Boris was in a typically bullish mood when he attended one of the final hustings. Half way through, he pulled a kipper out from under the lectern and then started lambasting the EU for their ludicrous, regulatory interference with one of our staple British products.'Do you know that under EU rules' he stated, 'any kipper sent through the post has to be accompanied by an ice-sack! This he stated, was unnecessary regulation and simply increased the cost of doing business - a great example, apparently, of why we needed to free ourselves of the EU and implement the referendum result without delay. His oratory was met with a resounding round of applause. It was just what the audience wanted to hear.
The trouble is that his accusation of 'unnecessary regulation' was entirely untrue. Kippers have gone through a preservative process, thus cool conditions for mailing are not required and are definitely not part of a regulatory regime imposed by Europe. No one should let strident rhetoric get in the way of the truth. Our entire democratic process is being put in jeopardy by a complete lack of attention to the truth, fake news and false propaganda are very much the order of the day. It should be noted that one of his first acts as Prime Minister was to appoint Dominic Cummins, who masterminded the Vote Leave Campaign, as his chief of staff. His tactics in the referendum campaign have been the subject of some discussion and Boris even faced unsuccessful legal action about his misleading £350 million a week claim.
Almost contemporaneous to Boris's husting appearance, was a piece on the BBC about Combe Castle dairy exporters in Melksham, Wiltshire. Peter Mitchell, the Operations Director, explained that just under a third of its business is exporting cheese to Canada, zero-tariffed under the EU-Canada CETA deal. The visual aid here was a giant block of cheddar worth about £500 in sales, just about to be shipped to Toronto. The tariff under no-deal Brexit, now that the Candians have turned down a rollover continuity deal, is an incredible £1,200 or 245%. This effectively knocks out a third Combe Castle's business at a stroke.
What has received remarkably little publicity is that of the 70 trade deals the EU has made with third party countries , in three years the UK has only managed to roll over 17 of those deals, freeing only 10% of our international trade deals with the countries concerned. That is in addition to the ending of free trade deals with the EU itself. This will be a disaster for the UK although, to listen to Boris and the Brexiteers this is simply a continuation of project fear. Tell that to the 1000 Vauxhall workers in Ellesmere Port, their families and the thousands of other jobs which depend on a new Astra model being made there. The French owners have made it clear that the continuation of this depends on an EU deal. There are many other businesses, like Coombe Castle, who will also face ruin.
The Conservative and Unionist Party, the upholder of the Union and guardian of our economy, are in the process of risking millions of jobs and causing misery for millions of our citizens. This threatens a marked downturn in HMRC receipts, jeopardising our public services. Their actions will also supercharge the breakup of the breakup of the Union, with an independent Scotland and a united Ireland. All of this in vain attempt to defeat the effects of our diminishing world role and the effects of globalisation.
Our nation can realign our priorities but our attempts to win out in the world as a block of 65 million people will not match the political power of the EU with 650 million citizens. The mathematics are self-evident. The lessons of the kipper and the cheddar cheese really are food for thought.