Welcome back for another instalment of the Weekly Digest, as published via WordPress.com. My roundup of what’s making the news and catching my eye in the world of politics in N Ireland, the UK, and US of A! It’s been a relatively quiet week by comparison to the tumultuous week or two previously. For the most part, we are still dealing with the fallout from recent events, whether that be due to the Covid crisis, or the dramatic events at the Capitol in Washington DC. So, let’s have a look at what’s been going on this week, beginning as always, in N Ireland.
The DUP have been going big on the NI Protocol this week, with several senior figures calling on the UK government to invoke Article 16 in order to have the current trading arrangements halted. Now, allow me to re-cap and explain the current trading arrangements in NI post-Brexit. The UK officially finished its formal separation from the EU on 31 December, 2020. Since then there has been some disruption to trade across the Irish Sea border. Northern Ireland remains in the EU single market for goods and will continue to enforce EU customs rules at its ports. The Irish Sea border means that most commercial goods entering NI from GB require a customs declaration. A three-month “grace period” means that supermarkets currently don’t need to comply with all the EU’s usual certification requirements, but this will run out in April.
Edwin Poots, the DUP NI Agriculture Minister, went into full doom merchant mode, when he told the BBC Nolan Show that difficulties around the new Irish Sea customs border could mean schools and hospitals would not be able to get supplies “in a few months’ time”. Mr Poots said NI was in an “outrageous situation” due to the Northern Ireland Protocol. “That is a major crisis and I have raised this with Michael Gove. (UK Cabinet Office Minister) Seriously, are we going to have a situation where our hospitals and schools are not able to feed the children at school, they (the hospitals) are not able to feed their patients?” Edwin’s DUP colleague and their Westminster leader, Sir Jeffrey Donaldson, publicly backed him on the BBC’s The View programme and said there would be another meeting with Cabinet Minister Michael Gove to discuss the issue on Friday.
However, Poot’s comments were challenged in several quarters as being hyperbolic scaremongering, bearing scant relation to the facts. Alliance deputy leader and North Down MP Stephen Farry, for example, accused Mr Poots of “scaremongering on steroids”. “There is no prospect that we are going to see a complete collapse of the food supply in Northern Ireland, it is just not going to happen,” he said. SDLP deputy leader and Infrastructure Minister, Nichola Mallon, agreed and also said Mr Poots was scaremongering.
So, who’s right? Well, let’s hear from the various horses mouths, as it were. In a statement released on Thursday, the Department of Health said it had only experienced “some minor delays”. It added that a small number of products have had to be substituted with equivalents, “but this is only for a temporary period”. And a spokesperson for the Department of Education said that it had received “no indication from its suppliers of a disruption to the supply chain that would impact on the delivery of school meals”. Added to that, the Henderson Group, which owns the Spar chain of shops in N Ireland, clarified that it is experiencing “some delays” as opposed to shortages. Furthermore, a company spokesperson said it has been engaging with Mr Poots’ department and other bodies to ensure disruption to its supply chain is minimal. This would appear to directly contradict Mr Poots’ very dramatic assertions! The DUP outrage and hyperbole was clearly on display in the House of Commons this week, too, where Ian Paisley railed against the unfortunate Minister at the dispatch box, Michael Gove! – Paisley told the Commons: “I must ask, what did we do to members on those benches over there to be screwed over by this protocol? “It has ruined trade in Northern Ireland and it’s an insult to our intelligence to say it’s a teething problem.” Gove accepted that “more needs to be done” to ensure that the protocol works correctly!
Perhaps, all of this has more to do with the DUP’s concerted campaign currently to deflect attention from the fact that they were amongst the most vociferous supporters of and campaigners for a hard Brexit? A Brexit which they mistakenly assumed would cement economic and political links with GB and accentuate the existence of the border between north and south on the island of Ireland. It could be argued they have grossly miscalculated and are now fighting a desperate rear guard action to deflect and divert blame for inadvertently weakening the union, rather than strengthening it!
As if to confirm the shifting of emphasis from east-west to north-south, (at least economically) Stena Line has moved one of its flagship ferries from Belfast to Rosslare in what it has called a “Brexit-busting move”. When the new Stena Embla arrived in Belfast on 2 January amid great fanfare, the company assured us it would be concentrating on transporting freight between Belfast and Liverpool. However, in a dramatic about turn, on Wednesday the company tweeted that it would be deployed on the Rosslare to Cherbourg route, thereby prioritising the RoI to mainland Europe trading route. Is this a sign that our economic and trading axis is tilting in that direction more permanently?
In a rare show of unity and display of collective responsibility, the First and Deputy First Minister’s of NI met up in Dungannon, Co. Tyrone, this week in order to give a joint press conference on the ongoing Coronavirus crisis here. Mrs Foster and Ms O’Neill last appeared together after an Executive meeting on December 10 and this was the first opportunity to quiz them together since the new Covid-19 restrictions were introduced. It came as the Department of Health confirmed the death toll has now exceeded 1500, at the time of writing. There are approximately 751 Covid patients in hospitals across Northern Ireland, with 55 in intensive care and 38 requiring ventilation. Hospitals are at 99% occupancy. A total of 149 care homes are also still dealing with outbreaks of the virus, despite being prioritised in the vaccine roll out. Amid further dire warnings from NHS staff on the frontline that doctors and nurses and hospital resources were stretched to the limits, a representative of the BMA in NI this week said their members were both exhausted and traumatised by the magnitude of the second wave compared to the first. One doctor in the Mater Hospital in Belfast even expressed grave concerns about the oxygen supplies running low! There is no doubt that we are at a critical moment in the fight against this virus.
On a positive note, Arlene Foster did allude to the fact that the all important ‘R’ number had gone down, from 1.8 to 1.1, which was encouraging. NI is also ahead of the rest of the UK in regards to its vaccine roll out, which is a testimony to the dedication of all of those involved and to the Health Minister, Robin Swann, who has maintained a reassuring air of calm and competence throughout the crisis, to be fair to him. He will, perhaps, be one of the very few within the Executive to emerge with a lot of credit when this is all over and the reckoning begins.
And so, dispensing with the need for customs declarations, let’s head across the Irish Sea. Were it not for the worsening Covid crisis, the immediate impact of Boris Johnson’s trade deal with the EU would be dominating the news agenda and attracting even more negative headlines for the government than they are at present. As it is, we have barely noticed that the Fisheries Minister Victoria Prentis admitted this week she had not read the full treaty…. because she was too busy with nativity preparations! Or that the fishing industry is struggling to export to its largest market and its representatives have threatened to dump rotting, unsold fish in Downing Street. Some Scottish trawlers have even resorted to off-loading their catch in Denmark! Or that Jacob Rees-Mogg blithely dismissed their concerns by saying the key thing is they are now “British fish and are all the better and happier for it!” Then there are the farmers, who are deeply concerned about their futures due to the loss of EU subsidies. Or there’s the report that the price of a Ford Fiesta may cost up to £1,700 more because of post-Brexit tariffs. Or the deep unease within the music industry concerning their rights to tour and perform freely throughout Europe. Add to that the controversial ending of the popular Erasmus programme, which allowed UK students to study anywhere within the EU. Or the fact that the Prime Minister this week threatened to trigger Article 16 of the agreement – the right to take unilateral action – because of the disruption to goods from Great Britain to Northern Ireland. I haven’t even scratched the surface yet! I could mention the hauliers who are drowning in additional paperwork amid port delays, or the manufacturing sector and export companies, disgruntled NI Unionists, or the financial sector in the City of London. The list of those who are not feeling the love for Brexit right now is long and growing! To use a fishing analogy, there are many who will be wondering if they’ve been stitched up like a kipper! Those sunlit uplands seem a long way off, not that you would think it to hear the PM and his cabinet colleagues, who have obviously been briefed to talk down any notions of a Brexit crisis. It’s just a few teething problems, it’ll be fine once it has all bedded in, etc. Are they sure? I do hope they are fully prepared to accept the consequences and responsibility for it if all goes horribly Pete Tong?
And it may get worse! Fury is also mounting at Boris Johnson’s apparent plans to ‘rip up’ workers’ rights in the new, post-Brexit landscape. Something they always denied was part of the rationale for Brexit in the first place. In fact, the Prime Minister had said he would go even further than EU laws to protect workers in the UK. Yet this week the Financial Times revealed officials have looked at changing the 48-hour limit on the working week, known as the ‘working time directive’. Officials also looked at tweaking rules around breaks and scrapping the need to factor overtime into holiday pay, or the need for firms to report working hours. The leaked proposals, while not confirmed, official policy or put to Cabinet, are genuine.
Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng – who in 2012 said Brits “are among the worst idlers in the world”, working “among the lowest hours” – today insisted “we are not going to lower the standards of workers’ rights”. But neither he nor Downing Street denied the plans had been looked at, or ruled out putting them into action in future. Shadow Business Secretary Ed Miliband said No10’s “silence” on the specific plans “speaks volumes” – and branded the plans a “wrecking ball” to hard-won rights. He added: “These proposals to rip up workers’ rights should not even be up for discussion, and Labour will fight tooth and nail against them if Ministers pursue this course of action.”
In the space of a few months Marcus Rashford has twice shamed the Government into climbdowns. First, he forced a u-turn from ministers into providing free school meals during the holidays and now he has highlighted the need to improve the quality of food parcels being delivered to children. It might be argued that Keir Starmer and the opposition should be holding the government to account over this, rather than a footballer? Well, they are! Starmer actually raised the issue before Rashford did, but that’s the power of celebrity for you! Households with children who would normally qualify for free school meals have been given the option of parcels to prepare at home as the schools closed in favour of remote learning. But there has been a furious backlash after parents shared photos of the paltry portions sent out. As you can see from the pictures below, some of the food parcels being sent out were very basic indeed.
Interestingly, a private company was given the multi-million pound school lunches contract without tendering for it. That company is Chartwell, part of the Compass catering group. As well as providing catering to the education sector, Compass Group also supplies food to sports and leisure facilities, hospitals and care homes, defence and offshore companies and private companies. The company’s outgoing chairman is Paul Walsh. Walsh is a former member of David Cameron’s business advisory group, and is thought to have donated more than £10,000 to the UK Conservative party. British businessman Dominic Blakemore, 51, has been CEO of Compass Group since January 2018 and reportedly earns £4.6m a year. I wonder would they be happy to receive a lunch food parcel like the one below?
Labour have been having some issues north of the border in Scotland for some time now, and have struggled to stay relevant with the increasing dominance of the SNP. This week, Richard Leonard has resigned as Scottish Labour leader, saying it is in the best interests of the party for him to stand down. Mr Leonard said he believed speculation about his leadership had become a “distraction”. And he said he would be stepping down with immediate effect. His resignation comes just months ahead of the Scottish Parliament election, which is scheduled to be held in May. Mr Leonard had been leader of the party for three years after succeeding Kezia Dugdale. Polls have suggested that many Scottish Labour supporters struggle to recognise him, and he is closely associated with former UK Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Scottish Labour had dominated politics in Scotland for decades, but is currently the third largest party at Holyrood behind the SNP and Conservatives. And Mr Leonard’s critics had questioned whether he was capable of turning the party’s fortunes around. His decision leaves Scottish Labour looking for its fifth leader since the independence referendum in 2014 – with Johann Lamont, Jim Murphy and Kezia Dugdale all having held the job since then.
Finally, let’s go stateside! It’s official! Trump is now the only President in US history to be impeached twice, after Wednesday’s historic vote in the House of Representatives. Somewhat worryingly, however, quite a few Republicans still lined up to defend the indefensible and still voted against impeachment. The US may soon be rid of the most divisive President in living memory, but the bitter political divide he leaves in his wake shows no signs of dissipating. Now Trump’s fate is in the hands of the Senate — and more directly in those of another longtime enabler, Mitch McConnell. The Republican majority leader has finally broken with Trump by signalling that he might actually vote to convict in the subsequent Senate vote. If he does, other Republicans might join him to construct the two-thirds majority needed to convict. By then, Trump would be an ex-president – but, importantly, he could be barred from running for office ever again and his name will be accompanied by a historic black mark.
However, there is another issue for the incoming Biden administration to consider in all of this. Since a presidential trial takes precedence over other business, the Senate would effectively use up days or weeks trying to convict an ex-President who will already have left office. This would delay Biden’s hopes of hitting the ground running and quickly passing legislation to save the economy and speed up Covid-19 vaccinations. It would also prevent him from moving on from the attention grabbing Trump circus.
It would appear that Trump’s name is already mud with many. Since the deadly riot in Washington last week, companies across America have come out against President Donald Trump and other Republicans who sought to block the formal certification of the presidential election results. New York City is taking steps to cancel its contracts with the president, the PGA of America is relocating its 2022 golf championship from Mr Trump’s golf course, and other firms with ties to Mr Trump’s private businesses, such as e-commerce platform Shopify and Signature Bank, have said they are closing his accounts. Meanwhile, Fortune 500 firms from Marriott and Disney to Dow Chemical have halted certain political donations, citing the violence. Twitter said it was permanently barring Mr Trump from its platform, while YouTube, Facebook and others announced suspensions in response to calls to shut off his megaphone and cut the publicity oxygen supply. All of this combined will hurt the narcissistic, attention craving Trump and impede on his ability to communicate effectively with his base. It will also hurt him financially at a time when he may need all the financial help he can get, just as the debts and subpoenas are mounting up! He is said to have raised over $200m from his support base since the election to pursue the bogus electoral fraud cases and help pay off his election debts. He will be desperate to stay connected to this gullible revenue source!
Joe Biden’s top aide said the incoming US president would sign about a dozen Executive Orders on his first day in office. Biden’s Chief of Staff, Ron Klain, said in a memo to new White House senior staff that the Executive Orders would address the pandemic, the ailing US economy, climate change and racial injustice in America. “All of these crises demand urgent action,” Mr Klain said. “In his first ten days in office, President-elect Biden will take decisive action to address these four crises, prevent other urgent and irreversible harms, and restore America’s place in the world,” including, it is expected, for the US to rejoin the Paris climate accord and reverse Mr Trump’s ban on entry of people from certain Muslim majority countries. “President-elect Biden will take action – not just to reverse the gravest damages of the Trump administration – but also to start moving our country forward,” Mr Klain said.
Mr Biden, finds his in-tray overflowing with a number of huge challenges. The US is fast approaching 400,000 deaths from the Covid-19 crisis and logging well over a million new cases a week as the coronavirus spreads out of control. The economy is ailing, with ten million fewer jobs available compared to the start of the pandemic. With this in mind, Biden announced plans this week to seek $1.9 trillion to revive the economy through new stimulus payments and other aid, and plans a blitz to accelerate America’s stumbling Covid vaccine roll out.
In echoes of another disgraced presidency, that of Richard Nixon, Trump hasn’t exactly been compliant with the law requiring that Presidential records be preserved. Apparently, he has been ripping up documents before binning them, forcing White House records staff to retrieve them and spend hours taping them back together. White House staff quickly learned about Trump’s disregard for documents as they witnessed him tearing them up and discarding them. The White House Chief of Staff’s office told the president that the documents were considered presidential records and needed to be preserved by law. About 10 records staff ended up on tape duty, at one point. The first document he taped back together was a letter from Chuck Schumer, the Democratic leader in the Senate, about a government shutdown. The president also confiscated an interpreter’s notes after a meeting with Russian President, Vladimir Putin – where topics were believed to have included Russia’s meddling in the 2016 election.
As the USA looks forward to this week’s presidential inauguration like no other, due to a combination of the threat of violence and coronavirus, the security services have issued warnings of a continued high threat level from Trump supporting extremists. Washington now resembles a militarised zone in Iraq or Afghanistan, rather than the capital of the United States. The military, police and security services have belatedly switched on to the very real and present threat from domestic right wing terror groups and are determined that the inauguration passes off without incident. The tense and nervy atmosphere hasn’t been helped by the arrest of one individual attempting to gain entry into the inauguration zone with a handgun and 500 rounds of ammunition. The heads of each US military branch on Tuesday issued a joint statement condemning last week’s insurrection and reminding service members of their duty. “We witnessed actions inside the Capitol building that were inconsistent with the rule of law. The rights of freedom of speech and assembly do not give anyone the right to resort to violence, sedition and insurrection. As Service Members, we must embody the embody the values and ideals of the Nation. We support and defend the Constitution.
The president has finally accepted that his term is about to end and he has to leave the White House. He doesn’t want to leave quietly, though, and is said to favour a lavish, military style leaving ceremony at exactly the same time as Biden’s inauguration. Always trying to be the upstager and spoiler in chief, right to the bitter end. In a blow to Trump’s aspirations, however, the Pentagon is set to break with tradition and not hold an armed forces farewell tribute to the president. To do so would be entirely inappropriate under the circumstances. Donald Trump should be leaving the White House via the back door without any fanfare to embark on his hoped for retirement in ignominy. With any luck, he might also get a residency in one of the US’ fine penal establishments, eventually!
Thank you, for continuing to read, follow and share my Weekly Digest politics blog. If you’ve just tuned in for the first time, whether by accident or by design, you’re very welcome! I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s instalment? Be sure to call back next week for the post-inauguration edition! In the meantime, stay tuned in, stay informed and stay safe out there! Bye! 👋🏻
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