Greg Clark, the Business Secretary, was on TV on Sunday warning that 3500 jobs were at risk if we don't resolve the customs union problem, not just in Ireland but at Dover as well. This was dismissed almost instantly by what is referred to HERE by a Eurosceptic cabinet minister as "project fear all over again". Clark is a lightweight at best but he must have had any number of conversations with industry, particularly the car industry and there cannot be any doubt that companies are far more stridently pro EU in private than they have been in public. Yet Clark's pro Brexiteers colleagues in cabinet still don't seem to believe there will be any economic damage.
In another piece (HERE) Jacob Rees-Mogg challenges Clark's assertion about the difficulty with JIT manufacturing by pointing out delays at Southampton docks are "tiny". Of course, in glacial terms a decade or even a century might be regarded as tiny. What does tiny mean? Is it a few seconds or a few hours? Don't worry trying to find out, Southampton is mainly a container port and I doubt it handles any JIT business at all so it's completely irrelevant. Rees-Mogg has no idea what he's talking about.
Personally, despite the economy only showing a modest slowdown, I think the 3500 figure is a substantial underestimate. You can bet other car companies and other industries will be similarly impacted if business with Europe is made more difficult. And, jobs in the supply chain are also in the firing line.
There is an article on the Conservative Home website about the customs union (HERE) with an unnamed cabinet minister claiming the PM's fear of a majority in parliament that favours remaining in the customs union may not be true. The article itself is not that interesting and I don't know if this anonymous minister is right or not (Ken Clarke says there is a "large majority" for it). But the comments underneath are revealing. When the odd criticism of leaving the CU appears there is an absolute tsunami of leavers comments attacking anyone who argued for a soft Brexit.
Someone called SD67 posted this when someone suggested leaving the customs union would cause gridlock in Dover:-
"The channel ports are 2% of our trade volume and frankly more trouble than they're worth. They give marginal EU exporters a competitive advantage at significant cost to British commuters. The credit rating - thats a joke - saving 10 billion a year improves your credit rating. What else was their - Easyjet needing to refuel a few planes in Paris in a ring fenced subsidiary....meh"
Dover handles £120 billion of trade each year by value - not volume. The reference to our credit rating, which impacts our ability to borrow and the cost of that borrowing, is dismissed as a joke. And quitting the European Aviation Safety Agency which, in the absence of another agreement, means our airlines would have to stop flying and the aviation industry would grind to a halt is not even seen as an issue at all.
And for a Foreign Secretary, BoJo's knowledge of world affairs is lamentable. In a Daily Mail interview where he tells us his own government's plan to resolve the customs issue is "crazy" and says (HERE) he wants to see a “confident free-trading Britain able to do its own deals,” no longer “locked in the lunar pull of Brussels.”. He is right in his analogy with gravity but he is looking at it the wrong way. BoJo thinks the EU is in orbit around us. But the EU has the massive gravitational pull, not us. Brussels doesn't just affect the tides, it locks us into it's orbit.
They are the earth and we are the moon, whatever happens we will still be a satellite feeling the regulatory gravity effects and this will always be the case.
Finally, Turkey's customs union is, according to The UK in a Changing Europe (HERE), a useful guide to what the UK might experience if it was in a customs union with the EU. Apparently, in Turkey the CU is criticised a lot but nobody wants to get out of it. It's seen as a problem but also as a great benefit, boosting Turkey's GDP by up to 13%.
We are perilously close to the cliff edge but our guides are not just ignoring the risks but deny there are any.
What could possibly go wrong?
