Well, we now know what the DUP’s position is on the Australian trade deal. They’re vehemently opposed to it. Agriculture minister and DUP leader elect Edwin Poots, has written to George Eustice to express "strong opposition" to a zero tariff, zero quota agreement, amid reports that the British government is poised to agree just such a deal with the Australians. He says the deal "presents a high level of risk to Northern Ireland and UK farmers."
The agricultural industry is just the latest 'victim' of Brexit. If follows the fishing industry and finance. Next will be the steel industry as reports come in that the government has made a preliminary decision to remove tariffs on imports of a wide array of products including steel and which the steel industry has described as a “hammer blow” that risks damaging the sector long term. No doubt we'll be hearing more about that very soon.
There
was never any Brexit outcome that could ever have been acceptable to unionists but they were not
only in favour of it, despite many warnings, they received and spent £425,000 on ads in London to get
Brexit over the line. We still don’t know where that money came from.
No wonder ordinary unionists feel hard done by. They are led by simpletons and have been twice betrayed. A border down the Irish Sea and now their farmers look like they will suffer a flood of cheap imports. The sunlit uplands are still shrouded in thick fog as skies darken over Ulster.
How this is supposed to help the cohesion of the union I don’t know.
Julian Sturdy, MP for York outer, is a farmer and Brexiteer. He too must be feeling a sense of betrayal and perhaps even embarrassment at his own naivety and foolishness. In March 2027, he was asking and getting reassurance from then prime minister May that U.K. farming would “not become a sacrificial lamb in any future trade negotiations.” Sturdy has supported Johnson throughout.
He is I believe a cereal farmer (but I may be wrong) and I don’t know how he might be impacted. I understand the sugar beet industry is in the firing line along with cattle and sheep farmers. But cereals may also be affected, I really don’t know.
What many fear is that a Rubicon has been crossed. The government is prepared to sacrifice anybody and anything to get more trade deals in order to try and justify Brexit. When it comes to the powerful USA agri-food lobby, nobody is expecting any prisoners to be taken.
Tariffs may be removed slowly over a few years but the end result will be the same. I would have thought many farmers will opt for early retirement. Farming as an industry will shrink and our reliance on food from overseas will rise.
Johnson talks of huge ‘opportunities’ for UK farming coming out of these trade deals but it’s hard to see what they could possibly be.
There is a good deal of criticism from people who understand these things that there is no coherent strategy or policy behind these decisions and Johnson is making them on a whim:
"Signing trade agreements before the UK knows what it wants" - this point keeps coming up.Given that this time it's Prof Alan Winters himself, let's hope the UK Gov is listening. https://t.co/9TZgMu0BM3— Dr Anna Jerzewska (@AnnaJerzewska) May 21, 2021
The letter referred to in the tweet is from Alan Winters to The Times. It talks of the PM's "timidity [preventing] both an informed national conversation about what post Brexit Britain will look like and the formation of a more methodical approach to making trade policy that involves legislators, stakeholders and the devolved administrations."