On the 5th anniversary of Britain quitting the bloc he isn’t quite ready to admit it has all been a disaster, although he comes pretty close. He says: "For sure, things haven’t gone perfectly in the last few years."
I bet that euphemism took a bit of typing, eh? He continued, not unlike a jerry builder trying to corral as many as he can into the obvious catastrophe in which we are all standing :
"But it’s our mess. We will, in the end, sort it out ourselves."
Yes, we will, by rejoining the EU which we should never have left. That I think is by now pretty clear to all, although it can't be said openly in important political circles, otherwise Frost wouldn't be appealing Canute-like for help in holding back the inrushing tide:
"Sadly, the Brexit movement has largely shut up shop in the past year or two. But we mustn’t allow the debate to be lost without a fight. So, I and some colleagues have been working to create a new campaigning and information body, to provide honest information about Brexit and the opportunities that national independence can give us. Watch this space – and do get in touch if you think you can help," Frost writes.
It’s as if he thinks if we all join hands and believe very hard in Brexit, everything will get better.
The Brexit movement has indeed 'shut up shop' mainly because it's too embarrassing to harp on about the "opportunities" and the "prospering like never before" while living standards continues to fall. Whenever the subject is raised in parliament there are just groans and laughter. At least 90% of the MPs and most of the Lords stopped believing in it years ago.
But the ever shrinking band of Brexit evangelists stubbornly cling to the idea that casting yourself adrift in an increasingly dangerous and uncertain world is somehow a good thing. Most people equipped with a modicum of common sense would accept the old adage about there being strength in numbers. Over the next decade that will I think be clear to more and more people in this country.
I no longer have any doubts that the United Kingdom, or what's left of it, will rejoin the EU. The course is locked in. It may take longer, perhaps a decade or more, but eventually when all other options have been explored and shown to be hopeless, the penny will drop in No 10.
Going round in circles
However, at the moment Starmer seems to have been temporarily infected with Trumpism with his talk of his cabinet having to choose between being disrupters and the disrupted at a special ministerial meeting he held at Lancaster House last week. This was, if you remember, the infamous scene of Mrs May’s disastrous speech in January 2017 where she first declared that she intended to take Britain out of the EU single market and the customs union. A policy she then spent the next two and a half years furiously and unsuccessfully back tracking on.
Starmer is the first Labour PM to try his hand at making Brexit work, but may not be the last. We are unfortunately still going round the Brexit circle ruts.
The Tories have already burned through no less than five prime ministers over eight years trying to make Brexit work and, despite three of them being enthusiastic leavers. All have abjectly failed. So will Starmer.
Trump and America
The Washington Post have a disturbing headline: In chaotic Washington blitz, Elon Musk’s ultimate goal becomes clear. It talks of the goal, not of Trump or the Republican Party or Congress but that of a billionaire megalomaniac South African immigrant who has never been elected by anybody to anything, not even dog catcher.
The "blitzkrieg on Washington has brought into focus his vision for a dramatically smaller and weaker government, as he and a coterie of aides move to control, automate — and substantially diminish — hundreds if not thousands of public functions."
A friend of Musk's, investor Shervin Pishevar, is quoted:
"Chaos is often the birthplace of new orders, new systems and new paradigms. Washington doesn’t know how to deal with people who refuse to play the game by their rules. Donald Trump and Elon Musk are two different storms backed by a majority of Americans — one political, one technological. But both are tearing through the same rotting structure."
I am not sure they are backed by the majority of Americans but they're certainly tearing down the the rules and the Constitution which they think of as nothing more than a "rotting structure."
It makes worrying reading to learn how they are going about it.
Anyone who believes the courts will stop them should read this article in Vanity Fair from 2022:
“I think Trump is going to run again in 2024, I think that what Trump should do, if I was giving him one piece of advice: Fire every single midlevel bureaucrat, every civil servant in the administrative state, replace them with our people.”
“And when the courts stop you,” he went on, “stand before the country, and say—” he quoted Andrew Jackson, giving a challenge to the entire constitutional order—“the chief justice has made his ruling. Now let him enforce it.”
The person speaking is none other than the current Vice President of the USA, JD Vance. What he is describing is a coup. It's funny how 'real patriots' hate their own country and half their countrymen so much, even the rule of a law has to be ignored and the institutions of government destroyed in order to 'improve' things.
If you still have doubts about the seriousness of the situation, read this article by Elie Mystal, the justice correspondent at The Nation, just two days ago. She says:
"I’m not even sure the people who think the courts will save us have fully considered what 'saving' will look like should it come from the Republican-controlled Supreme Court. It’ll be like being dragged out of a fire by a very hungry wolf. As a person who has read these people all of my adult life, please believe me when I tell you that, if the Federalist Society judges strike down some of these Trump executive orders, you’re not going to like how they do it.
"Chief Justice John Roberts and his crew of legal arsonists will be thinking of a world post-Trump. Even in ruling against him, they can ensconce principles that will make it very hard for future generations of liberal lawmakers to undo much of what MAGA and the FedSoc are putting in place now. I predict rulings from this Supreme Court that narrowly limit what Trump can do while simultaneously expanding what unelected courts can do, specifically Republican courts, to frustrate a number of democratically passed laws in the future."
