 |
| IMAGEM DE OVOODOCORVO |
| Amid the havoc wreaked by coronavirus, there is another danger we've forgotten |
Jonathan Freedland
As Boris Johnson reopens pubs, a no-deal Brexit
threatens to rain disaster on a country reeling from the pandemic
‘Boris
Johnson’s government of geniuses picked 4 July to reopen pubs solely because of
the pleasing headlines that that date suggested.’
Published
onFri 3 Jul 2020 17.11 BST
Do you have
the bunting out and the fireworks primed for Independence Day, with 4 July
designated as the moment England ends its long national hibernation and flocks
to the pub? To the untrained eye, the choice of a Saturday for the great
unlocking might seem a tad rash, when, I don’t know, Monday was available to
ease people in gradually. That point was put to Boris Johnson on LBC this
morning, but he couldn’t offer even an approximation of an answer. Which leaves
us to conclude that his government of geniuses picked Saturday solely because
of the pleasing headlines that the Fourth of July suggested – rather forgetting
that this is the day when Americans celebrate their escape from the rule of a
dysfunctional London elite headed by a man with more children than you could
count and prone to gibbering in public.
The date
may yet acquire new notoriety if the grand English reopening comes to seem
premature, given that coronavirus is still lethally active and the UK has one
of the world’s highest death rates. And yet 4 July does not mark this week’s
most reckless date. With much less fanfare, another milestone was passed, one
that could wreak a havoc all its own – especially in combination with the
pandemic.
I’m
speaking of 11pm on 30 June, the moment at which Britain lost the ability to
seek an extension of the Brexit transition period. Unless we reach a new free
trade agreement with the European Union in the next six months, we will be
crashing out of the EU with no deal on 31 December.
It seems
like bad form to mention it now, when we have a deadly disease to contend with.
That suits Johnson and Dominic Cummings well: they hope to bury the bad news of
Brexit deep inside the coronavirus, calculating that any damage inflicted by the
former will be concealed by the general trauma of the latter. “Covid’s created
an excuse,” says one former Conservative minister.
But the
logic is perverse. Cummings may like the politics of crashing out under cover
of corona, but anyone else can surely see that now is absolutely not the time
to submit Britain to the economic shock of a chaotic break from our nearest
trading partners. Recall that the Bank of England has warned that the UK faces
its deepest recession since the Great Frost of 1709; that the OECD forecasts
that the UK will suffer the worst recession in the developed world; that three
quarters of UK manufacturers expect to cut jobs this year.
The layoffs
have already started, with thousands announced this week, from Upper Crust to
Airbus. When the furlough scheme ends, there’ll be many more. Mass unemployment
is coming; consumer confidence will shrink as those with money become ever
warier of spending it. If, on top of all that, Britain leaves the EU without a
deal, or a deal so thin it’s barely better than no deal, it will fall as a blow
to the skull of a man already bleeding.
None of
this is abstract. The government has already published the tariffs that would
be imposed on basic food items necessarily imported from the EU. They would add
12p to a 500g bag of dried pasta, 4p to a tin of tomatoes: to some, that won’t
sound like much, but for those counting every penny it could make all the
difference. If you’re grappling with food poverty, an increase of 20% or more
on staples will be ruinous. In normal times, charities might step in. But many
of those are fighting for their own lives, their high street shops devastated
by the collapse in footfall brought by lockdown.
This is how
the coronavirus and a no-deal Brexit compound each other, their combined damage
greater than the sum of its parts. Ministers like to play down the coming
Brexit pain, suggesting that since all industries are going to have to adapt to
Covid-19, they might as well adapt to an EU crash-out while they’re at it. But
that’s wrongheaded, not least because the two different crises will affect
different sectors. Travel, tourism and the arts have been gutted by
coronavirus, while manufacturing, pharmaceuticals and financial services stand
to be hit by Brexit. “It’s two parallel shocks, rather than one shock that
might conceal the other,” says Naomi Smith of Best for Britain.
And do we
really believe this government can handle two such seismic shifts at once?
Consider this. Johnson has promised to create an entirely new IT system to
check goods heading from the UK to the EU in time for 1 January 2021. But guess
what? Exporters are getting worried that the new Goods Vehicle Movement Service
won’t be ready in time. The Road Haulage Association calls it “a cocktail for
potential disaster”, predicting chaos and delay at the ports. Not to mention
the new paperwork that will be required from British companies shipping goods
to Northern Ireland. Now remember that the government also promises to have its
delayed track-and-trace app for coronavirus up and running by the winter. It’s
a brave citizen who reckons they’ll succeed in one of these two massive IT
ventures, let alone both.
Brexit once
dominated our politics; now it is barely mentioned. The Conservative landslide
last December seemed to settle it. Many of the Tory MPs who would have raised
the coming no-deal threat have been purged. Keir Starmer is wary of raising it:
he has his eye on leave seats, and is in no hurry to play the diehard remainer.
He didn’t even press the government to seek an extension to the transition.
The result
is a double danger to this country. A hurricane is coming, and yet we are
blithely choosing this of all moments to sail off into uncharted waters, all
alone.
• Jonathan
Freedland is a Guardian columnist
Sem comentários:
Enviar um comentário