Friday 7 August 2020

Polling and ignorance

I note that YouGov have started doing more polling for The Times, asking the old question: In hindsight do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the EU, with two more polls being added recently. The field work was done at the end of July. The results are slightly bizarre but both polls are significant with sample sizes over 1600 and carried out within a week of each other. In both polls the Conservatives are ahead by about 6%.

But when asked if the government is doing well or badly in negotiating our exit from the EU a majority (51%) thinks it's doing badly. Just 35% think they're doing well.

And by 6% a majority (53-47%) thinks we were WRONG to vote to leave the EU. It's hard to fathom what is going on as an apparently popular government has an unpopular flagship policy which is being implementing badly, with the full support of the populace. Amazing, eh?

However, I am confident as time goes on more and more people at the margin will see Brexit for the disaster it is. I am certain that the great majority do not understand what is going to happen in January and I am not here talking about what might happen but what is a 100% cast iron certainty.

There will be severe disruption to trade with the EU and probably with Northern Ireland too.  This is a consequence of May's decision to leave the single market and the customs union.

Even The Daily Mail, right in the Brexit Vanguard for the last five years or more still don't get it. An article yesterday by James Tapsfield, Political Editor For Mailonline, about Germany calling on the UK to show more flexibility and pragmatism, contains a shocking piece of ignorance.  This is Tapsfield:

"Ministers fear that, in the absence of a trade deal, the EU will impose strict import checks on all goods entering the bloc, potentially causing gridlock." 


Note the "in the absence of a trade deal."  At this stage, with millions of words having been written and read about what Brexit means over the last few year, a man at the very centre of events is still ignorant of the reality of what he (I assume) and his newspaper have been supporting all along.

The government is partly to blame since they have not made clear that the EU will impose strict import checks whatever happens in January. This is inevitable. But Tapsfield seems to think a trade deal will reduce the paperwork. It will increase paperwork for many, since Nissan, as an example, will need to produce evidence to support the origin of all 15,000 parts that go to make a Qashqai. This is in order to avoid a 10% tariff.

Without a trade deal, they will simply have to pay the tariff.

Many companies, where tariffs are low, will opt to pay them anyway rather than face the rigmarole of finding out where every part was made.

But if Tapsfield and The Daily Mail don't understand, how are the majority to follow it?  Not only that, he is implicitly suggesting that all those "strict import checks" can be avoided by a trade deal and I expect many people think we will reach an agreement at the last minute. But it doesn't matter, it won't make any difference whatsoever.

I also noticed in a FT article about plans to resurrect Operation Brock in Kent and avoid delays, hauliers will be fined if they enter Kent bound for the cross channel ports without a Kent Access Permit (KAP) and to get one they will need to declare all their paperwork is present and correct.

The government's attitude is that freight companies have had plenty of time to prepare and so the permit scheme is reasonable. 


Richard Burnett, chief executive of the Road Haulage Association, told The FT that plans to fine hauliers — about 85 per cent of whom were drivers from the EU — were impractical and counterproductive, "if we don’t have enough customs agents to create the paperwork, then hauliers cannot be expected to go to the ports with the paperwork all correct,” he said.

Burnett tweeted about it:

So, while the scheme may well be successful in reducing traffic chaos in Kent next year, it will do so at the expense of a lot of exports to the EU since haulage by road through Dover and Folkestone will be severely restricted. This will simply be for the want of customs agents who can fill in the complex forms properly.

The upshot of it is that exporters are going to find it increasingly difficult to get orders from the EU as the year goes on. Who would place an order in those circumstances when you cannot be sure of taking delivery when you expect to?

Only when this happens will the implications of Brexit become clear to most people.
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