Ill will

Following on from last night's post about the article Sir Lord David Frost, member of Boris Johnson's Cabinet, and so unelected bureaucrat, it is odd that in a quite short article, he contradicts himself so much, giving himself the credit for the negotiation, but absolving himself of any responsibility for the consequences.

A perfect Brexiteer.

He says he voted leave to take back control.

He says he negotiated the Brexit deal to free the UK of EU institutions, laws and oversight while keeping free trade in place. That depends on whether you look at oversight of the EU from England or Northern Ireland. And there is no free trade, only trade in some areas, quota and tariff free if the UK keeps to what was was signed up to in an international treaty.

He goes on to claim that you can have sovereignty and control. This is false. One of the very first things I learned abotu trade is that you can have trade or control, not both. To suggest otherwise is cakey.

Countries choose to exercise their democracy in many ways: one is to go alone and use what leverage they have to put forward their interests, or there is the choice to pool it with several other countries in a tading bloc to create more leaverage, which is what the EU is.

The argument that the vaccine rollout in the UK was only due to the UK having left the EU is false too. The vaccine supplies were securred during the transition period, when the UK was still a de-facto member state. And was still able to secure the vaccine, and indeed other EU states are now doing the same.

Freeports are legal in the EU, and the UK had them before, but brought no real value, and if good leave the freeport it crosses a regulatory border. Freeports are used mainly for rich white men to hide their weath from state taxation, they bring no real value to the economy, if they had we would have kept the ones we had.

The important part of his article related to NI: he talks about consent. Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU, the UK Government did not seek to gain agreement with any of the devolved assemblies, so please talk to us about consent of the Northern Irish people? The EU made a mistake for four hours on Friday evening, and corrected it, the UK has in each month of this year, since the TCA came into force, threatened to break international law.

There is nothing lawful about acting without the agreement of the EU in extending grace periods, the same grace periods, Fronst wroote that the UK understood could not be extended. How he has changed. Or he is a liar, like his boss the Prime Minister.

As a single country, we can sanction other countries, witin the WTO framework, but sanctions without leverage are worthless, as WTO resilotions takes a long time, and can be ignored by the guilty country if they have the leverageto do so.

Far from being outwood looking, his piece is inward looking, seves only to distort the truth and reality of the position the UK finds itself in. Trade with the EU is vital, and the sooner the UK acts like a thousand year old democracy rather than a truculent toddler, the better.

It might play tot he gammons and member of the Tory party, but matters little in the reality that Brexit now shares with a global economy.