Last week, the door fell off our decades-old oven. They don’t make ovens just like ours any more so if we wanted a simple replacement then it just can’t happen. Through our large range of ancient-oven-owning local contacts we found the details of a man who fixes oven doors. He sounded amazing – one person told us that he refixes their oven door about three times a year. Our hopes rose. Maybe repair was an option. But when Oven Man arrived he shook his head. It seems that a ready oven deal is out of our grasp.
Prime Minister Johnson is dealing with a similar uncertainty – can his promise of delivering an oven-ready deal be realised or will he be pretending that a quail in the microwave for Christmas lunch was what he promised all along? Media coverage: BBC, Guardian, Express, Telegraph.
The only tiny thing that seems to be at stake in our oven-ready EU trade deal is our existing and future environmental, social and labour regulations. One can see that these are unimportant and can be dashed off pretty quickly.
In order to secure a deal that will allow the UK, no longer a member of the EU, to trade under more-or-less our existing favourable trade arrangements with the massive market on our soggy doorstep, the EU is insisting that we keep our existing standards. We are expected to retain a level playing field of regulations so that our industries cannot use lower environmental standards to undercut the EU’s industries.
This seems eminently reasonable – why would the EU give us a good trading deal if the UK does not keep the same standards for employment and environmental protection? But how does Johnson sell this as getting our freedom back if we are tied to these regulations (including the Habitats Directive which his dad, Stanley, largely wrote) as they exist now and as they might change in future without our being at the table which agrees them?
This is what it was always about as far as I was concerned. I voted Remain in 2016 because I wanted those environmental (and social) protections to remain. Others voted Leave partly because they wanted shot of those existing regulations and any others that came along. After over five years of discussion of these issues they aren’t resolved and time may be running out.
Vassal state which is a rule-taker not a rule-maker, but whose industries and farmers can trade pretty freely (albeit not as freely as we can now) and with environmental standards at least pegged (more or less)? Or, free-trading buccaneering UK on the world stage trying to find new markets for existing goods and new goods for new markets but being able to trash our workforce and environment as much as Jacob Rees-Mogg wants? Others might put it differently, but that was always the choice and it still is the choice.
Even in Boris-world reality bites eventually. Will it be no-deal and massive damage to the economy when an oven-ready deal was promised? Or will it be something closely related to the May deal which he opposed with tantrums? He will claim victory whatever happens.
If you have lost interest in Brexit then now is the time to wake up – you haven’t missed much of importance in the last 11 and a half months – it’s all going to be sorted out today, tomorrow or by Christmas or in January, or later. We will be told the deal or no deal, whenever it comes, is just what we need, and exactly what we voted for, but it won’t be.
By the way, a large part of the exhaust fell off our car yesterday too – I blame the EU.
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Two different meanings of the word interest: I haven’t lost interest but my cynicism says that whatever the outcome my interests will not be met.
Maybe the UK will bring in new environmental regulations regarding noise pollution and then you won’t need another exhaust pipe.
Gary – and would that be a good thing?
Of course not
but I was trying to find an upside.
My other thought was a raw food diet (for the oven problem not the car one)
In my opinion, there has never been any intention by the British Cabinet to secure any deal, oven-ready or otherwise. If the EU offered a deal, even if it came with bells, whistles & 8 reindeer , it would be refused. The only deal to be had in Britain lies on the Kent coast.
The next few days are in my view, a mere charade; the EU having to be seen to attend negotiations, partly to demonstrate to the remaining 27 nations that they are fighting for their interest, with their 27 cards; and the UK are attending to be able to say to the public that it was all the EU’s fault for having cards too.
So where does this leave us? Well, apart from back in the 1970s in terms of environmental and labour vulnerabilities to Government whims, metaphorical axes and de-regulation, I think it leaves the current Cabinet with a lack of a scapegoat. All the ills and pretentions that it was the EU’s fault will evaporate – when you’ve seized back control, taken the reigns of destiny and reclaimed sovereignty (in whatever Churchillian form it may take), then you have to own it. There will be limited places or fridges for Boris to hide in. So my feeling is that his usefulness will be spent and he may well be gone by the end of 2021. And cometh the hour, cometh who?
Whatever happens, Britain’s metaphorical door to the EU has fallen off. How dramatic the falling off has yet to be seen. Will it be an Italian job; or a Northampton job?
cometh who?
“Aye, there’s the rub”, said Piglet
Oven-ready, maybe not, but we are well and truly stuffed.