Cliff-edge
politics in
Blighty
There'll be bluebirds over
The white cliffs of Dover.
Tomorrow, just you wait and see …
VERA Lynn's lines somehow aren't quite as reassuring as they once were. Dover is where the lemming-rush of a "no deal" Brexit would happen.
Official documents that have just come to light predict that trade across the English Channel - Dover-Calais and via the Channel Tunnel - could drop by as much as 87% if a no-deal Brexit comes into effect on March 29.
Heavens! Did the U-boats manage to put such a clamp on Britain during World War II?
The figures come from a leaked document produced by the UK's Border Force, based on an assumption that the French would impose at least the legal minimum in the way of customs inspections. The document predicts that the situation could ease over six months to 50% of current capacity but longer-term recovery would require huge investment in automation.
All this is surely pretty catastrophic. Yet Prime Minister Theresa May has presented to the House of Commons for discussion a Brexit Plan B that looks remarkably similar to Plan A that was defeated last week by a majority of 230 votes, the greatest defeat ever for a British prime minister. And May is adamant that the March 29 cliff-edge date will not be extended.
Is this a game of chicken she's playing with her MPs? Or does she really believe in the lemming-rush?
There'll be fun and laughter
Forever after,
Tomorrow, just you wait and see …
I dunno, Vera, I dunno.
MEANWHILE, cross-party MPs – including Theresa May's former Attorney-General – are mobilising to get parliament to assert itself over such issues as extending the deadline for an agreement with the EU, making a crash-out impossible.
Will they succeed in this close to revolutionary manoeuvre? Who knows? Is there time? Who knows?
But the bus is hurtling toward the cliff. This is drama, folks.
THE wonder is that it's all self-inflicted. There's no evil madman dictator lurking in a bunker in Berlin. There's a vicar's daughter with every good intention in No 10 Downing Street. She declares a commitment to fulfilling the declared will of the people as expressed in that referendum just over two years ago.
Do we not have here the nub of the problem? When you have a working constitutional democracy, where the people are represented by MPs who make it their business to know what's what, does it make any sense at all to put to the man or woman in the street a complex question on which they cannot be expected to have a sensible answer? Especially on an emotive issue that is so easily hijacked?
Who would have voted in favour of a possible 87% drop in cross-channel trade? Nobody surely Yet that's what could happen, according to the government agency that is closest involved in the issue.
The cat is now out of the bag. Rock 'n roll assuredly lies ahead. This in a senior Nato country and a permanent member of the UN Security Council with veto powers, the world's fifth largest economy (for now anyway). The mind, senor, she boggles.
Tailpiece
THE marriage got off to a bit of a bad start.
The vicar said: "You may now kiss the bride."
She said: "Not now, I've got a headache."
Last word
How is it possible to find meaning in a finite world, given my waist and shirt size?
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