they UK has conceded the idea of an independent arbitration panel to make sure we do not undercut the EU27. This is I think the minimum the EU will accept.

The problem for Johnson is that the 'principles' will be those of the single market as it is now and probably in future. They may be broad and not so detailed but the EU will interpret them as they do now - anything else would be irrational.

The independent panel will mimic the ECJ but will have a different name and more limited functions, but essentially it's the same thing.  It will have independent adjudicators but you can be sure they will be at least equally chosen by the EU and the UK and they will change from time to time over the years as the UK government changes.  

Sooner or later they will be making binding rulings against the UK and the ERG (assuming it's still going) will rail against it just as they did the ECJ.  

And no doubt when the deal is published the ERG will note that we are still tied to the EU and our industry will have a sword of Damocles, in the form of sanctions, dangling over it in perpetuity. 

Also, I don't know whether Lord Frost realises it but he will carry the can when the deal is finalised. There are bound to be winners and losers (although many more losers and few, if any winners) and the chief negotiator is going to be blamed. Johnson doesn't do detail as we know and is famous for passing the buck. He will argue later that Frost went beyond his mandate and didn't tell the PM that the deal meant, for instance, the loss of Nissan or that Welsh sheep farming would be decimated.

It will not end well for Lord Frost.

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