All that We The People can do is to sit and wait for it to happen. Hello Project Reality.
Friday, 4 September 2020
Brexit - Trade Shit Has Hit The Fan
There is always an underlying reason behind chucking a dead cat on the table of political discourse, and it is becoming clear that the right-leaning part of our free and fearless press has deployed its current favourite - bashing the BBC - in order to stop the electorate from seeing the real disaster unfolding on the Brexit front. Put simply, the UK is not going to be ready at the beginning of next year, whether or not an EU trade deal is secured.
While papers like the Murdoch Times, the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph, and the Daily Brexit, still called the Express, instruct their readers to Look Over There at their latest Beeb Shock Horror inventions, alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his fellow clown car occupants have just pressed the panic button. But they are already too late. The FT, almost alone, has hinted at the gathering storm.
Joe Mayes of Bloomberg has spelt out the looming chaos (thread HERE; a must read), telling “Michael Gove has been given a Cabinet Office briefing listing 13 issues with the government's post-Brexit border plans, which is said to have `critical gaps' and is in part `unmanageable', with only 4 months to go”. There is more.
“Get this wrong, and it's a winter crisis for Johnson. The EU will stop trucks that try to enter without customs declarations, creating traffic jams and supply chain turmoil. It's new cross-border red tape that hasn't been needed for 30 years, and will apply even with an FTA … The stakes are high. UK does about half its trade with the EU, 80% of imported food in British supermarkets comes from the bloc. Border chaos would mean fresh food spoiling in trucks, just-in-time manufacturing stalling, extra strain on supply chains”.
Note “even with an FTA”. That means even if the Brexit talks reach a successful conclusion this month, disaster will not be averted. Mayes has added “the government has given itself sweeping powers to build Brexit lorry parks across England, without needing local approvals … In a statutory instrument laid before Parliament today, Housing Secretary Robert Jenrick listed 29 council areas where Brexit lorry parks can be built”.
Can it get worse? As if you need to ask. Business Insider has revealed that “Thousands of British food businesses could be left without the correct labelling required to continue selling to the European Union and Northern Ireland after the UK government missed an industry deadline to advise them on what new rules they will have to follow … Britain will leave the EU's trading rules at the end of this year, after which the labels that British food and drink businesses use will no longer be legally recognised on the continent”.
There was more. “UK trade associations repeatedly warned Prime Minister Boris Johnson's government that the end of August was the absolute deadline for issuing guidance that will allow them to produce new labels in time for January 1 … However, with just four months to go, they are still waiting for clarity from the UK government on the labelling rules they will have to follow in 2021”. We are well and truly screwed.
Worse, the idea that Michael “Oiky” Gove will sort the problem is for the birds, his mastery of politics another press confection, the idea that he must know what he’s doing as he’s one of their own. No hurling of dead cats will stop the onrushing disaster.
All that We The People can do is to sit and wait for it to happen. Hello Project Reality.
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All that We The People can do is to sit and wait for it to happen. Hello Project Reality.
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9 comments:
So translated; yesterday morning, Michael Gove opens his departmental email, sees this report on post Brexit intractable issues and gets back to the keyboard quick enough to leak it to Joe Mayes at Bloomberg for him to spill it all over twitter by 11.32 am the same morning. A Stakhanovite endeavour, even if Gove has no idea of how to cope with the issues 10/10
According to the late Gore Vidal, the four sweetest words in the English language are, "I TOLD YOU SO".
And so they are.
The so-called 'Project Fear' becomes the real 'Project WE Bloody Well Told You, Brexidiots, But You Wouldnt Listen'. Not quite as snappy as the vacuous and meaningless offerings from the Brexiters over the past few years, but Leaving was always going to be far more complicated than their simplistic lies led many people to believe.
there is one mistake in Joe Mayes tweet/article :
it's not british imports (food, drinks) that are at risks, but british exports, because the government has already announced that they would grant an exceptional 6 months periods for imports from the EU to be "custom-free".
Therefore, there are little to no danger to food security, though prices are gonna rise steadily all through 2021 and 2022.
on the other hand, meat and fish exports are pretty much going to be "frozen" from trade with the EU in the same period
Best regards,
Diddly-Squatxit.
Can just picture the scenes of Tory backbenchers in the Commons crocodile tears in January, that food exporters in their constiuencies.
Expect much squealing from a certain Mark Francois come when the Commons returns from its Xmas holidays in early January.
Huge increases in unemployment, delays at border crossings, Daily Mail weeping.
Expect the 1922 Committee to be demanding that Bozza steps up otherwise it's the exit.
Still, at least we got some practice in for next year when we all spent a month queuing up for bog roll.
Not really looking forward to the upcoming Christmas Prosecco riots, though.
Is now a good time to start stockpiling bogroll?
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