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 speech Keir Starmer should be making

Instead of running around the Labour Party like some demented John Cleese tribute act, shouting: ‘Don’t mention the Brexit!’, here is the speech Sir Keir Starmer should be making:

‘Today I am calling on Boris Johnson to respect the result of the EU referendum, and deliver what people voted for.

A lot of you voted to leave the EU, but you didn’t vote for the Brexit disaster that Boris Johnson and the Conservatives are imposing on us. We were promised by the Prime Minister and his Leave Campaign colleagues that we would have frictionless trade with the EU, that we would hold all the cards, that Brexit was all upside and no downside.

Instead, we have British fish, meat and flowers lying rotting because the so-called ‘deal’ that the Tories have negotiated means that they can’t any longer be sold in our biggest market, Europe. We have trade drying up between Great Britain and Northern Ireland. We have British businesses built up by hard-working entrepreneurs over decades collapsing because the deal the Prime Minister agreed inflicts strangling red tape on them. We have more Brexit red tape stopping British musicians, technicians, architects working in Europe any longer.

We have British people no longer able to send presents to their loved ones across the Channel, and we have the obscene spectacle of Boris Johnson’s government advising British businesses that if they want to survive, they need to go and set up in Europe instead.

This is not what people voted for. So Labour is calling on Boris Johnson’s Tory government to start dismantling today the unnecessary barriers they have put up between the UK and its biggest, nearest market, to tear up the unnecessary red tape, to stop putting dogma above jobs, and to set our country free.’

Brexitwatch: this wasn't meant to happen Part 4: inside DUP headquarters

When the Good Friday Agreement was signed, people said: 'the Republicans are too clever to admit they've lost, and the Loyalists are too stupid to realise they've won'. This may appear to have been confirmed by the DUP's apparently foolish decision to support Brexit, which has done more damage to the Union in 4 years than the IRA managed in 30. Fortunately, I can reveal that all this is scurrilous nonsense thanks to a recording secretly made at DUP headquarters of a wide-ranging 58 second long debate on the stance the party should take in the Brexit referendum.

'Right. Next business. EU referendum. Leave or Remain?'

'How many Papists are there in the EU?'

'Er, millions, tens of millions, maybe hundreds of millions.'

'Hmm. What are the Fenians going to do?'

'Sinn Fein? Oh. They're backing Remain.'

'Right. We back Leave.'

'Hang on, though under the GFA....

'GFA?'

'Good Friday Agreement.'

'Oh yes. I've got another name for it. Great Fuc....' 

[Loudly and hastily]. 'Yes thank you. Well the Good Friday Agreement only works if both Northern Ireland and the Republic are in the EU.....'

[Interrupts] So what are they saying on the Shankill?

'They tend to back Leave.'

'So Leave it is. Next business.'

'But hang on. If we leave the EU and "take back control of our borders", there'll have to be a border in Ireland between the UK and the EU. Now we can't have a land border because that would break the GFA, so that means a border in the Irish Sea between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK.'

'So?'

'That means the end of the Union! A de facto United Ireland.'

'No it won't.'

'What do you mean: "it won't".'

'It won't, because Leave won't win in a month of Sundays. Remain'll win, but we'll get credit for giving the Papist EU a kicking. Leave it is. Next business.'

Brexitwatch: this wasn't meant to happen! Part 2

 

Meanwhile at Leave headquarters:

Ever wondered why Boris Johnson looked as though he was going to a funeral when he announced Leave’s victory in the referendum? This transcript of a conversation from shortly before the vote explains: 

‘I say, Dom. Some jumped-up jackass has just asked me whether Brexit will mean less immigration. What’s our policy?’

‘Did they want less immigration?’

‘Er. I think so.’

‘So our policy is less immigration. If they want more immigration, our policy is more immigration. If they want no immigration, our policy is no immigration. Simple enough for you?’

‘But Dom, how will we reconcile all those contradictory promises?’

‘We won’t have to, because Remain will win.’

‘Yes, of course. Er, er, Dom I’m also a bit worried about these undertakings we’ve given about leaving the EU but keeping all the advantages of remaining.’

‘You just don’t get it, do you? We LOSE. So we won’t have to keep any promises. So we can promise anything. Then after Remain wins, we wait for the fury of the Tory head-bangers who’ve been denied their beloved Brexit, to force Cameron out. Look I’ve already written your campaign speech when you go for the leadership:

“My friends, no one campaigned harder for Brexit than me, but that fight is over, and now we must all accept the democratic result that we remain in the EU. Our task now is to bring together our party and our country – Leavers and Remainers – to take us forward to the next phase of our world-beating history.” Then throw in a bit of Latin or something if you must.’

‘Fine, Dom, yes. Er, one other thing. How should I vote?’

‘For Remain like me, what do you think? But don’t tell anybody.’

Brexitwatch: this wasn't meant to happen! Part 1

When Prime Minister David Cameron gave in to the Conservative Brexit fanatics and promised to hold a referendum on EU membership if he won the General Election of 2015, he also let them do a lot of other things - e.g. gerrymander the electorate by systematically excluding millions of people who could have been expected to vote Remain.

He never bothered to think about crucial questions - such as what would happen if there was a very small majority, and/or a small turn out? What if some countries in the UK voted for Remain and others for Leave? Should the Leave campaign have to come up with a credible programme for quitting the EU or should they be allowed to be all things to all Brexiters and promise a whole pile of often contradictory things that could never be delivered?

You see none of this mattered, because Cameron knew the Tories were not going to win the election. At best, they'd be back in coalition with the Liberal Democrats, and the Libdems would save him from holding the referendum.

Unfortunately, Cameron misjudged the ferocity with which his party would stab their former coalition partners in the back, and so, curses!, he won a majority. That wasn't meant to happen. 

So now he was stuck with the referendum, but still he didn't need to worry about the crazy, negligent basis on which it was being set up, because Remain was going to win. Leave was going to lose, and all but the most fanatical of the Brexiters could be put back in their box for a few more years.

To be continued

Brexitwatch: the blame game

If you think Brexit is going to be a success, ask yourself this. Why are those responsible for it so desperately looking for people to blame?

The Tories have been doing it ever since the referendum result: the EU (for being 'inflexible'), Remainers (for being 'enemies of the PEOPLE'), foreigners (for being foreigners). Now Labour's in the game too. Having gone along with the Brexit disaster, it's claiming it's all the fault of the LibDems. Even the New European newspaper, for which I have great respect, seems to have fallen for this line. 

So here's the letter I sent to put TNE right (and which, to be fair, they published), and the cartoon that prompted it.

Electionwatch: Labour promises Remain will not need a supermajority to win a Brexit referendum

I was disturbed by stories that if we get a Labour government in a position to hold a referendum on the terms on which the UK leaves the EU, it might require Remain to gain a supermajority to win - say 60% of all votes cast or the votes of 50% of the electorate. While, of course, Leave had 'won' the 2016 referendum with less than 52% of votes cast.

So I wrote to my MP, who happens to be Labour's Brexit spokesperson, Sir Keir Starmer. It took a while to get a reply  (though I recognise he has been very busy), but now he has confirmed no supermajority would be needed. Email exchange here:

Dear John,

Thanks for your email. These stories are simply untrue. There would be no threshold or super-majority requirements in the referendum. It would be on the basis of a simple majority of the votes cast.

All the best,

Keir Starmer

Dear Sir Keir,

As you know I have many reservations about Labour's policy on Brexit, but I am now considering whether I should vote for you in the GE.

I am concerned, though, about stories that Labour will require a supermajority (of say 60-40) or perhaps a threshold of at least 50% of the electorate supporting Remain, in order for Brexit to be cancelled in any referendum on its terms. As no such requirements were imposed on the Brexit side when they 'won' the 2016 vote, it would plainly be intolerable if Remain were required to surmount a higher hurdle.

Can you please confirm that in any referendum on the Brexit terms, Remain will be required to reach only 50% + 1 of the vote for Brexit to be cancelled.

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

John Withington

Brexitwatch: Beware. Is 'no deal' a Boris Johnson dead cat?

Back in the autumn of 2016, when Theresa May (remember her?) was peddling her 'no deal is better than a bad deal' nonsense, here is what I blogged on 9 October 2016:

'Is Mrs May engaged in a softening up exercise, conjuring up the most disastrous picture of Brexit imaginable, so that when she comes up with something that damages the country a bit less, Remainers will be pathetically grateful and go along with it? 

Beware! Every Brexit is a bad Brexit. The only good Brexit is no Brexit.'

Now Boris Johnson is our prime minister. He once wrote that if you were losing an argument, the thing to do was to 'throw a dead cat on the table' - meaning you should come up with a suggestion so alarming that everybody was so distracted by making sure your alarming idea did not come to fruition that they forgot the real point.

With Johnson, the only thing you can count on is that you can't believe a word he says, so it is possible that he's wickedly irresponsible enough to take the UK out or the EU with no deal (and, therefore, of course no transition period either). Equally, 'no deal' may just be a dead cat designed to make us forget how disastrous any Brexit will be. 

Either way, we need to remember: Every Brexit is a bad Brexit. The only good Brexit is no Brexit.

Brexitwatch: nail the 'over the line' myth

It’s surely one of the most mendacious of all the Brexit clichés. We keep being told that we have to get Brexit ‘over the line’.

You ‘get over the line’ when you finish a race, and once you’re over the line, the race is over. But with Brexit, it’s completely different. Leaving the EU, if we are foolish enough to do it, won’t be the end of anything. It will be the start.

Whether we leave with no deal, or with May’s deal rebranded as Johnson’s deal, leaving the EU will kick off years, possibly decades of uncertainty as we try to negotiate a future arrangement with them. And, just as they have over the last three years, the EU will hold nearly all of the cards. And as the Brexiters still haven’t decided what they want, it will be a depressing and demeaning experience.

So getting Brexit ‘over the line’ doesn’t stop the nightmare. The only way you can achieve that is by stopping Brexit.

Brexitwatch: the speech he never made

It is almost three years since the Brexit referendum. The man who called it, then Prime Minister David Cameron, promised that whatever the result, he would stay on as PM, but he broke that promise, resigning within hours. Just imagine if he had kept it. How much heartache and division, how many job losses he could have spared us from, and how much money he could have saved us.

All he needed to do was make this speech:

'Good morning. I am surprised and disappointed at the result of the referendum, but I promised that whatever the result I would stay on as your prime minister, and I will keep that promise.

I congratulate the Leave Campaign on their victory. Those who campaigned for the UK to leave the EU must clearly have had a credible plan for how this could be achieved without damaging our country, because without such a plan, no responsible politician could have advocated such a course of action.

So I am convening all those MPs who campaigned for Leave into a grand committee to come to an agreement on what they suggest as the way forward. Their plan will then be put to parliament as a whole.

In the meantime, there are many other tasks that our country requires its prime minister to perform in many other fields of policy, and I am now going back into 10 Downing Street to carry on with that work. Thank you.'

Would that really have been so hard?

Brexitwatch: MPs determine our fate. Write to yours

It's great that two million marched in London and that nearly five million have signed the petition to revoke Article 50, but don't forget that MPs have already ignored another huge march for a 'People's Vote' on the Brexit terms and the four million plus people who signed a petition for a second referendum.

I have always believed that Brexit will be defeated only when MPs begin to think supporting it will damage their careers. So if your MP has not done everything in his/her power to fight Brexit so far, write to them NOW and say that if the UK leaves the EU you will hold them and their party responsible, and you will work to ensure their defeat at all future elections. If they are entrenched Brexiters, write anyway. They can still count.

My MP happens to be Labour's Brexit spokesperson, Sir Keir Starmer, and this is what I have written to him: 

Dear Sir Keir,

I was bitterly disappointed to see the Labour Party trying to sabotage the People's Vote march. This is deeply foolish as well as duplicitous. As for hearing Caroline Flint singing the praises of Theresa May's blind Brexit when even Nigel Farage admits it is worse than staying in the EU, words fail me.

If we now leave the EU, I will not forgive Labour.

There is no longer any justification for Brexit:

1. Any Brexit will damage the UK and particularly the people Labour is supposed to care most about.

2. The referendum result is null and void as it was won by lies, cheating and criminality. (I am bitterly disappointed that Labour has tried to sweep this under the carpet - an act of foolishness and cowardice that will haunt the party for a very long time.)

3. The Brexit that was promised is not being and cannot be delivered, and there is no mandate for either of the available Brexits - Theresa May's blind Brexit or 'no deal'.

Labour's half-hearted opposition to the right wing Brexit coup has been a dreadful stain on the party's reputation, and if we are now dragged out of the EU, I will regard Labour as being as much to blame as the Tories. I trust you will now do whatever is necessary to stop it.

If we do leave, I will not forget, and I will do everything I can to help defeat Labour in all subsequent elections.

There is still time to do the right thing, but it is fast running out.

Yours sincerely,

John Withington

Brexitwatch: write to the Speaker to stop Theresa May forcing through her blind Brexit

Theresa May's disastrous blindfold Brexit has twice been overwhelmingly rejected by MPs, but she's planning to bring it back a third or even a fourth and a fifth time. Surely that's outrageous especially when she denies the British people a second vote after a very close, highly dubious referendum? Shouldn't there be a law against it?

Well, there is. According to House of Commons' rules, once MPs have rejected something, it should not be put again during that session of parliament https://news.sky.com/story/an-ancient-rule-means-bercow-could-take-drastic-action-on-brexit-11664555

So the Speaker, John Bercow, could rule it out. He has already shown himself a courageous defender of democracy, and I have written to him again to ask him to save us from having a Brexit no one wants foisted on us by the increasingly dictatorial Theresa May. If you agree with me, please write to him too:

Dear Mr Speaker,

I have already thanked you for your sterling work defending the rights of parliament against an executive that seems to have been driven mad by Brexit, but I am now very disturbed at actions by the prime minister that seem calculated to bring parliament into disrepute.

Obviously you know far more about this than I do, but I had understood that if a measure was rejected by parliament, a government was not allowed to put it to MPs again in that parliamentary session. Theresa May has already had two goes with her blindfold Brexit, and MPs have overwhelmingly rejected it twice, but she appears to be determined to try a third, and even a fourth or fifth time. Surely this should not be allowed, especially when Mrs May has decreed that voters should never be allowed to change their minds about Brexit!

Even worse, she seems to be using taxpayers' money to bribe Labour and DUP MPs to support her. In addition to the damning reaction of MPs, it seems clear from polling evidence that her 'deal' is also extraordinarily unpopular in the country with both Leave and Remain voters. So if by some chicanery, she does manage to force it through, far from 'healing divisions' in the UK, it is likely to only make people more angry than ever, and that anger will probably be directed against a parliament that is behaving in a way most people cannot understand.

Please help us.

Yours sincerely,

John Withington

Brexitwatch: a letter to the Speaker

House of Commons Speaker John Bercow has now joined judges, Remainers, MPs who ask difficult questions about Brexit, the EU and others among those demonised as 'Enemies of the People' by our extreme right-wing tabloids. His crime? He allowed MPs a vote on a matter of crucial national importance.

I have written to Mr Bercow at john.bercow.mp@parliament.uk and speakersoffice@parliament.uk to express my thanks, and to ask him to please carry on exercising his courage and wisdom on behalf of MPs' democratic rights in the weeks to come. He could become a very important figure as more sensible MPs try to halt the Brexit disaster.

This is what I said to him:

Dear Mr Bercow,

Thank you for standing up for democracy at this time of great national crisis and in the face of a bullying minority government that seems completely devoid of concern for the national interest.

The prime minister's pulling of the 'meaningful vote' in December was one of the most cynical acts of contempt for parliament that I can recall in my lifetime, which goes back almost as far as World War Two.

You will, of course, face vitriol and vilification for doing the right thing, but your courage and wisdom will be needed to help us many times in the weeks ahead.

Thank you again and good luck,

John Withington

Brexitwatch: Write to your MP

If you are not prepared to stand by and watch Britain dragged out of the EU on the basis of a Brexit campaign founded on a pack of lies which won the support of less than 38 per cent of the electorate, you need to write to your MP. This is what I have sent to mine.

'As a representative, and not a delegate, clearly your responsibility now is to exercise your judgement as to the best way of avoiding further serious harm to us, your constituents, and to the country as a whole. In the absence of any plan of any sort from the Leave campaign, this can only be achieved by a clear statement from Parliament that it rejects the result of a fatally flawed referendum, and affirms that the UK will remain in the EU.

We are already suffering serious economic damage from the referendum result - job losses, cancelled investment, value of people's savings and pensions slashed by the falling pound, and miscellaneous other effects, e.g. the loss of £7bn+ from the taxpayers' holding in RBS, not to mention racist violence against minorities in our country:-

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/brexit-eu-referendum-racial-racism-abuse-hate-crime-reported-latest-leave-immigration-a7104191.html

This cannot be allowed to continue. Parliament must act.

The EU referendum result lacks legitimacy for the following reasons:-

1. The Leave campaign deceived people into voting for it by lying. It broke at least four promises in the first 24 hours after the result 

http://disasterhistorian.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/brexitwatch-lies-and-broken-promises-so.html

And large numbers of pro-Leave voters now wish they had voted Remain.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/brexit-eu-referendum-bregret-leave-petition-second-remain-latest-will-we-leave-a7105116.html

2. Even Nigel Farage has admitted that a 52-48 margin of victory would not be sufficiently decisive and would require a second referendum

http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/nigel-farage-wants-second-referendum-7985017

If we had been voting to have a one day strike instead of to leave Europe, the proposition would have been rejected as having insufficient support:

'The government has long emphasised that, it does not consider a majority vote valid if it is less than 40% of the eligible electorate, when it is union members voting for a temporary public sector strike. Given that an EU exit is far more important and permanent, how will MPs justify treating the 37.4% of the vote to leave as sufficient, especially when the majority is so small and significantly composed of old people who won’t be affected by the outcome?'
Professor John Veit-Wilson
Newcastle upon Tyne

The Brexiters plainly have no plan, but I am sure that you do. I look forward to hearing what it is.'

Brexitwatch: Project Leap in the Dark - 6

This is my final comment of the campaign. I'm off to Madrid to enjoy Freedom of Movement while I can. 

A day may come when it is in Britain's interests to leave the EU, and when a Leave campaign emerges that has a genuine vision of what we do instead. That day has not arrived. The present Leave campaign have no coherent vision. 

Brexit = Project Leap in the Dark. If you don't want to gamble your job, business, savings, pension, NHS, public services, vote Remain.