The Withdrawal Agreement should be a bit boring. However, it hasn’t turned out that way if you are interested in geopolitics and economics, which you should be. Your livelihood and way of life will depend on it.

The Withdrawal Agreement establishes the terms of our departure from the EU, in accordance with Article 50 of the Treaty of the European Union. It came into force on 1 February 2020, after having been agreed on 17 October 2019, together with the Political Declaration establishing the framework of the future EU-UK partnership.

The Amendments

Our PM, Boris Johnson, called it an ‘Oven Ready Brexit’, allowing us to leave the Union without fuss. Then the government amended it. The amendments were put to The House of Lords last night and they kicked them out by a whopping 465 to 131. The government has said that it will re-apply the amendments when it comes back to parliament. With an 80-seat majority, not much can stop them.

This illegal breach of international law would give ministers the power to change or disapply export rules for goods travelling from Britain to Northern Ireland. This increases the likelihood of an unwanted and destabilising hard border between Northern Ireland (UK) and The Republic (the EU). And right there, the UK government has reached new heights of skulduggery which they had hoped to blame on the EU.

Trump’s Spanner in the Works

The government thought they could pull this off. They could blame Europe for No Deal and jump in the sack with Donald Trump, selling off our public services in exchange for whatever Trump wanted to push on us. The UK would effectively become a state of America and the EU could stick their trade deal where the sun doesn’t shine. Donald Trump put a spanner in the works of this masterplan by losing the US election (on the assumption he doesn’t make a run at a red neck coup of the White House).

So, now, with these amendments going back to parliament, the government has a dilemma. Does it push them through and break the deal that was signed by Boris Johnson himself? Or does it wait for a big news day and kick it into the long grass and stick with the original agreement (you know, the Oven Ready one) made with the EU?

If, as it says, it sticks to international law breaking, it will be one of the most colossal errors ever made by a British government. The EU will chuck the deal out and it will be no good turning to Uncle Sam, as he’s not listening. Biden’s new look America won’t entertain a trade deal with a country that breaks its word and jeopardises a peace agreement he helped put in place. Biden didn’t just turn up last week, he has 50 years of political experience behind him.   

The Impact

The jingoists can prattle on all they like spouting nonsense like ‘LET’S GO WTO’ and ‘STUFF YOU EU’ but it’s all just nonsensical bar stool bullshit. The impact of not having trade deals with two economic superpowers who will be aligning closer and closer together, is colossal. When America and the EU finalise their own trade deal, we will be sat in the Atlantic grovelling for scraps of WTO deals featuring complex and damaging tariffs.

Who else around the world will deal with us? Who will look at us and decide that a nation that tried to stitch up its nearest trading partner, is worth a carrot? Who would dare offer us a better trade deal than the EU are getting? Johnson has made some cock ups in his time but this is the coup de grace. Surely, he will have to backtrack and try and bullshit his way out of the amendment, saying it wasn’t meant how it was read. He needs to.

The Bad Times Populist

Johnson is a populist. Populists can get away with good time bluster and bullshit during times when everyone is making money and feeling content. Populists can get away with it by engaging a cabinet full of intellects who can do the hard yards needed to run a successful government. Johnson has none of those.

He has a pandemic; he backed the wrong horse in the US election, and he has a cabinet of imbeciles with the foresight of a demented fairground goldfish. If he had Frank Spencer, Mr Bean, Alan Partridge, David Brent, and Laurel & Hardy in his cabinet, he couldn’t have made a worse job of it. At least they would be funny.

People need to wake up and understand the damage Johnson is doing, before it is too late.