The situation in the UK remained fraught Tuesday, as Boris Johnson struggled to strike a Brexit bargain after the EU rejected a compromise proposal on fishing rights.
There were just nine days remaining to strike a divorce deal. An agreement didn’t seem imminent, but things could change with one headline.
Admittedly, this is not my area of expertise, but the amount of money at stake in the fisheries debate is apparently just $40 million annually, according to Bloomberg. So, this isn’t about money. It’s about “sovereignty.” Sovereignty over fish.
“It’s vital that everybody understands that the UK has got to be able to control its own laws completely and we’ve also got to be able to control our own fisheries,” Johnson remarked, on Monday, as dozens of nations halted flights with the UK, prompted by a weekend warning about a virulent new strain of COVID-19.
Some have cynically (and darkly) suggested that Europe is overstating the threat from the “mutant” virus strain in order to give the UK a taste of how messy trade and commerce will be in the event of a no-deal Brexit.
I suppose what I would say is that it was the UK which raised the alarm on the new strain. Johnson held a press conference on Saturday effectively canceling Christmas, and multiple UK government health officials warned on higher transmissibility. The language used by Johnson and his government while discussing the new variant was foreboding, to say the least.
In any case, Boris insisted that “the vast majority of food, medicines and other supplies are coming and going as normal.” Vaccine rollout is unaffected, his spokesman said.
Still, you’d be obtuse not to acknowledge the extremely poor optics and the disastrous timing. This episode has undoubtedly highlighted the UK’s susceptibility to trade route bottlenecks, heightening fears of what might befall the nation in the event of a “crash out” Brexit scenario.
“Home production contributed 16.4% of the total UK supply of fruit in 2019, a decline on the 2018 figure of 17.3%,” the government said, in its official 2019 horticulture statistics report. The figure for vegetables was 54%.
Summarizing the situation further, Bloomberg noted Tuesday that “British farmers are major dairy producers and the country should have enough milk to supply consumers” while the UK is also “an established wheat producer and farmers usually supply nearly all of its needs.”
Anyway, the point is simply this: The fact that anyone is even having the discussion right now is a testament to the urgency of the situation, efforts to downplay the UK’s twin crises notwithstanding.
Switzerland is looking for 10,000 Britons who came to the country after December 14. Those folks need to quarantine. The Swiss government is tapping into passenger manifests from more than 90 flights to locate the individuals. Greece lengthened quarantine times for UK arrivals to 10 days, effective for the next two weeks (give or take). Italy said anybody who’s traveled from the UK over the past two weeks needs to alert local authorities and be tested. That could cover more than 40,000 people, apparently. Singapore has banned entry from UK travelers with the exception of citizens and permanent residents, who will need a PCR test to come back.
Meanwhile, RKI President Lothar Wieler suggested the new virus variant is probably in Germany already. “I would estimate that the likelihood that it’s already [here] but not yet detected is very, very high,” Wieler said.
The bottom line is that irrespective of whether this is all overblown, it’s an unwelcome series of developments, and casts a pall over… well, over damn near everything as the holidays fast approach.
“The highly contagious new strain of COVID-19 that is spreading through the UK continues to undermine market sentiment,” Rabobank’s Philip Marey said Tuesday.
“Countries are closing their borders to the UK and global economic growth is facing another threat,” he added. “While the vaccines are arriving, the road to the exit remains dark and bumpy.”
Well written as always – I hope your friend Mr. Dalio has better days – Last week was very dark for him. FCN
Yeah, that was horrific news. I wish him the absolute best
Putting the crash-out scenario aside for a moment, the talk of a new SARS-CoV-2 “mutant” that is more “virulent” or more infectious/transmissible is premature at best. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wC8ObD2W4Rk
Meant to say that it cannot be said at this time that this is a new “strain”. It is a mutation but viruses mutate all the time. The question is whether this mutation makes a difference in transmission in humans and for now there is insufficient evidence to answer this.
Who cares about the video and the opinion of the person in the video. The virus, governments, the crowd, don’t care what the person in the video has to say.
The point is not the video. The point is to not needlessly scare people and markets.
The world’s peoples are like swimmers at ocean beaches (like the south shore of Long Island outside New York) where waves unimpeded since Africa can catch bathers in their turbulence, terrorizing the uninitiated and changing their relationship to the seaside. This is a gentle parallel to the plagues that killed high percentages of humanity as the waves travelled on human contact between Asia and Europe for example (or with the Roman legions) and from Europe to the ‘new’ world in the 1500-1700 period. We could be just beginning this 100 year plus biological adaptation to the new threats from caves in Asia, mountain redoubts in Africa, and prairie holes in North America as we humans step into everything, learning while doing (and screwing things up) into the 24th century. Some of the worst ‘plagues’ reside in the most advanced hospitals as super-viruses look for dancing partners to give them legs to get out of the isolation we use, as a primitive defense
Problem is that this new ‘variant’ although sounding simple will have a non-straight line quadratic impact on disruption and deaths as our new systems break down with overloads in ICUs etc. Bill Gates is right, as the world needs protection everywhere (and most are not allowed to die like the American Indians), but no one will be beyond these threats either until bio-tech has made healthcare like it has always been dreamed on the Enterprise several centuries from now.
Well said, sir.
A cynic might say that Boris is attempting to maximize the disruption from this new virus strain, in order to distract and/or demonstrate why it is necessary to climb down on so many of the red-lines he will need to in the Brexit negotiations. I am not sure it will be enough – the hardcore Brexiters are as reasonable as the hardcore Trump base.