If there's one thing the Ukraine War is demonstrating is that the desire to go to war is much diminished when countries become reliant on each other for trade. If you want to go to war, the secret is, however, not to let it become asymmetric.
The right-wing, Brexit supporting press is making much of the fact that UK exports to the EU have increased dramatically this year. How can this be possible when firms up and down the country are reporting a huge drop in exports? Well, it's because the Brexit supporting press is being economical with the truth and bending it to suit an agenda.
Firstly, the EU has been getting its LNG from Russia via pipelines and, as a consequence, has no LNG reception facilities at EU ports. To overcome this, the EU is busy constructing LNG reception facilities at several ports but, in the meantime, the UK is sending gas from Qatar to the Netherlands and Belgium by pipeline, primarily because we don't have sufficient gas storage ourselves (1% of UK annual consumption, the lowest in Europe). This is counted as UK exports for reporting purposes, despite the gas not being a UK product. If UK supplies come under pressure in winter, this export category will stop anyway, as confirmed by the UK government.
The cost of this gas from Qatar has to be offset against the price at which it is re-sold to the EU, if indeed it is sold, rather than the UK merely adding a handling fee. It's moot what this profit will be but, at a time of crisis, it can't be huge, yet the full price goes on the statistics for reporting purposes.
Secondly, Britain is shipping arms to Ukraine, via the EU. The value of these arms has to be declared on export documentation, despite them being donated and the UK not receiving a penny for them. This again is reported as valuable exports to the EU and was valued at over £100m in the first quarter of this year alone. That has since increased hugely to £1.3bn - again that goes on the export stats at the full value, despite the arms being a donation.
There are statistics and there are statistics - and then there's the Brexit press. One has to learn to look at the facts behind them.
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Also, the episode of Yes, Prime Minister in which Sir Humphrey demonstrates how to ask the right questions in order to get whatever result you want in an opinion poll and then just quote the final question has been invaluable in assessing public opinion poll results.
Reputable polling organisations don't engage in that kind of underhand stuff - it would be commercial suicide if it were known.
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