Toynbee looks back with 'told you so' glee

The beloved P Toynbee still can't let it lie, of course. Here she is with a list of whinges:

 fishers across Britain poleaxed by new costs and regulations, their catches rotting before they reach EU markets. It’s costing them millions already....

It wasn't that long ago that she was saying they should be ignored altogether, lazy bastards,  so we could get a deal with the EC of course.

 

Investigative journalism at the GRaun has now been reduced to gathering items from the email inbox:

Here are some random [ !]discoveries since Brexit day....The Sun [sic] warns of Brexit’s threat to the Cheltenham Festival:...The fashion industry – especially Asos-type, cheap end with small margins – is hitting a rules-of-origin crisis, paying new duties on its many products manufactured outside the EU. Fun stories in the Sun include the lorry driver crossing the Gibraltar/Spain border whose bottle of Nando’s sauce is confiscated, along with all those ham sandwiches snatched by the Dutch. ...The Daily Telegraph reports the flight of Europeans from England, but not from “remain-voting Scotland and Northern Ireland”. Farmers Weekly sends up flares about plunging meat prices, due to delayed exports.

And then there is the unfolding Northern Ireland disaster. Stena Line ferries has diverted its Great Britain-Northern Ireland sea crossings to the Rosslare-to-Cherbourg route instead....lorries carrying exports to England return empty, doubling his costs, as English exporters find it too costly to sell to Northern Ireland – and that’s permanent. The Telegraph reports that one in 10 lorries are being turned back at the EU border. Delays will continue: spot checks at EU borders are standard. So will queues, lorry parks and roadside squalor.

Heaven help us if Cheltenham is threatened. Not by Covid either. Or the fashion industry with its cheap imports. Goood job there are 'fun stories' as well .The Dutch police were only having fun.

 

There is still mileage in repeating EC lobbying with the talks going on about the City, of course

Yet still, most economically deadly is the unseen slipping away of invisibles, where that 80% of the economy in services is already leaking tax revenues. Bloomberg keeps up its grim recording of no likely progress: “City of London’s plight laid bare as Brexit deal hopes fade,” it reports....

Toynbee can only fight the old sad causes, of course, and she admits that 

The pandemic has worsened the Brexit effect, but that was a good reason to extend the transition period....It’s only human to confess to some remainer “I told you so” glee ...Many like Paul Joy on Hastings beach are still as passionately pro-Brexit as ever. Fearlessly, Labour needs to regain its voice of outrage that Brexit leaders deliberately shut their ears to what leaving the single market and the customs union really meant. A better Brexit deal really was possible.