Tuesday 17 November 2020

The Brexit express is about to be derailed

WhatUKthinks published its latest poll yesterday showing that with about 40 or so days before the end of the transition, when Brexit finally becomes real, just 38% of the population thinks it was the right decision, 51% now think it was wrong. I have always believed this would happen. You cannot hide the truth for ever, sooner or later the sheer folly of Brexit would become clear to a majority. That process started slowly at first in early 2018 when the polls began to show a majority were having second thoughts. I honestly think many of the 38% still haven't cottoned on but they soon will if news out this week is anything to go by.

As talks continue in Brussels, with fish still a big issue, the industry has written to DEFRA Secretary George Eustice to warn they face devastating delays over the way catch certificates are to be validated, this is apart from all the other paperwork issues like export health certificates. It will mean they will be unable to export fish to their biggest market - the EU - after Brexit!  Nick, incidentally, may be confused, I think the scenario in the letter applies whether we get a deal or not.

Next, the west midlands Conservative mayor Andy Street seems to have finally realised the local car industry faces tariffs even if we get a deal because what we think of as British cars are actually made of too many parts supplied by non-EU countries to qualify for tariff free access:

The west midlands is almost totally reliant on cars and adding tariffs would be a serious problem for the long term sustainability of the industry. Brexit will do more damage than red Robbo.

British ports have said that post Brexit customs checks similar to the ones carried out for non-EU countries at the moment will be impossible if there is no deal, according to Sky News:

"Appearing before the House of Lords EU goods sub-committee, the British Ports Association (BPA) said some will not be able to cope if customs consider all EU produce in the way that non-EU 'third country' imports are currently treated.

"The warning comes as Britain's largest container port at Felixstowe was described as being "in chaos", with shipments delayed and several ships being diverted elsewhere."

BPA said the money offered by the government falls well short of what's needed anyway and the infrastructure may not be ready even after July next year.  Rotterdam has been ready for ages.  Mark Dijk, external affairs manager at Rotterdam, the largest container port in the world was asked how it had been able to make preparations earlier than some of its UK counterparts:

Mr Dijk said: "We have always said that whatever Brexit it is will be a hard Brexit."  Whereas we presumably just hoped somebody else would solve the problem for us.

These new reports follow earlier and much more comprehensive ones from the NAO and the Institute for Government showing that Britain is woefully underprepared in virtually every sector. We know from evidence to the Lords EU Goods Committee last week that hauliers are warning we are not yet ready. The Customs Declaration Service isn't ready for GB-NI trade and several other IT systems including the Goods Vehicle Movement System might just about be ready but nobody will be really trained to use them - especially the 85% of foreign drivers responsible for the Ro-Ro traffic across the short straits.

Against this mounting evidence, Downing Street claim Johnson is not going to make any concessions and it is him taking the hardest line in internal meetings.  I somehow doubt this, he may appear to be taking a firm line but as we all know this usually precedes a massive U-turn, after which he takes another firm line, opposite to the earlier on. This is why he's known as the "shapeshifting creep."

Meanwhile, a paper from June 2016, before the vote, shows David Frost (now Lord Frost) a former British diplomat who was then CEO of the Scotch Whisky Association, and is now our chief negotiator has a piece extolling the virtues of the single market and arguing strongly it seems to me, to remain in:

"In short, even the best-case outcome can’t be as good as what we have now; and we won’t be able to negotiate the best-case outcome anyway, because in real life you never can."

All this appeared in the FT:

So, let's summarise where we are. We are trying to negotiate a deal which will make us worse off and less secure led by a negotiator who appears not to believe in it anyway, according to a self-set deadline we are totally unprepared for and with utter chaos threatened in January, as the public mood swings decisively against it.

The PM seems to be the last person to realise what a hole he is in and he just keeps on digging as he did yesterday when he presented Nicola Sturgeon with another huge boost by saying devolution had been a "disaster."  She could not have asked for more.

When Johnson leaves Downing Street, and it cannot come too soon for me. he will leave behind a legacy that no previous PM has done before him. The nation will be broken or on its way to being so, much poorer with a crippled industry and a lot of needless deaths due to coronavirus, the highest in Europe, a mountain of debts and terribly divided. Leavers will be as furious with him as remainers but they will all be able to agree he was a disaster for Britain.

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