Over the last four years we have been engaged in the same unverifiable arguments about Brexit. Will we really be better off, is it good for trade, will immigration actually fall and so on. It has all been at the metaphysical and theoretical level but now we are reaching the end game where the old positions will be tested and, as I believe, the lies finally exposed. Nowhere is this better illustrated than in Kent where lorry parks and customs posts are being planned and now there is a refugee crisis.
At least 4,000 refugees/illegal migrants have crossed the Channel so far this year with 7,500 expected by Christmas. This is twice as many as last year. All the talk of "taking back control" of our borders is turning out to be just what we all thought it was, a lot of hot air.
Priti Patel is reduced to 'pleading' with France to stop the flow although it's easy to imagine what her reaction would be if the roles were reversed. She is talking about bringing in the navy to patrol the coast and according to The Telegraph France is asking the UK to pay for them to increase patrols.
At the end of the year arrangements for returning illegal immigrants to France will end, making it more difficult to send the poor wretches back. Of course, there are complicated rules and Steve Peers tries to explain it all in this blogpost. The notion that refugees must apply to the first safe country they come to is not actually as clear cut as Farage and his ilk make out. It appears Brexit is going to make the illegal immigrant problem much worse, not better.
Next, we learn that tariffs on cane sugar are being dropped to benefit Tate & Lyle. At the moment raw cane sugar imported into the EU to be further refined into white sugar attracts a tariff of €339 per tonne. At the end of the year this will still apply but according to The Grocer, 412,000 tonnes or about 20% of the UK's annual consumption, will come in tariff free - a huge boost for T&L at the expense of home grown sugar beet or imported sugar from the EU.
A lot of sugar beet is grown in Lincolnshire and East Anglia, areas which voted to leave most emphatically. Kent too was at the forefront of the leave vote. British sugar has big operations at Bury St Edmunds, Wissington and Cantley and another at Newark. These are likely to be hit if T&L take more market share in the UK.
Jobs might be created in East London where Tate % Lyle's Silvertown plant is located but it's no substitute for agricultural jobs in Lincolnshire of factory workers in East Anglia.
So I wonder if the penny is beginning to drop? I think this might be the case when looking at the 148th poll in the WhatUKthinks series published yesterday showing a twelve point lead for WRONG in the proposition: In hindsight, do you think Britain was right or wrong to vote to leave the EU? When don't knows are excluded this is a 56-44% lead for WRONG.
It has been at this level before, in August 2019 and in December 2018 but I wonder if this time we are seeing the beginning of a more permanent shift in opinion on Brexit?
In the past we have seen opinion fall back but this has perhaps been partly because the remain arguments of significant problems couldn't be proven one way or the other, when charges of scaremongering still carried some weight. But as the real impacts of Brexit begin to be felt such charges are losing their potency. Let us hope so.
