Até logo to the Single Market

 

Among the headlines on the BBC News website this 1 January 2021 morning is Adieu to the single market created by the UK.

It's a piece by the BBC's economics editor Faisal Islam, and reads like a fond adieu on Faisal's part, of the 'What has the EU ever done for us?' variety.

Of its 38 paragraphs, only 5 focus on potential positives from leaving the EU. Most of the rest only look at the positives of being in the EU and the problems raised by leaving the EU. 

Anyhow, the piece also contains historical nuggets such as this:

The inadvertent diplomatic consequences of changes in trade patterns can be profound. If, for example, the eminent historian RW Johnson is to be believed, the UK's accession to the EEC in the first place, created the conditions for the fall of South Africa's apartheid regime which was "hurt in several ways". 

British trade was remodelled away from the Commonwealth to Europe, the EEC offered favourable trade with all of Africa except Pretoria. And then when Portugal followed its ally the UK into the EEC, its African colonies and white rule quickly lost to revolutions by black liberation movements in Angola and Mozambique.

That last paragraph seems to be missing a word - shouldn't there be 'were' before "quickly lost"?' - so might just be poorly written. Still, it seems to be claiming that Portugal joining the EEC led to its African colonies being "quickly lost to revolutions by black liberation movements in Angola and Mozambique". If that's what Faisal is claiming, he's wrong. Those countries became independent (under the MPLA and FRELIMO) respectively in 1975 following Portugal's Carnation Revolution the previous year, 11 years before Portugal joined the EEC.