#EU on Brexit negotiations

[zvaigzdelasas]

French President Emmanuel Macron has named Michel Barnier as prime minister almost two months after France's snap elections ended in political deadlock.[...]

A veteran of the right-wing Republicans (LR) party, he has had a long political career and filled various senior posts, both in France and within the EU.[...]

It has taken President Macron 60 days to make up his mind on choosing a prime minister, having called a "political truce" during the Paris Olympics

But Mr Barnier will need all his political skills to navigate the coming weeks, with the centre-left Socialists already planning to challenge his appointment with a vote of confidence.[...]

His nomination has already caused discontent within the New Popular Front (NFP), whose own candidate for prime minister was rejected by the president.

Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the leader of the radical France Unbowed (LFI) - the biggest of the four parties that make up the NFP - said the election had been "stolen from the French people".

Instead of coming from the the alliance that came first on 7 July, he complained that the prime minister would be "a member of a party that came last", referring to the Republicans.

"This is now essentially a Macron-Le Pen government," said Mr Mélenchon, referring to the leader of the far-right National Rally (RN).

He then called for people to join a left-wing protest against Mr Macron's decision planned for Saturday.

To survive a vote of confidence, Mr Barnier will need to persuade 289 MPs in the 577-seat National Assembly to back his government.

Marine Le Pen has made clear her party will not take part in his administration, but she said he at least appeared to meet National Rally's initial requirement, as someone who "respected different political forces".[...]

A recent opinion poll suggested that 51% of French voters thought the president should resign.

5 Sep 24

[cyarskaren52]

This is a warning: after Brexit vote, the anti EU ideologues were put in charge of the Brexit negotiations. Guess what happened? The UK negotiators got cooked by the EU career civil servants. It was a disaster for the UK. That’s going to be our future. Seriously you’ll be reblog /❤️ this for the next four years and afterwards

[whentheynameyoujoy]

Listening to the “I’m not advocating for Ukraine to make concessions, just to enter into negotiations with Russia” people is really starting to feel like listening to the Brexiteers of yore who absolutely weren’t anti-immigrant, no sir, they were just very concerned about the EU laws that compromised UK’s borders by allowing the fucking Polacks to come over. Like tell me, my dudes, what exactly do you want Ukraine to negotiate? The precise percentage of its land to be stolen and plundered or population to be re-educated, raped, and murdered?

[mariacallous]

The Russian intelligence used sexually compromising materials to recruit a member of the Irish parliament to undermine the relationship between Ireland, the U.K. and the European Union during the Brexit negotiations, The Sunday Times reported.

Irish security services have identified the politician, but his identity cannot be revealed due to legal reasons. The lawmaker, who continues to sit in the parliament, is referred to in the Times article as ‘Cobalt’ due to legal reasons. While he was tailed by Irish security services and police, ‘Cobalt’ met several times with Sergey Prokopiev, a colonel of the Russian military intelligence (GRU). The spy masqueraded as a diplomat working at the Russian embassy in Dublin between 2019 and 2022. Prokopiev was one of four Russian ‘diplomats’ expelled from Ireland in 2022 after they were identified as unreported intelligence officers. They were among some 600 Russian spies expelled by Western countries following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. ‘Cobalt’ reportedly offered to liaise Prokopiev with paramilitaries operating in Northern Ireland. According to the Irish security source, the Kremlin hoped to use the existing tensions and the period of contentious negotiations over Brexit to drive a wedge between Dublin, London and Brussels. One of the issues during the negotiations was whether to re-establish a hard border between U.K. Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland, which would violate the Good Friday Agreement, which ended the protracted period of violence between Northern Ireland’s ethnic and religious communities.

On the other hand, loyalist paramilitaries were threatening violence should the alternative, a customs border between Northern Ireland and the rest of the U.K., be established, which was the solution eventually adopted.

According to the Irish intelligence, ‘Cobalt’ received no monetary gain from the Russians. Instead, he was ‘honey-trapped,’ that is recruited by a Russian agent through seduction, which enabled the Russian intelligence to gather compromising materials of a sexual nature against him.

‘Cobalt’ was recorded as having met with the agent in Ireland several times, but the services could not take any action, as he was not doing anything that would break the law. He also traveled to countries outside of the EU in which Russian intelligence can operate freely several times.

According to Times, the services warned ‘Cobalt’ that he is being targetted by Russian spies, but ignored the warnings.

“They used him but he allowed himself to be used,” a security source said.

Lacking access to classified information that he could reveal to the Russians, ‘Cobalt’ could not be arrested or charged with espionage. The services believe that the sway the Russians had over him was instead used to get him to disrupt the public debate and served the Russian agenda by repeating Kremlin propaganda’s talking points.

‘Cobalt’s’ case is the first modern known case of Russian intelligence attempting to infiltrate the Irish parliament, although several such attempts to recruit British politicians, aimed at destabilizing Western countries, have been recorded.

No surprise, says Taoiseach

Simon Harris, Ireland’s Taoiseach (prime minister) said that Russian attempts to infiltrate Western countries with agents of influence should not be surprising.

“It shouldn’t come as any surprise to any of us that Russia seeks to influence public opinion, seeks to distort public opinion and is active in relation to that across the world and that Ireland is not immune from that,” he said.

“We’ve also seen a very significant increase in that level of activity since the brutal invasion by Russia of Ukraine.

Harris refused to comment extensively on the matter due to security reasons, but he commended the services on a job well done and for effectively cooperating with other international security services in the case.

“Gardai [Irish police] and our security services take all of these issues extremely seriously and monitor these issues seriously, and work with international counterparts on all these matters, and I have great confidence in the ability of Gardai, working with international counterparts.”

[thoughtlessarse]

Keir Starmer is under growing pressure to forge closer economic links with Europe five years on from Brexit, as a major new poll shows voters clearly favour prioritising more trade with the EU over the US. The MRP survey of almost 15,000 people by YouGov for the Best for Britain thinktank shows more people in every constituency in England, Scotland and Wales back closer arrangements with the EU rather than more transatlantic trade with Washington. MRP polls use large data samples to estimate opinion at a local level. Even in Nigel Farage’s seat of Clacton, more people think the UK is better off trading more with its neighbours on the continent than with the US under the Reform UK leader’s ally Donald Trump. The findings come as the chancellor, Rachel Reeves, on Sunday tells the Observer that Brexit has harmed the UK economy and that she is determined to claw back some of the lost gross domestic product (GDP) by reducing trade frictions for UK small businesses wherever possible. In one of the clearest statements by a senior government minister on Brexit, Reeves answered yes when asked if she was clear that leaving the EU had damaged the UK’s financial position. The chancellor, who discussed possible ways to improve trade with EU finance ministers and others at the World Economic Forum in Davos last week, said there were “loads of external estimates” showing the negative impact of Brexit on the UK economy and added: “What I want to do is get some of that GDP back by having a better trading relationship with the European Union.” Reeves also enthused about one specific proposal, saying it was “great”, made by the EU’s new trade chief responsible for post-Brexit negotiations, Maroš Šefčovič , who floated the idea of the UK joining the Pan-Euro Mediterranean convention (PEM). The PEM is a set of common rules for sourcing parts and ingredients for use in tariff-free trade.

continue reading

Reeves might have enthused about the proposal, but the message from No. 10 was 'not yet'.

[head-post]

Rachel Reeves “happy” to look at UK joining pan-European trade area

Rachel Reeves has said she is “absolutely delighted” to consider joining a pan-European customs area to ease restrictions on trade, Mirror reports.

Maroš Sefcovic, the new head of the EU’s trade body, said last week that the UK joining the Pan-Euro-Mediterranean Convention (PEM) is “something we could consider” as part of the post-Brexit reset. It would allow tariff-free trade in goods across Europe, as well as some countries in North Africa and the Levant.

The Chancellor told Sky:

“We are absolutely happy to look at these different proposals because we know that the deal that the previous government secured is not working well enough. It’s not working well enough for small businesses trying to export, it’s not working well enough for larger businesses either. We’re grown-ups who admit that, whereas the previous government said there were no problems at all. And where there are constructive ideas we are happy to look at those, as long as they’re consistent with the red lines we set out in our manifesto.”

Labour has ruled out joining the EU customs union or single market before the 2024 election. But Keir Starmer wants to seek closer ties with Europe after years of fighting over Brexit.

The comments immediately sparked howls of outrage from the Tories, who said it risked “cancelling Brexit from the back door.” Shadow Business Secretary Andrew Griffith said:

“This scheme is not the silver bullet to growth the Government thinks it is. Whenever Labour negotiates, Britain loses. So, we need to make sure they don’t surrender important assets like our fishing rights. We must avoid undoing Brexit by the back door by aligning with the EU’s low-growth model.”

Expressing a more optimistic tone than in recent months, she told the BBC:

“My optimism for Britain has never burned brighter than it does now and that’s why we are going further and faster in removing those things that are blocking investment and blocking businesses from creating the wealth and prosperity in our country.”

“Rachel from accounts”

Reeves also noted that people had “underestimated” her before and she had “spent her life proving people wrong” when asked if she was offended by critics calling her “Rachel from accounts.”

Asked if she thought she would be labelled condescending if she were a man, the chancellor told Sky News:

“Some people don’t want this Government to succeed. Some people don’t want me to succeed. I spend my life proving people wrong, proving that I can do stuff, that I’ve been underestimated.”

Asked if she was hurt by the nickname, she said:

“I’ve probably been called worse things… in the end people are going to judge me on the job that I’m doing now, that I’m doing as Chancellor of the Exchequer.”

Read more HERE

[nepolana]

With Poland doing a 180 it’s also interesting how the Tories will react

Poland under PiS has been a somewhat inside ally for the UK in the EU. Although PiS didn’t raise any objections during the Brexit negotiations it was undeniably eurosceptic and butted heads with Germany and France. With Tusk Poland goes right back to the table with Germany and France.

All the talks about an alternative to the EU (Johnson as the main proponent) largely fall without Poland.

And with Tusk as the PM, a guy who’s not only pro EU but a former president of the European Council it will be harder for Sunak. He still has Orban though but it’s not a great look to ally yourself with a pro Russian guy.

Also for Ukraine - not many changes, pretty much all political parties in Poland hate Russia with burning passion and the one that was explicitly against Ukrainians - Konfederacja flopped pretty hard- just 6%

[qqueenofhades]

oh, absolutely! and that’s why i’m honestly so fed up with these online leftists. they act like they were the first people to sound the alarm on bunch of horrible shit and go all defeatist, completely disrespecting the work of activists and organizers who have been trying to fix these issues since before they were even a thought. there’s this widespread idea that the systems won’t ever work in a way that’s fair because they weren’t designed to, and while yes, the systems were designed to be unfair and awful to marginalized groups, gutting them won’t solve the problem if there’s nothing to replace them with. mutual aid is a wonderful thing and i’m happy to see people talking about it but i don’t think a lot of them realize it can’t replace a system. it can help but it can’t be this thing you throw everything into because you’re disillusioned with the systems. the only way to make those systems better is to vote in candidates who will but these people are so sick of being told to vote they just refuse to even entertain why people may be telling them to do that.

See, this is where far-right libertarians and far-left "burn the whole system down!!!" ideologies once more collide. Far-right libertarians don't want to participate in society and don't want to be responsible for the welfare of others and don't want any rules and definitely no regulations and so on and so forth. Far-left "revolutionaries" claim to want the same thing in terms of destroying the existing system, but they do so out of some misguided idea that either some new and completely perfect system will magically spring from the ashes (spoiler alert: no), or that informal neighborhood-level networks of mutual aid (however they define that, when they're often willing to totally exclude people who disagree with them about the smallest things, so why would they help people they disagree with on everything else?) can replace, as you say, the entire system.

The thing is, if you're reduced to informally scraping along with your local neighbors and have absolutely no other recourse or formal system of governance and/or distribution, you're living in a failed state, and nobody who has ACTUALLY been through that experience thinks, as the Online Leftists do, that it would be a great idea. This is another thing about their total failure to learn from history, or listen to anyone who isn't American, despite the tankies' insistence that America causes all evil in the world forever. My friends who grew up in the former USSR sure don't think their system was great, even if it was called "socialism" or "communism" or whatever terms the left wants to use with no appreciation of their difficulties. And so on.

Basically, it reminds me of when the Brexit loons were insisting that it made no difference to food supply if Britain left the EU, because, and I quote, "Britain is a nation of farmers, we can grow food in our back gardens!" As if the entire point of human civilization has been to bring us back to personal subsistence farming, which has generally been acknowledged throughout history to totally suck and also be the least reliable way of providing for yourself, and also... the idea that personally growing food in your nice back garden in Kent can replace the entire structure and system of the EU single market and customs union is completely absurd. To say the fucking least, and to anyone whose brain isn't poisoned with Brexit Brexit Brexit! And yes, hey presto, Britain is now experiencing food difficulties and frantically blaming it on anything except Brexit. Meanwhile, Sunak finally negotiated a new Northern Ireland protocol with the EU, but it's anyone's guess if it'll pass the Commons, since the Tory backbenchers just reflexively nuke anything that suggests any cooperation with the EU or any acceptance of EU law. Because they want to pretend the EU never existed! (Even though it was Margaret Thatcher's idea/initiative, shh.) Yeah. That'll work.

So yeah. If you live in your own world where facts don't exist, or exist only to support your preferred ideology, and your insistence that destroying the system with nothing to replace it is the best idea... it is, uh, dumb. Which is the nicest way I can possibly put it. It's never worked out before, it won't work out now, and honestly, "I'm tired of being told to vote after I didn't vote and then things went wrong!" is an argument I have NO sympathy for whatsoever. I know things are bad. You know things are bad. If there's a simple, easy way to start fixing it -- and systems CAN be fixed, even if it takes time and is not the instant dopamine gratification of moral posturing on social media -- where you have to participate once every two years, and you don't do it, then yeah. I don't think that person is serious about fixing anything, and I have no obligation or desire to listen to them at all.

[warllikeparakeetiii]

“It’s no longer a joke. After initially provoking disbelief, U.S President Donald Trump’s audacious plan to acquire Greenland — potentially by force — has triggered frantic talks among European leaders aiming to stop him.

[warningsine]

French President Emmanuel Macron appointed Veteran politician Michel Barnie as prime minister on Thursday, September 5, after almost two months of deadlock following legislative elections that produced no clear majority in Parliament.

At 73, Barnier is the oldest premier in the history of modern France and has been tasked with forming "a unifying government in the service of the country," the presidency said in a statement. In a striking contrast, the former foreign minister succeeds Gabriel Attal, 35, a man less than half his age and who served only eight months in office.

A right-wing former minister and European commissioner, Barnier was the European Union's negotiator on Brexit. He has been all but invisible in French political life since failing to win his party's nomination to challenge Macron for the presidency in 2022.

France had been without a permanent government since the July 7 polls, in which the left formed the largest faction in a hung parliament with Macron's centrists and the far right comprising the other major groups. Amid the political deadlock Macron, who has less than three years of his term remaining, ran down the clock as the Olympics and Paralympics took place in Paris, to the growing frustration of opponents.

Radical left leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon declared the "election has been stolen," after Barnier's appointment was announced. "It's not the Nouveau Front Populaire, which came out on top in the [legislative] elections, that will have the prime minister and the responsibility of standing before the deputies," reacted the La France Insoumise leader on his YouTube channel on Thursday.

Socialist leader Olivier Faure decried the decision as the beginning of "a regime crisis" in a post on X. "The democratic denial has reached its apogee: a prime minister from the party that came fourth and didn't even take part in the republican front [against the far right]. We're entering a regime crisis."

Macron's centrist faction and the far right make up the two other major groups in the Assemblée Nationale, finishing second and third respectively.

Far right to judge 'on evidence'

Conservative ex-minister Xavier Bertrand and former Socialist prime minister Bernard Cazeneuve had been seen as favorites in recent days. But both figures fell by the wayside with the mathematics of France's new parliament stacked against them. Both risked facing a no-confidence motion that could garner support from both the left bloc and the far right.

Macron appears to be counting on the far-right Rassemblement National of three-time presidential candidate Marine Le Pen not to block the appointment of Barnier. "We will wait to see Mr Barnier's policy speech" to parliament, said Le Pen, the leader in parliament of the RN, the party that holds the most seats in the lower house following July snap polls. RN party leader Jordan Bardella said Barnier would be judged "on evidence" when he addresses parliament.

Greens leader Marine Tondelier countered: "We know in the end who decides. Her name is Marine Le Pen. She is the one to whom Macron has decided to submit."

Record-length caretaker government

Never in the history of the Fifth Republic – which began with constitutional reform in 1958 – had France gone so long without a permanent government, leaving the previous administration led by Prime Minister Gabriel Attal in place as caretakers.

To the fury of the left, Macron refused to accept the nomination of a left-wing premier, arguing such a figure would have no chance of surviving a confidence motion in parliament. France's left-wing New Popular Front alliance had demanded that the president pick their candidate Lucie Castets, a 37-year-old economist and civil servant with a history of left-wing activism.

The new prime minister will face the most delicate of tasks in seeking to agree legislation in a highly polarised Assemblée Nationale at a time of immense challenges. An October 1 deadline is now looming for the new government to file a draft budget law for 2025. With debts piling up to 110% of annual output, France has this year suffered a credit rating cut from Standard and Poor's and been told off by the European Commission for excessive deficits.

Barnier's "task looks tough, but difficulty has never scared him," said former prime minister Edouard Philippe, who earlier this week announced he would seek to succeed Macron in the next presidential election. Speaking to Le Figaro and using rugby parlance, Attal expressed hope his successor could "convert the try" of the policies whose implementation he could not complete during his time in office.

[learnwithmearticles]

French Politics Update

Since the 2024 French elections earlier this year, we left off with a more balanced National Assembly. Left-wing politicians became the highest population at 188 seats with centrist Emmanuel Macron still the president. The centrist party is not far behind with 161 seats and the right-wing party with 142.

Many networks at the time discussed the expectation of a hung parliament, as no one party holds the 289-seat majority.

Some things stay the same. In July, the National Assembly voted to keep centrist party member Yaël Braun-Pivet as speaker, winning by 13 votes. Additionally, many people have called for Macron to step down as President, but he will likely stay for the rest of his term until 2027. 

New PM

On the other hand, there have been major changes. Prime Minister Gabriel Attal resigned in July, and was replaced by Michel Barnier in September. He is a conservative, the leader of the 2016-2019 Brexit negotiation, and his appointment was met with much criticism from the left-wing parties.

Days after his appointment, over 100,000 people participated in protests across France. Many people view President Macron’s PM choice as disruptive to democracy, as the PM is most often chosen from the dominant National Assembly party.

Macron states that he made this choice based on the belief that Barnier seemed the most capable of dealing with political deadlocks, as is expected of the Parliament with no party holding majority.

I have to wonder, though, if this was also out of spite for the left-wing parties winning more seats than his centrist party. Barnier’s politics are expected to rely on joint support from the centrist and conservative parties. If the right or center opposes him on anything, he almost certainly will face loss after loss with his proposed policies. Will this lead France backward after the left finally gained some political power?

Barnier’s Address

Barnier delivered his first parliamentary address on Tuesday, October 1st. Summarily, he emphasized the hazard of French finances and debts, and the environment.

France is more than 3 trillion euros in public and environmental debt, which Barnier addresses first. His goal is to bring the deficit down from 6% of the national GDP to 5% in 2025, with the goal of under 3% by 2029.

His outline for achieving this is reducing spending, being more efficient in government spending (addressing corruption and unjustified spending), and taxes. He phrases higher taxes as a temporary measure, and states that large companies as well as the richest and wealthiest French people will be asked for exceptional contributions.

Barnier also addresses environmental debt. He plans to continue reducing GHG emissions, and for France to be more active in the EU and in the Paris Agreements, which push for countries to collectively act against climate change. He also mentions encouraging industry transitions in energy and recycling, encouraging nuclear energy development, and developing renewable resources of energy more, like biofuels and solar energy.

He has also conceived of a large national conference to act on the matter of water, the scarcity of which is an imminent issue for France.

Additionally, he plans to propose a yearly day of citizens consultations. In his idea, doors will be open for citizens for people of all levels of government to ask questions and start discussions and debates on various topics.

Another noteworthy statement from Barnier is that the pension reform bill voted on in 2023 might have to be changed, which received a loud reply from the audience.

As someone living in a country where an entire political party is built on denying factual evidence and realities, it is surprising to hear someone who does not deny climate change, and calls for equitable taxes to address debt.

About 30 minutes into his address, though, New Caledonia comes up. This is more in line with expectations of conservatives. New Caledonia is still a colonized territory of France, and a recent bill from Macron was going to disadvantage native Kanak people for the advancement of French loyalists on the archipelago. After fatal protests, the bill has been suspended before ratification, likely to be readdressed in 2025.

Also in conservative spirit, Barnier calls for stricter immigration policies in effort to meet “integration objectives”. France faces a cost-of-living crisis and an affordable housing shortage that has buttressed the right’s stance on needing stricter border measures.

Le Pen Trial

Also straining politics, especially for right-wing support, is recent news about popular right-wing figure Marine Le Pen.

On September 30th, Le Pen faced charges of embezzling European Parliament money. The right-wing party Rassemblement National is accused of filing false employee records in order to improperly use funds to pay members of the party. Le Pen is one of many senior party members involved in the alleged embezzlement.

This trial is expected to go on for seven to nine weeks, so the final outcome is some time away. But for now we can expect this will have negative impacts if Le Pen still vies for presidential election in 2027. It will likely also decrease citizen’s trust in the conservative party’s ability to make responsible economic decisions.

If found guilty, Le Pen and the other defendants could face up to ten years in prison and lose the eligibility to run for office.

After the 2024 shock vote instigated by President Macron, the French National assembly gained a left-leaning majority, though not enough for an automatic 289-vote majority. In most cases, this would mean a left-wing Prime Minister as well as a left-wing president, though that’s because the presidential vote is usually shortly after that of the national assembly.

Contrarily, Macron went with a conservative candidate that he believed to be stronger for the job. This increases the political unrest in the country, and increases the likelihood of delays and blockages in legislation development.

While the conservative Prime Minister has stated many intentions that people in the U.S.A. might call left-leaning, regarding climate change and tax targets, his appointment has upset many. His views on immigration, especially, contrast with most left-wing groups who want integration and safety for others. Overall, this decision from Macron calls into question his loyalty and dedication to the wants of the French people.

Additional Resources

1. New Prime Minister

2. Barnier on Borrowed Time

3. Le Pen on Trial

4. Barnier Address

5. Barnier Address Summary

[luimnigh]

looks like the shortest serving PM of France's 5th Republic, but not their shortest overall.

Hooray! France's own Liz Truss!

Ironically, the guy who negotiated for the EU on Brexit.

[stele3]

https://www.reuters.com/sports/ugandan-runner-cheptegei-dies-after-attack-by-boyfriend-national-olympic-2024-09-05/

[anyoneknowwhatbrexitmeans]

Written a year ago by

Bearly Politics on Twitter

Yesterday's flood of comments and those intriguingly candid DMs about us “remoaners” who can't let go got me thinking and doing a bit of introspection on the late-night, empty tube on the way home. Why exactly am I personally still so angry about the Brexit omniclusterfuck?

Now, fair warning, this is my personal perspective, so may not apply universally, but I suspect that it may resonate just a little bit with one or two people.

The central and main reasons I’m still so infuriated have less to do with losing the actual Brexit vote and more with what has happened before and especially since we left the EU.

We were promised so many, many things during the leave campaign, and this list is merely representative and not fully inclusive.

What were these promises?

- Cheaper shoes.

- Cheaper food.

- We would have all the cards when it comes to negotiating trading arrangements.

- Control of our borders.

- Control of our laws.

- £350 million extra in the NHS.

- Shorter waiting times for treatment (that video that was made was particularly fucking galling, making the comparison of what the NHS looks like in the EU and out of the EU).

- An increase in our environmental standards.

- Houses popping up left, right, and centre like thistles in a shit patch.

- Freedom from restrictive EU regulations.

- Access to a cornucopia of Free Trade Agreements, with the US being the holy grail of these.

- The deal was oven ready.

- Sunlit. Fucking. Uplands.

These are some big promises to make, and when you listen to them and think they could be true, many of the above would be absolute vote winners! Yet, when the rubber hit the road, and we left the EU four years ago, not a single one of these grand promises came true and what we got instead was:

- Runaway inflation (hurried along by a government riddled with dangerous incompetence) making everything we need to live so much more dear.

- Net migration has increased to around 750,000.

- A flagship free trade agreement with the Pacific that’s going to add a negligible amount of additional trade.

- An NHS that is not only underfunded (yes it fucking is) but incorrectly funded as well.

- Social care that is basically non-existent, our environmental standards that have fallen so far that the government merely impotently shrugs at the fact that we have more turds in our rivers and waterways than actual living creatures.

- Watering down of Net-Zero targets.

- An absolutely dire housing situation that is currently being blamed on that favourite villain of this Conservative government, migrants.

- We aren’t diverging from EU regulations because they’re not actually bad regulations and we still desperately need access to EU Markets.

- Our free trade agreements have been slow in coming in and meaningless in their contribution to the overall economic health of the country.

- The deal is currently being dismantled and renegotiated to ensure the Union remains intact.

- Which sunlit fucking uplands?!

Now, the outcome so far itself has already irritated me beyond human comprehension, as I think it would anyone who has been paying any sort of attention to what were essentially the KPIs we were given for Brexit, but where my blood really, really starts boiling over into a state of silent rage is when you look at what happens when you raise any of these issues.

The barefaced, blatant, baffled lying that has been done around this (and I’m not going to pussyfoot around and call it anything but lying because that has been exactly what they’ve done, they’ve lied), the hypocrisy and the megawatt-generating gaslighting that happens is just astounding. When you raise the fact that the promises made have not been met, the following responses invariably follow:

- You’re just yet another “remoaner”.

- You’re unpatriotic.

- You don’t love your country.

- It will take generations to achieve benefits.

- This is not the Brexit we voted for.

- These things weren’t said at all.

- People knew what they voted for.

- It was only ever about sovereignty.

- It’s “remoaners” that have kiboshed the project

- You didn’t believe in it fucking hard enough like Brexit was a modern-day fucking Tinkerbell with seriously shady undertones.

- Businesses always knew there would be trade friction.

- It's the fault of foreign courts.

- It's the fault of the pandemic.

- Other countries are doing as badly.

- It's the migrants.

- It's the civil service.

- It's the opposition.

And if it’s not the above, then things that are actual disasters are being spun as “Brexit Fucking Benefits” with the Cabinet Office just yesterday selling the additional checks on goods coming in as protecting our fucking biodiversity instead of what it is, a damned trade barrier that we ourselves are having to erect as part of the "oven ready deal!"

I desperately, desperately, with all my heart, wish that once, just once, someone like Andrea Leadsom, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Mark Francois or even the Labour Party would say “you know what, we were missold on this, and subsequently things have been completely fucked against the wall, and I’m very sorry for the people who have had to pay the price for the outright avarice and deceptive tactics to win the vote. We're sorry that this has been so badly mishandled and that you the public are the ones paying the price.”

Is that too much to ask? Instead of doubling down, is it too much to expect a bit of fucking honesty?!

Do I think that the EU is a paragon of perfection? Not at all, I think there are major reforms needed and it needs to do a serious bit of introspection about quite a few things. Do I think that’s a reason to leave? Absolutely not - if you want something to get better, you do so from the inside as part of the solution.

Do I think that Brexit could be made to work? With major adjustments, yes, absolutely. Do I think it can work if we keep trying to sell dinky champagne bottles as Brexit benefits and keep living in the self-delusional state we’re in at the moment? Not a snowball's chance in hell. Are there ways of fixing this fuckup we find ourselves in? Yes, but they would be very, very unpalatable to any Brexiteer.

So, where do we find ourselves now?

Knee-deep in a Brexit quagmire, mired in lies, and disillusionment. It's not just that the promises have been broken; it's the sheer audacity of those who made them, still strutting around, defending the indefensible. The reality? We've been sold a utopia and handed dystopia.

We're not just dealing with the consequences of a misguided decision; we're living in a state of perpetual denial, led by those too proud or too scared to admit they were wrong. It's like being on a sinking ship where the captain insists we're just stopping for ice.

In the end, we, the so-called "remoaners," aren’t just naysayers; we're the canaries in the coal mine, desperately chirping warnings in a tunnel that's fast running out of oxygen. Our anger isn’t about a lost vote; it's about a lost future, a vision of Britain that's being eroded day by day under the weight of its own delusions.

We need more than just damage control; we need a course correction, and we need it now. If we continue on this path, the sunlit uplands will remain nothing but a mirage on the Brexit horizon.

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#BrexitBrokeBritain #BrexitDisaster #RealityCheckRequired

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And the Brexit "wins" just keep on fucking rolling in, don't they?

[mariacallous]

Sometimes the most obvious questions are the best. In the case of the Conservatives, the most obvious question is so glaring that one wonders why Tory politicians don’t ask it ten-times a day before breakfast: why don’t they move to the centre?

The opinion polls are predicting a Tory rout on the scale of 1906, 1945 or 1997.

Surely in the interests of preserving the Conservatives as a fighting force the party must compromise to limit its losses to Labour. Here are a couple of compromises that occur to me. They make perfect political sense until you realise that conservatism has been so radicalised that compromise now feels like treason.

First, health. When we remember the suffering of the early 2020s, we will remember covid, of course.

But we will also remember the millions on NHS waiting lists, the elderly left for hours until ambulances arrive, the cancelled operations, the sick who would work if they could be treated but cannot find a doctor, the explosion in mental illness, the needlessly prolonged pain, the needlessly early deaths.

The Conservatives ought to be doing everything they can to improve the health service before polling day – out of a reptile-brain survival instinct if nothing else.

They will not do it because in British conservatism’s ever-diminishing circles health is not a concern.

The dominant Conservative factions want a right-wing policy offer of tax cuts and immigration controls. Not one of the party’s leaders has discussed how the increase in life expectancy means the demands on the NHS of an ever-larger pensioner population make tax cuts unaffordable. Nor have I heard honest discussion of how the need for foreign health and care workers to fill the gaps in provision makes immigration essential.

Rather than face up to the impossibility of Thatcherite economics in the 21st century they prefer to change the conversation and look the other way.

Let me offer a second example, which I think Brits will soon be obsessing about.

After years of delays Brexit Britain is finally imposing border checks on food imports from the European Union.  Wholesalers and retailers predict that bureaucratic costs and the need for veterinary and phytosanitary checks will lead to continental producers deciding to sell their goods elsewhere. Price rises and food shortages will follow.

What kind of government in an election year, of all years, wants empty shelves?

A Conservative kind of government appears to be the answer. The sensible move would be for the Conservatives to follow Labour’s policy of striking a deal to stick to EU standards and ease bureaucracy at the border.  That would mean the UK following European food regulations, as EU ambassadors have made clear.

But compared to dear food and empty shops, who the hell cares about that?

Tories care. Brexit is their King Charles head, their reason for being, their obsession.

David Frost, who negotiated the UK’s disastrous exit agreement with the EU, wrote an unintentionally revealing paragraph last week which encapsulated the ideological capture of British Conservatism.

“The Conservative Party owns Brexit. Whether ministers like it or not, or maybe even wish it hadn’t happened, it’s the central policy of the Party and the government. They must be prepared to defend and explain it – to show why it’s so important that Britain is a proper democracy once again. For if voters come to believe Brexit is failing, then the Conservative Party will inevitably fail too.”

There you have it. Brexit is the Conservative party and vice versa.

What a distance we have come! In 2016, a mere eight years ago, the Conservative party’s leader and most of its MPs supported the UK’s membership of the European Union. Eurosceptics posed as mild-mannered people. They promised that leaving the EU would not mean leaving the single market .

But then leave won the 2016 Brexit referendum and set us off on a spiral of radicalisation, which was instantly familiar to those of us who grew up on the left. 

Here is how it worked on the left in the 20th century.  You would be in a meeting where everyone agreed to a leftist policy: say that the government should encourage banks to give micro loans to poor people to keep them out of the hands of loan sharks.

Everything seems fine until an accusatory voice accuses all present of being sellouts because they do not believe in nationalising the banks,

Or today, after the great awokening, an academic department will propose reasonable measures to check that they are not unconsciously discriminating in their application process, only to be told that, if they were truly concerned with justice, they would decolonise the curriculum and purge it of “white” concepts such as truth and objectivity.

The near identical radicalisation of the right has been more serious because the right has real power.

Here is how its spiral into Tory Jacobinism went.

After winning the Brexit referendum in 2016, retaining the UK’s membership of the single market and the customs union suddenly became wholly unacceptable. They had to go.

As the ideological temperature rose, Theresa May’s attempts at compromise became sellouts, judges became enemies of the people, and the only acceptable way to leave became Frost and Johnson’s impoverishing hard Brexit.

We now have a new Tory ideology: “Brexitism.” It is a style of swaggering bravado and a bawling loud-mouthed way of doing business that goes far beyond the UK’s relations with the EU.

The catastrophic premiership of Liz Truss was “Brexitist”. She crashed the economy because she believed she was right to ignore the warnings of the Treasury, Bank of England and Office for Budget Responsibility.

What true Brexit supporter trusts experts, after all?

Brexit showed that you did not need them.  All you needed was the will to impose a radical agenda and then the world would accommodate itself to your desires.

In retrospect, 2016 plays the same role for the radical right of 21th century Britain that 1917 played for the British radical left in the 20th. The fluke communist takeover of Russia in 1917 convinced hundreds of thousands over the decades that revolution could succeed in the UK, even though communism never stood a chance in this country.

The fluke leave win of 2016 has had an equally mystifying effect. Because radical right politics succeeded in one set of circumstances, its supporters assumed they would succeed in all circumstances.

Nowhere in right-wing discourse do you hear suggestions that the Conservative defeat might be softened if the government appealed to the majority of voters. Instead, the right says that the only way to save the right is for the right to move rightwards and become more rightly right wing.

Once again, the parallels with the communist movement to people of my age scream so loudly they are deafening.

To quote the weirdest example. A few weeks ago, an anonymous group of wealthy men calling themselves the Conservative Britain Alliance spent about £40,000 on opinion polling, and gave the results to the Daily Telegraph. They showed the Conservatives were heading for a landslide defeat, as so many polls do.

But the spin put on it by the Conservative Britain Alliance’s frontman Lord Frost (again!) was that the Tories must move to the right to attract Faragist voters, not to try to stem the growth of Labour support.  

A further release from the anonymous group of wealthy men added to the impression of a right wing living in the land of make believe.

They produced findings that showed the Conservatives could win if Sunak were replaced by a hypothetical Tory leader. This imaginary figure was a political superhero who would be strong “on crime and migration” (naturally) but also had the superpower to “cut taxes and get NHS waiting lists down” at the same time.

Lower taxes and better public services all at once in a wonderful never never land.

My guess is that it will take three maybe four election defeats to batter the delusions of 2016 out of the Conservative party.

Perhaps no number of defeats will suffice, and Brexitism will be Toryism’s final delirium.