Friday 16 August 2024

David Davis, one of the world's stupid people

The world has always been full of stupid people. I include myself in that of course, but at least most of us know our limitations and tend to stick to things we have some direct experience of.  We defer to experts in other fields.  The difference nowadays is that all too often our leaders expound with total confidence on subjects they don't know anything about and understand even less. Donald Trump is the unequalled master of it, claiming that "nobody knows more" than him about almost everything under the sun while demonstrating that he is one of the dumbest men on the planet, if not the dumbest.

However, David Davis, MP for Howen & Haltemprice, former cabinet minister and Tory leadership contender is not far behind.  We all remember him saying in the House of Commons in October 2016 as the minister responsible: “There will be no downside to Brexit at all, and considerable upsides.” 

This must rank as among the daftest things ever said about Brexit. As I noted the other day, even Gerard Lyons, Johnson's economics adviser is saying he warned before the referendum that leaving the SM and the CU would deliver an economic shock. His colleague, Patrick Minford when further and even suggested Brexit would 'eliminate manufacturing' in the UK.

However, I noticed someone on Twitter posted an article from The Guardian in May 2016 where Davis is suggesting that Brexit could reduce net migration to somewhere between 100,000 and none!  He claimed:

“We will not be going to zero immigration. I think somewhere between nought and 100,000 is where it will be. Some years it will be near 100,000 and some years it will be nearly nought, depending on the economy. If the economy is growing gangbusters it will be going up. We will have a points-type scheme. But we cannot possibly deliver on the manifesto promise as it now stands.”

I'm not sure I know the difference between zero and nought - or even "nearly nought" but he genuinely seemed to believe we could quit the EU and control immigration to the extent that the government would be able to fine-tune immigration policy with a points-based system to match employment to immigrants almost perfectly every year.

In 2022 the economy grew by 0.%. It was hardly growing "gangbusters" yet we managed to raise immigration to an all-time record high.

In 2016 legal immigration was running at 330,000 annually. As we know, it went over 740,000 in 2022 and is still double what it was in 2016. The government is issuing a million or more work and study visas every year. Davis hadn't got a clue.  Former Labour Home Secretary David Blunkett is quoted in the same article saying Brexit would put at risk the Le Touquet deal:

“Were the French to decide to revoke the agreement, which leading French spokespeople have indicated, it would be a calamity for robust and rational border controls,” he said.

"This in practice means that we couldn’t use these immigration and security controls to stop people reaching our country. This would lead to an increase in asylum claims from people who came to our shores and the disappearance of tens of thousands of people into the illegal economy.”

Blunkett was talking about asylum seekers of course, but how right he was.  

And in the last few days, David Davis has been pulled up by the fact-checkers at Full Fact for telling Rory Stewart in a podcast that "most of our trade is with Taiwan."

In truth, they say, "in the four quarters to the end of Q1, 2024, the value of total trade between the UK and Taiwan was £7.2 billion. In the same period, the UK’s trade with China was worth £86.5 billion. Taiwan was the UK’s 35th largest trading partner, and China the 6th largest."

We are doing about twelve times as much trade with China as we do with Taiwan. It is not even close!

Davis just can't help being wrong can he?. The question in my own mind is how and why voters in his constituency keep voting him in?  

Posted by at