Don't get me wrong. I am not a fan of Donald Trump. I am not writing this to praise him. What I am highlighting is how the government of Boris Johnson has put Great Britain in a position where a Biden victory would put us in a very difficult position. Biden has publicly stated that he would not support a trade deal for the UK given the likely impact of Brexit on the Republic of Ireland, a key US ally. Without a deal with the USA, many of the benefits of Brexit that Boris has been trumpeting go up in smoke and he knows it. The EU will have a far stronger hand. It is now so late in the day, that it is hard to see any way for the UK to leverage a good deal with either the EU or the USA in a post Trump era. Having nailed his flag to the Brexit mast and having purged the Tory party of people who support anything other than a hard Brexit, he will have few options. An extension would be unpalatable to his own supporters and a WTO deal would add tarrifs to all sorts of trade. Once we leave the block, all EU negotiated deals go out of the window and we'll have to start again. That is not a good place to be in a world facing a covid fuelled depression on a scale unimaginable a year ago when Boris called the election. The EU are not stupid and they have shown themselves to be canny negotiators. Much as I dislike Trump, the one crumb of comfort I will take if he gets in is that we will be spared a hammering from a pincer movement of Biden and the EU. These are very worrying times and I think many people are rather deluded about the mess that Boris may have landed us in.
No comments:
Post a Comment