Leopards don’t change their spots

 

The jubilee comes closer, the jubilee of the day we won the Brexit vote. That was on Thursday 23rd June 2016. We’ve not forgotten, especially as the shenanigans Brussels produces again demonstrate that we were right to do so. Reports and articles at the weekend, produced by the various Remain correspondents, were hinting that the EU wants another ‘exciting’ showdown with the UK over the NI Protocol. After all, what could go wrong when even Pres. Biden is on their side, demanding that the UK observe ‘Teh Rulz’ as interpreted by Brussels.

There was also the attempt by Brussels to undermine Lord Frost with a lengthy report based on Brussels ‘diplomats’ and ‘sources’ telling the DT’s Remain correspondent that they much preferred Gove:

“One EU diplomat told The Telegraph: “Gove’s professional, less emotional approach was the more logical one from where we sit.”. (paywalled link)

Never mind that only in EU anti-Brexit circles a politician can be labelled ‘professional’ compared with a professional diplomat, especially one who knows the EU’s “negotiating positions” inside out. I bet Gove’s attitude was more ‘logical’ for Brussels, that is: more ready to cave in.

Surprisingly, RemainCentral doesn’t seem to be too fussed about all of this but the DT’s Remain ‘correspondent’ is still fighting on. He clearly is still well connected, his Brussels ‘sources’ are feeding him incendiary titbits – and he’s even got Mr Sefcovic, the EU trade negotiator, to pen a piece for the DT. Brussels, it seems, is hell-bent to get their retaliation in first:

“Brussels will start a trade war with Britain if Boris Johnson overrides the Brexit treaty so that Northern Irish shops can keep selling British sausages, a vice-president of the European Commission has warned. In an article for The Telegraph – published below – Maros Sefcovic said the EU would react “swiftly, firmly and resolutely” if Britain unilaterally extended the grace period in the Northern Ireland Protocol, which expires at the end of June.” (paywalled link)

So far so usual for anything coming out of Brussels. However, this quote had my ears prick up:

“Writing in The Telegraph, Mr Sefcovic, Lord Frost’s opposite number, said the bloc’s retaliation would be so crushing that it would ensure the UK “abides by its international law obligations”.” (paywalled link)

I may be ancient, a veteran of the Brexit wars, but my memory goes back further than just the Brussels attempts to prevent our voting for Brexit and to punish us for having done so. Expressions like ‘crushing retaliations’ reminded me of phrases used by the governments of the then Warsaw Pact states whenever they tried to threaten negotiators of other, non-communist countries.

So I went and had a look at the life and times of Mr Sefcovic. He’s a Slovak, a country created out of the former Czechoslovakia, by the will of the Czech and Slovak people to go their separate ways after the fall of the Wall and the Soviet Union. One might have assumed that Maros S. understood our will to determine our own future by voting to leave. One might have hoped that the smooth separation, the partition of Czechoslovakia, might have taught him that such things are indeed possible.

But no – it’s ‘once a communist, always a communist’, proof for the old saying that leopards don’t change their spots. My suspicions were spot-on, see for yourselves:

“Born in Bratislava, Šefčovič originally enrolled at the University of Economics in his hometown in 1984, but left the university after one year in order to pursue a degree in Russia at Moscow State Institute of International Relations, where he studied from 1985 to 1990. In June 1987, Šefčovič became a candidate for membership in the Communist Party of Czechoslovakia. After the two-year candidacy period during which he had to secure three approvals from other party members and which he embraced to “deepen his knowledge of Marxism–Leninism”, he filed an application for party membership in May 1989. The party approved his application on 1 June 1989 and he became an official member.” (link)

That year, 1989, is such a long time ago that it seems like ancient history. However, it’s the year when in November the Wall came down, it’s the year when thousands of East Germans tried to flee their communist paradise, camping in the West German Embassy in Budapest. In the early 1980s we recall the uprising of Solidarnosc in Poland, the crushing of it by the Polish Dictator Januszewicz by instituting martial law.

How deeply must the roots of strict communist doctrines reach when a young man like Sefcovic preferred to go to Moscow, to ‘deepen’ his Marxist-Leninist knowledge and credentials in order to join the communist party – at a time when his contemporaries were fighting it, when dissidents like Vaclav Havel led the ‘Velvet Revolution’ which toppled the communist regime in Czechoslovakia in 1989!

And this is the ‘negotiator’ who is threatening us with ‘sanctions’, using unreconstructed communist language. Yes, he will ‘offer’ us ‘concessions’, for example on medicines, admitting that:

“the EU needs to ensure “undisrupted supply” for drugs authorised in the UK for Northern Ireland, especially those that are seen as essential to the NHS.” (link, paywalled)

How very kind and generous! Sefcovic is so ‘flexible’ that he even offers a concession on pet passports:

“The EU is also ready to implement a derogation on pet passports for guide dogs entering Northern Ireland from Great Britain as well as eased rules to avoid “multiple tagging” of livestock. In an attempt to ease the food and agriculture checks that have disrupted supplies to supermarkets, Frost has tabled proposals for a veterinary agreement between where the UK and EU would recognise that their food safety rules are the same in most areas.” (link, paywalled)

It’s of course deeply emotional, illogical and disruptive by Lord Frost to point out that food safety rules are the same in most areas – after all, it’s not as if, at the stroke of midnight on January 31st 2020, we scrapped all standards in a rush to poison our food and our animals …!

And so, as the Brussels juggernaut tries again to squash us, we note once more that the Remainers in our MSM are either incapable of recognising what is in front of their noses or are willfully blind to recognise that leopards don’t change their spots – not the Brussels ones and especially not the communist ones. 

 

KBO!

 

 

Photo by Pandiyan