Owen Paterson, MP for North Shropshire, a former DEFRA secretary and avid Brexiteer, appears to have suddenly woken up to what Brexit means. I assume he has used the phrase 'take back control' more than once, it is after all the whole basis and reason for leaving the EU. He wanted Britain to become a serious competitor to Brussels but is now bellyaching that the EU are not being reasonable. They are behaving, well...like a competitor. Who would have thought it?
He tweeted approvingly about an anonymous article which appeared in Briefings for Britain:
From Northern Ireland to Gibraltar, the EU is already using any excuse to enforce its will.As this lawyer correctly states, the EU aims to squeeze the life out of any advantages for an independent UK.The Government must urgently take stock and push back.https://t.co/BMWgmXemaX— Owen Paterson (@OwenPaterson) January 21, 2021
The piece itself, said to be written by someone who goes under the name of Titus and claims to be a lawyer working in the public sector, is titled Gibraltarisation: how the EU is planning the next stage of its anti-Brexit campaign.
Titus has also suddenly come to the conclusion that "the EU has no friendly intentions towards us."
Well, who could have possibly realised? You urge your supporters to vote to leave the club of which you have been members for forty years and announce plans to set up a rival club which will be far better. Just as the new club starts up, the old and much larger club, the one you are relying on for all sorts of stuff, makes life difficult for you.
Only a Brexiteer is unable to see how stupid that sounds. In industry as in international relations ,this is absolutely normal. It is what being a competitor means and what 'taking back control' means if it means anything at all. Titus is a lawyer so he might be forgiven but Paterson was a businessman for heaven's sake. What did he think would happen?
Titus says by “Gibraltarisation” he means the EU will follow a campaign of harassment in the way that Spain has towards Gibraltar for decades:
"If Spain wants to hurt Gibraltar, it simply has to work to rule. Spain has perfectly good reasons to conduct border checks for cigarette smuggling and the like. However, it discovered that if it checks everyone coming into Spain, it can create an enormous queue. It can do checks slowly. We already see such tactics employed to slow down trade with the EU – does anyone really believe that EU customs officials are always so astute in checking packed lunches at its borders? The sneering Dutch customs officials saying “welcome to the Brexit” make clear the animus against Britain."
Now the mask begins to slip. Brexit Britain is beginning to feel sorry for itself, thinking it is hard done by. It's not only Brussels, but Spain as well and now the Dutch, perhaps our strongest allies in the EU, who now employ "sneering" officials. They can be added to Germany who Brexiteers have always reserved a special dislike for.
What our anonymous contributor is really saying is this. We need them far more than they need us. The UK needs the EU to act in a way which helps us, but knows there are dozens of areas (with many more opening up every day) where they can make life very hard.
On the NI protocol, Titus complains "the EU promised that it would look keenly for measures that prevented its Backstop disrupting trade with the UK. The measures would be light touch, and unobtrusive. Theresa May even believed them, and maybe still does."
He points to the fact that British sausages will now be unavailable in Belfast and that the EU want Northern Ireland’s economy "to shift away from the UK" quoting an EU official saying the only way to avoid controls is to source things through the EU. This seems to me a statement of the obvious and is a direct result of Brexit and the need to avoid a hard land border on Ireland.
All this was on the day the row about the EU's ambassador burst into the open. The UK government has downgraded him to the level of a nobody from an international organisation. Having for years called the EU a super state they now refuse even to accord their ambassador and staff the same privileges as other countries envoys. It is extremely petty and especially so when you realise out of 143 places where the EU has representation, the UK is the only one not to offer full ambassadorial status.
As somebody pointed out, the EU have a hundred ways to retaliate although they haven't so far. I assume we will soon back down and look weaker (in the eyes of Titus and Paterson) and even more stupid.
We keep prodding the hornet's nest and seem surprised when we keep getting stung.
Being an independent nation means looking after yourself. Does Titus think the USA, when Biden eventually begins trade talks, will set out with friendly intentions? Brexiteers are about to learn a big lesson.
The FT had another story yesterday coming from a survey of survey of supply chain managers carried out by the Chartered Institute of Procurement & Supply.
"More than half the UK companies importing or exporting goods through the EU border have suffered delays this month, largely because of post-Brexit paperwork" and:
"Nearly a quarter (23 per cent) believe they will run low on stock in the next few weeks unless the border situation improves."
The delays were put down to a combination of bureaucratic requirements stemming from Brexit and extra covid-19 protocols. About 60 per cent of the 444 respondents said goods from the EU were reaching the UK more slowly, with 37 per cent reporting delays of several days. The equivalent figures for imports 45 per cent and 28 per cent respectively.
The House of Commons public accounts committee was told yesterday that on average 5 per cent of lorries were being turned back before reaching Dover because they lacked the right paperwork, equal to about 200 trucks over a 48-hour period. This implies only around 2000 trucks per day are crossing the Channel - a very long way from the 10,000 per day at peak times. Expect much worse to come.
