Kent becomes an independent state

Back to the queuing lorries horror: First

A de facto Brexit border is to be introduced for lorry drivers entering Kent to travel on to the EU, Michael Gove has confirmed.

The minister for the Cabinet Office and chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster told the Commons that lorry drivers would need a “Kent access permit” to get into the county from 1 January with “police and ANPR cameras [automatic number plate recognition]” enforcing the system.

Under government plans revealed in a leaked document, KAPs will be issued only to drivers who have completed all the paperwork necessary to board a ferry or Eurotunnel train to Calais.

Can't wait for the barbed wire, searchlights and border police. New laws and standards in Kent, regulated by the ECJ?  Really pleased with their trope, the Graun editorial tells us they told us:

The prospect of a Brexit-induced queue of 7,000 lorries at Dover, each one requiring a permit to enter the county of Kent, would once have been dismissed by leave campaigners as baseless fearmongering. Now it is the government’s “reasonable worst-case scenario” for the end of transitional arrangements with the EU on 31 December.

The government’s “check, change, go” campaign, urging businesses to prepare, has been running since July, but inevitably traders’ attention has been focused on the coronavirus pandemic.

Not lobbying for an extension to transition at all, rather, as the Graun puts it

British freight and logistics companies have been pleading with the government to pay more heed to the practical economic implications of Brexit choices that are driven by Eurosceptic dogma....It is impossible for some businesses to prepare fully for new regulatory requirements, because the details depend on the terms of a deal that does not exist.

Poor old businesses cannot prepare for more than one possibility. The Government is evading as usual:

George Eustice, the environment secretary, claimed that “all the work in the world” was being done to prepare on the UK side, but that chaos could not be ruled out as a result of things being “slipshod and disorganised” on the continent.

It's all down to Boris of course:

a prime minister who expects nodding subservience from his cabinet...Mr Johnson is creating borders where there were none, inflicting cost where none was previously levied, erecting barriers, closing doors and calling it freedom. As the moment of implementation nears, the fraud inherent in the whole enterprise is getting harder to conceal.

The Graun seees that as 

[one of many] cynical inversions of the truth

And they may well have a point.

Finally

The economic cost of a no-deal Brexit could be two or three times as bad as the impact of Covid, a report has concluded....Analysis by the London School of Economics and UK in a Changing Europe [bound to be objective then]

In the short term it is “almost certainly correct” [rather weaselly to start] that “the economic impacts of Covid-19 dwarf those of Brexit,” it says, as not even the most pessimistic forecasts suggest the initial fall in output caused by a no-deal could lead to a downturn like that seen in the second quarter of this year...But it concludes that there will be longer term damage to the country’s reputation for ease of doing businesses, with delays due to administrative burdens at ports, constraints on travel and tourism, as well as curbs on immigration and free movement of labour.

Reputation. Funny how it all adds together.

 

Stop Press. There is a good rebuttal of the LSE analysis in Briefings for Brexit