My title today, July 5 2020, comes from an article in The Observer by Jonathan Freedland where he writes an alarming article on the forgotten BREXIT.

In summary, he wrote that given that coronavirus is still lethally active and the UK has one of the world’s highest death rates, it was totally irresponsible of the Government that at 11pm on 30 June,  it was the moment at which Britain lost the ability to seek an extension of the Brexit transition period. "Unless we reach a new free trade agreement with the European Union in the next six months, we will be crashing out of the EU with no deal on 31 December".

Clearly Johnson and the posionous Dominic Cummings hoped to bury the bad news of Brexit deep inside the coronavirus, calculating that any damage inflicted by the former will be concealed by the general trauma of the latter. “Covid’s created an excuse” says one former Conservative minister.

But the logic is perverse states Freedland. Cummings may like the politics of crashing out under cover of corona, but anyone else can surely see that now is absolutely not the time to submit Britain to the economic shock of a chaotic break from our nearest trading partners. Recall that the Bank of England has warned that the UK faces its deepest recession since the Great Frost of 1709; that the OECD forecasts that the UK will suffer the worst recession in the developed world; that three quarters of UK manufacturers expect to cut jobs this year.  That 80-90% of the UK economy are services that are moving slowly out of the country, while the Government talks fishing which is 0.3 % of the economy.  I repeat ZERO POINT THREE.

Freedland warns that mass unemployment is coming; consumer confidence will shrink as those with money become ever warier of spending it. If, on top of all that, Britain leaves the EU without a deal, or a deal so thin it’s barely better than no deal, it will fall as a blow to the skull of a man already bleeding.  This will be coupled with an increase of up to 20% or more on staples that will also be ruinous to much poorer Britons than even today.

 
Brexit once dominated British politics; now it is barely mentioned. The Conservative landslide last December seemed to settle it. Many of the Tory MPs who would have raised the coming no-deal threat were purged in last December's unnecessary election. Other parties have been strangely quiet and even our hope that Keir Starmer would shine has been dashed as he, apparently, has his eye on leave seats, and is in no hurry to play the diehard remainer. He didn’t even press the government to seek an extension to the transition.

Freedland ends with a stark warning ''The result is a double danger to this country. A hurricane is coming, and yet we are blithely choosing this of all moments to sail off into uncharted waters, all alone."

Come on friends lets fight harder to stay in the EU.  Our leaders will be all right...the rich landowners will always have their land and their close friend Johnson will be looked after.  But boy do we need the EU now as Russia rattles its sabres and the USA becomes Russia's vassal State.

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