Not my regular style but there is only so much gloom readers can take… In an attempt to end the year positively I had thought I would celebrate a Brexit deal and the imminent defeat of the coronavirus. Oh dear…

But there are still reasons why a contemplative view of 2020 can cheer you up as we look to next year. Here are a few of them:

• Boris Johnson is being found out and Cummings has gone. The unpleasant, extreme libertarian streak is abating in the Tory Party. Experts are back in vogue and Johnson is increasingly seen by his colleagues as ‘the wrong person to be PM at this time’. Vacillating incompetence, an inability to learn from his mistakes and wild exaggerations just don’t work. The view of his backbenchers is ominous for him. He has done his job in seeing off Corbyn but there is a belief that the tragedy of Covid-19 and its eventual aftermath requires a different character and indeed tone from the top. Interestingly, there are also growing mutterings from MPs that to be a Tory doesn’t mean anything anymore as a combination of the virus and the dash to populism to hold on to the ‘Red Wall’ has led to seemingly endless, massive public expenditure pledges. The future looks bright for Rishi Sunak…
• On domestic policies, the issue of homelessness is finally a priority, the perilous state of social care can’t be ignored any longer and the NHS won’t be underfunded for a generation. The only caveat to the latter point is that NHS accountability is not sacrificed. Despite rising wonderfully to the challenges this year, it is far from a perfect organisation.
• Overseas, Trump has been vanquished. However much he rages from the sidelines, he will no longer be POTUS. No more needs to be said.
• Lockdown has sometimes brought the worst out of people – an obsession with shopping and materialism generally still evident at Christmas – but mostly the best. Community initiatives are everywhere to help the more vulnerable. The importance of family across generations has been emphasised, friends are helping struggling friends and employers’ duty of care to their employees is firmly centre stage. Quite right too.
• Lastly and closer to home, in running my modest consultancy, JPES Partners, comprising some 20 people, the team has been exemplary. Working through the pandemic has been challenging as clients seek to maintain their external profile in difficult times through media engagement and homeworking is not the nirvana many talk about, particularly in a people business. When can you leave work behind you when it pours through your computer screen into your home? How can you unravel issues from a distance, particularly if you have rarely met the individuals in person, if at all? But everyone has worked hard, delivered exceptional results and gone the extra mile to make online interaction as smooth as possible. Last Friday, we had our Zoom Christmas Party. Containing an excruciating quiz, bad jokes, and plenty of alcohol delivered to employees’ doors, it lasted over two hours. The occasion flew by. Bearing in mind my antipathy to such things online, what more can be said. That is high praise indeed…

Have a relaxing festive break everybody and look forward to next year with as much optimism as you can muster. At least we can all agree that 2021 cannot come soon enough!

There is no upside to Brexit. The concept of national sovereignty is ephemeral in a global economy awash with pan-national crises. What does it mean in an age of global warming, pandemics, the absolute power of the US and the rising power of China? The answer is very little.

If the UK has issues such as a north-south divide, poor public services, weak infrastructure, fractured relationships with devolved governments, none are solved by leaving the EU. Some are exacerbated.

It is true that ending our membership of the EU will impact immigration and it is also true that the rise in immigrants from Eastern Europe has in some regions occasionally been difficult to absorb, at least culturally. But these individuals often staff our public services, the NHS in particular, work on our farms and pay their way. They will now be replaced more frequently by non-EU immigrants which one doubts was the motivation of Brexit voters.

We were constantly promised that a trade agreement with the EU would be easy, that an ‘oven-ready’ deal was in the offing. Well, another let down from Brexiteers, either by accident or design. Here we are, over 4 years later, scrambling for a last-minute deal. Those supporting Brexit now dominate government. They must own the final outcome, even a disappointing ‘skinny deal’, and there is nowhere for them to hide if we crash out.

There are two outstanding issues. First, fishing rights. These are a red herring since the fishing industry, according to its own figures, represents less than 0.1% of our economy and at least half of British caught fish are exported to the EU anyway.

What really matters is the second issue which is around regulation and state aid. The EU will not let us in to their single market with regulatory or state subsidy advantages. Being on their doorstep is why comparisons with a Canada style deal, which doesn’t give Canada completely tariff and quota-free access to Europe anyway, are erroneous. A level playing field is crucial to the EU dealing with a major economy 21 miles across the English Channel and having a land border with Ireland.

The UK is stuck. One understands that full sovereignty, free from any EU restrictions, ought to be the goal of Brexiteers to make the initial pain of leaving the EU worthwhile. The problem is that such an absolute approach to ‘taking back control’ blocks a trade deal, being contradictory to the principles and political will which drives the European project. You can’t have your cake and eat it to paraphrase a well-known Prime Minister…

The cost and added complexity of achieving that full rupture will be enormous and hasten the UK’s decline. The car industry is already looking fragile with a series of damaging Brexit related announcements this week. The independent Office for Budget Responsibility estimates a no deal Brexit will cost £40 billion and that is on top of previous Brexit and now coronavirus-related losses. Freedom to travel to the EU is to be curtailed. None of the pitfalls of failing to achieve a trade deal were set out during the EU referendum by those promising the sunny uplands of a new arm’s length relationship.

David Cameron and George Osborne were wrong about the economic consequences of leaving the EU only in their timing. Those consequences are now crystallising. One hopes the glib, exaggerated promises of Johnson and the band populists around him will now be seen for what they are and that they pay the price electorally. I am not so sure that will happen, at least not yet, but it is early days…

It has not been a good week for the government, despite vaccine progress. Confusion over the rules splitting the country into new Covid lockdown tiers of varying severity, an embarrassingly large parliamentary revolt over passing the legislation required to implement those new restrictions and then carnage on the high street has piled on the misery. And it is only Wednesday.

There is just the little matter of a no-deal Brexit to sort out and we are done for the week…

Authority is draining from Johnson as disillusionment with his handling of the pandemic grows. He looks exhausted and unhappy. We have had chaos amongst his No. 10 staff, rows with devolved governments and regional majors and U-turns galore. In order to get legislation passed to secure these new tiers of regional restrictions, Johnson was forced to implore his backbenchers in person in the Lobby not to revolt against his plans. 53 Tory MPs ignored him with another 16 apparently abstaining. Only the Labour Party’s abstention saved the day.

Increasing numbers of Tories feel the economic price being paid to suppress Covid is becoming too great. Many of them believe that Johnson and his government are too supply-side driven, overly steered by the needs of a sometimes unaccountable NHS and an ever-growing army of scientists enjoying the media limelight.

Outside Brexit and trying to manage the pandemic, it feels Johnson is lost. He wanted the top job badly but never had a clear idea of what to do with it when he got there. It was why he was so attached to his senior adviser, Dominic Cummings, to fill the vacuum. Now he is gone, Johnson’s only real policy is spending huge sums to ‘level up’ the North versus the South. It must be galling for him to watch his popular chancellor then take the credit for this. You can sense the tension rising.

My Westminster contacts tell me Johnson was widely perceived as a stop gap leader to see off Corbyn and there is no great loyalty to him. Umm…buyers’ regret…? There are rumours Johnson may be ousted within a year as a rejuvenated Labour Party under Keir Starmer scores hits. Apparently, a few letters have already gone into the 1922 Committee, which is the voice of Tory backbenchers, calling for a new leadership election. Incredible, when only a year ago Johnson won a General Election with an 80-seat majority.

Who knows? It still feels too early to get leadership jitters and a vaccine is on its way to hopefully defeat Covid. Perhaps MPs will relax by the Spring. But Johnson is currently on the ropes and is unlikely to fully recover.

Britain’s version of Trump may go the same way as his great supporter. Another blow to populism, because ultimately it is competence that counts, and there will be few tears shed across a good part of the political divide if that happens.