If these were the Headlines – Brexit would never have happened

Brexit has been an unmitigated disaster for the economy of Britain. Of course, the people responsible for it, won’t tell the truth or admit they were wrong.

The British government, in the last two decades, has presided over some calamitous public projects. From the Verify Digital Identity Service to the failure of Universal Credit and from the Emergency Services Network to the Ministry of Justice Tagging System. The list of project failures goes on and on. Described as “a catastrophic waste of public money” and “a masterclass in incompetence” (source) – it only goes to show that those walking the corridors of power are as clueless as they come.

So why did so many people believe a government immersed in numerous scandals of deception in the first place. And why did they believe any government could properly manage the biggest economic, political and constitutional change to Britain for several hundred years without completely screwing it up.

After the misinformation, disinformation, propaganda and outright lying – the truth is coming home. Up to the end of 2020, Brexit alone (and nothing to do with Covid-19) had cost the British economy about £200billion. That loss of £50 billion a year is set to double over the next ten to fifteen years.

They started by telling everyone that Brexit would be the ‘easiest deal in history.’ Then they said there would ‘bumps in the road’ – now they are saying the benefits of Brexit may not be seen for several decades. No-one knows what the world will look like in 30, 40 or 50 years time, so whatever people like Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, David Davis and John Redwood are saying is just another unadulterated lie (source).

Leaving aside the immediate economic failures of Brexit – the first big political challenge is the effective break-up of the constitutional settlement that has held for over three centuries in Britain with the upcoming vote in Scotland. And to stop that from happening you are witnessing the sheer scale of political and media firepower being directed at overthrowing its leadership weeks from the polls opening.

We are two months in and Brexit has been a calamity that is being given cover by a pandemic.

We’ve all read how the fishing industry has imploded – but there are other parts of the economy cratering as well.

Below are just some of the introductory paragraphs behind the headlines of Brexit’s reality.

 

March 3rd: Changes come amid fears that London will be overtaken by Amsterdam, New York and Hong Kong as a financial hub (source)

By the fourth week of 2021, Amsterdam had, for the first time in its history, overtaken London in share-trading. The increase directly related to Brexit was a massive 400 per cent victory for the Dutch. Rishi Sunak has now been forced to pave the way for “sweeping reforms of the stock market in a bid to attract more companies to list in the UK, amid the growing risk to London’s status as a leading financial centre after Brexit.”

The reality here is that the lowering of standards is the only tool that can be used to attract business away from places like New York, Amsterdam and Hong Kong. And the types of business that requires lower standards tend to be far more exploitative, extractive and/or ‘tax-efficient.’

 

March 3rd: UK campaigners seeking ban on lower-standard imports dismayed by agriculture and trade commission’s advice (source)

Farmers and food campaigners were dismayed when they found out that instead of outright bans on low-quality cheap food entering Britain, the government had decided to apply tariffs instead. The agricultural industry wanted an outright ban and regulations to prevent lower-standard imports in trade deals after Brexit.

George Dunn, the chief executive of the Tenant Farmers Association, said: “Seeking to protect environmental and animal welfare considerations by using tariff policy alone will not provide the long-term guarantees we need. Tariffs can be easily renegotiated, reduced or removed altogether, unlike clear, statutory standards.”

Kath Dalmeny, the chair of the Future British Standards Coalition, also said tariffs were inferior to an outright ban on lower-standard imports. “We have been clear that tariffs are no substitute for clear blanket bans and that tariffs could be easily reduced or phased out over time, thus breaking the government’s promise of ‘no compromise’ on food standards,” she said.

 

February 2nd: UK fashion brands battle the costs of Brexit (source)

Vogue Magazine reports that fashion brands in the UK usually spend the month of January preparing their autumn/winter collections for the show and exhibition season. But this year many found themselves also coping with a mountain of new post-Brexit paperwork and extra costs.

“We are an emerging brand and we don’t know yet if we can cope with it,” says Giulia Venturini, co-founder of Medea, an accessories brand in Milan. “Shipping costs to the UK have doubled, while paperwork has expanded exponentially”, she added.

Goat, a British brand best known for its cashmere and tailored separates is currently dealing with new paperwork for shipping as well as catering for “people who were shopping on our website who were hit with big duty charges”, says managing director Kalpa Shah.

Each item exported from the UK now needs at least 20 pages of documentation, to show that it conforms with a whole range of EU regulations,” explains Geoffrey Heal, an economist and professor at Columbia Business School.

 

March 3rd: Financial services firms move £1.3 trillion to EU following Brexit vote (source).

Since the referendum, a total of 24 significant financial services firms have publicly declared they will transfer UK assets to the EU to the eye-watering value of £1.3 trillion.

More than two in five (43 per cent) of financial services firms have moved or plan to move some UK operations and/or staff to Europe, taking the total number of Brexit-related job moves to almost 7,600.

Dublin and Luxembourg are the most popular destinations for staff relocations, new European hubs or office relocations. EMEIA financial services managing partner for client services at EY, Omar Ali, said “there will likely continue to be a slower yet ongoing movement of people and assets to Europe for compliance purposes”.

Whichever way you cut this, the truth is simple. The EU population of 27 member states is 447 million. It has a GDP of $18.2 trillion. The GDP of the US is $21.4trillion – and Britain is a member of neither. The financial service industry was not included in the Brexit deal with the EU. The so-called Free Trade Agreement is so thin, it is just a hard-Brexit deal – meaning, the UK has no real FTA with any of the economic three super-powers on earth – the only large economy to do so.

 

March 03: Travel jobs at risk because of Brexit, say trade groups (source).

The Financial Times reports that – “Thousands of seasonal staff employed by the British travel industry who previously based themselves in EU resorts are now at risk of losing their jobs because of work permits required after Brexit, the sector is warning. An estimated 20,000 Britons employed in the UK’s “outbound” travel industry are affected, according to ABTA, the trade group, which has flagged the prospect of “significant disruption” to tour operators this summer.”

“The lack of arrangements [on labour mobility in the UK-EU trade deal] . . .  risks significant disruption to operations this summer and beyond,” said Luke Petherbridge, ABTA director of public affairs.

Tom Jenkins, chief executive of the European Tourism Association, a trade group, said new rules restricting British business visitors to the EU to spending 90 days in the bloc during any 180 day period is a “catastrophe” for many workers.

The truth here is also as plain as day. There is now no freedom of movement for UK citizens within the EU, so tens of thousands of jobs for Brits are burned – whilst EU citizens get the spoils of war – again.

 

March 1st: Why Irish freight trade is avoiding Britain (source).

 

March 1st: Trade with Britain will not return to pre-Brexit model (source).

 

Here’s a truth

To get this mayhem through, an architecture of lies had to be imposed upon an unsuspecting country. This is one small example of that campaign of deceit.

March 2nd: Northern Ireland Electoral Commission calls for powers to publish political donations retrospectively, including DUP’s EU referendum funding (source).

Hundreds of thousands in dark money donations were funnelled through the DUP specifically to push Brexit. The money was then not just hushed up, it is now legally protected information. To this day, no-one knows where the money came from. The secretary of state refused calls to backdate legislation to expose the source of illegal cash payments, meaning the identity of the DUP’s Brexit donors remains secret. At the time, the Conservative minority government was dependent on DUP voters for its survival when protective laws were imposed to hide the information. The reality is that we don’t know if it was a corporate, a billionaire, or a state actor with nefarious intent. What we do know – is that the Tory government and DUP do not want the public to know.

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