It's the end of the year and I’m going to talk about Brexit. I know, you’ve been pre-warned, but another hilarious consequence of Brexit has come to light and it blends in nicely to another story I covered yesterday on sleaze, where Rishi Sunak is now going to allow government ministers to take their limo’s back to their constituencies, as long as that is a reasonable distance from London. I wonder if Sunak’s own constituency of Richmond in Yorkshire will constitute reasonable distance? Anyway it’s the cars specifically I want to address because we have a proud history of car manufacture in the UK don’t we? It was one of the few manufacturing sectors to survive Thatcher’s destruction of our manufacturing base, where the UK has moved to a services industry instead over the last several decades and fewer of those highly skilled, well paid jobs are available any more. We need manufacturing back, but Brexit has caused a big problem there and there’s no escaping the fact it is Brexit, or, at the very least the way it has been delivered, that has led to this issue surrounding governmental vehicles.
It's no secret that car manufacture has nose-dived in the UK since Brexit, production is down to it’s lowest levels now since 1956 and it’s all down to the supply chain issues created by the Tories mishandling of Brexit, incompetent bunch of sock puppets that they are.
British governmental cars have always been built by British car companies and for the last 30 odd years, Jaguar have built them. They have to be built to quite strict specifications, because these vehicles are armoured and have to meet the terms of a tender set out by the Met police. Well, because of Brexit, Jaguar, nor any other manufacturer of cars in Britain are able to meet the terms of that tender. Supply chain problems means sourcing the raw materials within the time scale required has become impossible and so our ministerial cars, to protect our government figures, whatever you feel about them using them for anything other than government business as Sunak seems to be set on permitting, will have to be built by another country. The Jaguar XJ’s we’ve seen them in for so long, will now be replaced by German Audi A8’s. Things are so bad in the UK car manufacturing market these days, Jaguar didn’t even bother to put in a bid for the work and nor did any other British car manufacturer. There was just no point. They knew they couldn’t deliver, leaving the Met with no choice but to go abroad. The next fleet of armoured governmental cars cannot be built in Britain. Freedom they called it a vote for, Freedom from buying British seems to be the ongoing story though. I mean we shouldn’t be too surprised really, it’s hardly the first time we’ve been unable to make something anymore here. Remember those blue passports Nigel Farage was molesting himself over at the thought of – ugh there’s a horrible mental image, sorry for that – well they got made in France and Poland didn’t they? So not only could we not make the passports here, but we couldn’t go to those countries under free movement rules with those passports either. Delicious irony there. Still as long as Nige got his rocks off. Really need to move past that now, bless your heart if you’re lucky enough to have gotten an Irish passport instead, it’s worth a damn sight more!
Look, the fact is this country keeps getting poorer and smaller because these issues regarding trade are not getting resolved. Whether you believed in Brexit or voted against, nobody voted for the mess we’re in now because we were all told different. You can have your issues with the EU, Lord knows there’s many, but being able to move stuff between here and there as easily as possible just makes flaming sense doesn’t it? Red faced old farts with British Empire complexes cheering our independence to the detriment of common sense have actively harmed our economy and it’s still getting worse as our car manufacturing industry continues to have procurement issues anyway in their everyday business and the industry overall continues to shrink. Car manufacture has always depended on sourcing parts and components from other countries and that hasn’t changed. Yes the pandemic hit these supply chains too, but the ongoing issue for our car industry has always been Brexit and the pulling out of the single market and the customs union has been the biggest driver of that. We don’t want to go back into that, you’re suggesting we undo our lovely Brexit, how unpatriotic! How dare you Damo, well some of you might be frothing at the mouth saying that or similar right now, but it’s a simple choice really, you can stay out of those trade and free travel rules or you can have a car industry. Here’s your Brexit benefit for car manufacture folks, an ultimatum! These companies will likely leave whilst they can still be profitable rather than fold, but not all may be able to do that. It will all be gone if something doesn’t radically shift. When even the government can’t get cars built in Britain for itself anymore, how long do you think it’ll be before that’s the case for us all? The fact is we need a workable supply chain and we still don’t have one.