Every time we down here in the bunker think things can’t get any worse for Rishi Sunak and the Conservative Party, they do. Their former deputy chairman, who resigned in January over the government’s Rwanda policy (it wasn’t sufficiently heartless), sensationally quit to join Richard Tice’s Reform UK Ltd for a reported transfer fee of £400,000.
Lee Anderson, once part of Arthur Scargill’s NUM and a Labour councillor in 2015, resigned as a party member in 2018 to join the Conservatives under Theresa May. The man who campaigned for Michael Foot in 1983 complained that Labour had been taken over by the hard left. Anderson won the Ashfield seat in 2019 and little more than three years later was deputy chairman of the Conservative and Unionist Party.
A few months later he was advising asylum seekers to “f*** off back to France” if they didn’t like conditions aboard the Bibby Stockholm. You can’t quite imagine Willie Whitelaw or Chris Patten, former party chairmen themselves, saying that can you?
His move to Reform UK Ltd is almost certainly the end of Anderson’s meteoric journey across the political spectrum, unless Attila the Hun decides to return and forms a political party even further to the right.
Reform has risen to around 12% in the polls while the Conservatives have slipped to 18%. It doesn’t seem beyond the realms of possibility that, on present trajectory, the two could pass each other at some point.
To help bring that about, we then learned that the Conservatives’ single biggest donor, Frank Xavier Hester, had apparently made racist comments about Diane Abbot, MP for Hackney North who had the Labour whip withdrawn in April last year for her own references to Jewish people not experiencing racism like black people do, something she later apologised for.
Hester’s alleged comments from 2019 haven’t been denied and are reported so precisely in The Guardian I assume there must be a recording somewhere:
“It’s like trying not to be racist but you see Diane Abbott on the TV and you’re just like, I hate, you just want to hate all black women because she’s there, and I don’t hate all black women at all, but I think she should be shot.
“[The executive] and Diane Abbott need to be shot. She’s stupid … If we can get [the executive] being unprofessional we can get her sacked. It’s not as good as her dying. It would be much better if she died. She’s consuming resource. She’s eating food that other people could eat. You know?”
Such indefensible remarks and dark nods to a certain time in European history are hardly what you’d expect from someone awarded an OBE in the 2015 New Year Honours list for services to healthcare.
Hester, who has donated £10mn to the Conservatives with another £5mn apparently yet to be declared, made his fortune through The Phoenix Partnership (TPP) a healthcare technology firm, with lucrative contracts from the NHS and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) amounting to more than £500mn since 2016.
The BMA’s general practice committee (GPC), is now urging Hester to resign from the company he founded with immediate effect.
Things have reached such a desperate pitch that the Conservatives appear to be seriously considering the return of Boris Johnson to campaign in red wall seats before the general election, according to The Times. The previous PM but one has just returned from a mysterious visit by private jet to see Nicolás Maduro the president of Venezuela to “emphasise the need for Venezuela to embrace a proper democratic process” we are told by his spokesperson.
And if you believe that you’ll believe anything.
This week we’ve added another 16 downsides, but no upsides.
The economy
In a little reported story, lifts are staying broken down for longer due to delays at the EU border and a lack of spare parts stocked in the UK, reports The Yorkshire Post. This is according to the CEO of The Lift and Escalator Consultancy who says before the UK left the EU, parts would arrive within “two or three days. Now all they can say is we’ll order it now but we don’t know when we’ll get it because it could get tied up or it could come straight through.”
I have personal experience of this sort of thing, which must be happening on a daily basis in plenty of other industries too.
John Springford at the Centre for European Reform (CER) says that following Covid, intra-EU exports grew much faster than exports from Europe to the rest of the world. He claims that if Britain’s total exports to the EU had grown at a similar rate, by August 2023 they would have been 27% higher than they actually were.
A report from CER also calculates that all of the UK’s existing free trade agreements (FTAs) plus possible new ones with India and the US would give the UK “a total boost of around 1% of GDP in the long run, a small fraction compared to the impact of Brexit”. This is due to Britain’s exports being heavily reliant on services where FTAs generally have a very limited impact, and because of trade gravity which means it’s easier and cheaper to trade with neighbours than countries on the other side of the planet.
The anti-Brexit group, Conservative European Forum, has published a 154-page report calling for the dismantling of post-Brexit barriers between the UK and the EU, arguing that it will help “boost the economy” and would enjoy public support. Former deputy PM David Lidington said:
“The removal of red tape, friction and the cost of form filling will make it easier for British firms to make profit and to employ people, and will make the UK an even more attractive place for investors.”
Since this is unlikely to have any impact on Sunak, one assumes it’s really aimed at Keir Starmer and the Labour Party.
Government
The European Scrutiny Committee chaired by Sir Bill Cash has been told by the first minister of Gibraltar that the UK and EU have “agreed in principle” that Schengen border checks will be carried out in Gibraltar and that the overseas territory will be “aligning with EU rules to ensure a so-called level playing field together with joint UK-Spanish management of Gibraltar’s airport and defence issues”. Sir Bill isn’t happy – as usual.
A new report by the think tank UK in a Changing Europe: Brexit and the State, claims that civil service numbers have grown by 100,000 since the referendum with particularly big increases seen in The Cabinet Office, DEFRA, and the Home Office. A lack of capacity in the devolved administrations who now have to “administer new functions and devise and deliver more policy from scratch, rather than merely implementing EU policy decisions” has at times also been challenging.
A similar analysis by Jill Rutter, also for UKICE, suggests that Brexit has “made the UK state less productive” in the sense that it is employing more people to carry out the same functions.
As an example, Rutter cites the post-Brexit farming regime which has meant the handfuls of people in DEFRA who oversaw the EU CAP scheme have now been expanded to 100s of officials. The international trade function in government – which didn’t even exist in 2016, now employs over 1,000, and when the Department of International Trade was absorbed into the reshaped business department it numbered over 4,000 staff.
Rutter says the big achievement of the government to date has been to create a lot of additional public (and private) cost for little economic gain.
And to emphasise the point, the FT reports the new border control post at Harwich is physically ready but the Horticultural Trade Association has written to the PM complaining of a lack of operational detail. The Cold Chain Federation estimates that new requirements could add up to £1,000 to the cost of a single multi-consignment lorry entering the UK.
With the civil service struggling to cope with everything else, it isn’t surprising to note the ‘sclerotic’ EU has taken a lead over the UK in regulating artificial intelligence. The EU Artificial Intelligence (AI) Act is expected to come into force in late May following a vote in the European Parliament.
The UK government is still consulting on a light-touch AI regime, but Enza Iannopollo, principal analyst at research firm Forrester, said:
“Over time, at least some of the work UK firms undertake to be compliant with the EU AI Act will become part of their overall AI governance strategy, regardless of UK specific requirements – or lack thereof.”
If UK firms begin to adopt the EU’s AI regulatory framework will they welcome another one on top? The so-called Brussels effect is going to take some resisting.
Financial services
The founder and CEO of Intercontinental Exchange, owner of the New York stock exchange, says the UK has “lost value as a trading centre since leaving the single market”, and uncertainty around some post-Brexit regulations had made it difficult to invest in British businesses. Jeffrey Sprecher suggested Brexit had “complicated” things for the UK.
As if echoing Sprecher’s words, the Australian hedge fund Tribeca, a major investor in Glencore, one of the world’s largest diversified natural resource companies, has called on the Glencore board to shift its primary listing from London to Sydney and abandon a plan to spin off its profitable coal business.
If Glencore does move, the company will be joining the continuing exodus of many global firms away from The City since Brexit.
Northern Ireland
The Northern Ireland environment department (DAERA) has warned that the ban on the movement of sheep and cattle between GB and NI – in place because of an outbreak of bluetongue virus (BTV) – could continue for another two years. DAERA minister Andrew Muir has also confirmed it does not apply to French cattle moving to NI through Great Britain because they’re treated as ‘re-entering’ the EU. Movements from GB to NI must adhere to the same rules as those governing movements from GB to the EU, with an export health certificate now required.
It has emerged in answer to a question in the House of Lords from UUP peer Lord Empey that the government has allocated up to £192.3mn for the construction of post-Brexit border inspection posts in Northern Ireland. Lord Douglas-Miller, a junior minister at DEFRA said:
“The construction of the Sanitary and Phytosanitary Inspection Facilities in Northern Ireland is supported by an agreed business case which provides a funding envelope of up to a maximum of £192.3 million.”
Education
According to The Telegraph, UK universities are considering offering fewer places to British students amid the threat of financial collapse. John Rushforth, the executive secretary of the Committee of University Chairs, representing university governing bodies, says reducing the number of domestic students was “one consideration” because it’s possible to make a surplus on foreign students, “but you can’t make one on domestic students.”
Meat
It seems meat is having problems crossing borders both ways.
A London delicatessen known for its wide variety of traditional German sausages, says stocks are running low due to post-Brexit border changes brought in last month. The company’s accounts manager, Susann Schmieder, says:
“We only have stuff left over from before the new border changes came in, and those are approaching their best before dates.”
The business has not received a delivery of sausages since 31 January when EU vets were required to sign off all meat and dairy imports before they can be shipped.
And it has emerged that an export shipment of British beef jerky was blocked by Australian border officials earlier this month.
It turns out that no beef at all has been exported from Britain to Australia under the recently signed trade agreement. The CEO of the British Meat Processors Association said:
“Australia considers UK beef and lamb not safe to import unless and until we prove otherwise.”
Who knew trade deals were that complicated?
