This week in Brexitland, October 15th, 2021
Apologies first off for my no show last week. I just couldn’t bring myself to write however many words about Brexit at the time. I don’t know, British politics is so depressing and awful at present that it can be hard to even try sometimes. But I’m here now, so let’s do this thing:
The many faces of Baron Frost
In a period in British history filled to the brim with absolutely ridiculous characters doing absolutely ridiculous things, people who if you’d written them as satire twenty years ago you would have been laughed out of town for going way over the top, David George Hamilton Frost still manages to stand out amongst the clowns from time to time. He gave a speech this week, of which several things need to be said.
Some Brexiteers are obviously talking it up as a famous victory already, stating that the ‘EU climbdown’ on the number of and type of goods that need to be checked when travelling form Great Britain to Northern Ireland is all down to Frost giving it to them Eurocrats good and proper. Of course, all that’s happened is the strictness of the Northern Ireland Protocol has been slightly eased on the EU side, all for completely logical reasons. Until such a time as the UK diverges in terms of standards, it’s just preparing for D-Day anyhow. When that happens, the EU will be sure to respond appropriately. After all, “Taking Back Control” turned out to mean “Give the EU total control over our lives”, something that might not have looked so snazzy on the side of a Vote Leave bus in 2016.
The guts of Lord Frost’s speech was that the NI Protocol simply won’t do. Never mind that the whole thing was the UK government’s idea, or that Frost himself was the leader of the negotiating team that settled the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement of which the Protocol is a major part - no, no, in Brexitland, anything can be whatever you need it to be at the moment you need it to be that thing. Just blame the whole thing on the EU - this tactic has never failed yet.
Beyond the rights and wrongs of Brexit, this ability most of the British public has at present to purposefully not hold our elected representatives to account when they say one thing and then do another is terrifying. Sorry, that was unfair of me - Lord Frost isn’t an elected representative.
French blockade!
French fisherman are threatening to blockade the island of Britain, making getting stuff from the continent we desperately need even harder. Seems like not giving them the licences to fish off the coast of Jersey that the last-second, crappy deal of Boris Johnson’s assured them was their legal right turned out to be a bad idea, particularly when we still desperately need stuff from Europe. Or at least we will do until that US trade deal kicks in sometime in the 2090s.
Amongst the many stupid things Brexit has given us, this fantasy return to the Napoleonic era, with what I’m sure involves many Brexity men throughout England imagining themselves as members of the cast in a Hornblower reboot, may well be the stupidest. At a time when the axis of China and Russia is threatening the tide of liberal democracy throughout the world, we’ve decided to pick a fight with France over a bunch of fishing licences - after, let’s remind ourselves, the trade deal our government agreed to at the last moment screwed British fishermen completely by cutting off their access to millions of buyers of their product. Oh well - you lose some and then you lose some more.
Empire 2.0
Given Brexit is an attempt to regain the glory of the British Empire, I thought a discussion that is long overdue is which sovereign nation the UK should invade first in its revamped imperial conquest. It will have to be somewhere relatively weak - we want to win, after all. It would be embarrassing to get our arses handed to us first time out in ages, after all.
I was thinking maybe the Yukon, but then realised it is pretty close to the US. Don’t want a 21st century Suez on our hands now, do we. But after that, I’m stumped. Suriname? Suggestions welcome, please. ‘Proper’ Brexit, or whatever this Brexit is we’re suffering with, is almost a year old now. We need to get out there, chaps. Otherwise, Brexit will just look stupid, won’t it?
And on that note, try and keep calm and don’t get shirty with any Frenchmen this week - we need all the product they can give us.