Thursday 14 January 2021

More Brexit problems come to light

I want to just take a step back and look at a few small points I noted on Twitter and add to the post yesterday about the many misunderstood impacts of Brexit - more holes below the waterline if you like. To Brexiteers leaving the EU has always been about sovereignty - at any price. Whether or not they believed there were economic benefits is moot. Some perhaps did, others probably knew there would be a cost, at least in the beginning but played it down.

For a lot of people for whom Brexit in 2016 seemed a remote issue, many of whom voted to leave or perhaps didn't vote at all on the basis that it wouldn't affect them either way, the realities are starting to come out.

First, the Scottish fisherman from Lochfyne Langoustines who fears bankruptcy because he's unable to export to the EU, calls for the government to "get it sorted." 

As Chris Grey points out, his problems are a permanent feature of Brexit. The non-tariff barriers are a deliberate political choice not something optional that Johnson can "fix" next week.  This may soon sink in.

Next, at one of the parliamentary committees yesterday (I'm not sure which one) an MP was apparently concerned about data exchange and seemed to think Ireland can sign up to a bilateral agreement with the UK on data sharing but was surprised to learn that it can't:

Then the announcement came that a subsidiary of Deutsch Bahn, Schencker, a delivery business with operations in 130 countries, has stopped delivering goods to the UK because customers can't provide them with the correct paperwork. It will be taken as a bit of an inconvenience on Twitter. But it's actually far more than that.

I bet that many German companies with operations in the UK use Schencker. I know there will be a lot of British companies with German machinery who keep no spare parts in stock and rely on the manufacturer to ship the parts overnight from Germany. Before Brexit this was easy, but with all the additional customs declaration it will become slower and more costly.  But when the main shipper stops working altogether it could be disastrous.

Johnson himself is confused by his own deal. Appearing before the Liaison Committee yesterday he seemed to believe musicians had the right to tour Europe without first obtaining work permits for all the states they intend to visit.

The PM confused tourist visas - or the lack of them - for work permits. A musician can tour as much as they like but once they receive money for doing so, they are breaking EU law.

Finally, in answer to a tweet from the BBC's Northern Ireland business editor, a haulage contractor demonstrated one reason why there are no real problems yet at Dover:

I particularly like J P Campbell's comment about MPs being surprised that the UK (or GB anyway) has left the customs union and the single market which has introduced a lot of new trade frictions. Who would  have guessed?

And for anybody who thinks that food shortages are still scaremongering, the FT had a report yesterday that the government is consulting to allow "fast-track empty supermarket food lorries returning to Europe to restock, as concerns mount in Whitehall that post-Brexit port disruption threatened supermarket supply shortages."

The document, marked "sensitive" warned “the potential for further disruption remains high” which I assume means the government itself is now getting nervous.

To return to the point I started with, I wonder if for some Brexiteers we will ever get to the point when they begin to believe sovereignty is just too expensive?

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