This week in Brexitland, September 9th, 2022

1. The passing of the monarch - and a nightmare journey

This week, I was going to review what Liz Truss as prime minister might mean for Brexit. I also planned to tell you all about my trip to Geneva, Switzerland and from there into the French Alps and use that to extrapolate on the “Swiss model”and how Brexiters always misunderstand it. Then, yesterday, two things happened.

One is that Queen Elizabeth II died. That was saddening to people all around the world (excluding those with a chip on their shoulder about the Queen being responsible for colonialism, the 19th century Irish famine or some other things she had nothing to do with). Beyond sadness, my biggest emotion about the Queen passing is fear. We’ve lost one of the main things rooting us to the near past - everything now seems wild, without a base. Perhaps this is an instant emotional reaction to her passing - but I don’t think so.

The other thing that happened is that I arrived at Gatwick airport with my family to find that our EasyJet flight to Geneva had been cancelled and that there wouldn’t be another one until the following evening (if then). I still have received no official explanation for this. Anyhow, the trip was for important family purposes, so we made the rather mad decision to drive to Dover, get on a ferry, then drive all the way down to the Franco-Swiss border.

It felt a little like “Planes, Trains and Automobiles” at times. The A2 was closed into Dover and the diversion lead nowhere, so we ended up driving around tiny country roads in Kent while the rain hammered down on the car. We did make it for our ferry, but one thing struck me at customs, as this was my first proper post-Brexit Dover experience. Having now witnessed the stamping of the passports at Dover first-hand, the idea that this wasn’t the major factor in backup at the port during the summer is ludicrous. It’s simple material reality - when you have to not only check each passport but stamp each and every one, if there is a huge volume of traffic coming through, it will be slowed down considerably as a result. This alone is a fairly big downside to Brexit and one that could be classed in my view as “disruption”.

Anyhow, we got on the ferry and drove through the night. It’s was kind of wild. I suppose having this all happen with the monarch’s passing as the backdrop hammered home the idea to me that Britain is slowly but surely becoming wildly dysfunctional. For fifteen, maybe twenty odd years, I felt that the country was getting steadily better in a lot of respects - then the decline set in, somewhere. Whether it was Brexit, or the post-2010 cuts or some combination of all of this, I don’t know, but it feels like things have been getting worse for a while now. I don’t say this to revel in pessimism - I really want things to get better, but it simply doesn’t feel that way.

I’ll leave it there, except to say God Save the King. God knows, we need something good right now.

2. The one year anniversary of “This week in Brexitland”

It’s been one year, almost exactly, since my first edition of “This week in Brexitland” went out and I would like to thank both all of the subscribers, the several thousand of you that make this worth doing each week, and the supporters who have helped so many people discover this newsletter, most prominently (but not solely), Chris Grey, Tim Bale and Phil Syrpis. I’ll try and keep up with this every week and hope to be sending the newsletter out to even more of you in another year’s time.

Sorry for the brief entry this week but I really need some sleep. I promise to make next weeks’ edition extra meaty. Until then, if you haven’t subscribed, please go ahead and do so and I’ll see you next week with, as always, the worst of Brexit.