The continuing spew of disingenuous claims from British Ministers moves me to despair. Latest is Trade Policy Minister Penny Mordaunt trying to pull the wool over our eyes by describing the recent Memorandum of Understanding with the state of Indiana as the beginning of the path to a Free Trade Agreement with the US Federal government.
As Chris Grey points out, this is just wishful thinking and yet another example of Brexit newspeak.
And, as he says, Mordaunt also refers to the US as “our biggest trading partner”, when in fact that is the EU single market. Really, when are the UK public going to wake up to the fact that Brexit has been an absolute disaster on so many levels?
I’ll leave you with Matt Green, channelling Rees-Mogg. This is hardly satire any more – it’s too close to reality…
Any correlation between the truth and what Liz Truss said was entirely coincidental
Never a truer word was spoken. Let’s see, Boris Johnson declared the Brexit agreement an “Oven-Ready Deal” and signed it. Now he and his cohorts want to renege on the agreement and break International law. How anyone in their right mind can trust anything that this bunch of lying incompetents say is quite beyond me.
Chris Grey is on form as always in his Brexit Blog. This week he turns his attention to Boris Johnson, and Johnson’s debasing of the parliamentary system. Not that Johnson is alone in this, his entire cabinet resembles a fish that has rotted from the head down – and is about as useful.
I particularly liked Grey’s comment that
It is, as ever, worth recalling that Johnson and Brexit are as inseparable as a dog and its vomit. Yet even if the Prime Minister ends up being toppled by Partygate that will only remove the dog from the metaphor.
The damage that Brexit continues to do to the UK carries on, as do the lies told by the Brexiters, with William Rees-Mogg leading the pack.
Also on top form as usual is Matt Green. Here’s his party political broadcast on behalf of the Conservative Party. Never a truer word was spoken.
I’m currently about halfway through Chris Grey’s magisterial flensing of Brexit in his book: Brexit Unfolded.
He takes us through the events of the five years since the fateful referendum, recording who said what, and whether what was said made any sense, either at the time or since. Disingenuousness, or downright deception, particularly from the Brexiteers, reaches stratospheric levels time and time again.
I remain convinced that leaving the Single Market and ending Freedom of Movement for citizens was a huge mistake, one that began with the fluttering of Cameron’s butterfly wings and his ill-judged referendum, and that has ended with the ongoing catastrophe that is Brexit.
I’ve been following Chris Grey’s Brexit Blog for some time, where he does a weekly analysis of the current events related to Brexit. This book is, in large part, a distillation of the contents of his blog, and is eminently readable, if depressing in its message.
While Boris Johnson has claimed that the post-Brexit trade deal allows Britain to “have one’s cake and eating it“, it is becoming abundantly clear that this is not the case.
The latest twist is that British exporters to the EU are being encouraged by the UK government’s Department for International Trade to set up companies in the EU to circumvent border issues and VAT problems.
Far from having one’s cake and eating it, this sounds more like Marie Antoinette’s apocryphal response to the news that starving peasants could not afford to buy bread.
So the Brexit deal has now been approved by both the UK Parliament and Brussels. True to form, Boris Johnson is claiming it as a great deal: “Having your cake and eating it“. This is, of course, a shameless lie – but when did we ever expect anything else from Mr. Johnson?
Far from “taking back control” as the Brexiteers have long espoused as their goal, what we appear to have got in its place is the EU-UK Partnership Council and its raft of committees.
So far from being “free from the yoke of unelected bureaucrats and the tyranny of red tape”, it would seem that even the post-Brexit world requires proper management of the EU-UK relations and trade. What a surprise. Oh well, it will give the Brexiteers the opportunity to continue to moan endlessly about the vicissitudes of Brussels.
The draft agreement requires careful analysis, which I am certainly not competent to do. For that, I point you towards Chris Grey’s excellent blog as a starting point on what will be a long and frustrating journey. And those frustrations will not be felt in trade alone, but affect politics and society in both the UK and EU. This is not a cause for celebration.
The room in this case being in Number 10, Downing Street. With the threat to break International Law, the UK Government seems intent on making the UK an international pariah. Chris Grey, over at his Brexit Blog has some choice words on the whole debacle. It’s a must-read.
The news that Tony Abbott has been appointed as a UK Trade Advisor would seem to confirm my suspicion that the UK government is resolutely determined to achieve a no-deal situation with the EU by the end of the year.
I feel that the phrase “UK Government” is rapidly achieving oxymoronic status. If you want to laugh about this latest turn of events, then I can recommend First Dog on the Moon. If, like me, you feel like crying about the whole Brexit clusterfuck, then I can recommend Chris Grey’s Brexit Blog for a forensic flensing of the whole sorry saga.
The UK’s National Savings and Investments organisation – those lovely people who run the Premium Bonds – have finally woken up to the fact that it is now the 21st Century. For years, they would only do electronic transfers of prizes or payments to UK bank accounts. If you live overseas, they would send you a crossed warrant. The one time I got one of these, I trotted along to my local bank branch (now closed, for reasons of efficiency) and handed them the crossed warrant. They stared at it with a sense of wonder. Clearly, they’d never ever seen one before. It took them a while to find and fill out the requisite form to deal with it, and charged me for the privilege of doing so.
A few days ago, I received an email from the NS&I proudly announcing that they could now do electronic transfers to international bank accounts.
The reason for that blog post was the bureaucratic hurdles that the NS&I put in the way of getting access to that service. I finally got there and they acknowledged that they would use my Dutch ABN AMRO bank account with my IBAN for electronic transfers.
And the reason for this blog post is that last month I got an email from the NS&I informing me that they would be closing their international payments service from next month:
Er, hello? An “inconvenience”? They must be aware that a non-UK resident cannot open a bank account in the UK, so that suggestion of using a UK bank account is risible. Perhaps they anticipate returning to sending out paper cheques to overseas residents in place of using the international banking system.
I phoned my bank today, only to be told that they no longer process paper cheques – it’s electronic funds transfers only these days. I could hear the incredulity in the voice at the other end of the line – he was doubtless thinking, as I was, that this is now 2020, and we did away with paper and quill pens some time ago…
I really have no recourse but to cash-in my Premium Bonds, and I suspect the majority of other non-UK Bond holders will have to do the same. I have been saving with Premium Bonds since 1964, but not for much longer, and not of my choosing.
So, Ms. Andreana Carrigan, Customer Service Manager – do you see now why I consider the term “Customer Service” to be an oxymoron in your case?
Addendum 22 September 2020: And now the other shoe drops. If you were lucky enough to have a UK bank account before coming to live in the EU – you’re going to lose it by the end of the year. So the NS&I will be losing more than just my custom.
I wrote and complained, and naturally they rejected my complaint.
They took a narrow view (“your complaint is that the International Payment Service is no longer available”), whereas my complaint was threefold:
You’ve stopped it.
You have offered no viable alternative (a UK bank account is not an alternative for non-UK resident Bond holders) and therefore
You have forced me to stop being a customer.
I find it astounding that the UK government’s pension service can happily continue to pay out my UK pension into my Dutch bank account using the Worldlink service, whilst it is seemingly beyond the NS&I’s capability to do so for Premium Bonds.
As I say, I assume that all of us non-UK residents will be forced to cash-in our Premium Bonds as a result, and I wonder how much that will cost the UK Treasury?
It’s the day after Brexit, and I’m still feeling depressed, and angry, about the whole sorry situation. I’ve been reading messages of farewell published in today’s Guardian from my fellow Europeans, and they have put into words the emotions I am experiencing. Two writers in particular capture my feelings, as these extracts may illustrate:
What breaks my heart in Britain leaving the European project is the dark message that Brexit delivers to the entire planet: every nation for itself, instead of collaborating for the common good; everybody making its own rules, instead of searching for common ground; every group competing with the others, instead of solving the common problems together.
Do you really believe that turning your backs on the continent will hold off ecological catastrophe, the waves of migrants, artificial intelligence, the internet revolution or women’s aspirations? Do you believe that globalisation and unfettered capitalism as conducted by China or Trump’s America will give you more affluence and sovereignty than belonging to a community of Europeans, who can achieve any kind of success only by working together, and who are at least trying their best to maintain the values of freedom, equality, fraternity, solidarity, justice and human rights; the rights of all living creatures; and responsibility for the future of the planet?
Adhering to these values is the only thing that can save humanity from sliding into an abyss of evil; we became familiar with this in the terrible 20th century, and the European Union was meant to inoculate us against the temptation to return to dark times. And for many years, together, it worked.
Aren’t you ashamed to be the first to back away from hope? Can you see an alternative? Do you really think that once we’ve broken our voluntary ties things will be just as they were before? No, they will not. So I cannot wish you all the best. I won’t say “Goodbye and good luck.” Because I’m furious with you. I really do like you – your people, landscape, gardens and moorlands; your history, culture and art; your unique British manner, even in its debased form; your humour, eccentricity and bravery. But I am sure you are making a mistake that we’re all going to pay for – you are sure to, but so are we. I am afraid everyone’s going to pay equally for the lies, cowardice and arrogance of the few.
I sincerely hope that my fellow countrymen reflect on what they have done, and that this ignominious decision will come, in time, to be reversed. It will probably take at least a generation, and I am very likely to be long dead, but we Europeans will be waiting.
For me, today is a day of sadness. Britain has turned its back on Europe and is determined to retreat to being an insular nation once more. As an act of self-harm, this takes some beating.
And whilst Johnson and his government may crow that they’ve got Brexit done, the reality is that the hard work now starts, with the hammering out of new treaties and legal frameworks – with just 11 months to go until the end of the transition period. It is also clear from recent statements from the likes of Sajid Javid that the British government either hasn’t got a clue, or is being economical with the verité (as depressingly usual).
Like Chris Grey, I mourn the country I have lost, and fear for the one to come.
The full text of Sir Ivan Rogers’ lecture given at the University of Glasgow recently is here. He is both a careful analyst of events and a bellwether foretelling a future that is very likely to play out in the agonies of the Brexit to come.
Ivan Rogers, the former UK ambassador to the EU, delivered a speech this week on the nine lessons of Brexit. The full 10,000+ words transcript is here, but if you prefer a précis, then this will do nicely.
The basic message is that the choice for Brexit and, in particular, the process of Brexit have both been fucking disasters, although Ivan Rogers is too much of a gentleman to use such words. The blame for this trainwreck, he argues, cannot rest on the shoulders of the Brexiters or the Remainers alone – both sides have contributed to the dishonesty and the confusion that today reigns supreme.
One might almost say “A plague on both their houses…”
Q: I thought Boris said we could stay in the single market and get rid of freedom of movement.
A: He was either lying or he didn’t understand what he was talking about. Probably the first. The single market is a series of rules. His plan was like saying that you’re going to visit Paris but not abide by French law. It was nonsense.
And now he’s Foreign Secretary…
Another interesting point is that David Davis is now the “Secretary for Exiting the EU”. He is at least a serious politician, but there’s also a rather delicious irony in his appointment – he is currently suing the UK government at the European Court of Justice so as to enforce EU law. Curiouser and curiouser. Welcome to Wonderland.
Geoff Coupe's Blog 