Mrs May said 109 times at the Despatch Box in the House of Commons that the United Kingdom would leave the European Union on the 29th March 2019, in accordance with the provisions of Article 50 in the Treaty of Lisbon. But the EU has brushed its own Article 50 aside at Mrs May’s request. Britain did not leave the EU on 29th March because Mrs May’s misnamed Withdrawal Agreement with Angela Merkel has not yet got through the House of Commons.

The true name for Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement is the Withdrawal (of Democracy) Agreement. It sets up a Joint Committee in Whitehall (Articles 164 to 169) to rule the relationship between the EU and the UK throughout the transition period (Articles 7&131), which it will extend to 31st December 2099 (Article 132). Clause 2 of Article 166 says that its decisions will “be binding” on the EU & UK; in other words, this Joint Committee will overrule the British government.

As the Court of Justice of the EU will resolve all disputes between the EU and UK sides of this Joint Committee (Articles 168 & 174), this committee will be the means whereby the EU will impose Direct Rule on the UK. Direct Rule by the EU will make Parliament in Westminster redundant, and the proceedings of the Joint Committee will be “confidential”, in other words, secret (clause 10 of Annex VIII).

The actual existence of this Joint Committee may also be secret, and it has never been mentioned by the BBC so far. Ignorance in Britain of the contents of the Withdrawal Agreement is understandably almost universal, as few people, and least of all MPs, have the patience to read through its 585 pages of dense Teutonic verbiage. So ironically MPs who voted against Mrs May’s misnamed Withdrawal (EU) Bill are mistakenly accused of voting to stop Britain escaping from the EU.

Mrs May and the rest of the Remain MPs in the Commons, at least three-fourths of the total number there, will do anything to avoid No Deal (with the EU). No Deal is the WTO Deal, the terms of trade of the World Trade Organisation, by which those countries outside the EU, the majority in the world, trade with the EU. Those terms of trade are the General Agreements on Terms of Trade, known as GATT, which have been reached in the eight rounds of international GATT negotiations since the late 1940s. The WTO oversees the operation of GATT, and all the major trading states in the world belong to the WTO. The EU itself belongs to the WTO, and so is subject to the World Trade Court of the WTO in Geneva. Since the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, the EU’s share of world trade has fallen by half.

If Britain leaves the EU without Parliament agreeing to the EU deal (Mrs May’s misnamed Withdrawal Agreement) and opts for the WTO deal instead, then Britain will regain its independence. It will become self-governing like other countries outside the EU that trade with the EU under WTO rules. Once out of the EU, British voters will be able to vote their sovereign government in a sovereign Parliament out of office as they could before 1973 whereas British voters can never vote the EU Commission out of office now.

Because the Leave victory on the 23rd June 2016 showed the British people to be unreliable subjects of the EU, the EU will withdraw democracy from the UK. And that is what Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement is for. The Joint Committee junta in it will abolish democracy. That is why Mrs May doesn’t care about the electoral consequences of her alliance with Jeremy Corbyn to get her (Anti)Withdrawal Agreement through the Commons. Because once her egregious Agreement gets through Parliament, the Tory & Labour and other parties will not matter anymore, and neither will elections or the electorate. They will all be trumped by the Joint Committee, and the EU has now given Mrs May until next Halloween to get her Agreement through Parliament.

The Withdrawal (of democracy) Agreement is Whitehall’s response to the 23rd June 2016. The EU has always been the bureaucrats’ idea of Heaven, and Whitehall bureaucrats feel far more loyalty to their opposite numbers in the EU than to the British electorate, who they regard as ignorant yokels. The Referendum victory for Leave showed that the Commons could soon have a majority of Leave MPs. So the EU had to act fast.

Mrs May’s mission from Angela Merkel is to force her Agreement through Parliament as the EU’s Final Solution to the British Problem. And in that mission to withdraw democracy, she has the support of those MPs in the Commons who campaigned for Remain before the 23rd June 2016. Remain MPs would much rather be ruled by EU bureaucrats, than by the dangerously unpredictable and swinish multitude of British voters.

Remain MPs regard the vote for British Home Rule on the 23rd June 2016 as a racist & xenophobic Hate Crime. Consequently, Remain MPs are wary of the ballot box itself and see universal suffrage as a dangerous indulgence of populism. Populism gives a voice to the vulgar, plebeian concerns of the common herd, and those concerns can speak through the ballot box, as they did on the 23rd June 2016.

Whitehall and Westminster both agree that the 2016 Referendum revolt showed that British voters are dangerously patriotic. Better therefore that democracy is withdrawn altogether through the covert imposition of direct EU rule through a secret junta. The Joint Committee in Mrs May’s Withdrawal (of Democracy) Bill is just the junta to do that; it is a masterpiece of bureaucratic cunning.

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