Brexitwatch: Boris Johnson - intimations of mortality

‘When a man is about to be hanged,’ said Dr Johnson, ‘it concentrates his mind wonderfully.’ Assuming that, during his time in the intensive care ward, Boris Johnson felt acutely reminded of his own mortality, what effect might that have?

Because you can’t believe a word he says, anything you write about Johnson is highly speculative, but I spoke to someone who claimed to know him, who told me something I found reassuring. He said the prime minister cares a lot about what the history books will say about him.

If he had died during his brush with coronavirus, they wouldn’t have made great reading: ‘He knew leaving the EU would be highly damaging for the UK, but he pressed on with it because he thought it would advance his own career. He undermined prime minister Theresa May on the pretext that her Withdrawal Agreement was not good enough, then once he had replaced her, negotiated one that was worse. He won an election under a slogan he knew was mendacious, and then when he was confronted with the worst crisis the UK had faced in decades, he proved completely unequal to the task.' Though the charge sheet would obviously be longer than this.

If Johnson is serious about being treated more kindly by history, he must realise there are a number of policies he is going to have to reverse. Most obviously, limiting the damage from Brexit by agreeing a close relationship with the EU to secure the frictionless trade on which the UK’s future depends.

So far the signs aren’t good. He has bizarrely ruled out any extension of the transition period which ends on December 31 at which point, the UK is in danger of crashing out of Europe with a huge hit to jobs, public services, businesses etc.

But the lesson for Boris Johnson of his intimation of mortality is surely this. If there is something you need to do, do it today. There may be no tomorrow.

Brexitwatch; what Labour really thinks about Brexit

Somebody called Barry Gardiner is apparently Labour's 'shadow international trade secretary' A couple of weeks ago he was secretly recorded saying worries that peace in Ireland could be threatened by the re-introduction of a border between north and south after Brexit were just a bit of flimflam concocted by the Irish Government and Sinn Fein. 

As for, Labour's Brexit tests, designed to try to prevent the UK being completely destroyed by leaving the EU, they were 'bollocks'. 

When front bench spokesperson Owen Smith said that as the Brexit people had voted for could not be delivered, there should be a referendum on any actual terms negotiated, Jeremy Corbyn sacked him for not following party policy. Barry Gardiner is still in his job.

I don't think he should be, and this is what I wrote to my MP, who happens to be Labour's Brexit spokesperson, Keir Starmer:

Dear Sir Keir, 

I had to cover the Birmingham pub bombings as a tv reporter. I have lived through a series of IRA bombing campaigns, and I have relatives in Northern Ireland and the Republic. I am horrified that Barry Gardiner is prepared to jeopardise the Good Friday Agreement in order to pursue his fantasy of a Brexit that everyone who has given it a moment's thought, knows cannot be achieved. That alone should have been enough to get him sacked from the Shadow Cabinet, as Owen Smith was.

Now I read that he also rejects the key basis of Labour's Brexit policy - the six tests - though he did not have the guts to say so publicly. Why is he still in his job?

Yours sincerely,

John Withington

Brexitwatch: how the UK can have its cake and eat it

As members of the EU, we are able to trade freely in the richest market in the world. We can travel to, study in, work in, and retire to 27 fairly nearby democratic countries.

But not only that. The UK has special bespoke deals on a whole host of things – we are not in the euro, we are not in the Schengen area. We get a discount on the sum we should be paying into the EU, we have special opt outs in the areas of fundamental rights and freedom, security and justice, etc. In other words, we are ‘HAVING OUR CAKE AND EATING IT’.

But Theresa May and the Brexiters plan to throw away this unbelievably good deal. Instead, they are demanding all sorts of impossible arrangements like being in the Single Market without Freedom of Movement or leaving the Customs Union but having ‘frictionless trade’.

To the (confected on the part of the better-informed) outrage of the Brexit fanatics, the EU has made clear on numerous occasions that none of this is going to happen, but still the UK has no plan B.

Even now, though, there is a way of having our cake and eating it. Cancel Article 50 and stay in the EU. If we are foolish enough to leave, before long we will be begging to be let back in. But never again will we get a bespoke deal as good as the one we have now.

*Thanks to Elkhart Public Library, Indiana for this mention for my book - 'Disaster!' https://myepl.org/epl/index.php/39525/

Brexitwatch: what Boris Johnson really thinks about the EU

A few days before his desertion to the Brexit camp, Boris Johnson said it would be madness to leave the EU because it would mean 'embroiling the Government for several years in a fiddly process of negotiating new arrangements, so diverting energy from the real problems of this country – low skills, low social mobility, low investment etc – that have nothing to do with Europe.'

Then, of course, he discovered backing Brexit might help him become Prime Minister.

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 - 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.

Europe: stay or leave? Focus on fact - 4

People complain there are not enough facts in the Brexit debate, so here are a couple:-

1. The anti-Europeans have not got the faintest idea what will happen if we leave Europe.

2. If we walk out of Europe, we tear up more than 50 trade agreements with countries across the world. Freeing up trade increases prosperity. That is why nations and organisations like the EU go to the considerable effort of making these deals. Conversely, losing free trade agreements reduces prosperity.

Some of the anti-Europeans have been claiming that everyone will be queuing up to sign a trade deal with us. Even if this is true, and it may well not be, these deals take a long time to agree. Canada and the EU have been negotiating for 7 years. Even if we could reach new deals to replace the 50 or so we tear up, this would take us years, perhaps decades.

The anti-Europeans have been plotting Brexit for years, so how many countries have they managed to sign up to give us new trade deals if we leave Europe? None, so far as I am aware. And managing to insult the United States and the Commonwealth in one sentence as Boris Johnson did yesterday, is probably not a great way to go about it.

As with so many things, the anti-Europeans have been flip-flopping on this issue too. Having had their claims that all and sundry will be queuing up to do trade deals with us blown out of the water, they are now saying we do not really need these agreements. As I said, if that were true, countries and organisations would not make so much effort trying to negotiate them.