Brexitwatch reveals the Brexiters' biggest mistake: winning!

I've managed to resurrect another section from the history of Brexit Britain published some time after 2050 - the priceless gift of Sybil, my acquaintance from the future:

'The morning after they "won" the Brexit referendum, the leaders of the Leave campaign, Boris Johnson and Michael Gove, looked as though they were going to a funeral. No celebrations, no 'we did it' fist-pumping triumphalism. Glum faces all round. The reason was simple.

In a project with so many faults and flaws, it seems invidious to pick out one, but perhaps the greatest was that Johnson and Gove never meant Brexit to win. It was a protest movement. It was against the EU, and often against it with a visceral hatred, but it was not really in favour of anything, certainly nothing very coherent and nothing that its Heinz 57 varieties of supporters could agree on.

If only it had lost, Leavers could have gone on happily complaining about the EU, while the rest of the country got on with its business of being reasonably efficient and content. Instead Leave won, and found itself lumbered with implementing a pile of undeliverable, often contradictory promises. Soon its supporters were complaining more vociferously than they had when the UK was in the EU.

But to make things worse, those who had understood the benefits of EU membership and had now been robbed of them, were up in arms too. The whole country, Leavers and Remainers, were at worst furious at and at best cynically contemptuous of a whole English political establishment they felt had betrayed them. While it seemed the only people to have benefited were politicians like Johnson, Patel and Braverman who were promoted way beyond anything their extremely modest gifts justified.'

  

Brexitwatch: the fall of Johnson. Did I get it right?

So, Boris Johnson, the great liar has finally gone (sort of). Back in September 2020, I prophesied how he might fall. Want to check how close I was? Here's what I wrote:

SUNDAY, 13 SEPTEMBER 2020

Brexitwatch: this wasn't meant to happen! Part 3 - Boris Johnson's 115th Dream

Boris and Carrie are sitting watching television. Now read on:

 ‘Oh great! Season 4 of ‘The Crown’!’

‘Oh yes. World-beating! But wait a minute, Carrie. That caption says May 3, 2021. None of this has happened yet. How can they know about it?’

‘Shh. I’m trying to watch the programme.’

‘Oh God! I don’t look like that. Surely they could have found somebody better looking! And he’s nearly bald!  Where’s the phone. I’m going to get on to that new head honcho we put in – Davey Somebody – and make him take this off.’

 ‘Boris! It’s not the BBC, it’s Netflix. Now shut up and listen.’

‘Oh. I was expecting to see the Queen.’

A hint of a mirthless smile flickers beneath an impressive moustache. ‘I’m afraid Her Majesty is otherwise engaged. She asked me to see you on her behalf.’

‘Hold on!  I recognise you. You’re Tommy Lascelles. You were in the last series or the one before. You can’t see me, because you’re dead.’

Unlike his interlocutor, the urbane functionary is not in the least nonplussed. ‘Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia, Mr Johnson. It sometimes…….exaggerates.’

‘You mean “prime minister”’

‘Mr Johnson.’ The mirthless smile was back.

‘Well, the point is that once parliament has passed this ‘Unilateral Cancellation of EU Trade Agreement Bill’, I’ll need HMQ to give the Royal Assent pronto, so we can implement the populi voluntatem without delay and all that.’

‘And, of course, if you ask Her Majesty to take that action, she will have to comply.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Which is precisely why you will not do it.’

‘What do you mean, Lascelles? You can’t obstruct the will of the people.’

‘I have here a few papers for your perusal.’ (The phrase: ‘Restricted. Top Secret. Not for Fatman’s eyes’ are fleetingly visible on one.)

‘Oh. I’ll take them back to number 10. Dom reads that kind of stuff for me.’

‘The papers will not be leaving this room, and, Mr Cummings is (Lascelles consults his watch) as of now, ‘a guest of Her Majesty’, as I think they say in the films. Apparently something about his time in Russia?’

‘There’s no point trying to frighten me about leaking stuff to the press. The ephemerides are all in my pocket and the BBC daren’t sneeze without my say so.’

The immaculately turned out royal servant produces a newspaper and eases it across the table. ‘If the papers I showed you a moment ago are too voluminous, perhaps you might cast your eye over this?’

“‘Bang Up Boris’ call. Gove poised for No 10.” What’s this?

‘The front page of tomorrow morning’s (Lascelles raises his eyebrows and utters the next word as though wiping something nasty off the sole of his Berluti Oxford) Sun. I managed to persuade them to tone it down from ‘string up’ to ‘bang up’.’

‘That bastard Gove! It’s a fake, Rupert would never do this to me.’

‘If you examine the papers I suggested you should read, you will see that some (the pause is followed by the same tone of voice used for ‘Sun’) gentlemen who had hoped to profit from certain actions of yours felt they had not received the degree of forewarning you promised, and so have not profited as much as they had anticipated.’

‘Can I get my mobile?’

‘As you know, these audiences are strictly mobile-free.’

‘Then I need to get back to Number 10 right now.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Some kind of security alert. The police say there’s a suspected criminal in the building. However (it’s that mirthless smile again) should you wish to avail yourself of a generous offer from President Putin, you may leave now and take asylum in Krasnoyarsk.’

‘What the hell is that?’

‘A place in Siberia. The president has provided special transport from here to the airport, and your flight leaves in a couple of hours. Aeroflot. I’m afraid he couldn’t get business class.’

‘You can’t do this. I’m the prime minister! I’m the prime minister!’

‘Oh Boris, do shut up! That’s the third time this week. Anyway it’s eleven o’ clock. Time for even you to get up. What are these dreams you keep having? Is it always the same one?

Brexitwatch: this wasn't meant to happen! Part 3 - Boris Johnson's 115th Dream

Boris and Carrie are sitting watching television. Now read on:

 ‘Oh great! Season 4 of ‘The Crown’!’

‘Oh yes. World-beating! But wait a minute, Carrie. That caption says May 3, 2021. None of this has happened yet. How can they know about it?’

‘Shh. I’m trying to watch the programme.’

‘Oh God! I don’t look like that. Surely they could have found somebody better looking! And he’s nearly bald!  Where’s the phone. I’m going to get on to that new head honcho we put in – Davey Somebody – and make him take this off.’

 ‘Boris! It’s not the BBC, it’s Netflix. Now shut up and listen.’

‘Oh. I was expecting to see the Queen.’

A hint of a mirthless smile flickers beneath an impressive moustache. ‘I’m afraid Her Majesty is otherwise engaged. She asked me to see you on her behalf.’

‘Hold on!  I recognise you. You’re Tommy Lascelles. You were in the last series or the one before. You can’t see me, because you’re dead.’

Unlike his interlocutor, the urbane functionary is not in the least nonplussed. ‘Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia, Mr Johnson. It sometimes…….exaggerates.’

‘You mean “prime minister”’

‘Mr Johnson.’ The mirthless smile was back.

‘Well, the point is that once parliament has passed this ‘Unilateral Cancellation of EU Trade Agreement Bill’, I’ll need HMQ to give the Royal Assent pronto, so we can implement the populi voluntatem without delay and all that.’

‘And, of course, if you ask Her Majesty to take that action, she will have to comply.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Which is precisely why you will not do it.’

‘What do you mean, Lascelles? You can’t obstruct the will of the people.’

‘I have here a few papers for your perusal.’ (The phrase: ‘Restricted. Top Secret. Not for Fatman’s eyes’ are fleetingly visible on one.)

‘Oh. I’ll take them back to number 10. Dom reads that kind of stuff for me.’

‘The papers will not be leaving this room, and, Mr Cummings is (Lascelles consults his watch) as of now, ‘a guest of Her Majesty’, as I think they say in the films. Apparently something about his time in Russia?’

‘There’s no point trying to frighten me about leaking stuff to the press. The ephemerides are all in my pocket and the BBC daren’t sneeze without my say so.’

The immaculately turned out royal servant produces a newspaper and eases it across the table. ‘If the papers I showed you a moment ago are too voluminous, perhaps you might cast your eye over this?’

“‘Bang Up Boris’ call. Gove poised for No 10.” What’s this?

‘The front page of tomorrow morning’s (Lascelles raises his eyebrows and utters the next word as though wiping something nasty off the sole of his Berluti Oxford) Sun. I managed to persuade them to tone it down from ‘string up’ to ‘bang up’.’

‘That bastard Gove! It’s a fake, Rupert would never do this to me.’

‘If you examine the papers I suggested you should read, you will see that some (the pause is followed by the same tone of voice used for ‘Sun’) gentlemen who had hoped to profit from certain actions of yours felt they had not received the degree of forewarning you promised, and so have not profited as much as they had anticipated.’

‘Can I get my mobile?’

‘As you know, these audiences are strictly mobile-free.’

‘Then I need to get back to Number 10 right now.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Some kind of security alert. The police say there’s a suspected criminal in the building. However (it’s that mirthless smile again) should you wish to avail yourself of a generous offer from President Putin, you may leave now and take asylum in Krasnoyarsk.’

‘What the hell is that?’

‘A place in Siberia. The president has provided special transport from here to the airport, and your flight leaves in a couple of hours. Aeroflot. I’m afraid he couldn’t get business class.’

‘You can’t do this. I’m the prime minister! I’m the prime minister!’

‘Oh Boris, do shut up! That’s the third time this week. Anyway it’s eleven o’ clock. Time for even you to get up. What are these dreams you keep having? Is it always the same one?

Brexitwatch competition: which was the greatest Brexit lie?

Should we have a competition to decide which was the greatest of all the Brexit lies? Was it:

1. An extra £350m a week for the NHS - said by pretty well everyone, and not denied by the few who didn't say it
2. A free trade agreement with the EU will be 'one of the easiest in human history' - Liam Fox
3. 'The UK holds most of the cards' - John Redwood
4. There is 'no downside to Brexit, only a considerable upside' - David Davis
5. We can 'have our cake and eat it' - Boris Johnson
6. 'The day after we vote to leave, we hold all the cards' - Michael Gove
7. A 52-48 result would be 'unfinished business' - Nigel Farage
8. 'Absolutely no one is talking about threatening our place in the single market' - Daniel Hannan
9. After Brexit, we will have 'the same benefits in terms of free access' to the EU - Theresa May

I am open to other nominations.

Last question. When it is so clear that the referendum result was procured by bare-faced lying on an industrial scale (not to mention criminality), does the House of Commons have any motive for failing to declare it null and void apart from cowardice?

Brexitwatch: New Year musings. Is Theresa May engineering a UK break-up?

1. The possibility that Brexit might break up the United Kingdom has generally been seen as unfortunate collateral damage if Theresa May is foolish enough to take us out of the EU, but perhaps detaching England (and possibly Wales) from the troublesome Scots and Northern Irish who do not vote Conservative, is the real Tory project?

Labour would find it very hard to win a majority in the resulting rump state of Little England, so however bad a UK break-up might be for the rest of us, it would be good for the Tories.

2. Michael ‘back-stabber’ Gove has partially backed down on his ‘I’ve had enough of experts’ stance. Even Gove seems to have realised that getting a randomly selected passenger to fly the aircraft instead of the pilot isn’t a great idea.

So now he’s retreated to: ‘we’ve had enough of economists’. Presumably because none of them has a good word for Brexit. Apparently we should all do a detailed examination of the hundreds of pages of complex evidence on which the economists' conclusions are based, and then make up our own minds. So what percentage of Brexit voters have assured you they are prepared to do that, Michael?

Brexitwatch: how the Leave campaign poisoned the political atmosphere

Nigel Farage is complaining the Leave campaign is being victimised over the murder of Jo Cox.

We do not know who killed Jo Cox or why. Quite properly, that can be decided only by a court of law.

We do know that the Brexit leadership has run a deceitful, inflammatory campaign that has unleashed forces that make violence more likely.

When you tell people: 'we want our country back', that can only mean their country has been stolen or taken from them by someone. (The man accused of Jo Cox's murder said: 'Freedom for Britain' when asked his name.)

When, like Michael Gove, you dismiss any informed voices who disagree with you with the words: 'people in this country have had enough of experts', when you denigrate the same people as 'elites', you paint a picture of a Britain where ordinary folk are being betrayed by a corrupt cabal holding power. (This 'elite', of course, does not include Gove, Boris Johnson, Grayling, Priti Patel, who are all themselves cabinet ministers.)

And when you studiously avoid offering any coherent policies on what you will do if Britain actually leaves the EU, but simply demonise immigration from Europe as the cause of anything anyone dislikes, you unleash what Polly Toynbee described (before Jo Cox's murder) as 'furies' which you cannot control.

Today Stephen Kinnock put it like this: 'There are those who say we must “take our country back”, who castigate those on one side of an argument as an “elite”, in the pay of an establishment, in it for themselves and detached from the real world. Those people have to realise that their aggressive words and dangerous rhetoric have consequences. If you try to light a fuse, you can’t be surprised when it catches.'

Brexitwatch: Leave campaign gets more and more like Right wing extremists

From today's Financial Times:

'the rhetoric of the far-right has been hard to distinguish from that of the mainstream Leave groups. Last week, the BNP emailed supporters warning that 80m Turks were set to “pour into Europe”. The official Leave campaign made an almost identical point in a leaflet it sent to voters'

Brexitwatch: Project Leap in the Dark - 2

The Brexiters have finally set out a ‘timetable’ for leaving the EU. It all looks terribly orderly and friendly, but as with all Brexit policies, it is based on the assumption that all foreigners will do exactly what Boris, Gove and Farage tell them.

Interestingly the Brexiters want to delay invoking article 50 of the Treaty of Lisbon giving notice to leave Europe, for as long as possible (more of this below). Then they say our exit terms and a new trading relationship with Europe will be agreed by 2019 or 2020. Significantly, Gove has said we might still be in the EU at the time of the next general election.

The problem for the Leave Campaign is that none of this is in their gift. The UK government and Parliament may have a view, and Boris, Gove and Farage are not yet the government, though increasingly they behave as though they are.

But more important, it is the other 27 EU members who will decide on the timetable and what Britain is offered. We will be excluded from discussions on our exit terms, which have to be finalised in two years. This deadline can be extended only with the unanimous agreement of all 27 countries. So, in reality, when the two years are up, for Britain it will be take it or leave it time.

Negotiations for a new trading agreement would probably happen at the same time. As I said in my post of 13 June, any such agreement would require the unanimous agreement of all 27 EU governments, their parliaments and the European Parliament.

So the idea of some Brexiters (though bitterly opposed by others who just want to rip up all our trade agreements) that Britain will get some special sweetheart trade deal is cloud cuckoo land. The best we can hope for is that in return for continuing to allow free movement of people, to observe EU rules and to go on paying into the EU budget, we will continue to get access to the single market, though this, of course, is not guaranteed.

By then, Boris, Gove, Farage and co will be between the devil and the deep blue sea, with their supporters getting angrier by the day that they have been conned into voting Leave by a pack of lies. So some of the wilder Brexiters are suggesting we do not bother with the legal niceties and just start unilaterally withdrawing.

This would destroy any residual good will there might be among our European partners, so that we would be offered only the harshest exit terms, with no trade deal of any kind. It would also mean we were in breach of international law, with unknown consequences, particularly for the million plus British people working or living in, or retired to, Europe. Not that Boris and co have ever cared about them.  

So why do the Brexiters suddenly want to start dragging their feet on leaving Europe? Probably the awful realisation that they might win, and that, once invoked, article 50 cannot be uninvoked. Giving notice to leave the EU is irrevocable. Another factor may be growing nervousness over promises they have made that they know cannot be kept, and a third the bitter divisions on the Brexit side that are beginning to emerge.

Brexitwatch: Project Leap in the Dark - 1

The thing that has surprised me most about the UK's EU Referendum campaign is how the anti-Europeans have been allowed to get away with saying virtually nothing about what they will do if we vote to leave. In this series, I am going to highlight some of the crucial questions to which they have given no answer.

The Breixters now seem to be getting cold feet about leaving. Michael Gove said if we voted for Brexit, he would try to delay invoking Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty, which we have to do in order to quit, and that Britain would still be in the EU in 2020, though he later tried to deny this. https://next.ft.com/content/b296fa42-2bd4-11e6-bf8d-26294ad519fc

At the moment, the anti-Europeans have no idea what they will ask for from the EU, never mind whether the EU will agree to it. Sometimes they want to be like Norway, or perhaps Switzerland (though plenty of commentators have said these options will not be viable - http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/06/10/three-reasons-a-post-brexit-uk-cant-copy-norway-or-switzerland/) All right then, like Canada, or (Gove's favourite) Albania. Or maybe we don't try to get a deal at all.

It is sobering that some of the Brexiters have been plotting against the EU for decades, and yet they have not been able to sign up a single country to agree to a single one of their ideas.

At other times Gove, Boris and Farage and co have said: don't worry because German carmakers and French cheesemakers will force the rest of Europe to give us a really good deal. 

In fact, any deal with the EU has to be agreed by all 27 countries, their national parliaments, and the European Parliament. The car and cheesemakers are going to have their work cut out to twist the arms of that lot!

And a deal has to be reached within two years. If it is not, the deadline can only be extended with the agreement of all 27 EU countries. You can understand why Gove and co are in such a panic.

Europe: stay or leave? Focus on fact - 8.

The proof that John Major is right. The Brexit campaign has become squalid and deceitful.

Today's fact: Boris Johnson says the EU is like Hitler, but actually the Nazis support Boris, Gove and Brexit.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3625503/The-neo-Nazi-swastika-breast-Vote-Leave-badge-vest-Holocaust-deniers-EDL-fascists-posing-Kray-twins-grave-violent-thugs-racists-hijacking-Brexit-campaign.html

This is what happens when you run a mendacious campaign, promising the impossible, stirring up fears and pandering to people's worst instincts.

Europe: stay or leave. Focus on fact - 7

Vote Leave, get Stay - on worse terms. Why Brexit is doomed to failure even if the anti-Europeans win the referendum.

Today's fact: Any trading agreement that the UK makes with Europe post-Brexit requires the agreement of the 27 EU countries.

Boris, Gove and co claim that because German car makers and French cheese and wine makers will want to go on selling goods to us, they will give us whatever we want. Even if that is true, and there is no evidence, there is no evidence that they can compel their own governments, let alone those of another 25 countries to agree.

Boris Johnson's own newspaper, the pro-Brexit Daily Telegraph, has to admit that the best we will be offered is membership of the EEA - the same deal as Norway - having to allow free movement of people from the EU, paying into the EU budget (rather more per person than we do now), and having to obey EU rules. The only difference being that we will no longer have any say on what those rules are:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/19/the-eu-will-play-hardball-with-post-brexit-britain/

*Because of the urgent task of getting some facts into the UK's Europe referendum debate, for the next couple of weeks I am going to be concentrating on that issue on this blog. Normal disaster history service will be resumed after June 23.