BoJo's speech is now on the government website HERE. It's not worth much since it doesn't say anything new. The Guardian's John Crace's semi-humorous take on it is HERE. The vacuous and content-free effort achieved something. It put another turn of the rope around the Conservative party and the mast of Brexit. BoJo is trying to drum up support for Brexit amid fears that it won't be the success he told us it would be. So that when it all goes pear shaped he can say, "you thought it would be a success, it wasn't just me". We should have none of it.
The fall out from the speech continues. It certainly didn't do what he wanted to. There is no coming together. As someone said it was the wrong speech made at the wrong time by the wrong man. The Independent wondered why he bothered (HERE). Politico's take is HERE headlined with BoJo's bit about it being "intolerable" for us to accept EU rules.
It was billed as a major speech. I would hate to hear a minor one. He essentially said nothing new. As for addressing the anxieties of remainers he only increased them. What people want to know is how we are going to minimise the damage to the economy. We didn't hear anything about that only about how we're going to take back control. If that means BoJo will be controlling anything at all I think half of British industry will be implementing relocation plans tomorrow. This is the fear.
The three reasons he set out as to why remainers are fearful are nonsense. The kind of nonsense a hack like Johnson might use to produce a newspaper column of the kind that would fire up the faithful but would be forgotten the next day.
Does any remainer really worry about the UK not coming to the aid of Europe in security terms? No, I don't think so. I am not sure anybody in Greece expects anything from us in the event of a war with Russia. Even I don't expect anything for ourselves. And who thinks we are somehow ripping up the cultural links with Europe? A few perhaps, but not many. On the economy he may be right but only because what he proposes is to cut us off from or make trade more difficult with our main suppliers and our main customers. This is plain insanity in any logic. But the main fear is that we will be governed by idiots like him.
If a group of people display spectacularly bad judgement, as they did over Brexit, and in doing so show us they understand nothing but the use of bluster, falsehoods and straw men and seem congenitally incapable of working with others to improve our lot as well as the environment, then we worry. This is what we fear.
Some of the other things in the speech, he or Davis have raised before including this:
"In spite of being outside the stockade, the US has been able to increase its exports twice as fast. I think there are 36 countries around the world that have done better than us in exporting into the EU, even though they are not members".
This is amazing, so utterly unreal one might think BoJo had suffered some sort of episode. What he appears to be suggesting is that because we can't compete on a level playing field when others are winning easily while kicking uphill - let us tilt the pitch against ourselves or put some other form of barrier in place to help us! It is totally illogical. And he adds this:
It is a striking fact that our exports to the EU have grown by only 10% since 2010, while our sales to the US are up 41%, to China 60%, to Saudi Arabia 41, New Zealand 40, Japan 60, South Korea 100%. Those figures reflect the broader story that the lion’s share of the growth is taking place outside the EU, and especially in the Asia-Pacific region.
The EU take 44% of our exports, well over £100 billion. To increase our exports by 60% as we have to China is just totally out of the question. We simply don't have the capacity to do this. If your exports are small a big increase is easy. If they are large it's very hard to make big increases.
And what about this for sheer chutzpah:
"And I say in all candour that if there were to be a second vote I think it would be another year of turmoil and wrangling and feuding in which the whole country would be the loser. So let’s not go there".
To me this says the 2016 campaign was a year of turmoil and wrangling. But even though the decision may be disastrous for the nation, we must shut up and still go ahead and "do the best we can". No intelligent person would think this way.
The Telegraph sees it rather differently (HERE) with an article headed "Detail be damned. Boris articulated a coherent vision for Brexit with real conviction". God help us. The world today is full of detail. You cannot escape it by damning it. Trade deals in particular run to thousands of pages of detail. Boris wants us to return to the days when everything was very simple so that imbeciles like him don't need to get into or understand the detail. In any case if there was any question of interpretation in the old imperial days it would always be resolved in our favour - mainly because we ruled at both ends of the agreement.
In the modern world, if you don't understand the details your opponents (Johnny Foreigner) will - and they will then run rings around you.
It's hard to know whether to laugh or cry when a foreign secretary uses words like murrain and autarky in a speech and press conference as well as sprinkling a few Latin phrases in for good measure. He has delusions of Churchillian greatness. Actually he's the most prominent twerp in a kakistocracy with an unnatural fear of dundridges.
It was portrayed as putting meat on the bones but all we see is still the dry skeleton. There was not a scintilla of flesh.
Now for the most amazing thing of all. The Conservative Home website carried his speech in full and given this is the party membership, the faithful, one would have expected them all to be swooning. But no, the reaction was terrible, check the comments (HERE). It seems even those on the right are beginning to see through the charlatan and recognise a man out for himself. His chances of becoming leader, always pretty hopeless, look like they have gone forever.
A great take on BoJo's speech was in the Irish Times HERE.
Incidentally, the Irish Times also claims Barnier is about to publish the legal text of the joint report from December. This is expected to cause an almighty row, especially in the Brexiteer camp. It is however, a good time to do it. The EU have maximum leverage at the moment. We desperately need a transition period, business is increasingly nervous and time is short. The best outcome would be for the government to walk out of the talks and spark an economic crisis. It might then become obvious what damage Brexit will do to us.
