The UK Statistics Authority has delivered an official reprimand to Michael Gove and his Cabinet Office for faking the figures on post-Brexit trade.
The Road Haulage Association published the results of a survey in February, showing that the volume of exports to the EU fell by more than two-thirds (68 per cent) in January, immediately after the UK finally severed its membership of the European Union.
Gove’s Cabinet Office then pretended that the RHA was wrong, stating that “inbound and outbound flows (across all UK ports) were close to normal, at 95% outbound and 96% inbound, in spite of the impact of Covid lockdowns on trade.”
The UKSA’s reprimand pointed out that the Cabinet Office’s response contained “claims based on unpublished data, and as such these figures cannot be verified”.
Worse still, it referred only to “flows” of lorries, and not to the amount of freight they were carrying.
It is entirely possible that the number of lorries going out to the EU was almost as high from January 1 onwards as they had been before.
But the claim that exports had dropped by two-thirds is also likely to be true if most of those lorries were empty – and they were.
Gove has been caught trying to mislead the public over this important issue. By rights he should resign. But does anybody think he will?
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Jake Berry: he thinks art is for cultured southerners, while northerners consider their culture to be football.
Jake Berry may have an ordinary-sounding name but he’s as entitled – and dim-witted – as all the other Tory toffs.
He recently exhibited his staggering Tory ignorance while actually trying to do something decent – appealing for government cash to help northern football clubs.
The trouble was not in the intention, but in the delivery of the appeal. He suggested that people in the south of England consider the Royal Opera House and the ballet to be “at the heart of their culture”, while those in the north consider their culture to be housed in their local football stadia.
He could not see how insulting this is.
He was basically saying that northerners are uncultured louts whose principle joy in life is seeing a leather bladder being kicked around a field on a Saturday afternoon, whereas southerners are refined, and are therefore able to appreciate exclusive art forms like music and ballet.
A put-down was in order – and has been duly delivered:
Yes. As a person who lives in the South, I can confirm this. Many of us actually live inside opera houses and communicate solely in the form of arias and recitative. Swarms of ballerinas are a daily menace on the streets, and we're warned never to feed them. https://t.co/4zMT7jRdvb
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It’s nice of Commons Speaker John Bercow to clear this up for us.
In saying that David Davis and other Brexit ministers could have clarified whether Brexit impact assessments existed – and prevented the misconception that they did – but that these people were not in Contempt of Parliament for having misled other MPs, he can only be implying one thing:
Mr Davis and other ministers were too stupid to understand what was being said to them.
Otherwise, they would have known they needed to clarify the matter. If they had understood, and withheld the information, they would have been in Contempt.
Stupid Tories.
It is also kind of Mr Bercow to clarify that the Tories and the single DUP member in the Brexit Committee who ruled that they would not pursue Mr Davis for Contempt are corrupt.
He said it was “regrettable” that the Brexit secretary had taken much longer to supply what material did exist, and that he had “redacted” information unilaterally when he had been ordered not to do so – but that he had to give weight to the committee’s decision, dictated by the votes of the DUP and Tory members.
If the committee had used these reasons to complain about contempt, it seems he was saying he would have started proceedings. But the committee did not, because the Conservatives have engineered a false majority on it, that is undeserved after the general election last June, and those members made a decision based on party loyalty rather than the evidence.
As Speaker, Mr Bercow cannot comment on such matters directly. But the message is clear to all those who are able to put the information together.
Here‘s The Guardian‘s record of the Speaker’s announcement:
David Davis has escaped the possibility of being held in contempt of parliament over the non-existence of Brexit impact assessment papers, but was criticised by the Speaker, John Bercow, for being unclear to MPs when he discussed the matter.
Bercow, giving a rare public rebuke to a minister, also told the Commons it was “most regrettable” that Davis had taken so long to hand papers over to the Brexit select committee, and that he had redacted information from them.
Addressing MPs on Thursday Bercow said “several” members had alleged contempt by Davis and other ministers over the fate of the impact assessments, and that he had discussed the matter with the clerk of the Commons.
Bercow said: “Ministers could, with advantage, have been considerably clearer in their statements, particularly challenging lines of questioning in select committees, which were based upon a genuine misconception.
“However, from the evidence which I have seen to date I have concluded that the test that I am bound to apply, that there is an arguable case that there has in this matter been a contempt of the house, has not been met in this case.”
Bercow said other MPs had written to him to seek a ruling on whether Davis was in contempt of the 1 November motion by not handing over actual impact assessments.
He again rebuked Davis, but noted that the Brexit select committee had last week voted to not seek a contempt motion against him.
The Speaker said: “While it was most regrettable that the secretary of state – a point I made to him privately but I now state publicly – unilaterally excised some material from the paper which he provided, and that it took so long to provide the papers, I also feel bound to pay due attention to the formally recorded view of the committee that the secretary of state had complied with the order of 1 November.”
A contempt of parliament had again not taken place, Bercow said.
Mr Davis has, however, been punished for another matter: Warwick University Conservative Association has sacked him as honorary chairman – for being “unworkable” and “uncooperative”.
David Davis will be sacked as honorary chairman of a university Conservative association because he is “so unworkable”, one of its members has revealed on live radio.
The Brexit Secretary failed to attend any meetings of the Warwick University Conservative Association – where he was a student – despite once using the university to launch an unsuccessful Tory leadership bid.
Rhal Ssan, internal affairs secretary for the association, let slip on air that Mr Davis was being sacked from his honorary post for being so uncooperative.
He told BBC Radio 5Live: “With David Davis, it’s actually a funny story – he’s our honorary chairman at the University of Warwick Conservative Association, and we’ve found him actually quite unworkable.
“He’s never been to any of our events. We’ve invited him constantly and we’re actually sacking him now because he’s so unworkable.
So it seems Mr Bercow’s comments are perceptive, regarding Mr Davis’s behaviour.
If he is like that habitually, then how can we expect any better behaviour in his professional life?
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It’s official – George Osborne lied when he said he had halved the £1.7 billion EU budget surcharge, and his claim that he had achieved a “real result for Britain” was nonsense.
This is how George Osborne probably looked after the fire in his pants caused by his incessant lying about the EU’s £1.7bn bill burned away the rest of his suit. Note that his briefcase is still empty of policies and all he has to offer us is the carrot of false promises [Image: Kaya Mar www.kayamarart.com].
Even more stinging must be the fact that this rebuke comes from a fellow Conservative – Andrew Tyrie, chairman of the House of Commons Treasury Committee.
“The suggestion that the £1.7 billion bill demanded by the European Union was halved is not supported by published information,” he said in a report by the committee.
“The terms of the UK’s rebate calculation are set out in EU law. It should, therefore, have been clear that the rebate would apply.”
The Treasury Committee’s report confirms what Vox Political stated the day after Osborne made his ill-advised claim.
Its report did, however, recognise the government’s “achievement” in extending the payment period and avoiding interest charges – although this was managed in conjunction with every other EU member state that found itself facing the prospect of extra payments, and was not an achievement of the UK government alone.
What does Her Majesty’s Loyal Opposition have to say about this? At the time, Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls told us, “David Cameron and George Osborne are trying to take the British people for fools.”
Has Labour’s attitude softened? No.
“This damning cross-party report exposes George Osborne’s claim to have halved the EU budget surcharge to be totally untrue,” said Chris Leslie, Labour’s Shadow Chief Secretary to the Treasury.
“He must now apologise to taxpayers for making this completely false claim.
“Too many times this Chancellor has desperately tried to use smoke and mirrors to fool the British people. He has been caught out again and his credibility is further undermined.
“People will now treat the false claims he makes in the coming weeks with the contempt they deserve.”
And that is the problem for our part-time Chancellor.
He has undermined his own credibility and that of his party.
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![This is how George Osborne probably looked after the fire in his pants caused by his incessant lying about the EU’s £1.7bn bill burned away the rest of his suit. Note that his briefcase is still empty of policies and all he has to offer us is the carrot of false promises [Image: Kaya Mar www.kayamarart.com].](https://i2.wp.com/voxpoliticalonline.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/141103osbornescarrot.jpg)
