Although Brexit downsides will continue to emerge, Yorkshire Bylines is officially retiring the Davis Downside Dossier having reached the milestone of 2,000 downsides and 39 upsides. The dossier will remain on the website but won’t be updated.
Exposing the idiocy of ‘no downsides to Brexit’
What started as a tongue-in-cheek way of exposing David Davis’s idiocy for suggesting you could effectively shrink your domestic market by 85% and suffer no consequences, has served its purpose.
Davis stood at the despatch box in the House of Commons in October 2016 and breezily exclaimed, “there will be no downside to Brexit at all, and considerable upsides”. There can be no doubt that the minister for leaving the EU at the time didn’t have a clue, although as we now know, that wasn’t something limited to him on the government benches.
His words marked the beginning of three years of impasse and bitter parliamentary argument, resulting in both Davis and the prime minister resigning, only to be replaced by the likes of Boris Johnson, Dominic Cummings and David Frost, not to mention Liz Truss, vessels even emptier and no less incompetent than himself, and the total collapse of any remaining trust in the British political class.
In the 2024 general election, the Conservative Party paid the price. Eight years of relentless focus on Brexit at the expense of the urgent and important, ended as voters woke up and noticed that nothing in the country worked any more. Living standards were falling while the ruling party wallowed in an overflowing cesspit of scandal, sleaze and corruption. The Tories deservedly fell to their worst ever election defeat.
David Davis’s legacy
Davis, or Sir David as we must now call him, was knighted in the 2023 New Years honours list, for “public and political service” revealing all that’s wrong with modern Britain.
In claiming Brexit would have no downsides he wasn’t just mistaken or misguided, he was flat wrong. Only Daniel Hannan stands between him and the eternal shame of being the unchallenged world record holder in the wrongness stakes. Hannan’s reward was a seat in the upper chamber.
Brexit turned Britain into a Conservative kakistocracy: government by the least qualified and most inept citizens.
However, Davis isn’t completely useless. He stands as an example to people everywhere, that limited expertise is no barrier to being an MP. He has even persuaded companies to employ him for the benefit of his ‘advice’. Most people might question what you could learn from the Right Honourable member for Goole and Pocklington that you couldn’t find out quicker from an eight-year-old child, or indeed a wet finger in the air.
His register of interests over the past few years shows that he values his time rather highly, usually between £2,000 and £3,000 per hour, and quite a number of firms have been daft enough to pay, although none for very long. At the moment he’s on the board of just one: THI Holdings GmbH, a family owned private equity business based in Stuttgart, receiving £33,900 per year for 16 hours work.
Brexit isn’t done with us yet
He and others at ground zero of the disaster like Johnson, Michael Gove and Nigel Farage, are all doing very well, thank you. They all display an ‘I’m alright Jack’ attitude, as the project they championed continues to blight the national life of this country in virtually every conceivable way, from trade to touring musicians and from immigration and inward investment to agriculture and energy.
And it isn’t done with us yet by any means.
Brexit has often been described as a “slow puncture” in the economy, which makes Keir Starmer’s ‘make Brexit work’ mantra sound rather hollow and ridiculous. How he intends to make a hole in a tyre ‘work’ for the British people is not entirely clear.
Two bright spots this week. First the appointment of Emily Thornberry, a former shadow foreign secretary, as chair of the powerful foreign affairs select committee. She has already called for a “proper trading relationship” with the EU. And Douglas Alexander, MP for East Lothian and minister of state for trade policy has attacked “post-imperial delusion in British trade policy in recent years” and says trade deals with Australia and New Zealand do not “touch the sides of leaving the deepest single market that we were a part of”.
These are very welcome if entirely obvious comments.
Retiring the Davis Downside Dossier
This week we added 23 downsides across 12 sectors bringing the total to 2,000.
Borders
Plans have been approved for border inspection facilities at the port of Larne in Northern Ireland with the forecast that more than £700,000 will be spent within a 12-month period on council staff carrying out post-Brexit checks.
Dame Angela Eagle, the border security and asylum minister, claims that an error by the previous government in the negotiation of post-Brexit trade rules has delayed the replacement of the UK’s Border Force fleet of patrol vessels and increased the cost to the public purse by around £250mn.
At the Border Control Post in Sevington, Kent, the horticultural trade journal Hortweek claims officials from Defra have blocked 11 trucks for 11 days on suspicion of finding Pochazia shantungensis, leading to hauliers saying they will never deliver to the UK again and to the death of thousands of pounds worth of trees.
The Horticultural Trades Association, representing garden retailers and growers, has written to Lady Hayman, the borders, biosecurity and plant health minister, adding their voice to warnings that some specialist transporters were now withdrawing from the UK market completely.
Culture (musicians)
Singer and songwriter Elton John claims that Brexit has placed “leg irons” on travelling musicians and says he also resents all the polarised opinions after “the bloody government tricked people into a bad vote”. The rock icon said the red tape involved in moving between countries has caused a “logistical nightmare” for the music industry and could jeopardise young artist’s future and also the country’s status as a cultural force.
Immigration
In a joint letter, the German interior minister, and her French counterpart urge the EU Commission to “rapidly present a draft negotiating mandate” for talks with the UK on an “essential” asylum and migration deal.
The letter says: “We believe that Brexit has had very detrimental consequences for the coherence of our migration policies. The absence of provisions governing the flow of people between the UK and the Schengen area is clearly contributing to the dynamics of irregular flows — and to the danger posed to people using this route in the Channel and the North Sea.”
Transport
According to the logistics industry news outlet The Loadstar, British firms are being advised to reconfigure supply chains away from the single market to “mitigate the [trade and confidence agreement’s] adverse effects”.
This comes from the Aston University report published recently which claims the “reduction in trade scale due to Brexit, particularly in sectors burdened by higher trade barriers, has led to decreased efficiency and a loss of global competitiveness” and adds that this “at least partially, explains the wider decline in UK exports outside the EU. The disruption of global value chains in sectors such as footwear is particularly evident, with corresponding declines in both exports and imports”.
Agriculture
A plant nursery in Swanley, Kent, has constructed a biosecure barn to carry out checks on products arriving from Europe because of dysfunction in the post-Brexit border control system.
Provender Wholesale is one of a growing number of UK plant and food traders setting up their own ‘control points’ where products can be inspected, as an alternative to state-run facilities. Stuart Tickner, head of the nursery and biosecurity at Provender said: “The way it’s going is we’re losing all control. By becoming a control point, we bring some of that aspect of control back to us.”
UK farmers are said to be struggling with red tape surrounding post-Brexit environmental subsidy schemes, according to The Times. John Atkinson, a Lake District farmer says joining the new Countryside Stewardship higher tier scheme is “like pulling hens’ teeth”. This is despite a £358mn underspend of the agriculture budget over the past three years.
The National Farmers Union (NFU) call it a “kick in the teeth” for farmers. NFU president Tom Bradshaw said the underspend was the result of new and incomplete government schemes replacing the EU’s basic payment scheme.
Education
The mother of a Yorkshire student says Brexit has made studying abroad “impossible” as she battles to get her daughter a visa in time to attend the University of Barcelona. Fay Bird, from Dinnington, South Yorkshire, says she applied to the visa outsource provider BLS International on 1 July but is still waiting.
Her daughter is due to start studying on 30 September and has spent £89 on a criminal record document, £80 for the cost of the visa, £79 for a medical form, £80 to post the documents and £100 on applying for a second passport, bringing her total costs to £548 – which could all be for nothing.
Energy
A new report from the think tank UK in a Changing Europe claims the UK’s exit from the EU’s Internal Energy Market has made the trading of energy more costly. The inefficiency is estimated to have increased wholesale electricity costs by 0.25% to 0.70% per year (£130mn to £370mn in 2022).
UKICE also suggests the move created barriers to investment in UK hybrid assets (the next generation of interconnectors which enable multiple connections from offshore wind farms to national grids), something which requires interoperability between the GB and EU energy markets.
This comes as The Daily Telegraph declares that the UK is burdened with the highest energy costs anywhere in the developed world.
Food
Inconsistencies and inaccuracies in veterinary regulations are ‘crippling’ the UK meat sector warns the Association of Independent Meat Suppliers (AIMS). The trade body, representing the meat and poultry industry, describes the current situation as ‘untenable’.
Jason Aldiss, AIMS’ head of external affairs, said: “We are seeing a complete failure in the consistency of veterinary controls, which is compounded by the inaccuracy of the manual, outdated export certification system. Errors in veterinary certification are causing substantial losses for the industry, and without immediate action, these inefficiencies will continue to destabilise the meat sector.”
The government has postponed indefinitely plans to force food manufacturers to put ‘not for EU’ labels on all meat and dairy products sold across Britain from next month after warnings that the scheme could cause “chaos” for producers and suppliers.
The Food and Drink Federation had estimated the cost to the industry of meeting the new labelling requirements at up to £250mn a year, and warned that it would increase the price of products for shoppers. The plan was part of the Windsor framework agreed with the EU last year.
An analysis by Pan UK (Pesticide Action Network) using data from the Health and Safety Executive has revealed that the amount of pesticide residue allowed on scores of food types in England, Wales and Scotland has soared since Brexit, with some now thousands of times higher.
For tea, the maximum residue level (MRL) was increased by 4,000 times for both the insecticide chlorantraniliprole and the fungicide boscalid. For glyphosate, classed as a “probable human carcinogen” by the World Health Organization, the MRL for beans was raised by 7.5 times.
Trade
A trade ‘snapshot’ for the first half of 2024 published by the Food and Drink Federation shows food and drink exports to the EU declined by 23.6% in volume terms, and 4.3% by value. Certification requirements are said to be, by far, the “biggest obstacle to growth”. A decline in beef and poultry imports since the introduction of the Export Health Certificate on EU imports in February 2024 demonstrates the effect of this requirement on trade.
The UK government has again delayed implementing post-Brexit physical checks on ‘medium risk’ fruit and vegetables imported from the EU which were due to begin on 1 January next year. The move comes after warning from the UK’s food supply chain that the new checks will add costs of over £300mn to the fruit and vegetable industry, resulting in higher prices for consumers.
The FT cover the report published by academics at Aston University showing that Brexit is having a “profound and ongoing” impact on Britain’s trade with the EU, with goods exports and imports still being impacted. Modelling indicates that the UK’s annual exports to the EU are 17% down and imports 23% below where they would have been if Brexit had not occurred, with negative impacts actually increasing during 2023.
Finance
Asset managers Abrdn (formerly Standard Life Aberdeen plc) has claimed that outdated post-Brexit regulation around investment trust cost disclosure has “set the UK back by three years on infrastructure”.
Christian Pittard, head of closed-end funds at Abrdn, said: “Cost disclosure rules, which have amounted to a distortive ‘double counting’ of costs, have negatively impacted investor sentiment, therefore choking flows into investment trusts.”
They have apparently been a key cause of “three lost years of infrastructure investment”.
Northern Ireland
The BBC reports that two elements of the Windsor Framework agreed in February 2023 and due to be implemented at the start of the October have now been delayed until next year. New customs processes for parcels and freight will not start until March 2025 at the earliest after some businesses had expressed concerns that there had not been enough time to prepare for the changes.
The leader of Traditional Unionist Voice Jim Allister says the new rules which should have come into force will create “additional complexity and costs”. Businesses not meeting the criteria for the green lane will have to send goods through the red lane, in effect a full EU customs border.
Jenny Brunton of the British Agriculture Bureau says that because of the new EU deforestation regulation, beef sold in Northern Ireland from 1 January cannot come from cattle raised on land that has been deforested to make space for grazing. Brunton adds that GB farmers will need to show they are not using animal feed that contains soy or palm oil obtained by deforestation abroad.
The Irish Independent claim this has raised fears of a ‘hard beef border’ between Northern Ireland and Great Britain.
Tourism
A new report by the Centre for Economics and Business Research suggests that the country is attracting nearly three million fewer overseas visitors annually compared to before the pandemic. Spending by these tourists has also declined by 8%, or £2.8bn adjusted for inflation.
Britain’s main competitors in Europe are expected to see a return to growth in visitor numbers this year, indicating that the UK is losing ground as a top tourist destination. The trend is attributed to rising costs and the abolition of the UK’s tax-free shopping scheme has further dampened the appeal for international visitors.
Bernard Donoghue, director of the Association of Leading Visitor Attractions (Alva), has described the government’s decision to ban the use of ID cards by EU citizens as “illogical” and says it is causing harm to the UK tourism industry. The government’s impact assessment showed that the UK would lose 890,000 visits by European citizens each year, with a financial loss of £590mn by the ban on ID cards. More than 200 million potential visitors from Europe have ID cards but not passports.
The 2,000 dossier entries can be downloaded as a Word document or a .csv file from the Davis Downside Dossier page. Note the database key shows 2,071 since this includes previously deleted entries.
