The Friday Blog: Short It Will Have to Be
Hey, hey and a very good Friday afternoon to one and all. I hope you are as well as can be expected under the current circumstances, and I trust that those of you who celebrate it had a splendid Diwali last weekend. You will tell me if I am wrong, I am sure, but it seemed to me that the event was marked with particular relish and robustness this year. It certainly felt like it in North Birmingham. Sunita’s specialist bakery and sweet centre across the road, which does an amazing line in eggless cakes if you are ever in the area, had a queue outside for most of the day, and the fireworks, well, the fireworks were just insane. And it is not as if we are not used to it. About 15 years ago when I first started spending most of my time here, I had one of those truly jaw dropping moments. My route home from the motorway involves a right turn off the A34 just Birmingham side of the Scott Arms onto the Old Walsall Road. At this point you are at the top of a hill, looking out across Handsworth and the city beyond. It was Diwali and I had never seen anything quite like it. It was like the start of those Disney films, except that the fireworks were real and there were about 100 times as many, but this year it was something else. The noise, and it was sound rather than light given the weather, started in earnest around 6 o’clock and continued, with no reduction in intensity, for fully four and a half hours. I can only imagine that it is what it is like living in a war zone and subject to constant shelling. I dread to think how many hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of pyrotechnics went, quite literally, up in smoke on Saturday night, but I can tell you that the Hindus, Sikhs and Jains of Great Barr know how to party.
I think Lakshmi was also smiling down on those of us with a more secular outlook on life. The cacophony, despite doors and windows being shut tight and the radio turned up to pacify the dog, provided the soundtrack to my kitchen duties. Daughter is at a difficult age (when are they not?) and feeding her is increasingly challenging. It was, perhaps then, a little foolhardy to have made a late decision to experiment with a new pasta sauce. But there was truly magic in the air, religious or otherwise, because she devoured it and proclaimed that it was “as good as DaGino’s.” Now, let me tell you, DaGino’s is a decades old Little Aston eatery, close to Sutton Park, and our go-to Italian, the place we spent lockdown eve. The cooks, and they are actually Brummies, Gino is the host, have that rather annoying ability to make, on the face of it, plain, simple food taste so much better they you can ever manage at home. They are particularly skilled with their sauces, so the compliment really was one of the best moments of my life so far. It was also unexpected. If I had had to guess which bit of my cooking might have been the first to get the “restaurant quality” accolade from daughter, I would have gone with steak night or maybe a roast chicken dinner, so to have it for a prawn tagliatelle was special.
If we needed reminding of how difficult getting back to something that looks normal is going to be, cue Boris going back into self-isolation. Typically bullish and “fit as a butcher’s dog and bursting with antibodies,” the PM nonetheless is, once again, holed up in the flat above the shop. Instructive, I think, is that Downing Street was designated as “COVID secure,” and the difficulties in keeping venues which attract a lot of footfall, even during lockdown, free of the virus are readily apparent. If Downing Street is not safe, despite saying it is so, where else can possibly be, certainly not our hospitals or GP surgeries. It does also beg the question as to what extent our legislators are following their own guidance. If adequate social distancing and mask wearing had been in place, would the PM and a large handful of MPs who met with him, now be in the situation they find themselves in? And how many times does any one individual need to self-isolate? I would rather not think about that question unless I have to, and having to will be if the highly promising vaccines we are all reading about are either not that promising after all, or we cannot get our hands (or upper arms) on them.
Boris’ predicament will have us all thinking about what Christmas might be looking like and the implications for January if we decide to go mental as usual. The question has also caused a punch up (virtual of course) between the Department of Health and Social Care and Public Health England. PHE’s Dr. Susan Hopkins told a No. 10 briefing on Wednesday morning that for every one day of lifted restrictions, two days of tighter measures would be required, but PHE’s press office then e- mailed journalists clarifying that Hopkins actually meant five days of tighter measures. This led to all those reports you read that five days of relaxed rules over Christmas will lead to 25 days of further restrictions, writing off January. The word is that Matt Hancock was furious that PHE had created fake news, one official was quoted as saying, “This is preliminary SAGE modelling and should not be taken as guidance on possible decisions.” So that is ok then, HMG will continue its approach to following the science, and January will be marginally less miserable for the hospitality sector and those of us that rebel by making it our major party month. I only do it to help out.
I do wonder why Christmas, and all the energy that is being put into trying to allow us to take the festive season off from protecting each other from COVID. It cannot be a good idea from an infection prevention point of view to have Grandma sat underneath the mistletoe. As some of you will know, we have no extended family between us, so are spared all the politics and stress that many people have to face at the most wonderful time of the year, meaning I am probably not best qualified to comment. However, I would have thought that a good proportion of the population would quite happily remain at home, locked down for a few days either side of 25th December. I also think that HMG needs to be very clear and careful about how it explains why we would want to do this in a way that makes sense to all of our citizens. It cannot be just because it is an important religious festival, other important religious festivals in our country have been disrupted by restrictions, and I have mentioned one already. But I am not going to get into a discussion about the true meaning of Christmas, especially as someone who regards it largely as his two-week winter holiday in the pub.
Ok I have done the religion so I might as well move on to the politics, specifically Brexit. Since the Referendum we have had critical weeks, we have had crucial weeks and we have had dead in a ditch weeks, but this has been “move week.” The term was coined by Irish Foreign Minister Simon Coveney, who we have talked about before here. It acknowledges, of course, that time is getting very, very short.
The prospect of us getting a deal with the EU in whatever time we have left seems to depend on who you talk to. Some in the EU are saying that there had been a step-change in approach this week, with better engagement on the British side on the level playing field issue and more trust from the EU side that Britain will keep its word, despite the upset over the Internal Market Bill. Others are less optimistic, and there is talk that some are disappointed that the removal of Dominic Cummins from No. 10 has not produced an immediate softening of the UK’s approach. The Dom was seen by many as being central to Boris’ resolve in talking tough to the EU, one of the reasons why the (soon to be) former aide did not receive a text during his jaunt to Barnard Castle telling him to carry on driving North. Anyway, despite losing his mate, Frosty was in Brussels yesterday meeting with Barney having a "moment of truth” discussion. It was thought if there had been sufficient progress, the U.K. team could remain in Brussels for talks over the weekend. Talks would be about what are now veritable old favourites, and it will be, as one UK official close to the action told me this week, down to how many fish the French are prepared to offer up for what level of a level playing field. But, if we needed reminding of how difficult getting back to something that looks normal is going to be, cue one of the EU negotiating team testing positive and Barnier going into self-isolation. There will now be a short break in the talks whilst they do I do not know what, but short it will have to be.
So, 1,610 days after the referendum, we are still, largely, in the business of speculation about the final outcome, and speculation is foolish (Bingo!) One of the more interesting analyses I came across this week was from an EU based Diplomat, who reckoned there are now two plausible scenarios from where we are at the moment. A bad one and a worse one. In the bad one, it becomes impossible to reach a deal because it is just too complex a thing to do to meet the deadlines (everyone in the world told us so) but things are done without acrimony. In that case negotiations could continue on friendly terms after the two sides have fallen back on World Trade Organisation rules.
In the worse one, the current talks end badly, and it takes a long time to resume them. In a sobering comment, the Diplomat added that U.K. seemed overly focused on breaking with the EU rather than forging a new future.
Even if Barnier and Frost are able to locate a microscopic rabbit in a hat the size of Disneyland Paris by yesterday and come up with a deal, it would still need approval by the 27 EU leaders, who would have to go back to their own Parliaments, as well as ratification by the European Parliament itself. And if a deal seems to bend or break red lines that the Council set out in its original negotiating mandate, officials and diplomats said they could envision the once-unthinkable scenario of the Council refusing to back Barnier. Some even think that Barnier, who is facing mandatory retirement in January, is focussed more on his legacy than getting the best deal for his constituents.
The pace of progress with Brexit talks also meant that Barnier was not able to brief EU Ambassadors ahead of yesterday’s leaders’ Summit, not that Brexit was on the agenda. It is a reminder that the rest of the world has its own issues, and the EU 27 had other pressing things to consider. Yesterday was supposed to be about agreeing the bloc's €1.074 trillion seven-year budget, which is due to start on 1st January. But there was trouble, with Hungary and Poland seriously ticked off by caveats being attached to access to a new €750 billion COVID recovery fund. The EU is threatening to withhold payments if countries do not satisfy certain rule of law criteria, and those in the East think they are being pointed at. The two countries, backed by Slovenia, are talking vetoes amongst other things.
Not that we do not have enough to think about at home, and it has been another busy week of communications on the preparedness front. NHS England, Chief Commercial Officer, Steve Oldfield, issued his latest missive on plans and preparations ahead of the end of the Transition Period and further details of the Government Secured Freight Capacity were announced. The good people in the Borders and Protocol Delivery Group also issued this extremely helpful Q&A on all things trade. Read it and you could probably start marketing yourself as some sort of advisor.
So, I am taking a breather again next week again. We had spied the opportunity to use a two day teacher training lark to take a break away somewhere nice and avoid the expense and crowds of half-term. Yes, I know. Daughter and I will be making mince pies whilst you enjoy the company of Cavendish Advocacy’s David Button, who will be covering all things trade.
