Brexit Bulletin: ‘Mayhem, its everyone else’s fault says PM’

 

‘I got no emotions for anybody else, You better understand I’m in love with myself, My beautiful self’ ¹

 

For weeks now this column has been describing the PM as delusional, a term used by many commentators this week as she rounded on MPs, blaming them for the crisis she herself has led the country into. She should remember the old blame-game saying, ‘when you point a finger at someone three fingers point back at you!’

The catalyst was the Speaker, John Bercow, blocking the prime minister from asking MPs to vote on her Brexit deal for a third time unless it had fundamentally changed. He said the PM could not ask MPs to pass the same deal, after they rejected it twice by huge margins. Way to go Mr Speaker, the Brexit Weekly’s new hero!

‘when you point a finger at someone three fingers point back at you!’

This led to dismay and criticism from a number of Tory hard-line Brexiters, one, the former children’s minister Tim Loughton said it was the ‘most serious constitutional crisis I have seen in my 22 years in this house’. With statements like that you can see why he was the Children’s’ Minister, whatever that might entail?

This isn’t a crisis caused by the Speaker, it is the result of bullying that has become the PMs instruments of torture as she tries to grind recalcitrant MPs into passing her destructive deal.

The reason Parliament rejected her deal, twice inflicting resounding defeats, is simple; her deal settled almost nothing. Will the UK become Norway, Canada, Singapore, or perhaps, a Cayman Islands tax haven?

At each turn we will still be subject to subject to EU laws and regulations, but with no say. Sitting outside the corridors of power in Brussels, whilst they decide rules we cannot diverge from, as we need their trade.

We will miss out on those promised deals with the US and China: Australia has spent 10 years failing to make a deal with India. The US trade department is drawing up demands for any UK deal with including such delights as chlorination, hormones and GM food, dropping our ‘precautionary’ safety-first principle for food and chemicals, pay higher US prices for NHS drugs, and forget controlling US tech giants.

Forget sovereignty, we are the US, you are our ‘special’ partner, now do as your told! Where is Hugh Grant when we need him?

The really is no better summary of the person and the situation that the one made by Dominic Grieve, who has known May since they were at Oxford University together, who said he had ‘never felt more ashamed to be a member of the Conservative party’.

He said the prime minister was ‘zig-zagging all over the place, rather than standing up for what the national interest must be’ and if the government did not get a grip, ‘we will spiral down into oblivion – and the worst thing is, we will deserve it’.

Now, and perhaps fittingly we are the behest of the EU after yesterday’s address to leaders described as ‘90 minutes of nothing’, by sources, failed to persuade the bloc that she had a plan to avoid a no-deal Brexit.

May had been asking for an extension to article 50 until 30 June to make time for vital legislation to pass should she manage to get her deal through the Commons next week.

Unsurprisingly, her appeal failed to deliver any sort of plan should the House vote down her proposal for a third time provoking EU leaders into taking matters into their own hands and in effect taking control of her future. ‘She didn’t even give clarity if she is organising a vote,’ said one aide to a leader. ‘Asked three times what she would do if she lost the vote, she couldn’t say. It was awful. Dreadful. Evasive even by her standards.’

‘It was awful. Dreadful. Evasive even by her standards’

The result, April 12^th is the new March 29^th.

This is the same PM who 2-yrs ago told us that Brexit would allow us to become ‘a great, global trading nation that is respected around the world and strong, confident and united at home’.

Instead we have become a laughing stock, as an Italian friend told me, Brexit now comes on at the end of the news, in that wacky slot just before the sport and weather.

After all of this it come as no surprise that many on both sides of the House are convinced that the PM’s days in number 10 are numbered, with MPs openly discussing who will seek to replace her.

Boris Johnson is the current favourite of Brexit-backing Tory activists, who will pick the leader out of a final two candidates. However, the former London mayor would first have to clear the hurdle of convincing Conservative MPs to put him on the final list of two. One minister said she would leave the party if Johnson and his supporters, such as Jacob Rees-Mogg, took over the Conservatives.

‘Brexit now comes on at the end of the news, in that wacky slot just before the sport and weather’

Another minister said he knew of five or six Conservatives who were openly saying they were so opposed to a Johnson premiership that they could not stay in the party run by him and a group of ‘Brexit ultras’.

And it is to these hard-line Tory’s and Brexiters that I now turn, my great fear is that they will enable the hard-right to become more prominent and strident in their views and activities.

A seemingly harmless march, or perhaps pub crawl, organised by ‘leave Means Leave’, and led by Nigel Farage, demonstrates this. This itself is harmless, around 100 people turned out for the march , which over the course of two weeks and different ‘legs’ will see disaffected Brexiters protest against their apparent ‘betrayal’, culminating in a demonstration in Parliament Square on 29 March.

One columnist amusingly dubbed it the ‘Theatre of the Absurd’, but, when you read some of the comments from the participants, the ‘Theatre of Hate’ might be more apt.

One 72-year-old participant told the Guardian: ‘I don’t want my grandchildren being conscripted by an EU army likely led by the Germans.’

Another participant said: ‘It’s like walking in the Falklands, following the flag again.’

This is xenophobia, plain and simple, all they need is the Leader

 

‘I’ve been waiting for a guide to come and take me by the hand’ ²

 

Once you start down a path of this nature there is no telling where it will end. Don’t believe me, look at what is happening in Italy, best described in the truly scary article written by the excellent Italian journalist and author of Gomorrah, Roberto Saviano.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/mar/19/italy-democrtic-emergency-migrants-racist-attacks?CMP=share_btn_link

By way of background, a year ago saw the last general election in Italy. Three months afterwards Matteo Salvini’s League and Luigi di Maio’s Five Star Movement (M5S) took power, today the government still has a high level of popular support, approximately 60%, according to polls.

The list of reported racist incidents in Italy from the beginning of this year is shocking.

 

1. In Lecce province, a young boy from Sierra Leone was battered on the back with a chair as his assailants racially abused him and told him to ‘go home’.
2. In Rome, a 12-year-old Egyptian was verbally abused and beaten up so badly by a group of older boys that he ended up in hospital.
3. A black brother and sister were pilloried by a schoolmaster in Foligno,
4. in central Italy. Women of colour are more and more treated as if they were sex workers – and not only in the street but even in public offices.

 

But this is only what is reported, many incidents go unreported, but it is more than sufficient to justify Saviano’s comment that ‘what is happening in Italy is a sign of a descent into barbarism.’

Now before anyone says, ‘oh, that’s just Italy, it could never happen here’, look at elsewhere:

 

• The gilets jaunes are still out every Saturday in Paris;
• the European parliament has concluded that Hungary poses a ‘systematic threat’ to democracy and the rule of law, and the conservative bloc has expelled Hungary’s ruling party;
• Estonia’s ruling party is contemplating inviting the far right into government;
• Antisemitism is on the rise across Europe with a 60% rise in the number of violent attacks in Germany;
• Protesters in Serbia stormed national TV calling for media freedom.
• Then there is the authoritarianism of Presidents Donald Trump of the US and Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil.

 

We are no different, and we have an electoral system that would allow this, first-past the post is ideal for minorities to become majorities. Don’t believe me? In the 2015 general election the Tories won a majority with just 24% of the eligible vote. Compare this to 1950, when Winston Churchill won 38% of eligible voters and still lost.

‘Antisemitism is on the rise across Europe’

The reason for the above can be explained by diminishing voter turnout at election time; between 1945 and 1997, turnout never went below 70%; since 2001, it has never reached 70%. Put simply, an organised campaign, which is what you would expect from the hard-right , could easily lead to the minority ruling over the majority.

Italy is a country with a north-south divide (a wealth-gap), we are country with a south-north divide, the ingredients are the same. In a way this wealth gap is an imaginary wall, not as physical demoralising as the Berlin Wall perhaps, but in its own way still demoralising for people on the ‘wrong side’.

The Berlin Wall effectively ‘fell’ on November 9, 1989, when a spokesman for East Berlin’s Communist Party announced a change in his city’s relations with the West. Starting at midnight that day, he said, citizens of the GDR were free to cross the country’s borders. 12-years before that an English singer/songwriter living close to the wall, looked out and saw hope….

 

‘We can beat them, forever and ever, Oh, we can be heroes just for one day’ ³

 

Another triple treat for lyric spotters this week.

¹ First out of the sleeve – and it couldn’t really have been anything else after Mrs May’s  remarkable display of narcissism, it’s those naughty boys the Sex Pistols with ‘No Feelings’ (what about ‘It Wasn’t me’ by Shaggy?……Ed)

² Next up, and no apologies for delving further into the Joy Division archive, this time it’s ‘Disorder’ – as hundreds of thousands march for a People’s Vote and a poll to revoke Article attracts 4m signatures.

³ Lastly, and we know the author is a fan of Bromley’s finest, maybe ‘Heroes’ are just what are needed. Enjoy. 

 

 

Philip Gilbert is a city-based corporate financier, and former investment banker.

Philip is a great believer in meritocracy, and in the belief that if you want something enough you can make it happen. These beliefs were formed in his formative years, of the late 1970s and 80s

 

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