Britain’s painful and protracted divorce from the European
Union (EU) grinds on.
You don’t need to be blessed with clairvoyance to figure out
that Brexit is going to cause economic damage to both the parties. The EU is
going to lose the second biggest contributor (after Germany) to its budget once
the UK leaves. As for the UK, barring the bonkers Brexiteers from the
Conservative party—madder than a stadium-full of hatters (on acid)—no one
thinks that Brexit won’t cause significant damage to the country’s economy.
The latest twist to what is already a high-octane melodrama
is the shift announced by Comrade Corbyn, the leader of the Labour Party, the
main opposition party in the UK, in its position towards the customs union. A
couple of days before the Comrade’s speech, Labour’s Brexit Secretary, Keir
Starmer (who wears the lugubrious expression of someone who buried his mother
in the morning), announced in a television interview that under a Labour
Government, Britain would stay in a customs union and single market. Starmer also
informed in the BBC interview (with the air of the doctor breaking the news of
advance cancer) that free movement of people would have to end; however, he
added, there would be ‘easy movement’ of people (the doctor explaining that
there were first-rate hospices). He neglected to explain what this ‘easy’ movement
would look like.
John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, who, by consensus, is
born in the wrong decade and in the wrong country—he would have been so much happier
if he were born as McDonnellowich and been Stalin’s henchman—revealed himself
to be a cunning linguist, and helpfully clarified that Starmer used the
indefinite article ‘a’ instead the definite article ‘the’ while discussing customs
union and single market.
What did McDennellowich mean? His leader, Comrade Corbyn—once
described by an Iranian freedom of speech, whom Corbyn inadvertently exposed in
an interview on live Iranian television and who ended up spending time in Iranian
prison (reputed to be only slightly better than Luton), as a useful idiot—clarified
a day later in a speech, while inexpertly reading from the autocue. Labour
would negotiate a bespoke customs union (and presumably a bespoke single
market) with the EU.
Comrade Corbyn invited us to believe that under the bespoke
customs union there would be frictionless trade between not just Northern
Ireland and republic of Ireland, but also between the UK and the EU. The good
news does not stop here. The UK will be able to strike bilateral deals with
other countries (while remaining in ‘a’ customs union) at the same time, and EU
bureaucrats would nod their heads, give an indulgent smile, and say, ‘Go on you
rascals!’
Quite how this ‘bespoke’ arrangement would look like Corbyn
did not care to explain in the speech, perhaps because he was keeping his cards
too close to his chest, or, more likely, because he had no clue (McDennellowich
had not explained that to him). But we are not to question this. We must have
the faith that the Messiah will deliver. If you don’t you are obviously a
capitalist traitor, who, no doubt, supported Iraq war and Blair.
Corbyn’s about-turn on customs union predictably raised the
hackles of the Tory nutters who are in the grip of Revanchist fury (turned on
themselves) ever since the referendum happened (almost two years ago). The
foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, took himself to air, the BBC Radio 4, the next
day, and removed the last vestiges of doubts from the listeners’ minds that his
grasp of Brexit was slightly worse than Donald Trump’s grasp on . . . well,
pretty much everything. When the interviewer Mishal Husain (she of seductive
voice) asked Johnson about the border between Northern Ireland and Republic of
Ireland, Johnson launched into a long-winded blather, which, even by his high
standards, was a spectacular twaddle. He compared the border situation between
Northern Ireland and the Republic Ireland to that of two Burroughs of London,
and went on to crow how he, Boris, when he was the mayor of London, saved the
situation by bringing congestion charges! Husain, unwilling to accept that the
foreign secretary was serious, asked Johnson whether he was serious, and
Johnson assured her that he couldn’t be more serious. I have seen and heard a
few interviews of Boris Johnson (which always leave the interviewers, from
Jeremy Paxman to Mishal Husain, shaking their heads in disbelief), and have
always wondered whether he is like a not-altogether-stupid-but-lazy-as-f**k
pupil, who never takes the trouble to prepare the subject, and hopes to get
through by verbiage (hoping that bullshit, when continued without pause, will always
baffle brain). It rarely works, but Johnson seems incapable of learning and
changing his indolent ways.
In the BBC interview, Johnson was frothing at the mouth at
what he saw as Comrade Corbyn’s treachery over the customs union (guessing,
probably with good reason, that the ‘useful idiot’ would be persuaded, next, by
Starmer (and those in Labour who have some brains) to change his stance over
the single market (replacing with ‘a’ single market). Johnson, no doubt
trembling with righteous indignation, accused Comrade Corbyn of cynical
opportunism, because Corbyn had shifted Labour’s position to that announced in
Labour’s manifesto in the 2016 general election: Labour would leave the customs
union. Johnson accusing Corbyn of cynical opportunism is a bit like Trump
accusing the North Korean potato-head of being mentally deranged. It also
suggested the innocent assumption that people bother themselves with manifestos
of political parties (and remember them after a year). Finally, it also
indicated that Johnson had not cottoned on to the difference between the
definite and indefinite articles, as elucidated by the linguist McDennellowich
(to be fair to Johnson, no one had).
The trouble for Johnson and Dr Fox, the International Trade Secretary (he is an idiot, alright,
but difficult to see what use he can be of to anyone), is that so far there is
not so much as a whiff of the free trade deals we have been hearing so much
about, and which Dr Fox is presenting to the heads of different countries round
the globe (including but not limited to the dictator in Philippines, who once
referred to Barak Obama as one can only assume his (the dictator’s, not Obama’s)
favourite part of female anatomy).
It was left to Sir Martin Donnelly, a highly experienced civil
servant, who, until last year, was the permanent secretary in Dr Fox’s Department
of International Trade, to tell some home truths to the fantasists in the two
parties. Brexit and giving up membership of single market and customs union for
future free trade deals elsewhere, Mr Donnelly said, was like giving up a three-course
meal now for a packet of crisps and promise of future. Three-fifth of the UK’s current
trade, Mr Donnelley explained, was with the EU or countries with which the EU
(as a bloc) has preferential deals with. It beggars belief that the hard
Brexiteers are prepared to piss on this in the delusion that the rest of the
world is queuing up to strike deals with the UK. As for Corbyn’s nonsense about
‘frictionless trade’ Donnelley warned that it is not even a legal term. Having your
cake and eating it, as Donnelley rightly observed, is not an option in the real
world, not that it will penetrate Corbyn’s thick skull.
Theresa May might go to India and wear as many bright-coloured
saris as she wants, or she might go to China and pose next to the Chinese
dragon (looking only marginally more scary), there is no sign, yet, that these
two Asian giants are in a mood to give any definite assurance to the UK. As for
America, with whom the UK politicians fondly believe we have a special
relationship, with Trump in the White House, we will soon find out that the
special relationship is the same as the McDonald’s has with cows. Trump does not believe
in special relationships. He believes in deals. And any deal Trump has anything
to do with has only one winner. Trump.
