Money – that’s the latest weapon in the Remain Cabal’s attempt to destroy Johnson. The “#Metoo” attempt to get him to resign has fizzled out, so the Arch Remainers are now using unsubstantiated accusations of Johnson wanting a No Deal Brexit so his ‘rich friends’ can become even more rich …!
I’ll get to the money issue below, let me first mention a few items which illustrate the ongoing Remain Cabal’s feeble flappings.
Item #1: a leak! The letter written by Sir Mark Sedwill to his civil servant colleagues has been leaked (here, and paywalled here). The take-home quote is:
“Rest assured, I am mindful of my own constitutional responsibilities, but I will continue to resist attempts to draw the civil service into the argument. These are political issues and they are for politicians to resolve.” (link, paywalled)
He won’t write that begging letter to the EU then. That’s a bit of a setback for the Remain Cabal who had hoped to get Sir Mark Sedwill to write that letter should Johnson prove to be recalcitrant.
Item #2: the shambles that is the Remain Cabal. Over the weekend we heard from several ‘members’ about their cunning plans, from a VoNC to a new Benn Law. Yesterday, it turned out, they couldn’t agree on anything – what exquisite demonstration of their own incompetence. Read all about it here!
Item #3: Hopefully we have now reached ‘Peak Grieve’. He’s everywhere, with a ludicrous claim that The Queen would sack Johnson if he doesn’t ask for an extension (here) and with one that is poisonous but rings true:
“Dominic Grieve has said Labour refused to form a caretaker Government to oust Boris Johnson because they are afraid of losing the money they get awarded as an opposition party. […] The party reportedly receives £7.9million in what is known as “short money”.” (link).
It’s only our, the taxpayers’ money, so why not have us pay extra to compensate them, for the privilege of stopping Brexit!
Item #4: lastly, Johnson is reportedly going to present his Brexit proposals to the EU, asking at the same time that they rule out an extension, here, and paywalled here and here:
“The prime minister will publish a legal text spelling out his proposed alternative to the Irish backstop within days as negotiations with Brussels enter a crucial period. He has privately made clear that an agreement should include a commitment from the 27 other EU nations that they will not allow another Brexit delay. Mr Johnson’s intention is to confront MPs in parliament with a binary choice of agreeing the revised deal or ensuring that Britain falls out of the EU without agreement at the end of the month. If he succeeds, the prime minister will, in effect, nullify the Benn Act, which compels him to seek an extension to Article 50.” (link, paywalled)
Our helpful ‘friends’ in the EU, allies of the Remain Cabal, immediately made clear that this won’t happen – not that they’ve actually seen the text yet:
“Senior EU sources told The Telegraph that unless Mr Johnson’s proposals made massive strides in their direction, the sides would be “simply nowhere near” an agreement. […] Sources in Brussels added that there “was no time left” to create bespoke arrangements for the border, with a final text needing to be nailed down by Oct 15 in order for it to be agreed in EU capitals and the European Parliament.” (paywalled link)
That’s the usual ‘Non’ then. Leopards, after all, don’t change their spots, so why should the EU rescind their perpetual ‘Nein’.
And so to “The Money”. If you believe the Remain Cabal, Johnson is in cahoots with multi-billionaire hedge fund managers who are speculating on earning zillions should we ‘crash out’.
It all started with a few sly remarks by Philip Hammond in The Times, who based his extraordinary claim on something said by Rachel Johnson, BoJo’s sister. She sounded vague when she made that claim, but Hammond has taken it as pure fact:
“[…] his sister has reminded us, he is backed by speculators who have bet billions on a hard Brexit — and there is only one outcome that works for them: a crash-out no-deal Brexit that sends the currency tumbling and inflation soaring.” (link, paywalled)
This is all the ‘evidence’ Hammond provides: no names but ‘Johnson’s sister said’ …! That sufficed for the Shadow Chancellor, Mr McDonnell, to ask an ‘Urgent Question’ in the HoC yesterday. For my sins, I watched the whole thing, and it was as tedious as ever.
The aim by McDonnell and the rest of the Remain Cabal was to get an ‘independent inquiry’ because Johnson must be got rid of, one way or another. The Treasury Secretary Mr Simon Clarke , new to his job, did an excellent job of dismantling that ‘question’:
“Simon Clarke […] described the claims as a smear. […] He said the government did “not accept there is any prospect of a conflict of interest”. He rejected demands for an independent investigation into the claims.” (link, paywalled)
Time and time again Mr Clarke told the screeching harridans on the opposition benches that there was no case, that this was a smear not based on facts – to no avail. I wasn’t surprised that he could not make headway. We surely know by now that opposition MPs simply do not listen but use such occasions to peacock about.
Sadly, they do not get it that their attitude just reinforces our opinion that they are wilfully blind and deaf and are driven by one thing only: prevent Brexit, by smearing Johnson with anything that comes to hand, be it ever so ludicrous.
In a coruscating article Dominic Lawson demolishes this whole “conspiracy theory”, giving chapter and verse of where this smear originated and that it was investigated by the Financial Times which found these allegations baseless:
“To quote the FT: ‘The inference is that hedge funds have used their financial might to influence the outcome of Brexit via political donations and are now standing to benefit from short positions in UK companies. The problem is, it doesn’t make any sense.’ […] As the FT concluded, this ‘investigation’ seized on so avidly by the opponents of Brexit is ‘firmly in the realm of conspiracy theories’. (link)
Do read the whole thing, it isn’t paywalled. Having watched McDonnell and his cabal supporters I can only state that nothing is beyond those ever more desperate Brexit wreckers. Demanding an inquiry of the PM based on insubstantial smears, at a time when he has to negotiate with this oppostet parts in the EU: what a disgusting way of trying to undermine his position.
You cannot tell me that these people don’t know that their smears and slurs are watched and read on the Continent. We know that one of the reasons the EU won’t budge is that they believe the Remain Cabal’s representatives when they tell them that they can and will get rid of Johnson.
There’s one more item on ‘Money’. Robert Rowland MEP writes in the DT:
“Hidden in Theresa May’s discredited Withdrawal Treaty, ex-Chancellor Philip Hammond (then also on the Board of Governors of the EIB) gifted it €7.5bn of taxpayer’s money for no concessions. He then accepted a 12-year repayment of €3.5bn with no interest, from a bank making €5bn profits in just the last two years. The ultra-Remain ex-chancellor was prepared to leave the UK credit card open over a decade to ensure the EIB can continue to lend on non-commercial terms to the EU 27 at UK taxpayer risk.” (paywalled link)
Before you read the next bit, please put down you cup of tea or coffee:
“The UK is also treaty-bound for another €36bn of “callable capital”. This is money we will pay to underpin the EIB if the eurozone collapses. Under May’s Withdrawal Treaty, the UK taxpayer would be on the hook for the next 12 years. And it gets worse. Loan note holders have the right to recover from solvent guarantors. That could be a massive hit to the UK economy, long after we are gone, if the euro or the eurozone economies collapse.” (paywalled link)
This was done by the conniving knave Hammond, who has just smeared Johnson with unsubstantiated rumours. Do Corbyn and McDonnell and the rest of the Remain Cabal know that Hammond has stuck us with this? Why are they not up in arms against this sell-out? Don’t they need this money to ‘end Tory austerity’?
I am puzzled as to why our eminent financial journalists are so … ‘un-keen’ to delve into this aspect of our financing the EU. Perhaps they could also ask what financial gains the Arch Remainers, from Hammond down, will make if we Remain. It’s a fair question. After all, they surely have nothing to hide, have they!
KBO!
Photo by Images_of_Money 
Thanks for the link Ken, what’s his name? Jeff Taylor made me laugh. I hope you are right that the electorate can see through it. I suspect the electorate is just switched off. But I’m sure if we don’t get a clean brexit 31/10, as soon as the electorate gets the chance to vote – a GE – Nigel Farage will get a massive vote.
But when will the GE be ? Neither the Tories nor Labour will want one. Can they constitutionally delay one till 2022, killing the time with trivial legislation ?
For me one of the many lessons to be learnt especially from the last few years is the failure in applying excepted norms of respect. Once respect was automatically bestowed on eminent figures and trust in those who held positions of responsibility. Now one cannot trust and respect has to be earnt.
Whether they be Supreme Court judges or Chancellors’ of the Exchequer all are likely to disapoint and have. When we listen to Greive’s oh so learned and cultured warble or the beyond reproach authority of professsors, chief superintendents consultants and yes judges we can no longer assume they are earning respect or sometimes even worth the space they fill.
Hammond is one such good example of a complete failure by any measure or definition we could apply. Politician often dissappoint.
Another lesson is dealing with the dissappointment of not being able to prosecute these traitors and wasters.
I’m afraid we have come to a time of ‘earned contempt’. Look at the behaviour and quality of our elected masters – look at their willingness to squander billions abroad, billions on EU mandated infrastructure, billions on a pseudoscientific scams while letting our care system drift towards collapse, our electricity grid teeter on the verge of catastrophe and the integrity of our elections sink to banana Republic levels while they line up their post-political careers in foreign investment banks.
Integrity! There’s a word they wouldn’t recognise if it bit them on their tax-padded, subsidy-fattened wobbly huge ar…
Signed Slubgob, Chief Secretary pp JF who seems to have inadvertently transmogrified into a large centipede.
How has it taken so long for this to emerge and what other horrors are still hidden in the ‘Surrender Treaty’?
May has also committed to handing control of the armed forces to the EU by signing PESCO. This fact seems to slipped under the radar with all eyes being directed to getting a trade deal. A country without any means of defence is no longer a sovereign nation
Correct. You don’t have to be a Maoist to accept that political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.
Speaking of Money, I hope I am not “remembering” out of turn, but I seem to recall around the time of the 2008 financial crash or shortly after, that the Irish finances were in grave trouble along with some of the other EU countries.
I believe we contributed to an EU stabilization fund, but didn`t I hear that we had already contributed a separate private sum to the Southern Irish (our friends and partners dependent on our economy).
Surely we are entitled for some sort of quid pro quo for our largesse in their time of crisis – I would suggest a bit more harmony on the backstop scrappage scheme for a start.
I know that country is reputed to have “taken the money and run” or at least misspent it when the original EURO introduction stabilization payment scheme was operating. Could I be wrong in suspecting that they might indeed have treated our last miserable tittle in the same fashion?
With the introduction of the €uro and the free movement of money, people, goods, and services, Ireland, being a small country, became the target of one of the greatest scams in history. The lending institutions “printed” money as debt, as much as possible as quickly as possible, (loans, mortgages, etc) without collateral, – the boom.
When demands were made to honour the loans, mortgages etc, the lending institutions went to the State and the State went to the EU. The EU washed its hands and insisted on the Irish taxpayers through the TROIKA carrying the can for loan/mortgage approvals when no collateral existed.
So the lending institutions built ghost estates often in the middle of nowhere, the taxpayer paid for them (with cash, assets, austerity, privatisation etc) the lending institutions were “bailed out” out by the TROIKA, and the Irish taxpayer is now in debt estimated at €40,000 plus for each man, woman and child.
A book telling the truth will probably be written abut this some day.
All the smears and accusations show that that the most important thing is to keep the the institutions of power intact. As I said yesterday there is a hierarchy of authority in these institutions which has stood the test of time.
Bypassing any link in this chain does not work as the Remainers are learning to their cost showing that bypassing the Cabinet and the executive with Benn law has proved that most members of Parliament have no knowledge or respect for the institutions of government.
And now, as I read above, they still have learned nothing …….. trying to bypass the government by attempts to draw the civil service into the argument….
“there is only one outcome that works for them”
I can think of a much better one: a Corbyn Government. Zero risk shorting of the £ for billions if not trillions.
Glad Lurch’s maladministration on the EIB deal is getting some column inches. Any Tory going to table an UQ about it?
The Parliamentary Remainiacs must be desperate and running out of ideas now. After trashing the Constitution, subverting Parliamentary procedure, Project Fear, they are now resorting to mud-slinging, smears and trial by media. The latest ploy is the, again unsubstantiated, claim of money market skulduggery. Whatever next? Maybe reinstate the position of Witchfinder General and bring back the rack. Don’t they realise the electorate can see right through their machinations?
More here:
https://youtu.be/sXbG_ekYGHM