Oven ready but undercooked

Yesterday, the Daily Express website ran four articles on how Johnson's Brexit WA, NIP and TCA had failed Brexiteers, leaving the UK still under the control of the EU.

It was always going to be thus.

In order to trade with the EU, you have to abide by their rules, and if you diverge from standards, there will be consequences.

It was always thus.

Two of the first things I remember learning about trade was that the more control you want, the less trade you will have, and that anyone talking about trade in pure tariffs doesn't really understand trade. That the TCA was trumpeted because it was tariff-free shows this, and as the UK exerts more control, there is less trade.

What we can say is that the cliff edge just has not happened, and may not, so one of the Brexiteers line of attack/defence is that Brexit wasn't as bad as you said it was going to be. Still a 15% drop in trade is pretty grim. But what we should be pushing back on is that Brexit was nowhere near as good as the Brexieers promised it would be. They said we would be better off, not 15% worse off.

So, if there is no cliff edge, and the Government create work-rounds to overcome difficulties, like temporary work visas for EU based fruit pickers, and so on, we might not get that much worse off, but what will be more difficult for those still fighting the worse effects of Brexit is that we won't be as wealthy, as a country, as we would have been had we remained in the EU.

That will be hard to quantify and prove, but as we look at the EU recovering from COVID and taking UK trade for its own, then we will see how their economy surges while ours stagnates.

One last point, and it is important that we point out the mistakes on both sides too; Sturgen states that if Scotland won independence, left the UK and rejoined the EU, there would be no border between Scotland and England. But there would have to be, a regulatory one, just as there is between Britain and NI.

Nicola, like Boris, cannot have her cake and eat it.