Category: Brexit

Brexit

He Who Fights Monsters

Brexit, EU Parliament, Liberal Democrats, Party politics, Quotes & snippets
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As Guido reports, the speech that Guy Verhofstadt, the European Parliament’s Brexit Coordinator, made to the Liberal Democrat conference was rapturously received.

He said,

We cannot continue, dear friends, with a Europe that is always acting too little and too late. In the world order of tomorrow – the world order of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries; it is a world order that is based on empires. China is not a nation, it is a civilisation [inaudible word]. India – you know it better than I do – is not a nation. There are two thousand nations in India. There are twenty different languages that are used there. There are four big religions. At the same time it is the biggest democracy worldwide. The US is also an empire, more than a nation. Maybe tomorrow they will speak there more Spanish than English, I don’t know what will happen. And then finally, the Russian Federation. The world of tomorrow is a world of empires, in which we Europeans and you British can only defend your interests, your way of life, by doing it together in a European framework and in the European Union.

Some people objected to Guido’s description of this speech as saying that the EU needed to become an empire. Fair enough, he never said that. But he certainly seems to think that in order to survive among a world of empires the EU must become more like an empire than it is at present. And – how shall I put this? – neither he nor his audience seemed unhappy at the prospect. Liberalism once meant something different from this.

Failing, flailing, and doing surprisingly well in the polls

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Brexit Party, Conservative Party, Elections, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Media, Party politics
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I read everywhere that Boris Johnson’s government is flailing and failing. They have been soundly defeated in the Commons. It looks like Boris will be forced to ask the EU for another extension, and according to the Times it has been pre-approved:

Rebel Tory MPs and opposition leaders received private assurances from European leaders that a request by parliament for a three-month Brexit extension would be granted in one last attempt to break the deadlock.

The Times understands that senior figures behind the bill to force an extension on Boris Johnson cleared their plan with EU capitals before it was published this week. They received reassurances that the European Council, which is made up of EU leaders, would not stand in the way of one final extension if it was approved by parliament.

Amber Rudd is but the latest high-profile Tory to resign the Conservative whip, to the delight of her brother Roland Rudd, the chairman of the People’s Vote campaign.

Yet…

“If Parliament is unable to decide on Brexit it would be better to have a snap General Election”

Agree: 50%
Disagree: 18%

-Tweet from the “Britain Elects”, quoting a poll by ComRes carried out from the 4th-6th September. It is not the only such result. The Independent‘s John Rentoul has observed,

Average of 3 polls this weekend (Survation, Opinium, YouGov)

Con 33%

Lab 23%

Lib Dem 18%

Brexit 14%

Brexit news

Brexit
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What just happened? Some probabilities have shifted but nothing is yet decided. A vote has been won to enable remainer MPs to introduce their European Union (Withdrawal) (No. 6) Bill 2019 which, among other things, may force the Prime Minister to ask the European Council for an extension of a length determined by the European Council.

Boris Johnson has initiated a procedure to enable a debate and a vote on whether or not to have a general election. He has threatened, should an election take place, to deselect Tory MPs who opposed him in the previous vote.

Much remains to be seen.

  • Will the remainers’ bill pass the first vote?
  • Will it be delayed by arcane procedures?
  • Should it pass, will it be put in front of the Queen for royal assent? Boris has said only that he will obey the law and the constitution. The constitution seems to allow him to prevent it becoming law.
  • A general election may delay it.
  • A general election may or may not be possible. Jeremy Corbyn says he does not want an election (until no-deal-Brexit is removed as a possibility).
  • Nobody is quite sure whether the election would be before or after the 31st October.
  • Should a general election take place, Boris might deselect Tory MPs who have opposed him thus far. Update: Confirmed that Boris has withdrawn the whip (they are expelled from the party and are now independent) from 21 MPs who voted against him.
  • Unless leavers are completely satisfied, the outcome of any election is very uncertain, and includes the possibility of a Corbyn government.

Farming and Brexit: whatever did we do before the EU?

Brexit, Historical
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As the saying warns, those who do not learn from the past are condemned to relive it – but sometimes, reliving the past is worth considering at least. 🙂 After all, it was in the past that we were not in the EU. How did we survive in that dim and distant time?

When Britain joined the EU (it was called the EEC in those days), many people – on both sides of the channel – pointed out that the UK’s prior method of supporting a viable farming sector had some things going for it.

– The EEC set minimum prices for agricultural products – so had butter mountains, wine lakes, etc. (Basic economics: want a surplus? – set a minimum price; want a shortage? – set a maximum price.) Food cost more, which was bad news for the poor inside the EU, and EU protectionism was especially focussed on agriculture, which was bad news for the poor in the third world. (When the UK industrialised, it let its farming sector shrink as Europe sold it food in exchange for high-tech products. Thanks to the EU, Europe’s approach to the rest of the world is the opposite.)

– The old UK system of “deficiency payments” for farmers was a negative sales tax. UK farmers sold what they could in competition with imports, and, instead of paying sales tax on it received a ‘deficiency payment’ – an annually-set sum per unit sale for farm products in the scheme. Thus food was cheap to the consumer, and a lot of it was imported, but UK farmers could budget each year to compete with third-world farmers without having to adopt a third-world living standard.

I’m not a fan of state intervention. However even Milton Friedman says that keeping enough of a local farming sector to survive e.g. another WWII can (sometimes) be a valid exception. If today’s politics tells us that Brexit’s effect on farmers will be addressed somehow then I’m prepared to discuss how best to do what will anyway be done. Joining the EU raised food prices. Why shouldn’t leaving it lower them? If the government will spend money on it anyway, then what do people think of motivating farmers to produce for the market instead of for the surplus, while helping the UK poor by lowering food prices instead of giving them yet another state handout, and allowing the poor in the third world to sell us what they can produce instead of tariffing them? It’s what we did before.

A purge long overdue

Brexit, Brexit Party, Conservative Party, Party politics
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Johnson threatens Brexit rebels with party expulsion

Sayeth that bastion of anti-Brexit sentiment Reuters. But what I find more interesting is this:

House of Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said any wise party would prepare for an election and that the rebel legislation would be considered a matter of confidence in the government. “It is important for the government to establish the confidence of the House of Commons and this is essentially a confidence matter: Who should control the legislative agenda, Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson?” Rees-Mogg said.

As I have said before, the way to get Nigel Farage (not Jeremy Corbyn, that is a canard) in No.10 is for enough of the Château-bottled shit who make up much of the ‘Conservative’ Party to prevent Boris from delivering a clean Brexit. That is the magic ingredient which transforms Farage from a remarkable political outlier into a political kaiju who will flatten London (well, Westminster specifically). The Brexit Party exists almost exclusively to rip the two main parties apart (but particularly the Tories) if we end up with No Brexit or Brexit-in-name-only. There are enough adults in the Tory Party to have figured out that out too, meaning they understand that certain ‘Big Beasts’ like Ken Clarke and several dozen others need to be purged from the party utterly, completely, unambiguously and unapologetically, or the entire Parliamentary Tory party will be able to drive to the House in three or four black cabs after the next General Election.

They have it within their power to make the Brexit Party pretty much just go away, and they would have to be cretins not to see how to do that. Sadly, if we have learned anything in the last three years, Parliament is awash with cretins. I always used to think it was a mistake to assume my enemies were idiots, but… well, we will see.

Eurointelligence on the prorogation gambit

Boris Johnson, Brexit
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Some interesting comments on the effectiveness of the prorogation at Zerohedge. That article quotes a pay-walled article from a web site called Eurointelligence, a web site about politics and economics in the Eurozone.

It argues that there is no time now for any legislation to pass. And so:

There is still one option left for Remainers to pursue, but it is very risky. They could hold a vote of no confidence when they come back next week. If they win, the fixed-term parliaments act sets out a definitive procedure. The House of Commons has two weeks to secure a majority in support of another prime minister – a technical government as the Italians would call it. But this is unlikely as the opposition is hopelessly divided on this point. If that effort fails, the Commons would be suspended for new elections. But, crucially, it is the government that sets the date for them. Number Ten said yesterday that the date for elections would be November 1-5, that is after a no-deal Brexit. In other words, a no-confidence motion could actually trigger a no-deal Brexit, as the Commons would have deprived themselves of the opportunity to ratify a withdrawal agreement.

Did they think they were the only ones who could break with convention?

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Shenanigans, Westminster Parliament
1 Comment

Oh, the growlings and the howlings now that Boris Johnson – for which read Dominic Cummings – has asked the Queen to suspend Parliament.

Reaction to Parliament suspension plan

Bercow: “I have had no contact from the Government, but if the reports that it is seeking to prorogue Parliament are confirmed, this move represents a constitutional outrage.”

Corbyn: “…an outrage and a threat to our democracy”.

Sturgeon: “This simply cannot be allowed to happen.”

Tory chairman James Cleverly blandly says that it is merely that the Government seeks “to hold a Queen’s Speech, just as all new Governments do”, but is not fooling anyone and does not seem greatly troubled by that.

It is an audacious move, and it is indeed constitutionally unprecedented. But that’s the thing about breaking precedent; once broken it stays broken. Oliver Letwin, Dominic Grieve, Yvette Cooper, Hilary Benn and Nick Boles were all happy to dispense with Parliamentary precedent in March. Bercow smirked while he betrayed his office to let them do it. Many warned them at the time that what they had done their opponents could also do. They went ahead anyway. And now they find themselves in the position described in a famous quote from A Man for all Seasons, that of having cut a great road through the law to get at the devil only to find that the devil has turned round on them and there is nowhere to hide, the laws all being flat.

Why Labour might want No Deal… and why such thoughts are dangerous

Brexit, Brexit Party, Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats
4 Comments

No Deal would suit Labour for the same reason as it would suit the Conservatives: with Brexit done each of the two major parties’ main rival would lose its main selling point. If No Deal turned out badly, that would suit Labour even better. They could blame the Tories for it while still scooping up its benefits. Discuss.

I could have stopped there. But in politics, where duplicitousness is common, there is an ever-present temptation to think that it is universal and that one’s opponents are only pretending to oppose. “Relax!” says a soothing voice. “We don’t need to do anything. They secretly want us to win and will open the gates before battle begins.” Everywhere I see Remain supporters claiming that Boris Johnson, Bluffer Boris, knows full well that leaving without a deal would be a disaster and will arrange at the last moment for it to be avoided. They add that he never even expected or wanted to win the referendum in the first place; did you not see his shocked face the morning after? He just wants someone else to step in and stop it so that he can blame them for betraying Brexit while still scooping up the benefits of remaining in the EU.

Long may they believe this. By “long” I mean until 31st October 2019. But I fear that my half-belief that Jeremy Corbyn secretly wants Brexit is merely another manifestation of the same comforting delusion.

Boris must win against barmy Tory Remainers…

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Conservative Party, Quotes & snippets
4 Comments

If Parliament continues to block Brexit, Mr Johnson is right to shut it down. Just this week a ComRes survey showed 54 percent of Britons would support him proroguing Parliament to ensure we leave on October 31. If Remainer MPs win a vote of no confidence, Boris should call an election for immediately after we have left. These barmy MPs must no longer be allowed to derail our democratic process. They voted to give us the choice in 2016 and must stick by their decision. It really is the People’s PM against Parliament – and Boris must win for the sake of democracy.

Otherwise what is the point of voting ever again? Especially when a handful of deluded MPs think it’s better to entrust our nation to a Marxist dinosaur than simply extricating ourselves from a failing EU.

– Tim Newark