It’s another Brexit weekend – but suddenly the Nation has something far more important to talk about, according to the MSM: snow! No, it’s not like the winter in the USA where people actually freeze to death: it’s the usual hysteria which descends every year when there’s an inch of snow about. It always catches motorists by surprise, despite the dire warnings of blizzards and all that jazz presented to us regularly every year from the start of October by the Red Tops, a.k.a. ‘The Gutter Press’.

Since the usual suspects – PM, MPs, the EU, the Opinion writers – are strangely quiet, it is very tempting to use our yearly snow drama as metaphor for Brexit. So let’s see if it works:

Item ‘Project Fear’: there are the seasonal warnings about life as we know it to come to a stop: no bread, no milk, no lettuce … people unable to get to work, people dying … we’ve heard it all – but the above were the ‘blizzard warnings’, not the Brexit ones. So are the dire Brexit warnings not simply more of the same? Might one perhaps even ask if our MSM are so addicted to create ‘fear and trepidation’ in their readers that warnings of Brexit, just as ‘of blizzards’ or WWIII, have become a journalistic staple, ‘click bait’ even?

Item ‘Preparedness’: councils have prepared school halls and gyms for stranded motorists, even with mattresses and camp beds, just in case. That’s for the snow catastrophe, not for Brexit! One can ask though: if councils are preparing for such possible disaster, should we assume that they will be totally unprepared for a ‘crash out Brexit’? Or isn’t it more realistic to think that yes, preparations have been underway for the No Deal Brexit?

Given that the Government email notifications I’ve signed up to are mounting – nearly 350 since mid December, and 61 since the HoC Debate on the 29th of January, I would hazard the guess that the authorities are indeed preparing for that deal. Moreover, I would be astonished if Business isn’t doing exactly the same, in spite of the Big Businesses’ clamour of the No Deal being a ‘catastrophe’ bringing life to a halt. That is, as we know, Remain propaganda pure and simple – after all, councils would not sit on their hands, doing nothing ‘in case of snow’ because it didn’t happen last year …

Item ‘Personal Responsibility’: this is closely related to Project Fear: keep a shovel, water, chocolates and a blanket in your car when you have to go out driving! Stockpile blood, medicines, machine parts, food staples, toilet paper for when No Deal Brexit happens! It’s in the papers so everybody is doing it, right? Hm … just as the stories of unprepared motorists being caught out (don’t they listen to the radio? Don’t they check the weather forecast?) might we look forward to stories of ‘unprepared’ stores or councils being caught out? Don’t expect the MSM asking how this could happen, ask if they hadn’t read the dire warnings in the MSM, or checked the government advice!

Item ‘joy’: later today, the MSM will be full of photos of children enjoying the snow because schools are closed. We’ll see photos of happy dogs in the snow, of intrepid pedestrians out for snowy walks, snowpeople being build – see, snow ain’t really bad! But: will there be such reports once we’ve got the No Deal Brexit, the ‘crashing out over a cliff edge’? Who knows – people may well send in photos of their Brexit parties, people may send in photos of full shops, of no queues at Dover, of life going on as we know it … but somehow I doubt it. After all, having to eat humble pie in public is not what our MSM, what our pundits and MPs enjoy doing.

Meanwhile there are news that Ireland is running to Big Daddy for help against the mean Brits (here), and no, that’s not to Juncker and Brussels, that’s to the USA …! Jacob Rees-Mogg has been to Northern Ireland to talk about the NI Border and why a WTO deal without Backstop is not a catastrophe (here). There are murmurings yet again about Article 50 having to be extended (paywalled, here), this time by the Home Secretary. I suppose it was inevitable that some Minister had to pose for the MSM! Also in a paywalled article (here) we read that some German economists are getting very cold feet about the EU’s tactics to ‘punish Britain’.

A bit over 100 years ago during WWI one German battle cry was “Gott strafe England” (‘God punish England’) – are some Germans remembering how that one ended? If you think this is just a little bit over the top, then I refer you to this article in the Spectator. The new top negotiator is the German Mr Selmayer, now the top Brussels bureaucrat, and surprise surprise, Mr “The EU won’t like it” Robbins now meets him, not M Barnier …

We must concentrate on this ‘negotiating’ team: the same one which gave us Ms May’s WA and the Backstop is now set to negotiate with Brussels about changing it. No wonder Selmayr and Barnier are laughing their heads off. Remember that Ms May had made noises about taking on two experienced negotiators to get Tory Brexiteers to support her WA – and then declared it was all a misunderstanding. This little scandal has sunk without a trace because nobody had any idea who these new people were anyway.

Richard Tice of Leave Means Leave has described them in an article in ConHome which I urge you to read – if only to see again how Whitehall is happy to shaft Brexit any which way, and to fire you up to email your MP about that this weekend.

If you need more incentive, then there’s the “WAB of deceit”. Several readers have pointed this out in private emails to me, writing e.g. that in the HoC debate on the 29th of January Sir Bill Cash exposed an explicit intention of the PM to introduce what she referred to as the WAB (The Withdrawal Agreement Bill) – to reverse the Withdrawal Act and the Referendum result. Over time, that could well become known as the WAB of deceit.

I hope readers will pick this up in the comments.

Have a nice weekend – build snowpeople in between emailing your MPs! Oh and for the sport fans: the Six Nations kick off today …

 

Print Friendly, PDF & Email