More talks are scheduled this week in London with a new found sense of realism being injected into the British side. Time is running out with no sign of a shift in the EU's fundamental positions. Phil Hogan, the EU's Irish trade commissioner, said the other day that UK negotiators had only started to engage a couple of weeks ago. The reason for that in my opinion is the dawning realisation that unless the UK makes some big concessions we will leave with no trade deal.
Although leaving without a deal has been the government's supposed reasonable fall-back position for the past couple of years, it is and always was a fantasy. Now we can see how Cummings intends to manage the narrative.
James Forsyth is Cumming's conduit to the media when he wants the national debate to go in a particular direction. Forsyth yesterday had a piece in The Times, no less, where he says "the cabinet is assessing how ready the state is to handle multiple crises at once." One minister is quoted as saying:
“The question we’re asking ourselves now is will our systems struggle or will they just not be able to cope,”
David Gauke the former MP and cabinet minister tweeted about it:
One of these crises (or, at the very least, a severe disruption), will be the end of the EU transitional arrangements. Entirely the UK Government’s choice not to extend transition, but now ministers are worrying that we won’t be able to cope with multiple challenges this winter. https://t.co/T2DeuoUs9d— David Gauke (@DavidGauke) August 1, 2020
It has been obvious for weeks that we will not be ready to leave the transition period at the end of December. Nobody has any idea of how the Irish sea border will work in detail yet and none of the extra customs infrastructure, IT systems, lorry parks has even been started. So, the government need to have a narrative for the ERG and the mad Brexiteers in the Tory party to explain the climbdown.
This is it.
There is a risk of multiple crises next year and we cannot allow Brexit to disrupt supply chains and so the government has reluctantly come to the conclusion that the transition must be extended. Watch out for Johnson saying something along these lines in the next few weeks.
The ERG will have group apoplexy which is why the message must come out slowly so as to condition them for the announcement. Apart from everything else, Hull is the latest port to throw up its hands and complain they don't yet know where two border control posts are supposed to be sited or where the trained staff are going to come from.
And we now learn that Liz Truss is facing a back-bench rebellion if she does not put in place legal protections for UK agriculture in the ongoing trade talks with the USA. If she does, the talks will end abruptly since access for US agri-food products is the pre-requisite for any trade deal. Now that it seems Joe Biden will be the next president - assuming nothing emerges to stop it and Trump actually agrees to step down (not guaranteed) - Johnson will not have a Brexit-friendly administration in Washington.
Unless there is a delay we face severe disruption to trade. The loss of access to the single market, no trade deal with the Americans, potential food shortages and chaos at all of our EU facing points of entry and exit for goods, disputes with the EU about the implementation of the NI protocol and with the WTO about waiving goods through Dover without checks.
Manufacturers still have no idea about what standards goods marked with the new UKCA safety certification mark will need to comply with.
All this will come on top of the coronavirus pandemic which continues to bubble along and threatens to break out again this autumn and winter. The economy has totally melted down with government borrowing on course for £385 billion this year. In 2009-10 at the height of the financial crisis we borrowed less that half that sum (£152 billion). Unemployment is expected to double by the end of the year.
As Johnson scans the horizon there are serious problems approaching from every possible direction.
Keeping up the pretence that we can weather it all in 2021 is becoming harder and harder. There needs to be real progress in the EU future relationship talks this week if there is to be any chance of getting a legal text ready to sign in October so that it can be ratified. Even then another implementation period to allow both sides to adjust will be needed.
It won't be a cliff edge bit it will be a steep slope down to lower levels of trade, investment and migrant flows.
I note this morning that Robert Jenrick is announcing another shake-up of our "outdated" planning system seemingly oblivious to the two previous reforms in the last twenty years.
John Prescott created a new system when he came to power in 1997 and over the next few years a succession of large, thick policy documents were released. When the Conservatives won in 2010 their manifesto contained this pledge to reform it all:
Britain’s complex and unwieldy planning system has long been cited as a significant barrier to growth and wealth creation. We will create a presumption in favour of sustainable development in the planning system. We will abolish the unelected Infrastructure Planning Commission (IPC) and replace it with an efficient and democratically-accountable system that provides a fast-track process for major infrastructure projects.
Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, Mr Jenrick said that, under the new rules, land will be designated in one of three categories: for growth, for renewal and for protection and "permission in principle" will be given to developments on land designated "for renewal" to speed-up building.
As far as I can see this is not hugely different to how things work now. The Selby Local Plan already has a list of sites designated for housing or industrial use or called 'brown-field' which is what I assume land for renewal means.
It cannot mean automatic planning permission and it probably won't make any difference at all. Planning is one of the most contentious issues in this country as anyone who has ever been involved in any new project will testify - on both sides, developers and objectors.
Nothing seems to create such fury in otherwise placid men and women is the idea that somebody is about to build something nearby - from a modest kitchen extension to a waste incinerator. Jenrick is about to learn what planning means to people in modern Britain.
