Quotulatiousness

June 17, 2019

Britain’s Conservative Party – the Quisling Right

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Sean Gabb outlines recent British history, with emphasis on “the project” — the gradual take-over of the educational and cultural power-centres of Britain by a self-styled new ruling class and the total melt-down of the Conservatives:

Boris Johnson, Secretary of State for Foreign and Commonwealth Affairs at an informal meeting of the Foreign Affairs Council on 15 February 2018.
Photo by Velislav Nikolov via Wikimedia Commons.

I will begin with what I believe has been a loose Project unfolding through my entire life. Since about the 1960s, we have seen the rise of a new ruling class, committed to the transformation of Britain into a new sort of country. Because I have discussed the Puritan Hypothesis at some length here and here, I will now give only a summary. In short, the new ruling class wants to reshape our thoughts into its own conception of The Good. This means a long-term project of securing cultural hegemony through control of education and the media, and a shorter-term project of compelling us to act as if we already believed in the new order of things. Though I will emphasise that it is in no meaningful sense either Marxist or socialist, the overall Project has been carried through by a careful use of what Louis Althusser called the ideological state apparatus and the repressive state apparatus.

One important element of this Project has been to maintain the appearance of political diversity. Because Britain — or at least England — is a rather conservative nation, this means ensuring a Conservative Party that makes conservative noises, but never does anything measurably conservative. I spent several years after 1997 grumbling about “the Quisling Right.” Though I have mostly fallen silent since then, here it is the idea of the Quisling Right briefly stated in a speech I gave in 2005 during a debate with Boris Johnson.

Though I will not call their predecessors real conservatives, the Conservative Party was taken over in 2005 by a small group headed by David Cameron. These people spent the next five years making vaguely conservative noises, without ever challenging the new order of things that had come fully into shape under the New Labour Governments. Because of this, they failed to win an election against Gordon Brown, but were able to form a coalition government with the Liberal Democrats, who were just as committed to the new order of things as Labour.

[…]

I think it a reasonable conclusion that the Conservative Party is the Quisling Right — and, or but, or both, that it is run by a clique of politicians unfit for any conceivable purpose. Theresa May will leave office with the label fixed to her of the worst Prime Minister in history. But the reason she was able to last so long is that she had no obvious replacement. As I write, her most likely replacement is Boris Johnson. He is lazy. He is unprincipled. He is a thug. He is an adulterer who paid for at least one of his mistresses to have an abortion. He was a ludicrous Mayor of London. He was the worst Foreign Secretary I can recall. This Conservative Government has landed us in a first-class national and international crisis. It has provoked the European Union into refusing to entertain any leaving terms short of the ruinous. It has made no good preparations for leaving without a deal. It has landed us in a position where the best exit involves throwing ourselves on the mercy of the Americans, and to hope that they will treat us no more ruthlessly than they did in 1940. The last person we should ask to navigate this crisis is Boris Johnson.

It seems the sheep in the Parliamentary Party have agreed he is their only hope of keeping their seats at the next election. Perhaps the Party membership will be taken in by his Churchillesque wind-baggery. But this will not do. He will be brushed aside by the Europeans. He will be taken for a ride by his fellow Americans. That is if, before then, he can avoid a general election in which he will by murdered by Jeremy Corbyn. I am told, in his defence, that only he who is without sin should cast the first stone. Well, I have never done what Boris Johnson so far has. So, if I am not the first to ask for one, hand me a stone, and make it a big one.

No conspiracy here. These people have failed us. But it was never their purpose to do otherwise. More importantly, they have failed the Project. For that, I suppose, we should feel minimal gratitude. Even so, their survival in office for so long raises a further question with no comforting answers. How could a clique of total incompetents have been allowed, without meaningful challenge, to take over and run into the ground one of our main parties of government? What does this say about us as a people?

May 29, 2019

The EU election was “the Tories’ worst result since 1678”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Mark Steyn on the results of last week’s EU parliamentary elections:

In any normal UK election, it would be inconceivable for either of the two main parties – Conservative and Labour – to attract just 23 per cent of the vote. The fact that that is all they could muster between them is hilarious, and greatly to be enjoyed. As I put it on the radio last week, the departing Theresa May has led the Tories to their worst result in two hundred years. But, really, that’s praising with faint damns. I saw Daniel Hannan on the telly extending Mrs May’s impressive feat back through the pre-Reform Act era and accounting it the Tories’ worst result since 1678. Which is kind of hard to spin. Her forced resignation last Friday morning (by which point her party had made it clear they wouldn’t stick with her past lunch) ensures that she and that election result will be yoked together for all time. And jolly well deserved it is.

When the party of government falls from favor, the beneficiary is usually the principal opposition. Instead, Jeremy Corbyn’s Labour Party saw its vote fall almost as precipitously as the Tories’. Against the Conservatives’ single-digit nine per cent, Labour could muster only fourteen per cent, its own worst result in a century – in fact, since 1910. Which would also be hard to spin, had Theresa May not done Corbyn the favor of pulling off an unbeatable record.

[…]

Instead, Mrs May in particular but also Parliament in general chose to double-down on the estrangement from the masses revealed by the referendum, and spent the next three years demonstrating that, whatever the Prime Minister had in mind when she first declared “Brexit means Brexit”, it obviously doesn’t mean leaving the European Union. Either through malice or stupidity or condescension, the political class opted to widen its breach with the people – and Nigel Farage, who is a very canny fellow, decided six weeks ago to create a party to fill the gap in a European election the UK shouldn’t have had to participate in.

Listening and/or watching to the BBC on Sunday for as long as I could stomach it, I detected a strange urge to suggest that the Brexit Party had somehow under-performed, as though it’s normal for a six-week-old party to win twenty-nine out of seventy-three seats, while the century-old Labour Party wins only ten, and the Tories four and the nearest Nigel gets to a run for his money is the second-placed Liberal Democrats with sixteen seats. Farage and the other officially pro-Brexit parties (Labour, Tory, Democratic Unionist) won 44 seats. The Lib Dems and the other officially Remainer parties (Green, Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymru, Sinn Féin, Alliance Party) got 29. Adding in the unelected UKIP and Ulster Unionists, the Leave share of the vote was 58 per cent.

Yes, yes, I know, that’s a bit of a simplification, in that the Tories are supposedly pro-Brexit but totally bollocksed it, and Labour is only pretending to be pro-Brexit as part of a difficult straddle between its Old Labour working-class base and the New Labour preening metropolitan Euro-luvvies. Many of the latter – including such hitherto loyal champagne socialists as actors Simon Callow and Michael Cashman and even Blair’s old Cabinet Secretary Gus O’Donnell. – flew Corbyn’s coop and voted for the Lib Dems. Even so, for those demanding a second referendum (or, as they cynically call it, a “people’s vote”), there’s not much evidence for a second-time-around sadder-but-wiser Remain majority. Among riven Tory families, Jacob Rees-Mogg’s sister stood for the new Brexit Party while Boris Johnson’s sister stood for the equally new “Change UK”, a militantly anti-Brexit party formed by a coterie of disaffected Remainer media self-promoters of the soft left and soft right. Annuziata Rees-Mogg was duly elected in the Farage surge, while Rachel Johnson flopped out because “Change UK” had barely any statistical support outside the more desperate bookers of telly current affairs shows.

May 28, 2019

Brexit Party wins big in European elections

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Nigel Farage and his brand-new Brexit Party took 31.6% of the popular vote in England, Scotland, and Wales in the European elections (the Northern Irish results are delayed):

The distribution of the seats:

At Spiked, Brendan O’Neill says that despite the Brexit Party’s stunning results, the establishment is still determined to prevent Brexit and deny the democratically expressed wishes of British voters:

And still the establishment is in denial. Even following the stellar performance of a brand new party in the Euro elections, still the political establishment and its cheerleaders on social media are in a state of blinkered, fingers-in-ears denial about political feeling in the UK. How bad is their denial? Get this: the Brexit Party, barely six weeks old, soared to victory in the EU elections, decimated the Tories, conquered historic Labour-held territories like Bolsover and Hartlepool, and became the largest party in the entire European Parliament, and yet the No1 political trend on Twitter is… #RemainSurge.

Yes, these people, these inhabitants of the Brexitphobic echo chamber, have convinced themselves that this electoral revolt in which the Brexit Party steamrollered all the other parties is actually a victory for them. This takes self-delusion to giddy new heights.

“This is a really strong night for Remain”, said Caroline Lucas, like a real-life version of that meme showing a dog saying “This is fine” as his house burns down. “Tonight the Brexit Party wasn’t supported by around two-thirds of voters”, said Hilary Benn, perversely ignoring the millions of people who did vote for the Brexit Party, who vastly outnumber those who voted for his Labour Party. Alastair Campbell interpreted the election results as a mandate for a second referendum, which is almost as mad as saying Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction that could be deployed within 45 minutes.

In the face of this colossal culture of denial among the political and media elites, let’s reiterate some basic facts. The Brexit Party battered Labour and the Tories. It won more than five million votes. It won 31.6 per cent of the vote, which is 8.4 per cent more than the Tories and Labour combined: the Tories got 9.1 per cent (fifth place) and Labour got 14.1 per cent (third place). The Brexit Party got 28 seats, making it the largest party in the European Parliament. It won in every single region in England apart from London, speaking profoundly to the massive political and moral divide separating the capital – the heart of the political establishment – from the rest of England. It also did spectacularly well in Wales, topping the poll and winning in 19 out of 22 council areas.

And yet myths are already taking hold, being feverishly promoted by pro-EU figures. The first is that the Brexit Party is “just” – why just? – picking up the old UKIP vote and therefore its victory isn’t all that significant. Actually, the Brexit Party has got almost 32 per cent of the vote share, which is five percentage points higher than UKIP got at its high point in the Euro elections of 2014. The other myths – that the Brexit Party is only successful because it is a shadily funded, demagogic outfit, whose new MEPs probably have Russian roubles stuffed in their pockets – is the usual conspiratorial and anti-democratic rubbish we’ve come to expect from the rattled defenders of the status quo.

As for the “Remain surge” idea. Get real. The two parties that are most explicitly anti-Brexit and have expressed their searingly anti-democratic intention to overthrow the mass vote of 2016 – the Lib Dems and the Greens – won a combined vote of 29.7 per cent. That’s two per cent less than the Brexit Party got. The most poisonously elitist anti-Brexit Party – Change UK – disappeared without a trace, winning 2.8 per cent of the vote. Remember how much Change UK was talked up by the liberal media? At one point the chattering classes really did see this party as the saviour of Britain from the horrors of Brexit and yet it won a pathetic, paltry level of electoral support – 600,000 votes to the Brexit Party’s five million.

May 21, 2019

The Brexit Party may be getting dirty foreign money! Call out the plod!

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Law, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the Guardian, totally neutral and disinterested journalists report on former Labour PM Gordon Brown’s call to investigate where the Brexit Party is getting its funding from:

The Electoral Commission is under mounting pressure to launch an investigation into the funding of Nigel Farage’s Brexit party because of concerns that its donation structure could allow foreign interference in British democracy.

Before Thursday’s crucial European elections, Gordon Brown has written to the Electoral Commission calling on it to urgently examine whether the party has sufficient safeguards on its website to prevent the contribution of “dirty money”.

The former Labour prime minister will use a speech in Glasgow on Monday to say an investigation into the Brexit party’s finances is urgent and essential.

“Nigel Farage says this election is about democracy. Democracy is fatally undermined if unexplained, unreported and thus undeclared and perhaps under the counter and underhand campaign finance – from whom and from where we do not know – is being used to influence the very elections that are at the heart of our democratic system,” he will say, according to pre-released extracts.

As Tim Worstall points out:

It’s actually an entire 13 paragraphs later that we get to the meat of the matter:

    Only donations over £500 have to be declared under British law.

The Brexit Party is obeying every jot and tittle of electoral and fundraising law. This is the very system that the federast establishment set up itself. But, you know, the wrong people are succeeding under it so aspertions must be cast.

And guess what? The Electoral Commission isn’t going to get anything done by Thursday. Not even to be able to confirm that the law is being obeyed as it should be. But we’ve managed to get the propaganda out there that Nigel’s posse are bought by the Russians and that’s the point of it all anyway.

You might think me a little cynical here. But sadly I’m not. When I was working for Ukip the Times – Sam Coates it was – announced that we simply weren’t going to contest the next election. No reason given, no analysis performed, an apology of any prominence never was forthcoming. Just a bit of disinformation dropped into the public conversation there.

That’s how the federasts play and any governance system that has to play that way isn’t one we desire to be a part of, is it?

The Hell with the EU.

Of course, dirty anonymous foreign money sources can fund other groups too.

May 18, 2019

Tim Worstall lists the benefits of a hard Brexit

Filed under: Britain, Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

In the Continental Telegraph, Tim Worstall responds to a demand for a list of the benefits of a hard Brexit:

1) How will you protect UK business from dumping?

We won’t. The aim, purpose and intention of trade is to gain access to those things which Johnny Foreigner makes better, cheaper, faster – pick any two of three – than our own domestic producers do. Given that the aim of an economy is to make the people, consumers, as well off as the constraints of the real world allow, we wouldn’t protect domestic producers from anything. Shape up or go bust.

As even the Treasury’s briefing on the costs and benefits of Brexit said, competition from trade is exactly what incentivises domestic producers to become more productive.

So, we don’t protect from dumping and the people of Britain become richer. The problem with this is?

2) What will you do for those who lose their jobs because the businesses that employ them are undermined by WTO rules?

Exactly the same as we do for anyone else who loses their job for any other reason. The economy destroys some 10% of all jobs every year – some 3 million – and another 10% are generated newly as well. That’s just what labour market churn is. We have a welfare system for the interim and people who lose jobs because of Brexit or WTO do exactly as everyone else, get another job with the welfare state as the backstop.

And it’s important to note how new job creation works. It isn’t that we must plan what those jobs are before the old disappear. It’s the availability of the newly employable labour which generates the testing of what should be done next.

3) What will you do on the Northern Ireland border?

Lie.

We have pointed this out before:

Our answer should be “Yes.” We agree that we are leaving, that we have put in place that hard border. Then we do absolutely nothing above what we already do. People come and go as they wish, carrying what goods they can, and we do nothing. Except, as we already do, we keep an eye on those moving things on an industrial scale and have our little customs and tax chats with them away from that line on the map.

What other people wish to do on their side of that line is entirely up to them. We will do, as we’ve always done when in our right minds, what is useful and beneficial to us. It’s somewhat unfashionable these days to talk of the empire but it’s still true that we had it. Often because we’re rather good at this lying, cheating and dissembling. We should carry on. So, there’s the border, as it is today. And?

May 17, 2019

The EU’s trade distortions harm African farmers in many ways

Filed under: Africa, Economics, Europe — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

One of the unifying themes of the European Union is its dedication to farm subsidies, which are very popular among some European farmers. EU farming subsidies and trade policies also do significant measurable harm to African farmers:

spiked: How does the EU harm African economies?

Sam Akaki: Thanks to the EU’s Common Agricultural Policy, which heavily subsidises EU farmers, Africa’s markets are flooded with their cheap excess produce. If you go to any African market, you can buy all kinds of European produce sold at very, very cheap prices. This is driving African farmers out of the market. At the same time, the EU imposes strict limitations on what African countries can export to the European market. In particular, African farmers cannot export value-added goods. So if a farmer in Ghana is producing cocoa, or a farmer in Kenya is producing coffee, they can perhaps get less than a dollar for their product as they have to export it raw. Only a fraction of the money you pay for a jar of coffee goes to an African farmer. The value-added goods, such as processed coffee, are then produced in Europe. Germany, especially, has been doing a lot of harm.

EU lobby groups and NGOs are not working in the interests of Africa and are opposed to African attempts to get themselves out of poverty. For instance, many African farmers work with genetically modified (GM) crops. One of the big issues about GM food is that Western companies sell GM seeds that don’t produce new seeds for the next season. Farmers have to go back to companies like Monsanto every year. In Uganda, at the Kawanda Agricultural Research Institute, scientists have been working on their own way of producing local GM seeds that will be reusable each year. Europe is against this and tries to stop it.

[…]

spiked: How have EU sanctions affected Africa?

Akaki: The clearest examples are Zimbabwe and Eritrea. Of course, these countries have human-rights issues. But human rights are a question of development. Countries go through developmental stages. There would have been enormous human-rights abuses in Europe 100 years ago. The UK and the EU use their influence selectively to impose economic and diplomatic sanctions on African countries. We should follow a consistent policy. We impose sanctions on African countries but we are happy to trade with other human-rights abusers like Saudi Arabia. One danger is that these sanctions are driving African countries closer and closer into the arms of the Chinese. This is a real own goal.

Sanctions are a blunt instrument. The leaders responsible for human-rights abuses are protected. They still have access to the best lifestyles money can buy. Their money is stashed away in British and other foreign banks. Sanctions don’t touch them at all. Instead, they hit the poorest hardest. Sanctions are directly contributing to poverty and mass migration. We should promote human rights, certainly, but we shouldn’t use human rights to punish the very poorest.

May 5, 2019

Theresa May’s awful “Withdrawal” Agreement

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Law — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Hector Drummond relays a Spectator article that lists 40 problems with Prime Minister May’s agreement with the EU:

Just in case readers don’t have the time to go through the lengthly document themselves, Steerpike has compiled a list of the top 40 horrors lurking in the small print of Theresa May’s Brexit deal.

[…]

In summary: The supposed “transition period” could last indefinitely or, more specifically, to an undefined date sometime this century (“up to 31 December 20XX”, Art. 132). So while this Agreement covers what the government is calling Brexit, what we in fact get is: “transition” + extension indefinitely (by however many years we are willing to pay for) + all of those extra years from the “plus 8 years” articles.

Should it end within two years, as May hopes, the UK will still be signed up to clauses keeping us under certain rules (like VAT and ECJ supervision) for a further eight years. Some clauses have, quite literally, a “lifetime” duration (Art.39). If the UK defaults on transition, we go in to the backstop with the Customs Union and, realistically, the single market. We can only leave the transition positively with a deal. But we sign away the money. So the EU has no need to give us a deal, and certainly no incentive to make the one they offered “better” than the backstop. The European Court of Justice remains sovereign, as repeatedly stipulated. Perhaps most damagingly of all, we agree to sign away the rights we would have, under international law, to unilaterally walk away. Again, what follows relates (in most part) for the “transition” period. But the language is consistent with the E.U. imagining that this will be the final deal.

The top 40 horrors:

  1. From the offset, we should note that this is an EU text, not a UK or international text. This has one source. The Brexit agreement is written in Brussels.
  2. May says her deal means the UK leaves the EU next March. The Withdrawal Agreement makes a mockery of this. “All references to Member States and competent authorities of Member States…shall be read as including the United Kingdom.” (Art 6). Not quite what most people understand by Brexit. It goes on to spell out that the UK will be in the EU but without any MEPs, a commissioner or ECJ judges. We are effectively a Member State, but we are excused – or, more accurately, excluded – from attending summits. (Article 7)
  3. The European Court of Justice is decreed to be our highest court, governing the entire Agreement – Art. 4. stipulates that both citizens and resident companies can use it. Art 4.2 orders our courts to recognise this. “If the European Commission considers that the United Kingdom has failed to fulfil an obligation under the Treaties or under Part Four of this Agreement before the end of the transition period, the European Commission may, within 4 years after the end of the transition period, bring the matter before the Court of Justice of the European Union”. (Art. 87)
  4. The jurisdiction of the ECJ will last until eight years after the end of the transition period. (Article 158).
  5. The UK will still be bound by any future changes to EU law in which it will have no say, not to mention having to comply with current law. (Article 6(2))

And on for another 35 awful items.

April 19, 2019

The next Euro-elections as “the second referendum”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Julie Cook wonders why the Remoaners seem so eager to cast the May 23 European elections as the second referendum they’ve been eager to have, as the early indications show something less than full eagerness among British voters for any of the pro-remain groups:

Timothy Garton Ash is, I think, making something of a mistake here. For he’s calling for the upcoming euro-elections to be seen as a second referendum on our leaving the European Union. The point being that this is going to be something of a hostage to fortune.

Perhaps more importantly the more Remoaners call for it to be seen and treated as such the more likely we are to see what lying toads they are.

    Britain will have its second referendum – on 23 May. Don’t miss it
    Timothy Garton Ash This is a crucial chance to show politicians how we feel now about leaving Europe. The turnout must be huge

The point being, well, what if Leave wins?

    In just five weeks’ time, Britain will have a referendum on Brexit. This will take the form of elections to the European parliament, but in reality this will be a pre-referendum, or, if you like your neologisms ugly, a preferendum. So there is now one simple task: to maximise the vote for parties that support a confirmatory referendum on Brexit, giving the British people a democratic choice between accepting the negotiated Brexit deal and remaining in the EU.

And there’s the toad bit. There’s a significant portion of the population who’d prefer to just Leave. Don’t care about the terms, the deal, let’s just leave the b’tards to stew in their own juices and we’ll get on with solving whatever problems remain after we’ve not remained. And this is a significant portion – perhaps not a majority, maybe not even a plurality but that’s going to be the interesting test

Early polls show that Nigel Farage and his new Brexit Party are in the lead over both Labour and the Conservatives. Of course, he’ll have to weather a full month of unbridled hate and slander from the media, but what can they possibly say about him or his new party that they haven’t already screamed and bellowed before? Once you’ve fired all the invective in your shot locker, you don’t stand much chance of changing anyone’s opinion if they didn’t react the first dozen times.

April 17, 2019

Theresa May has been brilliantly successful in achieving her (true) aims

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Theodore Dalrymple admits having misjudged Mrs. May as a failure, when in fact her plans have been coming brilliantly to fruition:

Like almost everyone else, I regarded [Theresa May] as a pygmy in courage and a giant in incompetence, but it is time for a re-assessment, especially with regard to her efforts to Britain’s exit from the European Union. After the Union granted a further delay to Britain’s departure, the President of the European Council, Donald Tusk, said that it was his secret dream to prevent Britain from leaving. It is pleasing to know that Mr Tusk’s secret dreams so entirely coincide with those of the British political class, including (I surmise) those of Mrs May. At last we have a basis for full and final agreement.

Like the great majority of the British political class, Mrs May was always in favour of remaining in the Union. This class was so confident of its ability to persuade the population that it was right that it agreed with practically no demur to a referendum which would pronounce the winner as the side which obtained 50 per cent plus one of the votes cast. Thus the matter of British membership, it thought, would be settled once and for all.

The problem for the political class was now to find a method of overriding the result of the referendum without doing so in too blatant a fashion. And here, in Mrs May, it found a perfect leader.

Needless to say, Mrs May, having been selected as Prime Minister, could not just put forward her conviction that Britain should remain in the Union and say outright that she had no intention of carrying out the will of the majority. At that stage, such a disavowal of the result would have been politically impossible and might even have caused unrest. Instead, she went through a brilliantly elaborate charade of negotiating withdrawal, in such a way that the result would not be accepted by Parliament. Her agreement would be withdrawal without withdrawal, the worst of all possible outcomes, all complication and difficulty, and no benefit.

She knew perfectly well that the European Union, having drafted this agreement unacceptable to Parliament, would not renegotiate it. Why should it, since it knew that Parliament had no intention of demanding a real and total withdrawal, since it did not want to withdraw at all? She also knew that Parliament would never agree to a withdrawal without an agreement with the Union, as Parliament has repeatedly made clear.

April 6, 2019

“The Prime Minister has repaid my loyalty with betrayal”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Despite the full applicability of the headline to Canadian politics, this isn’t about the Dauphin’s betrayal of cabinet ministers or the Canadian people, it’s actually Matt Ridley talking about Prime Minister Theresa May:

The Prime Minister has ignored the views of the majority of her Cabinet and ruled out No Deal. The reason, we are told, is that No Deal might lead to the re-imposition of direct rule over Northern Ireland, and might lead to a second Scottish independence referendum.

That either of these considerations should outweigh the independence of the United Kingdom from an increasingly decrepit but increasingly autocratic empire is bizarre. If No Deal causes a second referendum in Scotland – we were told that the vote itself would cause that too, remember, but it did not – then we will win that too.

But more bizarre is that these worries have existed all along. If the Prime Minister thinks the risk of direct rule in Northern Ireland (which is happening in practice anyway) trumps all other considerations, and rules out No Deal, then why did she not say so more than two years ago or at any time since? Instead, she said 108 times that we would leave the EU on 29th March, whatever happens; 50 times that she would not extend that date; and 32 times that No Deal is better than a bad deal. Not once did she say it was impossible.

[…]

Mrs May should have ruled out No Deal at the start of the negotiations, if that is what she thought, or she should have meant “No Deal is better than a bad deal” when she said it. As it is, the combination of threatening No Deal until the moment when it might actually matter in the negotiations, then dropping the threat on the feeblest of latest excuses, is about as foolish as one can imagine. And now rushing off to hand the initiative to an apologist for totalitarians, anti-Semites and terrorists instead. Thanks.

The Prime Minister and her allies are now chanting that it is all the fault of the European Research Group for rejecting her deal and are saying they have no alternative than the dismal choices of supporting her deal or no Brexit, as if amnesiac about the third option: their recent promises to leave with No Deal if necessary. Yet the truth is that ever since the debacle at Chequers in July, when everybody from half the Cabinet to the Democratic Unionists to the media to the people themselves told her quite clearly that she would never get the Chequers plan through Parliament, she has been the one at fault.

April 5, 2019

The Brexit trainwreck is “revealing to the British public the extent of its political class’s incompetence”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

Theodore Dalrymple in City Journal on the scale of political tomfoolery going on in the Brexit clusterfutz:

The imbroglio over Brexit has at least had the merit of revealing to the British public the extent of its political class’s incompetence. If it is accepted that people get the leadership that they deserve, however, thoughts unflattering to self-esteem ought to occur to the British population.

Theresa May did not emerge from a social vacuum. She is typical of the class that has gradually attained power in Britain, from the lowest levels of the administration to the highest: unoriginal, vacillating, humorless, prey to the latest bad ideas, intellectually mediocre, believing in nothing very much, mistaking obstinacy for strength, timid but nevertheless avid for power. Thousands of minor Mays populate our institutions, as thousands of minor Blairs did before them.

Avidity for power is not the same as leadership, and Brexit required leadership. There was none to be had, however, from the political class. From the very first, it overwhelmingly opposed Brexit — for some, the eventual prospect of a tax-free, expense-jewelled job in Brussels was deeply alluring — but found itself in a dilemma, since it could not openly deny the majority’s expressed wish. Many Members of Parliament sat for constituencies in which a solid majority had voted for Brexit. They feared that they would not win their next election.

The opposition Labour Party was as divided as the Conservatives. Irrespective of what its MPs actually believed about Brexit—its leader was, until recently, ardent for leaving the European Union, which he believed to be a capitalists’ club, changing his mind for reasons that he has so far not condescended to disclose — its main concern was to force an election that it believed it could win, a victory that would soon make Brexit seem like a minor episode on the road to ruin. The majority of the Labour MPs wanted first to bring about the downfall of a Conservative government and second to prevent Britain leaving the European Union without an agreement — what might be called the leaving-the-Union-without-leaving option. But they wanted the first more than they wanted the second, so under no circumstances could they accede to anything that Prime Minister May negotiated. Because of her tiny majority in Parliament, the hard-line Brexit members on her own side who want Britain to leave without a deal, and the refusal of her coalition partner, the Democratic Unionist Party, to back her, May needs the support of a considerable proportion of Labour MPs — which, so far, she has not received.

But the House of Commons as a whole, including the Conservatives, deprived May of leverage with which to renegotiate, because it voted that it would not accept leaving the Union without a deal. This deprived the European Union of any reason to renegotiate anything: it was a preemptive surrender to the demands of the E.U. that makes Neville Chamberlain look like a hard-bitten poker champion.

April 1, 2019

Sean Gabb on the Brexit crisis

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

In his latest email newsletter, Sean Gabb discusses the Brexit situation:

The consensus in the media appears to be that Parliament is out of control, and is attempting to stop our exit from the European Union – even if this means tearing up every settled constitutional norm. I disagree. No doubt, the House of Commons is filled with some very trashy people, and I have little doubt most of them would like to stay in the European Union. Even so, they are acting collectively with strict constitutional propriety. For the first time in my life, they are earning their inflated salaries and expenses and bribe allowances.

Three years ago, we vote to leave the European Union. The margin was respectable, though not substantial. The Government was therefore given one reasonably difficult job. This was to detach us from the institutions of the European Union, while respecting the wish of a large majority for continued good relations with the European Union. This was difficult, but hardly in the same class as trying to win a war against the greatest military power in the world, or dismantle an Empire, or even reform the structures and financing of local government. The most obvious compromise was to rejoin EFTA and remain in the Single Market, while negotiating a longer term set of arrangements. Most people, I think, would have accepted such a compromise. I would, and I may have written about it at the time.

Instead of doing this, however, Theresa May loaded us with endless vague promises, while negotiating in secret with the European Commission. At the end of two years and six months, she presented us with a draft Withdrawal Agreement that was universally unacceptable. I will not rehearse why it was unacceptable. Everyone has read it for himself, or read a fair summary and critique. When this was presented to the House of Commons, it was overwhelmingly rejected. Why the Labour Party and the various open Remainers voted against it is less important than that they did vote against it. This is why we have a Parliament. It is there to stop the Executive from acting against the public good. It is there to make the voice of the people heard.

Our present set of crises blew up when it emerged that Theresa May had allowed no one to think about any alternative to her Agreement. Her only solution to losing the first vote was to arrange for another, and then for another. Each time, her Agreement was rejected – and rejected, I repeat, for good reasons. But, thanks to her wickedness or stupidity, there were only three options available to Parliament. One was to swallow her Agreement. Another was to leave without any deal. The other was to give up on leaving – to cancel the Referendum result.

[…]

It may be that the plan was to unveil a fraudulent leaving agreement, and to whip this through Parliament, leaving the rest of us to grumble about it for the next generation, though unable to do anything about it. If so, the plan has failed. The problem is not that our ruling class does not want to be bound by the will of the people – this is hardly a novel discovery. The problem is the crude inflexibility of our rulers. The EFTA compromise I and most other people would have accepted three years ago would have allowed any number of quiet understandings in London that let things as they matter to our rulers go on much as before. Instead, they wanted complete victory on their terms, and they planned for no other outcome. No competent strategist or negotiation behaves like this. The Tory ultras did not behave like this in 1832 or 1911. Labour did not behave like this after 1983. On the whole, we are lucky that we have asked these people only to arrange a departure in good order from a customs
union. They might instead have messed up something really important.

These crises have been a useful learning experience. Theresa May and the interests she has been chosen to front are both wicked and stupid. Speaking for myself, I think our Members of Parliament – wretched creatures if these may be in themselves – for doing their job and lifting the stone to show the pale and stinking bugs in full light of day. Sooner or later, we shall leave the European Union. This will be a messier and more acrimonious departure than it needed to be. But I suspect that the debate between Leavers and Remainers is turning to a shared demand for our will to be obeyed by the Executive. This is a much wider matter than our membership of the European Union. Leaving is now a symbol of who has the final say in this country. The longer our decadent rulers try to hold firm, the more radical the demands will grow for a reconstruction of the system.

I have no idea what will happen in the next few weeks. But I am glad we have the Parliament that we have.

Alex Noble feels the situation is going pretty much exactly how the EU wanted it to go from the start:

For a few months now I have written about how the EU’s plan is increasingly transparent, and it is becoming possible to anticipate their every move.

I believe we are now so close to the outcome they wargamed a year ago, that the final week is now almost completely predictable.

For what it’s worth, here we go.

[…]

So this coming week, the EU will water down or remove the backstop they never cared about, and the British people will be betrayed into vassalage by their Vichy Parliament.

That’s right – another “breakthrough” is imminent, although I suspect the EU will once again trot out the gap-toothed Belgian bumpkin Verhofstadt to pretend to find the whole affair insulting, so we remember to be properly grateful to his paymasters.

All other options now are just scare tactics – No Brexit, No Deal, long extensions, a general election, a loss of drinking water, or pet food, or medicine – these are all just the Bad Cop act designed to get us to gratefully turn to the Good Cop.

Namely the EU’s Withdrawal Agreement, which as I’ve pointed out is like the Withdrawal Technique in that despite the promises made, it usually involves no actual withdrawal.

We have been herded for nearly a year like scared children towards the EU’s treaty, which imprisons us forever in the EU – it is what they wanted all along, and they have used our government, our MPs (with a few dozen honourable souls still resisting as I write), our media, and the craven statists embedded in our institutions to convince us that the EU’s Withdrawal Agreement represents freedom.

In this coming week, all but a few dozen stalwarts will crumble, and then the only question is whether enough Labour europhiles will cross the House to pass this grotesque betrayal and inflict it on the British people.

At that stage, I wonder whether our cries of fury and anguish will fade into silence, or swell into carnage?

March 30, 2019

The EU’s copyright regulation is a stalking horse for online censorship and control

Filed under: Business, Europe, Government, Liberty, Media, Technology — Tags: , , , , , , — Nicholas @ 03:00

To the amazement of many non-EU observers, the European Parliament passed blatantly authoritarian and corporatist changes to the rules on copyrights that will have potentially vast impact on the internet across the world, not just inside the EU. At City A.M., Kate Andrews explains why this is such bad news for all internet users:

The two most controversial points in the law – Article 11 and Article 13 – are almost certain to stifle digital activity, and interfere with the free way that people currently use online platforms.

Article 11, known as the “link tax”, would make online platforms compensate press publishers for links and article content posted on their sites.

As my colleague Victoria Hewson highlighted in her latest briefing, this approach has been “widely criticised as a distortive measure that seeks to prop up a declining industry”.

As many local and national newspapers decline in readership and revenue, governments have become increasingly protectionist in their attempts to “rebalance” the sector, by cracking down on online platforms.

The link tax has little merit, even if rebalancing is the goal. News outlets which require payment for readership already have logins and paywalls to protect their content from free access.

[…]

Article 13 will also be distortive to the market, as it makes online platforms increasingly liable for copyright infringement.

As Hewson’s briefing notes, major online platforms already have routine screening processes for content that violates copyright law or their own rules. But the new regulations “remove the protection for platforms previously available if they removed violating content promptly on receiving notice of it, and contravene fundamental rights such as free expression and freedom from monitoring”.

The Directive claims that safeguards – including pastiche, parody, and quotations – will be protected, and that meme content has been excluded.

But the algorithms which these platforms will have to implement to adhere to Article 13 are going to struggle to see the difference between infringement and fair use when comparing uploads to content that is registered as copyrighted.

March 23, 2019

“[T]he Withdrawal Agreement … resembles the surrender terms that might be offered to a vanquished enemy”

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Government — Tags: , , — Nicholas @ 05:00

Alex Noble isn’t a fan of the surrender document Withdrawal Agreement:

Let’s be clear – The Withdrawal Agreement is poorly-named.

It does not involve withdrawing from the EU in any meaningful sense, but instead commits us to Remaining within the EU and strips the UK of any future self-determination. It removes from the UK control of any future departure from the EU, and places it in the hands of those who reside in the building in Brussels with the statute of Europa outside – a woman riding a bull, keen students of the Book of Revelation may notice.

To this extent, the Withdrawal Agreement is actually a treaty for staying in the EU – it resembles quite closely the surrender terms that might be offered to a vanquished enemy, or the document that might be initially given to a small country wishing to join the EU.

Like say, Scotland.

One wonders if the EU wrote it in the run-up to the independence vote of 2014, threw it on a shelf when the Scots voted to stay in the UK, and then Angela Merkel simply tossed it across the desk at her puppet Theresa May at their meeting the day before it was announced at Chequers?

If the EU was a lending institution, this would not be a lengthy mortgage offered at a very low fixed rate, to a woman of considerable status, means and integrity (as might be expected of a deal offered to the fifth-largest economy in the world, the second-largest in Europe and the EU’s biggest customer), but is instead deeply punitive, almost insulting, perhaps comparable to a payday loan.

The Withdrawal Agreement is actually The Wonga Agreement.

And this is to be expected of course, because while Britain leaving the EU would be a disaster, Britain leaving the EU and thriving would mean the end of the generational attempt at reviving communism at the heart of Europe – many other countries (and the richer ones at that) would all suddenly be demanding the same terms and the EUSSR would fracture irreparably.

And at that point, all the ex-communists currently gorging at the trough in Brussels would have to accept the death of their dream.

If Britain left and thrived.

So the EUSSR can only survive Britain’s departure if it is made into a disaster for the UK.

Which meant they simply could not offer us a good deal, even if they had wanted to.

17 Million F*ck Offs – A Song About Brexit

Filed under: Britain, Europe, Humour, Media, Politics — Tags: , , , , , — Nicholas @ 04:00

Dominic Frisby
Published on Mar 5, 2019

Please help take this song to number one by buying a copy of the single at iTunes/Amazon etc
Amazon – https://www.amazon.co.uk/17-Million-F… ITunes (ignore Apple Music and go to the iTunes store) – https://itunes.apple.com/gb/album/17-…

I’ll put in other links as and when they come in.

Written and performed by Dominic Frisby
Music composed and played by Martin Wheatley (based on a traditional Devon folk song)
Video directed by anon
Audio mixed and recorded by Wayne McIntyre
Assistant director Mark “Yeti” Cribbs

Lyrics

On the 23rd of June, 2016
The people of the United Kingdom – and Gibraltar – went to vote
On an issue that for some had been burning for years
The question in full – and unaltered – was – I quote

Should the United Kingdom remain a member of the European Union
or leave the European Union?

It was the greatest democratic turnout in British history, I do not scoff
And when the time came to speak the British said f*ck off.
F*ck off.

Campaigning had gone on for many a month
With debate and discussion on many a front
They’d argued they’d fought they’d smeared and pulled stunts
There was David Cameron. Theresa May. George Osborne.
Tony Blair. John Major. The BBC.
The British told them to f*ck off. The British told them to f*ck off.

If you vote to leave, you’ll lose your job
Vote to leave, you’ll lose your home.
The ensuing recession will last for years
Said David Cameron. Theresa May. George Osborne.
And the Treasury. Tony Blair. John Major. The BBC.
The Bank of England. Mark Carney. The EU. The IMF. The US president. Saint Obama. Back of the queue. Loads of celebrities. Gary Lineker. JK Rowling. Benedict Cumbertwat. Lord Adonis. Who the fuck’s he anyway?
The British told them to f*ck off. Seventeen million f*ck offs.

They wheeled in the experts to tell us what’s right
They gave us the benefit of their foresight
To leave is calamitous, that’s definite.
Food shortages. No medicine. Planes grounded. House price crash. ½ a million jobs lost. Cost of £4,300 to every home. Stock market collapse. Riots. No sandwiches.
There’d be an outbreak of super gonorrhea. They seriously said that. Donald Tusk at the EU said it would be the end of Western civilization as we know it. I’m not joking. And one more thing. If you vote to leave, that makes you racist.
The British told them to f*ck off. Seventeen million f*ck offs.

The vote is final, there’s no going back
Although now they want to go back and re-vote
I think we know what the answer will be
To Gary Lineker. Alastair Campbell. Dominic Grieve. Chuka Umana. Keir Starma. Vince Cable. Anna Soubry (not a Nazi). Rory Bremner. Armando Ianucci. Delia Smith. Steve Coogan. David Lammy. Lord Adonis. Who the fuck’s he anyway?
The British will tell them f*ck off. 17 million f*cks offs.

ISRC#: TCAED1904492

« Newer Posts — Older Posts »

Powered by WordPress