Friday 26 August 2022

Truss: a disaster in the making

I am truly beginning to despair at what this country has become. We are sinking fast. Anyone who thought that Boris Johnson was an aberration, a blip along the usual line tracing the quality of British prime ministers is in for a shock. Truss is going to be far worse. At a hustings yesterday she was asked (by the awful Julia Hartley Brewer) if president Macron of France was a friend or a foe and she - the current foreign secretary and in ten days probably the next PM - said “the jury is out.” This is simply unbelievable. France is a fellow NATO member and a close ally yet she could not say unequivocally that Macron was a friend. She is more than a loose cannon.

Not only that, the audience of party members break into spontaneous applause at her answer and JHB breaks into a broad grin! It’s all a huge joke isn’t it? Here is the clip:

I am certain sentiments like that haven’t been uttered openly by a British foreign secretary for at least 200 years. It isn’t as if she needs to win more support. She is pretty well assured of the premiership. What she did was gratuitous and needlessly offensive, designed to fire up the UKIP wing of the Tory party. 

A lot of Tory politicians talk openly as if other countries are populated by the deaf and diplomats don’t take note. They are not deaf and they hear these things. When Truss wants to, for example, talk about returning asylum seekers to France or wants French cooperation in matters of defence or to influence things in Brussels, they will remember her comments. There is zero goodwill in Paris.

Diplomats in the FCDO must be tearing their hair out. This tweet is from the defence editor at The Economist:

Putin and Assad are our foes and if Truss can’t see the difference we are lost. I worry what is going to happen. All we can do is pray wiser heads will prevail.

Before Johnson, prime ministers weighed their words carefully before saying anything. Now, they just blurt it all out without thinking and simply wind back afterwards while leaving the impression that they actually believe what they first said.

Today we will probably get a ‘clarification’ from Downing Street or the foreign office

Allister Heath

I posted on Wednesday about The Sunday Telegraph’s editor Allister Heath and rabid Brexiteer. He put out another piece yesterday which shows the degree of panic starting to affect those who have cheered on the disaster for the last six years: Brexit is on the brink – and the ultra Remainers are mobilising to cancel it.  The sub-title is: Truss is the Brexiteers’ last hope. If she can’t deliver on the benefits of Leave, we may end up rejoining

If Truss is their last hope his article represents the raising of a white flag.  This paragraph captures the essence of his argument:

"The Remainers’ strategy is two-fold. They are attempting to blame Brexit for almost all of Britain’s myriad difficulties, claiming that the pain is self-evidently worse in the UK (“Brexit Britain”) than it is in Europe, and even portraying problems that are entirely unrelated to the European question as a Vote Leave broken promise. Some Remainers are redefining themselves as outsiders, as rebels, as supporters of windfall taxes and nationalisation, and seeking to depict Brexiteers as an elite responsible for the energy and water crises. As the political climate shifts Left-wards, they hope the anti-capitalist mud will stick, paving the way for a Labour government at least privately sympathetic to the Rejoin cause."

We get a clear admission that we are facing "myriad difficulties" but according to Heath's gospel none of them are caused or worsened by Brexit. He thinks - Trump like - that it's all fake news or propaganda designed to blacken the name of Brexit:

"The propaganda is sickening, but some, including ordinary voters in focus groups, are falling for it. Inflation: didn’t Brexiteers promise that prices would fall, and real wages rise, the Remainers repeat over and over again, a bad faith and out of context argument? The imploding NHS: what about the £350 million a week, they cry, ignoring Covid, the health system’s gross mismanagement and the actual massive increase in funding? The cross-Channel arrivals: isn’t that proof that borders can’t be controlled? Even filthy rivers are blamed, absurdly, on Brexit. Many who make these nonsensical arguments genuinely believe them, and are convinced that the evidence is in, the case is closed and that Brexit has conclusively been proved to have failed."

His problem is that for years voters increasingly fell for the reverse. A belief that things were not getting better and it was all down to Europe and the EU. He was happy to feed this misleading view of Britain's relationship with Brussels for his own ends. The boot - much bigger and with hobnails - is now on the other foot. 

I am not going to blame Brexit for all of out 'myriad' problems but what I am going to suggest is that not one of them is going to be made easier to resolve outside the EU.  At the absolute best, the impact of EU membership will be neutral or negative in a very small way. Plus, millions of civil service and parliamentary man-hours have been taken up and are still being taken up by Brexit and are deflecting attention away from out 'myriad' problems.  This is I think a fair summary and undeniable as far as I can see.

But some problems are definitely a direct result of Brexit. The cross-channel arrivals (as he coyly refers to asylum seekers) IS proof we can't control our own borders and we can't return them to France in any case. Trade is made harder and more costly, slowing down and falling with implications for the tax take.

Inflation is partly down to a falling pound ($1.18 yesterday) exacerbating imported food and oil prices. Sterling has never properly recovered from the vote in 2016.

The NHS is in crisis partly (if not mainly) due to labour shortages in clinical staff and social care.  Sewage discharges are also partly a result of problems getting hold of water treatment chemicals from Europe, DEFRA gave the green light last September to dump sewage that has not been fully treated into rivers and the sea because of disruption to supplies of vital chemicals caused by - Brexit. 

People are not daft. Brexit is going to be blamed by hard-core remainers and who is going to stop them? They are only picking up the tools that Brexiteers like Heath have had to discard. Membership of the EU cannot now be blamed for our problems, but a lack of membership can - and will be.

Funny how what goes around comes around, eh?

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