No quick fixes

Yesterday saw a major campain by actors to challenge the lack of freedom of movement that those in the creative industries are experiencing right now.

Let me state, I am behind them, as I am with musicians, the fashion industry, and so on and on. And I sympathise with the fishing induustry, those who used to run small businesses on Ebay, Etsy and Amazon.

All have had their livlihoods taken away by Brexit. And done so because of the rejection by Johnson on the freedom of movement of labour. There is no economic argument for it, though Johnson still refuses to release impact assessments on the effects of the TCA, it is purely Ideological.

And for such a freedome to be introduced it would require Johnson's Government to want it, and thus far, they're not listening.

For issues related to trade and tax: these are even more difficult, because to change these would mean reopening the TCA, and the EU would need a good reason for doing so. That the UK was unprepared or did not understand what it was signing up to isn't enough. Johnson had until the end of July last year under the terms of the extension agreement to extend that by up to 12 months, no questions asked.

But rejected that chance.

Even when whole industries were screaming for a delay, the Government pressed on, and an agreement on the TCA came on Christmas Eve, which had to be implemented in just seven days.

There was no beta testing. For some systems there was no system to beta test.

There were no lorry parks/freight handling facilities.

There were 35,000 too few customs agents.

There's not enough EU registered vets.

But they pressed on.

The DUP want the NI Protocol scrapped. It would have to be replaced straight away with something that did pretty much the same thing; protect the GFA and avoid a border across Ireland.

Back to the three choices of where you want a regulatory border: you're saying you don't want one down the Irish Sea, and because of the GFA, there can't be one across Ireland, that means the only solution is the deal May negotiated that the DUP voted against. THe whole of the UK in the SM and CU, or at least for goods.

And Johnson is not politically savvy enough to sell that to his own party, let alone the country. But it could be done. BUt it means accepting the four freedoms of the SM.

With each day that passes, businesses, industries, sectors and small one person operations are ever more stressed and will give up or go under. Denying the problem or ignoring it will only make it bigger day on day, week on week.

If the UK wants small areas "fixing", it would have to offer the EU something in return to make them want to help us.

No easy answers, no easy fixes. But this is a problem of the UK's making, and really, only we can fix it. But that would need honesty about the effects we are seeing and the choices available to us.

But instead of this, the Government has created a culture war where freedome of speech is to be protected, but only the freedom to say what the Government approves of. And we know what a dangerous slope that is, but its what Johnson would rather you thought about than the economic meltdown going on, largely unseen.

So it goes, so it goes.

Meanwhile:

Liz Truss has told six MPs she will not answer their questions in Parliament next week because they want to ask about the problems facing British exporters trading with Europe.

Maybe its because she's international trade secretary, and the EU isn't international enough, or maybe its because she is "no-platforming" Parliament, beacuse you can have free speech, as long as you say what we want, and not on Brexit.