Several things happened yesterday which might prove important in our struggle to influence public opinion and avoid Brexit. First, last night's Panorama programme on BBC1 was enlightening. Our side looked like a lot of nervous, ill prepared and headless chickens in ill fitting suits fumbling around for three years while the EU's suave, urbane, confident and professional team effortlessly ran rings round us.
The overall impression after 1273 days is that we have bitten off quite a lot more than we can chew - and are struggling to even articulate what Brexit is, what it looks like or what it's for. It has now become an all-consuming problem without a clear description or purpose, let alone a solution.
Mrs May for all her character flaws, appeared the part and understood the details but unsurprisingly couldn't find a way to get Brexit finished so we are now exchanging her for one of those ill prepared headless chickens, perhaps the worst one of all, who not only doesn't understand the details, he doesn't even think he needs to bother.
The Tories are putting their faith in Johnson, the buffoon who has made it a cause célèbre to get us out of the EU. He worked as Brussels correspondent for The Times and The Telegraph. He has been an MP, Mayor of London and Foreign Secretary. You would think of all people he would have every detail at his fingertips. But no, in the final hustings he chooses the packaging rules for kippers to illustrate how pointless and petty EU regulation is crippling businesses in the Isle of Man. This only added to his reputation for spreading myths about the EU.
As usual he didn't understand the details and neither did the cavalier Johnson bother to check beforehand. The rules are our own, not the EU's and the Isle of Man is not in the EU or the UK. Nobody forces them to do anything. But if they want to export they have to comply with our market rules.
Bizzarely, it would probably be easier to export kippers to the EU.
Earlier, the OBR had released a Fiscal Risks Report (HERE) which the BBC (HERE) and others headlined with the £30 billion hit to public finances in the event of a no deal Brexit. The report is 300 pages long but page 14 and paragraphs 55 and 56 are the key sections on Brexit risks, parts of which say:
"Heightened uncertainty and declining confidence deter investment, while higher trade barriers with the EU weigh on exports. Together, these push the economy into recession, with asset prices and the pound falling sharply. Real GDP falls by 2 per cent by the end of 2020 and is 4 per cent below our March forecast by that point".
"Borrowing is around £30 billion a year higher than our March forecast from 2020-21 onwards".
Note this is based on a relatively benign no deal scenario, with minimal disruption and not at all the worst case as Chancellor Hammond was keen to point out afterwards. By the way on a £2 trillion economy 4% is about an £80 billion reduction in GDP and this is where the £30 billion hit to tax revenues every year from 2021 comes from - and this is the best no deal scenario, it could be much worse.
This jars of course with the Brexiteer's view of the impact on our economy and was quickly condemned by Ian Duncan-Smith from BoJo's campaign team.
It will be fascinating to see what Johnson's cabinet members says about this and future OBR reports. Are they going to attack their own independent financial watchdog as being a remainer stuffed outpost resurrecting project fear? This might prove difficult since Sky News point out the OBR has consistently been proved to be correct (HERE).
And lastly, the government lost a vote yesterday afternoon on an amendment to an obscure
Northern Ireland Bill which means parliament must sit through September
and October and this in theory makes it more difficult for Johnson to
prorogue the House to force through a no deal Brexit. The defeat was a big one, 41 votes altogether, but more importantly 17 Tory MPs voted against the government. Another 30 abstained including senior ministers like Phillip Hammond.
It looks like Johnson may be the first PM in history to come to office without being able to command a majority in the House.
John
Baron MP told us afterwards that no businessman would ever take
anything off the table and, according to him, this applied even to suspending parliament in a parliamentary democracy.
This is to totally misunderstand the sort of negotiation we are involved in.
The EU have given us exactly what we demanded
back in March 2017. We wanted to become a third country and could have left on March 29th through the Article
50 process set out in an interational treaty. We are NOT negotiating to leave the EU. This is automatic.
No, we are negotiating to obtain something we desperately need. Access to the single market and other features of the EU covering scientific, educational and security related cooperation. These are absolutely unique to Brussels. We can't buy them from China or the USA. Brussels has set out the price, which is the Withdrawal
Agreement with the backstop in it.
We are now trying to
get a better price and threatening to walk away without the thing we
desperately need. More than that we are threatening self-harm if the EU
don't give it to us.
Brexiteers are fond of comparing it to a car purchase. If it is, it is like buying the only surviving example of an extremely rare marque. All of the negotiating heft is with the seller, not the buyer. This much was made abundantly clear on Panorama last night.
At the end of the Panorama programme, Nick Robinson said politicians now needed to be honest about the difficult days ahead. There will, I believe come a time when all the dishonesty that has brought us the brink of the abyss will be addressed but it won't be any time soon. There is still a lot of dishonesty to come.
Finally, I noticed an item about who is funding BoJo's leadership. Reuters (HERE) say it's:
"Hedge fund managers, the chairman of a football club, a director of
companies based in tax havens, and a fox hunting enthusiast are among
the donors who have poured hundreds of thousands of pounds into
Johnson’s campaign.
"More than half the donations came from financiers and businessmen who funded the campaign to leave the European Union".
Are they all worried about inequality, social deprivation or the poorest areas of the nation? I doubt it.
