What would you do?
The Brexit dream continues to burn bright and in order for that to continue it needs a perpetual sense of conflict and discord to fuel the flame. The completely incompetently negotiated Northern Ireland Protocol is therefore very handy.
But there is a difference between using it to create discord, headlines and a sense of useful paranoia and actually tearing it up. Because the consequences are dire and painful and not manageable.
If the UK government were finally to listen to the idiots who say that Article 16 is a useful tool and invoke it, the reaction of the EU will be key.
It can and probably will react with tariffs on British goods but that is just the start.
If you look at the Dover queues it is easy to see that even a work to rule by French and other officials would create chaos. Lorry drivers are increasingly reluctant to waste their time in the UK, more delays could be the straw that breaks the camels back and with it the UK’s supply chains. Food, components, medicines all become difficult to get.
Then there are the new checks that the UK is supposed to be introducing this year at Dover and other ports, yet again it is hinting that it will unilaterally kick them down the road.
The EU has been very patient with this kind of thing, but Article 16 would change everything. It can and would insist that the UK abide by the whole deal not just the Northern Ireland Protocol. If London doesn’t, the whole deal dies and the UK is back to WTO terms of trade, am economic disaster.
Finally the elephant in the room is Washington, upsetting an Irish-American President sounds like a storm in a tea cup- it won’t be. President Biden is serious about Ireland and he has endless ways of making the UK suffer for such recklessness.
Let’s just take one, he could easily hint that he thought the UK was not to be trusted, was starting a trade war with its biggest customer and therefore its currency was massively over valued.
The pound would plummet.
Empty shelves, a collapsing supply chain, factories lying idle, another huge rise in food costs, a collapsing currency making everything more expensive.
The UK would be in Brussels by the end of the week, on its knees, begging to be allowed the honour of putting things right.
Of course, the EU might decide to be nice, limit the damage, shrug its shoulders in a charmingly gallic way, swallow its pride and let the UK get away with it.
Except that would threaten every other deal it has ever negotiated or will ever negotiate.
What would you do?
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.