Oh dear! The boss of Jaguar Landrover has made it quite clear that we must brace ourselves for massive loss of high value jobs if there is a hard Brexit! Of course the leading Brexiteers refute this and say there is no need for concern. Who is right? Well, I will put my money on the industries that are raising concerns.
I cannot really comment on the car industry so I will go back to the industry I know - ports. I note that the Port of Rotterdam is doing some very serious thinking about the possible effects of Brexit on their operations. They have serious concerns about a hard Brexit! We should take note because they do actually know what affects the smooth-running of ports, especially as they are the biggest in Europe and are a major trading partner for the UK and Eire.
What people perhaps don't realise is that an awful lot of goods bound for Eire are trans-shipped via UK ports. They are unloaded from the biggest ships at Felixstowe and Southampton and then put on lorries to be driven across to Liverpool, Heysham and Holyhead for onward passage to Eire and Northern Ireland. If customs checks are added then that will delay their passage and will make it far less attractive to cross the UK. If I was a shipping agent I would be looking very seriously at landing in Rotterdam or Antwerp and then trans-shipping direct to Eire, thus cutting out the UK costs and delays. Environmentally it also makes sense because short-sea is much more efficient than over-land transport. The drawback of short-sea shipping is that it is a shade slower but that can be built into the 'just in time' model.
So, Brexit definitely creates an opportunity to cut out quite a lot of carbon emissions and to encourage the development of more viable short-sea routes from Europe to Eire. There will be gains and losses - the biggest being the loss of income at Felixstowe and Southampton, plus within the UK haulage industry. The Brexiteers will argue that it is small beer in comparison to the overall economy but for every container lost we are looking at least two lifts at the port - one from the ship and the other onto the lorry. So, perhaps £100 percontainer? I don't have a clue how many containers travel this way between the UK and Eire but I'll bet it is in the order of several hundreds of thousands. So, lets say we loose 100,000 units per year, that may be somewhere in the order of £0.5 to £1.0 billion in loss to the UK economy. But my figures are probably highly conservative and the true loss is likely to be much bigger.
I guess the Brexiteers will argue that I'm talking rubbish and there are no grounds for concern. They have no plan of their own, however, and it is clear that they really have not thought out the bigger picture. They have simply assumed that the UK can bully its way to an arrangement that suits us. Somehow I doubt it! However, I am hopeful that we will see a bigger shift towards short-sea shipping as Brexit makes the UK a less obvious stop for the major container carrying ships. I am unconvinced about the case for any further channel deepening at either Harwich or Felixstowe - Brexit could also push the big ships away and lead to the UK being a trans-shipment spoke rather than a major hub. That would be a serious blow to the ports and economies of several coastal communities!
