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Weatherspoon’s boss Tim Martin inevitably attracted heaps of scorn when recently bemoaning staff shortages for his pubs, and demanding the government allow more EU migrants to fill the gap. But at least he was prepared to face that scorn to point out an unfortunate if inevitable consequence of the Brexit he had helped to bring about.
Most of his fellow Brexit warriors have preferred instead to run for the hills. The new Brexit battle cry seems to be: ‘Don’t mention the war, in case anyone remembers that we were the people who started it …’
David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith and Liam Fox have morphed from being Brexit experts to become Covid experts, if by ‘expert’ we mean that they are regularly invited onto flagship BBC programmes to give their view, without ever being asked why they got so much wrong in their previous field of expertise.
On the rare occasion they do face a question about the B-word, Davis chuckles, IDS coughs, Fox sighs, and all three complain that, sadly, the Europeans have created the wrong sort of Brexit. Taking Back Control is all very well, but not if it means forfeiting the ability to blame the EU when it turns out we have lost more than we gained in doing so.
‘The wrong sort of Brexit’ is a line of defence now adopted by none other than David Frost, the government’s chief Brexit negotiator, who stood so proudly and so smugly behind Boris Johnson as the prime minister signed an agreement he had almost certainly never read, and who now laments the deal-clinching Northern Ireland Protocol of which he was once so proud and so smug.
It was not as though anyone warned them, was it, that to make Brexit happen, you would need either a hard border on the island of Ireland, or a border down the Irish Sea that would mean Northern Ireland was treated differently to the rest of the UK? Nor did anyone point out that this would create all manner of economic and political problems for the region… well, apart from Tony Blair and John Major five years ago and many times since. And apart from the Irish government until they were sick of saying it, and the European negotiators who kept trying to spell out the realities, but were met with Johnson’s populist bluster, and Frost’s insistence that things would work out fine.
Cont

Final-
Andrea Jenkyns, Nadine Dorries, Theresa Villiers, Mark Francois, Bill Cash, Steve Baker… so many Tory MPs who made their names in the fight for Brexit, now scattered to the winds, and, on the campaign to which they gave so much, largely silent as the grave. Arron Banks, too – it used to be anyone could hardly tweet the B-word without him retorting how wrong I would be proved when all the Brexit promises were delivered!
These days, not a word. And where is Daniel Hannan, self-styled intellectual godfather to the whole project, yet less voluble in explaining away its downsides, than he was when he was so confident there would be none?
Agreed, we can all laugh at Tim Martin. however wouldn’t it be nice, too, if Brexit’s other business cheerleaders, like James Dyson or Jim Ratcliffe, or that single Brexit economist who kept being wheeled out, whose name I have forgotten, but who assured us there would only be upsides, would also give us the benefit of their wisdom and their analysis now, five years after the champagne corks stopped popping?
Can any single one of the Brexit Army, from General Johnson down, say without shame or dishonesty, that Brexit is working out either as they said it would, or wanted it to? If so, why have so many of them fallen so silent
My opinion is exactly the same about Brexit today as when I cast my vote, and I am happy to declare it. Mistake. Disaster. Worst act of national self-harm in our lifetime. I wonder if deep down, some of these chancer's might be beginning to feel the same.
Surely having devoted so much of their lives to fighting for a change as big as Brexit, it should be assumed that they would never stop shouting about it from the rooftops, possibly have written books and made films galore to make sure people never forgot the scale and significance of what had been achieved!
But no, instead these deceitful Brexiteer winners are behaving as though they lost!
Might their silence of the victors suggest that though they are fully fledged creatures and exploiters of the post-truth world, for that is how they won, they are not yet fully-fledged creatures of the post-shame world?
We know Johnson has no shame, for we see it day in day out, but for these lesser characters in the Brexit story, might there just be the slightest smidgen of shame at the gulf between what was promised, and what is now ensuing?
Certainly, if they are proud of what they have created, 'don’t mention the war’ is a very odd way of showing !

Unfortunately for the the people of the UK, they are not working out fine, but heaven forbid anyone should think it is Johnson’s or Frost’s fault … No, those bloody Europeans made them sign the Protocol, of course they did. ‘How were we supposed to know it would have the effect they said it would? Why should we implement it just because we agreed to?’
What of Arlene Foster, how must she be feeling about life these days, having fought so hard for Brexit despite a majority in Northern Ireland not wanting it, having supported Johnson as Tory leader on the basis he would be "a fabulous friend to Northern Ireland", and now part of that long list of people to learn that if you hitch your wagon to Johnson, the chances are you’ll one day regret it?
Now Arline Foster is failed first minister, a child of Brexit devoured by Brexit, and its inevitable contradictions, on which she is now silent, as well as powerless!
Kate Hoey, another Ulsterwoman who flew the Brexit flag, not least from the back of the boat she shared with liar Nigel Farage as they sailed down the Thames to rage at EU fisheries policy, and promise UK fishermen a bright new future freed from the shackles of Brussels… where is she now? Sitting in the House of Lords, where else, alongside other Brexit-supporting ex-Labour MPs, Gisela Stuart and John Mann, similarly very quiet these days when it comes to Brexit.
As for Farage, he remains high profile of course, because his profile is his living. So he piles into any debate which allows him to say ‘woke,’ and milks his Brexit fame to become one of Cameo’s star turns, delivering video messages to anyone who wants one, and failing to spot that when someone called ‘Hugh Janus’ paid a few quid to get ‘a personalised message from Nigel’, it was a ****-take, just to hear the words ‘hello, huge anus’ fall from Farage’s lips. But when was the last time you heard Farage talk fishing, or farming, or indeed any of the other sectors promised they would thrive, and now realising they were lied to by people like him?
While liar Farage keeps on trilling and shilling, other leading lights of the Brexit campaign have simply vanished from public view, among them cabinet ministers.
There was a time you could not turn on the radio or TV without hearing the über-Etonian tones of Jacob Rees-Mogg telling us how Brexit would lead to cheaper food, cheaper clothes, cheaper holidays, less red tape, greater competitiveness, a stronger economy, more power… now that none of those things have turned out to be true, he has gone from ubiquity to invisibility, perhaps hiding away in agony that his beloved Catholic Church will these days marry twice-divorced proven liars who pay for abortions as a way of keeping their child tally to single figures.
Cont-

Weatherspoon’s boss Tim Martin inevitably attracted heaps of scorn when recently bemoaning staff shortages for his pubs, and demanding the government allow more EU migrants to fill the gap. But at least he was prepared to face that scorn to point out an unfortunate if inevitable consequence of the Brexit he had helped to bring about!
Most of his fellow Brexit warriors have preferred instead to run for the hills. The new Brexit battle cry seems to be: ‘Don’t mention the war, in case anyone remembers that we were the people who started it …’
David Davis, Iain Duncan Smith and Liam Fox have morphed from being Brexit experts to become Covid experts, if by ‘expert’ we mean that they are regularly invited onto flagship BBC programmes to give their view, without ever being asked why they got so much wrong in their previous field of expertise.
On the rare occasion they do face a question about the B-word, Davis chuckles, IDS coughs, Fox sighs, and all three complain that, sadly, the Europeans have created the wrong sort of Brexit. Taking Back Control is all very well, but not if it means forfeiting the ability to blame the EU when it turns out we have lost more than we gained in doing so.
‘The wrong sort of Brexit’ is a line of defence now adopted by none other than David Frost, the government’s chief Brexit negotiator, who stood so proudly and so smugly behind Boris Johnson as the prime minister signed an agreement he had almost certainly never read, and who now laments the deal-clinching Northern Ireland Protocol of which he was once so proud and so smug.
It was not as though anyone warned them, was it, that to make Brexit happen, you would need either a hard border on the island of Ireland, or a border down the Irish Sea that would mean Northern Ireland was treated differently to the rest of the UK? Nor did anyone point out that this would create all manner of economic and political problems for the region… well, apart from Tony Blair and John Major five years ago and many times since. And apart from the Irish government until they were sick of saying it, and the European negotiators who kept trying to spell out the realities, but were met with Johnson’s populist bluster, and Frost’s insistence that things would work out fine!
Cont-

The reasons for this are not hard to find. On top of everything already mentioned, the UK government has spent billions on new border controls and hiring civil servants to deal with Brexit and since the start of the year has imposed billions of pounds worth of red tape on British industry. All of this has hit trade and yet the UK government has not even started implementing several parts of the agreement, including collecting VAT. More pain for business is on the way.
Covid travel restrictions have also disguised the hit that the service sector will take from the loss of freedom of movement and leaving the single market. The complaints from the UK’s arts sector that new visa requirements make touring in the EU uneconomical will be as nothing compared with those service companies which discover their staff can no longer visit and work in EU countries at will. The City of London is also having to come to terms with the fact that the government hung it out to dry in the Brexit negotiations and the rest of Europe intends to benefit at its expense.
So, what will be the final figure for the economic damage of Brexit? Economists are divided, with the government’s own economics watchdog the Office for Budget Responsibility saying that the 2-3% of lost economic growth already suffered is part of the 6% that was predicted at the time of the referendum.
Others point out the 6% was a calculation of what would happen once the UK left and so will come on top of the damage we already know about. So, the total damage is somewhere between 6-9% of UK GDP. But this will be spread over a long period of time and will depress growth not reverse it.
Even so, with average UK economic growth well below 2% a year in recent years, this will mean losing between 1/4 and 1/3 of annual growth for the next 15 years. The huge bounce back from Covid will hide this for a year or so but it is still there, still painful and no amount of government misinformation and propaganda will change that.
Remember any benefits from new trade deals or replacing EU regulations with UK ones, cannot possibly repair the damage done by leaving the single market. Just look at the recent trade deal announced with Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein. It is worse than the one we had before as part of the EU; strangely the Norwegian government mentioned this, the British government didn’t.
One final thing, all these calculations are based on the EU staying as it is. Yet the EU has continually improved the single market and will hope to do so in future, especially in the area of services. For the UK, which is heavily dependent on its service sector this a tragedy; it would have gained enormously from staying in the single market and encouraging reforms. Now those improvements will be designed to benefit EU member states and most certainly not the UK.

Investment by British firms also took a huge hit from Brexit, it was on a long rising trend before the referendum and froze dead in its tracks almost immediately afterwards. It was stuck at that level for four long years as uncertainty and confusion meant British business held back on ten’s of billions of pounds worth of investment every year. Lost investment means lost growth, lost jobs and lost taxes. (Covid made the investment figures far worse, but that bit at least should bounce back.)
Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) into the UK from abroad, paints a similar picture. It matters immensely to the UK because productivity here is very low. France, Germany and the USA are all 20-25% more productive than the UK. One of the few things that helps keep the UK’s productivity at even this miserable level is that the UK has attracted high levels of foreign investment over the years. Foreign companies are only prepared to set up the most productive and efficient factories in countries as expensive as the UK and they demand their supply chains are productive as well.
Without high levels of FDI that will not happen as much and FDI is falling, from a record high of £192bn in 2016 to £35.6bn in 2019. These figures are very volatile but even so FDI fell for three straight years after the referendum and that looks set to continue. Research by UCL and the LSE has found Brexit will cause a further 37.5% fall in FDI because it was the very attractive membership of the single market that drew foreign firms into the UK like bees to honey. The decision to leave the single market will therefore be a disaster for FDI and UK productivity.
This is one of the major reasons we can see that the damage caused by Brexit has only just begun. Up until the beginning of this year the best calculations are that the British economy has lost some 2-3% of growth since 2016. To put that in context the UK spends 2% of its GDP on defence.
Looking forward, there is nothing to suggest that the pain is not going to get worse. The Treasury’s own analysis of Brexit found the UK economy would be 6% smaller in 15 years’ time than it would have been if we had stayed in the EU. Similar results have been calculated by many highly experienced and reputable economists.
Cont

Half a decade after the referendum, the economic hit to the UK caused by Brexit is becoming clearer. But it will be years before the true impact is understood
It has started already; you will have noticed it yourself; the pro-Brexit press is starting to write those articles we all knew were on the way... The British economy is not bouncing back from Covid and the lockdown, oh no, this is a 'BREXIT BONANZA'; Global Britain is booming it seems, not because the constraints of Covid are coming to an end but because we have left the EU.
Strange that there doesn’t seem to be a single industry that isn’t complaining about more red tape, higher costs, more restrictions, barriers to trade and staff shortages; but still this is a 'Brexit boom'.
Except it isn’t, we all know that, anyone with an ounce of common sense knows it isn’t. You just have to ask yourself: What has made trade easier in the last six months? What regulations have been eased? What has happened that Brussels would have stymied six months ago? Where are the millions of British workers trained and ready to replace EU immigrants? Where is the money saved from EU contributions being spent to boost growth?
Five years on from the referendum we would probably all be more aware of the painful consequences of Brexit had Covid not presented the government and its Brexit supporters with the ideal camouflage. How do you spot the damage caused by Brexit amid a far worse medical and economic crisis? How do you show that the economy is doing worse than it should when it is booming after Covid restrictions end?
Well actually it can be done quite easily, for two main reasons.
First, a great deal of damage was done just by the prospect of Brexit between 2016 and 2020 and; second, nothing about Covid makes the economic prospects of Brexit better. We know what happened and what to expect and it isn’t going to change.
The damage already done before the UK officially left the EU was considerable and was caused mainly by lower immigration from the EU, a fall in UK investment because of uncertainty and perhaps, most importantly, a fall in investment into the UK from abroad.
The level of immigration was one of the major reasons behind the vote for Brexit but ironically it has been of huge help to the British economy. It boosts growth, eases skills shortages and so means higher tax revenues for the Treasury. But since the referendum immigration has fallen dramatically and whole industries are suffering.
Just listen to the cries of pain from the hospitality sector, as it faces staff shortages while trying to re-open for business. Covid may have made this worse as many laid off workers went home and haven’t returned but the message is clear, immigration from the rest of the EU is good for the UK and now there is less of it.
Cont

The food industry is predicting a nightmare for British customers, with price rises and empty shelves caused by Brexit
It has been a gloomy week in Britain as customers digest mixed news about Brexit’s impact on food. The downside is that your weekly shop is going to cost more; the upside is that you won’t be able to spend too much because we’ll soon be seeing shortages of some of your favourite foods.
Driving this, in what is becoming a familiar refrain, is a shortage of labour from EU countries after you-know-what. The Road Haulage Association (RHA) predicts that a shortage of truck drivers - some 15,000 from Eastern Europe have stayed away since new red tape came in at the turn of this year - will cause a perfect storm of higher prices and reduced stock when the customs grace period ends in October.
Rod McKenzie of the RHA, said: “Not only will it be tougher to get all sorts of products into the UK, but there also won’t be enough drivers to deliver them to the supermarkets.”
For masochists who simply can’t wait until October to suffer, there is good news: The Cold Chain Federation (CCF), which handles the supply of frozen and chilled foods, says a lack of EU workers in packaging, production and warehousing is already affecting some products. “There will be outages day by day,” said CCF chief executive Shane Brennan.
Expect shortages of some meat, with the British Meat Processors Association “heading for a brick wall”, with production capacity down 10% because of staff shortages. Fruit and vegetables too could be in shorter supply, with Shaun Leonard from trucking company Turners Soham, saying: “The worst is definitely yet to come.”Other items affected could include pasta and household goods. So prepare for more shortages of lasagne sheets and toilet rolls, this time without a pandemic to blame (if the situation improves slightly, prepare to use lasagne sheets AS toilet rolls, or vice-versa).
But why will prices go up? Supply and demand. In order to fill driver vacancies, haulage companies will have to pay higher salaries, and the supermarkets that book the haulage firms will not absorb the cost but pass it on to consumers.
It’s all rather reminiscent of the joke at the start of Annie Hall: “Two elderly women are at a Catskill mountain resort, and one of 'em says, ‘Boy, the food at this place is really terrible.’ The other one says, ‘Yeah, I know; and such small portions.’”

Under England and Wales’ one-party takes all local electoral system!

Spread out over a whole council area, one party can get near 100% representation with less than half of the vote. When councils handle billions in contracts and public services, this poses major risks of dodgy contracts and lobbying going unscrutinised.

While Westminster’s lobbying scandal continues to grow, we need to have a closer look, closer to home.

In 2015 we found that councils dominated by single parties could be wasting as much as £2.6bn a year through a lack of scrutiny of their procurement processes.

The study, The Cost of One Party Councils, looked at thousands of public sector contracts, and found that one-party dominated councils are around 50% more at risk of corruption than politically competitive councils, paying far over the odds to lobbyist contractors.

Scotland and Northern Ireland already use a fair, proportional system for electing councillors – making local one-party states a thing of the past. Wales is letting local areas scrap First Past the Post and switch to the same system as Scotland and NI – the Single Transferable Vote.

Local one-party fiefdoms plague local government in England – with growing powers often wielded with shrinking oversight. It is a potential gift for lobbyists and shady contractors.

We often see the absurdity of ‘scrutiny committees’ – reviewing millions of pounds in contracts – being dominated by the same party in office.

The risks of winner-takes-all politics – of sloppy decision-making and dodgy dealings – are clear. One party councils could be wasting billions of pounds a year through a lack of proper oversight, according to the research. The warped voting system is actively raising the risks of corruption in England.

Voters deserve fair representation, not unjust domination by one party. Across England, voters want real choice and a clear voice – but they’re unable to break through the one-party ceiling.

A shift to proportional representation is vital to provide the effective scrutiny that voters need and deserve, and to open up the town hall cliques at last.

Instead, the Home Secretary is planning to make things worse by imposing First Past the Post on Mayors and PCC elections, a move that will hinder independents and deprive voters of real choice.

Nobody saved money by not checking things properly. If we want efficient local government, we need an effective local democracy, and then means councils that properly reflect their local areas

https://www.electoral-reform.org.uk/local-one-party-states-are-a-gift-for-cronies-and-lobbyists/?utm_medium=email&utm_source=ers-email&utm_campaign=blog-roundup&utm_content=ERS+News:+30+April+A

Votes for mayors and police and crime commissioners were counted using the Supplementary Vote, where people choose their first and second choice candidates. If no candidate gets 50 per cent of the first choice votes, the top two candidates go head-to-head in a second round and all other candidates are eliminated.
This threw up some interesting results on May 6th, where the second preference candidate scooped the win. So in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough, Labour took the metro mayor from the Conservatives when the second preference votes were totted up. The same happened in North Wales, with Labour winning the Police and Crime Commissioner election over the Conservatives. And Plaid Cymru also won the Dyfed-Powys Police and Crime Commissioner election over the Conservatives.
This preferential system has its flaws but it would be far worse for voters if FPTP was used. Yet Home Secretary Priti Patel announced proposals in March for precisely this, making it easier in future elections for unpopular and highly divisive candidates to get into city and town halls on low levels of voter support.
So as the new session of Parliament got underway, Make Votes Matter launched a petition against this blatant attack on our democracy. We need less First Past the Post in the UK, not more.
We’ve seen evidence in the devolved nations that proportional voting systems work, so why not extend it to British general elections and English council elections?
Make Votes Matter brokered the cross-party Good Systems Agreement which sets out the principles any new voting systems must deliver. And we believe the final decision would be best made by a deliberative democratic process such as a citizens’ assembly. It’s the only way forward.
The big takeaway from ‘Super Thursday’ is that when PR is applied, you get even representation. And when FPTP is applied, voters are left out in the cold, without a real say on the big issues affecting their local communities. It’s time to ditch the broken FPTP system and give voters a real choice at the ballot box.
https://www.makevotesmatter.org.uk/petition-less-fptp-not-more?utm_source=actionnetwork&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Maynewsletter&link_id=9&can_id=7912b55e72d6174409e36b7a8226a78d&email_referrer=email_1188731&email_subject=equal-votes-update-may

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