The delay in closing our borders to flights from India back in April because Johnson was keen to meet prime minister Modi to talk about trade, had its consequence yesterday when he was forced to announce a four week delay to the lifting of lockdown restrictions. So called ‘freedom day’ has been postponed until 19 July, although Johnson got this wrong and accidentally told the nation it was 29 July, proving once again that running a whelk stall is probably beyond him.
The exponential rise in cases of the Indian (renamed as the Delta variant, presumably to spare India’s blushes) variant has sparked concerns that we are facing a third wave of coronavirus. I believe that 90 per cent of new cases are now the delta variant.
Several commentators have pointed out that the advantage we had in the vaccine roll out has been squandered or is in danger of being so. David Henig is one of them:
My prediction of a few months ago that the UK would not in fact reopen substantially ahead of the rest of the EU despite our vaccine advantage has come to pass. Because the vaccine program was a rare island of calm efficiency in a sea of chaotic disorganisation.
— David Henig (@DavidHenigUK) June 14, 2021
Europe’s vaccine programme has been accelerating rapidly in recent months and they are not that far behind us now. It will indeed be an irony if we lose much of whatever advantage we had in kick-starting our economy early to show an advantage to Brexit because Johnson was trying to show another benefit from Brexit. I think its fair to say he made a huge mistake in allowing thousands of visitors from India in to the UK when those from Bangladesh and Pakistan were banned.
It must be incredibly frustrating for advisers around the prime minister to see good advice being rejected because of ambition and a mad determination to try and prove all the experts wrong about Brexit. One day it will all become clear.
This morning it seems the Australian trade deal will be announced to great fanfare although again its not clear what the 'benefits' to this country might be. Or it might be nearer the truth to say the government is 'announcing' a trade deal is close but not quite there. This is to meet its own timetable. David Henig again:
Morning. In broad terms it seems the government is announcing today that it hasn't quite finalised a trade deal with Australia.This is regrettably normal in global trade policy terms, where the same deal can be announced several times.— David Henig (@DavidHenigUK) June 15, 2021
He thinks it will have zero economic impact on our overall economy and even the 0.02% GDP gain over 15 years is optimistic and predicated on "heroic assumptions" not seen in an previous trade deal. I don't think this means there will be no impact at all. On individual sectors like farming where imports may displace home grown produce it might be quite significant.
Just before eight o'clock on the Today programme on Radio 4 we heard from a former Australian trade negotiator who told listeners that Liz Truss seems quite shy about what the UK has got from the Aussies in the deal. He said we know what the UK has offered but not what we have achieved. The big prize for Australia was the tariff and quota free access they are getting to a market of 60 million people and he thought champagne corks would be popping in Canberra today.
The UK government's own impact assessment is that our exports to Australia would rise by a derisory 7 per cent while their exports to us would increase by 83 per cent. It looks terribly one sided.
This to me represents a microcosm of the British problem. We want and need things like food, consumer goods, intermediate parts and raw materials but find it hard to produce them domestically at a price and quality the world finds acceptable. Of course there are things we are good at and we do export a lot of - just not enough.
Successive governments have wrestled with the productivity problem for years but have been unable to find a solution. Johnson's answer is to burden exporters with red tape which will only exacerbate the productivity issue and cause a further fall in exports while exposing parts of our economy like agriculture to low cost competitors from abroad. The trade gap will soon balloon.
To demonstrate the ridiculous incoherence of Brexit, John Redwood, who has been beavering away for years to get us out of Europe, tweeted this:
I buy much of my food from U.K. farms. I do not buy EU food given their unpleasant attempts to punish us. Happy to have more choice from Australia.
— John Redwood (@johnredwood) June 15, 2021
Redwood's reasons for Brexit are Europhobia plain and simple. He is apparently quite happy to buy food transported 12,000 miles but not from our neighbours 22 miles away across the Channel. Can anybody explain that with anything other than deep antipathy to all things European?
He says it's because of their "unpleasant attempts to punish us" but seems unable to grasp that the WA and the TCA were agreements freely entered into by Johnson and which he supported and voted for but when it comes to implementing what has been agreed he thinks we are being punished.
At this rate, Brexit will never end.
