Yes, the news that Liz Truss had declared that “the jury is out” on the UK’s future relationship with France certainly struck a chord with Kate McKinley, who runs the Mourchon winery in Séguret. He informed me with an air of despair, also adding that President Emmanuel Macron had reacted with the tolerance that has become his lot in matters of Anglo-French relations while the Brexiters reign here. However, the jury is definitely out on Truss. She has condemned herself before she even takes the Tory leadership tomorrow. As a horse racing man, I feel I must remind readers that dead certainties don’t always win – the bookies at Ascot offered 6-1 on a Labor victory the day before the 1992 election in which John Major triumphed. However, it looks like Rishi Sunak will need divine intervention to turn the odds now. Incidentally, it was not unimportant that a week before this 1992 election a horse called Party Politics had won the Grand National. The jury is definitely out on Truss. She has condemned herself before she even took the Tory leadership In my opinion both candidates are seriously wrong on many issues, but mainly because they continue to support Brexit when it is such an obvious disaster: among other things, it is seriously eroding the nation’s tax revenues – which Truss and Sunak they want to reduce further (in The case of Truss, tomorrow!). It is such a disaster that the one and only Jacob Rees-Mogg wants to delay the implementation of further border controls that are part of the Brexit ‘deal’. The unnecessary complications and bureaucratic consequences of Brexit affect and annoy more and more people, including many Brexiters. There are endless stories of delays at customs and problems with passport renewals. My contribution is this: to make sure she renews her passport in time for our holiday, one of our daughters was told to go to Belfast. So we decided to make a short family visit to Belfast. Now, although Northern Ireland is feeling the pinch of the cost of living crisis like the rest of the UK, it is abundantly clear that, thanks to its continued membership of the customs union and single market, it is suffering less financially. In fact, with all due disrespect to the DUP and the Truss, who want to break international law and disrupt the Northern Ireland protocol, I can state that my impression is that the majority of the people of Belfast are reasonably content. with the deal the horrible Brexit government negotiated and now wants to tear up. One of my first tasks on my return to London was to attend the funeral of an old friend, Jo Carey, a former Treasury official, who has died aged 88. I mention this because Jo’s career was an interesting example of how the Treasury’s attitude towards ‘Europe’ changed in the light of experience. Having worked on International Monetary Fund matters in the 1960s – we had been bailed out by the IMF in 1967, long before the more infamous bailout of 1976 – Jo and his colleagues at the Treasury knew all about the UK’s fundamental economic problems . They were also well aware of the argument that joining the European Economic Community would improve our economic performance – which it did. However, the Treasury had long been suspicious of what it saw as the Foreign Office’s excessive “European” enthusiasm. I remember on visits to Brussels in the early 1970s, when Jo was in the UK Mission, how often he and his colleagues in the Treasury were suspicious of initiatives coming from the countries that became our European partners after accession us in 1973. In the 1980s, Jo was the UK member of the Court of Auditors of the European Community, in Luxembourg, and was great at exposing examples of flagrant misuse – not to say corrupt use – of funds to which we had, of course, contributed. . But Jo and his colleagues at the Treasury knew which side the UK’s bread was buttered, not least after Margaret Thatcher’s defense of the single market. Indeed, one of the many aspects of Brexit that worries our former EU partners is how we can leave an organization that was largely shaped by the British. This brings to mind Harold Macmillan’s great observation: “Here we are, and the question is: where do we go from here?” Truss hasn’t shared its strategic financial plans with us because it probably doesn’t have any. And, God help us, that bunch of us have been left to the outrageous Alexander Boris Johnson, who has sacked all the sensible Remainers and Rejoiners in his cabinet.
