Tuesday 26 February 2019

The ides of March come early for Brexit





"Et Tu, Jeremy?"


And so, as long predicted by myself, Parliament is rapidly waking up to its true purpose. To end the horrid charade of Brexit once and for all.


As yet, there are only still the quiet whispers of betrayl. Brexit stands on the statute book as Caesar once stood in the senate. Proud, Loud and maybe a little naïve.


But the enemies gather, Jeremy Corbyn, a true friend to Brexit, has been forced the by disintegration of his party, into being bounced by the evil Keir Starmer (he has conspired with the enemy throughout the negotiations) into the position of seeking both a 2nd referendum and to campaign for remain in that referendum.


With Labour gone, only the ERG stand with the DUP in Parliament in favour of any sort of Brexit. Between them they have maybe 100 votes versus 450 or more.


So it is over. Parliament will vote against no deal, and/or vote for an extension lasting years or more and the whole process will be over. People are bored and the momentum behind leave will be left as a dangerous sore in UK politics. It seems quite likely Farage's party will rise up in the polls for the disaffected but to what end who knows as yet?


May will be happy, she has one last chance to get the ERG to vote for the Withdrawal Agreement and failing that she can sail off on the good ship remain, saying she did her best and the 'nutters' were intransigent.


If I were in the ERG I would vote for the Withdrawal Agreement, for its floors it does still meets the test of being a Brexit and moves the UK off the path of further EU integration. However, the bellicose and frankly stupid ERG members I think will opt for the happier ideological place of feeling betrayed by the murderer's of Brexit and blaming others for their own failure, forever. Weirdly they may revel in their own 'stab in the back' narrative, which they think will bring solace rather than danger.


Of course, I say Brexit is doomed, but then so riven too will be the body politic in the UK for a generation or more. Only a few weeks now until the new dawn, that will include, rightly, the end of the Tory party and from a perspective of the business position of the UK, the end of any party that supports capitalism having a chance of power for generations. There is no way the Tories can survive calling referendum and then cancelling Brexit - they are done. May has destroyed them. None of their replacements will be free market in principle, all will be either socialist or nationalist in beliefs. That is a big shame for the long-term future of the Country, as socialism will mean a more structured and higher tax economy that will reduce our dynamism.


 Perhaps in decades to come, poor economic performance will lead to the resurgence of free market beliefs, but looking to the EU and the US, this feels unlikely to be the actual future.

31 comments:

  1. "...for its floors it does still meets the test of being a Brexit..."

    *flaws.

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  2. Today is not a day for soundbites.
    I feel the hand of European Union history on our throat.

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  3. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  4. For god's sakes. Every way we turn - socialism !

    Have you all seen how AWFUL the WA is ??? No Deal is far better, how ever bad that is.

    No. The ERG weren't stupid.

    The biggest lie was on the ballot slip. You can tick "Leave the EU" and expect it to happen. What could the ERG do about that ?

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  5. There are many on the Leave side who would rather see Britain destroyed by Corbyn's communists than allow Remain to steal their victory.

    Very well than. National immolation, the breaking apart of the Union, let's throw our standards on the bonfire of our hopes, crawl in abject surrender to the capos and thugs of the Federation and refuse to act any further in co-opertation with the tyrants who overun our shattered democracy.

    No nation could recover from a betrayal so fundamental, so foundational.

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  6. Anonymous1:04 pm

    I don't think conservatives have been capitalists (or conservative) for a while - the energy price cap springs to mind and the hate law nonsense that can get you banged up for mis-gendering a trans person.

    Every so often they may throw a bone to show a veneer of capitalism (in the same way they throw a sound bit "Brexit-means-Brexit" to keep leavers happy).

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  7. PJH - epic, even by my own low standards...

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  8. Anonymous1:17 pm

    Are there more twists and turns to this? Why are you sure this is the end game?

    Tuesday 12th March: Meaningful Vote
    Wednesday 13th March: No Deal Vote
    Thursday 14th March: Extending Article 50 Vote

    Then -

    Friday 15th March (the actual Ides): Call for a GE or another "no confidence" vote.

    Better than the telly, this.

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  9. Raedwald - It simply isn't a case of us *putting* Corbyn in office but more like us disengaging from elections.

    Fortunately (un ?) we have a tell in Amber Rudd. She should still be on the reserve bench after committing an error which she has admitted, one intersecting in the race sphere (the Windrush.) Yet she is back ?

    Why ?

    She was never meant to have gone. She was there to trigger a crisis to save the WA and that's why she was returned, clearly.

    I predict this.

    A Leave so awful that a referendum to rejoin follows soon afterwards and I don't blame anyone for voting for it as nothing is on offer that actually resembles "Leave the EU" as worded on the original ballot paper.

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  10. As a Remainer I take no pleasure from the situation. Mrs May's deal is almost worse than falling out with no deal, at least the ensuing chaos might have forced Parliament to do some serious thinking, something missing from the last 3 years. Very very unlikely they would come up with anything useful though. Perhaps a pay rise for themselves, that's about all.

    As things stand not only do we fail to deal with the fundamental problems but we look like the unreliable boyfriend/girlfriend who will hop from one disfunctional relationship to another. Led by a dithering Parliament in terror of a Corbyn takeover. We look like an economic tart whom nobody wants to have much to do with and in peril of chucking the entire economy down the pan after snorting a huge line of coke. A worse position than if we had never started.

    The coming years will not be kind to Britain. Not much to laugh at, at all.

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  11. hovis3:47 pm

    The likeley original 'Kai su,[Jeremy]" is far more apt.
    ..it is I believe much more like 'screw you' that the more genteel betrayal implied in 'Et tu'..


    @Jim make that 20 years at least if not longer.

    Worse than if we never started - maybe but the structural imbalance in politcs was brewing for along time - the ref merely the mechanism that allowed the final straw to break - after all General Elections haven't allowed it.


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  12. You are an MP.

    It has been pretty obvs for the last 6 months that there is no point in leaving given the current WA.

    So stay or WT(g)O.

    It is pretty obvs that a lot of people wont forgive you for staying.
    It was a majority.

    So if you stay there will be trouble

    It is pretty obvs that a lot of people wont forgive you for leaving and and wont forgive you for losing their jobs and wont forgive you for making them poorer and wont forgive you for making them wait in passport queues and when some irish nutjob sets a bomb off in london, yes blood will splash on your hands.

    So if you go there will be double

    The UK remains split on this. There is no consensus

    So wev'e got to let them know
    ...
    Should we stay or should we go

    Answer comes there none.

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  13. All humour aside, it would be really funny if we did crash out and not cough up the 39bn.

    On Alphaville, it is pointed out ( in a long incomprehsible article on BOE repo) that
    "
    Thus far, our research suggests a theoretical non-payment of pre-committed EU funds by the UK would lead to an immediate funding gap for Commission programmes. Borrowing is not an option for the EU due to the terms of the Treaty on the Functioning of the European Union. An emergency budget renegotiation meanwhile is possible but extremely politically complex, and unlikely to offer an immediate solution.
    "
    So much for weak negotiating position

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  14. If they fudge a delay then I don't see why a General Election isn't the answer to resolving the deadlock (which doesn't actually exist and is only made up by the crony state).

    Bollock to People's Vote or anything else. Let's get the treasonous MPs out on the hustings.

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  15. Matt - some people see a no-deal Brexit as the worst thing that could happen to the UK

    others see a Corbyn government in that same light

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  16. hovis8:29 pm

    Matt that might work if the parties at any GE might offer a range of options instead of Remain or Remain.

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  17. Indeed we may have two Remain parties but at least they'd come out and say it. Last time we had two Leave manifestos and look where we are now.

    Whilst I realise the Venezuela option is extreme, there is no way the Tories deserve anyone's vote. A mass spoiling of the ballot would be in order.

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  18. Lets have a compromise. Leavers leave, aren't bound by EU rules.

    Remainers remain. They are bound, and they get the costs. All of them. If they don't pay they are bankrupted.

    140.5 bn for the 3 years delay

    100 bn for the Pensions incompetence of the EU

    43.5 bn a year going forward. 13.5 bn for the EU fees, 30 bn for the subsidies to low paid EU workers.

    Any EU costs forced on me, I can claim back from remainers.

    Now that is a fair deal because it's a consensual deal.

    Next. May EU elections. What's the betting we are disenfranchised?

    But I think MPs will discover when they go and vote what the electorate think of them.

    Their rape the electorate idea, you have no consent, do as you are told is going to be laid out for them to see. If you are a criminal them is the time to go a robbing, the police will be tied up protecting the snowflakes from the abuse.

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  19. Anonymous11:37 pm

    I've voted in my last election and I've completed my last honest tax return.

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  20. Bill quango MP1:08 am

    Just for the sake of the historical perspective
    The main people’s fates of those who were involved in the conspiracy to assassinate Julius Caesar.

    Gaius Cassius Longinus, or Cassius. Committed suicide after his defeat at the Battle of Philippi.
    Marcus Junius Brutus the Younger, or Brutus. Also committed suicide after the Battle of Philippi.
    Servius Sulpicius Galba. Condemned to death and subsequently executed in 43 BCE.
    Publius Servilius Casca Longus, or Servilius Casca. Believed to have committed suicide as well along with Cassius and Brutus.
    Decimus Junius Brutus Albinus. Tried to escape to join Cassius and Brutus, but was waylaid and executed by a Gallic chieftain loyal to Marc Antony.
    Lucius Tillius Cimber. Fate unclear, but most likely to have been killed during the Battle of Philippi.
    Gaius Trebonius. Tried for treason by Publius Cornelius Dolabella, tortured and finally beheaded.
    Gaius Cassius Parmensis. Declared an outlaw by the Second Triumvirate, but eventually joined Marc Antony in the latter’s power struggle against Octavian. Fled to Athens after Antony’s defeat in the Battle of Actium, where he was killed by Lucius Varus upon Octavian’s orders.
    Quintus Antistius Labeo. After the defeat in the Battle of Philippi, had allowed himself to be killed by his favorite slave whom he freed, a form of ritualized suicide.

    Suicide was necessary to preserve one’s family wealth. And it sometimes worked.
    The empire ruptured after caesar’s death. And the horrific civil war that had recently ceased and had created the Dictator of Caesar, began again to find his successor. It was even more bloody and brutal and ruinous than what has occurred before. And, of course, the republic was not restored. The reign of emperors began.

    Almost all those who backed the plot to eliminate Brexit...Erm...I mean.eliminate Caesar were soon dead. Even those who had merely looked upon the demise as a good thing, and not been actively involved in the assassination, were soon dead. Cicero among them.

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  21. May's failure will destroy the Conservative Party. 120k members 70% of whom are Leavers - who will refuse, come the May elections, to door knock, deliver leaflets, attend meetings. Probably not actually refuse - just a mass attack of Sciatica, perhaps. Then the big Tory donors are shying away and keeping their wallets shut - why throw money after a disintegrating party? At the inevitable GE the party will have fewer activists and volunteers than the Greens. Local government lost and down to SNP numbers in the Commons.

    Corbyn's trad Labour and rust belt supporters will desert him - but he'll have the city votes, some of the kids, the BAMEs. Half a million members. Enough to put him into Number 10.

    It's up to May and the Parliamentary Conservative Party - either deliver Brexit, or destroy our party. Your choice.

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  22. Anonymous8:26 am

    "A mass spoiling of the ballot would be in order."

    Don't do that. It gives them an excuse to abolish elections.

    Vote for an independent candidate who has lived in your area for at least ten years. Somebody who will support local people rather than a party.

    Don Cox

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  23. "Vote for an independent candidate who has lived in your area for at least ten years."


    Bit difficult here because
    (1) independents rarely feature on the ballot paper,
    (2) I don't think anyone appearing on our ballot paper recently has lived in the area for at least 10 years (it's rumoured that even the incumbent career politician doesn't live in the constituency - his 'address', such that it is, is his office, not his home address) and
    (3) you could stick a red rosette on a donkey round here and it'd still get a comfortable majority.

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  24. Anonymous11:54 am

    Raedwald - "There are many on the Leave side who would rather see Britain destroyed by Corbyn's communists than allow Remain to steal their victory"

    In what sense could Corbyn destroy Britain? Re-enacting Attlee's nationalisation programme? A pain (perhaps) but I'd quite like to see soem strategic industries NOT be sold off. Redcar, where a perfectly productive and modern steel plant was destroyed, is forever in my mind.

    I can only see two ways in which Corbyn/McDonnell would really wreck us

    i) cause the City of London to exit - I'm not sure he'll do that (although on a longer term timescale, without a manufacturing revival London is likely to eventually go the way of Antwerp and Florence before that)

    ii) open borders, although AFAIK they're pretty open already, judging by the Francophone Africans I hear in the streets of the local town. It looks as if Barbara Roche's 'reforms' have never been reversed. When five Gambians (with dual Spanish nationality) were crushed to death in a Birmingham recycling centre a few years back the BBC revealed there were 10,000 Gambians in Brum - why?

    But as I understand it, you don't consider that a problem and anyone who does is evil.

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  25. Anonymous11:58 am

    I should have said a Corbyn foreign policy would be bad for NI, Gibraltar, Falklands - but "the knee is nearer than the shin", it's sauve-qui-peut time.

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  26. Anon: you are not being imaginative enough. It is defence policy (and related matters) where they can do instant and irreperable damage at the stroke of a pen, without requiring budgets or parliamentary approval

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  27. I'm with Anon. A bit of nationalisation, with a state run investment bank actually sounds quite good. We already have an open door immigration policy and unending identity politics based initiatives, so I fail to see how a Corbyn led government could be worse than Mrs. May & Co.

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  28. Anonymous12:13 pm

    The optics of Corbyn hosting a Trump visit could be intersting...

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  29. There are no positive reasons to vote for Mrs. May's Conservatives. And I am not convinced by the negative reason that at least they are not Corbyn's communists.

    One of the advantages of age is that eventually you'll have heard it all before. I think at every election we've been told that the Labour party is different this time; this time they really are hell bent on reducing us to a Pol Pot style year zero.

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  30. Anonymous1:13 pm

    Remember the words of Mark Antony, on the Ides of March:

    "Oh what a fall was there, my countrymen;
    Then I, and you, and all of us fell down,
    Whilst bloody treason flourished over us."

    Are we going to just lie there, and let it happen ?

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  31. Bill quango2:26 pm

    Anon- “ they can’t raise the number of missions again. I mean..they just can’t. It won’t be allowed.”

    “Who’s going to stop them?” Yossarian asked.

    Dobbs was silent. Until eventually, and without conviction, saying quietly, “ somebody will.”

    Yossarian never saw Dobbs again. One day he was there. The next he was disappeared.

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