EVEN at the best of economic times, the Conservative Government’s seemingly voracious appetite to increase tensions with the UK’s biggest trade partner, the European Union, would be entirely disheartening.
And, given the mess in which the UK finds itself economically amid a cost-of-living crisis which is to a significant extent home-grown, the dangerous sabre-rattling by the Government truly beggars belief.
Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs Liz Truss has long been at the forefront of Tory actions which it is difficult to imagine do anything other than aggravate further our long-suffering European neighbours.
In the context of the Northern Ireland protocol, she has banged the drum loudly in the Conservative Government’s drive to scrap key parts of the very arrangements to which the Tories signed up in order to facilitate their crusade to leave the single market and customs union come hell or high water.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s comment in June that it would be “preposterous” if a trade war with the EU were to be triggered by his Government’s radical action on this front through its Northern Ireland Protocol Bill was as bizarre as it was predictable.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: Sir Keir Starmer sounds dismayingly like Tories
And this week we have had Ms Truss claim the EU is in “clear breach” of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement between the UK and the bloc, as she issued a press release which declared “the Government has launched formal consultations with the EU, in an effort to end persistent delays to the UK’s access to EU scientific research programmes, including Horizon Europe”.
This release added: “The UK negotiated access to a range of EU science and innovation programmes as part of the TCA in 2020. However, more than 18 months later, the EU has still refused to finalise UK access, causing serious damage to research and development in both the UK and EU member states.”
Ms Truss declared: “The EU is in clear breach of our agreement, repeatedly seeking to politicise vital scientific cooperation by refusing to finalise access to these important programmes.”
Much of this outpouring would be almost laughable if the UK Government’s seeming attempts to drum up controversy in relations with the EU, something which seems to go down well with much of the Tory voter base, did not have such serious implications for trade and the economy.
The idea of the current Conservative Government talking about the EU “repeatedly seeking to politicise” a Brexit-related matter, given its own behaviour, is to say the least extremely rich.
Drumming up trouble with the EU seems to be a speciality of Ms Truss, and of course of some other senior members of the UK Government.
Much of this appears ideologically driven. This is a Government, after all, which came to power with a big majority on a “get Brexit done” ticket.
However, it also looks increasingly like a mechanism to distract the electorate from the developing economic shambles that the Tories should be sorting out.
Layla Moran, the Liberal Democrats’ foreign affairs spokesperson, summed up well the dangers of the Truss approach and its implications for the UK economy.
Ms Moran said: “This latest escalation offers a glimpse into life under a future Truss administration, where a trade war with our largest trading partner is sadly a serious prospect.”
Data published on Wednesday by the Office for National Statistics showed annual UK consumer prices index inflation surged to 10.1% in July, from 9.4% in June.
Inflation is expected to go much higher still, as the UK finds itself in the grip of an energy price crisis.
And, not surprisingly, recession is now being predicted by the Bank of England.
It should go without saying that the Tories have a duty to focus on sorting out the economic shambles, which they have exacerbated greatly with a raft of dismal policy decisions, including their hard Brexit.
And raising the danger of a trade war by trying to pick fights with the EU is obviously absolutely counter-productive to any such effort to sort out the mess (not that there is any much sign at all that the Conservatives are interested in striving to ameliorate the crisis).
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: Preposterous to claim protocol changes do not warrant robust reaction from EU
The trade body for Scottish salmon wrote to Ms Truss and former chancellor Rishi Sunak ahead of this week’s Perth Tory leadership hustings to “highlight government action needed to support vital growth”.
Specifically, it flagged the serious barriers to growth from post-Brexit labour shortages and underlined the increasing danger of a trade war with the EU because of the UK Government’s behaviour.
It declared that farm-raised Scottish salmon was the UK’s biggest food export, supporting 12,000 jobs – “many in rural and isolated areas of the country”.
Salmon Scotland added: “Despite growing worldwide demand for the high-protein fish, the labour pool has shrunk in recent years with many key workers returning to eastern Europe post-Brexit.”
And the trade body flagged “ongoing concerns that changes to the Northern Ireland protocol could lead to retaliatory action by the EU, causing increased friction at the border, delays and queues for hauliers crossing to France, or extra costs for exporters”.
Salmon Scotland is calling on the next prime minister to embrace a “more enlightened approach to the movement of labour into the UK”, including a change to key worker definitions, changes to the salary cap level and a “broader public signal that the UK is open to people coming here to work”.
READ MORE: Ian McConnell: UK Stagnation Nation reality at odds with Tory tale of post-Brexit utopia
The trade body also wants a “serious, pragmatic approach to negotiations with the EU, avoiding a so-called trade war, with a clear focus on the nation’s export businesses who depend on a positive, professional relationship with France and the other countries of the EU”.
If Ms Truss has any interest at all in the UK’s future prosperity, and mitigating the inevitably huge damage from Brexit at the worst possible of times for the country’s economy, she would do well to take on board these entirely sensible suggestions.
Instead, she appears to be doing quite the opposite, continuing the populist approach of this Conservative Government by whipping up excitement among Brexit supporters by battling the EU.
You might imagine this approach would in coming months become less effective, with many Brexit fans surely likely at long last to see through the populist distractions and showboating as they wake up to the UK’s economic crisis and its impact on their everyday lives.
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