Well, now the evidence is starting to stack up and is proving harder and harder to dismiss. This is how crimes usually end isn't it? How the truth relentlessly catches up with wrongdoers. Slowly but surely the lies that you need to tell in order to cover up the earlier ones become less and less plausible until they are so convoluted, unbelievable and at odds with reality that it isn't just Peter Falk (i.e. us remainers) who find them impossible to believe but everybody else as well. Most people realise this in childhood and never forget it.
Johnson and Gove and plenty of others obviously never learned that deeply scarring lesson and actually thought an entire nation would allow itself to be gaslighted for ever. I truly believe many leave voters - including some of my own acquaintance - thought the Leave campaign could not utter such big, bold clear statements that were totally wrong. They assumed it was impossible to tell such huge lies.
We now have entire industries like shell fishing 'collapsing' before our eyes and the flight of whole sections of the economy from finance to distribution shifting to the single market. It was of course, never supposed to be like this. Businesses were supposed to be so impressed with the promised casting off of red tape that they would beat a path to post Brexit Britain.
I confess to having some sympathy for the small businesses - the fishermen and seafood companies - who are being badly hit. But I have none for the bigger businesses and I think in many ways their silence in 2016 was nothing short of complicity in the crime. Many of them knew or should have known what the consequences were or were likely to be. They have the wherewithal to survive by recruiting extra staff, shifting operations, re-configuring supply chains and hiking prices.
It is the ordinary citizen and the thousands of small businesses who will bear the brunt.
Many commentators have talked about the government's approach to sovereignty, elevating it above all else but failing to be honest about the trade offs. This is at the heart of my objection to Brexit. It is the lie that you can have your cake and eat it. To continue to trade frictionlessly with the EU while not being a member; enjoying the benefits without contributing and so on. We are now seeing the results.
David Henig, one of the commentators highly critical of the UK government tweets a lot about the basic dishonesty in failing to admit Brexit comes with a price tag. He says:
The choice made by the UK government was for friction with the EU over any kind of regulatory alignment. This is the natural consequence. It is a big problem for the country that neither government nor opposition will admit it. https://t.co/99RHDEFSzo
— David Henig (@DavidHenigUK) January 23, 2021
These frictions are wilful, inevitable and permanent although the current lie to sustain Brexit for another few months is that either the problems have nothing to do with Brexit at all (the Dominic Raab and Ben Habib answer), are exaggerated or are simply 'teething troubles' that will soon go away (Boris Johnson).
Covid is creating a fog over the issue at the moment and the economy's problems are not that visible. But as the weeks pass it will become more and more obvious to the vast majority that Brexit was always destined to be a disaster in which the government were not just complicit but were active in conceiving, designing, campaigning and negotiating every single step.
The Tory party cannot shuffle off the blame to anyone else. They have been in power since 2010, no other party can ever be held responsible in any way. Johnson and Gove are in the dock and the case for the prosecution grows stronger every day.
I see Dr Richard North tweets quite a bit more frequently nowadays and I noticed this one from him yesterday (excuse the French):
There is no question... Brexit is the most monumental fuck-up in living memory. It is hard to see how it could have been more badly handled at all levels. Neither politicians, the media nor business walk away from this looking good.
— Dr Richard North (@RichardAENorth) January 24, 2021
It appears in North World, the only person who walks away without blame is the man himself, the co-author of Flexcit and The Great Deception: Can the European Union Survive? He will argue that what we got is nothing like what he wanted, but I am afraid it is. He wanted Britain to become independent of the EU (which has miraculously survived the fifteen years since his book came out) and to be governed by people we elect. Well, that is what we've got.
The horrible truth is that our politicians, like our industrialists, aren't up to the job and even people like Richard North with a PhD no less aren't either. The decision making is terrible and we can look forward to much more of this in the weeks and months ahead. Get used to it.
