This article was first published in Moraymint Chatter and we re-publish with the kind permission of the author.
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[Part 1 was published here yesterday]
The EU Referendum Result Reaction
Let’s set aside for now the oft-espoused Remain argument that those 17.4 million of us who voted Leave didn’t know what we were voting for; were duped by fake news and manipulated by outrageous lies; are racists; are bigoted, xenophobic Little-Englanders; are uneducated old gits screwing up the future for the young etc. As someone who voted Leave, who knows people who voted Leave (about half the people I know, funnily enough) and who has looked carefully at the plethora of post-Referendum voting analyses, the fact is that the Leave vote was won by a majority of people for whom recovering the UK’s sovereignty was the overriding deciding factor. It’s important to bear this in mind.
‘They must go on voting until they get it right’
José Manuel Barroso
President of the European Commission
2004 – 14
It’s important also to bear in mind that the British people weren’t being asked to vote on a type of withdrawal from the European Union, ie a ‘hard Brexit’ or a ‘soft Brexit’ or a ‘deep and special relationship’ or a ‘Norway option’ or a ‘Canada-Plus option’ or any option other than to leave the European Union: namely to leave the Customs Union, the Single Market and the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice. Only since the Referendum result became known has the losing side coined a raft of terms supposedly to define ‘Leave’, but which in fact are designed to confuse, impugn and undermine the true meaning of Leave – which means Leave.
‘The UK belongs to the EU’
Martin Schulz
President of the European Parliament
2014 – 17
General Election 2017
As David Cameron disappeared over the horizon, the Conservative Party anointed Theresa May as Prime Minister, a Remain-voting MP. She in turn appointed a Cabinet comprising a majority of Remain-voting ministers. At that moment, as far as the UK’s relationship with the EU was concerned, the beliefs of the nation’s political leadership team were crystallised into the polar opposite of those of the majority of the British electorate. The seeds of Brexit failure were being sown from the outset.
Badly advised, Prime Minister May then called a General Election expecting, according to the polls, to achieve a substantial majority in the House of Commons. The strategy failed – not least because of Theresa May’s non-existent empathy with the general public – and so the Conservative Party was forced to form a minority government, relying on a confidence-and-supply agreement with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party (DUP) in order for the Conservatives to exercise executive power.
However, the key point here is this: the manifestos of both the Conservative Party and the Labour Party respectively pledged to honour the Referendum result and take the UK out of the EU. In the General Election, 82% of the electorate – over 26 million people – voted Conservative or Labour. Just 7% of the electorate voted for the political party sworn to stopping Brexit: the Liberal Democrats. The British people desired to see Brexit delivered, even if the journey itself wasn’t clear.
It is an illusion to think that EU states can hold on to their autonomy’
Hans Tietmeyer
President of the German Bundesbank
1993 – 99
The Brexit Process
The process for a member-state to leave the European Union is enshrined in Article 50 of The Treaty of Lisbon. Article 50 was triggered by the Conservative government in March 2017 and was to involve a 2-year process of negotiation aimed at securing a Withdrawal Agreement culminating in the UK leaving the EU on 29 March 2019. If the Withdrawal Agreement could not be ratified by both parties to the Agreement then the UK would leave anyway on 29 March, without a formal agreement (NB Some lawyers argue that Article 50 does not permit the UK simply to leave the EU without an agreement; they argue that the government must pass legislation in Parliament expressly to leave the EU without a deal, but that’s another twist to the story).
Parliament passed into law the UK’s intention to leave the EU: the European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018. In other words, the UK would leave the European Union by law on 29 March 2019, either under a Withdrawal Agreement, or by simply stopping being a member of the EU on that date. Parliament voted by 498 to 114 to trigger Article 50; in other words, Parliament decided emphatically that the UK would leave the European Union, by law, on a particular date, come what may.
‘National sovereignty will soon prove itself to be a product of the imagination’
Gerhard Schröder
Chancellor of Germany
1998 – 2005
Leaving without a formal agreement was soon termed ‘No Deal’. However, rather like Leaving became a Type-of-Leaving in the eyes of the losing side of the Referendum, so the losing side started describing No Deal as a ‘hard Brexit’ or a ‘cliff edge’ or ‘crashing out’ or some other pejorative adjective akin to Armageddon. In fact, leaving without a Withdrawal Agreement would simply require the UK to migrate to trading with the nations of the European Union under World Trade Organisation (WTO) rules. Most of the countries of the world (77 of them) trade with the EU under WTO rules; the other 58 countries of the WTO trade with the EU under negotiated terms. The UK has nothing to fear about trading with the EU on WTO rules despite the hysterical cries from those on the losing side of the Referendum, amplified by the BBC and other organs of the mainstream media.
The Withdrawal Agreement
Prime Minister May said in January 2017 that ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ implying that if any Withdrawal Agreement didn’t pass muster, the UK would leave the EU on 29 March as intended. Indeed, on over 100 occasions at the Despatch Box in the House of Commons the Prime Minister has stated that the UK will leave the EU on 29 March.
A Withdrawal Agreement was negotiated between the European Commissioner for Internal Market and Services (M Michel Barnier) and a British civil servant (Mr Oliver ‘Olly’ Robbins). Both men are unelected bureaucrats. The 599-page Withdrawal Agreement was almost certainly conceived by European Commission lawyers and staff in Brussels using the expert writing skills of British civil servants.
The Meaningful Vote
Prime Minister May put the Withdrawal Agreement to the House of Commons on 9 January 2019 where it was debated for 5 days. On 16 January, Parliament rejected the deal in a so-called ‘Meaningful Vote’ by 432 to 202 votes – the biggest defeat of a government motion by Parliament in British history. Undeterred, the British government managed to secure from the EU a few insubstantial amendments to the Withdrawal Agreement and so, rather bizarrely, put the deal back to the House of Commons for a second ‘Meaningful Vote’ on 12 March. Parliament verified that the Agreement was a ‘bad deal’ by rejecting it again by 391 to 242 votes, the 4th biggest defeat of a government motion by Parliament in British history.
It might have been fair to assume at this stage, therefore, that the Barnier/Robbins’ deal was indeed a ‘bad deal’ and that the UK would be set to leave the EU with ‘no deal’ on 29 March – as promised by Mrs May on many occasions previously and enshrined as such in UK law.
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[[To be continued with Part 3 tomorrow on INDEPENDENCE Daily]
A bit of info for you. Interesting to look at the United Nations Population Division web-site, you’ll find all sorts on interesting stuff like this.
“Replacement Migration: Is It a Solution to Declining and Ageing Populations?”
https://www.un.org/en/development/desa/population/publications/ageing/replacement-migration.asp
The UN are certainly planning to replace us and you have to ask why, in a rapidly overpopulating world is a declining population seen as undesirable?
If we don’t leave the EU and take back control of our borders we finished, this is suicide.
I often accuse those in Westminster of living in a bubble detached from the outside world, unfortunately there are many people who live the same way, I know quite a few acquaintances who have no interest in politics and I find this frustrating – how can they not care what happens politically in their country? The UN Migrant Pact was signed without a whimper from the public. People are being de-platformed for having a different opinion, some are being persecuted and harassed by an increasingly authoritarian police force and their human rights infringed all to appease a certain kind of people. Yes the people are getting angry, Brexit has been an eye opener revealing our democracy is nothing but a sham, does the queen prorogue parliament – does she heck! Nothing is working in this country and all because parliament refuse to do what most of them pledged to do. Will the people rise up? I hope so because if we don’t fight back we are lost.
All EU countries were effectively abolished by the Lisbon Treaty, signed off on our behalf by Gordon Brown on 1st December 2009. “The plot began over 100 years ago in secrecy and has been pursued with deception, dishonesty, disinformation, dissembling, deceit, equivocation, and every other word of that ilk in the dictionary. It climaxed with the Lisbon Treaty which was deliberately drafted to be unintelligible since, if intelligible to an ordinary reader, no thinking nation would tolerate it.” Britain Abolished authored by James Carver, George Curtis and Torquil Dick-Erikson. This little book is essential reading for every Briton and I am endeavouring to lay my hands on some more copies. However, it was written several years ago so it might be a bit of a struggle!
That treaty is a real horror! Gordon Brown should be tarred and feathered for his part in this.
As I say in my article on party politics in http://www.cravenfreedom.com it should have been impossible for Heath to have done what he did. What made it possible?
THE PARTY SYSTEM. See my text.as to why and then compare with now.
And all you “good” people in UKIP etc are simply aiding and abetting this ghastly system by thinking you must play the party game. You think that it is merely a matter of havign the right policy. no it is NOT.
THE PARTY SYSTEM makes our real Common Law constitution unworkable because ithat system destroys the separation of powers,so essentlal to our freedom.
So, if we escape the cluthces of the EU we msut make sure it can never happen again. DITCH THE PARTY SYSTEM
Martin, I feel your frustration, and I do partly agree with you.
Our current party system is a big problem for democracy, especially while MPs put their party’s interests above those of the constituents that elected them.
And especially, as you illustrate on your website, the fact that the main Establishment parties are in fact all the same entity, different heads on the same monster. They may all wear different colour rosettes, and on the surface appear to present different policies, but scratch beneath the veneer and the Labour, Conservative, LibDem, Greens, SNP, Plaid Cymru etc are all following the same secret ‘hidden agenda’ that has been going on quietly behind the scenes for many years now.
The different colour rosettes give the impression that voters have a ‘choice’, when in truth they don’t.
While I agree the PARTY SYSTEM is indeed broken and makes a mockery of democracy in not just our own country but any other country that has supposedly ‘democratic’ parties equally following the same hidden agenda, we can only beat this system by ‘playing’ the system I’m afraid.
All it takes its just one ‘anti-Establishment’ party that people can get behind and the rest can fall into place. But it will take a lot of effort to convince those voters who have already given up to start voting again, as well as changing the ‘programmed’ habits of those who will vote for Establishment parties “no matter what” (“my grandparents always voted Labour so I do so too” etc)
But the other problem is the fracturing of the “anti-Establishment” vote. This isn’t just about Brexit anymore, this is about seizing power from the Establishment. I see in the Newport by-election today that For Britain and Democrats & Veterans have stood candidates against UKIP’s Neil Hamilton. I wish Mr Hamilton the best of luck, but I honestly think it is unlikely that he would win outright, due to this splitting of votes.
Those that are truly ‘anti-Establishment’ must come together and put their own differences aside, and pool resources into winning seats at elections from Establishment parties.
I believe the unelected civil service is the real ‘government’ – political parties are there to give a pretence that we have a choice and that we live in a democracy – when in fact the opposite is true.. I joined UKIP over a decade ago because I wanted to leave the EU and UKIP was the only party offering that option. I fear for UKIP now Nigel has decided to start up a new party, splitting the vote is not helping!
*as we are seeing in … etc
Noted but I prefer the original version and “wee” over the lot of them.
I think it’s rather important to understand who are the real extremists and equally who the fanatical overlords. The ordinary people more and more see these self-appointed types as a new kind of feudal aristocracy. Like the EU technocrats this group feels superior, entitled, lordly and intellectually above the rest of society, in radio and TV interviews and in private they scoff at the opinions of others, they are disparaging and curt, ill-mannered and privileged, they view the citizens as serfs and countries as serfdoms, their property.
The sense one gets when they speak and roll their eyes at the possibility that anyone can be against the idea of an EU empire, with its civil code based on the precedent of Justinian – he who unleashed a European-wide genocide in the C5th (the first of so many on the Continent let’s not forget, in the name of some ideology or romantic utopian creed) – is that the Remainer cabal with its appointed upper chamber of barons set on preserving their privilege are in fact WORSE than the old Landlords and Hereditary Lords, who at least had a real investment in the land and in its preservation (the pre-Reform Act 1911 Lords in fact opposed Britain’s involvement in the conflicts that led to WW1 as they wanted to ensure the security of their lands and capital investments, it was the LIBERAL Lloyd George – and later admirer of Hitler – who took the country into the most destructive war ever known and the utter decimation of Europe and Britain, all for their socialist-leaning progressive ideologies)
These new aristos have no such commitment to Britain and its lands or peoples and they are proud of it, believing their globalism is actually internationalism, their progressiveness, a carte blanche to authorise the removal of liberties from any who disagree; their blinkered regulations a kind of security and safety from the world of opportunity; they can be seen as essentially 3rd-Way post-fascists who want an end sovereignty and the increased power of corporations and transnational committees. They would agree with Mussolini, that imperialist, when he said “Democracy is beautiful in theory; in practice it is a fallacy” “We recognise no borders and no flags” “(it is) necessary to imagine a wholly new political conception, … overcoming at the same time …liberalism, and the limited horizons of various spent and exhausted democracies” “What is freedom? There is no such thing…!” “I am making superhuman efforts to educate this people. When they have learnt to obey, they will believe what I tell them.”
Mussolini or fanatical Remainers wedded to the EU ideology? It is so hard to tell these days, for they are so “1930s”.
The UK has a unique role in the world in being able to look beyond the continental fixation on ideology and fortress-building. Their destructive creeping ivy will in any case get between all the nooks, bricks and rafters of society and bring the whole edifice of imperialist Remain ideology crumbling down in time, so, in spite of the powers taken by this privileged high intellectual class to itself, as we wee in Parliament and the “Lords”, we must now get out and shine a light for self-determination and freedom or sadly it will cost a lot more than £39bn.
And look what happened to Mussolini – a fitting ending to a tyrant.
Article 50 was a law written with the specific intention of keeping whoever wanted to leave the EU, stuck fast in the EU. It was written with that intention all along. It is not the route we should have gone down, but then May never wanted to leave anyway, she’s just looking for a way to make it ‘not my fault, guv’.