Old story given new legs

There have been several repeats of the OBR forecasts that Brexit has damaged the economy, and will have a worse impact than Covid, not least in, of course, the Graun (28 Oct -- link in Briefings for Britain article below).

Briefings for Britain this week offers a concise critique -- again 

Why the OBR is wrong to claim that Brexit will cause a 4% drop in long-term growth 

Several news outlets have been carrying the Office for Budget Responsibility’s claim that Brexit will have a worse effect on the economy than COVID.  For the OBR’s report, see the linked pdf.  From the outset, it’s worth noting that the quoted figure of a 4% Brexit impact on long-term growth is not new or original. It comes from the Treasury five years ago and was heavily criticised by BfB years ago. 

We’ve carried rebuttals of claims like this many times before - particularly in our Report from last year. This time, we’ll look in detail at the Report itself, and suggest a few places where the analysis relies on unsafe assumptions.

Firstly, it’s worth noting that the report stresses the negative impact that a fall in exports has on UK trade (pp. 58-60).  But the report admits that it doesn’t incorporate the very latest trade data, which revised up the estimates for Quarter 2 of 2021.  Moreover, it doesn’t give enough attention to the fact that EU exports have been performing better than non-EU ones – which makes no sense if trade barriers to the EU are supposed to be the cause of difficulties.

In response to this, Remainers might argue that the disruption caused by Brexit to British supply chains could have related to lowered exports.  But again, there is a difficulty in explaining why EU exports should not fall more than non-EU ones in this scenario.  More generally, though the OBR mentions shortages of hauliers as a Brexit factor (p. 47), we’ve demonstrated before that the shortages of hauliers come from a cocktail of local factors, in which reduced EU labour supply is a minor element.

Nor can one argue that British businesses are particularly prone to reshoring their suppliers due to Brexit.  As the OBR’s report itself acknowledges on p. 40, ‘a survey of 353 companies across 77 countries found that, post-pandemic, two thirds of businesses were planning to source more locally and 20 per cent planned to hold more inventories.’

Secondly, we note that the OBR makes reference to the estimates derived from a report from the Centre for European Reform published in May 2021 (p. 59).  But this methodology, as Graham Gudgin argued in 2018, is highly speculative.  It tries to mock up a model UK based on the weighted performance of a selection of countries, and is highly influenced by which you choose and how they’re weighted.

Ultimately, the OBR falls back on its November 2016 predictions, trying to argue that trends since then back up its predictions.  But one glance at the graph on p. 59 makes clear that there’s been massive volatility – and that the trend line hardly follows the path of the predictions with any significant fidelity.

Finally, to end on some good news.  While the UK economy suffered particularly from the effects of the pandemic, Britain is also on course to see a substantially stronger recovery than the Eurozone in 2021.  Needless to say, Remainers have ignored this particular international comparison.

 According to the Gruan, however, the public are right behind the pessimists,and, strangely, the nerdy economists at the OBR. In a classic link:

The survey comes after Richard Hughes, the chairman of the Office for Budget Responsibility, said his organisation calculated that the negative impact on GDP caused by the UK’s exit from the EU was expected to be twice as great as that resulting from the pandemic.

Implying the two aspects of the story have something to do with each other, just because one comes after the other! In the  pages of the Observer/Guardian that is.

Almost twice as many voters now believe Brexit is having a negative effect on the UK economy as think it is benefiting the nation’s finances, according to the latest Opinium poll for the Observer, carried out during budget week...

The actual data show fairly small differences of opinion on matters such as effects on salaries and wages and 'your personal situation' (with lots of 'don't knows'/undecideds), but big differences on 'prices in the shops' and 'ability to import goods from the EU'. Overall, 'The Opinium survey found that 44% of people think Brexit is having a bad impact on the UK economy, compared with 25% who think it is having a positive effect', hence the headline.

Then we return seamlessly to the OBR report which claims that: 'shortages of lorry drivers were at least partly caused by Brexit.'

However, one disappointment from the survey:

While Opinium found evidence of clear anxiety about Brexit, this has yet to translate into a negative effect on support for the Tory party.

Could be all sorts of things beyond the ken of  liberal Remainers here, of course, like even if the economy is being harmed at the moment, Brexit is still worth it and we would be nuts to rejoin?

 

 

EU concessions entirely pragmatic and peace-loving as realpolitik haunts Newsnight

The Graun reports that:

The EU will scrap 80% of checks on foods entering Northern Ireland from Britain...Maroš Šefčovič, the EU’s Brexit commissioner, also announced that customs checks on manufactured goods would be halved as part of a significant concession to ease post-Brexit border problems....The EU proposals on goods and medicines represents a significant concession for Brussels, which had previously called for the UK to align with the bloc’s food and plant health rules to avoid checks between Great Britain and Northern Ireland....

 

The EU is now proposing a “bespoke Northern Ireland specific solution”. This means checks would be removed on 80% of lines on supermarket shelves, with carefully labelled and sourced British sausages, the product that became emblematic of the row between the two sides, no longer at risk of being prohibited.

In a further concession, trucks carrying mixed loads – for example a lorry bound for a Northern Irish supermarket laden with meat, dairy and confectionery – would only have to provide one health certificate for each journey rather than one for each product line....Customs paperwork will be hugely reduced through a more generous definition of goods deemed “not at risk” of entering the EU single market via the Irish border.

 

In response to threats to affordability and availability of generic medicines in Northern Ireland, the EU will waive a requirement that medical manufacturers move out of Great Britain into Northern Ireland. Companies supplying the Northern Irish market can continue to have their supply “hub” in Britain, a privilege not usually afforded to countries outside the EU single market.

Following criticism that the protocol is “undemocratic”, the Northern Ireland assembly, civil society groups and businesses will be invited to take part in “structured dialogues” with the European commission on implementing the hundreds of EU laws that apply in the region, although they will not have any decision-making power.

About as close as the EC get to grasping the term 'democratic'?  However...

Šefčovič said: “It’s very clear that we cannot have access to the single market without the supervision of the ECJ.  ...In exchange for looser controls, the UK will have to ensure border inspection posts are up and running and that EU officials have access to real-time data on checks....Some market checks will also be intensified to prevent British goods being smuggled into the EU single market through Northern Ireland. Products for the Northern Irish market would have to carry individual labels, rather than labels on pallets.

So there is still much room for further mischief making. Indeed:

in Westminster there is a concern that the market surveillance and checks on sources of products will be as much of a problem for traders as the status quo. There was no solution contained within Šefčovič’s proposals to the issue of pets travelling from Northern Ireland to the rest of the UK and back.

 

The EU people are trying to see this as a new pragmatic approach, burying the old problems of the (very recent) past and moving forward.That annoying Irish MEP and former Deputy Trade Commissioner, M. McGuiness,once so arrogant when Brexit was stalling, just said on Newsnight she wanted to get the best for the people of Northern Ireland, and the EU ambassador to the UK, J de Almeida, also appeared to say it was time to move on and be pragmatic. Not concessions, he said, but proposals.

 

Apparently, EU persons had been to NI and asked people, mostly 'businessmen', what the problems were, and were responding to their concerns. No businessmen had mentioned the ECJ, of course. That was sufficient democratic consultation for the EC though. Another Yesterday's Man, L Varadkar weighed in with his view that no country would ever trust the UK if we broke our word and tore up the Protocol, a view reinforced by the latest Cummings tweet saying that of course they only signed to get the deal through and had no intention of actually implementing it

 

Even C4 News and Newsnight asked why the EC had not made all these concessions earlier, and whether this meant the Protocol was no longer as non-negotiable and as written in stone as it had appeared to be in the Summer.

 

Both journos also feared, as does the Graun, that' Brussels officials were “preparing for the worst” amid signs Boris Johnson is set to reject the terms of the deal.'

 

 

Moral panics-- a technical account

 A very interesting account in today's Briefings for Britain on how a Remain/Rejoin narrative was able to gain a good deal of traction by combining and amplifying a number of events focused on the petrol shortage. That  rapidly got connected to a shortage of truck drivers which in turn led to denunciations of policies to exclude cheap immigrant labour after Brexit as we saw.

 

Elements of the shortage for the author (G. Prins) included the recent switch to more ethanol in the mix -- E10 fuel as it is called -- for 'green' reasons which caused temporary problems in stocks, Prins argues. These minor shortages were then amplified in social media panics driven by a deliberate campaign and Government were slow to resist.

Incidentally, the Daily Mail (!) floated a story, I recall, that the Road Haulage Association's PR Department specifically released a story about panic buying at petrol stations and the person responsible was a notable Remainer -- I'd have to look up that source so I can't rely on it yet.

Prins uses models from cybernetics and psychology to explain how small disturbances can get amplified into major disturbances, which I will leave you to purse. It reminded me a bit of some chaos theory. His is a bit of a conspiratorial account -- he talks of Rejoiner Central and specifies the ubiquitous Gina Miller and Jolyon Maugham, familiar names to those still haunted by the appalling events of the hung Parliament and the High Court interventions in the run-up to the final split with the EU.

He also0 argues that the pressure is now being applied to a rather odd debate about whether the UK should reapply to join the EU Galileo project satellite navigation system like the US GPS from which we were excluded (from the military bits anyway)  as a 'third country'  if we dared leave the EU. It would introduce EU control through the old backdoor again, of course, and it looks like our 'own' One-Web system might be better anyway.

Fish wars spark into life again

 The Gruan is particularly keen on this story and has reported it for a few days running:

France threatens to cut UK and Jersey energy supply in fishing row

The EU could hit Britain and Jersey’s energy supply over the UK’s failure to provide sufficient fishing licences to French fishers, France’s EU affairs minister has said. ...Last week a third of French boats applying to fish in Jersey’s waters were turned down by the island’s government. The previous week the UK government provided only 12 of 47 French vessels with permits for its coastal waters. The UK and Jersey authorities have said the vessels that had been turned down had failed to provide evidence of operating in the relevant waters.

Under the post-Brexit trade and cooperation agreement struck on Christmas Eve, in case of a dispute with Jersey the EU can take unilateral measures “proportionate to the alleged failure by the respondent party and the economic and societal impact thereof”.

That term 'proportionate' might be interesting.

Unilateral measures affecting the energy supply to the rest of the UK would also theoretically be possible. But France would need to gain the consent of other member states in both cases and the action would need to be proportionate, as the UK would have the right to take the EU to arbitration after any such move.

Note the GHRaun's careful usage of the preferred term 'fishers'.

 

Australian sheep cause climate change

 A particularly useful and detailed analysis of a recent story in this week's edition of Briefings for Britain:

An environmental story with little substance was picked up by Sky News, repeated by The Guardian, City AM, the BBC, The Times, the Labour Party website and given substantial airtime on Newsnight, why? Because it gave Pro EU supporters an environmental reason to scupper the UK Australia trade deal.

 

For the EU and its supporters, climate change is the new Trade Barrier du jour...[that is, they erect barriers ostensibly on climate grounds, while hypocritically dealing with major polluters and polluting themselves]...If either the UK or the EU were actually interested in reducing carbon emissions in trade deals, they would buy the meat from Brazil, the US or Canada, not the animal feed.

Of particular interest for this blog , was the way Newsnight managed the debate. First former Labour leader Miliband appeared in the studio passionately claiming: 

‘You have got to put pressure on the big emitters, so you don’t do dodgy deals with Australia.’ ... ‘you don’t do a trade deal with Australia and say you can drop your temperature commitments from your trade deal.

The B for B article notes that 'in 2018 the world’s big emitters were all in the Northern Hemisphere... the EU...[was]... the world’s 3^rd biggest CO2 emitter' [The USA and China are the top 2].

Of course there has to be 'balance' so  the BBC also included an online contribution from a Conservative MP, but 

'the Newsnight anchor, Emily Maitlis, lined up Dunne’s contribution with the highly emotive: "We’ve bowed to Australia on what they wanted on climate change, … we have changed what we said over the Paris Climate temperature goals because we didn’t want to scare off Australians over a trade deal"....

City AM joined in with the headline: Scott Morrison confirms climate targets dropped from UK-Australia trade deal, but the first line of the article actually said ‘Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison has today confirmed the UK-Australia trade deal will not include binding commitments to climate change targets from the Paris Agreement because it “wasn’t a climate agreement, it was a trade agreement”....Why is the media claiming that a specific temperature [target] has been ‘dropped’ from the FTA? 

I conclude this manufactured activist outrage against Australia is for protectionist reasons rather than for environmental ones. This is simply another attempt by the #FBPE supporters to scupper the UK Australia trade agreement as it is the UK’s first completely new trade agreement outside the EU.

 Showing how moral panics build:

Once published the story was picked up by other ‘news’ organisations and repeated without any of them reading the published FTA Agreement in Principle – easily found on the internet. Equally at fault were the ambitious politicians and activists trying to score points against the Government (and given large amounts of airtime by the BBC) but not bothering to research the world’s largest CO2 emitters nor how that list overlaps with the UK’s present trading partners. At least the EU re-joiners, have their motivation spelt out on their hashtags, unlike the others who jumped on this bandwagon. But most worrying was the small amount of press given to Liz Truss’ denial [she had said ‘the stuff you are repeating is simply fake news’]. The first page of a google search only produced one article, all the rest were articles pushing the fake story.

NB #FBPE is an old support group Follow Back Pro EU. It appears to have been divisive. Surely it can't still be active? I wonder myself if this is not just an attempt to shift pnb energy into the old rival cause to Remain, especially as it is contemporary? It's just cultural politics  again.

Dogwhistles in Remainer ideology

After a while a lot can be left implicit in ideological stories. This is often described as a 'dogwhistle', a thinly coded way referring to racist or sexist tropes via terms like 'urban crime' or 'hysterical demonstrators'. The daddy of them all was the analysis of the 'mugging' moral panic of the 1970s and 1980s, of course.

Grauniad-reading liberals need a bit more help to get there and a bit of practice condemning the efforts of others. Thus we have been told once or twice that 'supply problems' is an apologetic for 'problems produced only/solely by Brexit'. The Graun is trying to work the trick in reverse. A story I failed to relocate in this week's Observer had dire tales of shortages that didn't actually refer to Brexit at all -- but it was located under a byline that said 'Brexit' anyway. This one today is a bit more transitional for slightly dimmer dogs who still need a bit of work:

Sewage discharge rules eased over fears of chemical shortage

Wastewater plants in England and Wales offered waiver because of impact of lorry driver crisis

It's a good topic -- sewage and ecological damage, although a bit of a problem with nasty chemicals, but no matter -- on with the story of driver shortages. It seems based on the usual handout after a survey, of course, from an industry PR person:

A recent survey of its members showed that 93% were experiencing haulage shortages, up from 61% in the first quarter of the year....One of its concerns is that the driver shortage will be worse in the chemical industry because of the requirement for additional qualifications for anyone carrying hazardous substances....“We are seeing a real crunch on the driver front,” said Tim Doggett, CEO of the CBA [Chemical Business Association]....“My concern and what I have said to the Department for Transport this morning is the game of musical chairs we will see. If you have a driver faced with a job which means he doesn’t have to get out of his cab to deal with dangerous substances and one that gets paid the same and has to handle hazards and be specially qualified to do so, you know which job the driver will go for,” he added.

So they have evidently relied on paying general rates for special and hazardous jobs and now they face a shortage. I thought capitalists knew how to solve these problems based on market dynamics. But no, 'the chronic shortage of lorry drivers [is] caused by Brexit and the pandemic' and thus cannot be solved except by Government. Or rejoining the EU? Saying sorry?

The magic term Brexit is what got it in the Graun, no doubt. There is no attempt to estimate or explain the relative effects of Brexit and pandemic or set them against the dubious employment practices the industry itself confesses to. 

It is not even clear that it is a real problem with real effects yet:

In a regulatory position statement issued on Tuesday, the Environment Agency introduced a waiver that would mean some companies would not have to go through the third stage in the treatment of sewage if they did not have the right chemicals....A government spokesperson said the water supply to consumers would not be affected and any waste company that wished to avail of the waiver needed prior approval from Defra....It also said that no water company had yet notified it of a shortage of ferric sulphate but it was introducing the regulatory position as a precautionary measure.

Observer keeps the faith

 Well, W Keegan does. He is still right about everything:

Just how long will it take the electors of this benighted country to realise that they have been conned by the Brexiters?...The evidence mounts that Brexit is an almost unmitigated disaster. The slogan “get Brexit done” has been supplanted by “supply chain issues”. As a direct, and wholly predictable, consequence of Brexit, Britain is economically, culturally, reputationally, politically and diplomatically poorer....

The truth is that this country continues to want European standards of public service and healthcare, but nothing like the levels of taxation that our fellow Europeans are prepared to pay.As for Chancellor Sunak, by espousing Brexit he has helped to make the country poorer, thereby eroding the exchequer’s tax base. I think this is going to catch up with the Brexiters.

It is still one simple explanation -- not covid but European membership is the key. Quite where this will lead is less sure --rejoining? Keegan's personal vindication so he can die happy?

Exports hit by Brexit and weasels

This graun story seems rock solid surely?

Brexit: food and drink exports to EU suffer ‘disastrous’ decline

Although there is already a reservation :

First-half sales fall £2bn, says industry body, as barriers are compounded by staff shortages

Nevertheless, the main claim is that the decline is 'because of Brexit trade barriers, with sales of beef and cheese hit hardest', although, again, there is a weasel: 'compounded by the lorry driver and warehouse workers shortages, which were choking the supply chain'.and 'labour shortages across the UK’s farm-to-fork food and drink supply chain'

The data seem clear enough, although they cover 2019--2021, not just the 'first half of the year' as initially claimed. To summarise:

By product category, the biggest falls in sales to the EU have been in dairy and meat: beef exports were down 37%, cheese down 34% and milk and cream down 19% in the first half of 2021 compared with the equivalent six months in 2019.

Exports to nearly all EU member states fell significantly, including a loss of more than £500m in sales to Ireland, while sales to Germany, Spain and Italy were each down around a half since the first half of 2019.

But year-on-year exports of salmon and whisky, two of Scotland’s flagship products, were up 27% and 20%. [which might need some explaining --no extra paperwork for  these?]

Exporters have struggled with the extra paperwork and administrative costs that came into force on 1 January 2021...[and a return to an old issue -- still unresolved?]...the physical sanitary and phytosanitary (SPS) checks that were not necessary before Brexit, with lorries facing partial or full unloads in Calais and other ports if any of the paperwork is missing.

imports were already being hit, with products of animal origin heavily impacted. Pork imports fell 19.6%, cheese imports were down 17.6%, and chicken imports fell by 17%.

 

 

 Brexit hits exports:

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/sep/02/brexit-uk-food-drink-exports-eu-disastrous-decline

Operation Fear: low wages for Romanians or an unhappy Christmas for us

 Familiar refrains are emerging again, with this:

Business leaders call for relaxation of post-Brexit visa rules

Industry bosses say retailers will struggle to keep shelves stocked at Christmas amid worker shortage

The shortage of HGV drivers has been running for a while. Briefings for Britain has their own account of the shortage -- poor conditions for qualified HGV drivers, and EU standardisation rules have, in effect, encouraged transport firms to domicile in low wage areas in Europe. 

Meanwhile, industry sources said in addition to lorry driver shortages, there was a lack of tens of thousands of seasonal agricultural workers, and 14,000 needed in meat-processing plants.

The latter has led to exotica such as predictions of a shortage of turkeys for Christmas,. Apparently, Nandos and KFC have already experienced a shortage of chicken, and, horrors! McDonalds is allegedly short of milkshakes. These shortages seem to have lasted for a day or two! Our whole way of life is at stake!

The GUardina knows the source of the crisis:

Guardian analysis of labour market figures from the Office for National Statistics confirms the extent of the fall in eastern Europeans in the UK workforce since the start of the pandemic, and after Britain left the EU earlier this year.

The number of Romanian and Bulgarian workers in the UK, who would typically fill lower-paid logistics and food production roles, has plunged by almost 90,000, or 24% since the end of 2019.

I like the 'lower-paid' bit especially. Let's get those low-paid migrants back in so we can eat cheap poultry again!

 

The Graun also notes that 'the meltdown [was] triggered by Covid and Brexit', before warming to its theme.

Remainers right to predict Taliban takeover

I have taken my eye off the ball a bit lately, but, some (former diplomat?) chap on the ITV News managed a little speech summarising a theme that has cropped up once or twice. It is an excellent example of how to link just about anything on Brexit.

 

The illusion peddled by Brexiteers, especially Boris, was that Britain would be able to pursue a new course in international affairs to regain its place as a great power, in alliance with the USA. The Taliban takeover, with Biden's decision to withdraw, has shown the folly of this vision. Thus Brexit was a wrong move.

 

As many posts in this blog show, the concern for Britain's influence on world affairs was actually a big theme in Remain -- leaving the EU would threaten it and leave us isolated; Brexiteers were Little Englanders.That the dreadful blunders and miscalculations that led to the events in Afghanistan could have been traced mainly to a vote at a referendum in 2016 is ridiculous. Staying in the EU would hardly have made any difference -- EU spokespersons seem to have confined themselves to the usual pious hopes for peace and reconciliation.

 

Boris might well have blundered in his policy toward Afghanistan but his actions pale into insignificance compared to his predecessors, especially the seriously deluded and still pro-EU Tony Blair

What sort of home did football not come home to, exactly?

The last week or two have seen a familiar cultural trajectory, very similar to the much more prolonged one that we saw with Brexit, characteristic of the cultural politics of social distancing embraced by the new petite bourgeoisie

1. An imaginary community is constructed. Not 'Europe' this time but 'England'. It is a place of community, diversity, love and harmony, 

2. It is embodied, utterly ludicrously, in the professional football team! Professional football is not at all ruthless, exploitative, competitive and dominated by shady billionaires, but a nice game played by nice people. These people appear (!) young, community-minded and liberal in their gestures(!) -- anti-racist kneeling and charitable works. They are smartly dressed. They were from humble origins but are now millionaires, which shows what happens if you follow your dream and work hard, kids (we'll pass over the thousands who were not selected). They are very nice lads who give fans their old kit and are polite to their betters.

3. A struggle ensues to capture and develop this image (at rather short notice) and reinforce it in the liberal media, especially by the usual suspects like the Graun, C4 or Newsnight. Gone are the old condemnations of the flag of St George as exclusionary. In come black people (mostly not actual players) enthusing over professional football and the myths of community it peddles.

4. The team IS 'the nation'. Suddenly, regional differences, even Celtic ones, and all other social ones that seemed so important are magically resolved. We can all unite behind the team. All this stuff was analysed in Cultural Studies 40 years ago -- and here it all is again.

After the crash (England's defeat to an thoroughly well-organised and professional Italian team)...

5. The main terrain is still the cultural one.No-one cares about the tactics or the issues of skill (except specialist sports writers -- but luvvies do not read them)  -- it is all about fighting over 'the narrative'. And of course it rapidly gets polarised and becomes a matter of social distancing. It is nice people versus 'racists'.  Nice people must be right because the only ones who oppose them are unspeakable hooligans and racists.

The actual football doesn't matter. The result doesn't matter. The England manager said as much. It is a matter of developing as 'role models', of being tolerant and welcoming to minorities, of doing charitable works (Rashford's campaign to restore free school meals during the holidays was described on Newsnight as him 'feeding a whole nation'). Luvvies would not love them otherwise. Prince Harry for England coach!

It is just like the way the Remain campaign shifted from the issue of whether the EU actually brought prosperity to whether it offered some superior but ineffable way of life, and how the debate polarised and became a culture war against ignorant racists.

There did seem to have been some pretty crude racist tweets because, of the 5 penalty takers for England, only the white ones actually scored, which clearly invites the naive positivism characteristic of racism. However, the liberals were close to that positivist racism too, claiming that football was nicer and more civilised because there were more black players in the team ( causes and effects were nicely blurred). 

Liberal championing of campaigning footballers also inevitably brings political retorts of this kind from N Elphicke, Tory MP: [Rashford, who missed a penalty, should have] "spent more time "perfecting his game" rather than "playing politics" (reported in the Times). Liberals never learn. Note that this is not racist, of course. This might be harsh. Professional football is harsh. £46m was at stake. Dealing with economic and political alliances is harsh. Sentimental politics get us nowhere.

In fact, the latest issue of Spiked reminds me, there is a need to check just how much racist reaction was actually generated and by whom. They have agendas of their own, of course, but they claim:

industry experts and security professionals... told me that racist abuse of English footballers does exist, but that much of it comes from foreign accounts and bots. It doesn’t come from frustrated and virulently intolerant English people firing off salvos of abuse while pissed up and pissed off....Manager Gareth Southgate must have recently been told the same. He explained to no-doubt disappointed reporters yesterday that a lot of the abuse ‘has come from abroad – people that track those things have been able to explain that’.

The media love reporting tides of horrid reactions from sexists and racists, and, of course, they can't possibly actually show any. The Daily Mail shared a couple with banana and monkey emojis. Lots of people seem to have seen them. I spent about 20 mins searching through Twitter and found lots of hostile comments but no racist ones

It's only football -- or is it a blow against Brexit?

Classic Graun commentary on England v Germany in the Euros qualifier yesterday (before the match):

Patriotic hubris and old footballing rivalries are harder to sustain in a world becoming more closely connected

Noting that some of the players play for clubs in the opposing countries, the writer , one Philip Oltermann, who also has a book to plug, thinks this represents some sort of imagined Graun future where sporting rivalries offer

a story of increased international entwinement, at a time when Brexit has spun the two countries in different directions. As vessels for narratives about the nation state, for once, they no longer look fit for purpose. Instead, they look ahead of the curve.

So it is not just a game then?It does have some political and cultural significance? It can be watched by Islington luvvies? He offers them a few guidelines to reinfirce their cultural distance from ordinary fans. The English press  offered:

pictures of Paul Gascoigne and Stuart Pearce, Photoshopped to look like second world war soldiers, were published in the Daily Mirror in 1996 [!] alongside the headline “Achtung! Surrender”....Germany’s dominance on the football pitch and the tennis courts (Boris Becker and Steffi Graf won their respective singles tournaments at Wimbledon in 1989[!] )] touched a deeper paranoia about being sidelined by what was now Europe’s largest economy....When Germany knocked England out of the Euro semi-finals in 1996, John Redwood urged Times readers to “think again about the problem of Germany”...Tabloid attempts to frame that encounter in terms of martial conflicts of the past – “Let’s blitz Fritz” wrote the Sun in 1996 – look in hindsight more like desperate diversion tactics, a case of “Don’t mention the economy”

 Meanwhile the cosmopolitan and only slightly superior Germans:

have spoken of the clash in more celebratory tones. “To play against England at Wembley, that’s awesome”, said midfielder Leon Goretzka....One reason for this has purely to do with sport: Germany’s real grudge matches are against teams that have inflicted painful defeats, like Italy or the Netherlands. Matches against England, by contrast, tend to produce happy memories: England have won only six out of 24 matches against West and reunified German teams since 1966. Germany won England’s last match at the old Wembley stadium, and the first after it was demolished and rebuilt. “Four World Cups and three European Championships” is the correct response to England’s “Two World Wars and one World Cup” chant.

The cultural critics (with popular history books to write) just cannot move on. It's like all that stuff about the return of Teddy Boys and fears of Napoleon (elsewhere) their parents used to frighten them with.

The Times had a slightly different account from its man in Hamburg, incidentally, describing German fans singing not Ode to Joy but a parody of the UK national anthem based on their goalkeeper as king.

 

Meanwhile, the Gru report today of the England fans' reactions to the match and the win did not seem too hostile. 

[The mood] ranged from quiet confidence to bold optimism...“Germany’s not very good at the moment, and the English team are fit and young,”...“I’m nervous, I can’t lie, it’s risky. But I think the side is balanced and they’ll come through with a masterstroke. I see us going through to the quarter-finals,” said an assured Wasam.[probably not a white racist?]... “This is a new England. The side has good penalty-takers, they’re young, fit, confident – I believe we could win this,” said a vibey Ali as the pair bopped to Mas Que Nada [that old racist chant] ...“I reckon we’ll scrape by.”...“It just proves anything can happen,” said 26-year-old Sarah Asher on her way to the pub to celebrate England’s first knockout win against Germany in 55 years.

No-one mentioned the War.

 

 

The Graun balances on a sausage

Lots of background manoeuvring here over the provisions (sic) of the Irish Protocol and the end of the grace period in June after which we have to implement the full idiocies of EU policy on 'allowing' goods into NI from the mainland. 

 

Newsnight last night miscalculated and got the balance wrong and had 2 EU critics on for 1 supporter. One was a Trump delegate to NI who criticised Biden's reported approach to Johnson -- he had issued an unprecedented demarche (diplomatic rebuke) over Johnson's recalcitrance and had urged him to settle with the EU (confirmed today by the Times). N Dodds was allowed to voice his suspicion that the EU did not care about the Good Friday Agreement at all, as when it threatened to suspend it to block vaccine trade, and was using the issue to punish us for Brexit. Unlike the previous night, everyone's sound feed worked well too. E Maitlis did not rant either -- surely it cannot be that she only rants if she has the crowd behind her?. What happened?

 

The Graun had three pieces of various degrees of partisanship;

 

The first reported the official views of both sides (EU patience is wearing thin, UK is confident settlement will be reached), and made some simple debating points. The one I have never heard before is the EU point that the crisis can be mostly solved quite simply:

“If you are sending sausage, cheese or meat products to Northern Ireland the very easy solution is to just put the sticker on it: ‘for Northern Ireland only’, and … we agreed on a simplified export health certificate [which could still be the real problem?]. Do you think that one of these things has happened? No, none, nothing was done,” he said.

Other areas where substantive progress was not made, according to the UK, included freedom of movement for pets without passports, trusted trader status for agrifood suppliers, and tariffs on steel and parcels...Progress was made on guide dogs entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain and the EU’s repeated request for access to UK customs IT systems. The EU had promised further proposals on the supply of medicines and livestock movements, Downing Street said....

In particular:

In a statement, the UK side said no substantive progress had been made on the prospect of a veterinary agreement, which the EU believes could mean 80% of the agrifood checks disappear and could work as a temporary measure...Ministers have objected to the proposal on the grounds that it would mean London observing EU laws again, just six months after Boris Johnson went ahead with a hard Brexit, severing the country’s links to the bloc’s trade rules.

This gets us to sausages and chicken nuggets(eventually)

 

The second item explains in more detail:

the EU is insisting that the full gamut of ​​​​​​sanitary and phytosanitary controls will need to be imposed from 1 October on imports from Britain on meat, fish, eggs and diary [sic], including time-consuming export health certificates (EHCs), which need to be completed by a vet or other qualified person. This would be a killer for trade, making it overly expensive for products to enter Northern Ireland from the rest of the UK....The EU has so far demanded dynamic alignment, if only temporarily, between UK law and its rulebook for these controls to be dispensed with. That is not something the UK will countenance, largely on ideological grounds: they didn’t do Brexit to sign up to EU law

In particular:

From the end of this month, a grace period on an EU prohibition on the sale of chilled meats imported from outside the bloc is due to come into force. The UK could unilaterally extend the grace period on that ban again – but such a move would almost certainly lead to the EU taking the British government to binding arbitration and potentially enforcing tariffs on UK goods entering the single market in retaliation for breaches of their agreements....It is claimed by Frost that many of these difficulties, arising from erecting a regulatory border between Northern Ireland and Great Britain, couldn’t possibly have been foreseen in the scale and scope they are now taking.

One final possibility, which again I have never seen raised before, certainly not in the Graun, appears in a third piece

Politico on Wednesday reported that EU officials and diplomats had floated the idea of checking all goods coming from the island of Ireland into the rest of the single market. Such a plan, if confirmed, would mean throwing Ireland under a bus so is unlikely to be a runner. However, it will fuel the UK’s position that the EU is prioritising the single market over peace in Northern Ireland.

Overall, an unusually balanced,almost 'investigative' piece from el Gordo. Perhaps it is detecting a change in the wind. After all, the Times reports that:

New polling and research by the European Council on Foreign Relations (ECFR) found that the majority of those surveyed in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Austria now held the view that the European project was “broken”....[In particular] Around 62 per cent French people polled perceived the EU as “broken” rather than “working well” ahead of their own presidential elections in April.

 

 

What do Labour remainers want now?

I've almost forgotten this blog, which shows how things have moved on. The disputes about the protocol in NI continue to aggravate, of course, and Newsnight and the Graun do their best to blame Boris's Brexit deal (with some justice), avoiding the malicious EC/Eire campaigns to weaponise the issue. There are some signs that sense is prevailing behind the scenes.

A re-run of the issues appeared with the latest local election results (one by-election too), with a nearly complete story of Labour disaster. Debates about what happened inevitably took a characteristic form in the Remainer press -- how Starmer had failed to win over Labour Brexiteers (not that he had really tried). That was going to be difficult because it was clear the metropolitan Labourites still hated their guts as ignorant racists after Brexit. 

So what does metropolitan Labour want now all the last straws have been grasped -- the Deal has been ratified, so there is not even the forlorn hope of a Norway option. There just might be a hidden bond if the UK is forced to sign the EC common agreement on veterinary standards but is that even likely?

The blessed L Elliott, one-man beacon of sense in the Graun has put it well:

Until Labour remainers properly accept Brexit, the party will be stuck in limbo

Labour is now more fundamentally split over Europe than the Tories were under Thatcher and Major. The bulk of the party’s supporters voted remain and still feel strongly that the result of the referendum was bad for Britain. A significant minority, concentrated in towns such as Hartlepool, voted leave and have resented being told that they got it wrong.... Responsibility for this rift lies primarily with the hardline remainer element in the party...

Immediately after the referendum, the assumption was that leave voters would quickly regret what they had done and show buyer’s remorse. When that didn’t happen, Labour remainers threw their weight behind the campaign for a people’s vote, a second chance for those who had got it wrong first time to come up with the right answer. This culminated in Labour’s worst general election performance since 1935 – and a much harder Brexit than would otherwise have been the case...

...the remainer left [my only objection -- the metropolitan new petite bourgeoisie are ultra libs, not left] kept up the fight. Its conviction that life outside the EU would be disastrous was apparently confirmed when the government decided to organise its own vaccine procurement programme separate from Brussels. As talks on a new trade deal rumbled on into the autumn of 2020 there were confident predictions that the economy would collapse, supermarkets would run short of food and the M20 would become a lorry park.None of this has happened

When voters in industrial Britain made their unhappiness about being forgotten known in the Brexit referendum, they were patronised and vilified. The government, through infrastructure investment, the siting of vaccine plants in the north east and the relocation of part of the Treasury out of London is at least seen to be doing something

Remainers often give the impression that they welcome bad economic news on the grounds that it makes rejoining the EU more feasible. This is not a good political look.

Alternatively, remainers can allow Labour to re-coalesce around the following propositions: Brexit has settled the UK’s relationship with the EU for years if not decades to come; there are advantages as well as disadvantages to life outside the EU; there is a duty to improve the lives of those who voted to leave in June 2016.

I don't think they will be sensible though. It's too cultural a matter, too connected to social distancing and class politics.That will remain (sic), although it might take different forms, some of which we are seeing already -- sexual identity politics, struggles over heritage. We can only hope the new forms take over rapidly, but the old duty to improve the lives of the despised is more remote than ever. They voted for Brexit -- serves the nasty racists and misogynists right!

Covid trumps Remain

I am only an occasional reader of the Speccy, and took up one of their free schemes only to read the report of the Euro poll on racism by R Tombs,. But they also have this today:

A poll out today – carried out by JL Partners for the often fanatically pro-Remain Bloomberg – shows that 62 per cent of people believe that leaving the EU helped the UK roll out vaccines more quickly than it could have done as a member. Another 67 per cent believe the EU has been ‘hostile’ to the UK during the row over vaccine supply. And, reflecting on all that, 54 per cent of people would vote to stay out in a rerun of the referendum, one of the highest margins in favour of our departure since the vote itself back in 2016. Bre-mourse? Bre-grets? Those it seems are now safely in the past. If there was a vote – a People’s one, or some other sort – we know what the result would be. Brits are now firmly of the view that we did the right thing by getting out. In effect, it has shifted public opinion decisively in favour of leaving. 

The effect may be even more dramatic internationally. Over the last five years, most businesses, trade bodies and governments bought into the standard hardcore Remainer narrative. Inside the boardrooms of Tokyo, San Francisco, or Dubai, insofar as they took any interest in the matter, they largely accepted it was a vote driven by racists, nostalgic for the Empire and hoodwinked by some deceitful slogans on the side of a bus.

Northern Ireland and Brexit

It's been a while. There has been other news of course,and I have been devoting Brexit time to reading R Tombs's excellent book This Sovereign Isle. There has also been a bit of a hesitation in forming up a suitable narrative to account for the upsurge of violent protest in NI. It is obviously the result of Brexit related matters such as the absurd obstructions developed by the EC to disrupt trade between NI and the mainland, even for goods which remain in NI, but there are additional factors such as perceived bias in policing the Sinn Fein funeral which obviously broke Covid regulations. Newsnight has tried to pin it all on Boris and his Brexit deal, of course, introducing that as an obvious background 'fact' and inviting people to comment on it (although T Villiers managed to get in the obvious counter about the EC weaponising the border  before being cut off).

The Graun today has the ever-reliable J Freedland

The consequences of Boris Johnson’s careless Brexit are playing out in Belfast

the true, founding purpose of the European Union: to ensure that a continent mired in blood for centuries would not descend into conflict again...shared membership of the EU had proved to be the key that unlocked peace in Northern Ireland after three decades of murderous pain...these were the life-and-death arguments for continued UK membership of the EU,

Nothing to do with building a cartel or imposing a European model of government then? Nothing to do with shared culture or migrating birds now either?

Of course, violence has many fathers....[but]...The incendiary difference this time is Brexit. From January, British goods arriving into Northern Ireland became subject to EU customs checks for the first time....This is the ineluctable logic of Brexit. 

And there are the personal inadequacies of Johnson:

“there were moments when PM had to rip up grid, cancel break, let people down, stay up late, hit phones, spend, flatter, arm twist and do nothing else for week”. This, wrote Fletcher, was just such a moment. Yet Johnson is doing none of those things. What’s worse, if he did decide to get a grip, who among us thinks he would be capable of it? ...

Of course, as Freedland admits, common membership of the EU actually did not remove the border between Ni and the Republic. The two remained separated by all sorts of things,including currency, laws and history (including murderous pain) and, to some extent, language. But:

So long as both the UK and Ireland were in the same EU club, the border between them could be blurred, allowing people in the north to identify as British or Irish or both without too much friction.

What prevents that today? Ludicrous trade regulations and spiteful bureaucratic delays imposed uniquely on this trade, designed to punish the UK, weaponising the border, as the EC promised to do from years back. Johnson might be inadequate in not recognising that the EC would continue to do this. He now surely has a strong case for suspending the protocol to preserve the peace?