Brexit: How Much Disruption Has There Been So Far?

[Roobaba]

BBC News Brexit: How much disruption has there been so far?
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/55831263

Disruption at the ports?.. Supply problems?.. Price increases? etc.. your comments?

[Jackdaw33]

A successful Brexit is when we can give two fingers to Brussels with absolute impunity.

[jim360]

An even more successful Brexit is when we no longer feel a need to do so.

[Sunk]

Way too early to say yet.

Orders were made and paid for months ago, so additional cost from 1st Jan have not hit yet. They will filter through by the summer and prices will rise.

[pixie374]

//Think the way the NHS is struggling , the UK just might have to wind their neck in a little, and welcome the return of the E/U nurses they frightened away//

If that genuinely is the case, gulliver, it means we need to increase money to attract more nurses. Win, win.

[jim360]

There's also stuff like this:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2021/feb/02/beekeeper-stung-by-post-brexit-ban-and-threat-to-burn-15m-bees

For the sake of clarity, this doesn't speak against Brexit, so much as its implementation, and in particular, the mad dash to the finish. Once a deal was agreed, there should have been proper scrutiny of that deal and its consequences, and the time provided to do so. Anything like this apparent nonsense could then have been sorted out.

[pixie374]

There was no mad rush. Three years of wasting time and prevarication.

[jim360]

There was clearly a mad rush at the end: a deal was reached with a week to spare, and its couple of thousand pages nodded through with little to no scrutiny. Whatever you make of the build-up, that is the definition of "mad rush".

[jim360]

Put another way, it can be both things.

[pixie374]

Do you not think the delays were anything to do with the remainers claiming they had won and the general opposition? There was hardly wholehearted support.

[MartinMillar]

Increased oil prices
Companies no longer delivering
Empty shelves in shops
Lack of compost and gardening needs
I could go on but this is enough to be getting on with

[jim360]

I don't think it matters one way or anothe. The focus of my post is an exceedingly narrow question: would granting more time than a handful of days to scrutinise such a wide-reaching new relationship, that is likely to last for decades, been beneficial to help avoid at least a decent proportion of such obvious administrative foul-ups? If the context does matter beyond that, then all I can say is that, whatever preceded 2019, after the election that year Johnson had total victory and the ability to implement Brexit on whatever timescale he saw fit. I don't think anybody would have cared much if it had taken a few extra weeks in order to sort through the finer details.

[pixie374]

It took 3 years. Not a handful of days.

[jim360]

You're confusing three separate parts of this process. It took three years to agree on a withdrawal deal; it took one year after that to reach a new trading relationship; it took seven days after that for the new relationship to come into force. I am only talking about the third stage of this.

[pixie374]

I do agree it should have been quicker, yes.

[jim360]

Perhaps the first stage should have been, although even that is debatable. But seven days is nowhere near enough time to scrutinise the detail, and I think that's largely what we have seen in the last month or so.

[MartinMillar]

Delay at getting goods from GB to NI could not buy wood for 2 weeks as it was being rationed

[TrevorThePug]

"I do agree it should have been quicker, yes."

Brexit is a process not an event. A lot of stuff is still unresolved and this will be whanging on and on for decades.

[pixie374]

Yes, Trevor. But it may have helped if so many, including MPs weren't fighting against it for so long. It wasn't an unexpected result.

[New Judge]

//…the UK just might have to wind their neck in a little, and welcome the return of the E/U nurses they frightened away .//

Why would they want to? Why should the UK feel it is perfectly acceptable to poach healthcare staff from other countries who have paid for their training? If it does anything it will hopefully encourage the UK to train its own nurses as it always did in the past (before it insisted on degree level education to enter the profession).

//…except as I said on other threads, that HS2 has been able to continue, because we didn't leave quickly enough.//

You keep mentioning this, pixie. Can you please explain (1) Why we were forced by the EU to undertake the project and (2) Why the project is (according to you) principally for the benefit of people and businesses in Europe?

The success (or otherwise) of Brexit will take some time to manifest itself. I agree with MartinMillar, the people of NI have been thrown to the wolves and the NI Protocol is a disgrace. Hopefully the behaviour of “our European Friends” a week ago will demonstrate to the UK government the folly of such an agreement.

Once the EU gets over itself and stops (for example) insisting on 15 different forms being submitted confirming the “animal health and welfare” standards are met of fish that UK trawlers want to land on the Continent when French and Spanish trawlers are hoovering up the same fish on an industrial scale, the sooner common sense will prevail. There may be movement: I read a letter in the paper today from a correspondent in Fontainebleau explaining that the shelves of Marks & Spencer’s food hall in Paris were empty. The store blamed the new customs arrangements. Once Parisians realise their favourite M&S fodder is running short it will soon be sorted.

[TrevorThePug]

Yes, because ensuring ensure that drivers comply with sanitary checks, and that everything is being kept at the right temperature and stored correctly for transporting is such a hassle these days eh.

And the M&S hummus may return to Paris shortly, but what about in the next 6 to 9 months when the embargo on EU food transports end.....