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Brexit: Johnson is right … but mainly wrong
I didn't want to get embroiled in the Johnson "kippergate" affair, not least because when the Oaf pronounces on EU regulation, he almost invariably gets it wrong, as he famously did with his claims about bananas during the referendum campaign.
That much I expected once more with his claim in the final hustings of the Conservative party's leadership contest on Wednesday evening, when he held aloft a vacuum-packed kipper that had come from a fish smoker on the Isle of Man, whom Johnson said, was "utterly furious".
"After decades of sending them through the post", Johnson averred on his behalf, he had had his costs "massively increased by Brussels bureaucrats" who are insisting that each kipper must be accompanied by a plastic ice pillow. "Pointless, pointless, expensive, environmentally damaging 'elf and safety'", the MP declared.
Had it been left there, there would have been little point – or interest – in pursuing the issue much further. Food safety regulation does indeed require temperature control of certain mail order foods, but the requirement is hardly onerous.
The disposable ice packs cost pennies, and are used to protect a premium product which retails at more than twice the price of a supermarket equivalent. It makes absolute sense to invest a tiny sum to ensure that mail order products reach their customers in peak condition, minimising growth of food poisoning and spoilage bacteria.
Even if it wasn't a legal requirement, this is one of those provisions which traders would adopt automatically. It gives consumers the confidence to use distance selling to buy high-risk, perishable food and has facilitated the massive boom in online food sales – the slight increase in costs more than compensated for by increased sales.
On the face of it therefore, this was another bit of Johnson hyperbole, the man venting his ignorance and prejudice about the nature of regulation, playing to the crowd. So it went: to cheers and laughter of the party faithful, he roundly declared: "We will bring the kippers back. It's not a red herring".
But what gives this story "legs" is yesterday's extraordinary intervention from European Commission food safety spokesperson, Anca Paduraru. To the delight of the gullible hacks - who, as always, suspended their critical faculties and believed everything they were told - she advised them that Johnson had got it wrong.
Said Paduraru: "The case described by Mr Johnson falls outside the scope of EU legislation and is purely a UK national competence". Then she asserted: "When it comes to the specific case mentioned, while the food business operators have an obligation to meet the microbiological requirements, the safety requirements to ensure the safety of its food, the sale of products from food business operators to the final consumer is not covered by the EU legislation on food hygiene".
Further adding to her case, she informed the hacks that: "There are strict [EU] rules when it comes to fresh fish, but these kinds of rules don't apply to processed fisheries products. I'm talking about temperature and the exact case he was explaining".
What is so remarkable about this though is that, at several levels, the Commission spokesperson was completely wrong. Covering the production and sale of mail order products is a raft of food safety law, almost all of it of EU origin. And it is certainly not the case that the sale of products from food business operator to the final consumer is not covered by the EU legislation on food hygiene. This is demonstrable not true.
The EU's "hygiene package" – most of which covers the sale of food to the public - starts with the General Food Law Regulation, Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, moves on to Regulation (EC) 852/2004 on the hygiene of foodstuffs, takes in Regulation (EC) No 853/2004, laying down specific hygiene rules on the hygiene of foodstuffs, and winds up with Regulation (EC) No 854/2004 on official controls on products of animal origin. For the purposes of the law, animals include fish.
The primary area where the Commission spokesperson falls down is in making a simple definition error, relating to the application of Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 which sets the temperature control rules about which Johnson so vitriolically complains.
The error made is in taking the provision of this regulation which allows, under certain conditions, Member States to adopt "national measures to apply the requirements of this Regulation to retail establishments situated on their territory".
This wrongly assumes that the Isle of Man suppliers are retail operations, thereby exempting them from EU law and allowing produce to be subject to "national measures". But, as is evident from one of the suppliers' websites, these are producers selling directly to the consumer, representing a wholly different situation. "National measures" will not apply and operations must be subject to EU law.
Nevertheless, the Commission may also be relying on an exemption from Regulation (EC) No 853/2004 which applies to: "the direct supply, by the producer, of small quantities of primary products to the final consumer or to local retail establishments directly supplying the final consumer". In that case also, national rules apply.
However, it will be noted that the exemption applies only to "primary production" which, according to Regulation (EC) No 178/2002, means "the production, rearing or growing of primary products including harvesting, milking and farmed animal production prior to slaughter. It also includes hunting and fishing and the harvesting of wild products".
With this fairly tight definition, it is quite clear that "fishery products" as defined by Regulation 853/2004 include product which, themselves, are not primary products. The definition covers "all seawater or freshwater animals (except for live bivalve molluscs, live echinoderms, live tunicates and live marine gastropods, and all mammals, reptiles and frogs) whether wild or farmed", but it also includes "all edible forms, parts and products of such animals". The products of such "animals" would encompass processed foods such as kippers but these do not conform with the definition of primary products.
This notwithstanding, the Commission spokesperson talks about "national rules" as if they were something separate, standing clear of Union law, entirely under the control of the Member State. Yet any such rules must be directed at implementing the EU's hygiene package, and they must be submitted to the Commission for approval before they apply.
They are, therefore, determined by the framework of EU law, even if there is some flexibility afforded in the wording. Effectively, even "national rules" are EU mandated.
And before we leave this, one needs to be aware of the origins of Johnson's kipper – the Isle of Man. And although the IoM is within the customs union, it is not part of the Single Market. Therefore, Regulation (EC) No 854/2004 on "official controls" applies, which has its own provisions on temperature control. Without it being stated directly, this may apply special provisions to IoM produce.
Then, as is the case with many food sectors, the UK's Food Standards Agency has an official guide on the hygiene of mail order food, in force since 2007. It notes that "perishable foods" are defined as those that are required by law, for food safety reasons, to be kept chilled or refrigerated.
Interestingly, it cites the applicable law as Regulation (EC) no. 852/004, and in particular Article 4.3 which requires the compliance with temperature control requirements in order to maintain the cold chain. And, within that regulation is a requirement for national hygiene guides to be produced, conformity with which "must be taken into account when assessing compliance with legislation". We come full circle.
Finally, I am troubled by the lack of any definition of "direct sale". Exploring EU sources has proved time consuming and unrewarding. But, in respect of retail exemptions, we see a requirement for "marginal, localised and restricted activity".
The notion stems from the observation that retail establishments supplying the final consumer as their main trade should in effect trade their products locally (even if the destination is in another Member State) and so "are not engaged in long distance trade which requires more attention and supervision in particular as regards transport and cold chain conditions".
It seems to me, without being able to pin it down, that direct selling also might not accord with the aim of EU law, which is intended to grant exemptions only to "short food chain" operations, where a more relaxed view of temperature control can be taken.
It would be interesting to get clarification on this point, but I have always taken direct selling as a requirement for the producer physically to place the goods directly in the hands of the consumer. In any event, it would be unlikely that the Commission would approve any national rules that had no provision for the temperature control of mail order foods.
For all that, though, in the context of Johnson's outburst, none of this really matters. Whether national or EU law, there exists a perfectly reasonable and sensible provision requiring perishable mail order foods to be kept chilled. This is in the interests of producer and consumer alike, and is unlikely to change with Brexit.
In that, Johnson may be right on a technicality that the EU Law does require chilled kippers – for once, wrong-footing the Commission - but he is wholly wrong in criticising an essentially sensible measure.
Richard North 19/07/2019 link
Brexit: the least of our problems
Over three weeks ago, I was discussing on this blog a report on a deal made between the Port of Calais and Channel shipping lines. The report had it that, in the event of a no-deal Brexit, British trucks would be prevented from boarding ferries at Dover if they didn't have the correct paperwork.
In this scenario, Dover would be used as a "filter" for traffic headed for the mainland, with the obvious possibility of massive tailbacks and disruption this side of the Channel. Vehicles without the necessary paperwork would be intercepted and stacked at Manston airfield as part of Operation Brock.
On the ball as always (not), BBC Newsnight has picked up the story, retailing it in its usual self-important way, as if it was the originator of the information, with no acknowledgement that this development is hardly news.
Predictably, though, the BBC is focusing on the possibility of gridlock in Dover as a result of the French action, where ferry companies have agreed to deny boarding in the UK to trucks without the right paperwork.
But, with this being an all too predicable outcome, even our lacklustre Department for Transport will be able to implement measures which will keep traffic away from the port, and avoid creating the long queues of traffic that the hacks are eagerly anticipating.
Thus, a DfT spokesperson is able confidently to state that: "There are well-developed plans in place to manage any traffic disruption in Kent in the event of a no deal scenario, keeping the M20 open with traffic continuing to flow in both directions".
Furthermore, there are long-standing plans for remote processing centres, one at Milton Keynes and the other in Hayes (West London), to handle incoming "high risk" traffic from EU Member States.
Even in the few months left to 31 October, when it looks increasingly likely that we crash out of the EU without a deal, there is time for additional contingency measures. And given the high profile and sensitivity of queuing traffic on the M20 and other approach roads, one can expect the authorities, with the backing of government, to put in a maximum effort in an attempt to ensure that the traffic flows smoothly after Brexit.
As we've pointed out before - quite recently - the first day outside the EU, on 1 November, will be a Friday. Most likely, the bulk of commercial traffic will be held back, with businesses taking a "wait and see" stance before sending stuff to Europe. Far from us seeing queues, therefore, the most probable immediate outcome of a no-deal Brexit will be a near-empty M20.
Perversely, therein lies a significant problem, but one of an entirely different nature to the one we have been schooled to expect. Because the latter-day emphasis of the media on queues at the ports, their presence or absence may well be taken as the test of the government's handling of Brexit – with no queues being taken as a measure of success.
One can imagine, therefore, a Johnson-led administration crowing about "project fear" and talking up claims about how their preparations have seen off the worse impacts of a no-deal Brexit. And, although border problems might not be expected to bite for a few weeks, the media is certainly superficial enough to buy in to the "success" story.
Should this happen – and there is every likelihood that it will – this will be yet another example of the legacy media missing the point. With the various contingency measures planned or already in-place, the indications are that there will be no obvious, visible effects of a no-deal Brexit. It will be a slow burn, with the main impacts measurable only through a web of statistics.
In that context, a while back I wrote about the role of European exports on the UK egg industry. Generally, the flow of fresh eggs across the channel is roughly in balance, so that we export as many eggs as we import. This has led some pundits to suggest that this sector would be unaffected by Brexit. We would simply divert production to the domestic market, and cease to take in imports.
However, things are never that simple. Although very few of our producers actually export directly to Europe (or anywhere else for that matter), the industry as a whole is largely dependent on exports to Europe to maintain its overall profitability.
The issue here is what is known in the trade as the "spring flush". Although commercial laying birds are far distant from the original jungle fowl and live in completely artificial environments, they still go into high gear in the spring (their natural laying cycle), whence egg production peaks.
This period normally matches Easter, one of the periods of highest egg demand – but there is not always an exact match. Before the Easter demand takes off, the hens are already in overdrive (especially if Easter is late). Producers watch nervously as a national egg surplus builds up and prices teeter on collapse. With predatory supermarkets, they can easily end up selling at less than the cost of production, wiping out profits for the entire year.
Fortunately, there is an answer – export. For reasons that were never clearly explained to me, the Dutch demand cycle is slightly different to that of the UK, taking off earlier in the year before the hens got into the spring flush. Thus, by the early spring, we could usually anticipate an egg shortage in Holland, driving up the prices there.
What then would happen was a number of entrepreneurs would contact UK farmers and buy up the entire UK surplus for a few weeks, stripping the wholesale market. They would fill up a number of containers for transport to the Dutch market. And because of regulatory harmonisation and the Single Market, that had become a simple operation: all egg producers had become export compliant.
This transfer of the surplus has the effect of stabilising the prices and, for many egg producers, without this they would be trading at an annual loss.
The point here is that most of the time, most egg producers did not export. But since they all complied with EU rules, when market stabilisation measures were needed, their surpluses could be bought up by middle men and exported – often bought off the wholesale market without the original producers being aware of the destinations.
Come a hard Brexit, where easy (and rapid) export of eggs to the continent might no longer be possible, there won't be any measurable effect on the industry. The main export demand would not be until the following spring. And if the market stabilisation system is no longer able to function, it may be towards the end of next year – or beyond – before we see a dramatic upturn in the number of bankruptcies, none of which will appear to be directly Brexit-related.
This is the problem with making predictions about the impact of Brexit. Business in the 28 EU Member States is now heavily integrated and interdependent, but the links are not always apparent. A component company, for instance, may sell its produce only to UK firms which in turn may make sub-assemblies for larger companies which do export their products.
In such a scenario, the actual volume of product from the component suppliers which ends up incorporated in other products destined for EU Member States may be relatively small – say about ten percent of their total business. But, for many businesses, it is that last ten percent or so that makes the profit and thereby ensures survival. A sudden loss of even small volumes of trade can drive them into liquidation.
Nothing of this is easily measurable, or even predictable – and the effects are most certainly not immediate. When I wrote recently of Brexit building up an accumulation of disincentives which will dissuade continental buyers from sourcing goods and services from the UK, it is thus also germane to add that the effects will not be readily visible.
With a government determined to talk up its Brexit "success", or at least conceal the adverse effects, one might see business failures attributed to other causes – anything but Brexit. Only when a downturn is so well-established that it is impossible to conceal, might there be a grudging acknowledgement that Brexit has been a causal factor in our woes.
Should this be the case, it will turn out that traffic queues at Dover – if they materialise – will have been the least of our problems. The slow burn effect is the one to look for, and that will not necessarily be easy to detect in its early stages.
Tucked in behind the Telegraph paywall is a piece by Jacob Rees-Mogg which manages to combine an extraordinary level of ignorance with the patronising superiority which is the hallmark of the man.
In his piece, Rees-Mogg is setting out to demolish Chancellor Hammond's prediction that a no-deal Brexit could cost the UK economy £90 billion. In so doing, rather predictably, he dismisses the Treasury's work as "project fear", substituting his own received wisdom to make his case.
Central to his supposed demolition of Hammond's case is a straw man assertion that the greatest negative impact of a no-deal Brexit "is the idea that 'behind the border' non-tariff barriers will suddenly spring up". depressing GDP by a staggering 4.2 percent. This, accounts for around half of the £90 billion negative impact cited by Mr Hammond.
Simply stated, says Rees-Mogg, "this means the Government believes that all sorts of new product standards will face our exporters and importers, despite over 20 years of shared rules and standards". And, this is an idea that Rees-Mogg rejects, on the basis that "such behaviour on the EU's part would be illegal under WTO anti-discrimination rules".
From the very start, however, Rees-Mogg miscasts Hammond's statement. The Chancellor did not refer to the effect on GDP in general, but to a "hit to the Exchequer of about £90 billion" over the next 15 years, which would have to be factored into future spending and tax decisions.
As to whether the 4.2 percent loss of GDP cited by Rees-Mogg is accurate is anyone's guess. These financial predictions are difficult to get right, not least because there are so many variables. But the actual figure is not the issue here. What we are dealing with is the classic "rookie" mistake that has this backbench MP believing that a no-deal Brexit will lead to a situation where "non-tariff barriers (NTBs) will suddenly spring up".
Sadly, this basic error still distorts the Brexit "debate", but someone of the status of Rees-Mogg should at least be aware of the fundamentals. As I pointed out in a blogpost of February 2017, there is no question of these NTBs suddenly springing up. They already exist.
The analogy I used was one of a medieval walled city, inside which the 28 traders happily do business – with the public and between themselves – secure within the fortifications.
I then posited that, when one of those traders decides to move his stall outside the walls, he will no longer be able to trade freely with the businesses still inside. But this is not a question of new barriers being erected. They already exist, and the trader has chosen to move himself outside the walls, placing the barrier between himself and his trading partners.
The second basic mistake that Rees-Mogg makes is in assuming that conformity with "shared rules and standards" gets us a free pass to trade with the EU. Yet, as we have seen so many times, Barnier has referred to integration with the "regulatory ecosystem"- the "standards, certifications, rights, regulations, supervision and jurisdiction" that make up the Single Market – as an essential precursor to frictionless trade.
As I also pointed out, this time in July 2017, conformity with standards is only the "starter for ten". Without a major element of systems harmonisation, mere conformity with standards is not sufficient to allow exporters to gain untrammelled access to the markets of EU Member States. Yet still, Rees-Mogg believes that "over 20 years of shared rules and standards" actually means something.
For his third error, however, Rees-Mogg comes up with the classic. The "imposition" – as he would have it – of supposedly new non-tariff barriers would, he asserts, "be illegal under WTO anti-discrimination rules". This is the man who is so keen on the WTO that he sees no bar to leaving under "WTO rules", yet in this vital aspect has almost no idea of how they apply.
As early as 2014, though, in Flexcit, I was rehearsing this issue, noting that free trade agreements were essentially discriminatory, permitting parties to relax trading rules between them. But, in the absence of such an agreement with the UK – as in a no-deal scenario – the EU would be obliged under WTO rules to apply the full range of border control measures to EU-UK trade. "The EU would have no choice in this. It must obey WTO rules", I wrote.
We thus have the extraordinary situation where Rees-Mogg in his interpretation of WTO rules has the situation exactly reversed. Far from applying NTBs being a breach of WTO rules, the EU would be obliged under the rules to apply them.
In his article, therefore, we have a man purporting to set himself up as the great authority on matters to do with a no-deal exit, making three of the most basic mistakes possible – indicating a most profound ignorance of the subject. Yet what really sticks in the craw is his patronising attitude as he marks down Hammond's view of a no-deal Brexit as "pure silliness".
Rees-Mogg, of course, is not the only person to take such a lofty view of opposing ideas, with the academic Lorand Bartels resorting to a similar epithet when challenged over his own errors. Bluntly, someone who resorts to this sort of language isn't all there. In the case of Rees-Mogg, this betrays an essential lack of maturity which speaks much of his personal inadequacy as a human being.
The trouble is that here we're not dealing with just any ordinary backbencher – if there is such a thing. Jacob Rees-Mogg is chairman of the European Research Group, supposedly leading the intellectual spearhead for the "hard Brexit" case. But, if after three years down the line from the referendum, we have such a key figure displaying this level of ignorance, there is no hope.
The point here is that Rees-Mogg is not on his own. This is a man venting his errors in the pages of the Telegraph. This is a national daily newspaper, where contributions are supposedly checked for accuracy. Clearly, when they vetted this authored piece, the editors went AWOL.
What comes across from this is that there is no longer any premium on accuracy or knowledge. As long as your face fits and you are saying things it wants to hear, the Telegraph is home to any manner of ill-conceived tosh, betraying the trust of its readers and abandoning its duty to present factually correct information.
Under such conditions, it is almost impossible to conduct a rational debate. Where error and misinformation is freely allowed, vested with privilege and prestige, mere facts and argument cannot compete. The most carefully constructed case can be swept aside in an instant by a surge of ignorant drivel – polemics and prestige trump the facts every time.
But there has to be more to this than mere stupidity – an issue that has fascinated and troubled this blog for years. More recently, though, I quoted Simon Kuper, who argued that some people sound stupid or ignorant because they are stupid or ignorant. And, in this context, it is not difficult to concede that Rees-Mogg is saying stupid things because he really is that stupid.
Nonetheless, I had promised to explore this phenomenon further, as to why politics these days seems to be dominated by institutionalised stupidity. And if this is having such an effect on contemporary politics, it is something that can no longer be ignored. Stupidity now seems to be a major influence on events.
On the other hand, if someone could come up with another plausible explanation as to how a high-profile MP can prosper on the back of such profound ignorance, with the apparent approval of a major national newspaper, I'm all ears.
I sometimes think I could go on holiday for six months without writing a thing, and I'd still be ahead of the game – by a factor of some years, in the case of some issues such as the effect of a no-deal Brexit on F1 racing.
So it comes to pass that the mighty, omniscient Robert Peston has finally discovered that, with nothing between the Tory leadership candidates, we are heading down the path towards a no-deal Brexit.
As far as I'm concerned, it was weeks ago that it was blindingly obvious that neither Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson nor Jeremy Hunt had the first idea of how to manage Brexit, both residing in the fiction that they could abandon the backstop and renegotiate the Withdrawal Agreement with the EU.
But then, when the likes of Peston start noticing the blindingly obvious, it simply confirms their brilliance, allowing us plebs to stand back in wonderment at their skill and perspicacity which allows them to divine that which has been known for weeks to everyone with a brain.
Of course, such brilliant leaders of men will never, ever realise how far behind the curve they are. So deeply rooted in their bubble, listening only to their adoring claque, nothing exists until the likes of Peston have invented it and brought it before the great unwashed.
That they are "brilliant" is a given, and we know this because they keep telling us, as in the tail-end of the Telegraph piece which enjoins us to "sign up for our brilliant subscriber newsletter".
For me, I rather take Margaret Thatcher's line, when she famously said, "Power is like being a lady... if you have to tell people you are, you aren't". Basically, if you keep having to tell people how brilliant you are, you aren't.
Nevertheless, that won't stop the legacy media preening and posturing, massaging their own egos and spewing out error-filled misinformation. That's what you do when you're in the media, because that entitles you to stop listening to anyone outside the bubble, conferring a free pass which absolves you from having to apologise for delivering second-rate work.
But there you go. Robert Peston has told us that a no-deal is now "probable". With the public now exposed to such brilliance, this affirms that our intellectual masters have got there – eventually.
Give them another three years and they might have worked out what non-tariff barriers mean, and how they impact on third country trading arrangements. Some of them might even begin to understand what "third country" actually means in relation to the EU.
But then we mustn't expect too much of these geniuses. Too many facts might hurt their little brains, while telling their followers too much might overwhelm them with adoration. Once you've reached the pinnacle of brilliance, there is nowhere else to go.
Despite Peston being on the case with his factoid of the day, therefore, there is little chance of him catching up with the rest. If he ever did, I the lowly blogger, would be redundant.
As it is, the media generally don't have a clue what a no-deal Brexit really entails, so I will probably have to wait quite a while for my redundancy notice, although we do get a tiny glimmer of sentience from Michael Deacon in the Telegraph. As court jester, he has a licence to ask awkward questions, taking a look at the absurdity of maintaining the no-deal Brexit "on the table", as leverage in the hypothetical renegotiations which the EU says we're not going to have.
Says Deacon, Johnson and Jeremy Hunt agree on at least one thing: that the way to get a better Brexit deal is to threaten to leave with no-deal – the very thing that Peston seems to have noticed.
Johnson, for example, has said he wants EU leaders to "look deep into our eyes and think, 'My God, these Brits actually are going to leave. And they're going to leave on those terms'". Such will be the EU leaders' alarm – so the theory goes - that they'll ditch the backstop on the spot.
The one possible flaw in this plan, Deacon asserts, is that the EU leaders might decide a no-deal Brexit would be a lot more damaging to Britain than it would be to them. If that is what they think, they might not find the threat quite so compelling, leaving Deacon to paint an alternative scenario:
The British Government might as well be saying: "If I shoot myself in the foot with this machine gun, it's going to make a terrible mess of your carpet. Imagine the stain. Could take you a whole hour to get it out. All that scrubbing. Be a real nuisance for you. Plus you'd have to put up with the horrible sound of my screaming, as I writhe around in unspeakable agony on your floor until the paramedics arrive. Wouldn't be much fun for you, would it? Could ruin your evening. Do you really want that? Are you sure?"
This is about as close as it gets to pointing out how absurd the stance of the leadership candidates is, delivering us a train wreck where the only choice is the side of the rails from which we want the doomed train to plunge.
One can only assume that, once the new leader assumes office – but not power – he will realise the fatuity of his strategy and start all over again, trying to craft something sensible. Only then will be find that he is subject to exactly the same constraints that stopped Mrs May from making progress.
However, the candidates are for the moment having to satisfy the whims of the Conservative Party, which is not in the reality business. Slurping up the propaganda from the Spectator and the Telegraph, with occasional sojourns elsewhere, they have allowed themselves to be convinced that no-deal is a tenable option, although they are equally convinced that the Johnson "handbag" strategy will have the EU blinking furiously at the 59th minute of the eleventh hour on 31 October.
When such stupidity is given the power to decide the leader of our government, there is no obvious means of escape. The "stupid party", living up to its name, is about to condemn us to perdition.
It is probably now too late to influence events – not that we could anyway. But most of the leadership votes are now in, and the die is probably already cast. Too late, the Guardian is pointing out what an odious little man Johnson really is, one of a series of pieces about "the real Boris Johnson". But it will not have the slightest effect. Nothing the Guardian can say about the character of the Tories' favourite son will touch his popularity in the party.
That will then leave the paper – and others, if they have a mind to do some real journalism – to "do a Peston" and try to catch up on the most likely effects of a no-deal, and the mechanisms for avoiding disaster.
When you're in the catch-up game, though, the big problem is that by the time you get there, the birds have usually flown. Properly to influence the debate, the media needed to have been exploring the consequences of a no-deal Brexit the moment Mrs May put the possibility on the table with her Lancaster House speech back in January 2017.
Thus, while we are always pleased to see the media catch up – eventually – sometimes "better late than never" doesn't hold true. To define and shape the debate, the media needed to be on the ball, ahead of the game and ready to inject real information into the system. It wasn't, and still isn't. "Eventually" really isn't good enough.
Brexit: the wages of propaganda
If ever one needed to know why businesses are so often badly managed, and why the banking industry makes such a mess of things, it is probably because they employ intellectual lightweights such as Anthony Browne, one-time business reporter and economics correspondent for the BBC and former policy director for economic development for Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson when he was mayor of London.
Typically, this is the sort of person – a "quango queen" with trousers - to whom the Spectator turns when it wants to extend its no-deal propaganda, knowing that the man will deliver just the right level of misinformation to make it look plausible, without actually veering anywhere near the truth.
Thus we have the decidedly smug and self-satisfied Browne seeking to address the question of whether a no-deal Brexit would be a disaster, to which he offers the predictable answer, "probably not", then purporting to give the reasons why – building on an edifice that asserts that "the government is better prepared than it has let on".
It matters not in the least to the Spectator that this self-serving rhetoric coincides with a statement from chancellor Hammond – to be broadcast in full by the Panorama programme later this week - warning that the UK "will lose control in a no-deal scenario", not least because "others control the levers", in particular the EU-27 and private business.
Necessarily, he says, a no-deal Brexit would leave Britain at the mercy of the French, who would be able to "dial up" or "dial down" at will the queues for goods going into the port of Calais. Paris would be able to exploit the Channel crossing to exert pressure in the same way that the Spanish had used the border with Gibraltar.
Despite spending more than £4 billion on Brexit preparations, Hammond said there would be a limit to the amount of influence the government could exert in the event of no-deal. We can seek to persuade the others, he said, but we can't control it. "For example, we can make sure that goods flow inwards through the port of Dover without any friction but we can't control the outward flow into the port of Calais".
What Hammond is saying, of course, would easily qualify as a statement of the bleedin' obvious, as we've been rehearsing such issues for years, issues about which the legacy media and the politicians have displayed their usual level of ignorance, so much so that what Hammond is now saying is actually treated as news.
Needless to say, the possibility of delays at Calais is precisely the sort of issue that the egregious Browne homes in on, this being one of the headline issues which will most likely define the media perception of a no-deal Brexit.
Last year, says Browne, the French ports of Calais and Boulogne weren't ready, leading to predictions of the M20 becoming a lorry park, and shortages of food and drugs. But, he now reassures us, Calais has now stepped up the number of checkpoints, employed 700 customs staff, and bought scanners which check lorries as they drive past. Then, as the no-dealers always do, Browne relies on the president of the Port Boulogne Calais, who has said, "there will not be any delay" in a no-deal Brexit.
It is this element of wishful thinking that really gives the game away. Jean-Marc Puissesseau, Browne's "president", was the man who originally warned of 20-mile queues outside Calais but later changed his tune when he and other local politicians conceived the idea of building an off-site joint customs SPS facility at La Zone Turquerie to service both the port and Eurotunnel.
But, like so many local (and national) politicians, Puissesseau had very little idea of how EU "official controls" work, and had entirely misinformed himself about "derogations" that might permit an off-site facility – the key to his plans to avoid congestion at the port and thus ensure that there were no delays.
When Brussels stepped in, however, the local authorities fell into line and we now see Border Control Posts established within the perimeter of Calais Port, with separate facilities established at Eurotunnel. The very arrangements needed to avoid congestion, therefore, have been vetoed by Brussels.
Furthermore, it is in the nature of the system that, while the port authorities provide the physical infrastructure for customs and SPS checks, staffing is provided by national government who work to a remit set by EU law and supervised directly by Brussels. The local authorities have no control over the scale or tempo of inspections, and must simply conform with the requirements of the authorities charged with implementing border controls.
It goes without saying, therefore, that with both customs and SPS checks being carried out at Calais Port and Eurotunnel, when hitherto there were none, there are going to be delays. The only question is the extent, and this is unanswerable until the system goes into operation.
However, it cannot necessarily be assumed that official border controls will be the only factor at play. Already, the Calais Port has experienced delays through industrial action from customs officials. But what might also be experienced is blocking action by either farmers or fishermen, who see in Brexit an opportunity to curtail UK imports. This possibility cannot be discounted.
Interestingly, Browne doesn't directly mention SPS controls and the need for Border Control Posts, and nor is he up-to-date on the Calais situation. But then, writing for the Spectator, he doesn't actually need to be informed. He just needs to tick the boxes which will keep the faithful happy, sedated by misinformation which allows them the comfort of believing that no-deal is a credible option.
That said, much of what Browne relies upon lies in straw man territory. For a long time – after being at the cutting edge of evaluating the effects of a no-deal Brexit – I have taken the view that the headline delays and possible shortages, so beloved of the legacy media, are the least of our problems.
Mostly, what we will see is the accumulation of disincentives, some small and some large, which will dissuade continental buyers from sourcing goods and services from the UK. Progressively, as is already happening, UK exports to EEA territories will gradually decline, the fall picking up momentum should we leave with a no-deal. The net effect will be a collapse of exports, causing major damage to a market worth £270 billion.
This, as Hammond indicates, is something over which the UK has little control. When we leave the EU, we become a third country in our relationship with the EU, and the restrictions that apply to our trade will automatically take effect. Without the mitigating effect of a comprehensive free trade agreement, the result can only be a substantial downturn in trading volume.
Significantly, Browne scarcely talks of our new status as a third country, which relieves him of the need to explore the wide range of implications. Rather, he focuses his readers' attention on preparations for a no-deal, heedless of the fact that so much lies beyond the remit of the UK.
But this is the way the game is being played. Politically, for the likes of Johnson, no-deal must be seen to be a tenable option. So the hacks and the drones are enlisted to make it so, with compliant media sources enlisted to the propaganda effect – the self-same media outlets that are so quick to squeal about "press freedom" if there is ever a hint on constraint.
What these outlets clearly haven't anticipated is that there will be a price to pay for dedicating themselves to the pursuit of political propaganda. Despite the facile reassurances of the likes of Browne, the net is closing, as no-deal becomes more of a reality by the day.
European Commission president-designate Ursula von der Leyen has in recent days reiterated her strong support for the Withdrawal Agreement and declares that the backstop is "absolutely necessary", ruling out once again any prospect of a renegotiation.
If then, 31 October becomes the date of our no-deal departure, the unavoidable realities will not be long in becoming evident. And all those legacy media outlets which have talked down the consequences of a no-deal will have some explaining to do. Blaming the EU will only take them so far, whence the credibility of media will take another lurch downwards.
For the moment though, their lies and misinformation prevail – no one can prove them wrong. But events will tell their own story. Then the wages of propaganda will become due.
The Harrogate Agenda: a package of reforms
Amid all the negatives, there is one possible positive outcome from the selection of Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson as UK prime minister. Once the full horror of this creature hits home, people may rebel against the system that put him there and move towards a directly elected prime minister.
Before we get there, however, we have a lot of thinking to do, from which needs to emerge a degree of clarity about the nature of democracy which currently does not seem to exist.
A classic example of the muddle we're in comes this weekend from Nick Cohen who writes a piece lamenting the decay of democracy. In this, he puts much of the blame on what he calls "party democracy", asserting that it is the "enemy of representative democracy".
In this, I am of the view that the moment you have to qualify "democracy" with an adjective, it is no longer democracy. Thus, I have long asserted that, as wooden is to leg, representative is to democracy. The same must be said of party democracy – neither can qualify as a meaningful form of democracy.
To that extent, the UK is not and never has been a democracy. Rather like Brexit, which I defined as a process rather than an event, way before anyone else thought of doing so, democracy in the UK has never been a fixed state. It is more a direction of travel, an aspiration to higher things that we will eventually achieve.
Nick Cohen, in his dissertation, relies heavily on historian Robert Saunders to guide him through the matrix, thus displaying the bad habit of many contemporary columnists and journalists in hiding behind the opinions of others instead of asserting his own.
Thus, after a dissection of the demerits of the role of political parties – and especially with reference to the election of our next prime minister – Cohen still manages to confuse himself with the contradictory assertion that, "we are a democracy and power should flow from the people, not from a privileged caste in a private club".
The contradiction, of course, is that unless power flows from the people, we cannot be a democracy and if – as is most definitely the case with the selection of the prime minister – we are in the grip of a party clique, we cannot by definition be a democracy.
It is there that Cohen brings in Saunders to suggest remedies. Either, he says, we return to MPs choosing leaders, and thereby accept that no one can become prime minister without first holding an election, or we move to a presidential system with a directly elected prime minister.
For our money, though, all we're getting is another element of confusion. Like so many, Saunders seems to believe that the process of electing a prime minister somehow turns it into a presidential system.
Yet, as I keep pointing out, presidents are heads of states. Prime ministers are heads of governments. To directly elect prime ministers does not miraculously turn them into presidents. If we have a system of directly elected prime ministers, then that is what we get – a system of direct election, not a presidential system.
As to having our MPs elect prime ministers, this goes back to the electoral college system. And if that has some merits, they are vastly overrated. I cannot see the need (at least in the UK) to interpose another layer between the people and the leader of their government. If the prime minister is to be elected, let the people do it, and cut out the middle man.
But there is more to the process of direct election than simply the selection of a prime minister. With this system comes something we do not have in this country – a proper separation of powers, where MPs are elected to scrutinise government, not to become part of it. A prime minister should not be an MP and neither should ministers. Government should govern, and parliament should scrutinise.
In his attack on the party system, though, Cohen does have a point, where he calls in aid Saunders once more to say that control of politics has passed to unelected and irresponsible members of the respective political parties. Says Saunders, "Boris Johnson or Jeremy Hunt needs the support of about 70,000-80,000 Tory members to become prime minister. That's roughly the size of one parliamentary constituency".
The thing is that political parties are primarily election-fighting machines. Without them, we would be even more prone to the situation where money buys elections, with the rich being the only people who could afford to stand. If one is to reduce the role of parties, therefore, we need to change the way elections work.
For my money, I would abolish general elections altogether, as a means of choosing MPs. The big electoral event should be directed at picking the prime minister. For MPs, I have argued that there should be a means of tying constituency boundaries to those of local authorities, allowing local communities to take control.
It should be for each local community to decide the terms and conditions of the appointment of their MPs, and the money to pay their salaries and expenses should be raised locally rather than paid from central funds.
For accountability purposes, MPs should be required to publish annual reports and (audited) accounts, which would then be subject to a vote of approval from the constituents. If the report or accounts were rejected, then there should be a by-election. Otherwise, the MPs continue to stand for as long as they get affirmative votes.
For by-elections, one possible antidote to party dominance would be to have prospective candidates vetted by an independent (or cross-party) panel, appointed by the local authority. A finite number who pass the selection process might then be awarded grants from public funds, with which to fight their elections, that becoming the absolute spending limit. Party sponsorship should be prohibited and candidates should not be allowed to join political parties.
The intention here is to turn MP elections into local events. The big weakness of the current system is that people tend to vote for the party rather than the person, thus cementing in the dominance of the parties. But when there is no party to vote for, and the election is for an MP rather than for a government, one hopes that the focus would be on the people standing for election.
Here, there is also another element. Currently, many of us are appalled by the low grade of MPs in the Commons, typified by their inability to grasp the technical issues of Brexit – and much else. Yet, if we have learnt anything, it is that the scrutiny of government is a tough and demanding job. Before standing for election, candidates should at least show evidence of an ability to perform the necessary functions.
This, though, cannot be all. In his earlier piece, Saunders argues that other changes are needed. Like the buildings it inhabits, he says, parliament needs urgent renovation. The first priority, he thinks, is a new voting system that more accurately represents the spectrum of national opinion. The second of his changes is to replace the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act, which allows zombie governments to linger on when they can no longer pass their major legislation.
Thirdly, he says that parliament should radically reduce its workload, distributing more of its powers to local and devolved government. Party members are right to prize the immediacy of a smaller, more responsive democracy; but that should be open to all, and not just to a fee-paying minority.
It is interesting how many people think that tinkering with the voting system is an answer to anything - as if other systems have solved the dominance of political parties elsewhere in the world. But Suanders's third idea is very much a core part of The Harrogate Agenda (THA), where we see central government doing far too much. The larger part of the system of government could be devolved to local authorities, with the spending ambitions of local politicians constrained by annual referendums on local authority budgets.
And that was the key lesson we learnt from our work on THA – that piecemeal measures were not enough. We crafted a package of six demands which work together as a whole. The last one, incidentally, was the creation of a constitutional convention with a view to drafting a written constitution. No longer is it safe (not that it ever was) to allow either governments or MPs untrammelled power to decide on constitution issues.
If power is to flow from the people, so that eventually we get closer to being a functional democracy, then the people must be the constitutional authority who decide on the allocation of powers in this land.
Brexit: under the radar
In 1998, the EU and the US signed a broad Mutual Recognition Agreement, which included a Pharmaceutical Annex providing for anticipated and limited reliance on each other's Good Manufacturing Practices (GMP) inspections.
The year 2017 marked the entry into operation of the agreement, which entailed the EU and the US recognising inspections of manufacturing sites for human medicines conducted in their respective territories.
This agreement strengthened the reliance of the two blocs on each other's inspection expertise and resources. Initially it applied between the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and those EU Member States that the FDA had assessed.
This had been gradually extended to all EU countries and now the regulatory authorities in all 28 EU Member States have been recognised by the FDA. Meanwhile, the EU made the same determination about the FDA in June 2017.
This is according to a European Commission press release which now celebrates the unique milestone, with the FDA having completed the very last of the capability assessments of the 28 EU competent authorities, bringing Slovakia, the last outstanding EU Member State, into the fold.
This, says the press release, brings to fruition five years of close transatlantic cooperation, in a process that started nearly 20 years ago, indicative of the sort of timescale on which these agreements operate. Since May 2014, we are told, teams from the European Commission, EU national competent authorities, the European Medicines Agency (EMA) and the FDA have been auditing and assessing the respective supervisory systems.
As a result, the batch testing waiver will also start to apply. This means that the statutory "qualified persons" in EU pharmaceutical companies will be relieved of their tasks of carrying out quality control on products imported from the US, when carried out already in the United States.
This, of course, lies outside the framework of WTO Agreements and is one of dozens of detailed sectoral agreements which help facilitate trade between the US and the EU Member States – without which transatlantic trade would be a fraction of its current level.
The importance of the Agreement cannot be over-estimated. Together, Europe and the United States account for more than 80 percent of global sales of new medicines. The full implementation frees up resources in industry and in public authorities on both sides of the Atlantic, and substantially reduces the costs and complications of trading in pharmaceutical products.
Fortunately for the UK, it is included in the current deal and, on 14 February 2019, the UK and the United States signed a continuity deal which would keep the agreement in force, in respect of the UK, after it had left the EU. Ironically, the deal was signed by now ex-ambassador Sir Kim Darroch.
As reported at the time, this was further evidence that the EU Member States and the US do not operate under WTO rules, with the agreement facilitating around £7.7 billion of UK exports to the US annually - nearly 18 percent of total UK goods exports to the US.
This is despite quarter-wits such as James Delingpole and many others averring that "the vast majority of the UK's trade with countries outside the EU is done on WTO terms", compounding his own stupidity by telling us that "it would be illegal for the EU to impose punitive tariff barriers on the UK, much as it might like to" – "punitive" in this case meaning MFN tariffs.
However, it doesn't stop there. The pharmaceutical industry is a strategic sector in which EU-US regulatory cooperation is much more advanced than in most other sectors. And it is to be extended further. The MRA implementation work is now to continue with a view to expanding the operational scope to veterinary medicines, human vaccines and plasma-derived medicinal products.
Obviously, there are procedural and resource limitations which will dictate the speed with which the extensions will take effect. And while, in the UK-US Agreement there are update provisions, there is no specific (or any) guarantee that the UK will be on top of the list when it comes to arranging the pre-cursor assessments.
But even if the UK is eventually to benefit from enhanced regulatory cooperation in the pharmaceutical field, the EU has already stolen a march on the UK with a joint statement in June 2018 between Commission President Juncker and US President Donald Trump on entering a new phase of trade relations.
Some see this as a sort of slow-motion TTIP, where the parties have already started negotiations, against a pledge to work towards zero tariffs, zero non-tariff barriers, and zero subsidies on non-auto industrial goods.
Even with its continuity agreement with the US, therefore, the UK is going to be playing catch-up with the EU, which is already streets ahead in its negotiation strategy. And it cannot help that the UK will be starting afresh with a new ambassador leading our efforts by what is said to be a demoralised workforce, with overstretched departments working "at cross purposes".
It says something though that, even as of yesterday with the vacuous Johnson still prattling about tariffs, the European Commission itself says that, given the low average tariffs (under three percent), the key to unlocking the potential for US trade "lies in the tackling of non-tariff barriers (NTBs)".
Here, of course, the EU and the US have developed and continue to develop opportunities for regulatory cooperation – the key to reducing NTBs. The parties are engaged in a continuous dialogue through the Transatlantic Economic Council (TEC), which was set up in 2007 as part of a framework agreement – a formal trade cooperation treaty.
Nothing like this will exist between the UK and the US after Brexit, so before the detailed international work of regulatory cooperation can begin, the UK will have to negotiate something similar, setting up the appropriate bodies with the necessary staff and resources. This cannot happen overnight, and it then takes time to develop smooth working relations.
Already, the EU and the US, under the aegis of the TEC, have set up three subordinate forums: the Transatlantic Legislators' Dialogue; the Transatlantic Consumer Dialogue; and the Transatlantic Business Dialogue. They also facilitate formal consultations with civil society on both sides of the Atlantic.
Pundits tend to underestimate the importance (and value) of such arrangements, yet institutions such as the TEC are the main mechanisms by which continued, if unspectacular progress is assured.
And these days, with the EU-Mercosur agreement already attracting protests, it seems as if the days of the "big ticket" free trade deals could be drawing to a close.
Rather, we expect to see progress though technical, under-the-radar deals such as the now fully implemented pharmaceutical MRA. In a process known as unbundling, the parties negotiate separate, sectoral deals which, when finally linked, have the economic effects of a full-blown trade deal, without the histrionics and the build-up of opposition.
Through the three years of the Brexit debate, however, such aspects have scarcely been discussed, with the trade wonks largely obsessing about conventional deals – oblivious to the fact that the world is moving on.
In this context, the EU – in a thoroughly unspectacular way – is streets ahead of the UK. If anything the gap is set to widen after Brexit, with inexperienced British officials – and clueless consultants and advisers – stuck way down on the learning curve, barely understanding what is going on.
And, with the Oaf as the head of the UK government, things can only get worse.
Brexit: a champion brought down
I don't do posh and even the best of suits sits on me like a sack. And when animated, my North London accent still shows through, the antithesis of poshness that betrays my lower-middle class origins that I've never bothered to conceal.
Booker's funeral, therefore, was always going to be a trial. Primarily, it was an event for family, close friends and villagers and at that level it worked superbly well as a moving ceremony with the Order of Service crafted by Booker himself. But, at another entirely different level, it was a gathering of posh people - outsiders - to send off their man, the "above-the-line" Booker.
That's the man these people came to bury yesterday – their Booker, the man who lived with toffs and who could talk with them, and be them. This wasn't the Booker I worked with for 27 years – a third of his life and thousands of hours of conversation, deep into every night as we shared our experiences and perceptions of life.
Helen Szamuely, sadly deceased, put her finger on it. She likened Booker to Hudson, the butler of Upstairs, Downstairs, able to talk freely with the nobs but equally at home with the lower orders. He spanned the divide and, as his career developed, that's what made him different.
For me, Booker was a revelation. I'd started out my first career with a short-service commission in the RAF, leaning how to fly. That is all I had wanted to do since I was four, when I'd seen a Westland Dragonfly helicopter fly over our flats, asked my mum what it was. At that age, the shape remembered to this day, I learned that it was a machine that men flew, and resolved that one day I would be the man to take charge of this wondrous creation.
Sadly, it was not to be. The RAF could never make up its mind whether I was more dangerous to myself or the public at large, but one of the more correct decisions they ever made in the post-war period was to deny me the opportunity of wreaking mayhem in one of their precious machines.
That the decision totally shattered me is not an understatement and I sought solace by spending nearly a year on an Israeli kibbutz, with my wife to be – met in the Air Force. We both worked in the fields, myself alongside an Israeli parachute colonel, who had fought in the Six-Day war. Over the period, we were bombed, grenaded, shot-at and Katyusha'd, but it was great fun and an experience not to be missed.
By the time we got back to England, I was ready to start out with a new career – and it was a career I was after, not just a job. But we had returned with only ten pence between us and with no qualifications, a new start was hard to come by. Yet, oddly, it was the Job Centre which came up with the idea of my becoming a public health inspector, for which local authorities were prepared to offer salaried positions for the three years' training required.
From steely-eyed killer to sanitary man was something of a leap, but I took to my new role with the enthusiasm of a convert and found in the work challenge, enjoyment and a degree of self-respect that enabled me to re-start my broken life.
A core part of the training syllabus was the history of public health in England, which really took off in the early nineteenth century, establishing a home in local authorities where two key figures, the Medical Officer of Health (MoH) and the public health inspector (later to become Environmental Health Officers) ran the service.
This strong medical base made the UK system almost unique and entirely different from continental practice, where different traditions led to a veterinary-based, largely centralised service – especially in food control and related matters.
By this time, however, we had joined the EEC and, with the continental system established in EEC law, we were obliged progressively to abandon our way of doing things and adopt the veterinary system that had been adopted by the EU.
There are many ignorant people in this game, who aver that the EEC (and then the EU) don't threaten our culture and traditions but here, right from the start, we found we were having to abandon long-established public health traditions to accommodate the EEC's ways.
Furthermore, it wasn't just a question of differences – I felt (and still do) – that the EEC system was inferior and less flexible, while at the same time being more bureaucratic, intrusive and expensive. And, from a personal point of view, my hard-won qualification was not recognised by the EEC and I was required to become a subordinate "veterinary assistant", to people with a fraction of my knowledge and skills.
This is where Booker came in. The onslaught of the vets had turned me into a dedicated anti-EU campaigner and in our "Mr Hudson" we found a man who was not only interested in the story – he actually cared. And it was together we mounted a spirited campaign highlighting the way public health was being damaged by the EU influence, with the meat inspection service all but destroyed.
I know of no other journalist who could have taken on this task, who could have got to grips with the arcane details and then, week after week, turned events into a fascinating narrative that put EU law on the agenda in a way that it had never been before or since.
By contrast, the pathetic make-believe inventions of the Telegraph's Brussels correspondent – the infamous Boris Johnson – were an embarrassment. They missed the point and interfered with our carefully structured pieces which showed how the EU was changing the very nature of how we were governed.
What Booker had done for me, therefore, was to give me a voice. The lowly sanitary inspector found himself able to address ministers and senior civil servants. And, if they didn't listen, there was always another Booker column which could take them apart.
But what Booker did for me, he did for hundreds of others. People who had been directly affected by all manner of bureaucratic imposts found in him a man prepared to listen and master the detail, and then to craft a story in that unique way of his, which made the dull interesting and the complex simple. He gave them voices as well, and access to the legacy media which had hitherto been denied to them.
Those of us who were below the line knew exactly what a treasure we had, but the "above-the-liners" never did. They saw his popularity in the paper, but never really understood the appeal. They pretended to endorse his work, but often didn't even bother to read it – still less take the trouble to understand what he was trying to do.
Then you had the smarmy pseuds such as Daniel Hannan, who tried to emulate the Booker style, and would rip-off our work and call it his own. In the latter days, the pretenders gathered like vultures to take his crown, yet never managing to produce anything of interest, and never anything close to the depth.
Latterly, some of that story is emerging, ironically in a Europhile tract, where Booker's concerns about the Telegraph are aired.
A year after the referendum, Booker was writing private e-mails to friends, in despair at the way his paper was treating him. In November 2017, he was thus writing that, four times in the past three weeks, he had been told that "the editor" (with whom he was never allowed to have contact of any kind), had ruled that items he had suggested or written for his column could not be allowed.
That week, as he was preparing yet another comment, he found that one "entirely suitable item" had been prohibited in advance. A second in his column as submitted was also vetoed.
Yet, he complained, the reasons why he had to keep off these subjects had never been explained. But he was to surmise that he was being blocked from writing about anything to do with social workers, the family courts and children being removed from their parents – an issue he had almost made his own.
The other "veto trigger", he discovered, was anything to do with the increasing madness of any form of "political correctness". He'd had worrying noises when he'd touched on this before, but now it was apparently wholly verboten.
Interestingly, Booker observed, he was still allowed to write about the EU, on which as an "ultra-Brexiteer", the editor held views very different from his own. But this was the reason, he suspected, why he had been so severely downgraded in his column in the summer. To have included the EU in the list of subjects ruled off-limits, he surmised, might have been a bit too obvious, and prompted questions from readers.
With the column a fraction of its former size, an insider gave a clue as to the thinking behind his demotion. "The feeling on the paper was it would be too awkward to sack such a big name", he said, "so at first we tried to persuade him to give up writing about politics and try doing a countryside column". When that didn't work, "we pushed him as far out of sight as possible. The editor couldn't face doing it himself, so it was all done by minions".
To add insult to injury, his old slot was given to Daniel Hannan, for whom he had utter contempt – a man who would touch him up for free copies of The Great Deception to auction for party funds, but who neither spoke favourably of the book in his column, nor ever reviewed it.
In short, for as long as our "Mr Hudson" was a champion of us "below-the-liners", he was tolerated by the toffs because of that popularity – but never really accepted. And when they could, they did their best to bring him down.
Now he is safely in the ground, they're moving in to repossess their favourite son. "Booker never minced his words", writes Delingpole, applauding his "safe" efforts on climate change. But with the rest of his ugly pack, he was unrestrained in bitterly criticising and belittling Booker's stance on Brexit, regretting "his decline from former soundness into senescence".
Yet, this man, like the rest of the pack, knows nine-tenths of fuck-all about the EU (and even less about international trade), not that it stops him parading his ignorance. But the most astounding thing about these people is their total lack of self-awareness. Delingpole writes of Booker:
Booker wasn't happy that he got ill — he felt that he still had much work to do. But he did feel a measure of relief that he'd no longer have to put up with a world where everyone gets their lessons on global warming from a 16-year-old kid in pigtails who can see 'carbon' in the air and a doddery old Malthusian whose TV crews drive walruses off cliffs and then blame it on climate change, all courtesy of a propaganda institution so shamelessly left-biased it makes Central Television of the USSR look like Fox News.
But I'd had that same conversation with Booker, only we included the ineffable, lightweight fools such as Delingpole, for whom Booker had an amused, if affectionate contempt – a man who was so comprehensively wrong about Brexit that he strove each time he wrote to prove himself even more ignorant than in his earlier attempts.
Delingpole was at the funeral, together with Rees-Mogg and others like him. Maybe they should not have been there, but then it was their Booker they were seeing off, not ours. Having lost our champion, we don't get closure. We'll not see it this side of Brexit, if at all. Yesterday, the nobs re-asserted their authority and sought to reclaim their son.
Brexit: the dung-hill rises
To the four Northern Ireland trade groups that have rejected Shanker Singham's Alternative Arrangements Commission (AAC) interim report, another can now be added. This is the Mineral Products Association Northern Ireland (MPANI), which has produced its own response which, in turn, has been reviewed by the Irish Times.
To say that the response is uncompromising is probably a fair description, as it starts by calling into question the origins, the purpose and the evidence upon which Singham's findings and recommendations are founded.
It starts by addressing a high-flown piece of rhetoric in the Singham report, where he claims that, "All over the world, technological advances are delivering seamless borders". Thus, Singham asserts: "our goal should be to ensure that the Irish border is the most seamless anywhere and certainly state of the art technology should be an aspirational goal for all policymakers and stakeholders".
Coming right down to earth with a bump, MPANI observes that, nowhere in the actual report "does the Commission actually produce any evidence where this is the case". What the Commission does is offer a series of country-specific examples where some facilitation techniques are used, but says MPANI, "the report fails to observe that an infrastructure free border does not exist in any of the examples given".
In other words, Singham is talking the big game about seamless borders but he is unable to offer any examples (outside the EU's Single Market) where truly seamless trade applies. And, effectively calling out the BS, MPANI goes straight for the jugular, declaring: "We would caution that this Interim Report gets treated as having more status than it deserves".
That was certainly the case on Tuesday evening when Singham's vainglorious efforts were vastly over-praised by the two Tory leadership candidates, taking a wholly undeserved position as the favoured solution for replacing the Irish backstop.
Such is the grip of this dementia on the body politic, though, that the government has just advertised four Senior Policy Adviser posts to progress the concept of "alternative arrangements", together with a Head of Ministerial Support Unit for DExEU which is said to be earmarked for the charlatan himself, Shanker Singham, should he deign to work for as little as £70K per annum.
Potentially five staff, costing the taxpayers better than a quarter of a million pounds in salaries, would be better employed in painting unicorns – for all the good that they will do. But it seems there is no idea so mad that the government can resist hurling money at it, even deluding itself that the fruits of its team might be used in EU-UK negotiations.
Back in the real world, MPANI raises an interesting point about the post-Brexit ability of Northern Ireland companies to tender for and win work in the Republic of Ireland as they have done for years.
Where companies produce relatively low-value community products such as ready-mix concrete and aggregate, the main economic contribution is in the added value, where the raw materials are only a small part of the total contract. And if Northern Ireland firms cannot partake in the service element of cross-border contracts, then they could be gravely disadvantaged.
I was mooting on this the other day when our fitted refrigerator failed, and Mrs EU Referendum was rather insistent on it being replaced. There were plenty of bargains to be had, but the crucial elements were the ability of the suppliers fit the new unit and to take away the original.
Basically, without the fitting service, there could be no sale and one wonders what the situation might be with a Northern Ireland retail firm. It might be able to sell domestic refrigerators, washing machines and the rest in the Republic, but would its fitters be allowed to cross the border to install them? And then, would cross-border disposal be possible?
Small wonder that the Northern Ireland Civil Service (NICS) has now come up with an assessment of the impact of a no-deal Brexit which makes for very sombre reading, suggesting that there will be profound and long-lasting impact on NI's economy and society.
While Johnson continues to assert that the cost would be "vanishingly inexpensive", the NICS anticipates a sharp increase in unemployment, with at least 40,000 jobs at risk, based on EU export exposure. A no-deal would have immediate and severe consequences for both NI's competitiveness in the all-island economy and its place in the UK internal market.
Particularly, the impact of EU tariffs and non-tariff barriers will mean that whatever the Irish Government and/or the EU may do or not do, many businesses will no longer be able to export to the Irish market, leading to a major reduction in NI's exports to Ireland.
The impact of EU tariffs could reduce NI's exports to Ireland by eleven percent and the inclusion of non-tariff barriers could see a decline of 19 percent. This equates to a decline of between £100-180 million in NI's exports to Ireland.
Analysis of import volumes and commodity prices shows that NI businesses would have increased vulnerability to low cost non-EU imports in the GB or NI market. This risk, NICS says, is particularly acute for the agri-food sector where certain commodity prices for larger agri-food exporting non-EU countries are much lower than local prices (especially for beef).
In the view of the NICS, therefore, a no-deal would place a "twin pressure" on NI's access to the EU and UK markets, leaving businesses with very limited options and the NI economy facing an absolute reduction in exports and external sales. Tradable services, it says, would be similarly exposed. For example, businesses exporting services to Ireland would face an average increase in the cost of doing business of 14.5 percentage points.
Much of this stems from being caught in the net of non-tariff barriers, which range from the administrative cost of completing customs documentation to the regulatory barriers to trade in certain products.
These regulatory barriers to trade, NICS says, are very significant for some products such as agrifood products, medicines or chemicals to trading into the EU without a trade facilitation agreement. These barriers include the requirement to batch test medicines within the EU or that products must enter the EU via a Border Inspection Post (BIP). Most agri-food products must clear a BIP on entry to the EU, of which Ireland has just the one in Dublin, which creates additional transportation and administration costs.
For services, it adds, these barriers can relate to restrictions on data transfer between the EU and non-EU countries, lack of recognition of professional qualifications or the requirement to be an EU resident to provide certain services.
Yet, for all the gloom, I still think they are under-estimating the problem. Taking the example of my fridge, in a sale with an invoice value of £500, the fitting cost £90 and disposal £20. These services are highly competitive – all the big players offer the same prices, so if an NI firm can't deliver the service or its price rises, its actual losses will be far greater than just the service element.
This we saw with my piece back in February 2017, when I wrote about the passenger lift business. Looking at the structure of one big player, only 36 percent of its value came from new installations and 16 percent from modernisation projects. The largest single contributor (48 percent) was routine maintenance, largely a service operation.
The interrelationship between the sale of goods and services, with the former dependent on provision of the latter, is something I explored further last year. Interruption in service provision will doubtless have a significant effect on the NI economy, but the impact could be far greater than anticipated. How does an NI firm sell a car or truck into the Republic, for instance, if it cannot provide maintenance services?
For all that, none of these issues are addressed by Singham's fantasy excursion into the realm of "alternative arrangements", yet vacuous politicians remain eager to soak up his flim-flam, ignoring the reservations from the real world.
In a sense, it might be highly appropriate for Johnson to lord over this dung-hill as prime minister. As Pete says, he's the perfect figurehead for an utterly degraded politics of a politically immature, decadent country informed by an ignorant and incurious media - the ideal captain to steer the Titanic to the bottom of the sea.
Brexit: two peas in a pod
To replace the Irish backstop, Jeremy Hunt tells us in last night's televised scrap, there are "three elements" to his plan. These, he says are "based on a 202-page 'excellent' piece of work by a group of MPs led by my friend Greg Hands". It involves: "first of all, mobile checks for food products, secondly a trusted trader scheme and thirdly use of technology, not new technology but technology that already exists".
A blustering Johnson went for the same, confirming that there was "no difference between us on this point" when it came to the backstop. He too wanted checks "away from the border" although he argued that if a new deal was not ready by 31 October, "then we do it in the implementation period".
And there, naked in tooth and claw was illustrated the utter fatuity of the contemporary political "debate" – two clueless candidates for the Tory leadership mouthing meaningless nostrums which, even that very day, had been rejected by four prominent Northern Ireland business groups.
Of course, if Julie Etchingham, the half-witted woman interviewing the two candidates, had an ounce of sense or political acumen, she would have seized on the response of these groups and, even with the material presented, could have demolished this gormless pair.
But this isn't how they do things in legacy media land. They whiffle around the edges, missing the killer points, coming up with a fudged morass of verbiage which fails completely to enlighten, and merely adds to the noise.
The purpose of this "debate" might have been to tease out differences in positions between the two candidates but, in this area, all it served to do was demonstrate once again that there is nothing of substance between them – two peas in a gormless pod, neither with an idea between them of how to resolve the Brexit impasse.
As for Hunt, he cannot even bring himself correctly to identify the origins of his own stupidity, attributing Shanker Singham's Alternative Arrangements Commission (AAC) fantasy report to "a group of MPs" – who had next to no input in the formulation or writing of the work.
It might have helped proceedings if yesterday's rebuttals had been given more prominence by the legacy media but one saw the BBC and others fall into the old trap of treating the backstop as local (Northern Irish) news, failing as always to look at or understand the bigger picture.
However, despite having to fight the national battle on a local front – with local resources – the four groups involved, the British-Irish Chamber of Commerce, Manufacturing NI, the NI Retail Consortium and the Freight Transport Association did tolerably well (although the NI Retail Consortium not so much).
And if one was to look for a reasonable summary of their endeavours, the Irish Times is as good a place as any to start. It forwarded the view of Manufacturing NI, which argued that the "Singham special" would "kill firms, damage consumers and inflict a level of surveillance on to Border communities which doesn't have their consent". It would, it said, "re-establish barriers" and "fundamentally disrupt the all-island economy".
In more detail in its online report, it noted that the AAC had offered "inadequate or no solutions offered for VAT, State Aid nor providing market access". Crucially, it added, many of its proposals "would require not only exemption or derogations, but changes to EU Law and Treaties which would require approval in the EU27 including through referenda".
When it came to the crunch, Manufacturing NI thought that the proposals "would ask businesses and individuals to trust in the delivery of a mass, complex mixture of derogations, simplifications and the rest". This is despite there already existing a solution which delivers frictionless trade on the island of Ireland which is supported by the overwhelming preponderance of business, farmers and civil society.
In this, the group took the view that it was "not clear that border communities in particular would give their consent to an increased level of enforcement, greater intrusion of HMRC and others, when it has been committed until now that there will be none".
This, presumably, was a reference to an earlier response to the AAC's work, where one of Singham's gofers had been told that full police support would be needed for officials if they tried to go into nationalist areas in Northern Ireland to do Brexit checks.
Adding detail, Manufacturing NI noted that many of the suggestions made on SPS "stretch the rules (exemptions, derogations etc.) a significant distance beyond what is provided for in EU law". For instance, it said, "the suggestions that inspections could take place at locations which are not Border Inspection Posts (BIPs) but there does not appear to be provision for this in EU law".
And, in a direct challenge to the competence of the report authors, it pointed out that "SPS is not customs". Given the impact SPS will have on creating a Border, it said, "it is perhaps advisable that the AAC Technical Panel would include a greater level of technical understanding in this area to guide its work in the next stage and before publishing its final report".
As regards mobile border inspection posts, the group acknowledged that there were "some flexibilities in the Union Customs Code" but none of those, it said, "removes the need for checks". Furthermore, it said, "Regulations on Border Inspections Posts are not covered by the UCC. So, again, there would be a requirement for significant Treaty amendment and approval from the EU-27".
Where the group really failed to score was in omitting reference to Singham's own claim than his Commission had "intentionally restricted our work to existing legal frameworks, administrative processes, software and systems solutions and existing technology devices to ensure that the ideas in this report could be agreed, implemented and tested within three years".
Yet here we have the trade association remarking that the core proposals in the AAC report have "no provision" in EU law, and that there would be "a requirement for significant Treaty amendment and approval from the EU-27".
Actually, we're looking at law changes rather than treaty change, but the point is valid. And since the EU has only just revised the whole corpus of law on official controls – which do not take effect until 14 December – it is very unlikely that it could be prevailed upon to change the law yet again. The fact is that Singham is working outside the current legal framework, inventing provisions that do not exist. This must undermine his own claim that his report "could be agreed, implemented and tested within three years".
Startlingly, one of his inventions has now reached the very top, with Hunt last night arguing for "mobile checks for food products". If only he could have been told, there and then, that the only thing the EU permits is the "mobile official control team", providing staff for dispersed BCPs performing controls on consignments of "unprocessed logs and sawn and chipped wood".
It is on such things, therefore, that detail matters, but where the NI groups acquitted themselves with less than full honours. The NI Retail Consortium, for instance, limited itself to observing that, "we know of no border where mobile SPS infrastructure operates effectively at the moment".
This, bluntly, is as weak as ditchwater. Indeed, there is no border where mobile SPS infrastructure operates effectively at the moment, but the reason for that is that mobile units – even if practicable (which they are not) – are not permitted by EU law.
Thus it is that a candidate for the office of prime minister gets away with uttering complete tosh on prime time television, and no one has to the wit to call him out, while the very organisations which could have hung him out to dry, drop the pass.
Therefore, it is not only the prattle of empty-headed media commentators which lets us down. Players right down the food chain need to up their games if we are to make a dent on the intellectual vacuum at the top of politics. As long as vacuity survives unchallenged, that's all we can expect from our politicians.


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Immigration | Rhode Island House | Rhode Island Politics
Watching the House: Different Perspectives on Illegal Immigration
Then there is H 5367 (Proposed by Representatives Peter Palumbo–Deputy Majority Leader, Stephen Ucci, Joe Trillo, Raymond Church, and Arthur Corvese) which seeks to create "THE ILLEGAL IMMIGRATION RELIEF ACT". The purpose of which is:
This chapter seeks to secure to those lawfully present in the United States and this state, whether or not they are citizens of the United States, the right to live in peace free of the threat [of] crime, to enjoy the public services provided by this state without being burdened by the cost of providing goods, support and services to aliens unlawfully present in the United States, and to be free of the debilitating effects on their economic and social well being imposed by the influx of illegal aliens to the fullest extent that these goals can be achieved consistent with the Constitution and Laws of the United States and the state of Rhode Island.
Read it all. It holds both illegal immigrants and those who employe accountable. Meanwhile, H 5392 (Proposed by Representatives Jon Brien, Douglas Gablinske, Arthur Corvese, Palumbo, and Timothy Williamson–Senior Deputy Majority Leader) puts the onus completely upon the employer side of the equation. Technically, it is an attempt to get Rhode Island to get in line with the "Basic Pilot Program Extension and Expansion Act of 2003", which extended the Federal employment eligibility verification program. Note that both bills were sponsored by Palumbo and Corvese, which may indicated that they will eventually be consolidated. At least I hope so. The problem with the second bill is that it, in essence, appears to hammer employers but leave alone the illegal immigrants themselves. That is only a half-way measure.
Watching the House: Civil Unions
Watching the House: Adjusting the Political System
DAVID MOHR
FROM DAVID MOHR (SGT) 301 6992636 Meet Stephanie Mohr, dangerous and hardened criminal, now serving a ten year prison sentence at the Federal Prison Camp in Alderson, West Virginia, thanks to tenacious federal prosecutors and tough judge. Stephanie's crime? Her dog bit a man in the leg. This was not just any dog. Valk, a German Shepherd, worked for the Prince George's County Police Department, Maryland. Police Officer Stephanie Mohr was his K-9 partner. The victim? Ricardo Mendez, an illegal alien from El Salvador, complete with criminal record, was found with an accomplice by police at 1 a.m. atop the roof of a commercial building in the suburb of Takoma Park, Maryland. Prosecutors were able to convince a jury, that the dog bite wasn't necessary, thus violating Ricardo's civil rights. And for that, Stephanie Mohr, age 35, decorated cop, loyal daughter, devoted mother…is spending ten years in the prime of her life in a prison cell, branded a criminal for life. Everyone reading this must be shaking their heads. Here, in the land of the free, where we cherish a constitution painstakingly designed to protect Americans from injustice, the justice system creates its own injustice. There's more to this incredible story. * Stephanie Mohr wasn't charged with a crime until five years later, one day before the statute of limitations expired. * Neither of the two illegals, including the man that was bitten, ever filed a complaint. * The case took two trials. In the first, eleven jurors voted for acquittal, with one hold-out. But the government went after her again, this time gaining a conviction. * The main prosecution witness faced criminal charges and testified in exchange for a deal It happened on September 21, 1995. Stephanie had been a cop for two years. Her short career — serving… Read more »
Harriet Coxxx
This whole story makes me sick. Not only will I contribute to Stephanie's legal defense fund, my husband and I will begin praying for her. Her reward is due and will be paid.
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The Man Who Could Have Been Pope: 'The Church is 200 Years Out of Date' September 2, 2012 Hemant Mehta
The Man Who Could Have Been Pope: 'The Church is 200 Years Out of Date'
Socially liberal Cardinal Carlo Maria Martini could have been Pope (he was passed over for Joseph Ratzinger). He died a couple of days ago and his final interview was a well-deserved condemnation of Catholic Church practices:
"Our culture has aged, our churches are big and empty and the church bureaucracy rises up; our rituals and our cassocks are pompous"…
"The church must admit its mistakes and begin a radical change, starting from the pope and the bishops," he said in the interview. "The pedophilia scandals oblige us to take a journey of transformation."
Cardinal Martini, famous for comments that the use of condoms could be acceptable in some cases, told interviewers the church should open up to new kinds of families or risk losing its flock.
"A woman is abandoned by her husband and finds a new companion to look after her and her children." he said. "A second love succeeds. If this family is discriminated against, not just the mother will be cut off, but also her children."
"The church is 200 years out of date," he said. "Why don't we rouse ourselves? Are we afraid?"
For what it's worth, he said many of these things during the course of his life, too. But the Church didn't seem to take his views very seriously. Too bad they just lost one of their better voices.
Church Holds Garage Sale for Community... Gives Everything Away for Free
September 2, 2012 Alabama High School JROTC Instructor Makes Anti-gay Comments; District Officials Look the Other Way


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Tackling the human resources for health crisis: A view from RESYST
We know that there is a health worker crisis in Africa. We've heard that nurses and midwives are part of the solution. So, what do we do about it? At the African Medical & Research Foundation (AMREF), we are actively engaged in health programmes and policy formulation with Ministries of Health across Africa. Our health research portfolio prioritises health systems strengthening. As part of the DFID-funded RESYST Research Programme Consortium we have been looking at training for nurses and midwives in Africa.
Whilst there are many/an increasing number of private nurse training institutions in Kenya/low and middle-income countries, little is known about the curriculum and content of the courses and the quality of the teaching, and also whether these institutions seek to address human resource challenges and public health needs in their local environments (such as a lack of health workers in rural areas).
Resilient and responsive health systems
RESYST is an international consortium led by the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine that conducts health systems and policy research in Africa and Asia, to help countries find sustainable solutions to their health systems questions. During the week beginning 16th September, the consortium held its third annual meeting, hosted by the Health Strategy and Policy Institute in Hanoi, Vietnam.
The meeting focused on RESYST's major research themes: (1) health workforce, (2) health governance and (3) financing for health systems. As part of the research, two learning sites are being developed in Kenya and South Africa, and longitudinal studies of nurse cohorts are being conducted in Thailand, South Africa and also in India. Under the health workforce theme, led by Duane Blaauw and Mylene Lagarde, AMREF and IHPP are examining the emerging role of private sector nursing training institutions, in conjunction with the Nursing Council of Kenya, the Uganda Nurses and Midwives Council and the Thai Nursing Council. The active engagement of the nursing councils in these three countries helps keep the research relevant to policy-makers and dramatically improves the likelihood that findings will be adopted by national governments.
Some of the best aspects of the face-to-face meetings have been dialogues across the research teams. AMREF's work has benefitted substantially from IHPP's experience in Thailand and Duane's advice from the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg. By the next RESYST annual meeting in August 2014, we expect to be comparing datasets, discussing analytical approaches and planning policy briefs and publications based on evidence about nursing training in East Africa and Thailand.
We also had excellent presentations on gender perspectives in health systems research, led by Sally Theobald of REBUILD (another DFID Research Programme Consortium) and Pamoja Communication's Kate Hawkins. We collaborated on developing a theory of change for integrating gender into our research and have already modified some research plans to incorporate this week's discussions on gender.
AMREF expects its engagement with RESYST to strengthen the evidence we can bring to decision-makers in Africa. Our research on the training of nurses in Kenya and Uganda is a start – we are looking to these kinds of research networks to enhance the evidence we can generate from our 150 health projects across the African continent, and to bring that evidence to health practitioners who need it. For a non governmental organisation like AMREF being part of the RESYST network provides an exciting opportunity which we hope will lead to real and significant change on the ground.
By Ravi Ram, AMREF
Dr. Ravi M. Ram is the Head of Monitoring and Evaluation for AMREF Headquarter, in Nairobi, Kenya. He is responsible for M&E systems across AMREF's 150 health projects in Africa, focusing on strategic direction and planning, programme quality and impact assessments, use of evidence to influence health policy and practice, and health systems research on human resources for health and mHealth.
Many thanks to our colleagues from HSPI in Hanoi, particularly Dr. Mai Oanh and Dr. Khuong Anh Tuan, and to the Government of Vietnam for providing a wonderful environment in Hanoi and for hosting the RESYST meeting.
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Disability in South Sudan
Decades of conflict in South Sudan, pre and post-independence in 2011, poverty and poor access to services have increased the rate of disability and rendered people with disabilities more marginalised and excluded as a result of the numerous attitudinal, environmental, and institutional barriers they face, and the lack of concerted efforts to include them. This… Read more
Access to services, Disability, Inclusive development
Empowerment, Voice and Accountability for Better Health and Nutrition (EVA-BHN) Assessment: Executive Summary
EVA-BHN is an £18.86m health voice and accountability programme working at community, district and province level in Punjab and Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) since February 2014. It is part of DFID's Provincial Health and Nutrition Programme (PHNP) to support delivery of an Essential Health Services Package (EHSP) by the Governments of Punjab and KP. This assessment… Read more
essential health services, EVA-BHN, health and nutrition outcomes, independent assessment


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