email to the Editor of the Chartered Institute of Logistics and Transport Journal, Focus
Dear Madam,
LP
6 Oct 2016
Dear Madam,
The one bit of good news emerging from the 23 June European Union (EU) referendum is that it provides Liberal Democrats with a tremendous opportunity. The Conservatives, after extending their internal split on Europe to the country, are all Brexiteers now. The 70% of Labour Party members who are pro-European are lead by an acquiescent, if not Eurosceptic, leader. Brexiteers ludicrously suggest our Olympic triumphs and recent good short-term consumer figures prove we can jettison our major trading and political partners in the EU. Meanwhile, our leader has been quick to identify the 48% who voted for Remain as a potentially large new source of support. To ensure we capture them, we need to plot a political, constitutional, legal, economic and international roadmap for the likely long rollercoaster ride ahead.
Asparagus is a cult vegetable in Germany. Anyone who has visited a restaurant between late April and late June will have seen the special seasonal asparagus menus. Most of the asparagus is grown in the sandy soils of northern Germany, but we have our own asparagus growing area around Darmstadt, just south of Frankfurt, where about 10,000 tons are grown annually. Every asparagus-growing region is proud of its own local product. Here it is sufficiently important that the Minister of Agriculture for Hessen, Priska Hinz, opened the season this year by cutting the ceremonial first asparagus.
Our future trade relations are the major battleground in the Brexit process. Unfortunately the public debate on trade remains poor, fuelled by the Brexiteers' misleading, if not self-delusional, narrative of how the global world trading system works.
Former Deputy Prime Minister and Sheffield Liberal Democrat MP Nick Clegg today warned that the price rises already being seen across Britain's food and drink sector were indicative of a wider 'cliff edge' in other key sectors of the economy, ahead of an increasingly likely 'Hard Brexit', taking the UK outside of the EU single market and customs union.
The EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic & Trade Agreement (CETA) has stalled, at least for the time-being. Despite the fact that it would have reduced almost all tariffs between the two sides and taken away customs duties amounting to savings of around €500m, coupled with the projected subsequent increase in trade, for the time being it is dead.