Just as planned
So one UK fishing boat doesn’t have the right papers and pretty soon we are starting a cod war with France. Ambassadors are called in, threats are made, demands issued and press gleefully hope for more trouble with the French.
Except, the UK needs access to the EU for its goods and services, as the OBR reported this week, even without trouble at the border trade will decline by 15%, a massive hit for the UK. The supply chain is so weak that water companies are allowed to pump untreated sewage into the UK’s waters and the British government can’t retaliate at the borders with more red tape because it is so incompetent that it hasn’t introduced the checks and forms it said it would.
For the government this is all from the 1984 playbook, create a permanent sense of war and dispute to distract from an appalling domestic mess. But as President Macron has made clear the bigger result is that no one trusts your word.
He was diplomatic enough not to be drawn on Northern Ireland because lives are at stake. But if this is what happens when one fishing boat loses its papers what will happen if the British government tries to wriggle out of its international obligations with regard to the Northern Ireland Protocol?
If this is a plan it is very dangerous, self defeating and self harming one.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.