PM’s optimism over trade deal is ‘fantasy’

PM Johnson’s fantasy optimism over all achievements – or future targets – being world-beating or magnificent, should mean great care in interpreting his last minute Brexit trade deal with the EU as anything other than a ‘bad’ deal. Only slightly better than ending with the severe loss and chaos of a ‘no deal’. It’s a bit like a condemned man being told that his execution has been commuted to a life sentence.

Expert economists forecast that deal, or no deal, there still will be an 8% hit to our economy and jobs. No deal was always the worst option, although Johnson said on TV news that “under WTO trade rules the UK still would be mightily better off”. How can any elected leader say such unproven nonsense without damaging our whole democracy, just like the awarding of multi-billion pound contracts to companies with dubious capacity to fulfil them, but having financial links to the Tory party ?

The 8% hit to businesses and jobs comes from the disruption in flow of goods at ports when Brexit starts on January 1st, much increased by Tory failure to deliver a result in good fixed time after five years’ wrangling.

The public accounts committee report this month found: “Government has not provided key info needed by businesses to prepare, eg guidance on how to apply for simplified customs procedures”; “New systems, including the core Goods Vehicle Movement Service, are still being tested and developed”; “The market for customs agents has not expanded enough to meet demand post-transition (20,000 trained with 50,000 needed)” ; and “The infrastructure in Kent and other ports is inadequate to hold HGVs and goods containers to cope with forecasted new documentation and procedural delays”.

It’s been a steady tale of government dysfunction – a pandemic copycat – much from the ‘musical chairs’ within Tory party political office, personnel, and policies: from Cameron, via May to Johnson and, lower down, from Davis, via Raab and Barclay to Gove, plus the hiring of expensive private consultants at every turn.

All-in-all, including the cost of the 2016 referendum and the early, unneeded 2019 general election, this whole Brexit charade has cost our public funds hundreds of billions at a time of dire unmet demands in public expenditure. ‘Charade’ in that we already had a good freetrade EU deal called membership. Surely, those causing this enormous waste of public funds should pay? Alan Debenham

Taunton