The Friday Blog: A Belt and Braces Job
Hello again, and I hope you are all bearing up after week one of who knows of how many of the latest version of lockdown. I am trying not to think too much about how long it is really going to last for or what the world will look like at the end of it, lest the Black Dog appears. We are trying to cheer ourselves up by planning the Santa’s Grotto that our house is set to become over the next few weeks. It transpires that in the last few days of relative freedom, my wife, or The Doctor as she is now known, paid a crafty visit to IKEA, and returned with illuminated nativity scenes and festive Scandinavian wreaths. If you are one of my 64 Twitter followers (@2greenrocks if you want to bolster my fragile ego and help me convince daughter that her Dad is a man of influence) you will have seen that the installation has already begun.
OK, I suppose I should tell you why she is now known as The Doctor, it is, after all, quite funny. During Lockdown One, herself needed to renew the driving licence and off things were dispatched to Swansea. When it returned, the only thing that was completed was her title, Dr. No name, just Dr. I thought it was hilarious, she was, officially, The Doctor, and I reckoned she should keep it as it was. But no, it was sent back and subsequently returned with the appropriate details complete.
Not sure where to start with it all this week. When I get in trouble with writing stuff on here and the complaints come in, my boss always points out that this is intended to be at least a little irreverent. But as many, far more accomplished than I have found, satire in a post truth world is challenging. The two glorious leaders of the free world can come up with things on their own that I simply cannot match.
At home, Boris has created a stir in trying to appoint a Chief of Staff. I am not sure what a Chief of Staff actually is outside of Leo in the West Wing, but anyway Boris is appointing one. His choice was the current Downing Street Director of Communications. You know what I think of the quality of communications out of Downing Street of late, and the genius behind it, and the man Boris wanted to be Chief of Staff, is Lee Cain. Before being Director of Miscommunication, intentional or otherwise, Cain was aide to Boris, both during and after his cameo as Foreign Sec, before that he was Peddler in Chief of indisputable facts for the Leave campaign, and before that he dressed up as the Daily Mirror’s chicken, taunting Tory MPs during the 2010 election campaign. Clearly a man of conviction and principle. But others at the heart of government were having none of Cain (and no, I am not going to say they thought he was not able) and cries came out for more decency and competence. Significant amongst the naysayers were the PM’s own partner, Carrie, and Allegra Stratton, remember her? She was on Newsnight for a bit before becoming national editor of ITN news and co-hosting that show with Peston, quitting in 2018 to spend more time with her children. Clearly tired of serious journalism, in April this year, she, rather quietly as far as I can tell, took up the post of Director of Strategic Communications at Her Majesty’s Treasury, before being appointed as the new Downing Street Press Secretary last month. In other words, she is CJ in the West Wing, and will soon be delivering daily doses of propaganda to your TV screen instead of the PM doing it himself. We should start up a big game of bingo to make it bearable, and my opening contribution is “What the Prime Minister meant to say was…” A bottle of Cornish fizz, arriving in time for Christmas (what Christmas) awaits whomsoever of you amuses me most with their suggestion. Anyway, being Boris’ longest serving and possibly most trusted aide, did Cain no good, and late on Wednesday evening he resigned. The political gossip pages have been rife with speculation about who might be next and the scale of discontent and dysfunction in No. 10, at a time when the PM should perhaps be focussing on other things.
It reached a head overnight with the entirely unrelated news (according to the man himself) that The Dom was to leave his post by the end of the year. Pride comes before a fall I suppose, and last time I got all cocky about reminding you how I had called the lockdown thing a month ahead, and I also said that The Dom was not going anywhere. Well, I was wrong. Not the first time and will not be the last. You can contemplate the whys and wherefores yourselves with the help of just about every media outlet this morning, and I suppose it makes a change for the news headlines not to be dedicated to the more serious things facing us.
At the risk of getting all BBC on you and bringing balance for balance sake, on the other side of the House, factions in the Labour Party were doing their bit to turn this week into an episode of the Thick of It. “Keir Starmer must apologise to Leave voters for Labour backing a second Brexit referendum and ‘not bury his role under the carpet,’” three of Jeremy Corbyn’s former shadow ministers say in a new report. Laura Smith, Jon Trickett and Ian Lavery are calling on Starmer to make the apology in an attempt to win back the red wall. I am not sure that they will be deploying traditional away day rebranding activities – “If the Labour Party was an animal, which animal would it be?” or seeing if McKinsey or similar have yet come up with virtual sticky pads. But they have suggested that the Party has become too Middle Class and too Southern. Plus ça change. I am a big fan of Radio 4 Extra and recently enjoyed an episode of Steptoe and Son from 1965. In it, Harold is hoping to become a candidate for the Labour Party, but the problem is that he is too working class because the Party is hoping to appeal to the new gentry moving into the East End. Besides, I am not sure Starmer is about to issue northern phrase books, after all he has Angela Rayner playing John Prescott to his Tony Blair.
Abroad, discussions have apparently been underway for some months now to decide which agency will be responsible for removing President Trump from the White House when the time comes. It is, I understand, between the military and the Secret Service. I am not sure what else I can add.
What I can add, is that within hours of it becoming apparent that Joe Biden will be in the White House when they have got Trump out, Boris was busy making positive noises about a deal with the EU, and committing to redoubling efforts to secure it. Boris even managed a 25-minute call with Biden this week, which Downing Street officials described as “genuinely warm.” Johnson assured Biden that the U.K. would implement Brexit in a way that upholds the Good Friday Agreement, and they found plenty of common ground on climate change. There was of course a twist and our friends at Politico reported that “Biden bringing up the Good Friday Agreement somehow didn’t find its way into the U.K. readout of the call, but luckily the U.S. side managed to include it.”
The Government suffered two, not entirely unexpected defeats in the Lords this week relating to Northern Ireland. They were amendments that removed the two clauses in the Internal Market Bill that would break international law if the powers were exercised. Despite not being unexpected, the margin of the defeats was eye watering. In the first vote, the Government was defeated by 433 to 165, in the second, by 407 to 148. The predictable response was that the clauses would be reinserted when the Bill returns to the Commons, HMG insisting the measures are vital to protect trade between Britain and Northern Ireland in the event of a no-deal Brexit. But some Conservative MPs are hopeful the Prime Minister could back down in the face of a growing rebellion in the Commons. Just two Conservative MPs voted against the Bill at its second reading in September, but 30 abstained. If that number voted against when the draft legislation comes back to the House of Commons, and a few more joined their ranks, it could put the government in serious trouble, despite its 80-seat majority. It could be me, but it feels like this is the smallest 80 seat majority in history. Rumours persist that no trade deal with the US will be forthcoming without a satisfactorily resolution to EU negotiations on the Irish border. I think this is one to watch.
Nonetheless, officials have reassured us on a number of occasions this week, that talks are continuing in earnest and the mood is positive, meaning, I think, that the submarine has entered the tunnel, which sounds like a belt and braces job if ever there was one. Mind you, and do not tell me you have never had these thoughts, it always struck me that getting on a train with a load of strangers and embarking on a journey beneath the seabed, is exactly the type of storyline that would have been nailed on to get you backing in the 1970s to make one of those epic disaster movies that were all the rage at the time. It is not that I do not trust the quality of the Anglo-French engineering behind it, or that I am usually nervous about these things, even so, I am pleased that I have never as yet had to board the Eurostar in the proximity of anyone who looks remotely like Shelley Winters.
Hope for the best but prepare for the worst remains a solid mantra and government departments have been busy this week. I would draw your attention to the latest Business Readiness Bulletin from BEIS, which contains a lot of information on new trading arrangements with a host of non-EU countries, some detail on the Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement with Japan, and details of the continuing series of transition webinars.
The Department for International Trade and The Foreign Commonwealth Development office have also announced that the UK will continue preferential tariffs for developing countries through the UK Generalised scheme of preferences from the 1st January 2021. DIT also announced an addition to the UK Government’s ability to attract foreign businesses, in the form of a newly established Office for Investment. The official release stated that the Office would be “staffed by highly experienced individuals with both private sector and cross-government experience, and be based in the Department for International Trade (DIT), with Minister for Investment Gerry Grimstone leading its work in close partnership with No10, under sponsorship of the Prime Minister and Chancellor of the Exchequer.” It all sounds very promising, but we will be pressing DIT to offer up more support for those of you that are exporting and have been hit by the reduction in things such as the Trade Access Programme (TAP).
And here is a world exclusive for you, we have been busy here at ABHI Towers too, and increasing funding for initiatives such as TAP is one of a number of recommendations we have made in our “Growth Opportunities for HealthTech” paper which will be launched on Monday. The report brings together, for the first time, our work in five key areas, Rapid Implementation of Clinical and Technological Innovation, Digital Health Technologies, Supply Chain Resilience and UK Manufacturing Capability, Trade and Development of a UK Diagnostics Capability as a Strategic Priority. Each has its own set of recommendations which we are advancing with government. The paper is substantial and reflects our perspective at a moment in time. To score a bingo hit, it is a living document.
Wednesday was, of course, Armistice day, and, serendipitously, I had a call with the good people from Defence Relationship Management. In another scoop, you lucky people, stand by for news of ABHI’s work to support the Armed Forces Covenant.
A good weekend to all and there is even Rugby to follow.
