Moral fibre.

Now, I think it is fair to say that I don’t think Mr May is the sharpest tool in the box when it comes to negotiations. 

But at the end of the day I will happily admit that I am wrong if she pulls off the deal with the EU.  But she does come across as more Civil Service then entrepreneurial for a start.   

But while she doesn’t appear to have the acumen of being a leader and negotiator, she does have one thing that is a big plus.  The one thing Mrs May does have is moral fibre.   

Early on in the conversations with the EU she explicitly said that EU citizens could stay here.  No if’s, no but’s.  And there are to be generous rules in place for people who had moved here from EU nations in recent days.   

Of course, some Remainers said that didn’t go far enough.  And they heaped criticism on Mrs May for not effectively signing a blank cheque in relation to people coming from the EU.   

Perhaps all those who were critical of Mrs May might have a listen to what the president of La cinquième république, their new best friend, has had to say in the last few days.  Mr Macron’s government has proposed that if the UK leaves the EU without a deal in place with the European Union, UK citizens living in la république will instantly be deemed illegal immigrants.  

This approach from the French government is all the more remarkable given that Mrs May, even in the insult filled air of the Salzburg summit, reminded the assembled leaders of the EU that the UK would explicitly guarantee the rights of the EU nationals living in the UK. .   

She might not be as sharp an economist or negotiator as we may wish for.  But on this one, she’s right on the money.  And we should give her the praise for such a principled stance.

Trade deals around the world. Lesson One.

If you listened to the Today Programme this morning, after Thought For The Day at around 7:50 there was an interview with the prime minister of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong.   He is signing a trade deal with EU today.   

You knew where the interviewer was trying to go.  But Martha Kearney found her path blocked when talking about the UK leaving the EU.   

So, to paraphrase her questioning, how long will it take for the UK to have the same deal once we leave the EU?  Day one was the answer.   

He patiently explained that given the UK was currently a member of the EU, there would be zero problem in the exact same agreement working for Singapore and the UK.   

The EU negotiators must have been wishing he hadn’t said that.  It gives Mrs May the opportunity to say, "know what, we can walk away.  Every other trade deal we have through the EU’s auspices is exactly the same". 

Of course there are a couple of other things more than the simple trade deal.  Singapore is not subject to ECJ decisions.  Nor is it in a restrictive customs union with the EU.  Nor is it in a restrictive single market with the EU.

An extended transition period? No thanks!

Everyone knows that the EU only works if it has a deadline.  You see it all the time.  

Last minute deals.  One minute to midnight.  It’s the way they do it.   

So the suggestion that the EU may wish to extend the so called deadline for the transition period for leaving the European Union is but a mirage.  All that will happen is nothing substantial will be done till weeks before the new deadline then once again it will be all flurry.  It is a ridiculous way to do business.   

So we should say, “no, thanks for the offer, but let’s stick to the original deadline”.   

If we can’t come up with a solution to the issues that are apparently outstanding now, we won’t with an extended deadline either. 

Raise taxes.

Adam McVey, the SNP Leader of Edinburgh Council was on the STV news programme at 10:30 last night. Go watch it on the STV player.  Everyone should watch the leader of the council of our Capital city had to say.   

The conversation was on whether Edinburgh should introduce a tourist tax.  Now, this is not an unusual thing as anyone who has visited Rome or Barcelona or many other cities around continental Europe will attest to.  It was his justification that was quite remarkable.   

For when it came to the crunch question, “What will you be spending the money on?”, gulp, you could see the panic on the face of Mr McVey.   

Well, he said, that’s why we are doing a consultation; to find out what people think we should spend the money on.  That is a paraphrase of a longer panicked answer.  But the truth was, he didn’t know.   

So, this is how the SNP works.  Say we need more money to fix an issue that they haven’t identified.  Raise the money through taxation.  Then work out where to spend it.  That is what he said.  So no logic whatsoever.  No saying this is what the problem is.  No saying this is what we need to do to fix it. No saying this is what it will cost to fix it.  And no saying this is the amount of money we need to raise in taxation in order to fix it.   

This is the lunacy that is running and destroying Scotland.

Pooling sovereignty? Aye, right!

BREXIT is a “colossal misjudgement” that will diminish the UK’s standing in the world, harm the Special Relationship with America and could break up Britain.   

So said Sir John Major in a speech last night.  But one of his major, excuse the pun, reasons for staying in the EU is to ensure that UK remain as a “buffer between the Franco-German steamroller and smaller nations”.  In other words, he thinks rather than telling the bullies to stop being bullies and that is the end of it, we should insert ourselves as being the nation that simply acts as a buffer to the Franco German steam roller.  Not stop the bullying.    

It is perhaps this kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place.  After all, he signed up to the Maastricht Treaty.  And in retrospect, it looks very like he behaved in the same way as his fellow EU enthusiast Mrs May has done these past 2 years.  Be a bully.  

As Stewart Jackson who was Chief of Staff to David Davis when he served as Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union said “Duplicity and mendacity has become a specialism in this administration: how can you nuance a capitulation on a long-held commitment to having no border in the Irish Sea, and then try to convince your party that gifting the province to Brussels as a colony, at least in respect of its regulatory regime, is fine and dandy?  What message does this send to the Conservative Unionists in Scotland fighting the Scottish Nationalists’ demands for a similar deal?”  Good question.    

Remember what took place this summer?  A carefully-planned coup in the form of the Chequers fait accomplis, complete with photo shopped picture of Mrs May trying to look like the saviour of the world bathed in light.  Indeed, given manipulation has become Mrs Mays game (was it not always thus some may cynically argue, looking back on her time at the Home Office) the 6th July Cabinet meeting would have made even the likes of Hugo Chavez, Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Nicolae Ceausescu and others of such dictatorial style beam in admiration of Mrs May. 

As was well reported at the time, Ministers were bounced, with less than a day’s notice, to approve 120 pages of papers of a Brexit White Paper that few had seen, but which most assumed was based on the Prime Minister’s vision as enunciated at Lancaster House, Florence and Mansion House.    Of course,  we know now it wasn’t Mrs Mays work.  It was Mr Olly Robbins work.  Produced, as he has admitted, in two weeks.  

But of course, Mrs May had set up a parallel government department run by Mr Robbins.  Without telling her fellow cabinet colleagues.  That is a bit like the alleged setting up of  hidden overdrafts accounts at Patisserie Valerie without apparently telling the Board of Directors.  Quite possibly a criminal offence.  Yet Mrs May appears to have conducted the government with the same mind set.  Staggering when you think about it.

Back in the 1993, Mr Major set about persuading parliament to vote to sign up without telling them what it really meant.  And what it meant was signing up to a political experiment where we were giving away our sovereignty.   Political integration.  Certainly not the Common Market that we entered on 1st JAnuary 1973.

Oh yes, these days people like Ms Gina Miller call it pooling sovereignty.   But nobody is fooled anymore.

Well, some still don’t see it as it is through their EU superstate rosy tinted spectacles, but that’s another story.

"I look forward to the day when Parliament is no more than a council chamber under a greater EU."

The International Currency Review, Vol. 23, No. 4, Autumn 1996.  I’m sure it is part of your quarterly reading plan.   From its worthy pages we read the following.  "I look forward to the day when Parliament is no more than a council chamber under a greater EU."   

Who could possibly have said that?  You may be surprised that it is not some EU bureaucrat.  These are the words of the Rt Hon Kenneth Clarke, MP.  This clearly defines the objective of Remainers and Mrs May.   And he has never changed his view.     

History is a good teacher.   And what does it teach us about attempts to turn a diverse continent into a single Empire?   It always leads to war.   

Europe does better when it is democratic, diverse and free.   Mutual cooperation in trade as originally envisaged after WW2 was a positive aspiration.   But then it all went wrong when Germany pushed for "ever closer union" or the idea of a super state complete with a flag and patriotic song which is designed to replace national anthems.     

So, where are we today?    Great Britain moving toward civil war?   Italy certainly is moving toward failed state status.  Greece already failed, though it’s partly their own fault.  They should have defaulted when the EU bullied held the fiscal gun to their head.   The rebelling in Germany over the unilateral decision to invite in millions of migrants.   Sweden to possibly have a populist government (surely every government is populist given it has won a majority, so is that so bad?).    

I think all sensible people think the best way forward would be to reform the EU by reversing its course toward a super state.   Of course, this means the dream of a super state will need to be replaced.  But too many careers are now built on this fantasy EU dream.  And too many people have taken this on board as a religion as with all Empires.    

As David Cameron discovered to his horror when he asked for just a few concessions to take back home to placate the masses, they wouldn’t even do that.  That is the kind of people who rule the EU.  And the kind of people who want to rule over you.  Completely.

The Irish Border. The Remainers last stand.

Can someone please tell me why Mrs May and others keep perpetuating the myth that we can't have a free trade Brexit because of the Irish border?  

Oh, it’s easy to understand why Remainers like Mrs May wish us to think that.  But the reality is really rather different.  

Firstly, you have to understand that not everyone on the EU set up is a raving, swivel eyed and only out to destroy the UK.  Oh yes, there are many of them that’s true.  But let’s give credit to one man, Donald Tusk.  He is perhaps the only one in the negotiations who actually realise that the EU and the UK are best served by a good deal.  He realises, as he said to Mrs May, there are no cherries on the cake.  This was interpreted by some as a sleight at Mrs May.  The reality was, he was just telling the truth.  And nor would we want cherries as an adornment.  What we want is the substance of the cake.

So in his pragmatic way, last week Mr Tusk confirmed that Canada +++ is still on the table.  It is an option.  So why Mrs May keeps saying there is no other option other than Chequers is beginning to sound rather silly.  Yes, there are strings attached. They could be negotiated.   But substantially, it’s a deal I think most would find acceptable.  Except the SNP who threaten to vote down any deal that comes though the UK parliament.    

Back to the border.  You can get Canada +++ and retain the border as barrier-free as it is today.  The only thing stopping it happening is the Remainer politicians like Mrs May who see it as a way to scupper any agreement and keep us under ECJ rule.   

And what does today’s border look like?  Yes, the tarmac changes colour.  But look closely around it.  Search it on GoogleMaps.  There is a complete infrastructure already in place in the form of ANPR cameras.  Does it cause disruption?  Does anyone complain that both sides are recording details of every vehicle that crosses the line on the tarmac?   And what of the other stuff, VAT, tax, excise and currency?  A border already exists for all these things.  So no new border.  The only thing needed to be added is Customs.  And to help Mrs May, there is a business in London that has just done such a project, in six months, for Singapore. 

So leaving the single market and the customs union, a promise, or should I say a threat, made by David Cameron, Vince Cable, Nick Clegg, George Osborne, Gordon Brown, Nicola Sturgeon and others for a Canada-style FTA adds one more item:  customs.     

But, let’s take an independent view from Lars Karlsson, a former director of the World Customs Organisation.  He has concluded that existing computerised customs clearing methods used across much of the world mean physical border infrastructure is unnecessary.  And from the UK?  Well, the chief executive of HMRC notes that companies currently traversing the border complete VAT returns electronically in a way that could be applied to future customs declarations.  Additional physical inspections by officials already happen away from the border.  So the Irish Border? The only people who think it’s a problem are those that want to stop us leaving the EU.

What did we vote for?

Once upon a time, as all good stories begin, there was a referendum.  It had been called to see if people wanted to stay in or leave the European Union.  Lots of people said, it will be good to get out of what had become in effect a parliament and legal system that was above our own UK parliament and those of the devolved nations.  Others took a different view.  They thought staying in this new super state was actually a good idea.   

Which was fine.  It gave a very clear line of what this was all about.  Sovereignty.   But the remain people decided that this wasn’t enough. They wanted to make a second case.  They wanted people to think that leaving was economically bad too.    

Indeed, using taxpayer’s money, the then government lead by David Cameron, aided by the Liberal Democrats and the Labour Party, spent £9m of our money to lay out reasons other than sovereignty as to why we should stay.   So what did they say?  Well, one thing they said was voting Leave meant leaving the Single Market, including  introducing potential trade barriers, paying tariffs and even reverting to WTO rules.  There are countless examples of Messrs Clegg, Cameron, Brown, Osborne and Ms Sturgeon saying just that.   

Look at the words they used about the so called Single Market.  Voting Leave meant “less access”, “losing full access” and “uncertainty and risk”.  Or as Will Straw put it such easy to understand language, “we must be absolutely clear about what this means: Britain would not be part of the Single Market”.    This was echoed by former chancellor Alistair Darling:  “those wanting to leave the EU want to pull Britain out of the Single Market, which would mean introducing tariffs and barriers to our trade”.   

And even the then prime minister had his words of doom that “What the British public will be voting for is to leave the EU and leave the Single Market”.     

To be honest, I am not really how much clearer those in power could have been.   Leave meant Leave.     

So those who now say we didn’t know what we were voting for, really?  We knew exactly what we were voting for.

Let’s do some arithmetic, Mrs May.

Over 80% of our economy is Business to Business within the UK.  So that makes our overseas trade worth a max of 20% of our total trade.    

Now, not all of that 20% overseas is with the EU.  Indeed only 35% of that 20% of trade is with the EU.  So, do the arithmetic,  65% of our overseas trade is actually out with the EU.

That means that out of all the trade we do in the UK and beyond these shores, only 7% of our total trade is actually with the EU.      

I know this a simplistic way of looking at it.  And I know there are different ways of measuring what exactly is trade.  Any yes, you may come up with a few percentage point s of a difference.  

You could, for example, argue that some of our components come from the EU.  That’s true.   But the inescapable truth is we actually don’t need the EU as much as Remainers keep telling us we do.     

Quite why Mrs May then says today in her speech that it is up to the EU to come up with a counter offer to Chequers, I have no idea.  

All it can mean is she is still looking to negotiate even more away even though, as your simple arithmetic will have demonstrated in these last few seconds, we don’t need to negotiate.  We don’t need to give anything away.