Selby4europe: THE POLLYANNAS ARE OUT IN NUMBERS

Saturday 29 December 2018

THE POLLYANNAS ARE OUT IN NUMBERS

The soothing don't-worry-everything-will-be-fine Pollyannas are out in force to reassure us that going over a cliff edge is actually beneficial or at the very least not really harmful. Either we are expected to soar above the rest of mankind, those poor unfortunates not lucky enough to be born British, or if that doesn't happen, we shall float gently down to the beach below. Nothing to worry about in a no deal Brexit at all.

The ones I've selected below have one thing in common. They are all journalists. Men with power but no responsibility. They share a 'belief' that all will be well, even if we leave without a deal. Not one of them produces a scrap of evidence, presumably on the basis that if you need evidence to support a lie you might just as well be honest to begin with and that wouldn't do at all would it? None of them are really honest about what no deal would mean.

Matthew Lynn says there are five myths (HERE) that will be exposed next year and he lists them, together with an extended explanation, as these:

the ports stay open and the trucks will still roll through them.
medicines will keep flowing and the hospitals will remain open.
planes will still fly.
the City will have a good year.
fruit will still be picked, and the factories will keep running.

Let us hope Mr Lynn is more accurate than he was in 2016 when he told us (HERE), "Within a year, growth in the UK will be far ahead of the rest of Europe" . We then fell from the top of the growth league to the bottom. His particular forecasting skills don't seem that good.

Next is Bill Carmichael over at The Yorkshire Post (HERE), who asserts confidently that the no deal doom mongers will be proven wrong about Brexit. He predicts, "we will indeed, finally, leave the EU either under Mrs May’s terms or under WTO regulations" and he adds,"The good news is that on the following Saturday morning, March 30th, things will carry on pretty much as before"

The good news is that on the following Saturday morning, March 30, things will carry on pretty much as before.

Read more at: https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/bill-carmichael-no-deal-doom-mongers-will-be-proven-wrong-about-brexit-in-2019-1-9510502

Read more at: https://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/opinion/bill-carmichael-no-deal-doom-mongers-will-be-proven-wrong-about-brexit-in-2019-1-9510502

So, for Bill Carmichael, no deal won't affect anything very much.

James Bartholomew, occasional leader writer at The Mail and The Telegraph, proclaims (HERE or outside the paywall HERE) the 'little people will get us through no deal Brexit'. At first, since Brexiteers often seem to have an affinity with Unicorns and other fabled creatures, I thought he might be talking about Leprechauns, but no it's people like us - not like him of course, far too grand to get his hands dirty. He talks like an officer at the Somme tossing a few thousand more of the 'little people' into the line of fire. It's all hot air and hope. This is Bartholomew's answer to it all:

"The great illusion is that people and organisations don’t react – that they could see a train heading straight at them and not budge. They take action because they have every reason to. If businesses see an obstacle, they immediately start thinking how to get round it to preserve their profitability".

So, the plan is finally revealed. Set an express train running and watch 'people and organisations' scatter! What a hoot and very few really serious injuries anyway. Nothing to see here (just wash that blood away would you?).

Quentin Letts, is the parliamentary sketch writer at The Daily Mail doing a bit of free lancing on the Politico website HERE declaring everything will be 'just fine' in Britain but Europe, 'should be worried about its future'. He doesn't seem to realise people like him have been writing the EU off ever since it was formed in 1956 but perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, he wasn't born until 1963.

Letts says after March 2019, "The question in Britain will then not be 'why did we leave?' but 'why did it take us so long?'”. On the contrary, I think actually in a year or two people will certainly be asking why we left but also which idiot said it would be 'just fine'?. They might also be asking how soon can we get back in?"

These contributions follow similar articles by John Longworth, Daniel Hannan, Fraser Nelson and Radomir Tylecote all in recent days and all extolling the virtues, to a greater or lesser extent, of leaving without a deal. One might think it has all been choreographed by some unseen hand. Tylecote thinks it's the 'deal-making opportunity of a generation'. For details of the kind of deal-making he probably has in mind, see this article HERE which explains how one leave backing millionaire, Crispin Odey, made £220 million for his company after the pound collapsed following the leave vote. If Mr Odey posts anything to help 'little people' like plumbers or chiropodists I'll let you know - but don't wait up.

Now, surprisingly, to an extent I agree with all of them, they are in a way, right, but for the wrong reasons.

I too think things will not change very much on March 30th 2019, not because we will have left, but because we will still either be a member or we will have started a transition period. Unlike the men I have mentioned here, I have never believed we will go without a deal. In fact, nothing is more certain that we will never leave the EU without a deal.

The consequences would be 'cataclysmic' as the Foreign Secretary says (HERE) and since the cabinet are the ones (a) in possession of the facts and (b) with the responsibility to make sure there aren't food or medicine shortages, that planes do fly and Kent doesn't become a giant lorry park, Britain will eventually have to accept whatever must be accepted to ensure we do not leave without a deal.

So what March 30th will demonstrate is not how clever we were to vote for Brexit but precisely how weak our negotiating position is and why Brexit will start to play out as the worst foreign policy decision ever taken by a sovereign state.

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Saturday 29 December 2018

THE POLLYANNAS ARE OUT IN NUMBERS