Some will know that, in 2016, Britain voted to become an isolated country via the Brexit vote. The marginal 52:48 popular vote was pumped up by:
Outlandish promises that we would fund our healthcare system with the proceeds of Brexit.
Brexit ‘freedoms’ from EU laws, 98% of which Britain helped to make.
The weaponisation of migrants ‘swarming’ into the UK, using the very same language used by the Nazis to justify the Holocaust.
It then took five years to leave our membership of the club we call the European Union, mostly because nobody in our Government could agree what Brexit meant. Some wanted total isolation with free market capitalism on steroids, a kind of ‘Singapore on Thames’. Others wished to retain all the benefits of trade and co-operation from Europe without any of the responsibilities of club membership. The battle raged on between the various factions, consuming four Prime Ministers in the process, with our fifth currently sitting in the departure lounge. Ultimately, it seems that Brexit consumes all its offspring.
Two years on from our departure, it is possible to see the beginnings of the realities of Brexit. In this film, I have taken what could be described as a ‘Brexit Stock Take’. This piece deals with the economic realities of Brexit. Others in the series will deal with Social effects, Political futures, Legal outcomes, Environmental impacts and Technological effects.
Please take a look at the film and subscribe to our EU TUBE channel. The film is 17 minutes long but well worth your time as a case study in populism which is sweeping Brazil, the USA, India, Russia and several other places. Paradoxically, the world needs collaborative leadership and joined up thinking to face climate change and the many other global issues we must address if we are to survive. Instead, many think that ‘strong men’ are the answers to such problems. We shall see who prevails.
I occasionally write about the lack of strategy, structure, cohesion, collective capability and leadership in the Remain / Rejoin movements. Once again, with a heavy heart, I must report that the chronic organisation development issues which divide us remain (sic) alive and kicking. This article concerns senior members of Grassroots for Europe, overseen by the CEO of The European Movement and its chair Lord Andrew Adonis. For some months I have attempted to resolve a worrying problem with a concerted smear campaign against me by senior people at Grassroots for Europe and The European Movement. I have had no reply in private from CEO Anna Bird, so I have reluctantly decided to go public. Here is a summary in the form of my letter to the EM CEO:
The WhatsApp group where much of this smearing takes place is overseen by Anna Bird and Lord Andrew Adonis, thus they are complicit in the campaign, by ‘letting it happen’. Andrew does not like uncomfortable truths and blocks people who he disagrees with. Thus I have no route to resolution with him.
Illiberal acts from the left
The ‘mob’ also follow the leader, sometimes without knowledge of the facts of a given cased. This is not without consequence. For example, I have been blocked from attending the March to Rejoin. I was blocked from attending a meeting with Gavin Esler. The ‘mob’ also asked that professional EM groups and affiliates in Sussex and Merseyside ‘deplatform’ me from speaking at events and so on. I mean, WTF are they frightened of?
I actively promote pro-European and anti-Brexit views and am perhaps more vigorous than many at a grassroots and strategy level, so I cannot understand their desire to silence me. Then again, I have worked on Brexit for 6 + years and I ‘get’ organisational illnesses etc. from my professional life as a business and organisational consultant. I’m hoping that Anna Bird will now make this nonsense stop and remove Richard Wilson and the other ringleaders from power. Here are some examples of the online smearing below – it is persistent and wearing. I cannot write to Richard Wilson to deal with the matter quietly, as he also adopts the Vote Leave strategy of blocking people he does not agree with.
It’s possible to see the level of confusion in these groups. For example, Lynne Armstrong manages to confuse me with Peter Corr, the leader of the March to Rejoin, but it does not stop her from condemning my / his work. In fact it’s unclear exactly who she is condemning. Other European Movement execs appear to join in with the ‘herd impunity’. For example, Emma Knaggs admits that she knows nothing about my work, but, of course, feels she must agree with those in power. She is also badly informed: Despite her assertion to the contrary, I remain Chair of The European Movement Mid Kent. Following a review by the Council chaired by Dominic Grieve QC I was confirmed in the position. My removal was an exec decision made by Anna Bird, without approval or authority of the EM. This, of course, mirrors the approach of The Conservatives re Brexit. It is quite surprising from an organisation that promotes transparency, open-ness and diversity.
In my professional life, I work with chronic organisational problems like this. When politics / egos and so on are added to the complexity, these issues become insoluble. I had offered my services for free to EM way back to help make them match fit, but they refused to accept professional help. Ostrich thinking and silos are not good enough if we are to build a movement fit to take Vote Leave on. As a result I have little confidence in Grassroots / EM’s abilities. Help can still be given but I’m not hopeful that they are in listening mode. One of their groundfloor troops, Magdalena Williams has recently stepped into the fray on Twitter.
There is a long list of people who have actively initiated and / or amplified this campaign. Others have passively supported or allowed the campaign to spread. In no particular order: Richard Wilson, Colin Gordon, Yvonne Wancke, Chris Hammond, Anna Bird, Lord Adonis, Robina Jacobson, Peter Packham, NE for Europe, SSTIE, Sue Wilson, Bremain in Spain, Doug at SODEM, Magdalena Williams, some of the SODEM gang, Lynne Armstrong, Emma Knaggs, Patrick Reynolds. There is a longer list of people who hide in the shadows … come out into the light please.
Some cold unemotional analysis for Remainers and Rejoiners who are hard of thinking. If we accept :
1. That all the Tory candidates are essentially the same in terms of their short term impact on the economy (shades of badness etc.). Morduant is another ERG puppet and Rishi is mistrusted by ERG because he is a prudent brown economist by TP members, having shown his credentials already.
2. That the next Brexit / Kwasi Recession is more or less “baked in”, thus the impact of leadership in the next few months has an NPV of zero. So the choice of leader is an irrelevant issue in ‘accountancy’ terms. Note that Liz Truss’s departure did nothing to the value of the pound. The city is not fooled by replacement headstones.
Then we move on to the next level of analysis. Which leader is worst for the Tories and Brexit?
1. If Boris loses, he loses any opportunity to return to politics. There would be no need for a judicial review etc. It’s a slam dunk success. This is probably why he’s hesitating as he is not a losing kind of guy.
2. If Boris wins, a new bloodbath will open up in the Tory party – with those who wrote letters resigning, writing more letters and so on and members leaving. Roger Gale has already written his letter!!
So, basically it’s a win win win win win win …. In short, if the ERG don’t want Johnson, and 1/3 of the Tories don’t like it, we should support it.
None of the above appears to be apparent to most Remainers / Rejoiners who are gaslit by the Johnson persona and his sins. We must set that aside. If Johnson gets elected, it will be tragic for the Tories and the Brexit bubble will be popped, like a very nasty boil.
Cold analysis is far more important than hot emotional reactions to the ghost of Johnson. Think about it. Put your head before your hedonic response.
The best outcomes at this time re Tory destruction are in order of desirability:
1. A General Election – However, I don’t yet see the mechanism for this, as the English don’t riot. The Tory argument that they were elected may well stand unless it faces significant parliamentary and public pressure. This, however is why we wrote the letter to King Charles. Now the Remainers are complaining about that for a host of bizarre reasons.
2. Boris wins – Vote of No Confidence, resignations and more mayhem.
3. Boris loses – they limp on with another lame duck.
Please send a letter to King Charles III. It is best if you write your own letter as multiple copies of letters tend to be ignored. Here however is a template you may adapt to suit your needs. We recommend using the rule of three … pick three issues from the main body of the letter to use. We also recommend that you send your letter by post for maximum impact. Handwritten letters are especially valuable. The address is Buckingham Palace, London SW1A 1AA
Your Majesty/Your Royal Highness (whichever is preferred),
INTRO PARA
It is with some hesitation that I write to you so early in your reign, and at a time of great bereavement for you and your loved ones and the country in general. However, the wheels of government roll on regardless. This emboldens me to raise with you a number of issues which I hope will inform your reign.
MAIN BODY – Do not overload and perhaps pick three issues for your letter – please remove the paragraph markers in BLUE
PARA ONE – CLIMATE
First and foremost, I hope that you will use your influence to help us address the pressing issue of climate catastrophe, which threatens us all. Planet earth will not wait for sub-committees to agree compromises which allow our planet to continue warming. Instead of responding to the call to suspend the use of fossil fuels in favour of sustainable energy sources, we are presently pursuing the controversial issue of fracking, a subject on which your latest Prime Minister may have been badly advised. The prime reason for removing the ban imposed as recently 2019 by her predecessor has been justified by the war in Ukraine and its effects on the economy and consumers. Yet the energy crisis preceded the advent of war. Does this not raise questions to the advocates of this course of action? Fracking is more expensive than solar and other forms of energy production. We should look upon the UK via the medium of the BBC sitcom “The Good Life”, in other words, we must be responsible environmental stewards. A hallmark of our existence is to leave the planet in a better state than when we arrived.
At the same time, the bonfire on standards due to Brexit enhances environmental damage through increased carbon footprint from ever longer trading across continents, moral hazard through use of poor materials for manufacturing and an increased use of irresponsible capitalism.
PARA TWO – BREXIT
Brexit has not delivered on the promises made in the ‘brochure’ in 2016. Instead it threatens the breakup of your Kingdom, the loss of Britain’s position as a world leader in many fields, breakages of international law, a possible return to the troubles in Northern Ireland and human trafficking of people to Rwanda as a supposed ‘solution’ to migration by people fleeing from war and oppression. Just when many countries in the world are recognising that joined up thinking is needed to solve joined up problems, we appear to have elected to live in un-splendid isolation. I know that your mother Queen Elizabeth II was opposed to Brexit and I hope you will exert further influence in this direction for a better Britain in a better Europe for a better world.
PARA THREE – MICRO ENVIRONMENT
Clean beaches and Britain’s waterways have always been one of the defining hallmarks of our green and pleasant land. They are under systemic attack from our Government, simply because the laws that allowed us to reach these standards of excellence did not emanate from Westminster. It matters not who sets the bar for excellence on planet earth. What matters is excellence itself. I hope you will agree that we must maintain clean beaches, clean rivers and clean towns and villages. Each and every one of us can play a part in this, but it needs your leadership to bind the country together. It is both distasteful and dangerous to allow our waterways to be filled with e-coli.
We have developed a class of people who are skilled in the art of offering easy answers to difficult problems. We know that complex problems have no easy answers and we need to take time to understand the systemic consequences of our actions. But it is clear that our standards have been decimated over recent years, with more to come due to the ideology of Brexit which requires the purging of all that emanates from the EU. Of course, 98% of these standards were ones which Britain created or supported.
PARA FOUR – FARMING
It has become apparent that we need to reform farming towards more sustainable approaches and an approach that conserves the land to reclaim food security for Britain. Whilst it was right for Government to replace EU subsidies for farmers with an equivalent scheme, the scheme was not of equivalent value and it was wrong to then cancel that scheme. This will undoubtedly affect lives and livelihoods for people who manage 71% of our land to everyone’s ultimate loss.
PARA FIVE – SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
Britain had a role as a world leader in science and science relies on collaboration with the finest minds on the planet. Every single scientific body warned against Brexit as having the potential to reduce the gene pool of talent on which some of our greatest achievements have rested. King Charles II founded the Royal Society which continues to make awards for contributions to the promotion, advancement, or use of science for the benefit of society. We have a long tradition of successful collaborations in science, whether that be in advances in health, aerospace, defence, living standards and so on. In the 4th industrial age, the age of information, we owe it to our children to offer them the best environment to bring innovative collaborations together through projects such as HORIZON.
PARA SIX – DEMOCRACY
For some time now, British democracy has been under attack. Examples include the illegal prorogation of parliament, manifesto promises being broken almost on a monthly basis and the erosion of truth and trust in politicians and politics. Flip flop politics are not without consequence. In recent times our economic experiments on the population of Britain have caused untold irreversible increases in mortgages and the cost of living. Prime Ministers are now elected without recourse to the vast majority of the people of Britain. We need a proper written constitution and the reform of our democracy and democratic processes as a matter of urgency.
PARA SEVEN – COMMONWEALTH
The self-isolation of Brexit is clearly affecting our relationships with Commonwealth countries, for example Bermuda. This has cross impacts on your own families’ standing as leaders and representatives of the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth. It takes decades to build trust and co-operation and minutes to destroy it. We must save precious relationships on which we rely.
PARA EIGHT – THE NHS
You mentioned that you were born on the same date as the NHS and quipped that you felt you were doing better than them when interviewed. Our NHS is under threat to become a two-tier system rather like the US, but without any safety net for those without means. A hallmark of a civilised society is in how vulnerable people are treated. Our NHS is too precious to be traded away as an asset.
OUTRO
I understand that you are unable to act in public as it would contravene your role. However, I urge you to influence the debates on our ‘Britastrophe’. I remain, Your Majesty, your faithful and loyal subject.
I decided that this needed to go out before the entire cabinet resigned, so here goes:
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I cannot decide whether Liz Truss conducts her role out of pure incompetence or she is a double agent. Truth be told, I will never know. However, it is fair to say that she is doing a great job of destroying the ERG and the Brexit illusion.
Don Adamson writes in his inimitable style from Yorkshire.
This week’s quotes: “Thick Lizzie is putting herself in a dangerous position … least experienced cabinet team the UK has had for decades (Comment after 12 years in office) … she will need every bit of Civil Service buy in she can get …Any efforts to introduce yes men will just drain the Civil Service of competent staff … … when Jacob Rees Mogg was supposedly in charge of public sector efficiency … incessantly wailing about civil servants not being at their desks while failing to notice that due to sell off of buildings there were not enough desks for civil servants to be at … Thick Lizzie’s moves are fundamentally unfair … crisis in the National Health Service is well known … calls for an independent enquiry (Comment: in Booming Brexit Britain an ‘independent enquiry is one that obeys Rupert Murdoch’s orders) … services unsafe as doctors struggle with huge workloads … no hope of building the promised 48 new hospitals … new Chancellor has admitted that any gas produced by fracking would not reduce costs for UK consumers … If he does not understand measures in his own price package what hope is there? …24 hours is maximum waiting time to file past body of the Queen … 40 hours waiting time endured by woman needing ambulance and hospital treatment … Thick Lizzie’s rusty Reaganomics … transplanting a 40 year old economic policy from USA to UK will not work … President brushed aside the contradictions … Thick Lizzie’s attempts to emulate the Gipper’s success is doomed … Thick Lizzie’s cheerleaders have read only the first part of the history of Reagonomics … early record was mixed … did not stop a recession … inflation rose … the result will be more conflict between monetary and fiscal policy … risk that inflation becomes entrenched … business leaders are warming to Labour … businesses despair of the Tory Party … after 12 years in office and four radically different PMs the Tories can hardly promise that Johnson’s tenure was especially shambolic … a suspicion that policy is being driven by ideological reflexes … Thick Lizzie’s approach worries firms … as for Jacob Rees-Mogg as business secretary, ‘I could think of a worse choice but you would have to give me an hour … NHS treats its workers so badly they are leaving … struggle to plan holidays … it is bonkers … the whole kit and caboodle of NHS employment is utterly Kafkaesque … working in an organisation that is indifferent to their needs … NHS can be a strikingly uncaring employer … The city is fighting to carve out a post Brexit role … 7,000 jobs, and £1.3Trillion of assets were lost from a sector that employs 1.1m … international firms opening a European hub prefer Amsterdam or Luxembourg … LSE’s importance as an equity hub has dwindled … in 2006 it raised 18% of global capital … in the first half of 2022 less than 1% … A wholesale repeat of the City’s post war reinvention remains out of reach … boosting the economy while ignoring environmental harm would be bonkers … keeping the heat on has replaced flying as an aspiration … Politicians of all stripes console themselves with the thought that Brits voted to leave the EU because they were misled by other, less upstanding politicians. ‘Nobody voted to be poorer’ runs the refrain. A scarier possibility is that people knew perfectly well what they voted for. Brexit will create a smaller economy but voters did not care … Thick Lizzie resembles a neo-liberal Kamikaze pilot, prepared to blow herself up for her cause …. The mad scientists … an experiment to test the riskiest of trickle down fantasies … It seems we have been misled … all we have needed all along was for the government to give vast amounts of money to the rich and wait for it to somehow boost the economy …Established economic theories and fact based research have disappeared a naysayer in a photograph of Stalin … all previous Tory governments have been left wing dupes … how doing nothing is supposed to increase growth is a mystery … this government will just find the money elsewhere … many things about this budget do not make sense … will cost the treasury a fortune … no additional growth, just a lower tax take … Cutting red tape is a right wing panacea, the kind prompted by snake oil sellers … the details are shocking … Justice system, social care, ambulance services and NHS are already on their knees … none of these measures likely to increase growth at all … a right wing wet dream … without even a semblance of an effort to make the numbers add up, no wonder the Office for Budget Responsibilities has been gagged … terrible news for those with mortgages (Comment: Daily Mail readers will love that) … right wing commentators in the press are praising it to the skies, but ignore these and read their financial pages instead … a right wing fantasy, an ideologically driven experiment to stuff the mouths of the rich with gold … it is betting with borrowed money that nobody knows how to repay … schoolboy errors … put the UK economy at risk … Kwarteng has always been a high risk appointment … too casual … too enamoured of his own intellect … a cabinet determined by loyalty to Truss rather than competence … in the space of four days three decades of sound economic management have gone up in smoke … pound suffered a rout … cartoon Thatcherism … Millwall strategy (no one likes us, we don’t care) is hardly a serious approach … Kwarteng, like the Bourbons has learned nothing and forgotten nothing … betrayed weakness not strength …,It is a fantasy to pretend that Britain can ignore the trend … a grab bag of ideas, poorly presented …it makes you wonder if Thick Lizzie is an undercover agent for the Bring Back Boris campaign … smug, cruel, arrogant, know it all ideologies …f*** the lot of you … failings of a wasted decade … sounds like insider trading … if it had happened under a Labour government the papers would have played merry hell … the money markets have made it clear they have no faith in Trussonomics … detestable characters in the Johnson resignation honours list … there are claims that Nadine Dorries knowingly misled Parliament …
Pip Pip Medway Delta (Retired) Saboteur and Brexorcist First Class
Editor’s footnote: since Don wrote this, another Tory MP has been fired …
Don Adamson writes from Yorkshire on the latest mayhem which contributes to our Britastrophe.
This week’s quotes: “Johnson’s ‘levelling up’ agenda is ailing and listless, a casualty of Johnson’s lack of seriousness … Few doubt the new chancellor’s intellect but he swings between genius and idiocy … an attention span of four seconds … The Chancellor rattles the Treasury … the Treasury needs good advice more than ever … may not be enough to avoid a downturn … None of this bodes well for the public finances. Yet the government is expected to announce tax cuts … Having got their woman into Downing St dodgy financiers can look forward to … deregulate their businesses yet further … Kwarteng should be able to get his ideas through with less sense checking from experienced officials…. However resounding the next crash the sound for friends of Kwasi wil be ‘kerching’ … Department of Health and Social Care is proving shy about efforts to claw back billions of pounds from underperforming suppliers … progress on suspect suppliers is close to bugger all …Priti Patel put former Australian Foreign Secretary (who helped create Australia’s harsh anti-refugee system) in charge of ‘independent review’ of her Rwanda scheme … leaked files showed guards hitting children or demanding sex from female inmates in grim camps in Papua New Guinea … If Downer could not detect abuse in Australia’s infamous offshore camps it seems unlikely he will spot it in Rwanda … Chris Philp, new appointment as Chief Secretary to the Treasury … why pay any tax at all when they can simply fold their companies when owing hundreds of thousands of pounds to Revenue and Customs … It was refreshing to hear a Labour Politician unapologetic about opposing Brexit, clear about the palpable damage was doing … Sept ans plus tard qui peut pretendre que le Royaume-Uni a beneficie du Brexit (Translation – after seven years who can pretend that the UK benefits from Brexit) … the answer is next to nobody. The tragedy is that the few who do pretend are sitting round the cabinet table, living in la la land imagining that Brexiters who ‘knew what they were voting for’ knew that it was bankers getting bigger bonuses … many of Thick Lizzie and Kwarteng’s plans are detailed in an economically illiterate pamphlet they published ten years ago … Britannia Unchained … unremarkable, badly researched, cherry picked data using taxi drivers’ anecdotes as ‘evidence.’ … evidence is thin … lifting the ban on bankers’ bonuses … even Johnson retreated on this idea … the authors without a science or maths degree between them or any sense of irony … one of the most illiterate parts of the prospectus is the notion that we will all have to work harder … in fact British workers put in longer hours but productivity remains low … the obvious change is more training, investment and better management … if you don’t believe ‘Britannia Unchanged’ the pamphlet has the evidence to convince you … the opinions of taxi drivers … the authors are terrible at maths, economically illiterate, ignorant of science and engineering and completely unaware of how to research a book or write well … smug, selfish, self satisfied, lacking in empathy, ignorant of facts and believing in their own fantasy economics …unfortunately they are now running the country …
Pip Pip
Don Adamson, Medway Delta (Retired), Saboteur and Brexorcist First Class
I don’t really think that Boris Johnson deserves more than one minute to reflect upon his legacy so I made several videos in less than one minute on this subject. In fact James O’Brien summed up the detail so well that I don’t feel i could better that. In summary we are talking about:
Broken promises on Brexit (It is NOT “DONE”, it will consume a lifetime of wasted time and money to continue the pretence). To read the full history, read Private Eyelines – Have I Got Fake Brexit News for EU and Reboot Britain – Strategies and skills to change minds on Europe and Brexit. Remainers and Rejoiners seriously need to up their skills if we are to win the next battle with the populists. Never forget that we lost two elections and a referendum, however inconvenient that fact is. Yesterday I delivered copies of these books to Sir Alan Sugar, Richard Branson and James O’Brien. I wish to send them to Hugh Grant next if anyone can help with this.
On Brexit, COVID and lies
Outright LIES on COVID (Johnson was late to the party when others were listening to experts. He conducted an experiment with genocide by placing infected NHS patients into care homes, causing 10’s of 1000’s of unnecessary deaths). The list goes on. These were political CHOICES and not inevitable. Johnson has been lying ever since he was born. Why would we expect any different from him?
On COVID, care homes and unnecessary deaths
On Brexit, Kettles and gold wallpaper
Industrial levels of distraction or dead cat politics, the latest one being the “kettle”. Even the kettle story is not correct. If you want your kettle to boil faster, descaling and using the correct amount of water will make bigger impacts on your bill. £20 is of course not even significant when compared with the actual energy price rises, but Johnson assumes that people cannot add up.
I don’t believe the Tories will call an election in order to lose their majority but if they do, we’ll need to do better than sharing memes on fb. The Daily Maul has set another dead cat loose on this subject today. Preparation is better than regret. Learn the skills to persuade people outside your bubble to change their voting behaviour here.
I don't believe the Tories will call an election in order to lose their majority but if they do, we'll need to do better than sharing memes on fb.
Preparation is better than regret.
Learn the skills to persuade people outside your bubble to change their voting behaviour here.
— Reboot Britain – Rage Against The Brexit Machine (@BrexitRage) September 3, 2022
Join us on Monday September 12 at 8 pm on ZOOM to build momentum to remove the Brexit beast from our lives and build a better Britain in a better Europe for a better World.
I had a chance encounter with a Labour Councillor the other day whilst at gay pride in Rochester. We know each other from many years back and I like and respect him as a solid campaigner for Remain within the Labour party. He approached me because he recognised me from behind, as I had my ‘offensive swimming bag’ with me, pictured below.
Brexit-Watchers
After a brief exchange of pleasantries, he raised the issue of Labour’s strategy for Brexit. Here is what he told me:
“In our first term we will join EFTA.
In our second term we will have a referendum to rejoin the EU”.
He claimed that Kier Starmer could not argue about ending Brexit at this time, due to his need to hold on to red wall seats at an election. I dispute this position:
If Kier Starmer continues with the strategy of ‘making Brexit work’, he will be accused, quite rightly, of being a liar after being elected. This is the very thing that he has accused Boris Johnson and the Conservative party of doing and is therefore morally bankrupt.
Everyone knows that Starmer is a Remainer and therefore there would be no great loss if he were to remind us of this fact. Boris Johnson reminds Keir Starmer of his EU / Remain credentials on a weekly and sometimes daily basis in parliament, so there is very little currency in the Daily Excess, Son or Maul revealing this ‘secret’. Opinions about Brexit are changing rapidly, with Lord Sugar the latest person to call for Brexit to be reversed.
The Labour Party seem to be terrified of the right-wing media, yet they themselves have a media machine. Therefore, they ought to be able to put up a valid defence of his position if they needed to. The Labour party somehow believe that their own media machine is inferior to the Tory party’s. Perhaps Labour need to read my books as well.
My sense is that Keir Starmer is even more scared of the hard left element of his own party than the Conservatives and that this is driving his avoidance of the Brexit issue. You have gotta love Mick Lynch’s ability to stand up and speak truth to power, but let’s not forget that Lynch is also a relic of the militant tendency from the 1980’s in terms of his wish to shut the borders and return us to Little Britain via Brexit myopia.
Let’s suppose that Starmer decided to ignore the hard left in his party. It is indeed possible that he would lose some votes in red wall seats. Let’s guess that this may amount to 10% losses of seats in those areas. However he stands to gain anything like 20 to 40% of Conservative seats in other areas. Labour are allowing the militant tendency to dictate their strategy for re-election and this makes them no better than the bluekip Tories. I cannot recommend that any remainers vote for them under these circumstances, except where their candidates have a more enlightened view about Brexit.
My Councillor friend put it to me that Starmer simply cannot say the Brexit word at this time. Respectfully, I say this is horseshit. He can say that Brexit isn’t working and has not delivered what was on ‘the brochure’ in 2016. He can also point to clear evidence to support such statements at this time, coming from UK in a changing Europe and our own work at Reboot Britain. The Labour Party has fallen into the trap of believing that a poll in OK Magazine or the results of the latest focus group should dictate party policy. This is not leadership. Silence is assent and Starmer’s position is a clear demonstration of putting party before country, what Tony Blair describes as putting ideology before pragmatism. I expected better from a clever man and I must conclude that, like the Tories, there are people who they are afraid of behind the scenes.
As regards Labour’s long-term plan, there are many flaws with this:
The EFTA countries are a small club of nations: Iceland, Liechtenstein, Norway and Switzerland who value collaboration over competition. It is unclear as to how such a club would wish to invite an aggressive competitor with a track record for wanting ‘cake and eat it too’ from its relationships with other trading partners. Brexit Britain has demonstrated a complete lack of regard for the role of international law, breaking deals made with others and riding roughshod over nations that it considers to be inferior to itself. These are hardly the kinds of elements of a compelling psychological contract to join a new trading bloc. Joining EFTA also means accepting the four freedoms of the EU. How will this be put to the knuckle dragging red wall Brexiteers?
The assumption of a second term in office is also questionable, particularly if it becomes apparent that Starmer lied to get into power. This makes him equivalent to Johnson and the mainstream media would certainly weaponise this. The second doubtful assumption is that another referendum would be desirable or indeed practical. Brexit has divided the nation and I very much doubt that the nation will look back on 2016 and want to repeat the exercise with all that it has brought. It is entirely possible that, by this time, many people will have forgotten most of what Michael Gove glibly called ‘bumps in the road’ and will not wish to open up the debate again. The longer we leave this question, the more difficult it becomes, as divergence will be complete and the damage to lives and livelihoods will be complete.
My friend assumed that the binary ping-pong politics model remain resilient into the future. This itself is questionable. Brexit has of course unleashed a disruptive influence on British politics, with a number of parties now standing for anything but the current system. Within the next few years we will see the emergence of Gina Miller’s True and Fair party, the possible resurgence of the Lib Dems in the South, the departure of Scotland from the United Kingdom and the emergence of other single-issue parties such as the Rejoin party. Under such circumstances, I’m doubtful as to whether ping-pong politics will remain the norm. My friend tried to deal with this with me by saying that if I didn’t vote Labour I would get the Tories. My reply was simple. I stated that I cannot vote for a Brexit party and that Labour must do better than this.
I am not sure whether the Labour strategy was given to my labour councillor friend in order to appease him or for him to use to appease me. Although miracles are sometimes possible, the strategy he presented has more holes in it than a piece of Swiss cheese banned by Liz Truss. He is a very good chap and I wanted to believe him. But I ended up with the feeling that he himself may well be hanging onto unicorns and trying to ‘believe harder’.
Check this video out that we made today in a sauna. The deception that the will of the people is still for Brexit is under extreme question, considering that this research was conducted in Brexity Kent. Watch the sauna video – it’s just two minutes long!!
Check also our World Wide Wednesday masterclass on Rejoining the EU below:
To get hold of the books ‘Reboot Britain’ and ‘Private Eyelines’ please go to Rage Against The Brexit Machine or write direct to me at reboot@brexitrage.com
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