Friday 25 September 2020

The stupidity lingers on

In Brexit you are constantly surprised, shocked even, by the sheer ignorance of people who ought to know stuff but don't. There cannot be any excuse as we come to the end of 2020 for being unaware of fundamental issues surrounding Brexit. Billions of words have been written by people, but they are either not read or not understood. Today I want to point the finger at Lance Forman, described as a businessman and former Brexit Party MEP.

He tweeted the other day about the KENT LORRY PARK (in capitals for some reason), a tweet in which he suggested the lorry park was just temporary and a negotiating tactic:
He thinks that somehow a (trade) deal will make the Lorry park redundant after a while. He does not seem to appreciate that the one being constructed just off junction 10A of the M20 is to be used both as a park for trucks exporting goods that lack the requisite paperwork but, later on in 2021, as a customs post for inbound HGVs carrying our imports. And others will follow.

Forman talks of those complaining as being either clueless or scaremongering. Mmmm..

He is one of those Brexiteers who thought you could exit the single market and customs union but avoid a border and border checks and carry on as if you're still a member. I think at one point Michael Gove and the gang at Vote Leave thought so too. Gove is being slowly educated but strapped to the buffer of the Brexit train he can hardly now admit it has all been a disastrous mistake.

OK you can accept a Brexiteer may have fooled himself, but even BBC reporters and presenters are not immune. Dmitry Grozoubinski, a trade expert I often quote on this blog, was interviewed on Radio Kent and later tweeted about it:

The terrible truth is now coming out and is no longer deniable by men like Gove and Johnson - and eventually Lance Forman himself. I suppose that is small comfort to people like us who have spent years trying to convince leave voters that it has all been a terrible mistake. But we must take comfort wherever we can get it and I look forward to plenty more in the next few months.

Forman got a powerful response on Twitter and someone dug up another tweet from him:

The most telling sentence is this: "Shut up for 10 years and if Britain is worse off complain like hell"

In that sentence the most important word is IF. Imagine embarking on something as far reaching as Brexit based on an if. Nobody knows what the future holds but we can use the evidence of our own eyes; countries inside the EU have prospered and trade with nations diminishes the further away they are, our diplomatic heft is increased by being in the EU.

Europe's response to covid-19 has generally been better than ours. Businesses and banks like J P Morgan are moving to the EU because it's better to be in a bigger market and so on.

The odds against Brexit being a success are very high and if you were not 100 per cent sure, why do it?

I have mentioned Mr Forman before on this blog because he was quoted in 2016 saying after Brexit the euro would collapse and we would all get cheap holidays. In fact the reverse has happened but he does not seem to have learned. And I'm sorry to say he probably never will, but others will.  Obvious truths cannot be denied forever.

I am strangely comforted by Forman's tweet because everything we have learned so far is that the experts were right. There are no benefits to Brexit and we are simply relearning what our predecessors learned sixties - and was blindingly obvious to me in the 1970s. Britain's golden age of enriching ourselves at the expense of others had gone and was never coming back.

We can be willing and useful members of the EU again at some point in the future when we finally prove to ourselves that the whole campaign of the leave side was fuelled by misunderstandings, misinformation and lies.

Finally, I post a video clip from Twitter of DEFRA Secretary George Eustice (and former UKIP member) suggesting to a parliamentary select committee that disruption at the border in January will only come about if the EU fail to plan:
He says we can do all we can but if there are delays the other side it will be because the EU have not prepared. Total delusion.
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