Green – suffocating Brexit?

 

Yesterday afternoon the HoC rejected all the amendments the HoL added to Johnson’s WAIB. Later that afternoon the HoL voted to accept that Bill with no new amendments. The Bill will now be presented to the Queen who is expected to give Royal Assent either today or tomorrow. It then goes to Brussels where the last hurdle is the session of the EUParl on Wednesday the 29th of January. 

So far so good. However …! A new battlefront has been opened which at first glance only looks like an opportunity for immense virtue signalling: green stuff. If you think this is something to be left to our politicians, you better think again – and you better remember the money we ordinary plebs have already been forced to pay for all the green crap thanks to various pressure groups influencing our politicians. 

Allow me a brief excursion to look at the latest proposals from the ‘Committee on Climate Change’ which you can read here. It is, ultimately, to do with Brexit. That becomes clear when you read how this is going to be paid for – yes, it’s by us, of course it is! – by looking at what this Committee proposes:

“Leaving the European Union presents an opportunity to fundamentally reshape agricultural practices in favour of the environment, says the body’s new report on land use. […] It estimated the costs of changing British land use to meet this goal at £1.4bn, which it said could be mainly funded by redirecting the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) after Britain leaves the EU and by carbon levies on airlines and other fossil fuel producers.” (paywalled link)

You’ll have noticed the reference to Brexit which is suddenly fine because the money saved can be used for those beautiful green schemes. Of course, until now “Teh Bus!!” was all a lie but look how circumstances suddenly make it a welcome truth! One asks oneself why the green promoters were such ardent Remainers … until now.

Also of course there’s one fact which those green crappists seem to overlook blithely: the landmass of Great Britain is finite. How can you decrease land use by demanding trees to be planted while also supporting solar farms and bird shredders while also building new homes while also needing more land to grow ‘plant food’ since we’ve all gotta become vegan now? Don’t ask such stupid questions!

Here’s the connection to Brexit: at that Davos shindig Ms vdLeyen has revealed a new EU green tax scheme. Our MSM were busy writing about Trump and how horrid he was to poor little Greta to waste space on this. Given the various threats which have already come from the EU, to ‘punish’ us if we try to escape from Brussels iron grip – here’s one of the latest – it is astonishing that ‘official’ Brexiteers seem rather unaware of this connection.

At Davos Ms vdLeyen said the EU is planning a CO2 ‘border tax’ and so far I am waiting for the outcry from our Remainers, who regard the EU as the icon of ‘Free Trade’ as long as traders follow EU diktats. I am also waiting for the outcry from all those who’ve been telling us that borders are of the devil! Does “green’ now trump everything? This is what happened:

“Speaking at the World Economic Forum in Davos on Wednesday, the president of the European Commission laid out Brussels’ plan to set up a carbon border adjustment mechanism that would hit importers from countries that do not respect international climate goals.  The initiative is a central part of the commission’s European Green Deal and is designed to protect European businesses — which are being asked to reduce their CO2 footprint — from “carbon dumping” outside the continent. “There is no point in only reducing greenhouse gas emissions at home, if we increase the import of CO2 from abroad,” Ms von der Leyen told delegates at Davos. “It is not only a climate issue; it is also an issue of fairness towards our businesses and our workers. We will protect them from unfair competition.” (link, paywalled)

Old-fashioned protectionism in our globalist world … you couldn’t make it up! Brussels, you will be somewhat relieved to hear, is still ‘working’ on this, but take note of the date when this latest proposal is expected to be presented:

“The European Commission will not reveal its approach on the EU’s proposed carbon border tax until late 2020 or early 2021, when it concludes a detailed feasibility analysis, Phil Hogan, the EU’s trade commissioner, said on Monday (20 January). “I’m not going to come to conclusions,” Hogan said of the proposed tax, indicating that the Commission was still in the process of conducting an impact assessment on how it could be implemented.” (link)

Late 2020 – when we’re still negotiating … Here’s another piece in the green Brexit puzzle:

“Europe has ambitions to become the world’s first climate neutral continent by 2050, placing pressure on domestic industries to drastically cut their carbon footprint. European industrial groups and countries such as France are the most enthusiastic supporters of a border tax, arguing that it is the only way to protect EU businesses from countries that flout global environmental standards.” (link, paywalled)

Keep this in mind for the moment. Next, nothing must stand in the way of green crappery, especially not concerns like the one coming from Ms Merkel:

“Ms von der Leyen added that rather than punishing importers, the EU would “prefer to encourage our trading partners, to work with us for a global level playing field, for the benefit of all”.  Big EU governments such as Germany are also wary of hitting producers with border taxes and inflaming global trading tensions. German chancellor Angela Merkel told EU leaders at a summit last month that a carbon border tax would risk exposing European companies to tit-for-tat protectionism from abroad.” (link, paywalled)

Not content with creating a ‘level playing field’ for Brexit UK and the EU, Ms vdL now wants to create a global one … Does one detect that typical German mindset here? There’s the gentle approach: the EU says it won’t ‘punish’ importers, of course not. Interestingly, Germany’s objection can be disregarded because it’ s surely only due to their being a top exporter. This though is the actual mindset in Brussels:

“The fact that China and the US say they are already worried is a sign that the threat is already working,” said one senior EU official.” (link, paywalled)

So it is a threat then! Doesn’t it sound familiar! Remember this vdL scheme and reports yesterday that the EU is planning to use ‘punitive measures’ should we not comply with their desire to create a ‘level playing field’ (see here) and then see this report in the DT: 

“Brussels is demanding that the future UK-EU trade deal has “level playing field guarantees” to prevent Britain undercutting EU standards on tax, state aid, social standards and the environment for a competitive advantage. Commission officials have told diplomats from the 27 EU member states other than Britain they would push for an enforcement system of fines and suspension of market access, based largely on mechanisms in the Brexit Withdrawal Agreement. France, which has long coveted London’s crown as the pre-eminent financial hub in Europe, insisted during the meeting that equivalence decisions must be entirely unilateral, in the Commission’s gift and with no right of appeal.” (paywalled link)

At the moment, the official EU stance is that this will mainly be used in regard to financial services. Keen-eyed readers will have noticed in the quote above the EU list in regard to that ‘level playing field’, where one of the items is ‘the environment’. You can now connect the dots between our negotiations, the EU’s stated aims to ‘punish’ us if we dare to go our way – and Ms vdLeyen’s proposed ‘carbon border tax’. 

Brexit looks to be suffocated under the cloak of Greenery, especially as our own, home-grown green crappists are already proposing to take away the financial benefits of Brexit for all of us.

I bet our politicians will happily comply, given that the mighty EU is going to use the thumb screws of ‘equivalence’ to make us conform. When ‘EU diplomats’ say that

“[…] they do not plan to use equivalence as a political weapon to leverage negotiations with Britain, as the commission did with Switzerland last year.” (paywalled link)

then don’t believe that, believe this: “After the meeting, one diplomat said: “We don’t foresee it, but we could do it”. (paywalled link)

And so they could, especially with M Macron already drooling to use this instrument, aided and abetted by the ‘Green Internationale’. Gilets Jaunes protests are irrelevant, farmers protests in Germany and the Netherlands are negligible. 

Happy New Brexit World? Not with the EU using green crap to enhance their power. You have been warned!

 

KBO!

 

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