There is a demolition going on, hardly reported in the news and almost never by the BBC or the most of the press. The demolition is that of the British economy, until this year sustained by external trade and investor confidence. Britain’s economy is collapsing under the weight of a double debt overhang, both of which result from events and circumstances that have been scored to the bone by corruption, arrogance, and incompetence.
UK trade is collapsing because the UK Government, in its haste to score a last minute deal with the EU on trade, forgot or ignored huge areas of the UK’s economy in that deal, which had been little more than a one-way British shouting match within an echo chamber for months. Perhaps those interested in the areas not covered by the deal did not pay government ministers or the Conservative Party enough money to be remembered or included in it?
These areas, which include fisheries, the arts, live music, banks and financial services (a mistake here, surely?), small businesses, retailers, the leisure industry, sports (especially at ground level) and small traders of all types, are now exposed, holed below the line and collapsing beneath the waves once ruled, they say, by Britannia herself. All this needless destruction caused because non-tariff barriers are far stronger than tariff barriers in their impact and the government simply lied about it.
The Prime Minister denied it before, during, and after the deal, and in doing so uttered one of the worst lies of this government, or any UK government since 1936. This is on the lie impact measurement basis – most of the country and even traders themselves believed him. Britain’s economy, composed of jobs, investments, goods and services, is being destroyed. Unfortunately the greater part of the destruction is yet to come as the full force of Brexit – life outside the protected European Union) has yet to be unleashed because of many transitional arrangements, agreed delays and stretched deadlines, while the government desperately seeks to hide all this with lies about its economic prospects, its vaccination programme and its competence in dealing with Covid-19.
The UK vaccination programme already badly trails the rest of Europe on the numbers of fully vaccinated people, due to the government jumping the gun on regulatory testing and generating early headlines to create the crucial record of events, one of Cummings’s most poisonous tricks. This led them riskily to approve the newly discovered vaccines, giving themselves an early lead on more careful European nations acting collectively to ensure that the over-65s were fully covered, a matter in some doubt in science conscious Germany and ‘arrogant’ France as well as elsewhere in Europe. The UK spent several days rebuffing the caution of its neighbouring foreigners.
On to the extended two-stage vaccination wheeze, which by a bizarre irony, was partly eager-beaver Tony Blair’s bright idea. Johnson knew that everyone would think that the UK had done well on its vaccinations after a few weeks and that when they realised the truth it wouldn’t matter as some other shiny thing had grabbed public attention, like Meghan Merkle or the Scottish imbroglio over a leader ‘lying to the Parliament’. Johnson had an eight-week free start based on a huge risk and a big lie. Another case of early headlines creating the record. The big lie is now catching up with him, and fewer adults have been fully vaccinated in Britain currently than in any major European nation.
The Government’s self-awarded laurels on the provision of PPE to the NHS and the continuous lies of the Health Minister should have been damaged even at the time by the open revelation that personal friends and financial sponsors of government ministers and the Conservative Party were given huge contracts to supply materials that were procured through unreliable third parties and often failed to be delivered at all. The outcome was catastrophic as even the BBC reported at the time. The dead can’t speak but anyone close to the action will confirm that PPE was a crisis for weeks all over the country’s places of care and cure, costing the taxpayer billions.
Track and Trace? Only worth mentioning to note simply that Johnson and his cronies hardly ever mention this £12 billion sinkhole of corruption and the indisputable fact that test and trace never worked and never could work. Last year’s news. More corrupt contracts. More billions wasted.
Concerns expressed for the UK’s sovereignty, underlined by a government that sees the advantages of profiting from prejudice, have been exposed as another huge deceit leading to the extraordinary, sudden, and wholly intentional loss of power in the UK’s economy. This is without parallel in European history since the Germans first endorsed Hitler as their Chancellor under the impression that he would make Germany great again. As the ghastly death-cortege of Brexit trundles on, ordinary British people continue to lose their jobs; large and small businesses alike fail, drowned in the paperwork that Johnson claimed would not and does not exist, and everyone’s freedom of movement throughout the EU has disappeared. But this isn’t on the news all that much. We were more interested in taking back our country.
If sovereignty meant anything at all, it would mean that Brexit should have given British people more control over their own decisions, but that hasn’t happened. Brexit has smashed a huge hole in UK sovereignty on this basis. It is easy to be the sovereign of your bedroom. We can all be the king of our divan. It’s so easy when you have no job and no prospects, there is nothing to give away. We have become sovereign of all the Millwallpaper we want in our lonely bedroom and because no one like us. But we took back control of our country
If sovereignty meant anything at all, it would mean that we and our children and their friends could move around Europe without hindrance, get jobs, contracts, trade there or live there without any onerous extra paperwork. But we can’t do that any more. Students no longer have the adventurous educational and friend-making miracle that was the Erasmus programme. Our footpaths, highways and byways were subsidised by the EU. No longer. We get HS2, city gridlock and deepening potholes in country roads instead. Oh and we took back control of our country
If sovereignty meant any thing at all, the Union would be a strong and voluntary union of nations and a cooperation of equals. That’s not happening. Scotland is drifting away from the Union; Wales may follow; Northern Ireland has been sacrificed for the ‘integrity’ of the EU deal. No one trusts us because our government has lied and can’t be trusted. But we got our country back.
If sovereignty meant anything at all, our future employment and economic health, which depends on the strength of our external trade, our ‘soft power’ and our beneficial trade arrangements guaranteed and supported by our EU membership, would all be safe and sustained. But they won’t. In a year hence millions more people will have lost their jobs once the government decides it cannot keep them on artificial employment support any more. We will also have the highest debt in Europe and no regeneration to mitigate it (a crucial part of the European Green Paper published a year ago). Also, we took back control of our country
Those people who will lose their jobs over the next year will have to be told that this was the price they paid for Britain’s sovereignty. They got back control when they lost their jobs. But hey, PM Johnson and his cronies will still be here, taking back our country like Superman.
And who is supposed to have this sovereignty after all? Actually, it’s the Queen, but the government has offered nothing more to her than to us – more lies, more deception, less respect. But we did get our country back, right?