Category Archives: Brexit

Boris Johnson was elected in 2019 to ‘Get Brexit Done’. Why are we still waiting for the benefits?

Cliffhanger: The Leave campaign infamously claimed Brexit would result in a £350m a week dividend for the UK. We never received it. Instead, Brexit has shrunk the UK economy by at least 4%, costing a huge amount of working time simply to do the new paperwork it has foisted on us.

Brexit – that was a huge con, wasn’t it?

The Conservatives swept to a landslide victory in December 2019 under the slogan “Get Brexit Done” – and we are still waiting for it to happen.

Instead of the massive boost to the economy that we were promised, along with a bonfire of bureaucratic paperwork, UK importers and exporters have been deluged with such a mountain of new documentation to fill out, simply to get goods across the Channel, that the then-new government has had to “stagger” its implementation and some of it has still not started to affect us.

And Brexit jeopardised the whole Northern Ireland peace process by putting a trade border with the province in the middle of the Irish Sea – an imaginary barrier that will remain there even after the latest attempt to forge agreement over it between the disparate political organisations that have a stake in the matter.

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Brexit was the first subject This Site discussed after the general election and I was justifiably disparaging:

The Tories – not just under Boris Johnson, but going back through Theresa May’s nightmare leadership and right back to David Cameron’s horror show – have used their puppets in the mass media to change it from a debate on our future relationship with the European Union into a divisive standoff, pitting family against family, old against young, cosmopolitan against parochial.

And they succeeded, I think partly because they had dragged the process out so long that people were sick of the whole thing.

Labour’s promise to have a decisive answer within six months was unpalatable compared with Johnson’s lie that he’ll have it all sewn up by the end of January. People want it to be over now.

And I made a prediction that proved to be exactly right – didn’t it? See:

Well, I’ve got news for those people: it won’t be.

Johnson might be promising a vote in Parliament on his Withdrawal Bill on Friday, which will enable to UK to leave the EU on January 31, but of course that’s not the end of the saga. The country’s decoupling will take many years.

How right I was!

But the deal on which MPs will be voting will put us into a “transition” period, with the UK assumed to be clear of the EU by December 31, 2020 – and a top EU official says that won’t happen.

In a leaked recording, Michel Barnier said it would be “unrealistic” to expect a “global negotiation” on trade to be completed within 11 months, meaning that in fact we are likely to leave the EU with no deal.

How right he was!

It will make it possible for Johnson to sell off our remaining national assets. And the nearly 14 million people who voted Conservative on December 12? They’ll be remembered as the patsies who made it possible.

Well, they haven’t all gone – yet.

But the Tories will keep trying. And we know what privatisation brings: corruption, greed and profiteering, a sharp drop in the quality of service, and increasing demand on the public purse to pay for it all.

You can look forward to that under either a returned Tory government under Rishi Sunak or a new New Labour government under Keir Starmer and his Tories-in-red-ties.

That’s why This Site is campaigning for voters to do something different at this year’s general election – and actually engage your brains.

I’ve said it before and I’ll probably repeat it many times:

You simply cannot vote tribally – for the party you think represents you (none of them do; they’re all about enriching their MPs and nothing else) – at the next general election.

Instead – and I cannot stress this strongly enough – if you want your vote to mean anything, you have to actually find out what the candidates in your constituency are planning to do, if they are lucky enough to be elected.

That is what party manifestos are for. Independent candidates also have policy documents and they will all be online for you to find and read.

You need to find and read these policy documents, and then you need to make a dispassionate choice, based on what you have read.

Which of the candidates offers the most policies that fit what you need? And, by that, I mean: who will improve your own life the most?

Do not consider how other people will vote, either in your constituency or the other 649 around the UK. That is not your concern.

It is not for you to worry about which party will get enough votes to actually enact its policies. This will lead you down the usual garden path to voting in a government that won’t do anything at all for the good of the country, like the one we’ve had since 2010.

BE SELFISH. Bizarrely, it might be the only way to get the kind of government that all of us need. It might even help us climb out of the Brexit pit into which Johnson, Cameron and all the other Tory twits dumped us.


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Why is the DUP returning to power-sharing in NI assembly if nothing has changed?

Return to Stormont? Chris Heaton-Harris (left), the Northern Ireland Secretary, seems to have done a deal with DUP leader Jeffrey Donaldson.

The Democratic Unionist Party has apparently agreed to resume its power-sharing deal in the Northern Ireland Assembly, even though none of the objections to post-Brexit trade rules over which its members walked out seem to have been addressed.

The DUP quit the Stormont assembly nearly two years ago, in protest at the so-called Northern Ireland Protocol for post-Brexit trade that would put a border between the Province and the rest of the United Kingdom.

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Prime Minister Rishi Sunak proposed a new deal, called the Windsor Framework, last year. This adopted a suggestion from the European Union that ‘Green’ and ‘Red’ lanes be set up at borders.

There would be a ‘Green Lane’ for goods going into NI, and they won’t be checked, while goods going through the province and into the Republic (or the other way, and into the UK) will be subject to customs procedures.

And the DUP didn’t like it – so Stormont remained closed for business.

Now, after talks with NI Secretary Chris Heaton-Harris, DUP leader Sir Jeffrey Donaldson has announced that a deal has been reached.

But nothing seems to have changed!

Heaton-Harris has said full details of the deal won’t be available until all-party talks are finalised, and it contains “significant” changes.

However, according to the BBC:

“Not one word of the Northern Ireland Protocol has been altered, and that means Northern Ireland remains under the EU’s customs code, and that means Great Britain continues to be regarded, in law, as a foreign country when it comes to trade.”

He tells gathered reporters: “Under the protocol there are hundreds of EU laws that we do not make and cannot change.”

He points out that those laws which shape NI’s goods economy are “identical” to those that govern the goods economy of the Republic of Ireland.

He says it’s all a “tawdry climbdown by the DUP on their own tests which have not been met” and accuses the party of “accepting foreign law”.

This Writer suspects that the change of heart may be partly to do with one aspect of the ‘Windsor Framework’ deal that Sunak mentioned when he announced it last year.

He said the Northern Ireland Assembly would decide whether the ‘Windsor Framework’ should be supported, in 2024.

This means, I think, that if the DUP wishes to oppose it, there needs to be a functioning Assembly, and if that party continues to refuse to take up its seats there, stopping it from working, then government of Northern Ireland goes back to Westminster, which will support the new deal.

Either way, it seems the DUP is checkmated because the Assembly will probably back it.

So the reasoning may be that it is better to go back to Stormont, debate the deal there and see what can be negotiated than to let the Tory government in Westminster make the decision and be forced to live with it.

But I’m prepared to be wrong.

We’ll find out, when the details are published.


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Tory lies: car industry issues were due to Brexit, not the war in Ukraine

Kemi Badenoch: another Tory parrot, uttering whatever tripe she’s told to regurgitate at us?

Take a look at this video clip of Business Secretary Kemi Badenoch saying concerns faced by car makers were due to the war in Ukraine, not Brexit – coupled with a more recent news report saying the exact opposite:

The best we can say about this is that at least the lies are being debunked faster.

In fact, this one was debunked in the press as soon as it was uttered. The Guardian explained [boldings mine]:

She said:

“The issue that the automotive industries are talking about is around rules of origin. This is something that the EU are also worried about because the costs of the components have risen.

“This isn’t to do with Brexit, this is to do with supply chain issues following the pandemic and the war in Russia and Ukraine.

“I actually have had meetings with my EU trade counterpart, we are discussing these things and looking at how we can review them, especially as the TCA [trade and cooperation agreement – the UK’s Brexit deal with the EU] will be coming into review soon.”

The “rules of origin” requirements raised by car manufacturers are part of the TCA, and are therefore definitely related to Brexit. But Badenoch is right in the sense that all European car manufacturers are having problems because there is not enough battery supply in Europe, making them reliant on imports from Asia.

And wrong in the sense that there is no information here that links a car battery shortage with Ukraine. Any shortages in minerals that are used in these batteries may be overcome by obtaining them elsewhere.

The question now is: did Badenoch know she was not telling the truth, or was she just another Tory parrot, squawking out the words she had been told to say?

If so, who is telling Tory ministers to utter such tripe?


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Brexit to blame for a third of Britain’s food price inflation

The price of Brexit: lorries waiting at Dover for the paperwork to be done.

Would you like to know why this is important?

Britain’s departure from the European Union has accounted for about a third of the increase in food bills for households since 2019, equivalent to about 250 pounds ($316), researchers from the London School of Economics and other universities said.

Although London and Brussels have an agreement allowing largely tariff-free trade in goods, barriers to exports and imports in the form of paperwork, known as non-tariff barriers, have caused delays and higher costs.

The answer is simple, if you remember:

When we were being asked to vote in the EU referendum, back in 2016, we were told again and again that Brexit would reduce paperwork, bureaucracy and red tape.

Remember?

File it as yet another Brexit lie.

Source: Brexit to blame for a third of Britain’s food bill rise, researchers say


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Heartbreak for Jacob Rees-Mogg as ‘retained EU law’ bill is delayed indefinitely

Jacob Rees-Mogg: he’s probably furious about this.

A proposed law to ditch thousands of regulations because they were imposed when the UK was part of the European Union has been delayed indefinitely.

The Retained EU Law Bill had already had its progress through the House of Lords paused indefinitely.

But there was an expectation that most of the laws that were copied into the UK statute book after Brexit would vanish at the end of the year.

Then, after it was revealed that the number of regulations affected runs into the thousands – 4,800 so far, allegedly – concerns were voiced that important legislation might be thrown away by accident.

And now it seems the cut-off point will be replaced with a list of 600 laws the government wants to ditch by the end of the year.

Some of us see it as the end of the plan to drop the axe on these laws – and are heaving collective sighs of relief:

Jacob Rees-Mogg, who introduced the Retained EU Law Bill to Parliament, may well be heartbroken.

When the Bill was paused in the Lords, people said they hoped it would spell the end of his hope to set the UK’s economy on fire (meaning, ruin it).

You see, if nobody knows the implications of cancelling these laws, it would make trade with EU countries impossible.

Rees-Mogg should have known that when he introduced the Bill, so it is logical to suggest that it’s what he wanted. Well, it seems increasingly unlikely that he will get his wish.


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As others see us: German magazine offers depressing verdict on the UK

Need a miracle: after 13 years of Tory government, so does most of the United Kingdom.

The German magazine Der Spiegel (The Mirror) has offered readers in that country a depressing summary of life in the UK – with predictions of worse to come:

Food shortages, moldy apartments, a lack of medical workers: The United Kingdom is facing a perfect storm of struggle, and millions are sliding into poverty. There is little to suggest that improvement will come anytime soon.

Things aren’t going well for the United Kingdom these days. For the past several months, the flow of bad news has been constant, the country’s coffers are empty, public administration is ineffective and the nation’s corporations are struggling. As this winter came to an end, more than 7 million people were waiting for a doctor’s appointment, including tens of thousands of people suffering from heart disease and cancer. According to government estimates, some 650,000 legal cases are still waiting to be addressed in a court of law. And those needing a passport or driver’s license must frequently wait for several months.

Boarded up windows and signs reading “To Let” and “To Rent” have become a common sight on the country’s high streets, while numerous products have disappeared from supermarket shelves. Recently, a number of chains announced that they would be rationing cucumbers, tomatoes and peppers for the foreseeable future.

Last year, 560 pubs closed their doors forever, with thousands more soon to follow, according to the industry association. Without Oxfam, the Salvation Army and other charitable organizations that operate second-hand stores, numerous city centers would have almost no shops left at all.

Last week, the International Monetary Fund forecast that in no other industrialized nation would the economy develop as poorly as in Britain this year. Even Russia is expected to end up ahead of the UK.

Whereas the number of billionaires in the UK – at 177 – is higher than it has ever been, millions of Britons have slid into poverty. Newspapers and television channels are full of cheap recipes and shows like Jamie Oliver’s “£1 Wonders.” Since December, hardly a day has passed without a strike by bus drivers, medical workers, teachers, public servants, university employees or rail workers. Last week, assistant doctors across the country went on strike for four days, with the media calling on the populace to avoid all activities that could result in injury.

Nowhere is the feeling of having “lost the future” stronger than in Britain, according to the public opinion pollsters from Ipsos. In 2008, the year of the banking and financial crisis, 12 percent of people in the UK believed that their children would be worse off than them. Now, that number is 41 percent, Ipsos has found.

The magazine doesn’t mince words when discussing responsibility for the crisis. It’s down to the Conservative government in general – and Boris Johnson in particular, it seems:

Many simply no longer trust their speechifying politicians in Westminster to get much done. The Tory party, which has been in power now for a dozen years, has gone through four prime ministers since 2016 alone.

Even if the fifth in the series, Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, is doing all he can to leave behind the period of sloganeering and slapstick, the UK isn’t likely to recover from his predecessors any time soon. Particularly not from Boris Johnson, who still refuses to admit any personal responsibility for the plight in which Britain finds itself and continues to bleat in a huff from the sidelines.

Even as his country slid further and further into the abyss, Johnson spent years absorbing all political momentum like a black hole, instead throwing his energy into projects like bringing back imperial measurements, announcing his intent to build a sinfully expensive royal yacht named Britannia and convincing the populace that he was building a “global,” or even a “galactic Britain,” a reference to the country’s budding space program.

Yet in early January, when the first 11 satellites ever to be launched from British soil were to head into space from Cornwall, the mission failed, and they ended up in the Atlantic instead. Excitement about the launch had been limited anyway, with an earthly populace that would have been happy with functioning school toilets.

The article goes on to examine a few case studies – including the National Health Service, on which it quotes the current average waiting time for an ambulance: 93 minutes.

“This country was already on its knees before Brexit, before the endless phase of political trench warfare and before the pandemic,” the article concludes.

“And now, it seems as though it has dialed 999 and is waiting in vain for the paramedics to show up.”

That’s how they see the UK in Germany. Considering where Der Spiegel lays the blame, is it something to think about when casting your vote in the local elections – and the general election that will eventually follow?

Source: Britain in Crisis: The UK Faces a Steep Climb Out of a Deep Hole – DER SPIEGEL


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Retained EU Law Bill paused – so it can’t do the expected damage? | A Different Bias

How many people know about this?

The brexit bill, designed to throw our country into chaos by removing thousands of regulations overnight, has had its progress through the House of Lords quietly paused. It isn’t clear if it will be left in limbo until it disappears after the election, or if Rishi Sunak intends to use the bill to carry out something useful. What is clear is that Jacob Rees-Mogg is not going to get his brexit wish of a UK economy on fire.

The reason Jacob Rees-Mogg is being said to want the UK economy on fire is that nobody involved in drafting this incoherent Bill has bothered to work out which laws will be cancelled and what the implications would be.

It would make trade with other nations impossible because nobody would know the rules.

And that’s just one problem with it!

View on for the full details…


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European Court demands UK government response over Russian influence on Brexit

Boris Johnson: he said he had seen no evidence of Russian interference in UK politics – but it was subsequently revealed that nobody in his government had even bothered to look for it. Here, he is pictured with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

The UK’s Tory government is being taken to the European Court of Human Rights over its failure to seek evidence of Russian influence in the referendum on whether the UK should leave the European Union in 2016.

The only response to have come from the Tories so far is that they think the UK should leave the European Convention on Human Rights (that this country actually founded, after World War II).

The issue is whether agents of a foreign power (Russia) have been allowed to influence the result of a poll in the UK – and whether it is possible for them to influence the result of what we have hitherto believed to be democratic elections here.

The details are in the following clip by Peter Stefanovic – and you need to brace yourself because they are damning:

The court in Strasbourg has given the UK until April 26 to respond.

Mark that date in your diary.

The UK government could have saved Dover travellers from huge queues – but didn’t

Queues: coaches waited for hours to board ferries while passengers queued for passport checks.

The UK’s Cabinet Office snubbed a £33 million proposal to double the capacity for French government passport checks at Dover – meaning it is responsible for the queues that have caused a critical incident there.

The French made the proposal back in 2020 – but the UK’s Tory government rejected it:

The money would have been used to double the number of French government passport booths from five to 10 in anticipation of more stringent requirements, including stamps in passports after January 1st, according to the Financial Times.

It came after the Port of Dover had repeatedly warned that it will need to substantially boost capacity for French controls, which under a reciprocal bilateral agreement enables passports to be checked before boarding the train or ferry to France in order to ease traffic flows.

Bumper-to-bumper traffic, in six-hour queues, made its way towards the Port of Dover on Friday – one of the busiest periods for foreign travel from the UK as most schools in England and Wales break up for summer.

When the Department for Transport was asked yesterday why it did not approve Dover’s bid for £33 million investment, an official said the department “did not comment on individual bids”.

So now we all know it’s the fault of the Tories.


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Port of Dover declares critical incident – and you know Brexit is to blame

Giving the public what they want: the British are often mocked by people from other countries as a nation that likes to queue. It seems Brexit has exacerbated that tendency.

The Port of Dover has declared a critical incident as coach passengers faced long delays before boarding ferries.

It’s another Brexit benefit, isn’t it?

Here’s the story:

P&O Ferries and DFDS Seaways … reported delays to ferry and coach services, citing bad weather and hold-ups at French border controls.

P&O Ferries announced on Twitter just before 9pm that it was providing refreshments to coach passengers waiting at the cruise terminal and working on getting food and drink to passengers waiting in the buffer zone at the entrance to the port.

The port said high volumes of coach traffic were due to the Easter holidays.

Really?

Here’s an alternative view:

Which do you think… holds water?

Source: Port of Dover declares critical incident as coaches face long wait to board ferries | Transport | The Guardian


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