The ‘Emperor of the EU’ …
A sennight – seven days – one week: yes, it’s now official, we’re Out. Royal Assent for the WA has been granted. You can watch the video clip of the announcement in the HoC here.
What now for the Remainers who’ve accompanied those last three years and seven months, the ‘Big Beasts’ who were never off our TV screens: the Heseltines, the Gina Millers, the MPs like Kenneth Clarke, Dominic Grieve, the former PMs like Major and Blair? What now for the Remain writers and journalists, the mostly Remain ‘Brussels correspondents’? So far – so quiet.
We’ve observed before that one paper only has a Brussels correspondent worth his salt: The Express. Late yesterday evening that correspondent, Joe Barnes, wrote a great summary, pointing out some EU ‘facts’ which the broadsheets have generously overlooked because they didn’t fit their Remain agenda. He explains why the EUrocrats are fearful:
“They [the Eurocrats] fear that a Britain free from the unnecessary regulatory constraints and the burden of bureaucracy would become a terrifying economic competitor on the EU’s doorstep.” (link)
They understand in Brussels what “Singapore-on-Thames” will mean for the rump EU, namely that:
“[…] a Westminster government could be able to adopt rapid regulatory framework changes to create a friendlier environment for manufacturers, software developers or even bankers. Such a post-Brexit strategy would represent a massive shift from the membership of the EU’s rigid, over-regulated single market and Eurozone. It’s this attitude and idea that has given birth to the so-called “level playing field”, which asks the UK to commit to maintaining its state aid, tax, employment standards and environmental protections.” (link)
In conclusion, this is the actual reason for Brussels’ insistence on a ‘level playing field, Mr Barnes finishing with a summary which describes the unspoken arguments with which M Barnier and the rest will fight for the EU’s economic survival:
“But it’s not Brussels’ sudden desire to fight climate change or protect workers’ right that drives their negotiating position, it’s a genuine fear that by scrapping cumbersome regulations Britain will become Europe’s premier economic destination.” (link)
It’s this fear of “unfair” competition, this sudden desire to create ‘level playing fields’ which has also driven the arguments by Ms vdLeyen at Davos when she proposed that “CO2 Border Tax”, as we reported yesterday (here). Please check out the report and analysis our friends at facts4eu have published regarding her speech (link)! In my ire about the Green blanket we can expect to be used to suffocate Brexit, I overlooked her overweening attitude, talking of the whole continent of Europe when meaning the EU.
Next, there’s an outstanding, devastating critique of M Barnier in the DT which is sadly paywalled. It hints at our Remainers having turned him into an oversized ‘Wizard of Oz’, accompanied by a steady denigration of our proper Brexiteer negotiators. They have constantly been supporting our wannabe Barnier Mandarins who led those negotiations ending in that May disaster.
I’ve been rubbing my eyes reading this article and kept asking myself why it is that such critique was never heard or seen in the MSM during those last three years and seven months:
“Over the last few weeks, Michel Barnier has been issuing a constant stream of demands, edicts and ultimatums over everything that Britain will have to agree to before it will be offered a trade deal with the European Union. But hold on. How come Barnier is still in a job? True, he was kept even as the commission changed to oversee the next phase of Brexit negotiations. And yet, in his first role as the chief Brexit negotiator he was a comprehensive failure. He overplayed his hand, and underestimated the resolve of the UK. And in the end, he blundered towards a much harder Brexit that seemed likely at the start of the process.” (paywalled link)
That’s another question I’ve not seen being asked before! Perhaps it’s because our mostly Remain MSM preferred us plebs to be in awe, cowed by that image they’ve perpetuated until now, of that huge, mighty EU and poor, inept Little England lacking in expertise, strength and ‘acceptable’ arguments. The conclusion of this article is another ‘keeper’ for the next months of Trade Negotiations:
“In reality, a trade deal between the EU and the UK is clearly overwhelmingly in the interests of both sides. The EU gets to maintain its massive surplus, and protects all the jobs that are created by selling stuff to Britain. We get the minimum of disruption to our economy. […] Instead, it now appears inevitable that the hapless Barnier will carry on meddling, making impossible demands, and issuing high-handed edicts, until a deal becomes impossible. A properly run organisation would have sent him off to rewrite Croatian fishing policy or Latvian industrial strategy by now. But as it’s the EU, he will stick around to make a hash of another round of negotiations.” (paywalled link)
I sometimes wonder, in the quiet moments of a sleepless night, if there are some machiavellian minds at work in our negotiating team who believe that, thanks to the Barnier effect, a No-Deal WTO Brexit is on the cards. The preparations for such outcome are certainly in train, shown by the sudden influx of gov.uk notifications received in the last ten days.
There’s another change in the atmosphere, hinted at in reports from Davos. One has to scroll right to the end of this articles, wading through the various arguments bigging up the EU. Here’s one that caught my eye. It relates to Johnson’s GE win, but illustrates nicely how the underlying EU mood might be shifting:
“The European politicians who spent so much of last year mocking the Boris story are now changing their tune. Victories like his are pretty rare nowadays, and no one else has worked out how to vanquish populism. Britain will leave the EU as the only member state with no populist parties in parliament – a feat that other European leaders can only dream of copying. It seems that conservatism – or the Boris version of it – is coming up with answers that have so far eluded most of the European Left.” (paywalled link)
Never mind that slur about ‘populism’. In the eyes of our MSM a party that has just won a resounding victory cannot be ‘populist’. Only the ‘extreme hard right’ parties are populist and somehow the screeches from Labour types, that the Tories are now ‘hard right’, don’t seem to have stuck.
Finally, here’s a quote from one of those fabled Big Business types, also picked up in a Davos report. After the well-known wail about ‘uncertainties’ and a possible ‘hard Brexit’, the CEO of ‘Deutsche Post’ came up with this:
“Mr Appel warned that Europe will suffer serious damage if the next round of Brexit negotiations break down in acrimony, with the UK sailing away on World Trade Organisation terms. “If we don’t get an amicable deal, growth will be zero or negative, […]” he said.” (paywalled link)
I wonder if Mr Appel will have a word with M Barnier. I also wonder if the shrill Remain Big Business managers here and in the EU will finally grasp that we in the UK don’t have to submit to EU decisions from ‘high up’. any longer. We can and will go our own way.
I think Big Business is frit – much more so than we peasants. They still have failed to understand that the EU needs us more than we need them. Perhaps now, with a week to go, they might adjust their EU view. Perhaps more articles about Barnier, the EU Emperor without clothes, will help in their learning process. Meanwhile, we’ll
KBO!
By the way, Bojo’s Brexit Bill has got through Parliament. But it contradicts his promise that there will be no “close regulatory alignment” with EU laws. And it can be used by the Court of Justice, through the Joint Committee, to break his promise that the transition period will end this year.
I think many in Britain will get a shock as well.The Peacock ( MPs ) rushing around announcing trade deals with Tunisia etc etc and other grand countries. All b****x. We have to make it, or code it, or design it, or even sing it, . And that’s where price, quality, service, innovation,, delivery etc. comes in and TAX is the killer. Millions and millions of people hanging on for dear life, have to be paid for…OR
It’s all relative (see Overton Window). The Tories are indeed ‘extreme hard right’… relative to the now extreme hard left socialists. But in absolute terms Boris is a sopping wet Tory soft leftist (green virtue-signaller and migrant amnesty believer). There is no party that represents the centre (i.e. the non-metropolitan country), let alone the right, apart from the Brexit Party as was (and maybe its phoenix, the Reform Party.) Then there is the paradox of Ukip. Its manifesto was a perfect example of decent centre-right pragmatism; yet the party is a the ferrets-in-a-sack shambles and couldn’t get its act together to push it.
IMHO I wouldn’t put any trust or hope in the Reform Party ; as for UKIP: looks like deliberate sabotage to me. Our one escape door slammed shut.
I wonder Mary. Can you tell us more about the deliberate sabotage? I feel Ukip promised to be my natural ‘home’ and now the door has slammed shut.
It’s my impression from watching events since immediately after the 2016 referendum result, including the Henry Bolton business, the TBP clearing the field for the Tories, plus events capitalising on UKIPs weaknesses and existing divisions. Plus Tories, the EU and the globalists have a motive; it certainly suited them to have all opposition out of the way over the past year for the election and the Vassalage Treaty. But I understand some brave souls in UKIP are still trying to get the show on the road again in the coming years. i really hope they succeed enough to prove a challenge to the Tories who IMHO won’t of their own accord deliver Brexit in any meaningful way.
I am not putting my trust anywhere, Mary.
And Ukip, sabotage? It looks more like egos and incompetence to me, but whatever it is they are done I am afraid.
May be Phil Left and Right labels were always nonsensical. Perhaps all Party names are too. Suppose they have to call themselves something. May be though it is because world has changed faster than ‘Parties’ have even tried to catch up. Brexit has rather brought all this to light. Ukip were very promising and as you say the manifesto was decent centre-right pragmatism. Even the warnings about the threat of Islam should not have killed it as they are well founded.
If Labour would only go back to being what it was in 1945 perhaps there would be a place for it. Surely LibDems have no place in Britain. Ukip should have taken the centre stage.
I agree that Boris is too ‘wet’. Wish he would drop the Green stuff and any migrant amnesty he might have suggested.
The ‘Transition year’ is now holding us back.
Just one year for the “transition period” ? Are you sure about that?
Pretty sure yes Ralph. For one thing even Boris is not immune to popular opinion. He can only stay in post by keeping his promises.
“We have no eternal allies, and we have no perpetual enemies. Our interests are eternal and perpetual, and those interests it is our duty to follow.” Palmerston 1848
Nothing less is acceptable today in our negotiations with the EU.
Spot on Jake, and Palmerston. Our Interests, i.e. Britain’s interests, that is what Britain’s government has to look after. That is their job.
If the last week is anything to go by the media will also be full of what Boris did with his mobile, St. Greta and her green crappery along with variations on the Coronavirus story not to mention the latest episode of the Royals at Home and Away for anything remotely intelligent to be aired about Brexit or anything else for that matter. Civil service and local governments departments along with all the quangos and the voluntary sector are going to have a nasty shock when it dawns that the game has changed. So far many are just kidding themselves that nothing has or will change.
Hope you’re right Norman those nasty shocks are much needed.