Just a day after Johnson appeared to have made a “Canada style” deal, it turns out that all is not well and the industrial scale lies and gaslighting has started again. Our deal is really a Canada MINUS MINUS Brexit. Here we report the news via the medium of populist press parodies. Today it’s the Daily Maul and The Sun. Including a fact and fiction checker. As always it’s action that counts. Please follow the links at the bottom.

FACT AND FICTION CHECKER

TRUE : Boris Johnson has thrown students under one of his buses by cancelling the Erasmus scheme. In one of his empty flourishes he says he plans to replace it with our own scheme which he has rather oddly titled The Turing System. FALSE : It does not require students to undergo castration like Turing had to, leading to his suicide.

TRUE : Britain “leads” all of Europe in terms of COVID deaths. We are once again back up at peak deaths per day as we experienced in March 2020. This is because Johnson has prioritised the economy above health throughout this crisis, acting too little and too late and using the science when it was expedient to do so and then ignoring it to silence opposition.  As a result, Britain lurches from lockdown to lockdown.  The result will be a prolonged crisis rather than a rise to zero.  Schemes such as eat out to help out and the use of exceptions mean that everyone loses as the pandemic flatlines at 400 – 700 deaths per day.

FALSE : Police did not threaten to taser lorry drivers to prevent them urinating.  However, they used tactics reserved for totalitarian states in their attempts to control people who, through no fault of their own, were trapped at Manston airport and remain so.

TRUE : Plans exist to evacuate the Queen in case of civil unrest over Brexit. This unrest can only come from those who apparently have “won” Brexit, since remainers are largely unable to contemplate acts of civil unrest. beyond eating cucumber sandwiches and sitting down on the grass opposite parliament.

TRUE : These charts are an accurate appraisal of the Canada MINUS MINUS Brexit deal, as compared with our existing arrangements with the EU.  It tells a very sorry story. To read the full text of the trade deal go to Brexit Trade Deal.

FACT AND FICTION CHECKER

TRUE : Jacob Rees-Mogg did in fact blame UNICEF for feeding children at Christmas.  This is beyond shame.  FALSE : As far as we know, Mogg has not opened a workhouse in Chew Magna, But one never knows.

FALSE : Although “John” has not taken over as home secretary , this regular attendee at 10 Downing St is an advocate of hanging.  TRUE : He often turns up drunk at 10:00 o’clock in the morning to sing songs such as Bye Bye EU. In fact this is his only song .

TRUE :  Oi band the K**TS managed to get to #5 in the Official Charts this week with their song Boris Johnson is a F*****G C**T.  Speaking as a musician, I cannot say this song is particularly well written, but clearly the sentiment has captured the mood of the nation.  Ursula Von de Leyen is in fact a gynaecologist, but did not utter the words about Johnson, apart from expressing some hand relief in her dignified speech on Thursday afternoon.

TRUE : The French provided relief to stranded lorry drivers with 10,000 COVID tests. The Germans airlifted supplies in, whilst Sikhs from Gravesend cooked thousands of curries for lorry drivers stuck in Kent through no fault of their own.  In contrast, Kent County Council managed to provide a snack bar, whilst Kent Police locked the drivers in at Manston airport and wielded tasers in order to frighten them.  Kent County Council’s CEO also was complicit in lying about the numbers of lorry drivers stranded in the County, suggesting that it was in the hundreds rather than thousands.

TRUE : Boris Johnson attempted to cover up the fact that he has given a lot of ground to the EU by refusing to publish the details of the deal.  He is calling it a Canada style deal, when in fact it is what I’m calling Canada MINUS MINUS Brexit.  Meanwhile today Michael Gove is involved in gaslighting us to talk about a “special relationship” with Europe, in order to stop scrutiny on the deal.  Keir Starmer is still undecided as to whether to oppose, abstain or support a Brexit deal.  Although it’s a difficult choice, an abstention would be the minimum best course of action given that Boris Johnson will blame Labour if they back the deal.  Where are your six tests Keir?  And your backbone?  John Redwood wishes to write a spoiler clause into the EU trade agreement, saying that we can cancel the agreement at any time without consequence.

This piece of excellent analysis by James Chespy who has read the entire EU Trade Agreement on Boxing Day – a Herculian effort:

The purpose of a Free Trade deal is to remove barriers to trading across frontiers. Having read this EU/UK Trade and Cooperation Agreement I can say with some degree of certainty that this is not a free trade deal it is not even a Canada Style deal which the Prime Minister articulates. The deal is a regressive agreement because imposes barriers to Trading across frontiers. It imposes extra bureaucracy for businesses to adhere to. That means extra costs of doing business and that will mean lost jobs and reduced profits.

When companies are having their profit margins hit by the extra bureaucracy they will take the view that it will be far easier to conduct their business from within the EU than from within the UK.Whilst its welcome that there are no tariffs on exported or imported goods the extra cost imposed on businesses by the extra bureaucracy will make the fact that there are no tariffs rather meaningless.

Take action

Write to Keir Starmer and Labour MPs.  Ask them to abstain as a bare minimum response to the Canada MINUS MINUS Brexit trade deal.

Continue to operate divide and rule tactics in the Tory party in whatever way you can. Use their own tactics on them and better their strategies rather than copy them.