EU RESET

According to a recent hysterical article in The Guardian by Simon Jenkins, a Brexit reset between the UK and the EU was inevitable. Not only was Simon Jenkins scathing about Boris Johnson for advocating Brexit, but also of Keir Starmer:

‘Starmer should hang his own head in shame. He was Jeremy Corbyn’s Brexit henchman back in 2019, when Labour voted down Theresa May’s bid to negotiate a soft Brexit deal … It was Starmer who helped to scotch at least a possible Commons coalition against hard Brexit and in favour of sanity. It was Corbyn and Starmer who could have stifled five years of the greatest act of self-harm by a British government since the Great Depression.

After the British public voted to leave the EU in 2016, the main reason they gave pollsters was immigration. There was little evidence of opposition to EU trade or membership of Europe’s wider economic community. So-called hard Brexit was adopted entirely by Johnson and those round him as a tool to oust May from Downing Street. Mendacious garbage was issued by his campaigners to claim it would benefit Britain. Public interest was hijacked by power.’

The allegation that ‘so-called hard Brexit’ was adopted to oust Theresa May from Downing Street is absurd. While the focus may have been on immigration and sovereignty, some were critical of the ongoing trade deficit the UK had with the EU. I, for one, did so. So-called hard Brexit is simply Brexit. In September 2016, The English Rights Campaign blog posted:

‘MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 19, 2016

HANSARD 15 JUNE 2016, VOLUME 611

• Nigel Adams (Selby and Ainsty) (Con)

Q14. I congratulate my right hon. Friend on honouring our manifesto pledge and delivering this historic referendum. Unfortunately, however, we have heard some hysterical scaremongering during the debate, and there are those in this House and the other place who believe that if the British people decide to leave the EU, there should be a second referendum. Will he assure the House and the country that, whatever the result on 24 June, his Government will carry out the wishes of the British people—if the vote is to remain, we remain, but if it is to leave, which I hope it is, we leave? [905437]

• The Prime Minister

I am very happy to agree with my hon. Friend. “In” means we remain in a reformed EU; “out” means we come out. As the leave campaigners and others have said, “out” means out of the EU, out of the European single market, out of the Council of Ministers—out of all those things—and will then mean a process of delivering on it, which will take at least two years, and then delivering a trade deal, which could take as many as seven years. To anyone still in doubt—there are even Members in the House still thinking about how to vote—I would say: if you have not made up your mind yet, if you are still uncertain, just think about that decade of uncertainty for our economy and everything else, don’t risk it and vote remain.

For those who are getting mightily fed up of the repeated nonsense spoken about how no one knows what Brexit means, and how we must remain in the Single Market, please note the exchange at Prime Minister’s Questions above – in particular: ‘As the leave campaigners and others have said, “out” means out of the EU, out of the European single market, out of the Council of Ministers—out of all those things’. That was perfectly well understood at the time and the voters knew exactly what they were voting for. posted by erc @ 1:44 pm’

The major problem was that Traitor May had not the slightest intention of delivering Brexit. We could have left the EU in a few weeks of the referendum, had we wanted to. Instead, May’s aim was to replace membership of the EU with a ‘deep and special partnership with the EU’, as she stated in her Foreword to the white paper for the Great Repeal Bill. Instead of leaving the EU, which required serving notice as set out in the Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties and repealing the 1972 European Communities Act (thus ending the supremacy of EU law), the May government paid out tens of £billions in ongoing EU payments, with yet more tens of £billions on top and agreed to abide by EU rule into the future. The purported cost of Brexit currently being plastered around social media is chicken feed compared to £100billions of the actual cost of sabotaging Brexit and the ongoing trade deficit the UK has with the EU.

The Jenkins remark of there being ‘five years of the greatest act of self-harm by a British government since the Great Depression’ is totally unexplained. In the absence of any such explanation, then the comment should be ignored as being an hysterical, unsubstantiated smear.

Jenkins proceeded to endorse the handing over of the UK fishing grounds and more EU immigration. He even asserted that immigration control needs ‘international cooperation’ (NB ‘international’ not European).

The Jenkins article is a part of an aggressive push to overturn Brexit.