Let's be clear - this is Johnson's Brexit

There is rising chaos at the borders, both the external one with the EU and the internal one with Northern Ireland. The problems of the fishing industry were just the first to become apparent because it's at the very top of the fresh food list, but others are now coming to light and reaching the mainstream media. The BBC's business correspondent Simon Jack even had a report about the meat industry on the main news last night. The sheer quantity of paperwork has taken business and government by surprise it seems.

The European Movement briefing yesterday said:

The negative economic impacts of Brexit intensified in the second week of the Brexit deal’s implementation. A group of supermarket bosses operating in Northern Ireland branded the new customs regulations “unworkable”, and blamed them for depleted shelves in shops. Scotland Food & Drink noted that “Brexit bureaucracy” was leading to a backlog of perishable fish which couldn’t be brought to market; this in turn has caused prices to crash as much as 80%. Meanwhile, in a sign that manufacturers are beginning to feel the Brexit damage, Ford explained that it had raised the prices of two new models by £1,700 after they became subject to tariffs under the Brexit deal’s ‘rules of origin’.

Let us be clear, NONE of this related to Brexit.

It is ALL down to the type of Brexit that Boris Johnson has negotiated.  The destructive version we are seeing has the name of Boris Johnson written all the way through it.

EVERY bit of chaos, the new border operating model, the lorry parks, and customs facilities, the thousands of customs agents that we are short of, the new IT systems, the Kent Access Permit system could ALL have been avoided if we had remained inside the customs union and the single market.

This would still have fulfilled the narrow 2016 mandate. It would have avoided the thousands of job losses and the flight of capital and financial businesses to the EU that we have seen HERE. Many if not most remain voters would have accepted it and I think the same with leave voters. The divisions seen over the past few years would have been far narrower.

It is all the political choice made by Johnson and the extreme right of the Conservative party. This should not be forgotten. 

The bizarre thing is that the Tory party and particularly the senior members of it, Johnson, Gove, Raab and others have always talked as though the impact of the deal would be exactly the same as being in the SM and the CU. The frequent claims of having good access without checks and frictionless trade with Europe created in the minds of many businesses, small and large an erroneous belief that getting a tariff and quota free deal would see trade continue as before. 

They didn't prepare because the government were constantly giving out mixed signals that seemed to suggest they didn't need to prepare.

Johnson was guilty of creating the illusion, deliberately or through ignorance, that little if anything in our trading relationship with the EU would change, while sending Lord Frost into the negotiations with red lines that meant chaos was inevitable. Introducing massive changes overnight, knowing thousands of businesses and exporters were unprepared, as survey after survey by trade organisations indicated, was to invite disaster.  

How did it happen?

MPs who believed the prime minister and didn't understand what he was doing, rubber stamped the highly complex deal after a few hours debate, most did not even read it. The ERG only read the sections on sovereignty and nodded it through, giving a green light to all the other MPs that it was fine. It was the blind leading the blind.

All they have had to sustain them over the last five years is belief, something Johnson and Gove with their journalistic skills were able infuse half the nation with. Never mind the facts, never mind the experts, ignore reality and the evidence of your own eyes. Close your ears to all the warnings because they are scaremongers intent on thwarting the will of the people.  But belief doesn't fill in 250 million customs declarations - only facts and truth and reality will do that.

The 2016 question was vague.  Many people wanted out of the political institutions and were unhappy with the idea of 'ever closer union' even after Cameron won a concession on that score in 2015. But they were happy with the trade aspects. Unfortunately, as the Brexiteers now in government are finding there is no clear dividing line. Trade is political and involves some trade in sovereignty. 

The four freedoms are indivisible and have aspects of both politics and trade. There is no 'Goldilocks' position for Britain, no perfect point that balances things nicely, giving us the exact amount of acceptable rights with an equal number of acceptable obligations.  If it ever existed, that position is a dynamic one, changing according to policies that are constantly evolving on both sides.

By prioritising sovereignty above all else we have minimised our obligations although nobody should be under any illusion that the new trade deal gives the UK complete freedom. Any divergences are likely to be very painful if the EU retaliates as they can under the terms agreed.  But we have also cut away a lot of the rights to frictionless trade, all of which we are now starting to see.

And the problems are only likely to get worse.

Will public opinion change as they learn the price being paid for a bit of thin sovereignty gruel?  We have given up our turn at the wheel and now need to decide if we are better with a comfortable place on the bus, or is it better to be dragged along behind?  Time will tell.