AC Grayling: when eccentricity becomes malevolent

For those who don't know who AC Grayling is, he is a classics professor, apparently of some note. I'd never heard of him until he became a de facto leader of the continuity Remain effort on Twitter, particularly the "FBPE" movement.

He is especially famous for inferring that Theresa May sent a Type 23 frigate to the far east in order for it to be sunk to take the sting out of bad Brexit press. More recently he's been in the news for grovelling to Guy Verhfostadt, pleading for Brexit to be made more painful. A man so ridiculous there is even a parody account of him on Twitter - where you would struggle to tell the difference between it and the genuine article. And just watch his humiliation as he is taken apart by Andrew Neil for making claims with zero evidence.

When he's not doing creative mathematics to de-legitimise the Leave majority, he's denouncing Brexit as the rebirth of the Third Reich and calling leave voters fascists and xenophoes. There can be few more risible individuals in the public domain.

Being that he is a public figure he is no stranger to ridicule. He just lacks the self-awareness to wind his neck in. If there were a second referendum, he's given us leavers all the ammunition we could ever need to paint our elites as aloof, snobbish, out of touch and absolutely contemptuous of democracy.

Ordinarily such lunatics would not occupy too much of my time since this blogger has bigger fish to fry. He has, though, become something of a problem. He's suing me.

Those who tune into my Twitter account are used to my somewhat abrasive approach and my South Park sense of humour. That's why they follow me. They know what to expect. Some find it a bit rich for their blood so they unfollow me within moments of following me. One such example of this humour was a tweet poking fun at the good professor in response to a tweet by Alexander Nekrassov.

The point, as if it were not obvious, is that remain figures feel perfectly at liberty to tar Leave voters as racist. The tweet is a parody. The tweet is so ridiculous that no reasonable person could possibly interpret it as a serious allegation, and indeed, no-one did.

Ordinarily it would have passed unremarked, not least since with my rate of tweeting it would have disappeared off the feed inside of about six hours. But then one forgets Twitter is the domain of censorious ghouls and grassers - and weaponised indignation is the weapon of choice for the FBPE crowd. That's how we can tell this is a set up. Here is an example (cited by Grayling's lawyers) of feigned outrage from "A50Challenge". A50 being Article 50.

In the particulars of the complaint, Graylings lawyers are lying to the court by the looks of it.

As much as the tweet is merely provocative humour, Grayling has suffered no harm at all. There were no headlines reporting a serious allegation, not least because there was no serious allegation. He has since been a headline speaker at a number of events and no doubt will be able to swan in and out to meet with senior figures in Brussels any time he likes. He also pens articles for a number of pro-Remain vessels. Were there a serious allegation in the public eye then that simply wouldn't happen. It would have been reported.

What further gives it away as a nasty piece of mischief is the supporting "evidence", where again Grayling's lawyers have attempted to mislead the court.

The "Femi" account is not that of a human rights advocate in this context. Rather he is a fellow FBPE cultist - a law student who dropped out with the stated intent of campaigning against Brexit. He is first and foremost a remain activist and everybody in this game knows that.

Far from being a casual outraged observer, he is a prolific tweeter and campaigner who speaks at the same events as Grayling.

The only reason my tweet did any mileage at all was because Grayling's acolytes took it upon themselves to share it far and wide as part of their "pile on" strategy. A favoured tactic of Twitter bullies - very often by high profile accounts with tens of thousands of followers.

In this, Grayling's lawyers make no mention of Grayling's status within the remain campaign, instead describing his academic accolades rather than his role in the remain campaign for which he is more famous. They are attempting to mislead the court presenting this as though it were an unprovoked attack on a private citizen rather than a political leader and Remain celebrity.

What this is, is an attempt at a political assassination. As it happens, I have no idea why he's even bothering since I have zero profile outside of Twitter and have no links whatsoever to the official Leave effort, and in fact find myself at odds with all of the leading Leave figures. The fullest extent of my media exposure is a couple of talking head slots on foreign television. I'm actually flattered he thinks I'm important enough to sue.

The real aim here is not to defend his reputation. His reputation is not in any way tarnished except for the damage he has done to himself by way of his Brexit Derangement Syndrome. The aim here is a vindictive attempt to bankrupt me and if possible silence me purely because I am a Leave campaigner.

There was no complaint made in person. I might have apologised for the crass nature of the joke had he done so. Instead, though, likely through having poison whispered in his ear, he went straight to the lawyers who sent a demand for a sum of up to £5000. In the spirit of Arkell v. Pressdram I told them their client could go fuck himself.

The reason being that I do not have five thousand pounds and I've never even seen five thousand pounds either. The most I have spent on anything was £3k on a ten year old Audi A4 which proved to be the worst investment I have ever made. After several serious electrical faults the engine blew up. It really makes no difference whether it be five thousand or fifty thousand. It's money I do not have and there are no assets to take either. Unless Grayling is hell bent on getting his hands on my battered collection of model aeroplanes he's shit out of luck.

I will, of course, be defending this claim, though I'm not going to waste money on a solicitor. We know how this goes. This is a very obvious stitch up but there is likely some or other technicality the judge will rubber stamp and subsequently find me guilty how ever well the case is articulated. We do not have a justice system so I'm not going to gratify it by pretending we do.

Really this is a rich man's game and I've been dragged into since libel laws as they currently stand are a means by which our elites can silence the plebs, even bankrupt them, simply by taking offence at a joke. That's really what this is about and we can expect to see more of it. Being that the courts are little more than speak-your-weight machines it is wide open to this kind of systemic abuse by the likes of Grayling.

This is all part of the ugly side of Brexit, where the technical concerns, which this blog is normally more concerned with, take second place to an ongoing culture war between high society and ordinary voters. Normally just ganging up to have someone's Twitter account suspended is how the FBPE crowd play it, but in moving the game into the courts, they have made this an all out war. A libel case is a tactical nuke.

As to how this plays out, your guess is as good as mine - but we are now seeing just how low they will sink. There is no limit to the vindictiveness. Grayling's eccentricity has just crossed the line into malevolence. Brexit can only get uglier from here.

A "no deal" Brexit just won't fly

As eureferendum.com notes, it is quite typical for pundits to treat "no deal" Brexit consequences flippantly. They are considered so extreme that disbelief sets in. The view is taken that because they are so extreme, they cannot be allowed to happen and therefore, that they won't happen. But this is to disregard what we know about modern officialdom.

For an insight it's worth watching the Netflix docu-soap "Ice Pilots". The programme follows the daily grind of an air courier company servicing the Canadian Northwest Territories. The family owned company operates vintage DC3s but provide general aviation services on the side, not least aerial firefighting.

In one episode the company manages to sell two Canadair CL-215s (pictured) to Turkey. This proves to be a lucrative exchange so the family go in search of another one to restore and sell. Eventually, following rumours, they locate an example in South America. They fly down to find the airframe in good order and a viable candidate for restoration to flight.

This is, of course, if the aircraft has its logbook. An aircraft, with the documents, is a valuable property. Without, it's a heap of scrap. There are ways around the bureaucracy but the airframe would be subject to full certification assessment involving a full strip down and ultrasound scanning of the airframe for fatigue - which is an expensive operation. I don't recall if the logbook was found but this serves as a worthy example of the modern regulatory environment. Recall also that, when EASA took over UK aviation safety, aircraft were grounded through paperwork errors. 

I also recall that the operators of Europe's last flying B-17 bomber, Sally B, were forced to cancel joining the VE-Day flypast because of insurance costs. This was due to crippling EU third party liability insurance requirements, based on aircraft weight, which have placed Sally B in the same insurance category as a commercial airliner.

The effect was an increase in liability insurance of almost five hundred per cent, which is the equivalent of a staggering one thousand pounds extra per flying hour, on top of the already incredibly high running costs. But unlike a 737, Sally B operates for only twenty hours a year, is on a Permit to Fly, and can neither fly commercially, carry passengers, fly for hire or fly over built-up areas.

This, I recall was another one of those times, much like when new EU rules forced the closure of a number of small slaughterhouses, when the government claimed it was powerless. The EU certainly made no friends among aviation enthusiasts. The point, though, is aviation is probably the most risk averse sector globally and if paperwork is not in good order then aircraft simply do not fly. Without agreements in place insurances are invalid, certifications are not recognised and permissions are denied. 

Changing the topic somewhat, a more recent example of draconian officialdom was reported in the Farmers Guardian when the European Commission failed to re-authorise the Red Tractor assurance scheme, along with four different schemes from other member states, despite the application for re-approval being lodged six months ago. The unexplained gaffe meant farmers whose grain was destined for the biofuels market have been left in the lurch, with some having to fork out for interim storage.

NFU combinable crops board chairman Mike Hambly said: "This current situation is a good wake-up call to Defra, the Department for International Trade, the end consumer and also farmers. No paperwork or tick in a box equals no trade, and it worries me it could happen in many ways, be that through chemical re-registration being missed or even a change in labelling. The importance of these things needs to be absorbed by us all and we need to be active in pushing for timely action to prevent issues rather than waiting until they become a major financial burden".

There are a number of sectors similarly dependent on authorisations and if the UK becomes a third country overnight then a number of sectors come to a grinding halt. We are told by hard Brexiters that we are exaggerating - and that it's all just a "millennium bug" panic but, categorically, it isn't. From air travel to chemicals registration, if the certification system is not in good legal standing then trade simply does not happen. Now imagine all of these problems hitting simultaneously. Not good is it?

Across the board, the export of many manufactured goods will cease. This will apply where they require third party certification from "notified bodies" and have relied on certificates from UK bodies. These will no longer be valid. Chemicals which lack REACH approval will also be excluded from the European market.

Live animal export will, of course, be prohibited, but this will probably also apply to the movement of pet animals without quarantine, and the transport of racehorses direct to France and Ireland, without veterinary control and supervision.

Being that we are looking at a sudden death Brexit, our domestic regulators will be in no shape to step in to get things working. We need to develop our own systems from scratch. Some ask why we can't just roll back things to how they were before the EU took control - but most of the sector experts will be retired by now and in some cases we are regulating things which didn't exist even ten years ago. 

For sure, special ministerial dispensation can be given to ensure the basics keep running, but not where there are transboundary authorisation issues as there is with aviation and trade in goods. There is nothing in WTO law which obliges the EU to relax its standard third country controls. In restoring order, everything will be treated on a triage basis according to its strategic national importance. That means some sectors will be waiting months before there is any kind of normality. 

The bottom line is that the EU is a creature of rules and will uphold its system of law come what may. Some argue that all this red tape is, of itself, a reason to leave the EU, and in many respects one could not disagree. There are some areas of public life which should never have been signed away - where there was never any utility in harmonisation. But as much as that is an argument for leaving the EU, it is also an argument for not making a monumental pig's ear of the Brexit process. We simply cannot afford to. 

Low Fact Chloe - stooge of the Tory right

Surprise of all surprises, Chloe Westley, of the Taxpayer's Alliance, is invited to air her protests on Conservative Home after a barrage of scathing criticism.

The truth is, we’re a team of ten and have the operating budget of a local pub. We’re funded by thousands of people, many of whom give less than £100. Our press team is just me and my colleague, James Price. We get a lot of coverage because James and I work our butts off and our research team (of three) write awesome papers. Our biggest ground campaign this year has been on council tax, which has been increasing all over the country – and that ground campaign and our activists are managed by Harry Fone. Most of our day-to-day work is on exposing wasteful spending in local government and going on local radio to talk about things that really matter to people, like bin collections. We get a lot of airtime on national TV and radio, too, and I think that’s because we’re often the only people willing to say that taxes should be lower.

Chloe doesn't actually know the truth about the TPA which is what makes her an effective defender of it. She gives the appearance because as far as she knows, she is.

The TPA, though, is far from an innocent player. We only need look at the names on the advisory council to see that the TPA is the soft propaganda wing of the ultra Brexit campaign. Patrick Minford and Ruth Lea should need no introduction - both advocates of the most boneheaded Brexit imaginable. 

This is not forgetting that the TPA shares an address with half a dozen other sock puppet front campaigns, all of which were devised by Matthew Elliott as AstroTurf to support his bid for the designated leave campaign. The TPA is not a grassroots campaign.

Being that it is a sockpuppet it does not need a large operating budget, especially when it only exists to get its name spoken on TV and radio, for which they need a malleable but presentable girlie, available on weekends to do a slot on Sky TV when all the bigwig Tory lords and MPs are at home marrying their first cousins or torturing geese. 

The media is only too happy to use them because they are in London, readily available and free of charge. Daya to day they serve as a rent-a-quote entity for Daily Mail articles covering obscene council CEO salaries, stories which are in the main poached from local media without attribution.

As for those "awesome" reports, they tend to be lightweight PDFs designed only for talking points in the media and are forgotten within twenty four hours. If it gets the TPA name dropped on the wireless then it has done its job. It requires zero talent. You just need a central London address and a few patrons from inside the Tory apparatus and so far as the media is concerned that qualifies as a source of authority.

To a large extent, the existence of the TPA is a symptom of the dysfunction in our media, where veracity of a source is less important than the prestige it carries. The TPA is simply exploiting that weakness in the system. 

Consequently we are subjected to lightweight bilge on Radio 4 where the TPA of the Freedom Association (one man and his dog outfits) are chosen as artificial balance - where some or other toryboy or girlie will rattle off a shallow and two dimensional spiel we are expected to swallow as equivalent to expert testimony. 

Thus, our Chloe is completely oblivious to the fact she is a bit part in a far wider propaganda apparatus which all traces back to the same handful of people - Elliott, Minford, Lawson, Hannan, Paterson, Littlewood, Broomfield, Bamford and Dyson. This sordid little ecosystem also supports its own network of acolytes and gatekeepers - not least Conservative Home.

Chloe protests that hers is but a minnow organisation up against a Goliath, but all tells us is that so long as you have the necessary prestige and the right connections you don't actually need a lot of money to make a large media footprint. 

Were that the TPA just, as Chloe asserts, making the case for low taxes, it wouldn't command a nanosecond of my attention. After all, who is actually in favour of council waste and obscene payouts to CEOs and quango bosses? If anything we could remark on how utterly ineffectual the TPA is in that these are issues I was writing about before the TPA even existed and yet still nothing they have produced has actually changed anything. 

But then, of course, there is no incentive for them to succeed because titillating clickbait sorties on council waste is their bread and butter and if they had to go fishing for anything more complicated they would find themselves out of their depths and bogged down by the many complex reasons as to why money is wasted. Government procurement is an unpredictable minefield which ensnares even those with the best of intentions. 

The TPA of itself produces nothing of value and that I know of has achieved nothing of note in all of its existence. I could quite easily ignore it but then when it is used in aid of a propaganda coup it becomes my concern. 

In this, Chloe is an instrument of deception. She a personable, chirpy wee thing who has Toryboy acolytes fawning over her and willing to defend her whatever unutterable nonsense falls from her lips. She sings the soothing songs of "global free trade" without the first notion of what "free trade" actually is and how it functions in the real world. She is, therefore, a tool in every sense of the word.

The propaganda aim of the ultras, through vessels such as Conservative Home and BrexitCentral is to make the case for unilateral trade liberalisation. And though our Chloe invites us to debate "free market ideas" these are the last people to actually engage in debate. Instead they are using every avenue at their disposal, making full use of their network of sockpuppets to disseminate demonstrable lies about the WTO option.

Any number of experts could dismantle their claims. We could quote chapter and verse from numerous official sources, all of them showing why controls will apply to UK produce from day one. But there is hardly any point. These individuals are anti-knowledge, making up their own narratives to support their case, without the slightest resort to fact and using the likes of Westley as pawns in a  far wider information war. The dishonesty of Westley, though, is in how she spins the criticism directed hat her.

Ad hominem attacks on right-wing think tanks like the TPA may temporarily embolden some on the left, but the fact they feel the need to try to silence us shows that there are people out there who believe in a low tax economy; who don’t like it when their taxes are squandered by faceless bureaucrats; and who want to pay for good public services but otherwise want to be left alone to get on with their life.

People hold such views because they can see for themselves what works. Free market capitalism has brought millions of people out of poverty. In China, for example, the abandonment of central government planning (which Corbyn would advocate introducing in Britain) and the adoption of more free market policies has lifted 800 million people out of poverty since 1978.

Freedom is worth fighting for. Empowering individuals to have more control over their income and their lives is an entirely legitimate moral cause. There is a consensus in Westminster amongst MPs and commentators that more state control and spending is the only way to solve society’s problems. Surely the left can handle one or two activists like me challenging this statist consensus?

She knows full well what angers people is that she is granted virtually unlimited airtime to opine on Brexit issues she has no knowledge of, working to an agenda she is barely even aware of, with no concept of the stakes involved, and certainly where I am concerned, she is a dog in the manger chewing up airtime that could be given to any number of people who actually can competently defend Brexit.

Instead, though, our Chloe pretends this outrage is an attempt to silence free market ideas. She rattles off her tribal spiel about capitalism lifting people out of poverty, which goes down well with the gallery, but this is another deception - claiming that she is a martyr to the cause and not complicit in the dark games of the Tory right. She is working to cover their tracks.

As it happens, most adults can accept that market economies are the best venue for delivering prosperity but in this instance the agenda at work is not free market capitalism, rather it is shock doctrine tactics by people in thrall to a minarchist teenager ideology who seek to impose their juvenile fantasies on the UK, unleashing the full force of hostile globalisation which will likely result in a firesale of public assets.

One could very easily conclude, given the sponsors of various Tory individuals, that this is indeed a disaster capitalist plot with speculators rubbing their hands with glee at the prospect of a no deal Brexit. For sure, the Bakers and Patersons of this world might well be dim enough to believe in "fwee twade" but the more cynical forces behind them are just waiting to cash in.

The irony, though, is the shortsightedness of these individuals. Should the warnings in respect of grounded flights and food shortage prove to be accurate, and there is every reason to believe that they are, a conservative government of any stripe is unlikely to win the next election - landing us with the most socialist Labour party since 1945.

The recent revelations about the IEA funding have finally shed some light on this corner of politics, but it prompts us to ask far deeper questions about the entire Tory apparatus - not least the revolving door culture that sees lackeys from Vote Leave landing cosy non-jobs in Elliott's network of sockpuppets. More so the concerted effort to promote shady Shanker Singham as a world trade guru.

While Westley may play the innocent underling what she represents is a corrupt network of old Tory money seeking to exploit the political dysfunction caused by Brexit to further their own commercial agendas.

She may not be fully aware of her role in it, but she is very much an instrument - chosen largely because of her aesthetic qualities and gullibility. That she is the focal point of invective speaks to the cowardice of her bosses who hide from the limelight. She can always cry "misogyny" - which is another reason why cobwebbed Tory lords have taken a shine to PR girlies. They are the must have accessory for any right wing think tank. It may be underhanded, but it sure does work.

There is plenty of Brexit noise, but we are evading the substantive questions

My favourite user function on Twitter is the mute button. It's useful for tuning out remainers because they really have nothing to say. Brexit throws up any number of complex questions which demand serious answers to which their reply is always "stop Brexit" which is really an answer to nothing in that the majority of people who bothered to vote in 2016 voted to leave and expect that instruction to be carried out.

Moreover I am not interested in re-fighting the referendum. The arguments are boring as indeed are debates as to why we voted to leave. It still stands as a political artefact that we did vote to leave and now a new battle for the future has broken out.

Instead of engaging in this debate the continuity Remain campaign has focuses all of its efforts on somehow delegitimatising the vote, failing to note that most of us made up our mind to leave long before Vote Leave was even invented. I can admit that Vote Leave was a shoddy and grubby organisation but it does not change the fact that registered voters, of their own volition, went to the polling booth and cast their vote. Unless someone can show the ballot boxes were tampered with then the vote is as legitimate as any vote in the UK is ever likely to be.

So the conversation now is between me and people who actually engage in the reality of our predicament, where leave or remain, we all have a common enemy; the ultra Brexiters. This really comes down to a question of what we hope to achieve by leaving the EU.

My view is much the same as it has always been. If European nations wish to pursue a federal Europe or even the continuation of whatever the hell the EU is now, then they should be left to get on with it and Britain should be an independent ally of it. I do not see it reforming in a meaningful way, I do not see that it can bend further to UK grievances and in the final analysis, I do not want the EU as a supreme government. I cannot be persuaded that it can ever be democratic.

Brexit, to me, therefore, is simply a matter of carefully uncoupling what was done to us and then when we have taken back control we can change things as and when the need arises. That is essentially the point of Brexit - to ensure that the public can affect meaningful change through their own parties, unions and democratic institutions. Too much policy from waste disposal to utilities is locked in and unreformable without going cap in hand to Brussels.

What Brexit is not, though, is a mandate to push forth the ideas of the far economic right. This is not a carte blanche to carry out a free market experiment on an unsuspecting public. I will oppose that school of thought as vehemently as I have fought to leave the EU. As much as I do not want a winner-takes-all society, the UK should not be a playground for speculators and disaster capitalists, not least since it will likely result in a populist socialist backlash that we take us back to the economic dark ages. If the Tories want unilateral disarmament of trade defences then let them put it in a manifesto and give the public a say in it.

The concern is that unilateral trade liberalisation is pretty much irreversible. Once you have opened up your domestic markets to unfair and subsidised competition and you destroy your domestic capabilities, not only are you more dependent on imports to a dangerous extent, you are vulnerable to price gouging. Moreover, what is done is not so easily undone. We could very easily destroy strategic national assets and in future have to rebuild at our own expense. We lose our institutional memory and our collective knowledge and have to start over.

This is not to say that protectionism is necessarily a good thing. It is simply that liberalisation should be carefully negotiated lest we have nothing to barter with in the future should we seek reciprocal liberalisation.

By leaving without a deal and embarking on this Tory flight of fancy we introduce a raft of urgent problems, most of which we are not presently equipped to handle. Domestic customs and regulatory systems need to be built from the ground up - and that requires extensive consultation, software, training and phased introduction. We are not presently in a position to run a modern and sophisticated customs system capable of dealing with the multitude of threats from terrorism to fake medicines. There are good reasons why lesser developed countries find it difficult to export into the EU.

In any rational setting most people would agree with me. It is somewhat more difficult, however, to get people to grasp these issues over Twitter, especially when there is so much suspicion around. Moreover rationality went out of the window some time ago. With so many determined to stop Brexit or interfere with it, it only hardens the resolve of leavers and increases their suspicion of any compromise. Brexit has become an end in itself rather than a means.

This is what the Tories are capitalising on. They want their WTO Brexit and because it is the fastest most certain departure, they know they have the backing of those worried that Brexit will be overturned. There is no patience and a somewhat justifiable belief that their votes will be betrayed. Being skilful propagandists the Tory establishment has successfully hijacked the Brexit movement - so successfully in fact, it has socialist MP, Kate Hoey, joining in the chorus for unfettered "free trade".

Here we see the full spectrum of Brexiters marching to the drumbeat of "free trade" without the first idea of what that entails and having even less idea of the consequences having convinced themselves that every warning is "project fear". We are supposedly leaving the EU to do away with Brussels bureaucracy, failing to note that regulatory divergence reintroduces a vast array of customs red tape that will prohibit the free movement of goods and services.

Meanwhile, for reasons that escape me, the Brexiters want "regulatory independence" to turn away from a £270bn a year market so that we can plug into smaller markets on the opposite side of the planet that can never sustain just-in-time supply chains. Fresh produce especially is not known for its resilience to long container voyages.

We are, therefore, back to the usual dilemma. We want to leave the political union of the EU but we wish to continue enhanced mutually preferential trade with it - and that means regulatory harmonisation and all the obligations that go with it. You don't have to like it, but the EU is still a regulatory superpower after we leave and leaving the EU does not mean the EU vanishes into the ether. It continues to be an entity with which we must contend.

What the ultra Brexiters want a simplified relationship with the EU where even a Tory cabinet minister can understand it. That, I'm afraid, is simply not going to happen. The single market framework regulates things that didn't even exist ten years ago. It covers everything from satellite bandwidths to maritime surveillance and electricity grid management. These are inherently complex subject areas all necessary for the functioning of cross border trade and cannot be simplified. This is technical regulation far beyond the basic understanding of the average voter.

These are areas of governance where the public shows precisely zero interest. They don't have to know, they don't need to know and democratising does not add any value. The reason regulators often do not conduct consultations is because there is very little uptake and little in the way of usable feedback. We have to accept that in the modern age there are some things that simply are not worth going to the barricades over.

When it comes to standards and regulations the only time people really care is when it comes down to the food we eat and nobody is in a hurry to relax those standards to accommodate Indian imports when their own food safety regime is not to be trusted. No responsible government should ever enter a mutual recognition agreement on food standards with India without a robust supervisory system and constant inspections.

Voters are highly selective in the things they value. Brexiters have long obsessed about fish and fishing, often holding antiquated and protectionist attitudes and romantic notions of catching all our own fish. The industry has not worked like that for some time and is now part of a global fisheries supply chain which would not in any way benefit from repatriation. Still, though, this preoccupies a corner of the debate, devoting huge intellectual resources to a sector barely worth a tenth of the UK sandwich industry (£8bn) which is directly threatened by a no deal Brexit.

None of this has ever really been explained to voters and as I have discovered it is largely pointless to even try. Consequently we are on course to ditch our most valuable markets to chase the Tory free trade unicorn. There is a certain pied-piper aspect to this.

None of this, though, gains any traction with populists like Brendan O'Neill who ought to know better. Brexit is simply a pawn in a culture war and as far as he is concerned, everybody who voted to leave voted for the most hostile exit possible and all for the same reasons. Dishonesty on stilts.

No amount of witless prattle from the revolutionary wing of Brexit is going to make all of these technical challenges go away and the issue of sovereignty and democracy is not so black and white when you factor in modern trade agreements and international conventions. Every trade deal requires some compromise and binding commitments.

Complicating this matter further is the ratchet effect. There is no such thing as a static agreement with the EU. All agreements are geared toward harmonisation and evolution toward full trade liberalisation. There has never been one designed to work in reverse not least because it is antithetical to open trade and the world is converging on global standards. So unless we are severing all trade relations with a view to closing off trade with the EU permanently we have to access the nearest and largest superpower will continue to have a profound influence on our technical legislation.

Further complicating matters, we find that even ordinary trade agreements are now seeking to include measures from the International Labour Organisation. This will influence domestic labour market regulation so as to facilitate trade in services and uphold mutually high labour conditions to ensure a level playing field. This is to offset the damage done by globalisation and regulatory arbitrage. Consequently there is no scenario where an enhanced trade relationship will not influence domestic laws that hitherto have always been an entirely domestic affair.

Whether or not globalisation means we are entering a post-sovereignty age is the next big question of our generation. Moreover, how do we usefully exercise it to gain the maximum benefits from trade while preserving what we value? Each of these decisions must be carefully considered lest we take the brakes off globalisation completely further eroding concepts of community, identity and nationality. Consequently unilateral trade liberalisation is in effect antithetical to the Brexit sentiment.

Meanwhile, those fabled WTO rules are very much a double edged sword. Much that many assume will remedied by Brexit will in fact continue to be a binding influence on our decision making and as the WTO matures, we will find the same questions of sovereignty once again arising.

Leaving the EU more than anything is a political statement that the UK wishes to remain a distinct legal personality in the world with the final say over what happens within its own borders. Modern trade, though, means there are grey areas where it is in the national interest to compromise and conform. It may be satisfying to feed the Treaties of the European Union into the shredder but eventually we will have to find something to replace them with and something that facilitates the freedoms that people and business demand.

This is really what the current Brexit debate should be about. Demanding that we leave without a deal is a demand to leave without answering any of the difficult questions which must eventually be decided by someone and if it isn't us then it will be decided by circumstances. For sure we can crash out now and open the gates to hell to the applause of hardliners, but it will fall to the next iteration of politics to rebuild bridges and forge a new relationship. Since there is no utility in burning our bridges I continue to ask why we would commit to such wanton self harm?

I have never made the case that membership of the single market is an ideal outcome for Brexit - only that it is a starter for ten and that, whatever relationship we have with the EU, it will continue to evolve. The EEA agreement makes the distinction between technical and political union ensuring we can continue to enjoy economic liberty as an independent country. It answers most of the difficult questions when the WTO option answers nothing and satisfies nobody. Brexiters may cheer but their celebrations will be short lived - especially for those who lose everything in the process. If we are going to do this then we owe it to the nation to ensure we do not visit a disaster upon ourselves.

More drivel from Briefings For Brexit

"A senior private-sector economist, who prefers to remain anonymous, suggests an alternative to the Chequers White Paper. This involves ditching the transition period and instead adopting a temporary period of unilateral free trade that will radically alter the dynamics of the current negotiation process with the EU" boasts Briefings for Brexit.

I can see why it's anonymous. I wouldn't put my name to this crap either. One detects though that this might very well be the dead hand of shady Shanker Singham or somebody close to him. It smells like Westminster bubble drivel. 

I will not give this the full demolition treatment because the whole tactic of them producing this drivel is to suck up our time in rebutting it - and there is no point in that since well constructed arguments do not make a dent. There are, however, one or two points to address.

Firstly, there is the matter of non tariff barriers in which the author claims...

Much has been made of non-tariff barriers. The Treasury has claimed these might average 20-30% of UK export values to the EU. This number is as much as 10 times too high – a careful study by Kee & Nicita suggests the average tariff equivalent of NTBS facing UK exporters to the EU, weighted by imports, would be just 3.4%. A detailed study of post-Brexit NTBs for several sectors in the Netherlands found they might total around 1% of trade values.

These abstract figures might as well be plucked out of the air for all the use they are. This is analysis is presumably based on normative operational conditions - which, of course, a no deal Brexit is not. What we are talking about when we talk about no deal is a very sudden change to the trading regime in terms of customs and regulation. 

Though we might be porting over EU regulation is does not function as a standalone set of rules without the systems for authorisations and mutual recognition. We therefore become a third country overnight without the necessary preparations to handle the level of customs declarations while the whole system grinds to a halt thanks to the imposition of third country controls at Calais. Here's what the Road Haulage Association says about that...

So we are then looking at a ripple effect through just about every supply chain, which worsens depending on the sector and the level of third country import requirements. This is major for food, pharmaceuticals and chemicals, the latter two requiring a re-start of the product authorisation process. The article makes mention of this,noting that the barriers are "far from insurmountable" but what they don;t mention is the millions it will cost firms to go through the re-authorisation process.

They then go on to say: 

So we should not be scared of the impact of shifting to WTO-based trade with the EU as many of the supposed downsides for exporters are relatively modest or can be largely mitigated. There are a number of areas where agreements would be helpful – on aviation for example and mutual recognition of automobile approvals. But for many of these issues, there are existing third country precedents that can be invoked. The EU itself has made clear it wants a deal on aviation.

This is something we see quite often. We are told there are means of mitigation but we are not told precisely what they are or what they cost - but always concede that a from of deal is required for the continued functioning of the aviation and automotive sectors. That, by definition, is not no deal. That's the UK going cap in hand back to Brussels to ask for the sort of agreements available to third countries - which by and large require observance of EU rules with direct implementation of ECJ decisions.

The author then makes the Minford case for unilaterally eliminating all of our trade defences: 

My proposal is for a temporary period of unilateral free trade that will radically alter the dynamics of the current negotiation process with the EU. This would involve the UK ditching the proposed transition period and announcing that from March next year, an independent trade policy will be followed. Initially, the UK will not apply any import tariffs against any country – as it is allowed to do under WTO rules – and will recognise EU goods as being compliant from a regulatory perspective. The UK will also conduct minimal border checks, perhaps 0.1% of consignments from the EU. These can be dispensed with entirely for large trusted firms such as the car manufacturers.

So we ditch the transition principle and go straight of the cliff edge while unilaterally dropping all of our standard trade defences to the EU. This is the zombie argument already debunked by The Leave Alliance (now viewed 135029 times). Staggeringly, though, the author causally claims that this would be for two years only. 

This period of unilateral free trade will last two years, at the end of which, the UK’s MFN tariffs will revert to the current rates applied by the EU, meaning substantial tariff barriers on UK agricultural imports from the EU and the 10% car tariff. At the end of the period, the UK will also adopt its own set of product regulations which imports must conform to, having built the capacity to do this in the meantime. During the two-year period, sensitive sectors such as agriculture will continue to receive subsidies broadly similar to now plus assistance to alter their pattern of production.

So after two years of of chaos we then impose a raft of non tariff barriers, and in accordance with the MFN principle, these presumable apply to all and not just the EU. My question being, how does that hep anybody and what does it serve?

Unilateral trade liberalisation of itself is a terrible idea in that it exposes UK businesses to predatory competition, often subsidised, which then sees a collapse of UK livestock production and subsequently production of arable feedstuffs. It gets worse though. 

But crucially, this proposal also allows the UK to turn the tables on the EU on trade. During this two-year ‘open border’ period, all the UK’s trading partners will be invited to talks on free trade agreements, to avoid having to face MFN tariffs at the end of the two-year period. Trade partners such as the US, Australia, New Zealand and perhaps the EFTA states will be keen to reach agreements with the UK as soon as possible to lock in their improved market access and steal a march on EU producers. 

This is all very well if the author can supply a single instance of a comprehensive trade deal being agreed in anything like two years - especially without years of preceding research. This tells you the author has no practical knowledge of trade whatsoever. It really is a flight of fantasy. I've forgotten more about trade than this author knows.

Skipping to the conclusions...

It is likely that the EU will eventually decide to strike a broad-based free trade deal with the UK under these circumstances. But even if an EU trade deal is not struck in the two-year period, the UK will have had time to build an efficient border system for trade with the EU and put in place a new and independent regulatory system, allowing future trade frictions to be minimised.

Again a comprehensive deal in two years from scratch is simply not going to happen. Moreover the assertion that we will have had the time to build an efficient border system for trade ignores just about everything we know about government procurement of software - which at its most efficient would not be ready to prototype any time inside seven year much less roll it out and train customs officials and exporters. 

One could do a more thorough debunking of this piece but as eureferendum.com notes, we are dealing with enemies of reason. Any number of experts could tell him he is wrong. We could quote chapter and verse from numerous official sources, all of them showing why controls will apply to UK produce from day one. But there is hardly any point. These individuals are anti-knowledge, making up their own narratives to support their case, without the slightest resort to fact.

Outing the Brexit liars is your job - because nobody is going to do it for you.

This is going to sound a bit preachy but I'm going to roll with it anyway. The Tory Brexiters have pulled a fast one. They have shifted to goalposts and now propagandists are spinning the narrative that any deal is a betrayal of Brexit. These people are professional liars.

If we had a functioning media the people who say we can rely on WTO rules as a basis for our post-Brexit trade relations would be hauled over the coals by all of the major newspapers because it is not a matter of mere opinion. It is an outright demonstrable lie.

But rather than outing liars as indeed our media should, many vessels are actually complicit in the lie. Particularly BrexitCentral, City AM, The Telegraph, the Express and The Spectator. They will give houseroom to liars without flinching. This is what they do now.

The media is often described as The Fourth Estate (or fourth power) - a segment of society that wields an indirect but significant influence on society even though it is not a formally recognised part of the political system. With that power comes responsibility.

One can argue that the press has always abused that power and it is something we must tolerate as part of a free society, but it;s hard to imagine a time where it crossed the line as it does now so brazenly. Would it have published leaked plans for D-Day?

Fast forward to 2018 and we find a corporate influenced media, run by a claque of related Tories, very deliberately steering the UK toward the rocks for financial gain, in a political act that will cause untold economic harm and put more than a million people out of work.

Dispute that if you will; call it mendacity or stupidity, either way, there are no first world economies who trade on WTO terms alone, and WTO rules can never be a substitute for forty years of technical and regulatory cooperation.

The nation has voted to leave the EU. Nobody that I know of envisaged terminating all formal trade relations with the EU. Certainly nobody serious thinks it is a good idea and it would do precisely nothing to remedy any of the problems leading to the Brexit vote.

There are deep, serious consequences to leaving without a deal - and our media has failed to properly raise the alarm, often trivialising issues so that the public suspects there is a "project fear" campaign. Tawdry reporting of consequences is a godsend to propagandists.

In this we have few credible defenders in the public realm, many of whom have squandered their credibility by joining forces with the odious continuity remain campaign. They are in no position to convince anybody of anything. So it falls to us.

Since we cannot depend on our media, and our politicians are of no use, it is incumbent on all of us to fight back. Like it or not, we are in an information war against professional liars who are spreading deliberate misinformation about the WTO option.

Since the media doesn't understand the issues and cannot intelligently report on these matters, it is the duty of citizens to do the heavy lifting and challenge these lies whenever they are uttered because all of our futures hang on this very question.

This is not a Leave/Remain argument. This is a simple matter of of acknowledging the reality of our predicament and ensuring that the public are better informed than their rulers - because only we can stop them. In a democracy it is your job to be informed.

Moreover, whatever else may be on the cards, this is the single most important issue in the debate. Not much else is going to matter if we do not win the argument and turn the tide against these Tory liars.

If the UK leaves without a deal, we lose a £270bn a year trade relationship, all of our formal relations with the EU and we are subject to standard third country controls. that would be nothing short of a disaster from which we will not recover from any time soon.

Likely we would never again reclaim our status or our economic standing, leaving us vulnerable to predators and passengers of events in the coming trade war. Put simply, we cannot afford to let the Brexit ultras win. They are liars and we must make that known.

We may not have the same prestige or circulation as the media, but collectively we do have power and we do have influence, and more to the point, politics is decided by those who show up. Well, we're here all the time. We tweet while they are sleeping. That's why we can win.

Matthew Goodwin's 2016 nostalgia

It's interesting that though I am in the Brexit business I am now a million miles away from the referendum debate. The bickering carries on as before but I have tuned most of it out. Carole Cadwalladr's campaign against Vote Leave and Arron Banks still rolls on, Matthew Goodwin is still churning out his cliched "Left behind" articles and Spiked continue to produce low grade teenage revolutionary garbage.

Meanwhile the remain crowd issue daily decrees on Twitter, bristling with hashtags and campaign acronyms calling for a second referendum, none of which is newsworthy. There isn't going to be another referendum and it doesn't matter which celeb they roll out to support it, they are wasting their breath. We all know what they want and it's to reverse the referendum even if that means a rigged referendum that splits the leave vote. It's just not interesting. Never has a campaign wasted more energy on a cause so futile.

The remain crowd are now largely talking to themselves, living in their own echo chamber, failing to challenge the ultra-Brexiter message while the rest of us in the real world are left to make sense of a situation that worsens by the day. The two camps become ever more polarised while the Brexit press and Tory propaganda mills churn out pro-no deal poison. We are, therefore in a full blown information war where the Tory side is actually winning.

In fact, the latest offering from Matthew Goodwin tells us a lot about what's going on. Not especially because of what it says because there is nothing at all interesting or new there. It's the fact that for Goodwin and Spikedophile crowd, the battle was won in 2016 and the world stopped turning. We are now expected to pore over polls, narratives and data collected from a single moment in time, without any reference to the war of attrition that has carried on since.

What it tells us is the commentariat have found their comfortable narratives to dine out on and that is the fullest extent of their engagement while those of us at the sharp end are engaged in a fight to the death for the future of the country. It's no longer leave versus remain. It's a battle between those of us who live in the real world and those who very obviously do not.

What has happened since the referendum changes the battle lines entirely. My daily discourse is as much with remainers as leavers and most of my conversations with leavers tend to be futile exchanges trying to explain the basics of the WTO and why we cannot use it as a fallback position.

I cannot pinpoint precisely when it happened but the goalposts have shifted and the real fight is between those who recognise that we need an orderly negotiated departure and those who think we can simply pull the plug and expect things will carry on as normal. It is, therefore, a little premature to be writing the sociological history of Brexit. It's not over yet.

At the time of the referendum, the establishment was looking pretty odious and deserved a smack in the chops. Since then, though, we have seen the duplicity, mendacity and incompetence of the Brexiteers. We have seen the cavalier attitude of David Davis. We have seen the poverty of ideas and the absence of knowledge among the Brexiteers. We have seen Farage robbed of his stature. We've seen Boris Johnson for the bullshit artist he is.

Public sentiment almost certainly has changed. We don't know precisely what that sentiment is, but virtually nobody thinks the Brexit process is being handled well and if we do crash out without a deal then all bets are off as to what happens next.

The Westminster bubble holds it that if Theresa May makes any concession to Brussels then the grassroots of the Tory party will again drift back to Ukip. Again this is without reference to anything that has happened since the referendum. With Ukip having all but packed up their Brexit shop, preferring instead to grunt about Muslims, taking up the cause of one Tommy Robinson, they have painted themselves into irrelevance. Ukip is bankrupt, sans Farage, and lacking the organisational infrastructure to mount a serious national campaign.

Moreover unless the consequences of a no deal are fully understood, the political responses will be muted and distorted. Since they are not, we get a drip feed of warnings that a compromise deal with the EU could lose the next election for the Tories. This hardens the pro-no deal sentiment.

In reality, however, a no deal Brexit is likely to be so shambolic that no government could expect to recover from it. Lorries backed up to the M25 and flights grounded is not a good look for a party that only a few months ago was promising sunlit uplands and an extra £350m a week to splurge on nurses.

Mindful of this we see Liam Fox today, getting his excuses in early, telling us that No Deal is odds on as a result of EU intransigence. There will be a concerted effort to shift the blame to the EU. A lot of people will buy that but there will also be countervailing propaganda. The EU is not going to take that lying down. The blame game will only get the "ultras" so far. The effects of "no deal" will be severe and difficult to hide that there is bound to be a push back.

We then find that many in the regions who voted to leave in good faith suddenly find themselves on the dole through no particular fault of their own, there won't be much forgiveness of those who told us everything will be fine. It is this chapter that will define what comes next more so than the referendum.

Arguably the pet theories of Matthew Goodwin gives us some clue as to how to forge a response to the Brexit vote, but in reality, Brexit creates so many change issues that higher politics falls between the cracks. The more problems we create for ourselves the less we are equipped to deal with them. As to the mode of Brexit we choose, which, if any, provides any remedy to the multifarious reasons for the leave verdict?

We are told Brexit means taking back control of our money, borders, laws and trade but of itself that is no remedy. Reclaiming the fabled £350m a week is little use having lost a £270bn a year trade relationship, absolute sovereignty over technical regulation ensures far less favourable single market access and it is difficult to see how Brexit has any mid term trade advantages. The only argument in its favour is control over our own trade defences, but that's not a lot of use of the Tories opt for unilateral trade liberalisation.

More likely such a policy will exacerbate regional imbalances and the only real decline in immigration we will see is when those workers relying on a favourable exchange rate realise the UK isn't worth the bother. No policy on EU migration does anything to remedy what really riles the Kippers... Pakistani rape gangs and forced marriages etc. 

Of course, one can argue that will a general collapse of the status quo and free of the EU we will have the tools to forge our response to these issues afresh, but that is assuming we are then operating in a vacuum when actually, our decisions will have ramifications for EU relations and our trade with it. There is no chance of any of these issues being satisfactorily resolved without first resolving the crisis of competence in Westminster.

Moreover, if we examine any of the reasons cited for voting to leave, much of this is caused by globalisation and the shift of retail from our high streets to the internet. What remedy does Brexit bring to that? Should we leave the single market, ultimately seeing a long pause in investment into Airbus and similar regional employers, there is every likelihood we will see an acceleration of decline. 

We know the public know what they voted for. They voted to leave the EU. Beyond that, though, are a thousand urgent questions, all of which require intelligent responses from our political apparatus. The constitutional question can be answered by the public but for the more technical questions we do need experts and specialists. We have proved to destruction that the average Brexiter (or remainer for that matter) knows dick all about trade. 

Every one of these questions requires a compromise to one or other degree and though our policy responses have to be mindful of the vote, they cannot be slaves to it lest we become the isolationist and bankrupt country we leavers said we would not become. Yet where is the discussion of any of this? Certainly we get nothing from Goodwin or wider academia.

Goodwin tells us that "a rapprochement seems unlikely, at least in the short-term. Consider what Leavers and Remainers want Britain to prioritise in the coming years. Leavers say Brexit, sharply reducing immigration, curbing the amount spent on overseas aid, and strengthening the armed forces. Remainers say build more affordable homes, raise taxes on high earners, increase the minimum wage, and abolish tuition fees. The only point of consensus is that both want to increase funding for the National Health Service".

Leavers are likely to be disappointed. Foreign aid is essential to an active trade policy, a body blow to the economy will mean cuts to defence, and then the remainer wishlist looks implausible in that there will be less economic activity to tax and a lot less to spend and having torched our most important international relationship, scant options for borrowing money. We will even have to ask existential questions about the NHS.

All of these questions hang in the balance right now and unless we have decisive answers as to our approach to Brexit then our fate will be decided by circumstances. Should we leave without a deal we will be left with an embittered wreck of a country with near universal contempt for our governing class. 

Perhaps that is what infantile revolutionaries might wish for, and indeed in my more nihilistic moments I have some sympathy with that view, but a zero sum game Brexit ultimately serves nobody except for the foreign "investor" predators the Tories invite into government via their crooked think tanks.

Whatever multifarious reasons may exist for voting to leave, public attitudes can turn on a sixpence, and as much as the Brexit process up to press will have shaped attitudes, a calamitous crash out seeing food prices skyrocket and austerity like we have no seen in my lifetime, narratives will change and voters will judge accordingly. 

One thing remainers are right about is that a sample of a opinion at one point in time in advance of a a raft of new information is an inadequate yardstick on which to forge policy for the next few decades. One can respect the result of the referendum but there is no reason why the losers should not be every bit as engaged in forging the future of our country. Brexit may have been a mandate to leave the EU, but it wasn't a mandate for an ultra capitalist experiment nor do I imagine the majority voted to sever all formal trade relations with the EU. 

With all this water under the bridge, the kind of prattle we see from Goodwin feels more like 2016 nostalgia than an attempt to engage in the issues. The crucial question is not if we should leave the EU or even why we voted to leave the EU. It is now a question of how we leave - and on that question all of our fates hang. Without application of serious thought, acknowledging the limitations of sovereignty and the shifting sands since the referendum, we will get nowhere near a good answer. 

Instead of a full and frank national debate we are fighting a war against unprincipled, anti-knowledge propagandists - which undermines the notion of democracy. A functioning democracy depends on an informed public but instead we find public opinion is skewed by deliberate misinformation without an adequate media response, with many players in the media being a party to the deception. Eventually the truth will hit home - because it always does, but by then it won't matter. The damage will be done. Mr Goodwin might wish he'd used this time to ask better questions. 

Brexit: a crisis of integrity

Folks, we have a problem. A very big one. The outright idiocy of Sir Christopher Meyer and the poisonous assertions made by the Spectator in respect of the WTO option, repeated by Kate Hoey have gained considerable traction among Brexiters. This is an all out war on knowledge and good sense.

It's one thing to conclude that we must leave the EU - another entirely to duck all the complex questions by claiming no deal will be fine. That is a lie and this is a wilful attempt to mislead the public using some of the most influential vessels in UK media.

This is made worse by a commentariat without the knowledge or curiosity to challenge these lies. Worse still, the people who tell this lie trade entirely on prestige. Consequently far too many people will unquestioningly believe it if it confirms their existing narrative.

There is a strong tribal dynamic here in that Tories will not think for themselves. they will look to whatever an opinion gatekeeper is saying and toe the lie accordingly. This is why the likes of Julia Dunning-Kruger and Kate Hoey serve as useful idiots.

As grossly irresponsible as it is to public such misinformation, BrexitCentral and the Spectator do it deliberately. The "ultras" repeat their lies, ad nauseam. But they never do detail, always sticking to generalities. They are unprincipled propagandists.

This is in part a consequence of ultra remainers seeking to reverse the vote. That was only ever going to drive Brexiters to the extremes - but primarily there is a disaster capitalist agenda at work here aided by zealous Tories who simply do not understand modern trade.

The bigger problem is that no amount of factual argument is likely to change minds. It's wasted breath. They will obfuscate and cloud the debate with jargon to paper over the cracks in their arguments. Their followers will believe it because they want to.

It is, therefore, an article of faith that any criticism is simply "project fear" from "remoaners". We are dealing with indestructible stupidity and any number of threads, explainers and blogs will not make a dent. Believe me, I've tried.

We are now at a point where Brexiters, usually especially thick Tories, now accuse me of being a remainer. Using facts is like a Sherman shell fired at a King Tiger. It just bounces off. Every breath is wasted.

In effect the Tory right has declared all out war on all of us. And this is not trivial. This will decide the UK's international standing for the next half century - and will make us substantially poorer and less influential. So we have to go on the attack. All of us.

This is no longer a battle over Brexit. This is an attempt by the Tory right to hijack the referendum to push a warped version of free markets on an unsuspecting public, demolishing all of our trade defences and opening the floodgates to foreign commercial predators.

Not for nothing do the ultras have ties to US agricultural, banking and private health interests. They don't care about Brexit and they certainly don't care about democracy or sovereignty. They will sell the UK to the highest bidder.

These people are not conservatives. They are not interested in a successful Brexit outcome, they don't care what damage it does to our allies, particularly Ireland, and they don't care how many jobs it kills. They simply don't care about you or yours.

If the UK leaves without a deal we assume the legal status of third country and subject to standard third country controls losing all market participation rights under the treaties - so yes there WILL be port jams and yes there will be shortages and airlines will not fly.

This is not project fear. This is simply what happens when you terminate all of your formal relations with your nearest and largest trade partner. We are then in a state of damage control with zero leverage. No patriot would want us in that position.

The ultras will say we trade with the rest of the world on WTO terms. That is a lie. They say we can use the WTO TFA to get thee trucks rolling. That is also a lie. These fanatics are lying through their teeth and they know it. This is a war - and one we cannot afford to lose.

The triviality of our media is a godsend to propagandists

One of the biggest problems in the Brexit debate is the total lack of media literacy where the ignorance of the public is exploited and important issues turned into click-bait trivia. This is why so many important issues are written off as "project fear".

One such example is the "Brexit threat to sandwiches" headlines - which of itself seems risible but sandwiches are an £8bn industry which is worth a magnitude more than fishing and and employs tens of thousands of people. Sandwiches do not pass through a membrane from an alternate dimension. they depend on complex logistics and food safety systems all of which are interwoven with our customs controls and thy depend on JIT supply chains and an array of suppliers for seasonal ingredients.

There are a number of ways in which a no deal Brexit can screw up supply chains - but also add to the costs of materials and ingredients thus making the lunchtime sandwich noncompetitive. This is to say nothing of the food safety regime which is interwoven with that of the EU.

This one example should not be taken in abstract but people, rather an example of what happens to just one sector. But people will still shrug it off anyway. Similarly so with the "super gonorrhoea" story - which is another way the media has trivialised an issue.

The story actually pertains to the continuity of medical research especially into antimicrobial resistance - where a no deal Brexit would instantly exclude us from a number of programmes and also made more difficult with visa restrictions. Beyond that there are concerns to do with the approvals of new medicines and even if we can sort out the logistic s problems we will see medicines rationing by health authorities as prices skyrocket.

This is where the likes of Brendan O'Neill casually suggests we can simply import medicines from elsewhere. This overlooks the fact that many suffers of ailments cannot casually switch brands. MS sufferers especially. Different brands have different side-effects. Moreover the reason the EU has an iron curtain on cheap imports of medicines is because the sector is rife with adulterated and fake medicines where a container load can be anywhere up to 70% fake according to the World Customs Organisation.

So there are very serious issues we need to address and treat with the seriousness they deserve but our media thinks we are only interested in these issues if they trivialise it and turn it into titillating clickbait. This actually tells you a lot about the snobbery and condescension in our media, assuming we won't understand the more complex issues. Hence there is a drought of quality information. Anyone would think working class people do not worry about supply of medicines.

What makes it worse is statements by various drug companies saying they do not anticipate problems. These are very often tweets from their communications execs who know precisely zilch about EU law and supply chains.

Then we get false witnesses telling us everything will be fine - which is all guesswork in spite of the EU Notices to Stakeholders telling us the exact legal position. But instead of researching the exact position the UK media goes looking for "experts" with prestige. This means they will scroll through their Rolodex for anyone remotely medical and ask them to speculate over things they know precisely nothing about. It is that weakness in the media that allows the likes of BrexitCentral to claim it's all "project fear".

But this isn't project fear. Most of what we are seeing is modelling of the no deal scenario when all formal treaties and agreements cease to apply. That them prompts claims that we will adapt or sort something out. Well that rather depends doesn't it? No doubt we can adapt, but what are we adapting to? Less choice, scarcity, decline in quality and price rises. So who is helped by that? Why is that better? And yes we can "sort something out" but at that point there will be conditions.

Some have suggested we can just pick up the phone to Brussels and sort out a quick mutual recognition agreement on medicines. This is right after we've just left a massive hole in the budget of the European Medicines Agency. No doubt, out of self interest the EU will make some concessions but these will have to be temporary waivers because anything else is prohibited by those WTO rules. To re-open talks on more permanent arrangements we will first have to discuss a financial settlement.

In effect we will be back where we started at the beginning of A50 talks and nothing will happen until we agree to sign the NI backstop as is, pay the financial settlement and agree to the existing settlement on citizen's rights. No deal cannot stay no deal. So what do you get then? Pretty much the same situation we're in now, only our regulatory systems have collapsed along with our customs processes, our need is greater and we have zero leverage. Then the EU calls the shots and we'll sign whatever they put in front of us.

So no, leaving without a deal is not a good idea. It is a catastrophe with just about every regulatory system failing simultaneously - and we are not equipped to manage it. This is not "project fear". This what happens if we leave without alternative arrangements. For the billionth time, leaving without a deal means that the UK automatically assumes the status of third country and is then subject to standard third country controls. Not a blockade. Just consequences of our choice. Third country *means* third country.

Brexit: another Dunkirk moment

One of the more irritating facets of the Brexit debate is those academics for whom Brexit is a hobby horse to which they can append their repertoire without any reference to the issues in play. This is especially typical of vessels such as Spiked Online and latterly Breifings for Brexit. 

Typically they will churn over any morsel of Brexit news to see how it fits in with their pet narratives, which leads them to produce meaningless verbiage which adds nothing to the debate. One example of this, the linked Briefings for Brexit article, starts on the premise that there is an ideology driving the Chequers plan. There isn't. This is politicking.

Richard Tuck argues that the key aspect of the Chequers deal is UK adherence to EU state aid rules and competition policy primarily because of Conservative values - as if there were any such thing. "It is not the Conservative Brexiteers who have been out-manoeuvred by this document: it is the Corbynite Left" he says. Like much of our media, he only sees it in terms of Westminster party political manoeuvres entirely divorced from any external impetus.

This negotiation, though, is not a negotiation and it is not driven by directly by any doctrine. It is more a matter of the UK making a decision as to which of its narrow options it can live with. Once that decision is made we might actually get somewhere but until then we are drifting toward an accidental Brexit where our fate is decided for us.

Here you have to scrap any notion that there is an intellectual driving force behind the current approach to Brexit. Even looking for one is a mistake. This is all about navigating EU technocracy in situation where the UK has next to zero leverage.  

The EU single market is a market governance system. If we want to be able to get past its outer firewall, which for the purposes of the NI border we certainly do, then there are conditions which must be met. 

The short of it is that if you want frictionless trade then you must have regulatory harmonisation. The Tory right, however, think the whole point of Brexit is so that we can deregulate thus are implacably opposed to either a common rulebook or the EEA. They mistakenly believe that divergence maximises trade potential. It doesn't.

But this puts May between a rock and a hard place. She has political obligations in respect of the Irish border along with a need to maintain as much existing trade as possible. She has therefore attempted to package which satisfies both the EU demands and those of her party. It cannot work though because the two positions are irreconcilable. You cannot have unilateral divergence in a regulatory union. That is why the plan was a stillborn at its first mention.

There is no higher philosophy at work here. This is just the collision of Tory "free trade" fantasy with the reality that the EU is the regional regulatory superpower. In or out of the EU, the EU will call the shots.

This, therefore, is not a negotiation. Rather we ware presented with two possibles for future trade relations with the EU from which the government must pick one. Instead, they have been utterly deaf to what Brussels has said, trying to square the circle with new proposals none of which are workable because the Tory high command simply hasn't understood the nature of the dilemma.

This is made all the more acute since the Tories have since convinced themselves that we can in fact leave the EU without a deal and expect trade to carry on as normal. We are, therefore, getting absolutely nowhere.

The mistake made by this author, is the belief that there is a doctrine behind the Tory approach. There isn't. It is purely an attempt to bridge and unbridgeable gulf in an equation where one side goes away with nothing.

Meanwhile the left won't commit to a decisive position since they left has its own unbridgeable divide. There is London metro Labour who voted to remain and then there's working class regional Labour who voted to leave. One side wants to keep freedom of movement, the other does not. They will, therefore, duck the question of the single market and instead mutter platitudes. 

The bottom line is they don't want to touch it with a barge pole. The EU issue is something the left simply don't care about. They have only ever had a united position on a surface level in order to exploit the "Tories are split on Europe" narrative.

What we now find though is that Labour is acutely split on the issue, with the hard left believing we must leave the single market because they think it prevents nationalisation, because that's the gossip in the Westminster bubble. They haven't done the research and the wouldn't know where to start.

So now we have an entirely atomised politics with no coherence from any side, with positions mutating on a weekly basis while no single faction commands an overall majority.

To ascribe doctrinal qualities to the Chequers plan is to misread it as a decisive political position with particular objectives in mind. It isn't. It was a fudge and one based on recycled material the EU has already declined. Only an academic could be unaware of this.

The joke of it is that the Tories are looking for a solutions which won't see them wiped out at the next election. Again this is entirely futile. If May does make the only concession to reality that she can make - then she loses the hardliners and the DUP. If she doesn't then we leave without a deal and we end up trashing a £270bn a year trade relationship - costing us millions of jobs and causing cuts to government like we haven't seen for decades. She'll be out on her ear.

This is what many on the extremes want. The disaster capitalists on the Tory right see a no deal as an opportunity to bring about Singapore on Thames, while the Momentum clan see it as an opportunity to give us the full Venezuela treatment. Given that neither is realistic and both and uniquely damaging to the UK, you cannot be surprised if most conclude that the economic status quo of the single market is massively preferable to the alternative visions on offer.

This is where an EEA Efta compromise comes in. It's only 27% of the EU acquis largely safeguarding frictionless trade and going most of the way to uphold our political obligations to Northern Ireland. May, for the moment, will not touch this, because her hardliners have convinced themselves that the EEA option is akin to remaining and does not satisfy the vote. 

Frighteningly, a large contingent of leave voters now believe that because the media can only cope with an issue if it turns it into a confrontation between the far extremes. We therefore get the ultra remainers on one side and then the morons like Kate Hoey, Julia Dunning-Kruger and Brendan O'Neill on the other. Being that people are generally tribal and bovine they cannot separate the issues from the personalities and will now support the hardline narrative simply any form of compromise is now described as a "betrayal".

That this how it is. Attempts to divine some kind of philosophical substance in all this based on time honoured divisions and principles is really just intellectual masturbation from academics who no more understand the systems, processes and intractable dilemmas than the man in the street - who probably has a better grasp of it than they do.

High politics has all but retreated from the arena. We are used to an irrelevant self-indulgent politics with its denizens squabbling among themselves - where their excesses are successfully contained. That, in part has been the greatest achievement of the EU. It is why we have enjoyed an era of relative economic and political stability.

What we find, though, is that eventually the status quo is sufficiently offensive to the majority that the status quo must change. A quick look at any northern high street gives you some indication as to why the public feels inclined to change it. But now we confront the biggest of all the EU's failures.

Having isolated and contained normative politics, it has retreated to high fantasy - and now that we want to put politics back in the fame we find is is no longer equipped for governing and all we are left with is zealous teenage ideology to guide us based on tried and failed ideas. Managing a transition like Brexit was always beyond their ken.

In this we might look to our media and academia to provide some kind of direction, but having become a part of the warped Westminster ecosystem, it is no more equipped to handle complicated change than our politics. Now we pay the price as we coast toward a calamity. What is driving our approach to Brexit is not ideological. It is simply an attempt to balance the electoral equation to stay in office. 

That right there is the fundamental dysfunction of our politics. We have an exhausted party political system with ideas which are simply not relevant to the world as we find it. Our parties are just marketing brands opportunists can use to to get their nose in the trough and once they get there they will use the apparatus of government to stay there. The national interest falls between the cracks. This is why we probably have to have a Dunkirk moment in order to return to good governance.