Wednesday 5 August 2020

Why IDS is wrong about the £160 billion

No apologies for posting about the half wit IDS twice in two days. As I mentioned yesterday I expected somebody on Twitter to quickly explain why he was wrong about the £160 billion that we are supposedly on the hook for through the European Investment Bank. Step forward Mr James Crisp the Brussels correspondent for The Telegraph of all people. He tweeted about it as you can see below.

But before we look at that I should say that an EU spokesman has said the Withdrawal Agreement is simply holding us to the guarantees we gave whilst we were a member of the EU, which by implication at least, we are now trying to wriggle out of. This is Crisps Twitter thread:

As he explains for the UK to be required to pay £160 billion "every single one of the AAA-rated EIB’s thousands of investments would need to go belly-up at the same time and so badly that there was no hope for restructuring or even asset-stripping".

Most of these investments are in large scale infrastructure like energy and bridges or roads so are hardly likely to become worthless anyway.  But more than that, the bank has £600 billion in reserves which it would call upon before going back to member states for money.  IDS's claims are all a total fantasy - one might call them scaremongering with some justification.

Best for Britain has unearthed a video clip of Duncan Smith in December 2019 speaking in The House about why there was no need to spend any more time in examining the Withdrawal Agreement and he was going to support the "programme motion" which limited debate to just three days, because he said he would like to know what it was that had not already been debated in "meaningful vote after meaningful vote".
Well now he has answered his own questions. He has now admitted that the EIB commitment was "buried in the fine print, unnoticed by many" presumably meaning himself and all the other Brexiteers so mad keen to get the vote finished as soon as possible in order to claim victory.

He looks like a complete fool - probably because that is exactly what he is.

In November he retweeted a link to Boris Johnson's column from The Telegraph repeating the headline: A deal is oven-ready. Let’s get Brexit done and take this country forward:
As I have said many times, this is Britain's problem in a nutshell (no pun intended). Nobody reads the fine print. I have skim read the Withdrawal Agreement and quickly recognised the sections with references to EU law and directives and knew my own limitations. I didn't understand all of it or even most of it.

When I was working one would often receive bulky specifications against which a client wanted to receive a quotation. You had to read the details if you were to (a) quote something close to what they were seeking and (b) not lay yourself open to making commitments that you could or might not meet. This was for modest contracts of a few hundred thousand pounds.

I worked for a great Italian business who would religiously go through every single word of a specification or contract - even in a foreign language - no matter how long it took.

But IDS couldn't be bothered to do this even when the fate of a nation and millions of citizens was and still is at stake.

I don't think it's laziness, it is something deeper than that. It's an arrogant belief in their own very limited ability. A quick glance at the front page of a document and they think they know everything inside far more than the experts who wrote it.  And I'm not just talking of politicians here.

I know plenty of people who never read instruction manuals, belittle expertise and simply plough on regardless.

IDS is one of those over confident and over privileged men and women many of whom are now at the very pinnacle of government. Johnson, Cummings and Gove are out of the same mould and are driving the whole country to disaster.

Despite all that the Tory party still has a 4-6% lead over Labour which just shows how little the population are bothered until disaster strikes them personally.

One day I am sure a majority will realise what they have done and they will be very angry indeed. I just hope to live long enough to see it.
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