Brexit grumbles
Okay, let us agree that the world has gone completely mad and that we’re living in a parallel universe in the fifth dimension somewhere on the other side of the universe, inside the black hole that the Solar System was sucked into around the time that someone persuaded Prime Minister David Cameron to commit the Tories to holding an ‘In/Out’ EU Referendum and the Labour Party decided to commit hari-kiri by devising a leadership election system that enabled the Loony Left to impose Jeremy Corbyn upon them.
Yesterday I undertook my normal Sunday morning diet of flicking through the newspaper whilst half-watching BBC1 from about 7.00am until midday – on this occasion BBC Breakfast Time followed by Match of The Day, then The Andrew Marr Show, The Big Questions hosted by Nicky Campbell and then … er … well, then there was no Sunday Politics hosted by Andrew Neil at 11.00am, which naturally then totally spoiled my weekend, albeit I suspected that at some point this past week I’d had a weird recollection that Andrew had mentioned during an edition of Daily Politics that there’d be no Daily or Sunday Politics shows for a while because of some recess, or holiday, or something.
That established, let me move on to the subject of today’s blog.
First up, we had the spectacle of Lord Peter Mandelson being interviewed on The Andrew Marr Show in his role as a prime mover in something called ‘Open Britain’ which – as far as I could make out – is a major new lobby group effectively dedicated to reversing the Brexit decision in the recent EU Referendum in which 52% of the UK population voted to quit the EU.
See here for a link to an ‘information about’ page on its website – OPEN BRITAIN
Mandelson, who seemed to be generating an excess of spittle in his mouth (I say that because he regularly interspersed his comments with huge swallows of fluid), was peddling verbiage straight from the ‘politics-speak’-spewing machine situated at ‘Bremoaners’ HQ.
Whilst, of course, he said he accepted the democratic verdict of the EU Referendum result, he kept repeating that none of those who voted for Brexit (for what was evidently a wide variety of different reasons, some just about rational, but others ridiculous, stupid, racist, economically-illiterate or indeed silly, because they hadn’t been listening to the very logical and reasonable arguments of the Remainers) had voted for the Hard Brexit that swivel-eyed Mrs May and her loony Tory government were now doggedly fixated upon pursuing.
It was therefore his duty – and that of all sensible politicians in the Houses of Parliament, and indeed Tony Blair, who had been put up by Open Britain to make his incendiary speech last week about the British people rising up to fight the government on the topic – to offer the stiffest resistance possible to the Brexit negotiations as currently being planned by Number 10.
The line he pushed was that nobody in their right mind would ever have voted for something which would not only decimate the British economy and make every man (and woman) jack of us far worse off than previously – which departing the EU Single Market, and/or failing to retain access to the various commercial collaborations and customs agreements that the EU made available to its members, would assuredly do.
It was now the duty of all good Bremoaners to fight, obstruct, complicate and just bugger-up the Government’s negotiations with the EU that would be triggered by Article 50 declaration (currently expected in March) in any way they could, including by organising a cross-party revolt in the House of Lords.
Furthermore – whether in the event that the two-year period assigned for the negotiations expired without any deal, or the Government came back with a deal that it represented as the best possible in all the circumstances – Mandelson (and those of his persuasion) were demanding the absolute right of Parliament to vote ‘Yes/No’ upon said deal, with the outcome being in the event of a ‘No’ result, that the Government would be sent back to the EU to renegotiate it and come back with something better.
It wasn’t clear to me from his interview whether Mandelson was separately or in parallel (or indeed at all) making the case that said proposed deal should also be put to the UK electorate in another Referendum, though I felt the hint was there.
I nevertheless came away afterwards with a nasty taste in my mouth.
It seemed to me that – despite stating at the outset that he respected the verdict of the electorate in last year’s EU ‘Yes/No’ Referendum [and of course let us remind ourselves that ‘Yes/No’ was the only question being put to them, as agreed and voted for by a large majority in the House of Commons when the issue of having a Referendum at all came up for debate] – this was precisely the one thing that Mandelson was disrespecting.
The truth, all semantics aside, is that Mandelson was simply exhibiting the all-enveloping condescension of the European ‘elite establishment’ towards democracy and ‘the people’. The Elite’s entire thought-process, in even allowing the electorate a referendum at all, was built around its false expectation that right result (viz. ‘Yes’) was going to be a foregone conclusion.
If there had been even a chance – or indeed an opinion poll – suggesting that the UK electorate was even within 15 points of producing a ‘No’ verdict, there is no way that the Elite would have let a referendum take place. They wouldn’t have taken the risk – and as a result normal (‘elite Establishment’) life would, of course, have continued as before until the end of the world [i.e. sometime in the autumn of 2017, when President Trump presses the nuclear button]. …
But they got that wrong, of course.
So now we are presented with the spectacle of Mandelson – and his pals, most of them growing fat with their very-nice, gravy-train-fuelled, EU lifestyles and pensions still flooding into their bank accounts – trying to do everything they can to reverse the UK’s EU Referendum decision.
I’d make the following points:
Does anyone suppose, had the 2016 UK EU Referendum result been a 52% ‘Yes’ and 48% ‘No’, Mandelson and those in his ‘elite establishment’ camp would have been receptive to arguments that – since the result had been so close, or indeed that nobody had told the electorate before the Referendum that if Greece defaulted again, and/or Italy had a major crisis (as constantly seems likely), and/or France or Holland (or anyone else) also had referenda that meant they’d be leaving the EU supposedly for a better life outside it … i.e. that the EU might de-stabalise itself and/or disintegrate completely within the next three to five years – there should be an automatic in-built opportunity to revisit the Referendum verdict and/or have another vote or Referendum on any subsequent deal that the British Government might negotiate with the EU secretariat as it gradually fell apart?
Would they hell!!!!
Furthermore – and I’m simply applying pure logic here – the Mandelson thrust seems completely devoid of merit.
Surely, if his argument was taken to its end conclusion, he’s effectively saying that whenever the British Government sets off to negotiate anything – whether that be at the United Nations, or with its EU ‘friends’, or with Indian corporate giant Tata regarding the Port Talbot steel works, or with Nissan regarding its future car making plans, or with President Trump, or indeed anything relating to prospective post-Brexit trade deals with Australia, Singapore, China, India and all points east and west – then either Parliament (and/or the UK electorate in a referendum) should have the automatic right to vote ‘Yes or No’ upon it before anything is set in stone, or indeed set out in some formal contractual agreement or another? And, if the vote goes the wrong way and comes back as a ‘No’, then the humiliated British Government will then have to go back to said organisation, or dictator, and say “Terrible sorry, but our MPs (or our public, whichever it is) doesn’t like that deal – can we have a better one please?” …
That’s just plain crazy, isn’t it … or have I got that wrong?