It looks this morning as if the American people don't believe Donald Trump has done quite enough damage to their reputation yet and might be prepared to give him another four years. As with Johnson, I don't think this is Trump's fault. Every country has its share of nutjobs but most countries don't elect them to positions of power. If there is to be a Trump victory, or even a narrow win for Biden, it will say far more about the American people than who the president is.
If after four years of acting like a petulant thirteen year-old with learning difficulties, the electorate still think he is any kind of leader then I worry for America's place in the world. And that is something we should all worry about.
Anyway, it seems we will have to wait a few days - possibly even weeks - before we know who's won the White House. This in itself shows what a mess the US electoral system is.
The last few days of intensive EU-UK talks in London and Brussels has failed to achieve a breakthrough. Barnier is expected to confirm this later today. The three sticking points are our old friends fishing, LPF and governance. He will apparently say that some progress has been made but not enough. But since Johnson hasn't walked away I think we can safely assume that he isn't going to. I expect talks to carry on a bit longer before the PM will have to get involved.
As usual, this will right at the end when he will step in with no understanding of the details and make concessions that will initially be seen as terrific only to be denounced later as rubbish after the real details emerge.
In that context, I want to turn to a report issued by the Institute for Government about Britain's readiness to exit the EU on December 31. It says Johnson's decision in June not to extend the transition period, despite coronavirus, is a "high-risk bet, made riskier still with every week that passes without clarity on the outcome of the negotiations and in which the resurgence of coronavirus demands ever greater government and public attention, forcing most of the country back into lockdown."
Government's don't usually gamble the future of the nation on a roll of the dice but that's Johnson through and through isn't it?
The report says a deal could make transitioning to new trading terms less disruptive but it would not, however, fundamentally change what both government and business need to do to prepare – "much of which is the same regardless of the outcome of negotiations. But this message has not cut through to the public. And the government is only now making clear how urgent it is to act."
The IfG say the NI protocol will not be implemented in full on 1 January which is hardly a surprise since this has been clear for sometime. They add that the government is going to be stuck between applying it in full or "facilitating the flow of goods" and possibly finding itself before the European Court.
The deadline for responding to the EU's legal letter about the UK Internal Market Bill passed at the weekend with nothing from the UK. This is bad advice, ignoring legal letters is never a good thing and the EU will now have to make decision about what to do next.
To add to NI's woes, The Belfast Telegraph suggests businesses are thinking about pulling out of the province because of the cost of doing business there after December. Northern Ireland's Agriculture minister Edwin Poots has suggested that tens of thousands of pounds could be added to the cost of a lorry load of supermarket goods due to border formalities.
And of course, this doesn't just apply to NI.
Coronavirus has in general meant that many companies are less prepared now than they were last year and the IfG say there is not much the government can do alone to get business to prepare. The government’s own figures, they say, "paint a worrying picture of just how few businesses are even aware of the changes coming, let alone prepared for them."
As late as last month a third of small businesses believed that the transition period would be extended, despite the deadline for any extension having passed in June. Coronavirus has robbed many of the bandwidth, and cash, to do what is needed and the government’s information campaign has so far proved ineffective. The IfG say it focused too heavily on "selling the opportunities of Brexit rather than driving the action that is needed to prepare for new red tape from January – deal or no deal."
We keep seeing ministers talk of these mysterious 'opportunities' of Brexit but what we don't get is a plan to avoid or mitigate the immediate opportunities of frictionless trade being lost as of 1 January. I read the other day that business does not believe the UK government understands British business and I think this is true. But I also think as the cliff edge draws nearer, business will make it clear through their own MPs - some of whom are ministers - that 1 January will be chaotic and disruptive and they are not going to take the blame.
The Vote Leave campaign, led by Cummings, made a lot of promises in 2016. They are now in charge. There is nobody to blame except the EU, but the winning "take back control" slogan is going to sound very hollow if, after Brexit, you are still blaming the EU for "punishing" us.
The Bloomberg report the other day that there had been a breakthrough on fishing has been rubbished by other EU sources according to a tweet from Tony Connelly:
EU officials have downplayed reports of a breakthrough on fisheries in the Brexit negotiations."We have not yet found a solution on fisheries," said Dan Ferrie, a spokesman for Michel Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator.— Tony Connelly (@tconnellyRTE) November 3, 2020
Bloomberg reported that UK and EU were close to an agreement whereby quotas would be set according to "zonal attachment", and decisions on what quotas EU fleets could catch would be pushed into the future. But an EU official spokesman, Daniel Ferrie has told RTE that "Barnier has repeatedly said the principle of 'zonal attachment', a methodology of defining the rightful ownership of fish stocks post-Brexit, and thought to favour UK fishing fleets, could not be the basis for any solution."
The clock is ticking.
