“The UK’s new start – let’s get going.” That’s the lame slogan unveiled this week to exhort businesses to prepare for Brexit proper in January. For UK consumers, that “sunny” new start means sky-high phone roaming charges, comprehensive travel insurance to cross the Channel, and the need to visit a vet four months in advance if you want to take your pet. For businesses, though, the situation is even worse. Under the border plans laid out by Michael Gove this week, importers face retrieving their goods from a “vast and stupendously pointless lorry park being put together at a cost of £705m”. Exporters face similar challenges in reverse.
And all told, officials predict a “post-Brexit bureaucracy burden” of 215 million customs declarations, overseen by 50,000 new customs agents, costing businesses £7bn. This “godawful mess” of red tape makes a mockery of Brexiter promises of reinvigorated trade. And even this supposes a best-case scenario of a trade deal, rather than a “no-deal crash-out”, and “crippling WTO tariffs”. Let’s get going? Let’s not. (James Moore, The Independent, The Week, 18 July 2020)
My comment: All this was quite unnecessary. I thought it would be a potential disaster, culturally, practically and economically. The characters involved in Brexit spoke for themselves. But I hadn’t factored in the earnest desire of bureaucrats to create bigger and better bureaucratic methods of really irritating the populace.
What is the national benefit to the the “new, vibrant Britain” is all this stuff? The current political establishment ( living back in the 19th Century) is not qualified for the job it has voluntarily chosen to do. Con-men thrive in all directions, but they are incapable of devising any sensible directions.