29/05/2018
It may have been a bank holiday and therefore a slow news day, but one really does wonder when the story of yesterday was the chair of the House of Commons Foreign Affairs Committee saying that the ghastly Johnson should be given greater control over Brexit.
It is true, of course, that some of the FCO's duties have been passed to Liam Fox's department. And, traditionally, responsibilities for dealing with the EU also went to the FCO but, with David Davis handling that end, that leaves the Johnson's department somewhat lightly engaged.
However, given his history and his current form, I would have thought that the very last person on this planet we need to take a greater hand in Brexit is the current post-holder. But then, the very last thing we need is the current post-holder having anything to do with government â ours or anyone else's.
Meanwhile, that great repository of information,
The Sun is demanding that "Britain must start planning for a 'no deal' Brexit". In the opinion of the intellectual giants that write its editorials, we need to do so or "we're only setting ourselves up for failure in negotiations".
Thus we are served up with the opinion that, "Theresa May must guarantee that we are absolutely prepared to go it alone or Brussels will be sure to serve us up the most awful deal possible" â a cretinous observation that could just as easily have been delivered by our foreign secretary. Yet Tom Tugendhat proposes that Johnson be given "strategic control" over leaving the EU.
And that basically sums up the state of play with Brexit at the moment â unless you want to get excited at a
Guardian piece on geographical indications. According to the newspaper, after a Commission
position paper last September, this is going to be the next "flashpoint" in the Brexit talks.
All that does, though, is underline the weird no-man's land that has taken possession of the issue, where nothing is real and no-one wants to be the first to tell the nation that we're sliding gently down the pan in a journey to oblivion.
Instead, there is much attention on the situation in Italy, and some suggestions that the instability there might in some way strengthen the UK's position. But then, any suggestion of political stresses in the EU Empire is invariably seized upon by some as evidence of imminent collapse.
Pete describes it as
kippery in overdrive. In terms of Brexit,
it don't mean nuffink. Things are too far gone for political developments on the continent to be of any use to us here. But, with Italian politics to keep us entertained, the Barnier speech from Saturday is already history, even if M. Barnier was kind enough yesterday to tweet a link to the
English language version. But he needn't have bothered â the dogs have barked and the caravan has moved on.
Speaking of Twitter, my one useful, if modest contribution for the day was to update
the data on EEA legislation. Using the
EUR-lex database, we see that there are currently 21,178 EU laws in force of all types. Reference to
EEA-lex gives us 5,779 EU laws incorporated into the EEA Agreement and in force. From that, we are able to calculate the proportion of EEA law to EU law. As of 28 May 2018, it stands at 27 percent.
We should need to keep posting this information, other than as an update for information purposes. But there is still an endless flow of Muppets who insist that adopting the Efta/EEA option means tasking on board the entire EU
acquis.
One of the latest in this long line is
Darren Grimes, deputy editor of
Brexit Central, who argues that "to be in the EEA means retaining all EU regulations and policies, barring reform and new trade". There really are people that stupid inhabiting the face of this earth.
What is depressing is that people like this feel it necessary to make stuff up in order to argue their points. All you have to do, as I did, is look up EEA-lex and EUR-lex. Count the laws in both, express one as a percentage of the other and you get the current state of play. But, to
Brexit Central, fiction is preferable to fact.
The greater tragedy is that, by all accounts, many in government share that preference â starkly illustrated by a report from
Reuters. It is previewing comments to be made today by EEF Chief Executive Stephen Phipson.
The head of the manufacturer's federation will tell us today that the government should abandon the so-called "max fac" option, much favoured by the "Ultra" tendency as being "unrealistic and a waste of money". Phipson concedes that "It may have some long-term benefits" but, as a solution to our immediate problems, "is a non-starter".
This is where inconvenient things like the truth come to the fore. Phipson points to the most advanced application of the "max fac" technology, on the US-Canada border, and notes that most goods were still subject to normal checks.
He says that after a decade of substantial investment, only 100 Canadian companies can use a fast-track system into the United States, reinforcing his view that pursuing "max fac" as a border option for the current
impasse on the Irish border, was wasting time and money.
"I hope that the Government now recognizes that one of these options is simply not credible", he says. "We need to put all of our resources into developing a workable solution, and quickly". This was rather what I was writing
yesterday, albeit somewhat more stridently.
In terms of the emphasis needed, what I wrote was more appropriate. We are at crisis point, and unless industry â and just about everybody else â starts ringing alarm bells, we are going to go under. Industry, in particular, is far too relaxed about the government's endeavours, while agriculture has been
on another planet. Even if industry is beginning to wake up, we're in danger of seeing too little, too late.
Yet, for some, controlling the message is far more important than the message itself, something of which is
leaking out into the public domain, as the attitude of the
Telegraph becomes more widely known.
That makes today's picture particularly apposite, contributed by Mrs EUReferendum. Mainly, we get the
Coventry treatment and it is only when â as Pete has been successful in demonstrating â that we go out of our way to be offensive, do the "Brexit aristocracy" take any notice.
Meanwhile, the High Priests can churn out
endless tosh that wouldn't pass muster in any honest debate, while the wider debate degenerates
into farce. Yet, surely, we should not seriously be expecting, after all this time, that a "no deal" scenario is a tenable proposition. Nevertheless, where
The Sun leads, the
Mail follows, bolstered by the usual quota of idiot MPs and the mindless prattle from the government.
The doors of the lunatic asylums have been thrown open and madness stalks the land.
