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