Liz Truss loves a good export. She loves to celebrate the ability to sell the same things to the same people in the same way as they were sold before Brexit. She likes to imply that Brexit has somehow made all of this so much easier. She also loves all trade deals…especially the sweet little teeny weeny ones with remote islands or small countries or the rollover deals which exactly replicate what we already had, or – better still – those which are marginally less favourable to us. All trade deals, that is, bar the one with the EU, to which she and her colleagues appear to have given scant consideration or even decided not to bother to read at all.
It’s the equivalent of the toddler who hides by covering their eyes on the ‘if I can’t see me or you, you can’t either’ principle…only it’s ‘If I haven’t read about the rules round third country status or understood the TCA, then they aren’t there, they don’t exist and the EU are being unfair by enforcing them.’
Truss has another problem beyond her curious trade euphoria/trade amnesia affliction. In the frantic scramble to find even a scrap of a good Brexit trade story, she and her colleagues alight on the most unsuitable examples. You might have caught the series of tax-payer funded ads (delicious divertissements away from the bad news of collapsing exports and ruined businesses) which featured a company whose director was under investigation for fraud. The story was broken by our (big) sister publication, Yorkshire Bylines and our even bigger uncle (?) Byline Times:
Now you’d really think, wouldn’t you, that everyone in this government would be just a bit more careful about which companies they chose to single out to be the poster boys and girls for the Brexit carnage. They must have twigged that sharp professional and amateur journalists would get their spades out and have a bit of a dig to check out any company unlucky enough to be the latest ‘chosen one’. To be fair, there has been progress in that this next company has done nothing wrong. In fact, it had been providing something of a lifeline to Marmite-loving, hobnob-craving, PG-drinking Brits abroad with Heinz beans withdrawal syndrome and, unsurprisingly, many of these customers are in the EU.
Honestly, could no-one who works with her not have gently said “I wouldn’t if I were you…” before the Truss gush tweet went out into the vigilant, cruel world?
Somebody managed to warn her to specifiy “largest single country “. Well done! That’s a more than 1 per cent pay rise for you, no doubt! But, oh, if only those nasty diggers did not feel provoked to get their spades out! Click on the link to see their Brexit page:
Oops! What have we here? No exports of certain goods to Europe because of Brexit? (NB this wording changed a few minutes after we published… Claiming normal service resumed BUT saying “We have unfortunately had to reduce the range of products available to these countries in order to comply with customs” …hmm. A rat is smelled.
Oh, and look below! This isn’t your ordinary, everyday, plucky little entrepreneurial ‘cornershop’ business with a bit of philanthropic government backing! Aww, Liz! You should have made it clear! And their whole business offering is based on the ability to export! And they can’t sort Brexit issues? Wow!
They are crafty monkeys, the folk in this government! You have to watch them like a hawk! They’ll try to get anything and everything past us. Like calling the failing privately-run Test and Trace programme the ‘NHS’ test and trace and then rebranding the brilliant NHS-run vaccine rollout as the government’s success! The scamps!
Eyes peeled, people. We’re being scammed and gaslit left, right and centre, because, you know…Brexit ain’t going too well…
