John Redwood has been tweeting about remainer warnings of serious problems in Dover and Folkestone being wrong - scaremongering I suppose he means although he didn't say that. His position seems to be that there were no difficulties in the first week and therefore everything will be fine. Brexiters can't seem to resist offering hostages to fortune and his tweets are already starting to look embarrassingly stupid. The Tories have always cast themselves as the party of business but I'm beginning to see they know nothing about business, only money.
Here is his tweet:
A week after Brexit and Dover port working fine. Still no apologies from the Project Fear commentators and media forecasters.
— John Redwood (@johnredwood) January 7, 2021
He should read this article in The Times which includes:
"UK hauliers have been warned to expect much tougher French customs controls from Monday, raising fears of the first serious border disruption since the new post-Brexit controls were introduced. The warnings were shared on two conference calls between British industry bodies and UK government agencies on Thursday, according to three separate individuals with knowledge of the discussions.
"One said that the French had “read the riot act” to port and ferry operators after initial checks this week showed that almost all the lorries arriving from the UK were not fully compliant with EU trade rules, particularly on phytosanitary (SPS) controls on agrifoods."
The problem with the short Channel crossing is capacity. If you restrict flow by introducing friction through extra checks and paperwork, the capacity of the route is reduced. Nothing can alter that.
If the crossing had a massive capacity and was running at only say 10 or 20% of it, introducing restrictions wouldn't have much impact. You might find the same absolute flow could rise to say half the newly restricted capacity. Nobody would notice much of a difference.
But I think they were running at much higher rates, on average it seems (from what I have read) that it operates on average at about 60% and at peak times reaches 100%. This means, it will NEVER be possible to keep the same absolute level of traffic as before.
Dover will perhaps be reduced to 6-8,000 vehicles per day maximum instead of 10,000.
ITV are reporting that many famous British retailers are surprised to realise they WILL be paying tariffs when exporting goods to the EU. Amazingly, because these are big companies, well resourced with plenty of expertise to call on, they seemed to think Johnson's deal would mean things carrying on as before. Now, caught by the Rules of Origin, goods that do not contain sufficient UK content or processing, face tariffs:
“Tariff free does not feel like tariff free when you read the fine print” - Steve Rowe, CEO, M&S. 50 large UK retailers - including Tesco, H&M, Boots, Matalan, Dixons, Argos - are assessing the cost of EU tariffs as a result of the trade deal. Full story: https://t.co/1W0C4fEqxk
— Joel Hills (@ITVJoel) January 7, 2021
This morning, the BBC have a report - Brexit: Problems grow at UK ports with backlogs and delays, which includes the ITV story of UK retailers plus reports of delays elsewhere. A Welsh haulier says:
"Whilst you don't see queues at ports and terminals the reality is that these queues are developing elsewhere in our depot in Holyhead , in our depot in Deeside and in our depot in Newport in South Wales and lots of hauliers have depots in the proximity of ports," he said.
"There are a lot of issues about demarcation about who is going to arrange the export declaration with the UK revenue authorities, who's going to arrange the import declaration, the hauliers then trying to arrange the import safety and security declaration to create an ENS number which helps you generate a PBN number so there has been a lot of everyone finding their feet".
A cabinet office statement acknowledges the problems faced by British companies and said it was "working with them" to make sure they have the correct paperwork. But in the FT report, Shane Brennan, CEO of the Cold Chain Federation, said:
“The government has this theory that vehicles will only appear unprepared once and the second time won’t do it again. But these processes are so complicated that might be a very optimistic assessment of the situation,”
The BBC say parcel delivery service DPD UK has paused its European Road Service due to the "increased burden" of customs paperwork for packages heading to the EU, including the Republic of Ireland. Apparently, 20% of parcels had "incorrect or incomplete data attached", which meant they would have to be returned.
I honestly don't believe Gove and Johnson realise what a catastrophe Brexit will be. The fan blades are starting to whirr - watch out.
