BORIS JOHNSON’S MUNICH MOMENT

In all likelihood, historians will judge that the 22 October 2019 was the day when the Brexit referendum result was in practice openly overturned. The Boris Johnson Government has adopted a policy of Brino, and they have also secured the full support of the Tory Eurosceptics, including ALL those dubbed the Spartans (who had consistently voted against Theresa May’s Brino deal). What the Government has done is fish out the May deal, amended the Irish backstop and made a few other tweaks, and then passed it off as Brexit. It is not. It does not achieve independence (see the blog post The Tory Leadership Election Debate) and would result in the UK being subject to EU dictatorship – the exact opposite of Brexit. It further paves the way to economic ruin.

An example of the flaws of May’s deal were set out in Tory MP John Redwood’s letter (included in this blog post). The comments in the blog post Sovereignty, regarding May’s deal, equally apply to Boris Johnson’s – save for the Irish backstop which has been replaced with the problem of hiving off Northern Ireland and placing it under EU jurisdiction with a border between it and the rest of the UK. The willingness of the Tories to sacrifice Northern Ireland is a fundamental abandonment of their commitment to the union that will have far-reaching consequences.

The comments in the blog post The Fall of Singapore Spirit remain accurate and that ‘the Tories are the problem’. The decadent culture of the Tory Party is like a sickness and is steadily dragging down the whole UK. The British ruling class is so accustomed to managing the decline and fall of the British Empire that they cannot see that the UK is different. The consequences of that decadence are worsened by the blind obsession with unilateral free trade, which has become the alter upon which Brexit has been sacrificed (see the blog post The Alter of Free Trade).

The Boris Johnson Government has not even taken back control of the UK’s fishing grounds. Even were it difficult to agree some big new treaty with the EU and to agree what to do with the Northern Ireland border, that does not prevent the restoration of the UK’s territorial integrity and restoring control over territorial waters. Instead, it is patently clear that the intention is to sell out the fishing industry (see the blog post Territorial Waters).

As was set out in the blog post Precedents, the lessons to be learnt from history are that the dire predictions of economic disaster unless the establishment gets its own way, are the opposite of the truth; and that, as with the ERM and the Gold Standard, a government will have to be forced out of the EU. They will not enact a genuine Brexit voluntarily. If there is any means of dodging a difficult decision, they will take it. They will have to be forced into honouring the Brexit vote. Crashing out with No Deal is the only option.