Anyone who claims otherwise is not being honest. Eight years after the vote and four years after we formally left, Britain is still implementing the intricacies of the agreements reached. Some of the delays are down to incompetence for sure, but a lot is because ministers knew how damaging the trade deal would be. The urgent need was to limit that damage at all costs and 'parry' the economic impact so that it was less noticeable.
Nowhere is this clearer than in Northern Ireland where Brexit continues to have serious constitutional issues. This morning, the BBC reports that many businesses in the province are concerned about the next implementation phase of the region’s Brexit deal at the end of September, the main impact of which will be on the shipping of some parcels from Great Britain to Northern Ireland.
Apparently, Business-to-business (B2B) parcels will require customs processes for the first time while parcel carriers will also have to be signed up to a new trusted trader scheme. The Northern Ireland Chamber of Commerce said the government needs to help with the looming changes and re-engage with wider Brexit issues in Northern Ireland.
The BBC quote from a report in the Belfast News letter about Purina, a Nestle owned petfood company based in Sudbury in Suffolk which has stopped supplying products direct to breeders in NI. One breeder was told by Purina that it would no longer supply customers of the Breeder Connect scheme because of “new trade regulations and logistics challenges that have arisen from” the deal.
Let us not forget this is happening inside the borders of our own country!
Brexit was all about returning control of the UK's borders to the elected government but it's obvious we have failed in that task at virtually every external border we have. Whether it's boat people crossing the Channel, sub-standard meat entering via Dover, importers paying charges for checks never carried out or delays creating massive queues to travellers when the EU Entry/Exit biometric system starts in November, the whole border control system is in chaos.
But the NI sea border is a newly created one within our own territory! Frost and Johnson agreed to it but now say they thought it was just a temporary measure. Who would voluntarily agree to that if there was a choice? It's ridiculous to even pose the question. Nobody would, right?
The fact that they did was partly down to having raised unrealistic expectations Johnson needed to follow through in 2019, but fearing a no-deal exit would be catastrophic for trade. He agreed to the sea border because he had to, there was no other solution if the UK was to leave with a negotiated settlement. The EU didn't have to threaten, they simply had to wait for the consequences of no-deal to percolate through the Brexit delusions, as it did in the end.
When it became clear that the price of a deal was an internal UK border, Frost and Johnson had to accept it but BoJo refused even to admit there would be one he had personally agreed to. I think he's probably still in denial.
The NI protocol was about raw economic power exercised in a velvet glove. We had no choice because this is what Brussels demanded in return for an orderly exit and a very thin trade deal.
If Starmer is genuinely serious about tearing down unnecessary barriers to trade, the most prominent one is the NI sea border, but unless he agrees to membership of the CU and the SM, that most famous of trade barriers will still be there, tearing the UK apart.
But you can be sure the EU won't offer Starmer anything to help ease the trade barriers anywhere without a Youth Mobility Scheme. Watch this space.
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