The dilemma of our age goes on: will this government do the stupidest thing imaginable and trigger Article 16? A look to ‘22
As we already know, Liz Truss wasted no time upon inheriting the Brexit brief from Frost to state that the UK government would trigger Article 16 of the NI Protocol if the EU doesn’t give in to their ridiculous demands. The question to consider now is whether or not Truss or indeed, anyone within this government is actually serious about doing something so idiotic, or whether this is just posturing ahead of a presumed leadership contest.
It all reminds me eerily of the end of December 2020, when it was a question of whether we would get a deal with the EU or leave on no deal. I maintain to this day that we were closer to no deal than a lot of people assumed; it came down to what was basically the last moment, and the choices left to make were either take the terrible deal on offer or buckle down for no deal. Given how many pundits on the right were baying for no deal, it was always far from certain that Johnson would take the bad deal instead. He did in the end, probably out of fear more than anything else.
A year later and it’s almost the exact same situation. Pundits on the right, and many Brexity Tory MPs as well, will be telling Johnson to go for it. Trigger Article 16 and watch the Europeans suffer, even though in reality the vast majority of the pain will be felt by the denizens of Great Britain. Just like they wanted him to go for no deal in December of 2020, the reasons they want him to trigger Article 16 this time round are almost exactly the same - so that BJ can act as a sort of battering ram. Article 16 gets invoked, there’s a trade war with the EU, it’s all a mess. It’s perfect because the fallout can be blamed on Johnson and then Truss or Sunak get to ride in and clean up everything, saying that every compromise they make once they take over is necessary after ‘Boris had screwed everything up’. This is what is known in Tory circles as the ‘Theresa May Play”.
What will Johnson do this time out? Probably run away scared, accidentally taking the better option, just as he did with the lousy deal that still was an improvement on absolutely nothing. I suppose the question to leave this segment of the programme on is this: what will the Brexit-related dilemma for whomever is prime minister be this time next year? Whatever it is, my guess is the whole shape of it will look precisely the same. Come on, Prime Minister, do something stupid so we can get rid of you and then find the latest person to blame for why Brexit has been shit so far, thus giving the project another go round. The quest for another martyr to the Brexit cause is never-ending.
Only one day until a lot more customs controls - Brexit as autarky
One the slogans of Brexit, even before the referendum was called, was ‘Global Britain’. The idea was that being ‘shackled to the EU’ meant that we couldn’t strike out on our own and create a whole bunch more free trade elsewhere in the world. The ‘protectionist EU’ we heard a lot about, signalling that a free, independent Britain would be the most free trading bunch since, well, ever.
Which is what makes the protectionism that Brexit has actually meant in practice all the more strange. Tomorrow sees even more protectionism come into play, when a heap of new customs checks on goods coming from the EU into Great Britain enter into effect. They have been put off a few times now already, but this time fans of autarky should get the champagne out. Or, I’m sorry, the English sparkling wine out.
Here’s the guidance on what’s coming into play tomorrow, from the government’s own website:
‘Ports and other border locations will be required to control goods moving into Great Britain from the EU. This means that unless your goods have a valid declaration and have received customs clearance, they will not be able to be released into circulation, and in most cases will not be able to leave the port, except from in Ireland.
‘From 1 January 2022, your goods may be directed to an Inland Border Facility for documentary or physical checks if these checks cannot be done at the border.
‘It’s important that those involved in transporting your goods are ready and understand how you intend to operate from January 2022.
‘From 1 January 2022, you must also submit an “arrived” export declaration if your goods are moving through one of the border locations that uses the arrived exports process.’
How’s that for free and uninhibited free trade, huh? But remember, it’s all the EU’s fault because…..the UK decided to leave the single market. Just so that’s clear.
Many Tories stated during the Brexit Wars of 2016-2019 that if the EU instituted checks on goods coming from Britain into the single market, we would show them something. We would just let everything through into Britain with no checks because that’s the kind of country we are, free trading to the core. That was always impossible for reasons that would take a large article to cover, which I will skip for now as a result. But just remember this for now: being in the single market when businesses and customers didn’t have to be wrapped up in this mountain of red tape was ‘protectionism’, but having to live with all of this added red tape caused by Brexit that helps absolutely no one is ‘freedom’.
Blessed are the cheesemakers
Does anyone remember when Liz Truss used to go on about cheese? To be fair, she went on about apples and pork markets as well, but you see what I’m getting at here - Liz was all about home-grown, British producers of food and getting them the best deal possible. Which is what makes her Damascene conversion to the pro-Brexit cause - that is clearly only accidentally beneficial to her political career - so confusing in one sense, because so many people who make food products have been stuffed by Brexit. Including, of course, those who make and sell cheese in this country.
Including the Cheshire Cheese Company, whose co-founder expounded to the Guardian this week about the effects of Brexit on his company’s fortunes.
“It turns out our greatest competitor on the planet is the UK government because every time they do a fantastic deal, they kick us out of that market – starting with the Brexit deal,” he said, before describing the post-Brexit EU trade deal as the “biggest disaster that any government has ever negotiated in the history of trade negotiations”.
What has been most interesting to me about Brexit thus far is how much it has negatively affected precisely those parts of the economy Leavers tried to convince us would come out better from Brexit. The farmers, the manufacturers, food and drink producers, fishermen. Turns out Liz Truss’ words as DEFRA Secretary about protecting several of those groups mentioned were little more than hot air. Will she do anything to help these groups once she’s prime minister? Roll on 2022!
Happy New Year everyone - we can only hope the year we’re about the enter is better than 2021 in almost every respect. Probably not in terms of Brexit though, which I will continue banging on about here, highlighting the numerous contradictions and sheer terrible elements of Brexit as they arise on a weekly basis. If you haven’t already, please subscribe!
you are brilliant sir, you and chris grey the best of friday mornings, and my fav anti brexit bloggers :)
I came here by clicking a link from Chris Grey's blog. Thanks for the effort, I look forward to reading more. As a Canadian, (expat Brit), I was against Brexit from the getgo, and got into many arguments over the years. Unfortunately for the UK, my gloomy prognostications have been proved correct. EU membership is roughly analogous to Canadian federalism, and it was clear that Brexit would be far from easy or beneficial to the UK. Our flirt with chaos, with all the same potential for disaster, came with the Quebec Referendum, but fortunately common sense triumphed (barely). The UK exported approx 6 times the amount per capita to the EU than the EU sold to the UK (2019 figures). How did anyone think that cutting yourself off from your customers would hurt them more than you? The EU exporters have a much larger collective economy so can absorb domestically a relatively small loss of a market. On the other hand, the UK with one tenth the market must absorb six times the loss. So the SM/CU was the only sane way to go, but that negated the main premise of Brexit, the Burkian view of sovereignty, since the concomitant requirement for alignment in standards means the UK does not make the rules. What a mess. Thanks again for your articles, looking forward to reading more.