Kexit

Kexit is Kent leaving England/Britain/UK.

(see previous post)

Why is Kent going to be partitioned from the rest of England and Britain?

Well, it is due to a failure of Government, Vote Leave who is now Government and Government policies in ignoring reality.

First of all, when the then PM, Theresa May, announced that the UK was going to leave the EU’s SM and CU, this meant there was going to be a border. A regulatory border and a hard one at that. The only question was where that border would be.

For most of Great Britain that would be 12 nautical miles from the coast, with the main part being down the English Chanel and the North Sea, that would be the case with anything other than full equivalence on both sides of the border. For Ireland, for NI, it was a case of if the border went down the Irish Sea or along the border between Eire and NI.

This has been known for four years.

Ever since it was decided to leave the SM and CU.

That May and then Johnson tried to make out that there could be no changes as to the way cross-border trade operates now and post economic Brexit.

This was denying reality, of course.

But acceptance, especially after Johnson got his WA and WAB agreed and ratified. But he still denied things would change.

And then came plans for 50,000 customs agents. Lorry parks in Kent and other parts of the UK, Operation Brock, customs infrastructure in NI, and the development of computer systems and apps.

But all woefully too late, letting years of potential preparation time slip through their fingers to maintain the pretence that nothing was going to change, when it always would.

Now there are real warnings of two day queues of trucks leading into Dover, so some kind of pre-testing needs to be done, and will have to be done by hand as the computer systems don’t yet exist.

So, checks on paperwork to get into Kent, and another one to get past Ashford.

And the checks will be for customs. For compliance with standards. And rules of origin checks. And each one for every consignment.

A lorry with 150 consignments will need 450 pieces of paperwork checked; manually or digitally.

And before then, they will have to be created. By the consignor. Who will need an army of people generating paperwork that is not currently needed because we are in the SM and CU.

This is the opposite of no change and frictionless trade.

As it was always going to be, of course.

We told them.

Experts told them.

Project fear, they said.

And yet here we are, Kent partitioned from the rest of England, rest of Britain, at least for goods. Because even for deliveries to Kent will need a process and paperwork exempting them from all of the above.

All could have been avoided if the UK Government had prepared. Been honest.

But if they would have been honest, there would have been no Brexit.