Boris has fudged it for ERG Brexiteers’, for farmers, for fishermen, for financiers, for food retailers and for the economy. But it’s not all bad news. ‘Them forriners’ did really well out of the deal.
They still get to make our laws (now without our input), they still get to travel between 27 countries while we can’t even get through Kent without a passport. They get to buy the Covid-19 vaccine for €10 less per shot (that’s trading blocks for you) and they keep the level playing field to stop us undercutting them.
As Barnier once said… “The UK has chosen to renounce the rights and benefits that come with EU membership”.
Boris got his deal, the economy is tanking (which is bad news for everyone except Boris, Rees-Mogg, Farage and their disaster capitalist mates). The UK faces major shortages and price rises on imported goods and other goods like medicines.
The financial sector is legging it to Europe, as are several of our remaining manufacturers but at least, for once, we really are in it together… including Tory and Brexit voters, most of whom lack the means to profit from Brexit like Aaron Banks will.
Hopefully, one day we will return.
So let’s face facts, accept the disaster we’re stuck with and pull together to maintain our community. The lesson of history predicts major social division and unrest anytime from mid-January onward. Fuelled by the likes of Farage and co who will be desperate to blame others for their own actions, it’ll be easy for us to collapse into rioting and mutual hatred not seen in UK since the civil wars of the seventeenth century. And (almost) nobody voted for that!
let’s stick together and come through this disastrous mess as a nation united by adversity, not a people destroyed by self-inflicted misery and the resentment it so often brings in its wake.
My latest offering. It’s OK not to know – this isn’t a real fight anyway. We need to take Boris on over policies, not more evidence that he lies – even if we could prove this (which is doubtful). It’s a huge distraction from the real issues that will most likely go nowhere.
If you’re one of those people who thinks Boris & co have handled Covid-19 well, have a look at this. Bear in mind that we’ve known about this for months, since well before we had our first cases here in UK. While the rest of the world, including Italy and even the World Health Organisation were telling us to prepare, Boris was advocating we just ‘take the hit’.
This Financial Times graph isn’t ‘real time’. It’s been adjusted to track each country’s progress since they reached 3 deaths per day. That means we’re all assessed on an equal footing – equal until you realise how much more warning the UK had than some other countries. Of course other countries did have a couple of distinct advantages…
Their health services hadn’t been crippled by 10 years of Tory underfunding. Our NHS went into this crisis with fewer beds than we had when the service began in 1948 due to conservative savagery. The tories opposed and argued against the creation of the NHS in the 1940s and they oppose it now, they just won’t admit it so openly in 2020.
Their political leaders didn’t see Covid-19 as an excuse to reduce the welfare bill by getting rid of their ‘useless eaters’.
In the 24 hours since this graph was produced the UK has overtaken even Italy. Do you still think Boris is handling things well?
I wonder what the Freedom of speech supporters who’ve stood on public platforms for years shouting divisive diatribes and railed against the law curtailing their right to shout divisive diatribes from public platforms will make of this. Those of us who really do support Freedom of speech (in UK Freedom of expression) genuinely are appalled.
Yesterday we saw how American alt-right offshoot ‘Turning Point UK’ was attempting to influence British education by encouraging intimidation of teachers. Today we learn that our government is doing the same. That’s hardly surprising given the links our government has with alt-right gurus such as Steve Bannon, arguably the real power behind Cummings’s Prime Ministerial throne. Let’s face it – it’s not Boris in charge, is it?
In 1933 the German Nazi party began a campaign of removing all academics and staff from schools, universities and cultural, historical institutions who weren’t ‘on message’.
I have long argued that the most valuable thing about European membership is the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). I’ve warned repeatedly that these Tories want to be rid of our human rights protections so they can exploit us further and been accused of scaremongering (latterly ‘project fear’). And yet it’s happening.
This is a PDF of The Convention, a blog series I wrote years ago, long before the referendum was a prospect because even then politicians on the right and far right were complaining about our human rights.
The struggle to retain our human and civil rights will be the next big battle in post-Brexit UK. PLEASE get informed. Download The Convention and see why it’s so important not to let Boris and his cynical mates take our rights from us.
On December 23rd I posted a little article pointing out that we still hadn’t seen the promised report on Russian interference in British politics and Conservative party funding. There have been some very serious allegations made, not least about the tory party’s electoral strategy and elements of political espionage and misinformation. So you’d imagine that Boris would be keen to publish the report as he promised.
One commenter on the blog pointed out that Boris couldn’t now publish until after January when a new defence committee would be formed. OK then, thought I – we’ll see it by February.
Well… it’s over a week now since the end of January and still no sign of the document that presumably would clear the conservative party of any wrongdoing. A fact which makes me wonder… what has Boris got to hide?
Whilst the press was jumping over the Labour party because of around 0.01% of members with anti-Semitic views, British Muslims were looking in a different direction. They saw plainly what many others did not. They saw the rampant Islamophobia and racism that has overtaken the Tory party.
I’ve never been all that impressed by the conservative party and its callous attitude towards ordinary people but at least it used to maintain at least a veneer of fairness and decency. Nowadays the party that brought us forced deportation of genuine Brits, Grenfell and the hostile environment is almost as openly racist as it was in Enoch Powell’s day.
Of course there’s more evidence to come but for now I recommend you read this little article from the Metro detailing the fears of British Muslims fleeing the country. This is what a Tory victory means for them. They know the signs all too well and the rest of us had better start watching too.
If we are to prevent a national decline into full on racism we need to do two things, and we need to do them relentlessly…
1. Challenge racist and religious bigotry of all kinds whenever we see it.
2. Make it clear to our Muslim, Jewish, European, Black and Asian neighbours that they are accepted by the decent majority of Brits – especially by those of us from a white, working class, Christian heritage.
Unless you want to live in an increasingly racist, bigoted, mean-spirited and hate-filled society please consider this a duty.
As Boris’ awful withdrawal bill, with all its opportunities for exploitation progresses through the house, I think this short poem is as relevant as it was when I wrote it back in 2018.
Keir Starmer announced this morning talking to the BBC’s Andrew Marr that a motion for a second referendum, a ‘Peoples’ vote’ will be tabled next week. He further announced that this new referendum will be supported by the Labour party.
Poor old Boris. Never mind Rees-Mogg. It’s OK, Farage. You’ll just have to content yourselves with the money you already have. We won’t let you shaft the rest of the UK to enlarge your already over-inflated piles (double entendre intended).https://youtu.be/HHCHG8skjuA
Left eye view 