Back to Top

Brexit is not a complete disaster, it is an incomplete disaster

From Don Adamson in Yorkshire. Brexorcist First Class, campaigner, writer and impressario:

This week’s quotes: “ Brexit re-enactment society: historical re-enactments are popular in Britain … fans of the genre should go the House of Lords … scrutinising the Retained EU Law (Revocation and Reform) bill … lawmakers know the bill is dangerous, wasteful and one of the silliest pieces of legislation ever to come before Parliament … Parliament is again galloping towards an avoidable blunder … it is like lighting a fire in a library and handing the librarians a photocopier and a marker pen to save what they can … ministers do not know how many laws are in scope … hands the executive broad powers to make laws with no idea as to how the power might be used …

Treasury fears it could lose billions in tax challenges … an almighty time sink … for the vanity of those for whom the battle to leave the EU was the highlight of their careers … parliament is imprisoned by the shrill politics of Brexit … some of the most damaging features of the Brexit process … a sane country would never allow itself to be put in this vice … familiar mix of terror and irresponsibility … blithe optimism smothers debate …

Labour is wary of opposing Brexit … terrible mistake …  a clear majority of Brits believe that to Leave the EU was a mistake … Brexit causes politicians to lose their judgement …  The Old Bailey focuses mainly on murder, rape and terrorism cases … the majority of terrorism cases involved people on the far right of British politics. A minority involves Islamic terrorist cases …

Thick Lizzie addressed a reception at the Japanese Embassy … the feet shuffling mood hovered between embarrassment and cringe coated pain … Thick Lizzie assumes publishers would flock to offer her big bucks for her memoirs … interest varied between minimal and zero … must be hurtful … Johnson is clocking up millions for his memoirs and after dinner speeches … while persuading Richy Scumbag to fund lawyers to help Johnson pretend that he did not lie to Parliament over Partygate …

Brexit is choking the arts and the government is doing nothing about it … touring orchestras and music sales – British culture and arts are a huge success story … Brexit means struggling with tough opposition from abroad … rivals get better tax breaks … children’s TV is suffering … movies of all kinds, music, live theatre, dance, audio books and video games … the world loves British cultural exports but Brexit makes it far harder to sell them … games firms give £7B a year to the economy … music exports are worth £3.5B … creative industries contribute £116B to the economy … yet is one of the worst hit by Brexit … government is totally indifferent … British government promised to make up any shortfall but has not done so … huge problem for the industry … harder and more expensive … a ruinously expensive waste of time … hurt an industry where Britain has huge advantages … You have to be something of a strange breed to want to be an MP in the first place …

Daily Telegraph runs pieces overtly critical of Brexit and Johnson …  Johnson can only count on Daily Mail and Sunday Mail for blind loyalty … Michael Gove admitted ‘I ask myself if Brexit was the right thing to do ‘ … Gove’s loyalty lasts only so long as it suits his interests … wants to distance himself from the Brexit recriminations after the next election … frankly hilarious death spiral the governments poll numbers have been taking for months …

Thick Lizzie continues to peddle her ‘it was all the fault of communist currency traders’ … ‘le grande illusion’ encapsulates Brexit … Johnson’s audacity … ‘that is what Louis XVI did and he got the guillotine …  Redevelopment at Teesside Freeport is Europe’s largest and most risky Brownfield project… highly toxic land and riverbed is churned up at breakneck speed …

Environment Secretary Therese Coffey has little interest in protecting the environment … toxic waste is taken from remediated areas and piles driven into contaminated land … ‘business partners’ make tens of millions … Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy … it was in the days of Nigel Lawson and Peter Walker that this vital industry last enjoyed civil servants with genuine energy expertise … the timing of these disruptions could not be worse … a new defence export advocate to promote arms sales … given the job to a Tory peer … under investigation by the Serious Fraud Office  … there are more health professionals of Ghanaian origin working for the NHS than in Ghana … Brexit is not a complete disaster, it is an incomplete disaster … Brexit does not need fixing stormed Lord Frost to the Daily Mail …

Brexit is not a complete disaster, it is an incomplete disaster

Michel Barnier

I was delighted to attend a superb event hosted by Professor Anand Menon of UK in a Changing Europe. Even more delighted to meet Michel Barnier and present him with copies of the books Reboot Britain and Private Eyelines.

Here are my takeaways from the event. It was necessary to attend in person to gain the full value of the conversation between these two giants. Just click the link to Twitter below or go direct to the the full article on Linkedin.

Merci beaucoup pour tout ce que vous avez fait pour essayer de sauver notre pays de lui-même. Le Brexit est perdant. Nous allons nous réveiller doucement.

Whilst we are here, do check out my riotous conversation with James O’Brien on LBC re Rishi Sunak’s motivational strategy.

Talking bollocks about Rishi Sunakered – Please download the album and subscribe to our Bandcamp page for updates

We are failing

Life long Tory voter Rod Stewart has just declared that the country is a mess and the Tories need to hand over power to someone more competent. This prompted me to think of the song he covered on his Atlantic Crossing album. Apologies for the lyrical changes which are occasionally grating !! 🙂

Brexit Britain 2023

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.

Write a letter

King Charles III

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.

Joe Bloggs