Belfast sinks......
According to the Belfast Telegraph it is a boom time for investment into Northern Ireland. Firms are flocking to the area to set up shop. The region is also the only part of the country, apart from London, that is growing and the local business community is very happy with the deal it got in the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Since that very protocol keeps Northern Ireland in the Single Market, this is not a surprise. After all the list grows ever longer of Brexiteers who now claim they never wanted to leave the Single Market.
Apparently they always loved and adored it and wanted nothing more than to take rules and regulations from Brussels with no say on them whatsoever. No, I don’t remember many Brexit campaigners saying that at the time, the few that did mixed it in with all the usual bile about Brussels and spent years poisoning the well.
Then they act all surprised and innocent when Brexit turned into the mess we all knew it would be. Anyone with an ounce of common sense could see it coming a mile off.
Now the evidence is impossible to refute, the UK did very well in the Single Market; terribly outside the Single Market.
Northern Ireland not only benefits from staying in the Single Market, it becomes a magnet for firms that want to set up in the UK and have seamless access to the EEA.
It proves Brexit is a disaster and so the logical thing is not to emulate it but destroy it- it has to go. The government is therefore intent on dragging NI out of the Single Market, kicking and screaming.
Even when a majority want to stay in, industry loves being in and the British government has to break international law to leave.
Like some messianic religious cult all evidence, no matter how clear, that the cause is a fraud must be discredited and destroyed.
Northern Ireland’s prosperity and security is a small price to pay to keep the PM in power.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.