Suella Fernandez has an article on Conservative Home website HERE about how excited she is about the "opportunities" of Brexit. She says it's important we "work together [with the EU] to come up with the broadest and deepest Free Trade Agreement ever struck". Poor old Suella, nobody seems to have told her this is what we've got at the moment.
- "our prospects as we leave the EU are bright"
- "I intend to make the positive case for the rich array of opportunities"
- "explore and develop new and emerging markets"
She repeats the EU forecast, which is apparently very reliable, that 90 percent of growth is expected to come from outside Europe and says."in the coming years, by leaving the EU we will put ourselves in a better position to capitalise upon that growth. Free trade has historically led to more consumer choice, jobs and prosperity. It has enabled millions of people around the world to be lifted out of poverty".
This is a common response by private sector companies who are losing market share to a new competitor. It is not to compete, but rather to find new customers. So it is with Brexiteers. Our EU exports are falling so let's leave and find new markets. But unless you face up to the challenge and get products that your existing customers want and at a price and quality they find acceptable, you will lose the new customers eventually and have none at all. Germany and the EU will do far better out of the extra-EU growth in future than we ever will.
She tells us that, "The world stands on the cusp of the fourth industrial revolution. Britain led the first, and I am convinced that we can lead this one too". Having worked in industry for fifty years this is so far removed from reality I can only conclude she was on mind altering drugs when she wrote it.
And if one looks at her words elsewhere in the article you might be forgiven for seeing it as an application to join the EU rather than leaving it. Look at this as an example:
We have solid foundations built from close relations with EU Member States and the rest of the world. Those foundations are underpinned by international agreements that cover everything from trade to air services, fisheries, data flows and more. We are working to help ensure that we continue to enjoy the benefits of these agreements. And many of the challenges that the world faces today have no respect for national borders: climate change, cyber crime and international terrorism are just a few examples.
This would not be out of place coming out of the mouth of a politician from one of the future accession states or even Norway in an application to become a full EU member.
The article is completely empty of detail that might give you a sense of a single real world opportunity that is going to help transform the country after Brexit. The "rich array of opportunities" is so rich she can't give even one example. And that is why Brexit will ultimately fail.
And by the way, one can only be encouraged by the comments from members or readers of Conservative Home. Many are utterly scathing.
Finally, I read a tweet from somebody that Robert Peston had retweeted. I think it was an EU diplomat or a European minister from Luxembourg summing up Brexit perfectly.
"The UK were IN with opt outs, now they want to be OUT but with opt ins".
One imagines that we are in the process of moving ourselves in the most expensive and troublesome way just a few metres from where we were previously. But we may find that our position, while seemingly still very close, has changed from being inside the wall, to being outside it and the difference will be far more profound than anyone realises.
