Buy your new BMW now, Grau urges its readers

A useful guide to how to act if there is a no-deal Brexit (don't you mean 'crashing out'?) in the Gruan today. Valuable advice includes:

[House prices] Buyers have a choice; defer a purchase until November to get clarity on Brexit (but if there is a deal, then prices could start moving up again) or make cheeky low-ball offers and see if a vendor is desperate enough to accept. How do you know a seller is desperate? One way is to search the property’s listing history...[Mortgages] hold your horses. As recently as 2016 mortgages were offered at rates as low 0.99% – a significant saving over the 1.3% to 1.7% best buys available this week....[Savings] move them into a fixed-rate bond that guarantees the rate for the bond’s term.[Currency] If you think the pound will continue to tumble, then buying your holiday money now makes sense, even at today’s depressed levels....If you want to take a punt against sterling and make some money by trading, all you need is a credit card and an initial deposit of around £100-£200 to join online forex traders such as eToro, City Index and so on.[Pensions] If you are convinced that a Boris Johnson-led Brexit is going to be a calamity, that the economy will tank and UK corporate profits collapse, then you can choose to shift your pension into overseas shares.

Ethically woke Graud readers don't buy shares directly, but some of them might have 'old privatisation and demutualisation shares'. What should they do? 'investors are wary of banks, and that they will never again be growth stocks, and you should hold them instead for a steady supply of dividends.'

Bad luck if you do not have a few old shares or other savings: 'Realistically, most people can do very little about the threat of job losses, particularly if they are in low-skilled positions.' So let's move on from these losers.

Back to the normal Graun reader: 

[On holiday in France, gendarmes] will want to see your UK driving licence, your international driving permit (IDP 1968), your insurance green card, the car’s log book (V5 document) and a GB sticker. Tourists flying into the EU and hiring a car will also need an IDP in several countries including Italy, France and the Netherlands. [But] The Post Office will sell you an IDP for £5.50 

 [Health] For those going on holiday, it is simply a case of buying travel insurance before you leave, and the government is advising just that.... [for Brits residing abroad] the UK government has said seeking bilateral agreements to maintain healthcare rights is a top priority....Medicine availability is what vexes people more seriously....Already there are reports of diabetics informally stockpiling their own supplies of insulin by giving themselves less on a daily basis...But the government says the fears are misplaced, as drug companies have already been told to build up an additional six weeks’ supply of medicines

[Prices] of some imports including meat, shoes and cars will go up. [Yes -- but what about English strawberries?] ...Among the consumer goods that will be hit are imports of beef, prices of which will go up by almost 7%, cheddar cheese, up by about £20 per 100kg, and imported fully finished cars, which would attract a 10.8% levy, or about £1,500 for an average new car....This suggests that if you have an eye on a new BMW or Mercedes, it might be worth bringing forward your purchase to before October... [For other goods]...the reality is that shops will absorb some of the increase or may substitute for domestically produced or alternative suppliers.

So -- what crisis? The average Graun readers can cope or even make a modest gain by shrewd and timely shopping 

However, they might still suffer some cultural angst. The yoof activist L Spirit, the 'co-president of Our Future Our Choice' asserts that:

The fanatical commitment of the Conservative membership to leaving the EU on 31 October, “do or die”, bears no resemblance to the wishes of the vast majority of young people, eight in 10 of whom want to resolve this crisis through a people’s vote.

There is real injury in Johnson's remarks:

A recent Barnardo’s report found that more young people think Brexit is an immediate threat to their future than is climate change. When Johnson wrote of the Extinction Rebellion protests in April that he was “utterly fed up with being told by nice young people that their opinions are more important than my own”, few would expect him to think otherwise for our concerns about Brexit.

Spirit is convinced that Brexit 'in any form...will leave us poorer, our opportunities fewer and our domestic priorities irrelevant amid the long-term political chaos that would follow.'

So, as usual, she actually wants to Remain rather than to have another referendum, of course. Moreover:

And even if young people were in fact in favour of Brexit, they would still reject Johnson. This is a politician who, regardless of his personal beliefs, is happy to dabble in misogyny, xenophobia and homophobia as far as it appeals to those whose support he needs. This is a man who has described women wearing the burqa as “letterboxes”, claimed “voting Tory will cause your wife to have bigger breasts” and described gay men as “tank-topped bumboys” [The last link leads to a full list of 'outrageous Johnson quotes' in Newsweek]...His values are the antithesis of a forward-looking generation who want to see borders eradicated, [between only European countries?] not reimposed. It is why Stormzy got the crowd to sing “Fuck Boris” during his headline set at Glastonbury in June, and why T-shirts emblazoned with the same slogan have been selling in huge numbers since.[Nothing commercial about this -- it's pure altruism]

Pots and kettles resume talks

Apparently, the Irish Government has been attacked in the popular press as incompetent and unwise in letting the Border be weaponised. Guardian support for all things Celtic and lack of awareness of the unintended consequences of endless moralising and lecturing has led to some sort of response:

The political fear is that this new breed of “Brexit Ultras” (Johnson’s cabinet with Nigel Farage’s Brexit party snapping at its heels) could deliberately pursue a no-deal EU exit at the expense of a volatile Irish peace.... Ireland, and the fragile peace process that has been built over the past 20 years, falls between [UK and EC positions]...That relations between London and Dublin are now strained is beyond dispute, though officials in Dublin insist that much of the noise is to be expected and aimed at a domestic UK audience rather than Ireland or the EU. [The problem is  Johnson insisting the removal of the backstop is a precondition for any deal, Varadkar adamant that the EU will not relent on the withdrawal agreement.

What seems to be a new Irish insight (in public at least) is the recognition at last that:

Nobody on the island [the writer of the piece is 'an award winning Irish journalist, author, broadcaster and motivational speaker'] is blind to the reality that in standing by the backstop in order to avoid a hard border, they could end up with one if the UK crashes out without a deal. Indeed, the Irish government has conceded, in its latest updated contingency action plan, that it will implement increased checks and procedures in the event of a no-deal Brexit.

So the options?

Last week Varadkar stated the obvious when he told the MacGill summer school that a hard Brexit would force communities in Northern Ireland to consider the possibility of a united Ireland. They already are. [But] the truth is that both communities in Northern Ireland – as well as citizens across the island of Ireland – are fearful of what a botched, rushed conversation about unification might yield. That fear is that the birth of a united Ireland would be accompanied by violence and upheaval....Unification without the support of unionists, whose traditions and identity must be protected as part of any shared future, cannot be pursued as a zero-sum game. Otherwise we risk repeating history: the Troubles in reverse.  [The first time this possibility has been acknowledged in the Grun to my knowledge]

So all the bluster, swagger and cosiness of the Irish/EC bonding has led to this after all?

Meanwhile, the Graun editorial is predictable:

There is no economic case for crashing out of the European Union. MPs must stop the government’s plans in their tracks 

But it explores a few ideological issues in a most amusing and un self-reflective way:

to the keenest leavers, Brexit has always been an article of belief rather a policy programme....In the end... a no-deal Brexit is an act of faith-based politics and not a rational choice.[And Remaining?]

The usual stuff on economic disaster is trotted out -- falling pound, lack of growth in investment, the Bank's prediction of a recession -- presumably as simple truths based entirely on rationality. There is a recognition that more 'political' scares have lost their force -- 'many like...[Johnson]... do not ultimately care about the Northern Ireland peace process, and are not bothered about the concerns of the devolved nations either.' Poor old Graun -- it embraces Unionism just as lots of people (especially in England) have developed compassion fatigue and posture cramp over the plight of the Celts and their romantic pursuits.

Finally, there is the usual misunderstanding of any sort of confrontational political tactics:

A rational policymaker would therefore be seeking ways of avoiding no-deal rather than feeding expectations that it will happen.  The Johnson government, though, has ramped up the rhetoric and pumped in another £2.1bn in public money, not least on its own propaganda...For a government to say it does not want something to happen because it would be so damaging and then to spend so much of its money and its political capital on the possibility that it will is a shameful strategy.

Ultimately, though, the Guardian takes a moral line. Politicians should just stop offering alternative arguments to Gruan tenets of faith:

Others [policies]  like the disgraceful relabelling of the Irish backstop as anti-democratic, when it is not, are lies designed to mislead the public.

Elsewhere, the Graun turns to freak show copy for the silly season:

Indian boy, seven, found with 526 teeth inside his mouth

Johnson is a WelshNat

M Kettle is still banging on and on, as he promised just after the Referendum, focused more on Johnson personally. The Gru has recently become a Unionist newspaper as we noted, [Actually not so for the editorial team who supported a no vote at the Scottish referendum in 2014, although some of their columnists fllirted with romantic ScotNattery]. This time it is the Welsh with whom we need to keep united. Kettle thinks:

The prime minister may end up doing more for Welsh independence than the nationalist hero Owain Glyndŵr

The nationalist hero who was defeated and killed in the 15th century he means?  Kettle sees the recent Johnson forays as:

... a prime ministerial grand tour around the country to show his new subjects who is boss....Tours like Johnson’s only emphasise that this union is increasingly divided – and perhaps even breaking apart...in many ways the most telling trip was Johnson’s foray into Wales...Modern Wales has endured little of the existential pain of Northern Ireland. The nationalist cause has never carved through Welsh politics the way it has in Scotland. Wales has been welded to England for far longer than the other nations. And its support for devolution was often lukewarm. [And it voted for Brexit, unthinkably for the Grudinad of course, but move on]...Yet amid the more eye-catching convulsions of Brexit elsewhere, the old idea that nothing is likely to change in the relationship between Wales and England is looking lazy.

Writing about Wales, almost as much as writing about Ireland, seems to encourage English romanticism:

The land, like the language, plays a dynamic role in nationalist consciousness. Angry farmers can make a leader suddenly vulnerable. [As confirmation]
Look what they and the “gilets jaunes” did to Emmanuel Macron. [Where do we start with this absurd leap of argument?]

Then the obligatory link to Kettle's obsession:

But this volatility is not simply about Johnson’s Marmite personality. Nor is it simply about the single-mindedness of the nationalist parties to exploit every situation for the separatist cause. It is also structurally bound up with Brexit itself, whatever the terms.

There might be some perilous deviation, post-Brexit, from wise EC rules:

What if Scotland chooses to subsidise its fishing fleets while England does not? What if Welsh hill-farmers secure a differential subsidy rate for their lamb that northern English hill-farmers cannot access? “The requirement for increased agreement across a whole range of new territory increases the scope for friction,” [The whole thing assumes nationalist independence and then trade wars]

Before we get too excited though, and before his colleagues question his objectivity:

It is important not to exaggerate, of course. There are many bridges to be crossed before Wales becomes as much of a threat to the union as Northern Ireland and Scotland now are. There are radical ways of heading off the disintegration of the United Kingdom, including the federalist new Act of Union proposed by Lord Lisvane ...Outright support for independence in Wales languishes in single figures. 

However, the Grun finds hope in ethnic identity and 'progressive' nationalism as ever, especially if it is cultural:

But more than one in three Welsh voters now feel some support for the idea, and the proportion of those whom nationalists dub the “indycurious” is clearly rising. Use of the Welsh language is growing and becoming more fashionable.[Unfortunately] Jeremy Corbyn refuses to engage on these identity issues.

Back to romanticism to end the piece:

the late and life-enhancing Welsh historian Gwyn Alf Williams wrote about the continuing potency of the legend of Owain Glyndŵr. ...“But since 1410 most Welsh people, at some time or another, if only in some secret corner of the mind, have been ‘out with Owain and his barefoot scrubs’. For the Welsh mind is still haunted by its lightning-flash vision of a people that was free.”

CeltNat good, EngNat bad, as ever. 'Wales' dreams of being free from Union with England -- but wants to stay in the EU? 

Meanwhile, the Grun continues to maintain the prestige and seriousness of British journalism it is so concerned about:

Does a local Lidl really bring down house prices?

NB -- the answer is no because lots of nice people now shop in Lidl too.

Border winds through the USA

Another twist to the Irish border saga. As Johnson insists that there can be no backstop, while Varadkar insists the backstop must stay, purely to preserve Good Friday, of course,  the US Congress has fired a warning sho, says hte Grut:

Hostile Congress could hold up trade deal if Brexit jeopardises N Ireland peace agreement

Silence of the lambs

The Graun is well into Project Fear mk. 146 these days,having got over the hurt of Tory members rejecting their advice not to elect Johnson. The lead story on the website is this:

Stop playing Russian roulette with sheep industry, Johnson told 

Johnson himself had said:
 

he would “always back Britain’s great farmers” and promised to “make sure that Brexit works for them”...“That means scrapping the common agricultural policy and signing new trade deals – our amazing food and farming sector will be ready and waiting to continue selling ever more not just here but around the world,” he said. “Once we leave the EU on 31 October, we will have a historic opportunity to introduce new schemes to support farming – and we will make sure that farmers get a better deal.”

And:

Alun Cairns, the Welsh secretary, agreed that farming was a winner from having access to EU markets but said there was potential for exports to new markets...Asked for his response to threats of civil unrest, he claimed UK farmers could export their meat to Japan rather than Europe.

A bit like recommending cake instead of bread, perhaps. Others predict bloodshed, of course:

40% tariffs on meat exported to the EU could lead to the mass slaughter of sheep.[As opposed to letting them gambol freely for the rest of their lives as with the EU]...Helen Roberts from the National Sheep Association in Wales said it...could lead to civil unrest among sheep farmers...."... I suspect there will be protests."

Sheep farmers seem to have seen an opportunity here:

Roberts said she did not want to see a mass slaughter for welfare reasons so the government needed to get cold storage in place and talk about public procurement of lamb meat...Minette Batters, the president of the National Farmers Union, said there would be no market for 40% of the UK’s lamb meat in the event of a no-deal Brexit....the government would need to look at forcing hospitals, schools and other public bodies to buy lamb meat.

Very sensible -- poke lamb down the throats of the sick and those at school and arrest all vegetarians as unpatriotic. The real problem seems to be not the increase in price due to tariffs,however, but a possible punitive EC policy:

In a no-deal scenario, the 37,000 carcasses a week that are usually sent to Europe would be stopped overnight under strict EU import rules that require de facto licensing for all farm exports.

Should do wonders for the price and will be very popular among European consumers.

Meanwhile. on Newsnight ( 31/07/19) a rather nice young woman read from a Welsh Farmer's handout to tell views that 90% of Welsh lamb goes to the EU (it is actually 90% of exports -- either 60% or 70% of total output is sold in the UK). She went on to dismiss any Government plans to buy up surpluses -- there just wasn't the storage capacity she told us (she totalled the lamb and beef annual output to make this claim).Then she slowly worked to a predictable joke -- we would have a meat mountain just like all those food mountains we once rebuked  the EC for! Probably an Oxford Arts graduate, or related to someone already at the BBC, but her heart was clearly in the right place.

Owl of Minerva sighted over Brussels

The Gru has an unusual piece from a (rather right-wing) analyst rather than banging on and on yet again. A McElvoy , 'senior editor of the Economist', leads with the alarming news that:

Fearing that a bounce in the polls will give Boris Johnson a mandate for a hard Brexit, Europe is starting to soften its stance

[The EU had] banked on Parliament rejecting no deal...Things do look more nuanced and interesting...my guess is that this summer the major member states will be more engaged in the key decisions on how to handle the threat of no deal. Until now, they have been happy to leave the pain to Brussels placemen. The timeline and the “Boris factor” are changing the calculation on the continent.

Declared unity in Europe is always questionable – there are too many faultlines, interpretations, passions and aversions for the harmony to be absolute or unchanging. The “Rhine divide” is a term popularised by the Princeton economist Markus Brunnermeier to explain the tensions between France and Germany in the Greek and wider eurozone crisis....Macron has to date thundered against any extension to the existing deal and suggested that the EU would do better to be shot of difficult Brits than put up with further months of dithering....The Merkel position, by contrast, reflects her preference for a calm approach when the going gets tough. So even on the backstop she calls for “fresh, creative thinking”

Putting aside whether we consider no deal to be an inherently bad idea [an unthinkable statement for Gru journalists], it is quite likely to happen....there’s a growing realisation that parliament may not reject this option, and that Brussels will have to face up to the prospect....With that in mind, the tone from Germany’s government has softened in the past few months.

[Overall] a Brexit “iron curtain” – in which a rupture in the trading relationship infects other aspects of cooperation – is invidious to both the UK and wider Europe’s interests. Brexit notwithstanding, we have much in common with the great European liberal democracies. It is always possible to make a bad crisis worse, which means that the Johnson era demands fresh reflection – and not only on the home front.

The online comments on this piece are very interesting too. They are substantial and  overwhelmingly hostile, as we might expect. The more interesting ones well demonstrate cultural cringe towards the EC -- it is united by a noble purpose, with sophisticated and personable leaders, it will put solidarity with Ireland above all else (it didn't during the eurozone crisis a rare critic noted), they are strong and united. There were confident cultural generalisations too about the Irish people,for example, which McElvoy would know about if only she had visited and talked to the people,or about the perception of cooperation and unity gained by travelling between France and Germany. Lots of class hate,mostly focused upwards this time, lurked not far beneath the surface.

Observer contradictions -- driven by class hate?

The Observer editorial is an (actually rather tedious) masterpiece

Britain has never been more in need of a leader capable of healing a divided nation. [The Graun/Observer has hardly helped with its own divisive hysteria] Yet though Johnson has promised to be a prime minister for the whole of the United Kingdom, the angry protests that greeted him at Downing Street symbolise how contentious and divisive a figure he is [He will never signal enough virtue for those people]  Though he lacks any mandate, [ignore the Referendum then] beyond winning a contest decided by the unrepresentative sliver of the electorate that makes up the Tory party membership, he has made no conciliatory attempt to unify the country, no effort to interpret the referendum result in the context of the slim majority it produced for Leave. He has left no doubt that he will not be a prime minister for Scotland and Northern Ireland [Scot Nats are hardly enthusiastic either, surely], for those who voted Remain, for the least affluent areas of the country that will be hardest hit if Britain crashes out of the EU without a deal [but they frequently voted Leave]. 

[Johnson's first speeches] lacked gravitas [do bring back that nice Mrs May and spreadsheet Phil] and were characterised by the rambling and blustering that have come to be Johnson trademarks [quite unlike Observer journalists].[It can't be all bluster though because]...there is a dangerous strategy that sits behind it: to make demands of the EU he knows there is almost zero chance it can agree to, making a no-deal exit more likely. And to prepare for the parliamentary showdown that this will inevitably precipitate, by presenting himself as the prime minister standing up for the will of the people against an recalcitrant legislature. [And political guile too]...That Johnson has put his new government on a general election footing is obvious, not just in the spending commitments designed to appeal to Tory marginal voters, but in his dramatic cull of Theresa May’s cabinet. Out went the moderates [!] who have been clear they cannot countenance a no-deal scenario [to the extent of plotting with Labour!] . In came a sorry collection of incompetents, unreconstructed Thatcherites and anti-European ideologues.

Name'n'blame these terrible people:

Priti Patel, who was sacked as international development strategy in 2017 for carrying out unofficial meetings with Israeli ministers while on holiday, is home secretary. She has a dismal record on civil liberties, which includes making an incoherent case for the death penalty on the BBC as recently as 2011. Questions already hang over her appointment in light of revelations that she took a lucrative private sector advisory role without clearing it, as former ministers are required to do. The new foreign secretary is Dominic Raab, whose vision for post-Brexit Britain is a race to the bottom on taxes and regulation. Gavin Williamson, sacked just weeks ago as defence secretary for leaking sensitive information, is back as education secretary. Johnson’s cabinet shows he prizes loyalty over competence [May's Government was competent?] .

 Johnson has set Britain on a collision course with Europe in making scrapping the backstop a precondition for any further negotiations. The EU cannot remove the backstop from the withdrawal agreement unless there is another Irish border solution in place. To do so risks forcing a choice between undermining the Good Friday agreement or unravelling the integrity of the single market [we already know which one they have really chosen,and this will expose the hypocrisy about Good Friday] So it looks like Britain is heading for no deal, which every forecast predicts will hit the economy hard.

 A no-deal Brexit also makes the breakup of the UK more likely. [The Observer -- now unionist] It would provide further succour to the Scottish independence movement. It could necessitate the reimposition of home rule in Northern Ireland, which – together with a border – might sufficiently shift public opinion to require a poll on Irish reunification.

And the real beef [sic]:

And in making Britain more reliant on the US for trade, no deal risks putting us at the whims of a volatile, self-avowedly America First president....the UK can expect the tearing down of health and environmental standards to be on the table in any trade talks. The White House is also calculating that closer trade ties will increase its leverage over the UK, drawing us further into its geopolitical and foreign policy orbit, diminishing Britain’s sovereign control over its affairs.

All that sovereignty we had in the EU! All gone! The Observer argues only on behalf of deserving others, of course:

The pain will be inflicted most sharply on the areas that have suffered most as a result of deindustrialisation and on the families who can least afford to bear a further economic shock after a decade of austerity.[But Government spending might help? However]...More money in these areas is to be welcomed, but this is a pre-election bribe for voters, rather than a strategy to rebuild a state brought low by 10 years of austerity.

Any hope of avoiding the calamity of a no-deal Brexit rests on the decisions of Conservative moderates and the Labour leadership..[But even here, the dastardly blusterer has a cunning plan]...Johnson will position the Tories as the no-deal party and treat any general election as a quasi-referendum. It’s a high-risk strategy: he is gambling that any seats he loses to the Liberal Democrats – who have been admirably, and consistently, clear on the issue of Brexit – will be more than compensated for by attracting voters that might otherwise be tempted by the Brexit party. What will ensure his bet pays off is if Labour continues to equivocate.

Our future prosperity is now at the whim of a group of ideologues who don’t represent Britain but are nevertheless running the country.

I love that 'now'.