… and the winner is: Teflon Ursula

 

 

Meteorological Spring starts today – not that it feels remotely spring-like here at Chateau ‘INDEPENDENCE Daily’. Yes, some brave crocus have come out and I’m sure so has the daffodil which sits right at the back wall: it’s still too dark for me to go and check. The winds however still come from the NE and are cold, dry and wintery.

Not even good old ‘staff’ at Auntie Beeb could muster much enthusiasm when penning the headline for the usual compilation: “Newspaper headlines: Fears for missing baby and Sunak to ‘defy critics’” (link). Frankly, my dears, I simply channel my inner Rhett Butler and metaphorically walk out of the door …

However, after the outstanding theatre production of the ‘Windsor Framework’, there are a few quotes from the Westminster commentariat which are worth keeping for the record. Let’s start with the editorial by Daniel Finkelstein in Remain Central. The headlines are sufficient to induce nausea in anybody:

“​​We lost the plot — let’s learn not to do it again. The Windsor framework demonstrates just what can be achieved when serious and disciplined people are in charge” (link, paywalled)

Who is this “we” of whom Mr Finkelstein speaks? I’m not aware that any of us peasants nor even the Audi Avenue denizens have had any say in those EU negotiations. I’d also like to know who those ‘serious and disciplined’ people are – the Remain mandarins who’ve managed to subvert our demands to Leave since 2016, perchance?

But then again, this is Remain Central and thus we can surmise that they also mean yon Starmer and his coterie of Rejoiners who did so much in Parliament and the Courts to deny us our vote. Unlike the Remain Central editors, unlike the Remainers/Rejoiners, we plebs have a very good memory, not needing to keep track of all the lies we’ve told in order to get re-elected. 

In contrast, the opinion page of the DT offers three opinion pieces, by Lord Frost, by Nigel Farage and by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard. Let’s start with him – attention: the following comes with my health warning! – because his ‘explanation’ for why Brussels ‘gave in’ (hah!) is simply too outlandish. Under the headline “The EU has discovered that it needs Britain more than it thought” he seriously writes (this and other emphases are mine):

“Vladimir Putin is the Godfather of the Windsor Framework. Full-scale war in Europe for the first time since 1945 is what has made it possible to detoxify the Northern Ireland Protocol. Few people are aware that the UK extended its world-class cyberwarfare deterrent to the whole of Eastern and Central Europe at the outset of the conflict, raising the stakes for the Kremlin if it tried to take down their critical infrastructure with cyber attacks.” (paywalled link)

Strewth. And why are ‘few people aware’ of our ‘engagement’ in the chihuahua states and Poland? It couldn’t possibly be because eminent ‘journalists’ like AEP somehow never wrote about this, now could it! That’s why I loathe the unholy Westmisnter propaganda machinery: talking down to us ignorant plebs because they ‘know’ something which we don’t, never doing their duty to inform us.

As for the rest of that essay: he rants on about some scientific programme for which Brussels needs our input, concluding: 

“[…] the EU needs the UK more than Brussels supposed in the first flush of post-Brexit triumphalism, just as it needs the UK more than it ever imagined to prevent Putin reconstituting the Russian tsarist empire. Mr Sunak had the personality and good judgement to seize the moment, and so did Ursula von der Leyen. Hats off to both of them.” (paywalled link)

If only we ignorant Leavers would understand that “we” must slither up to Brussels “because: Putin!” Since Mr Putin governed Russia well before Brexit, since there was what is called the ‘Maidan Coup’ in the Ukraine in 2014, I wonder why AEP and the rest of the Remainers and Rejoiners haven’t screeched about Putin before. After all, there were sanctions and uproar when the Crimea joined Russia in 2014, well before the Leave campaigns.

In the second of the DT’s opinion pieces, Nigel Farage doesn’t mince words. The headlines say it all: 

“Tory MPs should eat their sausage on a stick, and prepare for an electoral wipeout. Brexit is ruined. Our borders remain wide open. Fear of crime is growing. The cost of living hurts. Taxes are too high. And on the list goes.” (paywalled link)

You might like to watch his video from yesterday evening where he speaks about this framework, anticipating the points he makes in his essay. There is one vital aspect though, which demonstrates, in writing,  the whole farce of this ‘Framework’:

“The key to any real definition of success is the legal basis behind this framework. If Sunak has truly won the right to veto EU single market laws introduced into Northern Ireland, he would have secured a significant – perhaps even historic – coup. Yet when asked a direct question at his press conference in Windsor on Monday about the continued supremacy of the European Court of Justice (ECJ), he obfuscated. In contrast, von der Leyen was clear and instinctive. She said that the ECJ will be the “sole and final arbiter of EU law”. In practice, this means that the attempt to remove the UK from the ECJ’s clutches and instead appoint an independent panel to oversee disputes was rejected.” (paywalled link)

Good old Frosty has also been given space to have his say. The subtitle of his comment piece underlines that this whole thing was and is a sad farce: “The new arrangements are oversold, and do not change the fundamental Protocol framework”. He explains – who would know better than he does! – why this is the case. For the record, here are his concluding paragraphs:

“The EU always tried, unsuccessfully, to persuade the Johnson government that the best thing was not to change the fundamentals of the Protocol but instead to let the EU fix “day-to-day” problems by changing its own laws as they apply to Northern Ireland.  That’s what’s now happened: the deal leaves a slightly amended Protocol and EU law in place in Northern Ireland and the EU has agreed to change its own laws so that they bite less tightly. That is worth having, but it isn’t taking back control. Indeed, it may entrench the Protocol superstructure rather than weaken it. Most of our political class is choosing not to look too closely at any of this because they are tired of the whole problem.” (paywalled link)

I don’t know if this ‘overselling’ of the ‘framework’ will come back to haunt Sunak, as Lord frost claims at the end of his essay. All I know is that we are tired of the whole problem of politicians’ and mandarins’ lies, of their trampling of our free vote in 2016. We know that Starmer is a Rejoiner as is the whole Westminster swamp, all drooling at the prospect of showing us, once and for all, that our votes don’t matter. 

That’s all I have for today. At least the fine “Windsor Theatre Production” kept ‘news’ about the imminent demise of the Sacred Cow or about the coming budget out of the headlines. I’m sure we’re all grateful for that temporary respite! Have a good day.



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