Who is in charge?

The recent report from the House of Commons Home Affairs Committee on preparations for Brexit makes grim reading. Almost a year ago the committee warned that post-Brexit customs arrangements are the most important and time-sensitive of all the challenges of Brexit.

Six months later the head of the civil service, Sir Amyas Morse, announced he was very concerned about the lack of leadership and co-ordination of Brexit preparations, saying plans risked "falling apart like a chocolate orange". When he asked Mr Davis, the Brexit secretary, about seeing a report on the overall preparedness across government the response he received was "vague". As a result Sir Amyas publicly called for central coordination and central support for all government departments - "strong integration" - instead of each department doing its own thing.

The government response to Sir Amyas was, "Cabinet ministers meet regularly on Brexit to coordinate work on this and we have put forward a series of bills in the Queen's Speech to prepare the country for leaving the EU."

A few ministers meet every so often and put forward a couple of bills? This is the government's coordination strategy?

Now, once again and a year further on, the question being asked is: who is in charge?

The concluding statement of the most recent Home Affairs Committee report is a plea in all but name:

"The Government’s approach seems to us to lack focus, urgency and above all leadership. Any progress seems to rely on working groups of government officials, with no meaningful ministerial leadership...a fully joined-up approach from the Government is urgently needed, as well as proper coordination with the private sector. The impetus to achieve this is only likely to come from a named senior Government Minister taking responsibility."

Of course there is a dearth of leadership in our present government, of course this is a poisoned chalice, but is there really not one single senior Tory with the skills and courage to take on this task?

Bordering on madness

The EU strongly backs Eire's insistence that there must be no future regulatory divergence between Eire and Ulster. This would allow continued free movement of goods across the border. Due to their geographical position, Eire does a lot of trade with Northern Ireland so a hard Brexit (and thus a hard border) would damage them far more than other EU countries.

What is not possible is to remove Northern Ireland from the single market while maintaining the current invisible border.

Vague suggestions of a technological border solution or even a 'non-border' don't address this issue, but then how do we answer it? The issue for Mrs May is that keeping Ulster aligned with the EU means regulatory divergence between them and the rest of the UK.

Retaining EU regulations just in Northern Ireland could be done - and similar special regulations are already in force there (for example, in the all-island electricity market). We negotiated something similar for Hong Kong. No doubt, however, the Brexiteer headbangers will cry 'betrayal' and Mrs May is too weak to stand against them.

Even worse, her sickly and divided government is shored up by the DUP who fear anything that would weaken their link with the mainland. The DUP has said that they will withdraw their support if Northern Ireland was made to mirror Eire's rules - rules set by the EU which would not be applied on the mainland. Without regulation harmonisation however there could not be a soft border.

Mrs May hopes that she can avoid stirring up trouble by not answering the question, putting it off until later in the negotiations. However Eire has threatened to block talks from moving on until this is sorted. Mrs May might risk calling their bluff, of course, as a no-deal Brexit would be at least half as bad for them as for us.

The Irish deal was always a fudge with much left undefined, and that is why it worked - everyone felt that they had options. Brexit is closing down those options.

Zero tariffs

Economists all agree that free trade is a Good Thing. If you reduce barriers to trade then your manufacturing and service industries will specialise in what they are best at, boosting exports, productivity and wages. Certain sectors will disappear as other countries specialise in those areas and we import those items and services rather than produce them ourselves.

This also happens within countries - there are steel-producing regions (Sheffield in the UK) and service-oriented regions (London). It is happening within the EU since trade barriers are low or non-existent. For example, London has the greatest concentration of financial services in the EU.

Pro-Brexit economists say that it is therefore a no-brainer to leave the EU and unilaterally reduce our tariffs to zero. Instead of restricting ourselves to a free market within the EU we can trade with the whole world on the same terms.

Certainly this model would solve our customs problem - essentially we would only need to check for illegal imports.

So why are the Brexit-boosters trying desperately to set up trade deals? Because setting our tariffs to zero won't mean other countries would do the same. So our exports will have tariffs imposed, while imports won't. How do we bring in trade deals? We offer good terms. If we are already giving away zero tariffs then we have nothing to offer.

Clearly having tariffs imposed on our exports means our industries will find it hard to compete abroad. For example, WTO rules impose a tariff of 10% on cars. In contrast, overseas companies will have unrestricted access to the UK. It doesn't take an economist to see that many of our industries will take a severe beating. As one pro-Brexit economist admits, "you are going to have to run [the car industry] down."

Britain today has a current account deficit of £23 billion (it was zero in the 90s). Eliminating tariffs without any preparation would destroy much of British industry and ramp up imports to unprecedented levels, dragging the pound ever lower and pushing prices ever higher.

If we crash out of the EU we need to cushion the disaster. We need to give industry time to adjust to harsher trading conditions, not impose the harshest possible outcome instantly. Britain was working before the referendum. Why break it?

Reds in our beds

Mr Putin likes to have influence in the EU. That is hardly surprising as the EU is a very large, very successful, very powerful neighbour. Look at the problems caused in Mexico by that sort of situation.

The problem is that Mr Putin prefers to use propaganda rather than diplomacy, and his background in the KGB means that he is very good at propaganda. Not just the content but also the channels he uses.

The Russian media outlets RT and Sputnik are well known for their biased news coverage, and even fake news reports. However, not many British people watch these channels. Of far more concern is the admissions by Google that in recent EU votes they sold Mr Putin's minions advertising slots, slots for ads persuading people to vote for Brexit.

Equally concerning is the number of Twitter accounts that the Russian state controls, many being run from a 'troll factory' in St Petersburg. 150,000 Russian Twitter accounts switched to focusing on Brexit in the run up to the referendum and posted around 45,000 messages about Brexit in the two days before it. After the vote they simply switched back to their pro-Putin posts.

Facebook accounts were also involved, but it is impossible to discover how many. Facebook has refused to help investigate how its platform was used by the Kremlin, even though Facebook-based propaganda is more influential than Twitter feeds. Facebook's boss, Mr Zuckerberg, stated it was a "pretty crazy idea" that Facebook posts could influence votes - despite raking in $10 billion in advertising revenues. Clearly advertisers think it can influence people even if he doesn't.

Meanwhile the Legatum Institute is also being investigated for long-term Russian influence. The institute is an outspoken advocate for Brexit and has very close links with Conservative Brexiteers - for example, Mr Gove and Mr Johnson's recent letter to Mrs May voicing concerns about her approach to Brexit was adapted from a paper produced by the institute.

Of course, it may be that Mr Putin has simply been giving some moral and financial support to his admirer Mr Farage and has no wish to see a fractured and weakened Europe.

None of this invalidates a single vote in the referendum. People voted freely, and we can't say whether any were influenced by the propaganda. The point of the investigations is to find out exactly what is happening, and prevent future elections being subverted by foreign powers. You could say it is "taking back control".

Non-tariff barriers

The UK has almost never managed to export more than it imported - even during the years of Empire and the industrial revolution. This is despite the UK still being one of the world's biggest manufacturers. We export a lot, we just import even more.

And even though we are big manufacturers it is services that really earn us our keep. We exported £26 billion worth of motor vehicles in 2015 - but earned £29 billion from travel services and £50 billion from financial services. Services officially make up 43% of our exports, but this is probably a serious underestimate as earnings from services are hard to count and even hard to categorise - if Rolls Royce sells you an engine then is the maintenance contract counted as part of the engine cost or a service?

All this sounds like good news - exporting services will mean avoiding all those dreary tariff arguments. Who cares if we are ejected from the single market and have to trade using WTO rules, we are selling services which aren't covered by either.

The bad news is non-tariff barriers. The world goods trade has already gone global. Tariffs are at their lowest ever in history. It is now the non-tariff barriers that cause problems. For goods this means quality and safety standards. For services - well, there is a reason that trade regulations rarely cover services.

Services have a lot of rules attached because the damage done by dodgy services can be hard to detect, take a long time to kick in, and can become very expensive. Discovering your beef burger is half horsemeat may be distressing but you just chuck it and buy a fishburger. If someone sells you substandard financial advice then you end up retiring without a pension and living off state benefits.

So services have to conform to local rules and standards and providers need locally-recognised qualifications. To sell services internationally it is necessary therefore to harmonise regulations across borders and cross-recognise equivalent qualifications. It also means having an supranational adjudicator to rule on disagreements.

Of course, bowing to laws made elsewhere and accepting the decisions of a non-elected, non-UK body will mean giving up our new-won 'sovereignty'. But it's that or give up trading services.

Ironically, the EU has got closer to allowing free trade in services than any other group of nations ever has. Shame we're leaving.

Paying by instalments

Food prices are growing at their fastest in the past four years, going up another 4% and adding another £140 to the average family's annual grocery bill. So far Brexit has cost the average worker a week's pay in reduced earnings and inflation. The LSE has calculated that overall household costs have gone up by £400 due to inflation since the referendum.

GDP growth is predicted to stay well below 2%  for the next five years - the first time in recent history - which will keep us at the bottom of the G7 growth league table. In contrast, the EU has seen a surge in business activity, with manufacturers in particular celebrating the best month in nearly twenty years.

The Institute of Fiscal Studies predicts that it will be another twenty years before real wages start to rise again - and forty until our national debt falls back to normal levels. That's the positive view - assuming there isn't a recession in that time. The good news is that the Resolution Foundation and the Office for Budget Responsibility are a bit less gloomy, predicting only ten years of falling living standards.

The UK's tribulations parallel those of Japan over the past twenty years. Their problems also began with a debt-fuelled real estate bubble bursting in 1991. Wages flat-lined, banks weren't lending, businesses weren't investing. Meanwhile the population was ageing, reducing the number of people earning, and those that were earning were saving rather than spending.

Although we are still spending, the spending is paid for by borrowing so it can't go on for much longer. Furthermore, the Japanese government eventually lifted themselves out of the economic mire by cutting interest rates to the bone to discourage saving. We are already just about as low as it is possible to go.

The Brexit cheerleaders demand everyone is positive, but there is a difference between being positive and denying reality. We will get a bit more sovereignty and a different colour for our passports, but we have to be prepared for paying the price of these.

The gruesome twosome

Mr Johnson and Mr Gove are back together again. Their idea is that together they can make Mrs May do what they want, essentially becoming puppet-masters of the Tory leadership.

It is rather surprising that they have kissed and made up. Mr Gove played a most Shakespearean part in Mr Johnson's failed bid for the top job. Backing him to the hilt until the very last minute... then burying his dagger to the hilt in Mr Johnson's back.

You would think that Mr Johnson would be cautious about putting his future in Mr Gove's hands once more, but then Mr Johnson is not himself in possession of any moral fibre, for him betrayal is but a broken promise that will be forgiven and forgotten. He also sees his chance of becoming PM inexorably slipping away, and this is likely to be his last chance to reposition himself as a candidate.

On the other hand, why does Mr Gove think that the duplicitous and gaffe-prone Mr Johnson is an asset? Mr Johnson's most recent blunder was a careless statement that may land a British woman five more years in an Iranian jail. He won't even admit he made a mistake. Though, fair's fair, Mr Gove is not particularly reliable on facts either.

The Brexit secretary, Mr Davis, seems unlikely to welcome them to a Brexiteer love-in. Mrs May has already taken away Mr Davis's control over the officials negotiating Brexit, deciding she can do a better job herself. Mr Barnier, the EU chief negotiator, doesn't seem to pay Mr Davis much attention, forcing Mrs May to intercede personally when things bog down. Now the gruesome twosome are ganging up against him.

Good to see how strong and stable the senior Tory leadership is leading us into the most difficult negotiations since Adam and Eve were caught scrumping.

Citizen's rights

The Brexit negotiations are at a crucial point. In a couple of weeks the EU Council will decide whether things can move on to the next phase.

In order to move on, sufficient progress must have been made in the current phase. One of the areas for negotiation in this phase has been the rights of British citizens who live in Europe. So, has sufficient progress been made? In short, no. The Leave campaign promised that British people living in Europe would be not be affected by Brexit, that their rights would be protected. Although both sides agree about this they still have not inked in the details, nor have they guaranteed them.

Does this mean that phase two will be delayed? Maybe not. Both sides would like to move on to phase two and the term 'sufficient' is rather vague. It is possible that they will shelve the final details for later, and even use our citizens as negotiating levers (as Mr Davis, our chief negotiator, suggested he would at the beginning).

Remain in France Together is lobbying MEPs to make sure they understand both what rights are at issue and why they are in danger of being lost. You too can help. They provide a form letter and links to MEPs. All you need to do is email the letter to your own MEPs.

These are British citizens. They should not be used as pawns.

Shrugging off Brexit

The EU economy is growing much faster than ours, the UK and Italy are well to the rear of the pack. The single currency itself is doing so well that the EU is unable to raise interest rates for fear of pushing the euro too high. The damage already done to the UK by Brexit has warned off other EU members, so support for other EU exits has collapsed.

The EU is also planning ahead. They accept that the UK will leave, and are focused on other things. Mr Macron is shaking up the French economy, and has plans for increased integration of the core EU members. We, on the other hand, still have no idea what we even want to happen - let alone what is going to happen. We don't even know who will be PM in January.

It is reminiscent of a group of friends deciding to go a film. Britney stomps out because no-one wants to see the film she chose, slams the door and as she marches off she looks round - to find no-one is following her, in fact they have already dismissed her from their thoughts and are happily chatting away inside selecting a restaurant. Worse, the door has locked behind her.

Right now we are about to stomp out. The door hasn't yet closed behind us. If we really are going to head on out then we need to make sure that we are prepared - where did we put our coat and umbrella? do we need a taxi? - and understand that while our mates will be sorry to see us go it isn't really all that important to them. If we don't want to come along then so be it.

Mrs May does appear to understand this. She wants a transition deal to give us time to sort ourselves out. She has accepted that we will need to pay our debts. She may even realise that the EU will simply shrug its shoulders if she threatens 'no deal'.

If so then she also knows that it is up to the UK to make the running in the negotiations. They have things we want but we don't have much to offer them. Worse, even if we negotiated a dream deal we would still have a mountain of jobs to do, sorting out laws, regulators, trade and so on.

It won't be a dream, but Mrs May should do her best to prevent it becoming a nightmare. She needs to agree to the EU payments and EU citizen rights so that we can sign off on stage one of the negotiations and get on with sorting out the trade deal.

False assumptions

Mr Rees-Mogg has endorsed a "budget for Brexit" produced by Economists for Free Trade (EFT). EFT is headed by Professor Minford, a Brexit believer.

Their idea is to reduce taxes and trade barriers to encourage trade with the rest of the world. Singapore has successfully used this model, though there are costs. Their government has set most import tariffs to 0%, and has put few restrictions on overseas investment. International trade in Singapore is equivalent to 300% of its GDP.

EFT claim that copying them will bring in £135 billion over the first five years.  Professor Minford also believes that the prices of imported goods will fall by 10%, based on the comparative prices of goods inside and outside the EU.  He says that less sunny forecasts by other economists and the Office for Budget Responsibility are based on "false assumptions".

Professor Minford does admit that the policy would hit British industry hard. He says, "manufacturing would be subjected to competition. The metal-bashing element, the pure making element, would reduce substantially."

Again, taking Singapore as a model, his suggestion is that "those industries doing that would go up the value-added chain and become more and more high tech."

Easy to say when you are an ivory tower academic whose 'reduce substantially' means thousands of people being thrown out of work when their factories close. He surely realises that industries and their workers don't magically become 'more high tech'. The reality on the ground will be industries collapsing, lay-offs, rising unemployment. The transition will be painful, old industries dying and being replaced - we hope - with something else. Skilled workmen will be deskilled overnight. And not every metal-basher can retrain as a robot repairman.

Note too that reducing our tariffs to zero does not mean our trading partners have to do the same. So we will be trading at a disadvantage to them. Given that most tariffs are at around 3% it does seem curious that Professor Minford believes making them 0% will do so much magic. How similar is Britain really to Singapore? Can copying a couple of ideas of theirs turn us into Singapore-Upon-Thames, or are these his own "false assumptions"?

In fact, the professor ignores the biggest difference between us and Singapore - our productivity is much lower than theirs. We need to sort that out before throwing open the flood gates.

One way to teach a person to swim is to throw them in at the deep end. They learn or they don't - sink or swim. Mr Rees-Mogg and his professor want to throw our economy into the deep end - hoping some of it will float. Fortunately Mrs May cares more about people than money.

Setting a deadline

Mrs May has come in for a lot of criticism for proposing to fix the exact date of Brexit. The nub of the objections is that this prevents flexibility - what if the agreement is almost done but just needs a couple more days? Forcing Brexit at that point would be sheer lunacy.

What the objectors fail to understand is that an inflexible deadline can actually work in a negotiator's favour - as does a believable willingness to walk away with nothing. The point is that you are betting that the other side prefers some deal to no deal. A deadline means they can't use the strategy of wearing you down, they need to focus on what they really want and concede things you really want.

If some deal is 'still two days away' but the deadline is midnight tonight then everyone goes all out to sort it before the final stroke of twelve, working through the night. This is how company mergers and acquisitions are run.

So Mrs May is doing the right thing?

What Mrs May doesn't understand is that a deadline only works if you are absolutely clear about what you must have in the agreement and what you can concede. If you don't know that but your opponents do then a deadline gives them the advantage.

Even if Mrs May ever decides what she is aiming for and is confident that the rest of the EU will agree to it, then she still isn't strong enough to set a deadline. This is because the 'no deal' threat is not credible from our side.

Ironically it is a credible threat from the EU side, though they are far too experienced to bandy it around like our Brexit headbangers do. Every delay the EU negotiators introduce is a subtle reminder that 'no deal' is a very bad deal for the UK, but not all that bad for the EU (bar Ireland which would take about half the damage we will).

Mrs May should forget messing about with deadlines and focus on sorting out her cabinet and sorting out her Brexit plans.

He who pays the whistler calls the tune

Brexit is going to be very expensive. For example the government is budgeting £1 million a day to prepare for Brexit - this is just for the bureaucracy and ignores structural and ongoing costs such as increased border staff and facilities. Cornwall wants £60 million a year to make up for the EU handouts they won't be getting after they voted to leave the EU. Other regions will no doubt want the same (even if they aren't so hypocritical about it). Farmers want state support to carry on as before, as do all the other Britons who benefit from EU funds.

There will be other costs - crops are right now being left to rot in their fields as there is no one to pick them, there is a critical shortage of nurses, London-based financial services are relocating to the Continent. Not to mention that losing the benefits of EU membership will cost between £19 and £26 billion a year.

Bus-side economics tells us that we will have £350 million a week to pay for all this. Even if this were true it wouldn't go very far.

Given all that, it might seem sensible to try to drive a hard bargain with the EU over the divorce settlement.

The EU has recently asked for another £6 billion to cover pension costs. This is on top of the £47 billion it already wants. Mr Johnson suggests we tell them to "go whistle" for any payments - so be thankful he isn't allowed anywhere near the negotiations. Instead Mrs May and Mr Davis have steadily softened their position on payments.

Why? The point is that we are negotiating for our long-term economic future and time is running out. As Mr Barnier, the EU chief negotiator, said, "I'm not hearing any whistling, just the clock ticking."

If we refuse to pay then we get no deal - and a reputation for reneging on our trade agreements. We certainly couldn't expect the EU to do anything to help make Brexit work. We will be hurting economically for a long time.

If we pay then we get a better deal and a more willing trading partner - a trading partner that currently takes 50% of our exports. The sum we owe is very large, but we can afford it, it will be a one-off hit and we will get long-term benefits from it.

By paying our debts we get what we want from the negotiations. He who pays the whistler calls the tune.

Fight for your rights

The Conservatives are meant to be the party of small government and of personal liberty. Labour is supposed to be the party which wants us to work collectively for the good of all, requiring a lot more central direction by government.

In essence then Tories put individual rights above a government-mandated general good, while Labour do the opposite. Britain has generally managed to steer a balanced course between the two extremes.

However, in today's political swirl it is the Conservatives who wish to bin the Human Rights Act, with the right-wing papers the most vitriolic in their hatred of it. The Labour Party is hardly a trustworthy guardian however, as Mr Corbyn demonstrated when he called for London properties to be appropriated in order to house people made homeless by the Grenfell fire.

When the right wing and left wing parties both wish to remove our rights, it is more important than ever that we fight to keep them.

Report on the government preparations for Brexit

The House of Commons Home Affairs Committee has published its first report on the government preparations for Brexit. The report focuses on customs operations. This is a 'cliff edge issue' since if there is no deal agreed by Brexit day EU imports/exports immediately become subject to customs. That is £382 billion-worth of goods per year.

Below are quotes from the report, answering key questions. Before you read it sit down and check there is nothing breakable near you.

Has there been progress in the past year?
"Evidence on post-Brexit customs arrangements in January 2017 ... expressed serious concerns about
the level of preparation for post-Brexit border and customs arrangements. Despite 10 months having elapsed since it was taken ... little has changed in terms of the detail of the Government’s intentions, or any action being taken ... beyond the publication of position papers and consultative documents."

What are the government plans?
"There is a worrying lack of clarity about whether the Government intends to preserve existing policy and operational practices during the transition, or [not]. It is also unclear when the Government intends to clarify this. This is a concern, given that there are significant lead times and costs involved."
"The UK Trade Facilitation Expert Panel has warned of the prospect of total chaos if the necessary preparations are not made in good time. [The chairman] argued that ... decisions are needed now, but he feared that this was unlikely to happen."

Is the planning coordinated at the top level?
"The Brexit Secretary has stated that he wants agreement with the European Union on transitional arrangements in the first quarter of next year. The Prime Minister, by contrast, has suggested that any transitional arrangements cannot be formally agreed until the UK’s future trading relationship with the European Union has been agreed."

Who needs to be involved?

"HMRC is the lead government agency for customs arrangements, with Border Force [under the Home Office] providing the operational arm. However, a vast range of other government departments and public bodies also have a role: the IfG report identified 36 organisations involved in customs policy or operations."

Is the Border Force going to be ready for Brexit?
"The Home Office could not provide specific details about any post-Brexit planning that is under way."

Is the new Customs Declaration Service (CDS) computer system going to be ready?
"The planned completion date for the programme is only two months before the March 2019 EU exit date and government IT projects routinely overrun."

Will CDS be able cope?

"CDS had a capacity aim of 150 million declarations. However, HMRC itself has estimated that Brexit will result in an additional 200 million declarations [on top of the current 50 million], meaning that the new system will need to be capable of handling at least another 100 million declarations a year beyond the planned capacity."

What happens if we aren't ready on Brexit day?
Queues. Long long queues. Motorways used as lorry parks. Serious financial costs to the economy and individual businesses. A French ferry strike in 2015 together with the resulting traffic chaos "resulted in businesses losing £21 million in stock and the economy in Kent losing £1.5 million a day."

How much will 'no deal' cost?

"The additional cost is likely to be between £19 and £26 billion a year as a result of losing the customs and trade facilitation and duty benefits which EU membership offers."

How will it affect our ports?

 4 million goods vehicles pass through our ports each year.

"At some ports, including Dover, as much as 99% of traffic relates to trade with the EU; ...a no deal scenario might therefore result in effectively 100% of trade becoming non-EU, leading to a hundredfold increase in the number of customs declarations."
Currently EU goods just roll on through. After a no deal Brexit each goods vehicle will have to wait a minimum of an hour for clearance, and may wait up to five hours. Exactly where they will wait is unclear.
“We should absolutely and categorically try to avoid physical checks on vehicles at ports” because they “simply don’t have the physical space” and “that is where the pressures are.”
"Even at present, clearance for lorries arriving via Dover or the Channel Tunnel which do require customs checks takes place six miles away at a lorry park off the M20 that currently has 82 spaces."

How will it affect our businesses?
"EU rules would require UK exports to be treated in the same way as those from any other third country with which the EU does not have an agreement. This would potentially result in serious delays for UK meat and agricultural products at the [Irish], French and Belgian borders."

"Containers selected for inspection can be delayed for between two and four days."

What about Ireland?

"The Northern Ireland border constitutes one of the UK’s major trade routes with the EU, with 200 crossing points and a continuous daily flow of lorries which at present encounter no customs controls, and RoRo ferries carrying significant amounts of goods between Dublin and Holyhead."
"Ireland is the EU country most dependent on the UK for trade with a value of about a €1 billion a week in both directions."
"It is clear that the impact on border and customs operations at the Northern Ireland border with the Republic of Ireland will be severe in the absence of specific solutions to the very complex Brexit issues affecting the island of Ireland. Decisions on the way forward are needed as a matter of urgency including on infrastructure improvements, systems and capacity."

Conclusion

Below is the report's conclusion:

"We were not satisfied with the answers we received to a vitally important

question about planning for post-Brexit customs arrangements: who is in charge? The

Government’s approach seems to us to lack focus, urgency and above all leadership.

Any progress seems to rely on working groups of government officials, with no

meaningful ministerial leadership. This is particularly worrying given that the costs

involved would appear to be significantly higher than the existing Brexit contingency

funding requested by the Home Office and even higher than the total envisaged

by the Prime Minister for the whole Government. Moreover, the fact that multiple

government departments and agencies are involved in delivering customs means that

a fully joined-up approach from the Government is urgently needed, as well as proper

coordination with the private sector. The impetus to achieve this is only likely to come

from a named senior Government Minister taking responsibility, who can then provide

regular reports to Parliament on the Government’s plans. In addition to the ongoing

cooperation between the Treasury, the Home Office and other departments with a

direct interest, we recommend that a Minister of State should be named as the lead

Government Minister responsible for delivery of post-Brexit customs arrangements."

Go West young man

The number of Irish passports issued to British people has doubled since the referendum. It makes sense - even if you don't plan to go over there it still makes sense to keep hold of the travel and career advantages of EU membership. And if things do go tits up...

Businesses too like the fact that the locals speak English and that the economy is booming (in contrast to lacklustre UK growth). XL Group (a large insurance syndicate) is moving its headquarters from London to Dublin. JP Morgan is moving employees over. The European HQs of Google, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are based in Dublin.

The only problem is that house prices are rising at the fastest rate in Europe. In Dublin prices are predicted to rise 16% in the next couple of years. If you are contemplating a move then sooner is a lot better than later - especially given UK house prices are expected to fall by 1% in the same period.

You should factor in the exchange rate too - the euro area's economy is growing much faster than the UK's. The EU is doing its best to keep the euro down, but they can only do so much. 

Interested? Cash out now and get a nice place in the Emerald Isle while you can still afford it.

'Free' as in free-trade

Free Trade Agreements (FTAs) improve market access, for example by reducing tariffs and allowing 'door-to-door' trade. Even Singapore has FTAs with other nations, despite imposing zero tariffs on most imported goods.

The key problem with FTAs is that they have to have 'rules of origin'/ FTAs are between two nations or economic blocs. Each will have different agreements with other countries. So a country which was allowed to export large quantities of some product to one but not the other could 'cheat'. They simply export to the cheaper one, and then re-export from there to the second country.

'Rules of origin' are intended to stop this and mean that exporters need to prove where the goods originally come from.

Why is this increased red tape a problem? The issue is the cost of the paperwork. For small firms the cost is often greater than the tariffs charged under WTO rules, so in some countries only 20% of small export businesses take advantage of existing FTAs. Most prefer to pay the tariffs.

FTAs also increase the burden on customs, as customs officers have to check the paperwork and the incoming goods to prevent cheating.

FTAs can be good to have but are only a pale imitation of a customs union, where trading between partners is treated the same as trading within a country. As, for example, our trade within the EU is treated at the moment, trade which makes up 50% of our exports.

Shame on the Brexiteers for forcing more red tape and extra cost on British exporters.

Landmines in the exit agreement

The Brexit cheerleaders tell us that we will be better off without any sort of deal with the EU. A deal with the EU will certainly mean restrictions on other possible trade deals, so they claim no deal is in fact "better" than a deal. Ignoring the fact that we will need to have an agreement with the EU if our airlines want to land there (this is technically referred to as a 'deal'), they are still glossing over some very serious gotchas.

One of them is the US. This was promised as one of the first deals we would do post-Brexit. Sadly for the no-dealers there are conditions. The US commerce secretary, Mr Ross, wants us to lower car import duties, chuck our food safety laws out (to allow chlorinate chicken and genetically modified food in), and keep our passporting rights for financial services. Clearly the first two will be simple to achieve in the low regulation capitalist paradise of post-Brexit Britain, but the last will require... a trade deal with the EU!

Mr Ross said, "Assuming the scoping exercise turns out to be fruitful, and further assuming that there are no big landmines in the exit agreement... then it shouldn't take terribly long."

That is a lot of assumptions, especially when he clarified 'landmines': "To the degree that it turns out that there is a change [to passporting rights] that could become a real barrier in services."

How long would an trade agreement with the US take? Well, if we keep passporting rights then US banks based here would put great pressure onto the US negotiators, but if we don't then we will just be another small market for cars and food. And please don't say 'special relationship' - Mr Trump has been very clear about ensuring deals favour the US. The US will be very happy to wait for us to become desperate for a deal - any deal.

Still, given that a 'no deal' Brexit means losing our main export market then, as Mr Ross said, they won''t have to wait terribly long.

Cornish cake

The recent hoohah about Grimsby voting Leave but wanting to escape its effects depended upon the vagueness of the term 'Grimsby'. What actually happened was that 70% of its inhabitants voted Leave, and since then some industry representatives (who presumably voted Remain) have asked for special dispensations on imports. It clearly showed the divide between typical Leavers and Remainers but little else.

For breathtaking hypocrisy we need to return to 2016, just after the referendum. This was when the Cornish Council asked for their soon-to-disappear EU grants to be replaced by funds from the UK Treasury.

The council leader said:
"We will be insisting that Cornwall receives investment equal to that provided by the EU programme which has averaged £60m per year over the last ten years."

Insisting?

This despite the fact that most of the councillors supported Brexit, that before the referendum they posted a statement on their website stating that EU funding would not be affected, that Leave campaigners promised Brexit wouldn't change the funding received - and that Cornwall residents voted for Brexit (57% to 43%).

Interestingly, after the referendum the council said that they were going to study the possible impacts of Brexit on Cornwall. It is unclear why they so strongly pushed voting Leave before knowing the consequences.

Mission Impossible

Mrs May has accepted we need a transition deal, a two year period where we continue to trade with the EU on current terms after we officially leave in 2019.

The simplest way to do this is to not actually leave until 2021. That would tick all the boxes. Unfortunately many Brexiteers would prefer to throw the UK into economic turmoil rather than risk putting off leaving. They realise that the longer we delay the fewer will want to leave. They were handed a surprise gift by Mr Cameron (did you see their faces when they found out they had won?), if they let go of it for an instant they fear it will be gone.

So if we can't do this sensibly, we will need to do it the hard way - recreate what we have.

We need to set up a (temporary) customs union, including mutual legal recognition of standards, testing and enforcement. This will also require automatic enactment of new EU regulations during the period, acceptance of current quotas and staying within the jurisdiction of the ECJ. This will need to be done in the face of stiff resistance from the Brexit headbangers.

We also have to roll over the EU free trade agreements with non-EU countries so the exact same deals apply to us, otherwise we can't have the customs union. This will require negotiation with each of the countries involved - simultaneously if we are to reach agreement before we exit. If one fails then it all fails.

But first we need the EU's agreement. Clearly it is good for us, but what's in it for the EU? If we say "it's this or it's no deal" then they will laugh politely. Their big concern won't be lost trade with the UK, it will be the precedent set by even allowing such an agreement. For example, the EU-South Korea trade agreement states that the EU must offer South Korea the same deals they offer anyone else.

Altogether something that even Impossible Missions Force would baulk at.

Mrs May knew triggering Article 50 started the countdown.. It would be great to have more time, but she needs to approach and prioritise negotiations assuming that we only have the time she chose to give herself.

Brexit only means Brexit

Was Brexit a vote against globalisation?

Half of the Britons who voted in the referendum voted for Brexit. The campaign focused on putting 'us' first. Take back control, take back our money, take back our jobs, our schools, our doctor's surgeries. Sure sounds anti-global.

The other half voted to keep the advantages of EU membership: trade, travel, security. Definitely pro-global.

However, the other promise made by the lead Brexiteers was to free the UK from the shackles of the EU, allowing us once again to trade globally. So pro-global. The Remainers were happy to stick with the local club and its trade barriers which hold back the rest of the world - definitely anti-global.

Maybe it wasn't globalisation - was it really a vote against capitalism?

The majority of Britons view capitalism as "greedy, selfish and corrupt". This is in a country still growing (albeit slowly), where unemployment is near zero, where luxuries unimagined only a few decades ago are available to everyone.

However, this is also the country where house prices are now an average of 7.6 times annual income - double the multiple 20 years ago - making home owning an unattainable dream for young people. Where living standards have fallen for the past decade. Where many more students graduate, but they graduate with loans of up to £57,000. Where zero-hour contracts and part-time work is becoming the new normal, allowing companies to skimp on pensions and benefits. A country where pensioners have their "defined benefits" pensions together with the state pension's triple-lock. Pensions paid out of the taxes of young people who won't have anything nearly as good when they retire.

Yet, the younger the voter the more likely they were to vote Remain.

The truth is that each voter had their own reasons. From protest votes to deeply held beliefs. Economics, politics, tribalism, idealism. Sovereignty, immigration, growth, trade, the NHS.

A cross in a box does not define anyone, does not define their beliefs cookie-cutter style, no matter that the Brexit headbangers claim a vote for Brexit is a vote for no deal. The vote was in favour of leaving, not self-immolation.

Our elected representatives, including the most extreme of hard-line Brexiteers, have a duty to do their best for this country, to do their best for us. Right now that means standing behind Mrs May, it means speaking with one voice to the EU, it means agreeing - yes, compromising - on a plan.

Brexit only means Brexit. Let's try for the best Brexit we can.

Fishing for favours

Are Grimsby residents trying to have their cake and eat it? With 70% voting to leave the EU it comes as a bit of surprise to hear that representative of the seafood industry there are asking for special treatment to reduce the effects of Brexit. It is very easy to make fun of this but when looked at in detail it is an instructive story.

Grimsby residents blame the EU for the loss of their fishing fleet and the town's decline. Their vote to leave was a vote against the EU rather than a vote for sovereignty. 

The irony of Brexit for Grimsby is that the fishing industry has since been replaced by a large seafood processing industry which imports 90% of the seafood it uses. Brexit will mean increased costs due to import duties and increased delays at the port due to customs - delays which would take the 'fresh' out of 'fresh fish'.

It is possible that some residents did really believe the Leave campaign's claims that everything would be the same only better, but it is likely that they would have voted to leave no matter what. Many Leavers are willing to pay a high price if it guarantees Brexit.

It is hardly a surprise, on the other hand, that local industry leaders would prefer Remain and if they can't have it then they will certainly ask for any special treatment they can get.

So a majority voted Leave and the minority are asking not to be punished for a choice they didn't make. However, this isn't a non-story, this goes to the heart of Brexit. Those who are doing well out of the EU want to stay in while the 'left behind' want to leave. The Leave vote was a vote to reject globalisation. The irony is - so was Remain.

Exiting the EU will expose us to harsher global forces than those that assail us right now. Within the EU bloc we are competing with nations with similar standards, similar social systems, similar costs. If we end up trading on WTO terms, as the lead Brexiteers want, then we will be up against poorer countries, countries with lower costs, lower standards and higher productivity.

Brexit or not, we need to ensure we keep our preferential trade deal with Europe.

Oh, are you off then?

The Leave campaign repeatedly claimed that Europe needs us more than we need them. We buy more from them than they do from us, the Brexiteers said. True - but their exports make up only 8% of their total, 50% of ours are to them. The EU has the upper hand there.

The Brexit headbangers also say that we need to keep the 'no deal' option, threatening to leave without paying the bill. The money comes to 0.1% of the EU GDP. Not a very scary threat.

Even the more level-headed hope that we have some levers we can use to negotiate a reasonable deal. One lever is London's central rôle in European finance, a rôle worth €40 billion in revenues for the UK, a rôle we (hardly surprisingly) want to keep.

The problem is that non-EU banks need permission (called 'passporting rights') to provide financial services in the EU. Our negotiators will argue that removing those rights when we leave the EU will cause chaos in the EU. Unfortunately, they know this is a bluff.

Unlike the UK government, UK-based banks have been preparing for Brexit for a year already. They are not manufacturers, essentially all they need is an office with an internet connection. For example, HSBC is preparing to move 1,000 employees to Paris, JP Morgan is doubling its Irish workforce to 1,000 people, and Goldman Sachs has opened a new office in Frankfurt.

Moving the staff is disruptive, which is why senior bankers are demanding a quick deal on Brexit, so they know what they need to do. If we keep faffing around then they will have to commit to moving anyway, to avoid being caught with their trousers down. The deputy governor of the Bank of England recommends the deal needs to be sorted within the next three months.

In the long term, however, passporting is not the real issue. Once we have quit, whatever the deal, the EU will enact regulations to stem the flow of financial business, ensuring that the EU is not dependent upon UK services - it would be folly for them to have their financial security in the hands of an non-EU country.

One hope is that even without passporting rights our financial services sector can recover after the initial massive hit, which will include up to 100,000 job losses, by focusing on global finance. Passporting would be nice to have, but long term we need to build up our global financial services industry. Worryingly we have been losing global market share to the US and Asia.

London has become a honeypot, the huge amount of financial business taking place there drawing in even more business. This process could reverse, as businesses starts to leave, more follow.

To stay in the running we need to ensure that London is not hit too hard by Brexit. That means keeping the banks here. That means sorting out Brexit now.

Cue coup

The government still refuses to publish its assessments of the effect Brexit will have on the UK, even though parliament has bound it to publish them.

The new excuse is that they are not ready to publish because they need to be censored. The Tory MP - and former minister - Ms Soubry noted this delay was a "gross contempt" of parliament. However, anyone at all familiar with Mrs May's approach to Brexit will hardly be surprised - the real shock is that she has agreed to publish anything. We still have no idea what Mrs May plans are for the UK post-Brexit, or even what her 'red lines' are in the negotiations.

Partly, of course, this is because whenever Mrs May makes a promise on policy you can guarantee that she will renege on it - possibly within a few hours, so she may not even know herself where we are headed.

So it is no wonder that rebellion is once again in the ranks. Mr Shapps's previous attempted coup failed, but he is once again collecting names. The real question is not whether Mrs May will go but when, and who will replace her. The argument for keeping her was essentially that she was a compromise candidate, a Remainer who decided to accept Brexit. With the widening rifts at the top of the Tory party she at least could be claimed by both sides. Another issue was that removing her would mean another leadership contest, paralysing the government and further splitting the Tories.

So far she hasn't manage to unify senior ministers, and recent events may make a leadership contest moot. Ministers have been falling like ninepins, most recently due to the Sexminster scandal. Mr Johnson is clinging on to his post but has provided overwhelming evidence of his unfitness for the PM's job. Ms Davidson (the leader of the Scottish party) will not be able to run. That leaves a very small field.

Ms Rudd seems to be the one to watch. She is home secretary, as Mrs May was, and so is one of only five women to ever hold one of the 'Great Offices of State'. She campaigned for Remain but is strongly against immigration, again echoing Mrs May. So she has experience in high office, she appeals to the anti-immigration Leavers, and she has good links with the Tory Remainers.

Whoever replaces Mrs May will need to retake control of Brexit and of the cabinet, communicate a clear vision of what we are aiming for in the negotiations and for the future, and commit to promises and stick to them when the going gets tough. Not easy - do we have anyone who can do it?

Get real

The number of jobs for new graduates is dropping while the number of graduates is increasing each year - meaning freshly-minted BAs and BScs will end up with a large debt and no job. Financial firms are reducing places in 2018 by 20%, retail by 25%, law is down 20%.

Real earnings are still lower than they were a decade ago - the worst figures since 1750. Only Greece has fared worse than the UK.

A fifth of male low-earners are part-timers now, meaning that they get no training and have no prospects of career progression.

So far we have managed and - thanks to the policies introduced by the last Labour government and their continuation by the Tories - inequality has not yet increased. However tax credits and a minimum wage do not solve the problems, they simple address the effects while allowing the real issues to get worse.

The recently launched apprenticeship scheme is a good idea - though it is partly to blame for the drop in graduate jobs, as firms are being forced to take on apprentices, so cannot afford graduates as well. However, if the Brexiteer promises of a free-trade bonanza are to be fulfilled then we need a lot more ideas and we need a strong and stable economy.

It is back to you, Mrs May. Clear out your cabinet (before it clears itself out - Ms Patel being the latest Leaver), sort out what the post-Brexit UK will look like, drop those vanity projects and invest the savings in jobs, and make a deal with the EU. Fast.

Russian interference

Where did Aaron Banks get the £2.3 million he used to bankroll the Leave campaign?

Who loaned £8 million to UKIP to pay for their Brexit campaign?

One theory is that it was the Russians. After all they interfered in the US elections in order to get the pro-Russia Mr Trump elected (Mr Trump's financial affairs are also rather murky - he still refuses to publish his tax returns, unlike every previous president). Russia has also attempted to interfere in the French elections, siding with the Russia-friendly candidate, Ms Le Pen.

Why would Russia want to interfere, though? Clearly it is in their interest to have friendly neighbours, so supporting sympathetic candidates is a no-brainer. Of course, it has to be done under the radar, hence all the skulduggery.

The real irony is the US fury over a bunch of Facebook ads and some "troll farms". The US has an extensive and shameful record of political interference with other democracies, involving long-term financial support to dictators, covert political advisors, military support, even waging war, in order to install or prop up governments friendly towards the US.

Russia is simply doing the same, including making war - such as their invasion of the Crimea and their cyber-attacks on Estonia.

Why Brexit, though? The next best thing to having friendly neighbours is having weak neighbours, ones who are no threat to you. Russia invaded the Ukraine when it seemed likely to join the EU, preventing its accession and any consequent increase in its ability to stand up to Russian influence.

Splitting the UK from the EU significantly decreases both the UK's and Europe's power. Not only will we no longer support each other so effectively, but in division there will be strife. Already we have had one antediluvian peer threatening to declare war on Spain.

However it makes no sense to void the result of the referendum, as that automatically gives victory to the Remain side. What does make sense is for Brexit to be debated fully and openly by our properly elected representatives. For them to be allowed to make a real choice, based on fact not rhetoric and lies.

Austerity generation

Cuts to universal credit and tax credits will push a million more children into poverty, with families losing around £20 a week, while living costs continue to rise. Growth and productivity are low with little immediate prospect of improvement, keeping wages down. Tax revenues are falling, forcing the chancellor, Mr Hammond, to join the rest of us in increasing his borrowing - though in his case he is putting an extra £16 billion on the Treasury credit card. There goes his Brexit contingency fund.

We can't keep borrowing - and someone will even now have to pay our huge bills. Our children are likely to be the austerity generation if we don't reign ourselves in sharpish.

Unfortunately, Mrs May is in a precarious position, heading a minority government supported by paid-for DUP votes (current cost £1 billion). She wants to win back those Tory voters who deserted to Labour in droves. One wheeze is a tuition fee giveaway to students costing £2.3 billion each year. She is also flinging more borrowed cash at vanity projects such as HS2 (an eye-watering £40 billion) and at disasters-in-waiting such as the Hinkley Point nuclear plant.

Meanwhile she is vainly attempting to contain the Sexminster scandal, with her ministers exposed as dirty old men eager to exploit their power over nubile underlings, while her foreign secretary (that's the one who got his mistress pregnant) makes off-the-cuff remarks resulting in threats of jail time for an innocent British citizen (Mr Johnson hasn't even the decency to admit he was wrong, let alone spend time on upping his game).

Rather a relief then to hear reports that our feelings of well-being haven't gone down since last year - in fact they have gone up a little bit in England, while holding steady in the rest of the UK.

Hold on a minute, though. Looking at the figures since 2011 shows that well-being has been rising steadily every year. However, the past couple of years have seen that rise slow right down.

Our feelings of well-being depend upon our financial security, our job and our health. Right now we can borrow virtually interest free, we nearly all have jobs, and the NHS is just about coping.

Things are changing. Interest rates are starting to go up, companies are starting to go bust, the NHS is starting to cut services. Things will get tougher even if Brexit is defeated - these challenges need to be addressed whatever happens.

It is the government's duty to lead change and to make it as painless and as smooth as possible. It is questionable whether the shambolic remains of Mrs May's government are up to the job in front of them.

Direct democracy

A recent Pew Research Centre poll shows that two-thirds of the public support the idea of direct democracy while only a third of foreign policy experts support the idea.

Well, of course those experts wouldn't want to be put out of a job, would they. If we simply asked the public to make all the decisions then we wouldn't need experts - as Gove said we are tired of experts.

Actually, most people trust experts. Quite apart from the obvious ones (plumber, doctor, car mechanic, pharmacist, pundit, engineer,...) people much prefer experts to politicians for information.

So why do so many people like the idea of direct democracy? A system where your punter-in-the-street logs on (or goes to a polling station) and chooses what they prefer. It even has a with-it name - "crowd sourcing". An example is a "Guess my weight" competition - you get very close to the correct answer if you simply ask enough people and take the average.

The problem comes with more complex questions. We all have a rough idea about weight. What if a member of your family is ill - do you put up a notice in the supermarket with a description of the problem and collect votes on the best remedy? Do you count all the votes, including the ones where the voter didn't read much of the description, the ones pushing a particular treatment simply because the voter likes that treatment, the crank votes?

Would you call a public meeting and allow people to give speeches about why their suggested treatment is the best (and allow lies and personal attacks) then ask the people to vote on the best treatment?

If this seems reasonable to you then you would be happy with undiluted direct democracy. If it seems demented then representative democracy would suit you better.

Ironically, the Brexit referendum was neither - it was intended as an opinion poll (technically it was "non binding"). However it was hijacked and became an example of the worst type of 'direct democracy' - where demagogues funded by shadowy figures used fake promises and vague feel-good rhetoric to persuade the electorate to vote a certain way, and then leveraged the vote to push for an outcome that they had denied they wanted.

No wonder no-one wants another referendum - we are still sinking ever deeper into the mess caused by the first one. Instead we want Mrs May to tell us the truth about what is happening and what her plan is. We want to know the real consequences - and for our elected representatives to be given a real choice when the deal is done.

A pro-democracy, anti-elite message

The self-described "moderate Brexiteer" Iain Martin (a Times columnist) is certainly relatively moderate in his threats against Remainers compared to the extremists, however even he seems to be becoming radicalised. He is now threatening (if Brexit is somehow avoided) a vast grassroots rebellion - "Momentum for Brexiteers" - being fomented by "a cross-party campaign outside Westminster" funded by "big pro-Brexit donors".

Why does a moderate Brexiteer support this vision? His argument is that right now we have "a large part of the British establishment (much of it unelected) effectively trying to overturn a referendum result". These shadowy and unspecified figures will be undermining democracy (just like Gina Miller and those pesky judges) by their actions. Surely the population will rise up in anger.

Why even broadcast this threat of rich people funding civil turmoil? His fears centre on the tribulations of the Withdrawal Bill that is being debated now. In particular if the bill fails then we will be heading for a 'no deal' Brexit.

We have a weak PM, divided parties, no strategy or plan for post-Brexit, no trade agreements in prospect, the Irish border nightmare, a collapsing pound and collapsing credit rating, and an EU that is acting as though we aren't actually all that important to them. 'No deal' seems eminently possible.

Surely, you will cry, Mr Martin should be celebrating? After all, the Brexit theme tune is 'No deal is better than a bad deal'.

However this is where his unelected elites come in. He notes that John McDonnell MP "is keen to work with MPs of all parties to halt a 'no-deal Brexit'". (It is unclear whether Mr Martin actually regards MPs as unelected, but then 'elected representatives of the people' doesn't really fit with his argument.)

It seems Mr Martin suspects that when a no-deal Brexit is offered to the public then most ordinary people won't want anything to do with it. They will make this clear democratically ("a sustained shift in the polls" as he puts it), and power will shift democratically to those who are willing to deliver democratically what the people actually want. At that point the gloves will come off because "those who campaigned for it are hardly going to sit back".

In essence he is explaining that if Brexit doesn't happen then the rich people who want it will buy in rent-a-mobs, hoping to force through their agenda against the will of the people - and remember this is a self-styled "moderate Brexiteer" speaking.

Ironically, Mr Martin refers to this as "a pro-democracy, anti-elite message".

Democracy is democracy

Mrs May has finally been forced to accept that "democracy is democracy", and has agreed that the Brexit agreement with the EU will have to be scrutinised and voted on in detail by our elected representatives, rather than simply giving them a 'take it or leave it' vote.

One concern is that this will mean the agreement will take longer, however given the current rate of progress in the negotiations this is hardly an issue. As this agreement will determine Britain's future for many decades to come, time needs to be invested in it and it needs proper scrutiny.

Brexit headbangers who claim no deal is better than a bad deal are very concerned. This says more about their attitude to democracy than it does about the negotiations or the possible outcome. They simply hate the idea of allowing all MPs to have a say. They don't want democratic oversight meddling with their unstated agenda.

If they really know what's best for Britain, then why wouldn't they publish the studies on the likely results of Brexit? Studies they have now been forced to publish. Why won't they tell us what their plans are post-Brexit? If they want the best deal for us, why have they referred to ordinary people's futures as cards in their hand to be used as bargaining counters?

It has taken a considerable time and the efforts of many many people to re-impose democratic control on the Brexit juggernaut. This is one more step.

Look to the future

The Conservative government has finally had to agree to revealing what research predicts will happen to us post-Brexit - research kept secret until its existence was leaked in April. The reason Mr Davis, the Brexit secretary, gave for keeping them secret (even from Parliament) was that it would be bad for negotiations, and "not in the public interest".

I have never heard of someone keeping good news secret to protect people, and Mr Davis would hardly keep secret a bunch of studies that showed how well we would do without a deal, would he? If they matched Leave's promises then we would be able to charge the EU to keep them under wraps.

So we know that they are going to be bad news. The promise is that the documents will be published in some form, so we may never know quite how bad the news really is. Well, until it happens, of course.

After much public pressure the concession was extracted by Labour forcing a vote. Mrs May forbade her MPs from voting to avoid an embarrassing defeat - a strategy she is using rather frequently now.

This is another example of wartime-like secrecy that Mrs May has imposed on the British democratic process. And it becoming clear whom she fears. Her junior MPs are still loyal - not a single one asked for the studies to be released, Mr Corbyn supports Brexit, while the Lib Dems have become an irrelevance. Mrs May is keeping secrets from members of her own camp, senior Conservatives who fear the damage Brexit will do to the UK, and in particular Ken Clarke, an MP for 47 years and leader of a cross-party group of pro-EU MPs, has already had private talks with Mr Barnier, the EU's chief negotiator.

Of course, the real danger isn't Mr Clarke knowing. It isn't the EU finding out. It is us, the British public, learning what the Brexiteers are really leading us into.

No longer managing

Credit card borrowing is going up, as is other unsecured consumer borrowing -  a 10% annual increase. The total on tick is now £200 billion. The government has told banks to put away an extra £10 billion to protect themselves from defaults as interest rates start to rise and people start to go bankrupt (currently 2 in 1000 and rising). Borrowing is now at 135% of income, with people borrowing to pay bills rather than buy luxuries, as pay rises fail to keep up with inflation and the government keeps cutting benefits while increasing taxes. Mrs May's "just about managing" are becoming the "no longer managing".

UK businesses are also feeling the pinch, with half a million of them now in financial difficulty - a 27% rise since last year. Just between July and September this year 25,479 businesses went bust. As interest rates rise, as inflation goes up, and as the pound falls, more and more companies are going to get into difficulties.

The UK is in a delicate position. Whatever we do now we are in for a period of belt tightening. However, at the moment we still have our trade agreements - in fact, income from abroad is up by £6.4 billion - and we still have foreign investors. Losing those will turn something painful into something terrible.

To keep things on the road we need certainty, we need to know what is going to happen post-Brexit, we need to know that we will still be able to trade with our current partners. The only people who will benefit from a hard Brexit are the financiers looking for a good deal on sound but insolvent businesses.

We need a plan and we need a deal. Pay now for a good one, or we will be forced to take whatever we can get when the time runs out. Let's take back control.

Roll over Brexhoven

Mr Fox - our international trade secretary - promised at the Conservative Party conference that he had countries lined up to "roll over [trade deals] at one minute past midnight". This is where we continue trading with other countries on the same terms as we do currently, 'rolling over' the deal that we have with them as part of the EU.

Only a couple of weeks later it seems that not one of the 60 or so countries concerned have actually agreed to do this, he admitted: "We have not finished any agreements yet, but we have agreed on the methodology we will use to get to that end-point."

Confidence-inspiring stuff.

Oddly, Mr Fox's colleagues seem to have misunderstood this. Mr Davis (Brexit secretary) said last week, "All the big ones have said...they are interested". Lord Price (the former trade minister) said all the countries had already agreed to roll over the agreements. Given that Leave claimed free trade as Brexit's big selling point, it is a concern that these high-ranking Brextremists don't even know what is going on with our most important export markets.

Go on then - we dare you

The Leave campaign promised that a trade deal with the EU would be easy, that they needed it more than we did, that it would be the fastest trade deal ever done. They said that German car-makers would be desperate to keep trade open and that - crucially - the EU exports more to us than we do to them.

The last is true by value - but the EU is much bigger than us. Around half our exports go to the EU, while their UK exports are only 8% of their total. Frankly, they don't need us a quarter as much as we need them.

So what about the money they want? We could say we will walk away and pay nothing. Defaulting on our debts would push down our international credit rating, but that is already being downgraded as the economic damage of Brexit becomes ever clearer.

Sadly, non-payment would only annoy them. The money we owe makes up only 0.1 percent of the EU GDP. They certainly wouldn't blink first. And if we don't honour our obligations then any trade deal we negotiate later with the EU will definitely involve the UK paying back the debt.

With the boasted US deal now just another abandoned promise, with Mr Fox unable to even negotiate 'roll-over' trade deals, and with just sixteen months left (having spent eight months failing to agree on expatriates, even though both sides want the same thing) Mrs May needs to clear the cabinet of Brextremist headbangers and negotiate from where we really are rather than where Leave claimed we would be.

The EU aren't offering us a trade deal, they are offering a framework for our future relationship. Our best strategy is to take that and build in a lengthy transition period. We will then have time to work on individual sectors, even individual contracts, so that we build up a trading network within the new deal. Post-transition the Leavers will have their sovereignty and the rest of us will have a functioning economy.

No more Mrs Nice Guy

So the party conference season has come and gone, with little to show for it except division and rancour.

Labour banned discussion of Brexit, tried to no-platform the Mayor of London, one of their most popular elected members, while a reporter had to have bodyguards to protect her from the Labour members.

The Conservative conference offered a reality-as-parody speech by their party leader, and not much else, as one member of a Question Time audience pointed out.

Meanwhile the EU Withdrawal Bill has been delayed again while a committee go over the hundreds of changes that have been proposed, and Brexit negotiations are even further delayed as Mrs May still refuses to pay the divorce bill.

Mrs May is weak and ineffectual as the leader of the current Conservative party, but might achieve something if her own cabinet backed her. It is an irony that she feels unable even to impose a reshuffle.

Mrs May should look at her record of abandoned policies and ask herself if she actually wants to achieve something in her term of office. Whether we leave the EU or stay in, she will not be PM after the next election. A good Brexit deal, one that is worth having, one won in spite of the most intemperate efforts of Brexit headbangers, would be something she could be proud of.

To achieve it will take ruthlessness, single-mindedness, double-dealing, and political savvy.

No more Mrs Nice Guy, Mrs May.

Be prepared

Mrs May promised £250 million towards preparing for a no-deal Brexit. Parliamentary Brextremists criticise Mr Hammond for not wanting to spend it now. From their point of view this makes sense - they want a hard Brexit so they need the government to prepare for it. The fact that few ordinary people - or even their own colleagues - want to cast the UK completely adrift is irrelevant to them. They don't care that a hard Brexit means a hardship Brexit for people who are already struggling.

However, their zealotry means that they are unable to actually think critically about what such preparation would involve. Ignoring the problems that can't be 'prepared for', such as the imposition of tariffs and non-tariff barriers, and also ignoring the problems that will have to be solved no matter what flavour of Brexit is forced down our throats, such as chemical regulation and access to nuclear materials, we are left with problems which will cost a lot more than a quarter of a billion pounds to even get started on.

The Calais upgrade is costed at £800 million over six years. The upgrade is only to get it up to scratch for current purposes. Leaving the single market means Dover will need to be expanded to cope with the demands of custom inspections - not only staffing and inspection areas, but also holding areas where transport can wait its turn. Dover is hemmed in by cliffs and the sea, making expansion very expensive. £1 billion would only be the appetiser. Of course, unless the UK paid for a further upgrade on the French side, this won't solve the problem. When the French applied extra security checks in 2016 people going via Dover had to queue for 14 hours or longer, the A20 was closed, and truck-jams covered miles of motorway.

At least the government could pay their way to some sort of a solution there, but what about the extra bureaucracy for every exporter? One document that will have to be filled in is the "single administrative document", 54 boxes, for every goods declaration. The government could provide a 50p-a-minute helpline, of course.

What about the extra warehousing and inventory required to allow for delays? It is hardly the government's job to be building warehouses - and given their record on homes needed right now, would you give them the job anyway?

Just how scared is 'the EU' about a hard Brexit anyway? France and Germany stand to do rather well out of it. Romania would be take a bit of a hit, but most members don't really care either way. They have more important things to deal with.

The clock is ticking and we have no clear strategy. Knuckling under to the hard Brexit headbangers would be a betrayal of our country's future and of our children's future. The Tory party needs to come together to agree on, collectively support, and successfully negotiate a beneficial trade agreement with the EU. Some ministers will need to go and we will have to pay upfront, but the benefits will keep rolling in.

Ice cream and swimwear

Sterling has dropped 15% since the referendum. On the face of it, this should make our exports cheaper and so increase sales. This would fit with the Brexit plans to strike trade deals across the world and become a trade-led economy.

It hasn't worked yet. All Mr Fox, the secretary for international trade, could boast about recently was an increase in income from exports of ice cream and swimwear. However even the apparent rise in ice cream income is mostly due to exporters getting more pounds per scoop, sales have barely changed.

One issue is that British industries 'add value' now rather than actually manufacturing things. We import parts and export the finished product. The values of the imports and exports almost cancel out.

A more worrying issue is that firms seem to be just banking their extra profits instead of investing them in developing new markets or adding capacity. Last year non-financial firms banked £74 billion - a record.

Clearly companies won't invest until they feel safe to do so. Until Britain's future is more certain they will sit on a comforting pile of cash.

Government supporters of the export-oriented Singapore model should be supporting British industry. Supporting British industry means supporting a well-defined exit strategy with clear goals. Supporting a well-defined exit strategy means supporting Mrs May as she negotiates with the EU.

It really it very simple. To realise their dream the Tory Brexiteers need to rally behind Mrs May, right now.

The Whore of Babylon

Apart from the £1.5 billion bung, why would the DUP want to support a government committed to Brexit, given the likely dire effects on Northern Ireland?

It may be relevant that one faction of the DUP claims the EU is controlled by the Luciferian global elite. They point to the EU's symbol of Europa riding a bull, which is according to them quite clearly the whore of Babylon "sitting upon a scarlet coloured beast, full of names of blasphemy". This beast (found in the Book of Revelations) represents the world government led by the Antichrist.

Evangelicals see other indications of the demon princes' plans for world subjugation under cover of the EU - in particular a poster (later withdrawn) promoting the European Parliament which clearly shows the EU rebuilding the Tower of Babel.

Evangelical Tories in the UK don't openly commit to these views, though Tory MP David Burrowes said voting Leave was a Christian duty, Pastor Paul Hedger branded the EU as anti-Christian, saying "my responsibility is to help people see things the way God does", and Giles Fraser, a Guardian columnist, exhorted "the laity and other clergy to persuade people" to vote Leave.

It doesn't all go one way, however. Christians who voted Remain may well have been led to their decision by reflections similar to those of Mark Woods, editor of Christian Today:

Would Britain be "better off" outside the EU? It's impossible to say. But that is not, perhaps, the right question. Arguably a better one is, "Would the nations of the EU be more prosperous, more just and more secure with Britain inside it?"

Leaving is so very hard to do

The Department for Exiting the European Union already has an annual budget of £1.5 billion and a staff of over 200 officials, but that is just the start of it.

The European Chemicals Agency has confirmed that 6000 'substance registrations' by UK companies will be void after Brexit. Companies will need to re-register using an EU proxy.

60% of our chemical exports go to the EU, but that isn't the real concern - the UK will still be a member of the EU in May 2018 (the deadline for substance registration), and companies are legally required to register anything they produce, whether for export or not.

To help confuse matters, the UK government says that they will create their own post-Brexit register.

Meanwhile, the Home Office has a lot of extra work in prospect - officials want the same deportation rules to apply to EU citizens and non-EU post-Brexit. In particular that means that anyone sentenced to more than 12 months in prison must be deported: 6,171 offenders were deported last year, at a cost of £850 million. If the new rules were already in place then the Home Office would have had to deport around 26,000 EU citizens too - costing another £3.6 billion.

Not to mention concerns about our nuclear reactors and medical treatments using radionucleotides, as Mrs May wishes to exit Euratom as well as the EU.

Let us hope that DEXEU are keeping up.

Bags of red tape

One of the claimed benefits of Brexit is the clearing away of towering thickets of red tape that are supposedly strangling our entrepreneurial spirit.

It is strange then that Defra, led by Mr Gove - a Bretremist sans pareil, is trumpeting the addition of further layers of tape. Even odder is the fact that this is red tape based on EU directives, though Defra claims the measures as their own:

• The plastic bag charge: Defra says this shows the UK is a "global leader in protecting oceans and marine life." However, we brought this in much later than many other EU countries. Maybe Defra means we are ahead of most African countries?

• Banning ivory trading: Gove says this puts "the UK front and centre of global efforts to end the insidious trade in ivory." As our new rules are simply a copy of the rules decided by the EU (and the USA already has a ban) it would be more accurate for him to say that they bundle the UK onto the 'me-too' bandwagon.

Rather than publicising fake wins, Defra should be sorting out Britain's food situation post-Brexit. They might note that I am quite happy for them to claim my own modest proposal as their own.

Dig for Victory

The National Farmers Union reports that since the referendum there has been a drop of 17% in the number of seasonal workers coming to the UK to harvest fruit and vegetables - that is one in six staying home even before Brexit.

Post-Brexit none of those workers will be allowed in, so farmers will need to employ locals or give up.

Meanwhile, EU food imports (making up 70% of what we consume) will become more expensive. A cabinet minister says we can simply grow more here.

Tripling our food production is rather a tall order. Quite apart from where we would grow it all, who would do the work, given that we will be banning migrant labour?

Fortunately, Ms Leadsom has the answer - forcing students into the fields. With Mrs May shamelessly nicking Labour ideas, it isn't too surprising that the right-wingers want to bring in classic communist policies.

I would like to suggest a more British alternative, one that fits well with Brexiteers' jingoism. Revive the wartime campaign "Dig for Victory", requiring people to grow their own vegetables, converting their garden or working an allotment. We might even re-introduce rationing in order to encourage participation.

If we are to make a success of Brexit we will need to pull together. "Dig for Victory" recalls a time of national unity and purpose. Let us call on the "Dunkirk spirit" once more.

Grow your own

At the moment we import 70% of our food from the EU. It will take time to replace this with home-grown food or imports from other countries if we exit without a trade deal.

Why should that be a concern? After all, EU farmers will still want to sell to us whether we are in the single market or out of it.

The concern is the cost. If we crash out of the EU without a deal and fall back on WTO tariffs or worse then we will have to pay WTO tariffs on all our imports. Note that under WTO rules we have to charge/pay tariffs unless there is a negotiated agreement - we can't simply casually agree to ignore them, even if neither side wants them. Tariffs on trade within the EU single market are around 1%, WTO tariffs are higher - a lot higher for food and textiles. For example, Ireland exports mostly food to the UK. Tariffs will add around 18% to the price they must charge for their products.

These increased costs will obviously mean prices increase. Meanwhile our exports will also be more expensive (those tariffs again) so will be less competitive. Our volume of exports to the EU will fall by over 20%. Around 10% of our current exported products will no longer even be worth exporting as no-one will buy them. Some entire product categories will essentially disappear - the clothing trade will fall by 99%, sugar/confectionary 95%, meat/flour 90%.

These effects, combined with the continued fall in real wages, means UK living standards will be squeezed even harder.

The response of Mr Grayling, a cabinet minister no less, is that all we have to do is grow more in the UK. This comment is so fatuous it simply underlines that there is no plan.

Whatever the long-term intentions of the Brextremists, right now they must accept that we need a transitional deal. They should support Mrs May in her negotiations and stop posturing about payments. The price of an agreement is far less than the price of no agreement.

UK credit rating downgraded again

Moody's, an international credit rating agency, has downgraded the UK's rating once more. They had already reduced our rating from AAA (the top rating) to AA1, they have now cut it to AA2. S&P, another large agency, has already demoted our credit-worthiness by two places, from AAA to AA, and a third major credit rating agency, Fitch, has also downgraded us to AA.

The reasons for these downgrades are concerns over Brexit's economic effect, the lack of clear government policies and a weak prime minister.

Meanwhile, the Office for National Statistics has revised its estimate for net foreign investment, reducing it by £490 billion. This is due to two things - overseas companies reducing their investment in the UK and the ONS correcting an accounting error. Ignoring the correction, foreign investment is down £160 billion. Still a big chunk of change.

The reasons for the reduced investment are concerns over Brexit's economic effect, the lack of clear government policies, a weak prime minister and the likely loss of tariff-free access to the largest free market in the world.

This international loss of confidence in Britain's economic future is also the cause of the precipitous decline in the pound.

If the Brextremists really do want Britain to succeed then they should be the ones calling for firm government and insisting on a fast deal. That means they need to support Mrs May rather than undermine her, they need to disown Mr Johnson who has his own agenda and cares nothing for Britain's future, they need to accept (and even better - understand) the upfront cost of a good deal rather than the far greater cumulative cost of no deal.

Project Fear is now Project Nearly Here. If the Brexit headbangers refuse to change their script, if they insist on driving us into penury despite the warnings and the mounting evidence, then we have to ask what their real motives are.

Why come to the UK?

There are around 911,000 Poles currently living in the UK. Almost all have arrived in the past 15 years.

So why come to the UK rather than other EU countries? Before the Brexit referendum the UK was booming with full employment, and our GDP second only to Germany's. Poles came knowing that if they worked hard they would earn a lot more than they would in Poland. So that is what they did, and Polish workmen have become a byword over the past decade.

Meanwhile, over the last ten years Polish GDP per person has increased by around 50%, while in the UK it has barely changed. Since the referendum the pound has depreciated against the Polish zloty by 20%. Together with the uncertainty of what will happen post-Brexit and the increase in hate crimes, this has meant that the UK is no longer a good place for Poles to work. This year the number of people coming to the UK from the EU8 (which includes Poland) was matched by the number leaving.

So it seems that at least that Brexit promise may be fulfilled. Admittedly it isn't because we have 'taken control' of our borders. It is because we have lost control of our economy.

Let's hope that this works out over the long run. Maybe once we have chucked out all the foreigners who are willing to work hard in low-paid jobs we can give those jobs to British people. By then British workers may even be glad to take the jobs, to learn how to work hard for little money, which may help to push up Britain's woeful productivity. As the continued freeze on benefits shows, the nation can't afford to keep subsidising people who aren't producing as we chuck out the people who are producing.