So - Customs Union It Is

Are we closing in on something sensible?  A short while ago our old friend Mark Wadsworth mused on what was so very wrong with a Customs Union: and the same thought had crossed my mind as soon as it became clear that Liam Fox was well placed in the ranks of the utterly incompetent - a werritable w****r, in fact.  The chances of getting favourable trade deals now with any nation that truly counts?  Zippo.

Customs Union.  Can almost have a ring to it. Like the Hanseatic League; the romance of trade.  ECJ jurisdiction on trade issues?  So what.  There must surely be a Commons majority for that now.**

ND
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** yes yes, we understand the bastards in Brussels will squeeze out a few more drops in the process.  And that it may be a trick.  And that Corbyn will claim it was all his idea.  All I'm saying is:  (a) with May gone, and Fox too with any luck, perhaps a half-decent negotiating team can be assembled - shouldn't be beyond the wit of man in a city like London.  And (b) irrespective of whatever would have been mine or anyone else's first choice, that boat sailed in 2016 with the Hinkley fiasco and there must surely be a Commons majority for that now 

Fat & Lazy? Fox May Be Right

I have very little time for Liam Fox ("by their acolytes shall ye know them") but even a stopped clock can be fleetingly right, and this time I think he has a point.

Britain is "too lazy and too fat" with businessmen preferring "golf on a Friday afternoon" to trying to boost the country's prosperity, Liam Fox has said.

My early business experiences were in oil companies, which are no paragons, but haven't been brought up to believe the world owes them a living.  So it came as a shock, when I started doing business with the big heavy industrials in the north-east and north-west, to find them operating under the guiding principle: "why do a hard day's work when you can go lobbying instead?"

Seeing as it is now defunct - hardly a coincidence - I can finger ICI as the worst I encountered.  Any time they could bend the ear of the man from the government they would be letting it be understood how many jobs were for the axe if this or the other little tax-break, blind-eye treatment or other featherbedding wasn't continued.  Sometimes they'd even invent a new kind of 'special case' for favourable consideration.  When the man from the HSE or the Alkali Inspectorate etc came calling (and by heaven, they had good enough reason to poke their noses in: what went up the stack of ICI's old Wilton power station was outrageous) they'd get the same story: a gentle cough and "5,000 jobs" would be mentioned; and he'd go away sadder and wiser.

My firm was new on the patch.  When we had an environmental problem we quickly hatched a solution, but received a delegation from the local worthies.  If folks were to start fixing problems, they said - well, where would it all end?

This is only part of the story, of course, because Britain has many business success-stories of which we may rightly be proud.  But those that Fox is fingering need to shape up.

ND

PS, I see Fraser Nelson has even more to say on the subject in the Speccie