Monday, September 03, 2018
The real problem is Boris and his Brexit fantasy
The adoption of Churchillian language by Boris Johnson in his bid to lead the Tory Party and become Prime Minister, would be laughable if it were not so ironic.
Churchill may well have stepped up to the plate in his country's hour of need, but his career was almost as chequered as that of Boris, and of course Churchill was a good European, who had a strong commitment to human rights. Churchill did not create the crisis he led us out of. It is a shame that the same cannot be said for Boris.
In this light, Boris Johnson's first newspaper column of the new parliamentary term, in which he attacks Theresa May’s Chequers plan, has to be taken with a pinch of salt. He alleges that May's plan
means the UK is entering Brexit negotiations with a “white flag fluttering”.
As the Guardian reports, Johnson claims “the reality is that in this negotiation the EU has so far taken every important trick. The UK has agreed to hand over £40 billion of taxpayers’ money for two thirds of diddly squat”.
As ever with Boris there is no alternative proposal. He claims that the Chequers' plan means it will be “impossible for the UK to be more competitive, to innovate, to deviate, to initiate, and we are ruling out major free trade deals.” As if such deals were on the table in the first place?
The Trade Secretary has spent months and months chasing his tail over many thousands of miles and has emerged with (to use Boris' phrase) diddly squat. That is because countries like China, India, Japan and even the USA, gain more by engaging with the European Union, which is a much bigger trade bloc. The UK is way down on their priority list.
But let us not pretend that the European Union is the restraining influence Boris and his fellow travellers like to claim it is. We do trade with non-EU countries and we do so on better terms than are available through the WTO by virtue of us being a member of one of the biggest free trade areas in the world.
About 49% of Britain’s trade is currently with the EU. Another 12% is with 65 non-EU states that have free-trade agreements with Brussels. The most recent, with Japan, was signed in July this year. All of that is in jeopardy because of Brexit.
The reason Theresa May's Chequers' deal is a disaster for the UK, is not because it is too soft, but because like Boris, the assumptions on which it operates are unrealistic and undeliverable. The same is true of Brexit. Chequers is no more acceptable to the EU than it is to the hard line Brexiteers, or pro-Europeans like me.
Real leadership would be standing up mea culpa and telling the voters that they were sold a false premise in the 2016 referendum, based on fantasy and wishful thinking. That our best interests lie within the EU and that the only alternative to that is a no deal Brexit that will devastate our economy for a decade or more, cause thousands of jobs to move across the English Channel and increase our cost of living.
Real leadership would be to give us a chance to vote again on which of those realities we want, now that the truth about Brexit has come out properly. Unfortunately, all of our national leaders, Johnson, May, Corbyn et al, are too engaged in their own little games of self-promotion to embrace the national interest and give us that third plebiscite.
Churchill may well have stepped up to the plate in his country's hour of need, but his career was almost as chequered as that of Boris, and of course Churchill was a good European, who had a strong commitment to human rights. Churchill did not create the crisis he led us out of. It is a shame that the same cannot be said for Boris.
In this light, Boris Johnson's first newspaper column of the new parliamentary term, in which he attacks Theresa May’s Chequers plan, has to be taken with a pinch of salt. He alleges that May's plan
means the UK is entering Brexit negotiations with a “white flag fluttering”.
As the Guardian reports, Johnson claims “the reality is that in this negotiation the EU has so far taken every important trick. The UK has agreed to hand over £40 billion of taxpayers’ money for two thirds of diddly squat”.
As ever with Boris there is no alternative proposal. He claims that the Chequers' plan means it will be “impossible for the UK to be more competitive, to innovate, to deviate, to initiate, and we are ruling out major free trade deals.” As if such deals were on the table in the first place?
The Trade Secretary has spent months and months chasing his tail over many thousands of miles and has emerged with (to use Boris' phrase) diddly squat. That is because countries like China, India, Japan and even the USA, gain more by engaging with the European Union, which is a much bigger trade bloc. The UK is way down on their priority list.
But let us not pretend that the European Union is the restraining influence Boris and his fellow travellers like to claim it is. We do trade with non-EU countries and we do so on better terms than are available through the WTO by virtue of us being a member of one of the biggest free trade areas in the world.
About 49% of Britain’s trade is currently with the EU. Another 12% is with 65 non-EU states that have free-trade agreements with Brussels. The most recent, with Japan, was signed in July this year. All of that is in jeopardy because of Brexit.
The reason Theresa May's Chequers' deal is a disaster for the UK, is not because it is too soft, but because like Boris, the assumptions on which it operates are unrealistic and undeliverable. The same is true of Brexit. Chequers is no more acceptable to the EU than it is to the hard line Brexiteers, or pro-Europeans like me.
Real leadership would be standing up mea culpa and telling the voters that they were sold a false premise in the 2016 referendum, based on fantasy and wishful thinking. That our best interests lie within the EU and that the only alternative to that is a no deal Brexit that will devastate our economy for a decade or more, cause thousands of jobs to move across the English Channel and increase our cost of living.
Real leadership would be to give us a chance to vote again on which of those realities we want, now that the truth about Brexit has come out properly. Unfortunately, all of our national leaders, Johnson, May, Corbyn et al, are too engaged in their own little games of self-promotion to embrace the national interest and give us that third plebiscite.
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> May's plan means the UK is entering Brexit negotiations with a “white flag fluttering”.
As Dr Johnson said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
As Dr Johnson said, "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."
J ohnson is not a leader he is a disrupter not a leader you should not mention him as a leader. As you say he hides in patriotism
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