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Category: Brexit

Sunakered

Brexit Chaos

In the wake of the first Labour local council victory in Medway since 1998, I draw some post-election consequences for the Lib Dems, Greens, SNP, Labour and Conservatives. Undoubtedly, this was a disaster for the Tories and Brexit in terms of what was predicted. The Tories lost 1061 local council seats. The question is, is this enough to get the Tories done and Brexit undone?

My part in the Tories’ decline

At a personal level, I was delighted to play my part in the Tories’ decline in Medway, through long term campaigning, mass Brexorcisms in pubs, cafes, supermarkets, bus stops etc., and doorstepping in Tory voting areas over the last few weeks. My family loaned 8 votes from my family to Labour last week and some to the Lib Dems and Greens. However, we shall not repeat this performance in a General Election, unless Labour turn on Brexit and Europe. I have put their Councillors on notice to this effect.

My Tory MP Rehman Chishti became so desperate about the decline in his party’s fortunes that he decided to attack Suella Braverman about her recent demonisation of Pakistani Muslims in The Observer. This is significant, in so far as Mr Chishti has an impeccable record in voting with the prevailing cabinet. His unbridled attacks appear to have sprung from sheer desperation and a desire to pick up the Pakistani vote in my area rather than any serious conviction that Braverman is an evil spirit who was herself an immigrant. He failed. Given that the Tories have a stronghold in my area, I plan to stand an independent candidate in Gillingham and Rainham and need your help to do this NOW. Please click on the link below and back us.

Get the Tories out in 2024

Lib Dem renaissance

Perhaps the story less covered in the mainstream media is that of the Lib Dems renaissance in last week’s elections. The Conservatives losses were fairly evenly distributed between Labour and the Lib Dems, with the Greens taking a very good proportion of votes as well. If this were to continue, the Lib Dems could find themselves as Kingmakers in a General Election along with the SNP. The Tories and Labour like the binary system which both believe they profit from. But we could find ourselves in a rainbow coalition in 2024. A lot can happen between now and then. Coalitions mean that politicians have to do things they really don’t like doing : listening to opposing views ; coming up with better decisions ; occasional compromises and so on. It’s all good with me. The people may just be the net winners in such a system … ?

The big winners here were the Lib Dems and Greens, with the losers being the far right (Tories) and the far right parties.

Green revolt

The Green party cleaned up, gaining a very respectable 241 seats in England and taking control of one Council in Brexity Mid Suffolk completely. Increasing awareness of sewage, climate catastrophe and possibly a protest vote against the far right parties aka Tories and UKIP may all have contributed to this. Let’s hope this continues into a General Election. Check our film out, based on our music composition ‘How do we want to be remembered‘.

Climate Crisis is the number one issue facing our planet.

How do we want to be remembered?

Rishi Sunakered

Sunak is under pressure from the ERG to go further right with his policies. As a holding statement on The BBC on Friday, Sunakered simply repeated his five priorities. He claims that people who cannot afford to eat were more interested in stopping the boats. Even James O’Brien is not sure what Sunak means by lurching to the far right. O’Brien frivolously suggested on LBC that it might involve bringing back the birch. I’d add bear bating, the rack and the drowning of witches, to take us back fully to Jacob Rees-Mogg’s 18th Century Brexit idyll.

An 18th Century Tory Synthpop Trance Floor dance groove we composed.

I called James to discuss Sunak’s options. Paradoxically, I suggested that Sunak would be better advised to move towards the centre ground of politics to pull the Swordaunt from the stone. James and I riffed away to my catchphrase ‘Sunackered’, which I coined in the summer of 2022. James said that Sunackered (or Sunakered) is worthy of a Daily Mail headline ‘if some guy wasn’t going to wear his mum’s hat and sit on a chair on Saturday’. Listen into to our riotous dialogue at LBC James O’Brien. #Sunackered is trending on Twitter as I write this.

Sunakered
I coined the phrase at the end of Summer 2022. Sunakered is free to use by the populist press. Please download the album to support our continuing work to banish Brexit bullshit.

Early indications suggest that Rishi Sunakered listened to my advice on LBC. Yesterday, Kemi Bad Enoch Powell announced that the Government has rowed back on its promise to have a bonfire of EU laws, 98% of which British politicians helped to make! Unusually, Jacob Rees-Mogg has called Sunak out as a traitor. Bad Enoch was sanctioned by TWFKASLH (The worm formerly known as Sir Lyndsay Hoyle) yesterday. Hoyle is a man who has allowed all sorts of bad behaviour to pass in the House of Commons but decided that enough was enough with the Nigerian Brexit fraudster. Mogg never calls the Government out. He even backs rapists. His outburst on the bonfire of EU law is clearly a smokescreen to get more than 20 Tory signatures on a letter to shaft Rich Tea Sunakered. I confidently predict that the approx 600 laws to be incinerated will be the ones with no large scale impact or connectivity to the main body of EU law. In other words, it will look as if we have taken back control of our laws, but, in reality, nothing will have changed, unless you indulge in some arcane Brexity manufacturing processes. For example, making car engines from English oak, impact-destructing cricket bats or pepper grinders without holes. Otto English sums up one of the many contradictions:

Arse Nicked by Brexit

And, once again, the ERG are fighting like cats in a sack. Andrew Bridgen has split the fascist parties by joining Lozza Fox’s Reshame party instead of Ricardo Tice’s Rebjorn Again party. It’s all good. Rishi is doing exactly what I predicted in order to save the Tory party from Brexit oblivion. Next he will steal Keir Starmer’s clothes, see Hard Labour. Perhaps Rishi is not Sunakered after all?

Sunackered or Sunakered – The theme tune – we were the first to convert the catchphrase into an EDM dance groove in 2022!!

Go now

In his weakened state, Sunak now needs some scapegoats. Given that the Select Committee has not yet reported on Boris Johnson’s multiple illegal, immoral and indecent behaviours, a convenient distraction would be for this committee to make a strong verdict against Johnson soon, such as full suspension from parliament. Accordingly, this would allow Sunak to blame the current malaise in the Conservative party on Johnson and Truss’ catastrophic mishandling of the country. It would also allow him to exorcise Johnson’s ghost without having to do anything himself. This is the way that Sunak likes to handle his HR decisions, through outsourcing to other agencies.

If Johnson is suspended for more than 10 days, The Rejoin Party have a plan to issue a recall petition to remove him from office and break the spaffer’s spell for good. Please join them in readiness.

Voter Suppression

The other big news about the election was voter id and voter suppression. For more on this read our full article on the subject. Early indications suggest that this will have disadvantaged specific demographic areas, such as ethnic minorities, the disabled and young people. The Government now runs the Electoral Commission and they decided not to record any data from polling stations. Correspondingly, it is quite likely that there is serious under-reporting on the extent of voter suppression in these elections. Edwin Hayward reports on over 70 case studies of voter suppression. They are almost certainly the very small tip of a very large electoral fraud iceberg.

These elections have demonstrated that the voter id system is totally unfit for purpose. I made my own small protest to the Electoral Commission. Above all else, please make your voice heard. Add your name to the call for action at electoral reform.

Say no to voter suppression

The Scottish position

Although the local elections are a hammer blow for the Tories, they are not catastrophic. Labour needed to reach the magic number of 40% vote share in these elections to win a General Election outright. They won approximately 35%. This explains why Labour want to take 30 seats in Scotland. I predict an informal coalition of aggression between Labour and Conservative to viciously attack the SNP on any agenda and exploit the change of leadership. Admittedly, the SNP’s transition could have been smoother. However, I believe we will see some very bad behaviour from both Labour and Conservatives in the coming weeks and months. They must be dealt with accordingly.

That said, the SNP’s problems are temporary. The essence of SNP support and the values underpinning them will be largely unchanged by a few sensational tabloid headlines in the longer term. For comparison, I note that Boris Johnson’s many breaches of the law did not attract police tents in his garden and officers in fancy dress Hazmat suits. Added to this, Brexit delivers a daily stream of bad news, both in the short, medium and long term. Robert Peston reported that 86% of young people wish to rejoin the EU. In consequence, Starmer’s position on Brexit is ultimately untenable. I reported on Labour’s position on Brexit in the previous article “Hard Labour“. If Labour’s results are not good enough to win a General Election outright, a hung parliament still seems a likely outcome of the current optimism about the local elections.

Read our page on Scotland

Voter suppression

Voter suppression

Voter suppression is hardly a hot story for the tabloids, particularly with the Coronation and Eurovision to entertain us to death, but we like to publish the stories that the populist Brexit press will not print. There were numerous examples of voter suppression in Thursday’s by-elections. Accordingly, this article records just a few of them. Write to the Electoral Commission to complain about your own examples via Electoral Commission.

The Government now runs the Electoral Commission and they decided not to record any data from the elections. Undoubtedly, these examples are the very small tip of a very large electoral fraud iceberg. This development is a cynically constructed and desperate attempt to cling on to power by the Tories. Accordingly, the policy has failed spectacularly. Britain is now in full decline into a banana republic. The worse part about this is that nobody much gives a flying fuck about it. However, if you do, read on to see some of the examples mentioned by Edwin Hayward:

Edwin’s thread contains numerous examples of fraud

Clear evidence of law breaking by the Tories

The move to voter id is totally “disproportionate” when compared with historically low levels of electoral fraud in UK elections. From the Government’s own website:

The UK has low levels of proven electoral fraud. There remains no evidence of large-scale electoral fraud in 2019

From the Government’s own website. Voter fraud is an illusion created by the Tories.

This is another example of the sleepwalk into a fascist state by the Brexit party aka the Tories. There is absolutely no sensible explanation as why a young person’s Oyster card is NOT an acceptable form of id when an old person’s Oyster card IS acceptable. Add your name to the call for action at electoral reform.

Read some of our other articles on elections at Ensure Brexit doesn’t pay, Gerrymandering and Don’t Pannick.

Brexit-Watchers

Into 2023

From Don Adamson, Brexorcist in Chief from Yorkshire.

This week’s quotes: “NHS waiting list has ballooned to 7.2 from 4.6M in early 2020 … only 18% of nurses said they had enough time to provide the quality of care they liked … You Gov poll found that almost two thirds of Brits supported the nurses’ strike … no amount of planning can prevent the anguish and inconvenience caused by cancelled procedures .. We are fighting for everybody… The 2021 Integrated Review … Johnson government’s ill fated attempt at designing a ‘post Brexit grand strategy” … a fantasy future for the UK … published the day after Putin began his first troop build up on the Ukrainian border … most ill timed piece of hubris … Royal Navy tasked with keeping open sea lanes rather than protecting the internet cables … that were mysteriously cut in October … no comprehensive national security risk assessment … blithely redirected our military and security resources to Asia … the challenge now is to make a handbrake turn … we cannot afford a fudge … we need politicians to level with the public … we are in a recession but Britain lives in a fantasy … it is going to be far, far worse … UK is the only G7 country that has failed to recover from COVID … UK growth will be second worst after Russia … how did we get to be such a failure? … Brexit … an amazingly inept and ideology driven budget … UK will be paying for these disasters well into the 2030s … Brexit is costing at least 4% of GDP permanently … tax burden … highest sustained level since WW2 …

Don Adamson

Daily active interventions on our tragic mistake to leave the EU are needed.

Waiting for people to die and looking away because it’s painful won’t get us there.

Learn how to do it with these books.

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Police Corruption

Police and Thieves

From Don Adamson, Brexorcist in Chief from Yorkshire.

This week’s comments: “Rape in Britain has the lowest charging rates of all crimes: less than 2% of reported rapes lead convictions (COMMENT:  especially when the rapist is a Member of Parliament) … an exhausted and demoralised NHS workforce was leaving to take low paid work in the private sector putting patient safety in jeopardy … Johnson received over a £1M from a crypto mogul …. moonlighting MPs have been paid over £17M from second jobs since the last election … Over £180M has flowed into political parties since 2019 … self elected band of overly ambitious sociopaths … sadly for Britain’s politics the saints are outnumbered by the rest … National Health Service is in a poly crisis … underfunding … post Covid demand … post Brexit skills shortage … multiple systematic meltdowns … hundreds of excess deaths per week … long term impact will be more severe … outcomes way poorer than in comparable countries … ability to deliver is collapsing … not some contingent crisis triggered by Covid, inflation and incompetence … scandalous mismanagement … this government demands more productivity from people who are already working many hours a day for free …

Covid and the war in Ukraine help to make the terrible effects of Brexit … the deep, painful and avoidable damage that Brexit has done and will continue to do is becoming clearer … makes us poorer … substantial loss to the economy and the government’s revenue … the frothing Europhobes, racists and swivel eyed loons have to be fed and the country has to suffer … inevitable and painful consequences …  the government knows what is happening … serious shortages worsening … crops rot in the field … Treasury is lobbied by every sector for help … the government is entirely deaf to requests … whatever the economic damage … severe shock to the economy … self harm that works directly against Downing Street’s stated aims … shameful Rwandan policy … blind indifference to economic damage … needs … would require an honest government … buggerations of Brexit … fair play to Lancashire police … in issuing a penalty charge to Richy Scumbag … perhaps take the same approach to PPE fraud, tax avoidance misconduct by Johnson … and Thick Lizzie …  what a ridiculous mess Brexit has created … scandals taint No 10, business, civil service and the BBC …increasingly toxic miasma surrounding the government … states collapsing under the weight of corruption … Cabinet Secretary Simon Case displayed the intellectual and moral brilliance of Baldrick on a bad day .. seemingly endless other matters …Scumbags premiership has not imploded as spectacularly as Thick Lizzie’s but it has failed … done nothing to show he understands what is happening to the NHS … an addled King Canute sitting helplessly in front of waves he could have done something about … pledged to run a government with integrity but has some kind of personal involvement in every scandal … Johnson’s memoirs cost Murdoch £6M … sensational inside stories that will be profoundly damaging for the current PM …Zahawi demanded Johnson’s resignation because Johnson lacked integrity … Zakawi’s demonstrations of poor integrity … Telegraph’s jaw dropping admission that Tories had made a mess of Brexit …Brexit extremists again hole Britain below the waterline … sheer plodding obviousness of the corruption … 

Volodymyr Zelensky cracked down on government corruption and the privileges of some Ukrainian officials (COMMENT: That would not happen here. Rupert Murdoch would not allow it) … Despite glimmers of good news a downturn is still likely … Fortune has smiled on Europe (COMMENT:  might that be because Gammons and Flagshaggers are no longer around to p*** in the soup?) … car making in Britain is far graver than in decades … manufacturers are voting with their feet … if the government wants to help British industry it should focus on basic responsibilities …Six years ago British motor industry was purring like a Rolls Royce … Brexit makes it look more like a Morris Marina … 2022 was the worst year since 1956 … chances of a revival are ebbing …. Britain’s withdrawal from the EU … globalisation was good for Britain … and membership of the EU … vulnerable to government policies that reduce its allure … Brexit was that writ large … Brexit has added reams of paperwork … stymied investment at a crucial period … Richy Scumbag resembles a hapless character from Evelyn Waugh (COMMENT: Waugh was a frightful snob and professional Catholic – just like Rees Mogg) …

Scumbag is accident prone and surrounded by colleagues who cause harm … unable to escape the Bollingeresque chaos that surrounds the Tory Party … Scumbag’s inability to bring his party to heel makes him look weak … record waiting lists in A&E departments … after 12 years in power the Tories can be blamed …  cuts … skimping on equipment … schemes now seem ludicrous … planners underestimated demands … Soviet fixers were called Tolkachi. In England they are known as Tory donors … Britain is vulnerable to graft … Government policies create a huge mismatch between supply and demand… Supply chain woes … unsustainable economy … projects of dubious value … jittery investors … these numbers are catastrophic for the poor… It stretches credulity to say that the Russians did not interfere in the 2016 US Presidential election and the Brexit Referendum …

Transparency International 2022 Corruption Index … The UK is a country to watch but not in a positive way … historic low … declining public trust in government … appointment of politically connected people to senior roles … attacks on democratic institutions … systematic bias …ministerial misconduct … woeful inadequacies in political integrity systems in Britain … NHS crisis has put Richy Scumbag on the ropes … swamped A &E departments … epic staff shortage …  soaring numbers waiting for treatment … Like all desperate lightweights he keeps throwing one desperate counterpunch … attacking the Welsh NHS … Labour led government in Cardiff is doing more than Tory led government in Westminster … Wales spends 8% more on healthcare than England … on social services Wales spends 43% more than England … Wales has 270 hospital beds per 100,000 people compared to England’s 170 … skills gap crippling UK wide … Civitas, Right Wing Think Tank, call for Scumbag to rekindle the bonfire of income tax cuts that Thick Lizzie promised before she torched Britain’s public finances … Wales NHS performance achieved by Labour demonstrating honesty and competence … with the pandemic receding the economic effects of Brexit can no longer be blamed on Covid … polls show on 34% of British people now think UK was right to leave the EU … Brexit continues to be a major problem for the UK … the degradation the Tories have inflicted … the chasm between public opinion and the reality denying stance of the Government and the ‘make Brexit work’ stance of the opposition is growing …

Rees Mogg continued to defend on the BBC …  he did not have to fight many colleagues to get the gig … corrupt and corrupting PM … a government that overlooks the damage  … final nail in the coffin for the car industry … Britain is not open for business … 13 years of total incompetence … immense damage … British car industry is finished … madness of ‘Global Britain’ … overly optimistic to the point of delusion, underfunded, naive ideas … fell at the first hurdle …  pathetic … a shameless attempt by the blustering buffoon … complete bullshit … completely uncompetitive … UK car industry probably doomed … industry decided to invest anywhere but the UK …  just one sector that Brexit is making far worse … a harbinger of what is to come … Brexit was promoted by economically illiterate know nothings …  UK gets the worst of both worlds … Rupert Murdoch fell for Johnson’s hard luck stories … agreed to £6M deal for \Johnson’s memoirs … Murdoch knows he is over paying for the book … Johnson must still be contractually bound to come up with devastating revelations … will have spooked Richy Scumbag … Johnson got Barclay at the Telegraph to £275,00 a year for 10 hours work a month, which Johnson described as ‘chickenfeed’ … British Council paid scores of teachers in Afghanistan … these individuals are on Taliban death lists … a great many of them have gone missing …  they are in danger and are not allowed to come to UK … our policy is to render no assistance …Brexit has been about disrupting systems and coming up with fantasy replacements …

Telegraph says ‘Tories desperately need a Johnson comeback … delusional … all too predictable fiasco of Brexit … We give away £4B tax relief to the wealthy … Tories immoral maze … Tory cesspit … Whole edifice of the ruling class is rotten to the core … Shocking rise of something for nothing Britain bellowed the Daily Mail … far too many people are indolent and unproductive … according to Right Wing think tank  Civitas … Civitas report focussed on retired households which received more in benefits than they pay in taxes … pensioners make up a substantial proportion of Daily Mail readers … decision to attack them as feckless spongers looks brave … National Health Service is littered with reforms that work inside a health secretary’s head but not in practice … Stratford on Avon residents appalled by careless tax affairs of their MP. Even Nadhim Zahawi’s Tory colleagues have tired of him … most people involved in last Autumn’s Truss disaster keep their heads down …

Middlesbrough South MP Simon Clarke explains how Thick Lizzie was fundamentally and importantly right … Royal Mail Chief Executive Simon Thompson was recently criticised for his ‘toxic inexperience’ … twitchy, blinking, toe curling performance … good at evading questions …. with every answer he gulped, recoiled and raised his eyebrows at the question … a more awkward witness had not been seen at a parliamentary hearing in many years … doubts were raised about the accuracy of the evidence he gave … Cast of weirdoes spouting conspiracy theories on GB News … Brexit induced restrictions risk impeding improvements …In December Britain borrowed £27.4B, the most for that month since records began … Many economists had similar beefs about the BBC’s coverage of Brexit, accusing it of trying to balance the overwhelming consensus in the profession a few fringe figures who suggested that leaving the? EU would boost growth … (COMMENT: BBC and Tory Party get their knowledge of economics from 1950s vintage Commando Comics) …

Family doctors in Britain see a year’s worth of accident and emergency patients in a month … 15% more patients than in 2019 with less funding and fewer doctors … fewer resources to meet rising demand and complexity … voted for a Brexit that had been burnished with the sepia tint of WW2 … nostalgia can come with a cost … less than 2% of reported rapes lead to conviction … Thick Lizzie, the shortest reigning PM ever, provided a terrifying example of how bad things can get and how quickly … a re-emergence of the miserable political paralysis that jammed Westminster 2016-2019 after Brexit triggered a nervous breakdown … “

Learn the skills of Brexorcism here.

Private Eyelines
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Brexit is finished

From Don Adamson, Brexorcist in Chief from Yorkshire.

This week’s comments: “Britain left the EU on the back of dodgy promises … all over Europe leaving the EU is seen by ever more voters as a mistake after Britain’s wretched display … price of populism is becoming clearer … even Marine Le Pen has toned down her Euro bashing … voters now see that populism is long on rhetoric but short on solutions … I just do not believe a word this government says …

Richy Scumbag is briefing that the next election will be 1992 all over again … they are wrong … however bad the Tories were in 1992 they are now on another level … Richy Scumbag is more unpopular than any party leader in history after 100 days … his personal ratings have plummeted down to that of the Tories … there is no expectation of economic growth … wherever he looks there is another dead end or fundamental crisis … mired by endless allegations of sleaze … grim situation … impossible dream … truth matters … standards matter …

Rees Mogg got roundly rubbished … howls and head shaking scorn … people know that that Brexit is not working … Right wing economics have failed again … Austerity kills growth and productivity … UK fell further behind … growth lowest than any decade since the Napoleonic Wars … hard right continues to persuade people that they can have first rate public services  and tax cuts … intellectual justification … low taxes create growth … no evidence this is true … state is profoundly weakened … half remembered Thatcherism … ideological drag of Brexit … UK destined to have the worst recession of the major economies, including Russia … like madman they repeat the same experiment in the hope of a different result … Johnson’s resignation honours still to be announced … always the odd preposterous name on a list … Johnson’s are all preposterous …

BBC is a place of fear and loathing … post Brexit buggerations … screams of an incompetent liar … pathetic attempts to distract attention from a dodgy loan … Floundering economy … foolish monetary policies …  advice of experts ignored …  corrupt and incompetent supervisors looked the other way … crackdown on asylum seekers … nothing the government has tried has worked …

Richy Scumbag’s legislation is likely to end in disappointment … impractical as well as morally dubious … shortage of experienced Home Office Staff … sloppy decision making … the longer it takes for Britain to resolve these questions the further it will fall behind EU countries … sleaze is again crippling the Tory Party …  the tax burden has rarely been so high, the public services so creaky. … as for Brexit the best its backers can claim is that it is a work in progress …

Boorish Lee Anderson elevated to deputy chairmanship of the party … Westminster echoes with the chiselling of Tory epitaphs … Thick Lizzie hopes that history will eventually smile on the premiership that wrecked the Tory Party’s reputation for economic management …  Johnson wishes to be remembered for helping Ukraine TV interview with Nadine Dorries, the most adoring of his erstwhile cabinet (imagine the Watergate Plumbers interrogating Richard Nixon) … “ Meanwhile Rishi Sunak has not denied the existence of aliens in Downing Street …

Learn the skills of Brexorcism here.

Private Eyelines
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Reboot Britain
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King Charles III

Coronation celebrations

I now write for Byline Times in Scotland. Above all else, the Coronation celebrations on 6 May will be a welcome relief from Tory gaslighting in difficult times for some. But will it be a mixed blessing for Charles and Camilla? It’s not exactly like the works’ Christmas curry in terms of just trying to get the seating plan right and avoiding embarrassing encounters. The entire world will be watching, analysing, hypothecating and so on. Please read our latest article on the Coronation celebrations at Byline Times. Find it below by clicking on King Charles III or a chicken:

King Charles III Coronation celebrations
Possible PhD project title : “The phenomenology of barbed wire, culture wars and societally caged monarchs – Royalty in aspic”

JOIN US AT OUR NEXT REBOOT BRITAIN MEETING WED 10th May at 8pm via ZOOM

Although I’m agnostic about the royalty and definitely do not want President Boris, I am having trouble swallowing my breakfast at the thought of swearing allegiance to a King who takes no view on the macro issues that affect his ‘subject’s lives and livelihoods’. The BBC are trying to suggest today that having a ‘piss up’ will heal Brexit Britain. It won’t. Just for clarity I made this mini film for Chris Mason, Mishal Husain, Martha Kearney, Amol Rajan et al.

The Police were quick to move in on protestors. They even arrested people who had not actually done any protesting. This is the ultimate manifestation of 1984 Brexit thoughtcrimes. If you are thinking, it’s now possible that you will be arrested for it …

Shouting God Save the King is OK. Shouting Not my King is a public order offence. Jesus Christ !!
Suspicion of crime is now the new standard for arresting people in Brexit Britain.
Thought Crime 1984

If Charles is to prevail, he must exercise some influence upon the Brexit fascists who now run our country. Undoubtedly, it’s the least KC III can do to earn the nation’s respect. The age of deference has gone for most people in Brexit Britain. Finally, whilst we are on the subject of monarchy, here’s some more royalty:

Gimme fried chicken …. image by P Paton.

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Learned Helplessness

Learned helplessness

I recently published an article on Labour’s position (or lack of it) on Brexit. You can find the article at Bylines Scotland. It provoked an angry visceral reaction from Labour ideologues on social media. Louis told me the article was incorrect and badly written. When I asked him to point out the inaccuracies and poor writing, he couldn’t. Eventually he told me that we must all keep quiet about Brexit, deliver a crushing defeat to the Tories in the local elections and then Rishi Sunak would call a General Election. I asked him to explain his logic. He refused and drifted off into the notion that the UK will be ended if a General Election does not happen in 2023.

Sadly Louis refused to justify his appraisal of the article. And he claims to be a scientist.

Louis’ logic from the exchange can be summarised here:

The Tories suffer a crushing defeat on May 4th.

Sunak must then call a General Election.

He does this so that he can suffer another …. crushing defeat.

Can anyone help me figure out how this works? Call me cynical, but politicians do not call elections that they intend to lose. I agree it’s not impossible but it would require significant public and political pressure. With the nurses having caved in on a pay deal yesterday, I sense that the Tories are now over the hump of public unrest, due to the passivity of the British people. We’ll have to see …

Another chap called John simply called me a silly infant. I asked him to justify his statement. He could not. I don’t mind being called an idiot, but I do mind it when the people doing it cannot justify their insults. Several people have apologised privately on behalf of John, telling me that (a) he’s a bit old (so am I) (b) he’s a bit nutty (do I have to put up with that?) and (c) he is horrible to lots of people so that’s OK (does that make it right?). Here are some of John’s tweets:

No explanation, no apology – the same behaviours as used by Brexiteers

A clear demonstration of learned helplessness

I was also schooled online by Supertanskiii that ‘now is not the time to mention Brexit’. I beg to differ Tan. Airbrushing the word Brexit out of the lexicon is a one way journey, sponsored by the Tories and Labour alike. Brexit is the single most important socio-economic, political, legal and environmental disaster of our age. Denial is not a river in Egypt.

Supertanskiii is a potent online campaigner, but I fear she is emotionally addicted to Labour

John’s views are symptomatic of what is called in the trade ‘learned helplessness’. Remainers lost two elections and a referendum through setting low expectations, accepting rules on democracy which Brexiteers ignored them, believing that we don’t deserve any better and so on. This extract from the book Reboot Britain summarises the ‘condition’:

Learned Helplessness
Learned Helplessness – Click the graphic to read more

So, it seems that we are back into the binary political trap that delivered Brexit. Tony Blair was right when he said that the Labour party often suffers from the triumph of ideology over pragmatism, a disease which caused the Tory party to cannabalise itself with Brexit. Have a look at the Scottish Bylines article and let me know what is inaccurate or stupid about it in the comments or via Twitter. To my Labour chums, I repeat my usual challenging unemotional questions:

What are the differences between a red or blue Brexit? No one will explain them and I have asked many times.

There is a clear business case to support the argument that Brexit has failed. Why won’t Keir Starmer move to this position?

Why will the right-wing media eat Starmer for breakfast if he states that Brexit isn’t working? Read the point on sunk costs in the article to understand this point better.

What makes people believe that Labour will reform the FPTP electoral system in a binary prisoner’s dilemma, all the while they believe that it benefits them? By the way, all the research evidence from UKICE points to the fact that Labour would benefit from electoral reform, in terms of votes, seats and number of terms in power.

If 70% of Labour members wanted to Remain, why are they so docile? What does this say about Labour’s approach to democracy?

Why do people believe that Keir Starmer will rejoin the Customs Union and Single Market when he has flatly refused to do so on many occasion? Surely this makes him a liar? The right wing media will certainly be all over this if he were to gain power.

Hard Labour
Hard Labour – Click to read the article. Image by P Paton

To understand the various options for joining anew, please see London 4 Europe’s article on this.

Join us at our next Reboot Britain meeting on Wed May 10th May at 8 pm via Zoom. Find the link at Reboot Britain.

Rehman Chishti

Tories fighting like cats in a sack

Recently, I took the new prospective local Tory Councillors to task over their inability to answer a simple question about the local impacts of Brexit. See this microblog on twitter for the background to this article:

The sorry tale of Ms Venus

In the course of my e-mail exchange with Tina Venus-Coppard, it transpired that she and her husband had become ‘angry birds’ due to my over familiarity, but most particularly because I explained that it was nothing to be proud of by supporting drowning children in the channel in order to ‘pray at the racist altar’ of Brexit. Of course, Ms Venus vigorously denied supporting Suella Braverman’s policy, although I pointed out that if they were Tory party members, then surely they supported the values and behaviours of that party? They did not answer. Mr Venus pretended that he wasn’t a Tory nor did he back Brexit and that was the end of the matter ….

Until today, when the local Tory MP, Rehman Chishti published an article in The Observer, yes, The OBSERVER, saying that he does not agree with Braverman’s racist remarks about Muslim grooming gangs. Chishti stopped short of criticising Braverman’s policy on racist abuse of people fleeing from terror and therefore her policy on migration and asylum via deportation to Rwanda. Chishti calls Ms Braverman’s comments ‘inaccurate’. Translated, that’s a LIE. Rehman is himself a Pakistani Muslim and the son of a preacher imam, He campaigns on various issues of cross faith religious co-operation, when he’s not taking consultancy fees for Saudi defence ‘consultancy’ and taking £22 000 pa salary for a US fundamentalist anti-abortion pressure group.

Nonetheless, I must welcome Chishti’s candour in this matter, particularly as his voting record shows that he votes with the Government on nearly every issue he is presented with. This is presumably a throwback to the time when he became a prefect at the local Grammar school. However, I am naturally suspicious that this is a carefully crafted stunt, simply designed to curry (sic) favour with the local Conservative party and the Pakistani community for the local elections on Thursday May 5th. Interestingly I am told that Mr Chishti’s daughter is also a local Tory candidate in my area. It is notable that Chishti did this almost immediately after I challenged Ms Venus on her immigration credentials. Last time Chishti opposed something was over the illegal pro-roguing of Parliament by Boris Johnson. He voted against the bill initially as it was safe to do so but then subsequently he voted it through. But to see the good in what he has done, this is a major contribution towards racial harmony in an area full of knuckle dragging white supremacists in Medway and Mr Chishti should be applauded for this. I wait to see what happens on Friday 5th May for my final analysis. I note that the Tories are now fighting like cats in a sack over this trumped up issue and look forward to the eventual climbdown. In case Rehman is looking, here is my answer to immigration and asylum in just two minutes. Having gone this far, it is time to lead Rehman. Who knows, Mr Chishti may well cross the floor to Labour again or The Lib Dems as he did many years ago in order to win the 2010 General Election in my area.

What should we learn from this? Click on the links to read more:

Letter writing works – CLICK

Multiplying your impact works – CLICK

The Tories are scared of the electorate – CLICK

Learn the gentle art of Brexorcism here – CLICK

I am tired of Tories who pretend that local politics has nothing to do with national policies. In this context, I ask that you support my campaign to GET THE TORIES OUT. My campaign in 2019 demonstrated that if I’d campaigned seriously I’d have a fighting chance to wreak some serious damage. This time I will adopt a longer term and more serious approach to the matter.

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An Innocent Man

Jailbreak

Yesterday, I walked out of Medway Police station as an innocent man. But there was no jailbreak or incarceration in “Kentonville Prison”. I merely handed myself into the Police to assist them with their investigations. This followed a complaint in The Daily Express from someone in Yorkshire about the re-branding of Kent from The Garden of England to The Toilet of England.

The Kent Toilet of England story was reported the world over, from The Guardian, The New European, Evening Standard, FT to Scotland, Ireland, Wales and as far as The New York Times and in Abu Dhabi. Reports said that the police were investigating. It turned out that the Police press officer had made the story up as an “official response”.

Jailbreak. Turns out that Natalie lied.

I had a cordial conversation with the officer in charge at Medway Police station and then left without the need for waterboarding, electric shock treatment or a cake with a nail file inside.

One man from Yorkshire commented: “The petulant, infantile antics of swivel-eyed Remainers never ceases to amaze.”

The Daily Excess

ITV News picked up on the story behind the jailbreak headline, as did Kent Live. The Kent Toilet of England exercise was organised to highlight the combined impact of COVID crisis + Brexit disaster = A Britastrophe. In the event the ITV news interview was truncated down to the parochial issue of the lorry parks and Brexit readiness in Kent.

Here below are the original interview questions and our full answers. There have been recent instructions for local authorities to say nothing bad about Brexit, so the Councillor’s hands were tied. Careful analysis of his statement does reveal that the Councillor more or less told viewers to stockpile food and fuel as he cast doubt on whether supplies would get through. I guess that ITV want to only spread good news in the season of goodwill, but I had hoped for better from them. It seems that everyone is scared of this Government, but why?

Shock horror – a suit !!

Q1 Kent County Council say that everything will be fine after Brexit. What do you say?

A This is disingenuous at best and a downright lie at worst. I understand that people want to feel optimistic at this time of COVID crisis and Christmas. However, in my long experience, optimists are usually people who have not had enough experience. The French prefer experience over fantasies. They showed that a 70 second transit time produces a 5 mile queue. This has been confirmed by the Government’s own reports on the matter. I myself have spoken with Kent Councillors, who confirm that once contagion takes place with cars, we are likely to see gridlock in towns and village, as members of the public attempt to use rat runs etc. It has recently been reported that Government plan to use the military to fly COVID vaccines into Britain – obviously the roads are OK then?

Q2 You organised a stunt to change the signage at the Kent border to say Kent, Toilet of England. What was behind that?

A We did it to highlight three main points:

Brexit can be stopped or suspended.  Although legally we have left the EU, stopping or suspending Brexit is merely a matter of political will.

Nobody voted for the toxic combination of Corona crisis plus Brexit disaster, which I call a “Britastrophe”.  We must Re-Boot Britain and that’s why we feel the need to re-start the conversation with all the people who voted in the referendum.

We have interviewed former MEPs across the political spectrum.  They confirm that no deal is more or less the same as a Brexit deal. Theresa May was right when she said “NO deal is better than a bad deal”. She might have added that NO Brexit is better than a Britastrophe

Jailbreak
A man from Yorkshire complained about the signage in the Daily Express – that’s hardly “Fury” 🙂

Q3 What should Kent County Council do now?

A They must ask Boris Johnson to suspend or stop Brexit in the wake of Corona. Border delays are the tip of a much bigger iceberg socially, economically and politically. The GDP shock to our country will be between 5-10 times larger than the 2008 crash. People have no idea just how bad this will be. We have to endure Corona as a natural phenomenon. We don’t have to endure Brexit on top of Corona. Tonight we’re gonna have a Jailbreak …

Please take action by writing to MPs and EU leaders. Ask for Brexit to be stopped or suspended for two years minimum.

Here is the “I am Spartacus” video we made with the help of people across the globe who admitted to the sticker crime. I am hoping all of them manage to make a jailbreak …

Spartacus lives !!
Doing time for Brexit.
Brexit Hits The Fan
Click on the image to read Brexit satire.

Musings of a former Conservative Councillor

Many years ago, the Conservative grandee Lord Hailsham observed that, constitutionally, Britain is an “elective dictatorship”. Boris Johnson’s regime is demonstrating the truth of his warning, particularly when power falls into the wrong hands.  Dominic Cummings, until recently Johnson’s over-powerful senior adviser and the driving force behind his policies, was autocratic by nature. Cummings treated MPs, including Johnson’s Brexiteer supporters, with contempt. During his period in power, he created a centralised and unaccountable  power base at the heart of Government with key functions such as appointments, vetting and control of data in his own hands. Parliament was increasingly sidelined. The hallmark of  the regime became the advancement, employment and enrichment of persons noted only for their loyalty to himself and the Brexit cause, with no consideration given to their merit, experience, suitability or capability to carry out their duties. A stench of corruption and cronyism began to emanate from No 10. 

Conservatives have a long track record in crime.

Johnson’s regime is also unconservative. Conservatives instinctively want to conserve, as the name implies, but his is an administration of destroyers.  Cummings was never a member of the Conservative party and his appointees in No 10 reject traditional Tory respect for continuity and compromise, in favour of creative destruction. Their current targets are the BBC, the impartial civil service, and the judiciary. Our planning system and, indeed, our whole structure of local government are due to follow. Under Cummings, the Conservative tradition of managerial capability and economic credibility has been discarded, as demonstrated, inter alia, by the extraordinary failure to report  and then trace the contacts of almost 16,000 COVID-19 cases, a major blunder to which the Government reacted with barely a shrug.  Cummings’ departure opens the door to a new start where realism replaces dogma, honesty and transparency replaces lies, corruption and cronyism, and where respect for our institutions and constitutional conventions and, in particular, the rule of law is restored. 

What must be done?

  1. Radical U-turns by the Conservative party are required to expunge Cummings’ legacy.  The largest and most immediate is the withdrawal of  the Internal Market Bill and, in particular, the removal of the clauses which break international law and curtail Parliament’s powers. 
  2. There should be no further talk of lowering our food and environmental standards at the behest of the United States, nor of downgrading worker protection. 
  3. The Culture Secretary’s plan to abolish the BBC and replace it with American-style radio and TV must be shelved.
  4. Hancock’s questionable appointment of an old university girlfriend to a post in his department should be this administration’s last vestige of cronyism.
  5. The Cabinet Office’s involvement in hospital and medical procurement should be terminated and all further government contracts undergo transparent and competitive tendering processes as the law requires.
  6. There should be a general review of appointments made under the Cummings regime in No 10 and the public service, with a view to removing those who are patently unsuitable or incompetent. The Prime Minister would do well to carry out the same exercise amongst his second and third-rate ministers once Brexit is over and blind obedience to that objective can cease to be the sole qualification for advancement.
  7. This should be accompanied by an end to lying and xenophobic propaganda, if Conservatives still wish to regain any trace of being a one-nation party.

Only if a programme of this nature is followed can we hope to regain a Government worthy of respect, both at home and abroad. Its present state was well summed up in the words of a Tory former cabinet minister: “ This is a bad English nationalist government with no idea of where it’s going.” Unless Johnson shows himself capable of changing this judgement in the near future, it is in the interests of his party as well as of his country that he be replaced as soon as possible.

The writer resigned from the Conservative party in protest against its SE branch’s policy to force Remain members to vote for extreme Brexiteers in the choice of candidates for the 2014 European elections.