First of all, thank you to the plethora of new subscribers this week and a special thanks to Chris Grey for placing a kind word about this substack on social media, very much appreciated. That done, let’s see what joys Britain’s exit from the European Union brought us all this week.
Is the fishing war with France about to end?
Amidst all of the news regarding Christmas parties that may or may not have happened in Number 10 last year, it is easy to forget that the fishing row between the UK and France has still not been fully resolved. The threat of Article 16 has never actually been taken off the table by Frost and co, although the chances of them invoking it receded greatly once the Americans gave them a slap on the wrist about it all.
Weirdly, the too numerous to recount in full scandals Downing Street are embroiled in at present probably helps the inevitable climbdown here. With the nation’s attention on so many other political matters, the government can probably just quietly give the French whatever they want without raising too many eyebrows. I’m a little saddened by this, since I was eagerly looking forward to seeing how the Daily Express was going to spin the UK government’s latest post-Brexit folding to the demands of an EU member state. “Boris bashes Frogs! Macron humiliated by the strong arm tactics of Lord Frost!” There would have been three paragraphs of fluffy, content-free quotes from government aides, followed by the bit which reveals how badly the government had actually caved in to French demands. Oh well, there’ll be a next time.
What’s amazing to think now is that the government was ever actually serious about invoking Article 16 in the first place. Did any of them read it first? It would have been a total disaster, one that almost certainly would have ended Boris Johnson’s time in Number 10 before the next election. Although, that looks like it might well happen now anyhow.
The UK government “minded” not to annoy the chemical sector with further Brexit implementation
One of the great myths around Brexit is the deregulation thing. Freed from the shackles of European directives, Britain can form its own regulatory environments suited specially to our needs! Except, it turns out that shifting anything on regulation is really tricky and not something a lot of sectors particularly want to do.
Take the chemical manufacturing sector. They are in what amounts to the EU’s regulatory framework until October 2023. Except now the government is going to push that out two years, to October 2025. You see, it turns out that far from freeing industry from red tape, creating a UK-only regulatory framework means that you just have a whole new set of regulations to abide by. It’s more red tape, in other words. It is doing the opposite of what Brexit was supposed to do, although that happens most of the time with any example you can name anyhow, so what’s new.
It’s like the idea of setting up a UKCA quality mark for goods. All you are doing is creating more hassle for companies with no reciprocal gain. The only way industry would come out better from a UK origin regulatory regime is if it was lighter-touch and easier to manage and - this is the crucial bit - was taken up by loads of other countries across the globe, the more the better. If it’s just us doing it, the whole thing is a tremendous waste of time and resource. But again, this is like Brexit in a nutshell - unless the UK changes the way other countries do business and this helps UK industry, all we’ve done is isolated ourselves for no reason.
“Smart” borders are back in the news
2022 offers many things to look forward to. A football world cup. A possible end to the Covid nightmare. And, of course, the UK government solving all the problems they created with Brexit by the testing of “smart” borders.
This is more ‘technology will save Brexit’ bullshit. Basically, the Home Office will use some sort of AI no one has actually invented yet that will mean the customs borders the government created with its “clean” Brexit will no longer be so cumbersome. To give you some idea, a government spokesperson described the whole thing as the “Rolls Royce system of moving goods”. If that doesn’t give you confidence, then nothing will.
This gets to the heart of what I really hate about Brexit. If you want to pull Britain out of the customs union, okay, I think that was a stupid thing to do - but if you thought the opposite, at least own up to what that means. You want to control the border more? Then that’s going to mean pile ups of goods wherever you place that border. It’s going to mean things get into Britain slower or not at all. This is just the reality of the situation. If you don’t like it, please don’t tell us some robot is going to fix the whole thing one day in the near future. Just figure out once and for all that perhaps Brexit wasn’t all you thought it was going be.
Until next week, stay healthy and I’ll be back next week, as ever, with the worst of Brexit. In the meantime, if you haven’t already, please subscribe.
I'm really quite confused about Jim Radcliffe. A man who made a fortune out of chemicals. He is one of those strange "Brexit supporting businessmen". Has he said anything at all in this pointless UK Reach saga? It would be amusing (we get our Brexit laughs where we can) to know what weird contortions he has come out with on this subject from his lovely pad in the old British colony of Monaco.