This week in Brexitland, September 17th, 2021
It was a busy week in Brexitland, so get yourself a hot beverage and dig in:
We need to talk about Liz Truss
On Tuesday, Liz Truss, the then Secretary of State for International Trade, gave a speech about her latest vision for post-Brexit trade. If you want to know all of the gory details, I wrote an entire take down of it the day after it occurred, which you can read here. As for the rest of you, I’ll try and summarise the speech as succinctly as possible: don’t worry about losing all that trade with Europe because Asian trade is where its at now. Besides, the EU was protectionist, which is bad, even though by leaving the single market we’ve had to enforce a layer of protectionism on the British economy not seen since God knows when. Sure, Brexit may look like nothing but queues and paperwork and red tape and headaches now, but when we join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, everything will come good. Any businesses who disagree with this assessment just aren’t trying hard enough and deserve to go bust.
It was an abysmal speech, even by Truss’ low standards. There weren’t even any ‘pork markets’ moments to help you laugh along. As a bad speech maker, Liz Truss has gone from being the Tommy Wiseau of political speakers to the Michael Bay of the genre - dull but efficient, with a pretence to substance that is in fact entirely absent.
And wouldn’t you know it, the very next day after giving this speech, Liz Truss was promoted to Foreign Secretary. So now the rubbish contained within it is even more central to this government’s way of looking at the world.
The crown returns to the pint glass
The big news this week, however, is that Brexit has finally delivered: the crown at the top of the pint glass is making its triumphant return! Who cares about destroying just in time supply chains when there’s a crown at the top of your drink again, right?
Trying as hard as possible to engage seriously with this story, I get that symbols mean a lot to people, and one of the continuing failures of pro-European campaigning has been a failure to understand this. My problem with these types of stories is that we could have had crowns on pints and blue passports and all that other stuff while remaining in the EU. We didn’t have to leave to get any of it.
Part of the reason is that a lot of this stuff is less dictated by EU diktat than parts of the British press might have led you to believe. Another is that when there was anything the British government didn’t like about EU regulation back when we were in the club, instead of doing what every other member state did and either find a way round it or even just ignore it, we always applied everything to the letter of the law.
Hungary restricts freedom of expression and right to peaceful assembly, crushing opposition and creating what amounts to a one-party state. And they’re still in the EU. Does anyone seriously think that the United Kingdom, the second largest economy in Europe, would have been thrown out over some crowns on glasses?
As it happens, the main reason crowns on pint glasses actually disappeared was because most of the pint glasses in the UK are manufactured abroad. It’s hard to get round these sorts of things when you have them made in the Czech Republic, it turns out. Basically, Britain stopped having pint glasses with crowns on them because we stopped making pint glasses and instead, imported them from elsewhere. But hey, what a triumph for Brexit and all that good stuff.
Brexit customs checks on food get pushed back - yet again
Checks on food coming from the EU that were due to be in place in April 2021, then pushed back to October have now been pushed back again - to July 2022. The government reached for its all-purpose ‘It’s the pandemic’s fault!’ button, but it doesn’t wash here. The problem comes down to some simple problems with the Brexit deal and indeed, as ever, with Brexit itself and how to implement parts of it without causing massive, obvious problems.
Supply chains in Britain are already under strain due to the lorry driver shortage - caused mostly by Brexit, but let’s skip over that for now - so placing much heavier checks on good coming from the EU would be an added burden on all of this, possibly causing shortages that could become critical. By that I mean, everyone would notice and there could even be panic buying.
So, they have delayed the checks once again to stop this from happening. Which brings up an important point, which is that the government doesn’t really know how to implement a key element of Brexit, namely taking back control of our border in terms of goods being imported, without it quickly turning into a disaster. They don’t really know how to make Brexit work yet, in other words.
Some might ask here, why don’t the UK government just not bother with checks coming into the country? If it’s going to be a disaster, and no one is forcing them to do it - precious sovereignty regained via Brexit, remember - why bother? Well, because with the EU doing these sorts of checks on goods coming from the UK into the EU already, this means all UK based firms who wish to export are at a distinct disadvantage. Meanwhile, if you locate your firm inside the EU, you can export all over the single market, as well as - this is the important bit - to the UK without that much of a hassle, relatively speaking at least. Meaning, the current regime incentivises businesses to relocate to the EU even more than Brexit on its own would have done. The government knows this current state of affairs can’t last forever for that very reason, but they don’t know how to change it without inviting catastrophe. So, we are stuck in Brexit limbo, for how long, time will tell.
If you liked this article and would like to read how exactly Brexit is failing every week, please subscribe. And pro-Europeans, remember, as always: the road back will be long, but worth it.