EU’s shame: How Brussels shamefully STILL plays the colonial master | Express Comment | Comment

Never let it be said that an Express hack doesn’t stand by his every word. To wit: I’ve just been to Uganda, meeting with President Yoweri Museveni, and I think I might have struck a Brexit trade deal.

You’re welcome.

I was supposed to be discussing development, Africa and, well, how marvellous President Museveni is.

And indeed this I did. But I thought, what the hell, while I’m here why don’t I strike a Brexit deal?

Because, let’s face it, some bugger has to.

Our politicians (on both sides) seem to have wilfully and shamefully thrown in the towel on making our chance of a lifetime Brexit work.

Because, I rather suspect, if those servile Remainer-types can show it’s not working (by doing Michel Barnier and Emmanuel Macron’s dirty work for them) then they can take us crawling back to Brussels for a crushingly awful deal.

Which Sir Keir looks to have already cravenly tee’d-up last week.

And won’t the civil service blob – which is hugely responsible for this damaging inertia – feel even more smug than usual. “See we told you Britain was crap!” they will delight in telling us.

Ironically the only time, post-Boris, it felt like we had someone who truly understood the needs of Brexit was when Liz Truss was trade minister then Prime Minister.

But oh, didn’t we all just love bullying Liz! The silly little woman!

All those emasculated, hand-wringing liberal lefties free to indulge in good old-fashioned woman-hating misogyny; all those Marxist command-economists suddenly bowing down to “the markets”, that tiny cabal of shamefully greedy, self-interested, impossibly rich, gambling addicts which the Left suddenly convinced themselves cared more for the British people than the elected and serving Prime Minister.

Shame on us all for that one.

But I digress.

Back to my Ugandan trade deal.

The kicker with my trade deal, you’ll be delighted to know, is that we get to rub Brussels’ nose in it and expose the EU for the corrupt, colonial, protectionist racket that it is.

The EU’s website is awash with self-agrandising claims Brussels is a friend of Africa. It is of course nothing of the sort.

The EU’s jaw-droppingly patronising website will tell you (with positively colonial fervour) Brussels is encouraging trade and helping those poor little developing nations.

The reality, as Odrek Rwabwogo (Chair of Uganda’s Presidential Advisory Committee on Exports and Industrial Development) resignedly explained to me, is very different.

“Europe forces us to sell only raw green coffee beans to them, which they then process and sell back to us as Nescafe and the like for many, many times the price,” he said.

President Museveni was even more damning as he told me: “This is modern slavery.

“It is about the selfishness of the western countries. The global value of coffee is $460Bn but out of that the coffee producing countries of the world only get $25Bn – and Africa only takes $2.5Bn of that.

“It is parasitism and European countries should stop.”

He’s got a point.

Uganda’s biggest export (40% of trade) is coffee.

In Britain we drink almost 100 million cups of coffee a day, indeed it has now surpassed tea as our national drink.

But, ever seen Ugandan coffee?

Kenyan, yes. Colombian of course. Ecuadorian, Brazilian, Peruvian… but Ugandan?

And the reason for this is Europe only allows Uganda to export the raw coffee beans tariff-free.

The roasted version would incur a huge import tax which Ugandan farmers simply cannot afford.

So the big companies get cheap beans which they turn into expensive roasted coffee at a mind-bending mark-up.

Germany, that well-known coffee growing nation, exports more than 250,000 tonnes of roasted coffee beans every year with a value of more than €1.5 billion.

That’s money developing nations like Uganda are simply being robbed of.

It’s “keep the African nations in their place 19th century colonialism” at its very worst. It’s immoral. And the EU should be deeply ashamed.

Which is why I took the liberty of getting in touch with the office of our Minister of State for Trade Policy of the United Kingdom Douglas Alexander to suggest he and my new pal Odrek talk and come to some mutually beneficial arrangement – a trade deal in fact.

Seems like a win-win for all concerned.

I shall keep you fully abreast of developments…