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