Unions flexing their reformed muscles … but will it work against an intransigent government?
WHAT a year it’s been, from the musical chairs in Downing Street, to the reshaping of the SNP’s Westminster contingent, the tragedy of more refugee deaths in the English Channel, and union strife at levels not seen since the Winter of Discontent in 1979, when Margaret Thatcher launched war on the unions – branding them ‘the enemy within’.
In the first in this series of festive posts I’ll start with the industrial unrest that’s plaguing the NHS and ambulance services (not in Scotland), airports, schools and what used to be ‘our’ trains, buses and postal services.
The scale of this unrest is reminiscent of the 1980s, when Thatcher crushed the once-mighty NUM and Rupert Murdoch (through his mouthpiece Andrew ‘Brillo Pad’ Neil) saw off the powerful print unions at Wapping after a lengthy and exceptionally bitter dispute..
So, how have we come to this?
Brexit had a major part to play making Britain a laughing stock around the world as the Tories realised that people in European nations, as well as countries outside the EEC bubble, didn’t like them, or Britain, at all.
The UK’s departure from the bloc meant nothing to those within it, who were free to get on with their prosperous lives without being barracked by ministers who thought they still ruled the Commonwealth.
In the months and years before Brexit, I wrote many times about its potential effects, along the way interviewing politicians, business people and lawyers whose warnings were dismissed as ‘scaremongering’.
One company in the south-west of Scotland with a substantial European order book told me several times that exporting to the bloc had become so difficult that it was easier to export to Canada, New Zealand or Australia. The loss of the European market had left them seriously concerned about their operation in Scotland and the people they employed. I will revisit them soon for an update, although I do fear that the news won’t be good.
The Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI) in Dublin revealed in a study earlier this year that Brexit has had cut the potential value of goods exports to Europe by 16 per cent, while EU exports here represented a 20 per cent loss in potential sales.
Their study used a hybrid model combining UK and EU data, and assumed that had Brexit not happened, UK import and export levels with Europe would have mirrored the EU’s relatively stronger internal trade performance last year.
Desperate to continue some kind of trade with the bloc, the UK has imposed few post-Brexit restraints on EU imports, meaning European goods have continued to flow into the country.
However, exports to the EU are subject to extensive customs and other checks that increase costs and delays, which manufacturers – already working on low profit margins – cannot afford.
We might ask ‘will it get any better?’ but that would seem unlikely as long as we have a government populated by the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg – accused in 2018 of copying the style of Beano character Walter Brown – who still appears to be inhabiting a parallel universe somewhere in the 1800s.
More follows later… Pip pip.