Harsh reality is exposing the fantastical promises of Brexit
LAST month, the Brexit proposition, never based on sound foundations, began to unravel. Dominic Raab, Secretary of State for Exiting the EU, launched 24 Technical Notices aimed at business sectors explaining how companies should prepare for a no-deal Brexit.
The downside realities and cracks began to appear. Businesses and taxpayers were being asked to absorb the cost and bureaucracy.
In this new Brexit madhouse, business will have to deal with customs declarations for goods from the EU. Businesses will need to employ customs brokers, freight forwarders and supply software and authorisations. Each business will have to apply for a UK Economic Operator Registration and ID number.
There’ll be higher costs and slower processing times for Euro transactions, and new tariffs. This will need 1,000 extra border staff and 9,000 new civil servants, paid from our public purse.
Missing from Raab’s papers was the time factor.
Two minutes’ extra delay can build rapidly to 20kms of traffic queues in Dover and Calais; fresh food rotting, huge disruption of shipping schedules if tides are missed and massive
Brexiteers’‘Project Fear’ squawks devalue political integrity, writes Ken Daly, the former head of economic and political research of Aims of Industry.
vehicle exhaust pollution.
In June, the Commons Treasury Committee asked Chancellor Philip Hammond for an impact assessment on possible outcomes in the Brexit negotiations.
He replied the day Raab’s 24 notices were launched. The Treasury had conducted wide-ranging analysis and the assessments were sobering. Their provisional analysis was that in a no-deal/World Trade Organisation (WTO) deal, gross domestic product (GDP) could be 7.7 per cent per cent lower (depending on the economic model, estimates ranged from 5 per cent five per cent to 10.3 per cent per cent), over 15 years from Brexit.
This would have “large fiscal consequences”, he said. Annual borrowing would be around £80billion a year higher by 2033-34 under a nodeal WTO scenario. This dwarfs the fraudulent £360million a week on the referendum campaign Brexit Bus.
The Chancellor’s letter provoked howls of “Project Fear” (sorry guys, “Project Reality”) from Brexiters, while Jacob Rees-Mogg said the Treasury letter was “Brexit Panic”.
His response exposes Brexit as a delusion too far. The negotiations have forced people to compare the gap between what we will get and what was promised.
The Brexiteers’ case has been found wanting. Any deal will be worse than we have now.
Their campaign promises on the economy were lies. The pound was devalued by 15 per cent per cent after the referendum. That trebled inflation, increased borrowing rates and wrecked the spending power of millions of working families, contributing, partly, to major retail casualties and job losses.
Brexiters’ immigration scare stories exacerbated staff shortages in our overworked NHS and damaged agriculture as EU seasonal workers pondered other opportunities. When industry raised legitimate concerns, Boris Johnson responded, “F*** business”.
This blind arrogance and parrotlike squawks of “Project Fear” when their lies and fantasies are revealed opens up a serious, little-discussed consequence: their casual devaluation of political integrity.
One cornerstone of the Brexit campaign was restoring UK parliamentary sovereignty. Yet, pooling sovereignty, as we have done in the EU and NATO, has always made sense, enabling us do to together what no country could contemplate alone.
Ironically, parliamentary sovereignty is something the Government has sought to evade and avoid as the implications of Brexit have dawned on parliamentarians. Theresa May’s first rejection of parliamentary sovereignty came in 2017 when she cited the “royal prerogative” to justify refusing to submit the EU withdrawal notice to MPs’ approval. Urged on by the Brexit ayotollahs, she went to the Supreme Court, who ruled Parliament should have a say.
As the Brexit legislation proceeded through 2018, it became clear Parliament wanted a legal commitment to a “meaningful” vote, in the event of a “no deal” Brexit.
Faced with the likely defeat, the Government appeared to agree to an acceptable wording. At the last minute, however, this agreed text was replaced with a provision, only allowing the Commons a “take note” motion, which would be unamendable and meaningless if the government ignored it.
An additional blow against parliamentary democracy followed when the Tory Chief Whip, Julian Smith, broke a “pairing” promise to Lib Dem Jo Swinson MP that she could be absent to look after her new baby. Pairing has long been a cross-party decent and cherished tradition to handle circumstances such as hers.
It would seem that the proper scrutiny of legislation – what parliamentary sovereignty is all about – is being threatened far more by our Cromwellian Brexiters than it ever was by EU membership. Parliamentary standards should not be sacrificed on the altar of Brexit obsessions.