Business
The Withdrawal Agreement needs to By Adrian Fisher MBE When something is utterly, absolutely wrong, how much time should a government let pass before taking action? The Brexit Withdrawal Agreement with its customs border down the Irish Sea is proving to be a brutal, vindictive and terrible mistake. DFDS traffic into Northern Ireland is down 70% and imports to Northern Ireland are down 33% since the beginning of January 2021. This is not a covid-like crisis that will be overcome within a couple of years, and then something we can learn to live with, as we do with flu, AIDS, MERS and SARS. There is nothing that can “bed down” and go away. It is fundamentally flawed. It is an urgent crisis. It is tinder-dry lethal. Within weeks of January 1, the Northern Ireland economy has gone into systemic shock. A business I know paid out £240,000 by credit card for 20 construction deliveries all essential to a project, but only 17 arrived. The outstanding three items were credited, and the fresh orders placed. Except that now no hauliers will transport anything. The company has thus £200,000 tied up in stock, but cannot start work, nor pay its staff. The company may be able to hold out for perhaps 180 days. The staff are only two pay cheques away from ruin, just 60 days. These are our fellow UK citizens. No one can hang out for six months, let alone four years when there will be a vote. In the absence of registered hauliers, a black market is already springing up at swingeing prices yet failing to collect taxes, prompting unattractive comparisons with non-tax collecting parts of southern Europe. A business colleague based in Scotland wrote: “We have a lot of NI customers and to a man they are pissed off big time and say the atmosphere is very bad. 66
Cartoon by Lyndon Wall justsocaricatures.co.uk
“A border has been created in the Irish sea without the consent of those living in Northern Ireland completely against the letter and the spirit of the Good Friday agreement. Adrian, you and others warned against it when it was first proposed and you were 100% right. What is so ridiculous is that all the inspections are being done for inspection’s sake. In reality, virtually nothing is going to leak into the EU single market via Ireland, since the cost of reexporting from Ireland to the Continent will preclude it. There is going to be a serious bust-up over it and it is better it is between the Government and the EU rather than between Unionists who feel abandoned and Nationalists. UK ministers need to stop weaseling and start facing reality.” What’s this got to do with the rural economy of the Blackmore Vale of Dorset and Somerset? In our own business, we have a prospect for a hedge maze in Northern Ireland. We intended to use a Hampshire-based grower, as we did for the hedge maze at Leeds Castle. But since January 2021, we cannot use them unless we wash the soil off all the roots before we send them, which is
totally impractical, costly and will kill the bushes. This is like the Merchant of Venice, where the merchant could “have his pound of flesh” provided no human blood was spilt. So we will be forced to import bushes from the Netherlands, which must pass through England as a sealed consignment, because from the new year English soil is now ‘potentially contaminated’. The bushes may not be such great quality, will cost more, and we are forced to import when we would prefer to buy British. This is all to move things within our own country, from one part of the United Kingdom and Northern Ireland to another. In our own business, mirror mazes have a steel structure. Despite “free access to a single market” there are steel quotas in place. Any steel that crosses the Irish Sea to Northern Ireland, where they make railway carriages and ships, is considered part of the UK’s steel export quota into the EU. So we face a steel import duty of 25% to export a mirror maze to the EU, through lack of remaining UK steel quota. And therefore potentially lose the sale to a EU competitor on price. A relative of mine has a business
in southern England making chutneys. If he wishes to export to Northern Ireland, he must label every jar with the name and address of the intended retailer, or else the goods will be refused entry. In England, I don’t see every jar in our local Tesco inflexibly labelled with their Blandford address, to be sold there and no other Tesco branch. Another colleague wrote: “The EU’s behaviour over the vaccines was an immense slipping of the veil. Behind that veil we saw, for a while, with perfect clarity, what a totally savage set-up the EU really is. If we hadn’t twigged before, when Greece and Italy were being mauled, this was unmissable. We always vaguely knew that the NI border was being ‘weaponised’ for the purposes of bringing the UK as a whole to heel during the Brexit negotiations, now we could see it in High Definition. I am sure I am not alone in feeling a burning outrage that seed potatoes cannot go from GB to NI if there is soil on them.” This is the amputation of a sovereign nation, and completely unacceptable. It was driven by vindictiveness and punishment. On Sky News, 9 December 2018, former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab said: “You would hear swirling around in Brussels, particularly around the European Commission’s SecretaryGeneral Martin Selmayr …. that losing Northern Ireland would be the price the UK would pay for Brexit. This was reported to me through the diplomatic FINDING INVESTMENTS Are you used to trying to find stuff on the internet? If so, and you are interested in investing, and maybe familiar with Trustnet and MarketWatch, you are on. Good hourly rate + bonuses (and for enthusiasm). peterrouth456@gmail.com 01258 863682. Shroton
