A website called Reaction recently published an article by their 'editorial board' claiming that the EU "does not mean business" and calling for the government to leave without a deal. The site was founded in 2016 by Iain Martin, a well known right wing journalist to "provide commentary and analysis on politics, business, economics and culture – seeking to make sense of the news." But don't be fooled, it's another pro-Brexit website and I assume the article was written mainly by Martin himself.
The editorial 'board' is made up of journalists and fund managers and Lord Salisbury who is I assume financing the whole thing including a student programme to provide "paid internships and training to the next generation of journalists" which is funded "by events, dinners and the generous backing of our supporters." They are the next generation of swivel-eyed nationalist loonies.
The advisory board includes Adam Boulton which surprises me but I assume he is the token impartial journalist.
The article accuses Barnier of being the "biggest procrastinator in Europe since the Roman general Fabius" and seems to have forgotten that the Tory party chose Theresa May after Gove stabbed Johnson in the back and she went for a needless election in 2017 so we didn't actually get a policy until mid 2018. And the foreign and Brexit secretaries then promptly resigned! Meanwhile the EU waited patiently - where was the procrastination?
The EU have published clear, logical mandates months and years ahead of us so it's hard to see how the EU engineered all the delays but apparently somehow they did.
This is the heart of the piece, what it's all about:
"From the outset, Brussels’ attitude towards Brexit Britain has resembled that of George III towards the rebel American colonists. Britain, under the management of Theresa May and Olly Robbins, was complicit in fuelling EU delusions by behaving in a hangdog manner – traceable to the elites’ embarrassment over Brexit – like a delinquent petitioning for parole. Britain has since progressed to Boris Johnson and David Frost; but Ursula von der Leyen is as doctrinaire an integrationist as Jean Claude Juncker, and Michel Barnier remains the barrier to any breakthrough agreement."
One is bound to say to the authors of the article - this is what Brexit means, it is what you voted for and urged others to support as well. We always said Britain would be the supplicant and so it is turning out.
David Frost is lauded (as was Theresa May back in 2016) and said to be the "key to the situation" and is described as "a European reformer rather than a Brexiteer and he has insider familiarity with Brussels’ workings. His rise was unexpected, but his CV justifies it."
It strikes me that he has actually done nothing yet - except carve up the United Kingdom into two separate customs zones by placing a border down the Irish sea - and will get nothing in the future.
Brexiteers keep putting up a new champion as if that is somehow the "key" to changing the dynamics. It's the equivalent of dining in a foreign country and shouting louder when the waiter doesn't understand English in the hope it will make a difference.
What's the betting that next year Frost and Johnson will be attacked like Ollie Robbins and Theresa May as behaving in a "hang dog manner" and conceding too much. I think this is a 100 per cent certainty. The expectations of Brexit among the elite is far too high. Britain is not being thwarted, the EU are not punishing us. All of the ire comes from seeing their very own inflated dreams of Brexit flushed down the toilet.
There is no benefit to Brexit whatsoever, as they will eventually admit. And I am not convinced any of them have even been following the negotiations since the article claims Brussels' "longstanding strategy" is to "refuse broad-front negotiations and impose a tunnel approach whereby it refuses to discuss wider issues until its priorities have been conceded,"
The article came out on Friday - the very same day the talks ended and Barnier said the following (and not for the first time):
The British have also proposed British texts on certain subjects. But such consolidation will only be possible if it is done together - the British and us, and not each on its own - and on all subjects in parallel.
See the difference? Martin says Brussels refuses to "broad-front negotiations" while the EU press Britain to discuss "all subjects in parallel". It is as if the last eighteen months never happened.
It ends like this:
"The elephant in the negotiating room is Britain’s net £72bn trading deficit with the EU, whose member states have much more to lose. The only sensible course is to factor WTO trading into our post-Covid recovery blueprint and prepare for a long march. At least it will have a realistic destination, unlike the intransigent EU, sinking further into internal dissension and incoherence."
It ends like this:
"The elephant in the negotiating room is Britain’s net £72bn trading deficit with the EU, whose member states have much more to lose. The only sensible course is to factor WTO trading into our post-Covid recovery blueprint and prepare for a long march. At least it will have a realistic destination, unlike the intransigent EU, sinking further into internal dissension and incoherence."
The Reaction article is more or less a toned down version of the Daily Express on Saturday:
In a few years time the Daily Express will be telling it’s readers the EU forced Britain out of the EU against its will. pic.twitter.com/KgmE1zZFv9— Nick🇬🇧🇪🇺 (@nicktolhurst) August 22, 2020
The newspaper that has above all others pushed for the UK to leave without a deal and parroted the claim that we will flourish even without a trade agreement is now blaming the EU for the fact that we can't get what we want - or need.
There is no way that Britain can leave without a deal. Talking about the £72 billion deficit makes it sound like this is all Mercedes-Benz and BMWs and doesn't take account that about a third of it is food and the rest is stuff like medicine, vehicle parts and sub-assemblies and things we cannot presumably buy cheaper elsewhere.
There is no way that Britain can leave without a deal. Talking about the £72 billion deficit makes it sound like this is all Mercedes-Benz and BMWs and doesn't take account that about a third of it is food and the rest is stuff like medicine, vehicle parts and sub-assemblies and things we cannot presumably buy cheaper elsewhere.
If we left without a deal there would be chaos. When that happens what is the government going to do? There will be disruption and shortages even if we get a deal, without one things will be even worse with price rises and factory closures to add to the queues of unemployed.
It ain't going to happen and the EU know it - there WILL be a thin deal in the next few weeks, it WILL be a bad deal for the UK, far worse than we have now, and there WILL be a further extension to the transition period. This WILL provoke howls of anguish from Brexiteers, fishermen and the more hard-line leave voters but it will be their tragedy - and ours.
Nothing is more certain.
It ain't going to happen and the EU know it - there WILL be a thin deal in the next few weeks, it WILL be a bad deal for the UK, far worse than we have now, and there WILL be a further extension to the transition period. This WILL provoke howls of anguish from Brexiteers, fishermen and the more hard-line leave voters but it will be their tragedy - and ours.
Nothing is more certain.
