BREXIT is a “colossal misjudgement” that will
diminish the UK’s standing in the world, harm the Special Relationship with
America and could break up Britain.
So
said Sir John Major in a speech last night.
But one of his major, excuse the pun, reasons for staying in the EU is
to ensure that UK remain as a “buffer between the Franco-German steamroller and
smaller nations”. In other words, he
thinks rather than telling the bullies to stop being bullies and that is the
end of it, we should insert ourselves as being the nation that simply acts as a
buffer to the Franco German steam roller.
Not stop the bullying.
It is
perhaps this kind of thinking that got us into this mess in the first place. After all, he signed up to the Maastricht Treaty. And in retrospect, it looks very like he
behaved in the same way as his fellow EU enthusiast Mrs May has done these past
2 years. Be a bully.
As Stewart Jackson who was Chief of Staff to David Davis when he served as Secretary of State for Exiting the
European Union said “Duplicity and mendacity has become a specialism in this
administration: how can you nuance a capitulation on a long-held commitment to
having no border in the Irish Sea, and then try to convince your party that
gifting the province to Brussels as a colony, at least in respect of its
regulatory regime, is fine and dandy? What
message does this send to the Conservative Unionists in Scotland fighting the
Scottish Nationalists’ demands for a similar deal?” Good question.
Remember what took place this summer? A carefully-planned coup in the
form of the Chequers fait accomplis, complete with photo shopped picture of Mrs
May trying to look like the
saviour of the world bathed in light. Indeed,
given manipulation has become Mrs Mays game (was it not always thus some may
cynically argue, looking back on her time at the Home Office) the 6th July Cabinet
meeting would have made even the likes of Hugo Chavez, Idi Amin, Fidel Castro, Joseph
Stalin, Kim Jong-il, Nicolae Ceausescu and others of such dictatorial style beam
in admiration of Mrs May.
As was well reported at the time, Ministers
were bounced, with less than a day’s notice, to approve 120 pages of papers of a
Brexit White Paper that few had seen, but which most assumed was based on the
Prime Minister’s vision as enunciated at Lancaster House, Florence and Mansion
House. Of course, we know now it wasn’t Mrs Mays work. It was Mr Olly Robbins work. Produced, as he has admitted, in two weeks.
But of course, Mrs May had set up a parallel government department run by Mr Robbins. Without telling her fellow cabinet colleagues. That is a bit like the alleged setting up of hidden overdrafts accounts at Patisserie Valerie without apparently telling the Board of Directors. Quite possibly a criminal offence. Yet Mrs May appears to have conducted the government with the same mind set. Staggering when you think about it.
Back in the 1993, Mr Major set about persuading parliament to vote to sign up
without telling them what it really meant. And what
it meant was signing up to a political experiment where we were giving away our
sovereignty. Political integration. Certainly not the Common Market that we entered on 1st JAnuary 1973.
Oh yes, these days people
like Ms Gina Miller call it pooling sovereignty. But nobody is fooled anymore.
Well, some still don’t see it as it is
through their EU superstate rosy tinted spectacles, but that’s another story.
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