Written by David Blake
This article was first published in Briefings for Brexit and we re-publish with their kind permission.
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Remainers who want to block a ‘no-deal’ Brexit should be frank about their real intention. Their plan is for the UK to be subsumed into a United States of Europe with the most important laws determined by unelected officials in Brussels
So the Arch Remainer Philip Hammond resigns because he refuses to be part of a government that takes the UK out of the EU ‘without a deal’. He then tweets his ‘wholehearted support’ for the new Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, for his determination ‘to do a deal with Brussels’. Indeed, most of us want ‘to do a deal with Brussels’ since it will be less disruptive for the economy in the short term. Yet the Financial Times reports that 30 or more Tory MPs are threatening to block a ‘no-deal’ exit. We should be very clear about what they really mean.
Boris Johnson has confirmed that the UK will leave the EU by 31 October 2019.
This could involve leaving with what has been dubbed ‘no deal’. But this is a very devious misnomer invented by Remainers and constantly used by their friends in the media. There will inevitably be ‘a deal’. At the very minimum, we will trade with the EU on World Trade Organisation terms. This is how we currently trade with most countries outside the EU and that trade has grown faster than trade with EU member states (at 2.88% p.a. v 1% p.a.). In addition, there are already many ‘mini deals’ agreed – covering visa-free travel, aircraft landing, rail and shipping agreements, road haulage licences, student exchanges, defence and security, etc – so citizens and businesses of both the UK and EU can continue visiting and trading with each other with minimal disruption, as WTO rules require. Further, a sufficient number of the international trade deals negotiated by the EU have been novated that we can also continue trading on the same terms with many of these countries as we do now. A key example is Switzerland which accounts for more than a quarter of our trade under these EU-negotiated deals. So this can hardly be described as ‘no deal’.
The EU has also said that it does not want ‘no deal’. But the ‘deal’ that the EU wants and that Remainers like Hammond have voted for three times is the Withdrawal Agreement (WA) and Political Declaration (PD).
But as I have pointed out in a previous Briefings for Brexit piece, the WA/PD is NOT a real Brexit. It is a Boomerang Brexit. It is a trap. It is a one-way ticket back into the EU – before 2025 and on far worse terms than we currently have. This is what Olly Robbins meant when he was overheard in that Brussels bar saying the backstop was always intended to be a bridge to the ‘final trading arrangement’.
Jean-Claude Juncker, in his 2017 State of the Union Address, advocates various steps towards greater EU centralisation including a stronger Commission President. Euro-fanatics like Martin Schulz, former President of the EU Parliament and ex-leader of the German SPD, have made it very clear that they want political union by 2025. This means that the Commission will become the unelected Executive (so Europe’s ‘President’ will be the Commission President – currently Jean-Claude Juncker), the European Council becomes the unelected Senate, and the European Parliament remains as it is with very limited powers to block legislation coming from the Commission. The direction of movement is towards a single foreign policy, a single fiscal and tax policy, and a single military command, etc. This is all allowed by the 2007 Lisbon Treaty which introduced a European constitution by the backdoor – after it was rejected in national referenda in 2005. Brussels also wants all EU states not in the euro to join by 2025. Any new members must join the euro.
The WA, much of which was drafted in the German Chancellor’s private office (according to John Petley’s anonymous informant), was designed in such a way that the UK could re-join the EU in full at some time after the next general election in 2022, or so Theresa May is reported to have suggested to Angela Merkel. Rejoining the EU would likely mean joining the euro and Schengen Agreement on free movement – and losing the rebate. In such a future scenario, our interest rates would be set, not by the Bank of England, but by the European Central Bank in Frankfurt. Theresa May is also reported to have agreed to keep as many EU laws as she could on state aid, the environment, workers’ rights, etc. Much of this is included in the (supposedly non-binding) Political Declaration accompanying the WA which commits us to rejoin the EU’s Customs Union – and hence not have a free trade agreement with the EU along the lines of the deal with Canada that the government initially promised.
Now you can’t blame the EU for playing hard ball, especially when it observes how much of the British establishment wants to reverse Brexit. But it is time for Hammond and those 30 Tory MPs to acknowledge that by blocking a ‘no deal’ Brexit, the UK could be subsumed into a United States of Europe with the most important laws that we have to obey determined by unelected officials in Brussels. They also need to admit that they are quite content to ignore the result of this country’s biggest ever democratic mandate given in the Referendum in June 2016 and equally happy to sign up to the sham democracy of the future United States of Europe.
Hammond is now known as ‘Phil Guevara’ around Whitehall. Perhaps this nom de guerre is appropriate, since his hero Che helped to create one of the most undemocratic countries on the face of the planet.
We are supposed to be negotiating the withdrawal of the UK from the EU. A “deal” is a red herring, the deals would be made after we have left. The negotiations are basically the EU telling us how they want us to leave and what influence they will have over us in the future (phase 1). In the Article 50 Treaty (written by EU bureaucrats) it states a country will leave the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement, after 2 years, if one isn’t agreed. It is the EU that made the rule, not our government. The second phase of Article 50 is where “deals” are made. That is when we ask the Germans if they still want to sell their cars to us, or France still want to sell their Cheese to us, or the Italians still want to sell their Prosecco to us. I gamble they will say YES PLEASE !
Interesting epithet about Hammond! Actually also, Che Guevara was also a huge fan of Perón and of Mussolini and stated “Forget about Nazi-fascism and the clerical fascism of Franco and Salazar. By fascism I mean the true essence of what was a revolutionary movement — or left-wing fascism…. True pure fascism, as envisaged by Mussolini, grew out of the militant left-wing of Italian Socialism. It was an attempt to impose the Social Democratic program through dictatorship and armed force.”
Hmm “Impose the Social Democratic program through dictatorship and armed force”. Nothing to to with the plans for a militarised EU based on absolute adherence to codices written by the Commission (as Ursula Von Der Leyen recently said) obviously.
If the remainers were frank and honest they would leave the conservative party and join the liberal party. That must include the 277 conservative MPs that voted for Mrs May’s Not really leaving just pretending WD treaty on the third reading. They will then get their vassal state.
Perhaps Theresa May could head the group of Remainer Conservative Backbenchers. One would think that she would be suitable. Mmm.. No, they may not be able to trust her.