Gove appeared on Marr yesterday and Twitter absolutely fizzed afterwards with excerpts from his interview. One wonders what goes off inside his head sometimes. I don't think he's in Johnson's league as far as stupidity goes, and I have read several times he is privately worried about a no deal Brexit, as he should be. The minister in charge of no deal planning knows better than anyone how devastating it would be. If that's true there must be internal conflict between the public pretence all will be well and reality.
He also had an article in The Sunday Times where he persisted in the fantasy that we are only asking for a Canada-style FTA - "That’s what the EU said it would offer us." This is patently untrue but is clearly now the government line. Barnier said explicitly in February we could NOT have a Canada style deal - it was a headline on the BBC website: Michel Barnier: UK can't have Canada trade deal with EU. Where had Gove been these last eight months?
He calls for a "fundamental change in attitude, policy and politics from the EU" which is not going to happen. The UK will back down, of that I am 100 per cent certain. The chairman of Tesco was warning on Friday about "some" shortages of "some" fresh food items for up to three months after January. This is shocking to me and is something most people have never experienced. Even during rationing after the war we didn't have shortages of fresh food.
John Allan insisted there was "no need for the public to stockpile" but said there may be some things we have to "learn to do without for a few weeks, possibly a few months after Brexit.” Some hope. People will soon be panic buying you can be sure.
Many people posted a clip of Gove being confronted by Marr with his own pre-referendum speech and it's worth watching to see how slippery he is:
If you've never seen a liar cornered before, this is it what it looks like. And like all liars caught red handed, he's trying to get out of it by telling even more lies. Gove, Johnson, Cummings, Trump, the whole heap of them, they're all the same.#Brexitpic.twitter.com/uJCcegDPps
— Brexit Bin 🇪🇺 #NotMyBrexit (@BrexitBin) October 18, 2020
Asked why he wasn't embarrassed by his 2016 rubbishing of claims we would find negotiating a deal with the EU difficult if not impossible, he blamed the EU. One wonders if privately he admits to Brexit being one of those things you start, thinking it would all be easy, but quickly realise that the outcome is going to be certain humiliation or disaster. In my case, I would stop and rethink it since experience tells you, the longer you persist in struggling with the inevitable, the bigger the humiliation or disaster that awaits you. Only a fool or a politician goes right to the bitter end.
Of course, men like Gove, politicians, can't admit error. It's the last thing they ever admit to and with something as huge as Brexit, it is probably impossible. It is to Gove what Iraq is to Blair.
And so Brexiteers like Gove are spending billions trying to prove the experts wrong and to try and save their own reputations and face. We and they know it won't work, is going to cost the nation a lot in the short, medium and long-term and will have to be reversed one day. What we are going through is the charade that Brexit will be permanent. It won't.
In the ST article Gove also says, "Businesses have responded energetically, flexibly and imaginatively to the inevitable challenges of change, while also identifying the many new opportunities life outside the EU will bring." This must have been written before the CBI organised a joint letter from the heads of 71 trade groups which said precisely the reverse. They didn't mention the work he said had been "done to get ready for life outside the customs union will enable businesses to take advantage of the new free trade deals Liz Truss has secured, including our new deal with Japan."
His position seems to be that we have cut you off from your largest market 22 miles away and secured some miniscule improvements (in exchange for opening you to more Japanese competition) with a market with about 5 per cent of the trade and 7,000 miles away. Any more 'victories' like that and we're finished.
However, the worst aspect of his article is the final paragraph which nobody mentioned as far as I can see. This is it:
"We’re getting ready to do what the British people asked us to — take back control."
For me this is like the con man or trickster who befriends someone vulnerable, perhaps with a bit of dementia or on the timid side, and persuades them to change a will in their favour or have the roof repaired or driveway resurfaced at extortionate cost. Afterwards, they justify it by saying "he told me to do it," which is true but only because they were persuaded it was a "good thing."
The British people were persuaded to vote for Brexit but every week brings new horrors, job losses, Kent having a border out around it or portaloos spread along the length of the M20, food shortages and so on. One day a big majority will realise they've been had and Brexit is actually a "bad thing."
When that happens I would not want to be in Gove's shoes.
Finally, can I recommend Andrew Rawnsley's article in The Observer yesterday. Well worth a read.
