“(Brexit required checks) would have been an act of self-harm”

So said Brexit Oportunities Minister, JRM, as the Channel Tunnel facility in Folkestone yesterday.

Whether this means this would always be the case, or just during 2022 is unclear, but implementation of the checks, due to have started in July, have now been delayed until the end of 2023.

At least.

This comes after UK ports spent tens of millions of pounds oon new facilities to opperate the checks from, and now it is clearly possible that they might never ben used at all.

UK Vets have criticised the plan which means that no incoming checks on any foodstuffs coming in will be carried out either, increasing the chance of fod related disease and incidents.

All this was forecasted, and then dismissed as "project fear", what should we say now to Brexiteers like JRM, "welcome to reality"?

As the latest post by Chris Grey puts it:

"At the more macro-level, consumer confidence is at a 50-year low, not least because of inflation and the cost-of-living crisis, whilst the Office for Budget Responsibility expects this year to see the biggest fall in living standards since records began in the 1950s. Brexit is certainly in the mix of this, too, because from the moment it happened the vote to leave, largely because of the drop in the value of sterling it caused, had an impact on inflation. So, by June 2018, the vote to leave had already raised consumer prices by 2.9%, costing the average household £870, with a related sharp decline in real incomes (figure 2 of link). Once Brexit actually happened, it introduced further inflationary pressures in terms of labour shortages and higher costs of trading with the EU. The eminent economist Adam Posen this week estimated that 80% of UK inflation is attributable to Brexit."

Or

"Overall, the latest IMF World Economic Outlook published this month has the UK set to be the slowest-growing G7 economy in 2023 at 1.2% (compared with 2.4% average for advanced economies and 2.3% average for Euro area) and to have higher inflation, at an average of 6.3% over the next two years, than Germany (4.2%), France (2.9%) and Italy (3.9%) as well as the non-EU G7, and higher than the advanced economies average (4.1%) and the Euro area average (3.8%).* In other words, it’s not just Covid, Ukraine, and global energy and supply chain factors, which have affected all countries. Something particular has happened to the UK and it has a name: Brexit. Indeed the IMF’s 2022 country report for the UK identifies Brexit, along with the pandemic, as having “magnified structural challenges” facing the economy. This is why, as other major economies ‘bounce back’ from Covid, the UK does so more slowly."

See: https://chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2022/04/six-years-of-failure.html

So, we get ever poorer, which the Government thinks they can improve by scrapping rules and regulations in many areas of work and life in general. Another we told you so dismissed as project fear. Such driving down on standards and rights is the only way to drive down costs. And yet UK companies will still find themselves less competitive than those in the EU due to Brexit-related red tape and non-tariff barriers.

Rather than accept the Brexit they won and implemented it, as they tell us to who voted to remain to get over losing, the Government is now trying to rewrite or ignore parts of the WA and NIP, or change UK legislation so they think they can ignore it. Shame they signed an international treaty in such bad faith, and if key areas of the NIP are to be ignored, at least domestically, expect some serious consequneces not just from the EU but from the US too.

All this we know, and yet the choice for the Government is:

1. Stop implementing the very checks and requirements their very hard Brexit mandated, or
2. Do Brexit all over again, but harder.