Tesco turns away business shock

Tesco can't be bothered to deal with NI --too much paperwork. So says Lord Kerr in the Graun today:

Lord Kerr says extra food-related costs may cause firms like Tesco to abandon region

Who is Lord Kerr exactly? CEO of Tesco? No -- ' the architect of article 50 which enabled the UK to leave the EU,'. Long term readers will recall that he never imagined for one mimute that anyone would actually want to leave the EU and he thought he was just providing a democractic appearance to the bloc. He sustained a Remain position throughout.

Just three weeks ago the first details of the new trading conditions across the Irish Sea emerged, with businesses obliged to complete customs, security and transit forms on all goods being transported to Northern Ireland....And the former Conservative chancellor Lord Lamont...argued there was a clear conflict in the Brexit protocol between article 5, which demands Northern Ireland businesses complete exit summary declarations for all goods being transported to the rest of the UK, and article 6, which promises “unfettered access”.

Luckily, Lamont said 'it was within the UK’s gift to ensure unfettered access.'

Walked [sic -- 'Northern Ireland minister Robin Walker'] conceded that some of the detail of the protocol had yet to be agreed by the joint committee chaired by Michael Gove and the vice-president of the European commission, Maroš Šefčovič.

Meanwhile, a classic Brussels press briefing, sorry more 'news':

UK negotiators have only engaged with issues 'in last week or two', says EU

In an interview with the Guardian, Phil Hogan, [' a former Irish government minister'] who oversees the EU’s negotiations, said there had been “a change of attitude” by Downing Street in July as they realised time was running out but that the talks were “not as advanced as we would like”.

Guess what the issues are:

one of the most pressing being what self-limiting rules the UK government would establish on its financial assistance to companies, known as state aid...British negotiators have recently claimed that it is not necessary for the EU to have sight of the new regime as domestic legislation is no longer relevant to Brussels....Hogan warned, in response, that the EU could give “strategic” exemptions from its own state aid regime to allow capitals to subsidise European companies competing with British businesses unless an agreement on maintaining a so-called level playing field was found.

Same old issue then -- the EU want to legislate for everything in advance as ever, almost as if we had never left. Then there is the old stuff about how our majority is bigger than your majority, as if it were 2016 all over again:

Hogan, speaking to five European newspapers, said there was never any advantage to be gained by negotiating from a position of weakness outside the EU...He said: “The UK is beginning to realise that as part of the European Union they were able to negotiate an agreement with various countries on the basis of 500 million people. It is different when you have 60-70 million people and therefore what will be asked of a single albeit large economy like the UK.

The GHraun has always been very balanced on the issue, of course, and dutifully reports, right at the end:

A UK government spokesman said: “The UK has engaged constructively on all issues throughout the negotiations. Unfortunately the EU’s unusual approach has meant we have only been able to progress at the speed of the most difficult issues. Both sides will need to work energetically if we are going to get an agreement in September.”

 

 

Big business needs more time to fill in forms

The CBI is still worried about risk says the Grud:

Brexit will deliver double shock to UK economy, study finds 

The report, titled Covid-19 and Brexit: Real-Time Updates on Business Performance in the United Kingdom by the LSE’s Centre for Economic Performance shows that sectors entailing more human contact - including hospitality, air travel, restaurants, hotels, and arts and entertainment – have been the hardest hit by the pandemic.

Other sectors such as the scientific industries, professional services including accountancy, legal services and publishing have been less impacted because they can continue to operate with staff working from home....Among those reportedly continuing to operate with remote working are firms such as Vodafone, Google, consultancy KPMG, GlaxoSmithKline, Rolls Royce and consumer goods giant Unilever.

But Brexit will impose new barriers on those trading goods or services with the EU, whether pharmaceutical companies seeking regulatory approval, banks or services needing to transfer data from servers in the bloc or car manufacturers or clothes importers required to fill in customs declarations for the first time in decades.

 [LSE Prof] Dhingra said the coronavirus pandemic had “reduced the capacity of the UK economy to take further shocks” and “rushing Brexit through” would “broaden the set of sectors that see worsening business conditions”.

 Meanwhile, the Grunaiad's world-beating team of fearless investigative journos 'in their core mission to expose wrongdoing, incompetence, injustice and inequality', set out to 'interrogate the actions of those in power without fear' and 'give a voice to the oppressed and neglected, and stand in solidarity with those who are calling for a fairer future' with this scoop:

'Smelly and create great stains': emus banned from pub in outback Australia town

Giving legs to old midwives tales

A classic bit of Graun journalism today,classified as 'news': 

Timid, incompetent ... how our spies missed Russian bid to sway Brexit

So it's true --there really was a bid to sway Brexit,and it was 'missed'. The whole Referendum thing must be declared null and void! Remainers 'wuz robbed!'

Lots of convincing detail first:

In September 2015 a tall young man with jet black hair and a pleasant grin made his way to Doncaster. His name was Alexander Udod. With the EU referendum vote on the horizon, Udod was attending Ukip’s annual conference. In theory he was a political observer. Actually Udod was an undercover spy, based at the Russian embassy in London....Udod chatted with the man who would play a key role in Brexit – the Bristol businessman Arron Banks. The spy invited Banks to meet the Russian ambassador Alexander Yakovenko. 

You would think the Guardian was actually there! They fearlessly discovered a photo of A Udod, which confirms their descriptioon --  supplied by the Russian Embassy! Then it gets a bit more cautious:

What allegedly [!] followed was a series of friendly encounters between Leave.EU and the Russians in the crucial months before the June 2016 poll: a boozy lunch, pints in a Notting Hill pub, and the offer of a Siberian gold deal. (Banks denies receiving money from Russia and previously stated his only contact with the Russian government in the run-up to the referendum consisted of “one boozy lunch” with the ambassador.)

Then a bit of 'we don't know but we should be told':

How much did MI5 know about Udod, a career intelligence officer, and his wooing of leading Brexiteers? We don’t know. But the Russia report – published last week after a 10-month delay – paints a damning picture of British spooks who were too timorous or too incompetent to do much about a growing Russian threat, or the Kremlin’s surreptitious attempt to sway the Brexit vote.

Again that surreptitious attempt is now fact . Every credible source supports this, like MPs, and there are smoking guns under the bed:

The MPs who sit on parliament’s intelligence and security committee (ISC) were incredulous at the lack of cooperation from the UK’s security agencies. Asked about Moscow and Brexit, MI5 produced “six lines of text”, the report said. GCHQ didn’t drill down into the St Petersburg troll factory, which pumped out millions of pro-Leave messages. And MI6 failed to ask its secret agents what exactly the Kremlin was up to.

The stuff about the 'troll factory' and its milliions of pro-Leave messages might need a bit more work. The implication, of course, is that it must follow from the details in the earlier report and thus is supported by it.

 

Guarding their backs again:

Agency sources suggest such criticism is unfair. 

Only 'unfair', not inaccurate. 'Agency sources',well-known for speaking to the Gurdina, of course, also said:

They have less operational freedom than the FBI in the US and they are culturally and historically reluctant to wade into politics. Plus the instructions never came.

Well, we know what a bunch of bureaucratic order-followers they are. So what exactly is being alleged?

The report makes clear that nobody in government wanted to investigate whether Vladimir Putin helped midwife Brexit.

Midwifery seems suitably vague, but also a bit complex:

Eurosceptics may have been beneficiaries of Russian interference in 2016. They may be less happy when Moscow throws its weight behind a second Scottish independence vote....such as Moscow’s social media campaign during the first 2014 Scottish independence referendum.

And, puzzlingly, the first was devilishly effective, riddled with dark artery -- but not the second.

What happened to those essential Four Freedoms?

Never mind all that stuff about freedom and European civilisation, what the birds tell us about our connections with others, or the risk of Teddy Boys abusing Wittgenstein (this blog  passim): realpolitik finally emerges clearly with the GHraun's 'news' of Brexit developments: 

Despite the dire Brexit warnings, a deal is still the likely outcome

The rational outcome, then, would be for the two sides to avoid adding no-deal salt to Covid-19 injury.

Who has been peddling all these dire warnings I wonder? Anyway, a bit of the usual linkages and condemnations:

Political accidents do happen. Johnson’s year in office has not been without slip-ups and errors of judgment, of which the relatives of the more than 45,000 people who have died with coronavirus in the UK so far will be painfully aware.

The Graun must be a bit depressed by this especially:

Sources on both sides agree that there isn’t much of a personal understanding between the two lead negotiators – David Frost in the UK camp and the EU’s Barnier. There have been some dinners but face-to-face time has been limited.

If cosmopolitan chaps can't get together agreeably over a KitKat, no wonder we are in such a mess. As usual, Barnier's press handout gets most space for the substance:

At the start of this month, Barnier sought to draw a Venn diagram of sorts. He carefully elucidated both sides’ red lines, or his interpretation of them. The two most contentious areas in the talks now are access to British waters for European fishing boats and the maintenance of similar regulatory frameworks in the UK and the EU to avoid either side gaining an unfair advantage...As he sought to sketch out the negotiating space, Barnier accepted that there would be no role for the European court of justice in the UK; no obligation for the country to be bound by EU law; and an agreement on fisheries that shows Brexit “makes a real difference”...In return, he stipulated what Brussels would need: robust guarantees for a “level playing field”, including on rules on subsidies known as state aid, and a solution on fishing access that avoids European coastal communities being ruined.

I hope Labour supporters note that bit about state aid. Meanwhile, there is a useful weekly addition to the Briefings for Brexit site:

This ‘Key points’ feature will highlight (and rebut) some of the most notable Brexit myths in the media this week.

Here is one example

Spooks for Remain and No?

M Kettle in teh Graun improvises on the theme of the Russia Report, suggesting the real issue is the effectiveness of UK Security Services. He blames overwork andthen, bizarrely,  confusion about the nation state for the apparent blind eye turned to Russian cyber-tampering. Above all,

The case for thinking creatively about the secret agencies, which the nation needs but which have sat on their hands too often while Britain is under Russian assault, ought to be strong. And yet, tragically for Britain, the drive for reform of the state, so necessary in so many ways, is not in the hands of a Hegelian idealist like Haldane. Instead, it is in the hands of a vengeful tinpot vandal, Dominic Cummings, who promotes a malign and partisan agenda that can only breed public hostility to the state’s agencies – not help to restore the confidence that is so badly needed.

Confusion about the nation state is interesting.

the agencies “do not view themselves as holding primary responsibility for the active defence of the UK’s democratic processes”. When asked by the committee about Russia’s possible role in the EU referendum they displayed “extreme caution” that this might be anything they should concern themselves with. On one level this is admirable. It shows how seriously the agencies appear to take their statutory responsibilities. It shows sensitivity about the line they must tread, as secret agencies, in a world that demands transparency and good governance. But it also shows they are neglecting a key part of their job, and need to have more clarity about what they are defending.

Meaning -- they should have intervened in the national interest -- to nobble the Leave vote and keep us in Europe, where our proper 'national interest' lies? Then he takes another line:

Consider the following highly topical example. The potential break-up of Britain that might have resulted from the 2014 Scottish referendum is axiomatically not in the interest of the UK and is also a major problem for UK national security. It therefore has to be a concern to MI5, not least because breaking up the UK is obviously also in the interest of a hostile power such as Russia. The large political constraint is obvious. A majority in Scotland could have voted for it – and may yet do so. The agencies’ role here is obviously immensely delicate, but it is hard to argue that they should just do nothing.

Note that 'the nation' is now the UK. What exactly is being argued here? That spooks should now get some scam on N Sturgeon? Perhaps it was  been just an unfortunate lag that led to the attempt to smear scam all over A Salmond instead? Someone forgot to update the records on who leads the SNP?

Is M Kettle a spook lobbying for more business? I think we should be told .

Graun news -- no news as silly season beckons

This story is a classic on how to turn no news into news of no news:

Downing Street officials say there has been neither ‘breakthrough nor breakdown’ on major sticking points

On Brexit, of course.

After two full days of talks in London, No 10 officials described the current state of play as neither a “breakthrough nor a breakdown”....Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief negotiator, and his UK counterpart, David Frost, are in the midst of intensified discussions. A fifth round of talks will go ahead as planned next week, with another round scheduled for August unless agreed otherwise.

The 'intensified discussions' are evidently not the same as 'talks', and the 'major sticking points' seem to be leading to -- more talks as planned.

The Graun is obviously limbering up for the onset of the silly season in 8 days time when all the journos and BBC folk go on holiday. I should imagine that machines now generate the fillers.
 
The Government is capitalising on the forthcoming shock horror Brexit- and covid-induced shortages of news:

Liz Truss’s Department of International Trade is to tackle what it views as “fake news” about the UK’s post Brexit trade policy with its own rapid rebuttal expert.

The DIT has just advertised a new position of “chief media officer, trade policy and rebuttal” to handle the press and denounce stories it believes are false or contain false information....The vacancy comes as Boris Johnson’s chief adviser Dominic Cummings seeks to shake up media relations in Whitehall.

Meanwhile, as light relief and as a sign of August news values:

Do Manchester's 'metropolitan elite' feel pandered to by BBC?

When the media minister John Whittingdale goaded the BBC this week by saying it pandered to the “metropolitan elite” in London and Manchester, he did not specify where exactly these spoiled audiences could be found, gorging themselves on BBC Four documentaries and listening to difficult jazz on Radio 3....But Whittingdale may well have had the south Manchester suburb of Didsbury in mind, home to million-pound Victorian houses traditionally occupied by lefty professors and students, as well as a prep school and private hospital

The Graun's fearless investigative reporter ('Helen Pidd North of England editor') set out to continue the Graun's mission 'to expose wrongdoing, incompetence, injustice and inequality' and 'interrogate the actions of those in power without fear' via a classic sample of what the Graun thinks are ordinary people: 

Many buy their samphire and scallops from Evans, a fishmonger in the heart of Didsbury village, which also offers fresh-cut sushi. Yet behind the fish counter, Edward Johnson said he felt overcharged by the £157.50 TV licence fee...Is the BBC elitist though? Johnson’s younger colleague Christian D’Andrea had a think. “I can’t afford all the ingredients on Saturday Kitchen,”...Drinking a latte outside an Italian deli in Didsbury, Paul Hartley, a former local BBC presenter turned aircraft dispatcher, was cross....A few doors down from the fishmonger, Ann Hudson was enjoying a sausage butty. “I hate how the BBC has been politicised,” said the 67-year-old...Jeff Smith, the Labour MP for Withington – which includes the expensive cheese-eating enclaves of Didsbury and Chorlton – said it was just Whittingdale’s latest attempt to undermine the BBC. 

Do not tell me that this is wit or self-mockery -- the Graun hasn't done that for years and it is never mentioned in those little appeals for subscriptions at the end of each story, so it can't be policy.

 

 

Reds under the bus

The liberal media have been alive with this curious story -- the news is there is no news. Lord, how E Maitlis of Newsnight wished there had been and unsuccessfully put suitable words in the mouth of an interviewee and all. We just have to do what we can :

The Russia report confirms it: the government had reason to suspect a violation of our democratic processes, and ignored it

The conclusion of the Russia report is damning not for what it says, but for what it cannot. Neither the British government nor intelligence agencies made any effort to investigate the alleged hacking of the UK’s most significant democratic event in generations.

We should note that many Russia experts doubt a coordinated interference in the Brexit referendum....Many also note that Russia had both economic and political interests to maintain a strong EU – not least as a bulwark against the US.

Here is a nice bit of argument by residue:

Nevertheless, allegations of Russian interference in the 2016 EU referendum did not emerge from the ether and were not simply the online ramblings of conspiracy theorists.

We can obviously rule out those two feeble sources -- leaving only the one we want to believe in.

There is a chance to revisit the old causes one more time:

The referendum was compromised in a number of ways. Some, such as the allegations of misspending, were about laws. Others, such as the naked falsehoods published by Vote Leave, were about basic fairness. And yet early on, for whatever reason, the UK government decided that Brexit was the will of the people and that was the end of it. 

After all that nudging and winking:

The fundamental point here is not that we would have remained in the EU if it hadn’t been for shady officials in Moscow, or troll farms in St Petersburg. Even if such a smoking gun exists, it will probably never be found. Rather, the government had reason to suspect a violation of our democratic processes and ignored it

Jonathan Lis is deputy director of the thinktank British Influence

Brit ghost haunts EU bunfight

Good(ish) news on the EU crisis from the Grud today, but a strangely parochial tone. I thought it was only Leavers who kept harping on about British interests

As part of the deal, the “frugals” will receive significant increases in the rebates they receive on their budget contributions, a throwback from 1984 when Margaret Thatcher secured discounts on the UK’s outsized budget contributions.

Merkel said the British departure had changed the balance among the remaining 27 members and created a new dynamic.

At one point during the bad-tempered negotiations Macron had thumped the table in frustration and likened those thwarting his spending plans to the ill-fated British [!] in previous budget negotiations.

I reckon the EC needs us still as a kind of external threat, much like the US talking up the military capability of the USSR to get bigger budgets for defence. 

It actually looks like a classic EC fudge:  

The final outcome is a messy bundle of compromises. ...The compromise agreed by the leaders...puts off designing a rule of law mechanism for another day with agreement to be made by a qualified majority of member states.... The final deal also swung in Poland’s favour by watering down a demand to link green transition funds to signing up to the 2050 climate target...the leaders will face severe opposition in the European parliament when it is brought to the chamber for MEPs’ agreement.

Expats do not notice 'poisonous mistrust'

Our chance to say 'told you so'. One major predicted problem seems to have gone away according to teh Graun,but some people can still find problems:

“We continue to call on the EU and member states to protect the rights of UK nationals with faster implementation, longer application windows and clear communications, as the UK has done for EU citizens in the UK,” said a Foreign Office spokesperson....It coincided with a joint statement with the British ambassador to remind Britons their rights are “guaranteed” if they are living there before 31 December.

Sue Wilson, the founder of Bremain in Europe, a campaign group for Britons in Spain, said the fact that the Spanish government have chosen a simple declaratory scheme allowing rights to be “guaranteed” without an application for settled state a “great relief to British immigrants”....“We are grateful to the Spanish authorities for making the process as simple, seamless and painless as possible.”

 But:

“I suspect a large number of people are out there who may not understand that there is an issue that they have to deal with because of Brexit [really?], some of whom may not like to approach officials because they don’t know or fear how it might impact on things like taxation, health care,[or maybe because they are criminals on the run?] ” said Helen Weir, the director of Age in Spain.

  Meanwhile, EU solidarity seems as fragile as before:

a proposed €500bn in grants for the hardest hit countries was shaved down to €450bn. ...The Netherlands, along with many EU governments, wants to tie European funds to upholding democratic values – a plan staunchly opposed by Hungary and Poland, both subject to EU investigations on the rule of law... Hungary’s prime minister, Viktor Orbán, compared Rutte [Dutch PM] to the communist police.....The communist police used “unclarified legal terms, exactly the same which is written in the proposal of the Dutchman,” said Orbán recalling his own encounters with state police as a young activist.

Bulgaria’s prime minister, Boyko Borissov, accused Rutte of wanting to be “the police of Europe”, while Poland’s leader, Mateusz Morawiecki, called Rutte and his “frugal” north European allies “misers”....After a second day of deadlock, Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron walked out of midnight talks with the frugals

By Sunday, however, some EU diplomats thought western Europe’s united stance on the rule of law was beginning to fragment...Failure to agree will weigh heavily on the EU. The hardest-hit countries already have access to a €540bn financial cushion, but France, Germany, Italy and Spain see this as inadequate to the scale of the looming recession.

Even with a deal, this bitter summit has exposed poisonous mistrust between some leaders, as well as the EU’s struggle to deal with nationalists in central Europe, who are feared to be trampling on Europe’s basic values.

BItterness?Poisonous mistrust? Is this the Europe of suave diplomacy and that nice  M Barnier? 

They told us so -- China, Covid and Johnson's infinite conflict

The Observer re-runs its editorial on Brexit and the China crisis from last week. Perhaps it is only the website that features Greatest Hits like this? Or is this ideological exhaustion?There is a follow up today, though

As the UK struggles to carve out a post-Brexit role, the Huawei affair has left it exposed, caught between two superpowers who have no respect for an isolated, vulnerable island

Caught in this unlovely triangle, senior government officials are hedging their bets. On the face of it, they satisfied an importunate US last week by banning the Chinese telecoms firm Huawei from doing business in Britain....But as the Observer reports today, they have also privately indicated to Huawei that “geopolitics” is to blame and the decision may be reversible.

Warming to his theme, S.Tisdall says:

Brexit’s big idea was that “global Britain” could chart its own independent, buccaneering course, trading freely with the world. [Cameron and Osborne also wanted far more trade with China, however]  Yet the emerging picture is of a diplomatically isolated, vulnerable country frantically juggling the conflicting demands of bigger players. Some say the curse of Brexit is upon us....What’s left is a post-Brexit UK global strategy that largely boils down to a risky gamble on expanding relationships with two superpowers that don’t rate or respect Britain and which are fiercely at odds with each other. Johnson is reduced to playing piggy in the middle.

However:

in terms of the specific Huawei and Hong Kong problems, still being a member of the EU would not have helped much...Italy joined China’s Belt and Road global trade partnership last year, for example, while Greece promotes itself as China’s import “gateway” to Europe.

The problem, it seems, is actually personal again because while other nations have accomplished statespersons who might eventually reconcile the parties, we only have: 'the infinitely conflicted Johnson'.

Irrationality of Brexit voters #94

Business as usual for the pro-EU lobby today:

Stephen Phipson, the chief executive of Make UK, said: “Should the UK fail to reach a comprehensive trade agreement with the EU, then those regions with a high concentration of manufacturing and a dependence on Europe as a major market will suffer a triple hit, given the impact of Covid-19. For some companies the combination may prove fatal.”

In their regional economic outlook report, Make UK and BDO said regions with formerly solid Labour “red wall” constituencies had a high dependence on exports to the EU, as well as a higher-than-average dependence on manufacturing, which would put them at most risk from a no-deal scenario with barriers to trade and tariffs.

The category 'red wall' makes it easy to add all the dangers together, of course

It said almost two-thirds of exports from Wales, the north-east of England and Yorkshire and the Humber went to the EU

However, there are now difficuties in estimating any economic impact, luckily for the Government:

The last time official analysis of the economic impact was published was in November 2018, as Theresa May struggled to get her Brexit deal through parliament. At that time, the government said Britain’s economy would be 9.3% smaller after 15 years under no deal than it would have been under remain....On Tuesday the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, told MPs on the Commons Treasury committee that it would be difficult for economic forecasters now to come up with an accurate forecast due to the coronavirus crisis.

There is some amplification of 'told you so' with this:

The Department for Transport has signed off on the purchase of a vast site in Kent for a Brexit border facility and confirmed that it will be partly used as a giant lorry park just days after the cabinet ministerMichael Gove insisted that was not the “intention”.

Meanwhile, the Graun seems to be launching some odd sort of campaign to get us all touching each other. It's a new petite bourgeois aesthetic, of course, showing you are comfortable in your own body (ie not a socially mobile imposter or residually gammony). It's for everybody:

Sexually flexible here:

The power of touch: having sex with another woman shook my brain and restarted my heart

Sensitive football fans here:

The power of touch: I miss football hugs. Now I long for a fetid, boozy embrace 

The vulnerable here:

The power of touch: I was hugged for the first time at 18. It meant confronting my deepest fears

Binaries reduce UK international prestige as Times eats three dogs

R Behr said he got so stressed over Brexit he made himself ill. One can only worry about his recovery on reading this piece in the Graun 
 
It starts well enough:

The essential issue here is that Brexit can make EU membership go away, but not the EU itself. When the only problem was being inside, escape was the only solution worth talking about. 

Then the issues deepen and broaden. It is not just expensive strawberries any more -- it is our national prestige!

even if it were economically sensible to fall back on WTO rules (and it isn’t), the question of Britain’s geopolitical alignment would still remain unanswered.... Johnson took foreign policy, security and defence cooperation – the stuff of which international alliances are made – off the table [he did? permanently?] ....The whole point of new “global” Britain, as an upgrade from the old European version, is that it is freer to deal with other global players peer-to-peer. The limitations of that approach are quickly becoming clear. ...In less volatile times an independent seat at the WTO would have been meagre compensation for losing Britain’s influence [!] as one of the big three EU members.

The back-tracking on Huawei involvement in 5G is the issue that provides the legs. Npb consensus seems to be that Trump is responsible. The Huawei executive on Newsnight last night kept trying to say this, although E Maitlis was not put off and kept demanding he give his personal view of China's foreign policy, sort of 'Are you now or have you ever been a member of the Chinese Communist Party?' No doubt the chance to call someone out and be a real celebrity on Twitter prevailed over showing solidarity with Islington this time.

Back to Behr:

A country that wants a deal to access US markets can expect to have its foreign investment relations vetted for intimacy with undesirable states....Any prime minister would prioritise the security alliance with the US over a commercial deal with China. But Johnson happens to be the first prime minister to be confronted with the choice in stark, binary terms

It's those appalling stark binaries again!

And personal flaw, naturally:

Would Johnson have been a leaver if his Downing Street ambitions had come to fruition five years earlier and he had spent some time hobnobbing with fellow heads of government at EU summits? I doubt it.

Maybe a bit personally revealing there too? Overall:

Johnson cannot address this challenge without exposing the basic flaw in Brexit, which is that the sovereignty he so jealously demands from Brussels buys no clout in Washington, Beijing or anywhere else...The UK national interest requires a new strategic partnership with the EU, but Johnson refuses even to include that concept in the negotiation. The obstacle used to be confidence that Britain had no need of Europe. It looks now more like fear of admitting how much of Europe Britain still needs.

Meanwhile the Times has been runnning a few stories about wokedom at the BBC:

There was this (subscription):

A disproportionate focus on diversity, coupled with removing free licences for the over-75s, is alienating its core audience

 and this dogwhistle:

BBC advises all staff to use trans‑friendly pronouns

Then the BBC 'head of standards' says today 

Corporation journalists had been seduced by the instant gratification of social media, he said, posing risks to the BBC brand as the tone of debate on such platforms sours....“The way social media has developed in recent times, particularly Twitter, has become adversarial, more argumentative, more combative, more polarised and sometimes toxic,” Mr Jordan told the Lords communications and digital committee yesterday. “It can suck people in, the immediacy of it can be alluring, the live dynamics of it can be seductive to some people....“We have had issues about the use of social media in the BBC where people have not adhered to our standards or have overstepped the mark.”

Mr Jordan assured the committee that not all BBC journalists read The Guardian, [love it!] but acknowledged that the broadcaster had succumbed to left-liberal groupthink in the past...“We had issues, for example, about tracking the rise of Euroscepticism. Across the BBC, did we do that adequately? No, we didn’t...

All of this is overdue from the Beeb and probably shows the arm-twisting going on behind the scenes. At the same time, you can't help but admire the Times for attacking rivals to its own Times Radio (BBC Radio 4) and newspaper (Graun and Twitter) as well!

The Graun is just not in the same class but prefers to extend its own international prestige  with this:

Is it worth making your own curry paste?

Elites and the mediocre combine against npb journos

A few Brexit snippets in the GHRaun recently. First

But from Monday the victory for wildlife [from the lockdown] will end as the first machines and crews start work on a 27-acre Brexit customs clearance centre to process lorries coming from the EU into Dover from January, prompting anger from local residents, a Tory MP and other politicians. 

 What an alliance --local residents, an MP (Damien Green no less) and irate blackbirds! And right at the end:

 Ashford borough council’s deputy leader, Paul Bartlett, welcomed the plans, saying on Facebook: “A HMRC clearance depot is vastly preferable to the warehouses proposed by [owners] AXA/Friends Life and granted planning consent by ABC in 2015.”

Then

People going abroad will need to take out policy that includes health, as EHIC runs out on 31 December

And we are promised

From Monday a new marketing campaign to get the public prepared for life after the Brexit transition period will include TV, radio and digital adverts. Advice for people in Northern Ireland is set to follow in a few weeks’ time as negotiations with the EU continue....Meanwhile, the chancellor, Rishi Sunak, was reported to be poised to introduce tax cuts and an overhaul of planning laws in up to 10 new “free ports”.

I can't wait to see what patronising crap the Government produces this time. 

And finally some interesting  cultural commentary as N Cohen interviews A Applebaum

Anne Applebaum can look at the wreck of democratic politics and understand it with a completeness few contemporary writers can match. When she asks who sent Britain into the unending Brexit crisis, or inflicted the Trump administration on America, or turned Poland and Hungary into one-party states, she does not need to search press cuttings. Her friends did it, she replies.

Cohen can never fail to make it all relevant

They [once] asked [Johnson] about Europe. “No one serious wants to leave the EU,” he replied, which was true enough as Johnson was to prove when he came out for Brexit.

There is some good serious argument:

You can read thousands of discussions of the “root causes” of what we insipidly call “populism”. The academic studies aren’t all wrong, although too many are suspiciously partial. The left says austerity and inequality caused Brexit and Trump, proving they had always been right to oppose austerity and inequality. The right blames woke politics and excessive immigration, and again you can hear the self-satisfaction in the explanation....Applebaum offers an overdue corrective....Politicians hungry for office, plutocrats wanting the world to obey their commands, second-rate journalists sniffing a chance of recognition after years of obscurity, and Twitter mob-raisers and fake news fraudsters, who find a sadist’s pleasure in humiliating their opponents, propelled causes that would satisfy them.

[Populism is] a war of one part of the elite against another part of the elite, she says. Brexit was an elite project. “The game was to get everyone to go along with it”. Were all the southern Tories who voted for it a part of the oppressed masses? “And who do you think funded the campaign?”...They may pose as the tribunes of the common people now but they were members of the intellectual and educated elite willing to launch a war on the rest of the intellectual and educated elite. 

Cohen insists:

The Anglo-Saxon world is not so different from Poland and Hungary....Britain has handled Covid-19 so disastrously because only servile nobodies, willing to pretend that a no-deal Brexit would not harm the country, could gain admittance to Boris Johnson’s cabinet

Rather a lot to discuss in there but on we go...

Careerism is too glib an explanation for selling out...bigotry and racial prejudice were never enough on their own to move her friends away from liberal democracy. 

'On their own',note. And eventually Cohen/Applebaum sees it all as a conspiracy against the meritorious:

Applebaum understands that a society based on merit may sound fine if you want to live in a country run by talented people. But what if you are not yourself talented? Since the 1950s, criticisms of meritocracy have become so commonplace they have passed into cliche. Not one I have read or indeed written [blimey!] stops to consider how one-party states represent the anti-meritocratic society in its purest form. Among her friends who became the servants of authoritarian movements, Applebaum sees the consequences of the lust for status among resentful men and women, who believe the old world never gave them their due.

Back to the UK

I didn’t doubt for a moment that there would be thousands of mediocre journalists, broadcasters, lawyers and administrators who would happily work for the new regime if it pandered to their vanity by giving them the jobs they could never have taken on merit. 

Overall, lots to note. Populism is right wing,and covers the spectrum from Orban to Johnson. It is the same as wanting to Leave. Elites and fractions of them determine everything, with plebs following along docilely, or maybe doing a bit of bigotry and racial prejudice. No one loves the courageous truth-telling new petite bourgeoisie who have embraced meritocratic credentialism as their preferred closure strategy and are shocked to realise it no longer works as ideology.

Anne Applebaum's book is now on sale.

Choose EU neolib globalisation over China and the USA!

Shock news from el godrino:

Vast Brexit customs clearance centre to be built in Kent

Exclusive: council given only hours’ notice of emergency purchase of 1.2m sq ft ‘Mojo’ site

As usual, the copy is slightly different:

“Plans have not yet been finalised for the use of this site, but is anticipated to form part of the Department’s strategy to minimise potential disruption at Kent ports for the end of the transition period. This is likely to involve temporary capacity for the holding of delayed HGVs and facilities for border-related controls to be carried out by government agencies (eg HM Revenue and Customs). More detailed information will be provided in due course.”... Bartlett said it was no surprise that the land was going to be developed as it had been empty for almost 10 years and that HM Revenue & Customs operations would be more welcome locally than the rumoured Amazon warehouse. “It is a huge tick that this creates skilled jobs,” he said.

The Observer adds legs to its continuing [sigh] anti-Brexit stuff with a contemporary anxiety about the Chinese:

It’s a pity that the Tory grandees who are making the most noise now did not raise their concerns much earlier, before Britain became dependent on Beijing’s favours to escape its Brexit mess.

Duncan Smith was rich in hindsight. In a race for trade and investment over the past decade, he said, “the free world has marched somewhat blindly into the embrace of [the] Chinese Communist party”. Unfortunately, it was now clear that China was intent on “complete dominance” globally.

Of course, it is not just Brexiteers who might have misjudged the issues:

David Cameron and the then chancellor, George Osborne, launched their bogus “golden era” in UK-China relations, promising ever closer ties.

But Brexiteers are still responsible -- for not speaking up: What was the Observer's take on it at the time?

So why did [the current Tory grandees] not object earlier? One possible explanation is that Duncan Smith, Davis, Fox, Paterson and other new-minted human rights defenders were ardent Brexiters, before and after the 2016 referendum. Their overriding priority was pushing Brexit through – and for this the appearance of a friendly relationship with economically powerful China was crucial....As international trade secretary, for example, Fox boasted in 2018 of cutting lucrative deals during successive visits to Beijing. This, they said, was the future. In their blind fervour for Brexit at any cost, they did not think things through.

We should never have left the safety and security of the EU, which is, I must say, the only good reason for staying I could think of, but it was and still is a nasty choice between three neolib globalists:

Yet now, six months after Britain formally left the EU and only a few short months away from a calamitous no-deal crash, what is Britain’s position? It is some way off even a basic trade pact with the EU. Desperate to cut a deal with Washington, its ability to resist unpalatable US demands declines by the day. Donald Trump is even pushing Britain to sign a “loyalty oath”, giving preference to the US over China. He wants UK backing for his dangerous “new cold war” narrative [which sounds as if the Obs might be supporting as well?]  Therein lies another huge trap....In China itself, meanwhile, Britain faces a vastly more powerful, scornful opponent that lacks respect for its values, believes (with some justice) that it can exploit British economic, financial and political neediness to get its own way, and which does as it likes in Hong Kong – as evidenced by last week’s withering tirade from its London ambassador, Liu Xiaoming.

The oriental devils have even made us lose face!

No Italian trousers and only paper cups in no-deal UK as scurvy and rickets return

The diatribe against Johnson today is largely about his treatment of the covid emergency. Some of it is fair enough,but it is all seen as a symptom of his appallingly caddish personality. It goes a long long way back. No doubt there is a Graun online archive somewhere where you can cut'n'paste

 When Boris Johnson gets caught, his first inclination is to wriggle.

He squirms and he splutters; if all else fails, he rumples his hair like a chastened little boy and mumbles regretfully at his shoes. When confronted with the story of his affair with Petronella Wyatt, he retreated behind claims about a “pyramid of piffle” rather than admit it was true.

The link connects to a piece by the same reporter (G. Hinsliff) in 2004!

the buck for all this [covid cockups] still stops ultimately with the man who took the big strategic decisions, and now seems curiously reluctant to account for them. 

Not Cummings then?

And, still burning still hurting:

When he hit a sticky patch with Brexit last autumn, he decided to prorogue parliament for five weeks rather than face the music.

'Face the music'!  Admit defeat at the hands of the Remainerati? Can you remember any of them now? Phillip Hammond? Dominic Grieve? John Bercow? Jo Swinson?

The blast from the past includes 'news' as well -- the Graun obviously reproduced the handout from a 'Brexit press briefing'. Welcome, Operation Fear Mk176:

No-deal Brexit will raise cost of UK household staples, say retailers

There are some covid legs:

With just six months to go before the UK leaves the EU entirely by exiting the single market and the European customs union, retailers fear further damage to a sector already reeling from the coronavirus crisis, with 5,600 job losses announced on Thursday from Boots and John Lewis alone....it was a misunderstanding to think that retailers and their suppliers had built up “huge Brexit war chests” and [Connolly -- see below] added that Covid-19 had exposed the fragility of the supply chain.

It's not just strawberry famines or the soggy tomatoes in BLTs: 

beef, which is imported in huge quantities from the Republic of Ireland, will go up in price by 48%, with cheddar cheese, another staple imported from across the Irish Sea, expected to cost 57% more....Oranges from Spain will cost 12% more, while the price of cucumbers will rise by 16%. Trousers imported from Italy will have a 12% levy slapped on them , porcelain kitchenware will also go up by 12% and drinking glasses made in Poland up 10%. ...“It’s not foie gras that we’re talking about, it’s mince, it’s cheese, it’s oranges, you know,” said Aodhán Connolly, the director of the Northern Ireland Retail Consortium in a Brexit press briefing.

Calcium deficiency, no cottage pie or spag bol, horribly dated kitchenware, (other people's) kids with scurvy, men with holes in their trousers, no cucumber for the sandwiches with the vicar, having to drink your wine out of paper cups -- total nightmare.