When Dominic Raab took up his position as Brexit Secretary, following David Davis’s sulky resignation, I thought he couldn’t possibly do a worse job than his predecessor who seemed to have attended one, maybe two meetings with his European counterparts. Davis had shown no sense of urgency about the negotiations and Raab was at least showing up.
Ok, it’s a low bar to hold him to, but it was a start.
So when, yesterday, Raab showed frankly terrifying ignorance about the situation he is negotiating about, I was alarmed. He told a tech event that he “hadn’t quite understood the full extent of this, but if you look at the UK and look at how we trade in goods, we are particularly reliant on the Dover-Calais crossing”.
“And that is one of the reasons why we have wanted to make sure we have a specific and very proximate relationship with the EU, to ensure frictionless trade at the border.”
Raab “hadn’t quite understood” that the Dover – Calais crossing – the shortest route from mainland Britain to mainland Europe – would be a crossing we would be “particularly reliant” on. The Dover – Calais crossing, which even has a working tunnel underneath it, if you’re listening, Dominic, designed to expand access from boats to trains, too.
He also told the delegates that Prime Minister Theresa May was pursuing a trade deal that recognised the “peculiar geographic economic entity” of the UK, as an island nation.
Are we seriously only just realising that we’re an island? That this has an impact on the trade we do? And that this will have an effect on the results of Brexit?
Consider this a cry for help
Dominic Raab, frighteningly, is our hope for getting anything survivable out of Brexit. The thought of a no-deal Brexit keeps me up at night, especially the prospect of food and medication shortages. There are government guidelines in place for moving horses around Europe in the event of no deal, but nothing reassuring yet about the drugs that keep people alive; the medications I take daily to keep me well, the ones with unpleasant effects if you stop taking them, and the ones that help people to manage their pain, their depression, or their multiple sclerosis.
And as for food, it should go without saying, but given that the guy in charge has only just figured out that the food we get that comes from Europe has a fairly high chance of having crossed the channel via Calais to Dover, I have lost all hope in his competence at achieving anything at all.
Bear in mind that we don’t have a trade deal set up with Afghanistan, with Albania, with Algeria, with Andorra, with Angola, with Antigua and Barbuda, with Argentina, with Armenia, with Australia, with Austria or with Azerbaijan, (according to Have We Got A Fucking Trade Deal Yet?), or indeed any of the other countries up to and including Zimbabwe, we could be considered to be royally screwed. I’m hardly a proponent of rampant capitalism but we have to buy stuff and we have to sell stuff and there will be no rules or procedures in place for doing that from March onwards. Next March. And it’s now November.
We haven’t even started negotiations with any of those countries.
Frictionless trade
I keep hearing the phrase “frictionless trade”, and Raab has at least noticed that, without frictionless trade at the French border, we will have less choice in the shops post-Brexit. Now I’m quite partial to some Camembert and I’d be very sad without good chocolate, but there are medications, cars, specialist items… anything we can imagine buying, we have a good chance that it comes in from “abroad”. Right now, all “abroad” is much the same because we have absolutely nothing in place for those channels to continue, not least without being completely taken advantage of because our desperation will be known the world over.
Labour MP Jo Stevens, a champion of the anti-Brexit campaign group Best for Britain, told the New European: “We finally have an admission of what we’ve known all along – that the Brexiteers hadn’t really thought through any of the impacts of leaving the EU. These comments are shocking.
“British jobs, supplies and services rely on key border crossings like the Dover strait and the fact that the Brexit Secretary is only just realising this is a serious cause for concern.
“There’s only one clear solution. We need a people’s vote on the final deal, with the option of staying in the EU and retaining our vital trade links.”
David Davis, that lazy-looking predecessor, told the Today Programme that fears about shortages of insulin and food were “nonsense” but that there would be “hiccups” during the early days.
I agree with those calling for a people’s vote on the final deal, and new research suggests that remainers might actually win this time. We are utterly unprepared for a transition of this depth, and many of the people who voted to leave in the first place had no idea that this kind of chaos would take place. They didn’t vote for this. Nobody but the most self-destructive or the most self-interested would have voted for this.
Photo: Vicente Fernandéz Rioja