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Originally Posted by Sephiroth
If only it were that easy to fix the Northern Ireland thing. The DUP is the problem as we all know - and they opposed the Good Friday Agreement at the time. And they still sort of hate the Nats.
There's no hard line the Guvmin can take with the DUP for fear of loyalist terrorism. There's no incentive for the Guvmin to give ground to the EU because it plays into the Nats' hands and the UK will eventually lose NI - sooner rather than later.
So, the Guvmin is up shit creek. As a bystander, the choice I have is to (a) support interpretation of the NI protocol that NI is part of the UK Customs regime and that we should be free to supply supermarkets without more than one sheet of customs paper; (b) to let the ECJ run its writ in NI as regards Single Market whilst agreeing with the EU to their light touch customs proposals.
I now favour (b) just to get things done. Whether or not Sunak has the cahunas to get on with that I can't judge at this stage - he might have. Something must give because the DUP are *******s and need to be sidelined.
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Surely the government don't need the DUP now they have a 70+ seat majority?
Meanwhile, business (and government tax revenues) continue to suffer from Brexit. The boss of Britain's largest airports group, Charlie Cornish, spells it out.
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Speaking at the Airlines 2022 conference in London, Cornish said: “There’s no doubt that Brexit has damaged the UK economy, 99% of leading economists would tell you that. You just have to look at the rate of growth now, and that’s significant.”
He added: “If that carries on, the UK’s ability to be competitive will get eroded every single year. We do need the UK government to look at how to actually get a sensible economic growth plan back, with aviation at the centre of that.”
Cornish said that while other factors such as Covid had structurally altered the labour force, the problems were exacerbated by fewer Europeans coming back into the UK. “That does damage the UK aviation sector’s ability to recruit workforce at scale and at pace,” he said. “Pre-Brexit, that problem was never there.”
He added: “Aviation is wholly linked to GDP. We have to have an open conversation: how are we going to solve the Brexit-related disruption? If you look at the economic recovery in the EU, they’re much further ahead of the UK. Nobody’s going to be able to say that’s not due to Brexit.”
Willie Walsh, the head of global airlines body Iata and former boss of the British Airways owner IAG, said there were clear indicators that UK aviation was recovering more slowly than Europe’s.
“It’s damaged the UK, from everything I’ve seen,” he said. “ I haven’t heard any politician articulate any benefit, and don’t see any Brexit benefit for aviation. If you can’t acknowledge that there’s a negative, they’re not going to be able to fix it.”
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https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknew...15ee9ba644b667