With every day that passes, the scare tactics and wild predictions scattered on stony ground by the Remain camp have failed to germinate. The 48% need to put a stop to the infantile wrenting of clothes, wake up to what 23 days have done for everyone in Britain, and face the much bigger obstacles and opportunities that lie before us. To do otherwise will simply result in them becoming a laughing stock….something the squabbling Left can ill afford.
Following his appointment, new Chancellor Philip Hammond moved at the speed of light to say that “in the changed circumstances”, Britons should not expect the UK’s deficit targets to be met any time soon. Aside from the idiotic decision of one ratings agency to downgrade the UK’s borrowing score by half a notch, the market circumstances haven’t changed at all….and neither this nor the recent drops in the value of Sterling have affected our SBR costs in the short term.
The economic outlook has changed in but one way: the clown in charge of policy in that area has been summarily fired. But yet again, there is an attempt in play to blame every problem on Brexit. In the days following the result, angry media upset at having failed to drive the queue into the showers came up with ridiculous stats such as the losses on RBS and Lloyds shares “as a result of Brexit”, and drops in the Pound’s value “as a result of Brexit” – as if such things were set in stone from here onwards…..and should be blamed on the voters rather than the neurotic pinheads who deal on the various stock and Forex markets.
Bloomberg all this week has repeated four to five times a day that this or that movement is “in the light of Brexit”, CNBC at one point talked of “the waning influence of the London City in the aftermath of Brexit”, Spain (of all places) referred to Britain as “now a confirmedly racist country”, and the market movements in gold and oil both before and after Brexit were casually attributed to Brexit by many of those involved. Not the awful US non-farm payroll data, not the awful Chinese export statistics, not the disastrous state of the Italian banks, and not the now rapidly approaching demise of Deutsche Bank.
No.It’s all down to nasty scumbigot fascist old Baby boomers who dumped on the young from a great height, and snatched their future from the jaws of victory.
In the FT, Nick Clegg said he was “angry that my children’s future has been put at risk by a needless referendum. Angry at the years of wilful misrepresentation of the EU by vested interests in the press. Angry at the betrayal that Brexit voters will feel when they realise — too late — that a land of milk and honey outside the EU does not exist.” Every word of it is uninformed supposition or deliberate misrepresentation: but the FT is a rabid Eunatic newspaper, so Cleggover was given his say.
There have been so many hypocritical and ideological somersaults during the last 23 days, it’s been damn near impossible to keep up. That one-time champion of direct democracy The Labour Party quietly put away all its Fabian principles to campaign hard for a rerun, and then quickly turned to a second attempt to overturn the public voice by using his “failure to persuade the electorate” on the EU question as the long-sought excuse to install their own candidate (the laughably Peace Campesque Angela Eagle) in place of Jeremy Corbyn.
Some chums just arrived here in Southern France and brought a recent edition of Private Eye with them. I had already seen Ian Hislop’s bullying and somewhat amoral stance on the issue on British TV two weeks ago, but I confess to having been both horrified and disappointed to see an anti-Brexit rant from cover to cover in the 8th-21st July issue.
Private Eye’s legendary determination to dump on all sides in any political dispute has been legendary for over half a century….but not on this occasion: Hislop imposed his will on the content with all the even-handedness of Paul Dacre at his worst. It was, genuinely, like reading The Guardian – surely the greatest (and most richly deserved) insult the magazine could ever suffer. One-Eye, Jaundiced Eye, Evil Eye….maybe all of these should be lined up in whatever masthead revamp lies ahead.
The one genuine cockup as a result of the Leave victory lies where I would always expect to find it: in the gilded corridors of Whitehall. It now transpires that Sir Humphrey did not put in place a single element of any plan whatsoever for what to do in the event of such an outcome. Osborne left office as he arrived: armed (at the Saturday news conference) with an enormous lie about “we had long planned for what to do if Brexit became a reality”.
I keep waiting for some Remaindeer herd hack somewhere to break ranks on the reality of what’s happened – and is still happening – but obviously the fear of lions out there is universal. So the lowly 7,000 readers a day Slog will now try in its own little way to redress the balance.
Let’s first of all look at the changed political landscape. It is – no exaggeration whatsoever – the sort of thing that would’ve been a liberal-Left wet dream just three weeks ago.
Cameron, Osborne, Gove, Crabb, Whittingdale, and Morgan have all gone. Camerlot is no more.
Boris Johnson finds himself Foreign Secretary….but with David Davis as Minister for Brexit, his power will be kept severely in check. Theresa May herself has come out openly for a ‘Brexit-lite’ solution to our EU relationship (using the Danish model) – and, by making the Article 50 trigger dependent on Scottish agreement, has predictably slowed down the process of doing that.
What’s not to like for the whingeing woeful?
Now the econo-fiscal situation. The Bank of England didn’t bring in a rate cut, the Pound is back to £1.20 to the euro….and as the Italian and Deutsche mires spread during the next month or so, I will not be surprised to see it back at 1.30 or close to that by the end of August. There is not going to be an emergency budget. Seven separate and large global importers beyond Europe have been quick to say they are enthusiastic at the thought of trade with us minus the import barriers. The new trade figures are better than expected. Everything is just the same – ie, dire – as it was.
NATO has confirmed the importance of Britain as an ally. German fear of a potentially disastrous car output effect in the event of British truculence has (as I predicted) mellowed the tone of those with a functioning brain in Berlin. The markets have welcomed the May Government, and the FTSE is now officially a Bull Market – incomprehensibly a Bull market, but then you all know my view of contemporary bourse movements.
Across the EU, the Brexit decision is being seen – everywhere except by the media in France, Spain and Germany – as a corrective (and much welcomed) poke in the eye for controlling Federalism. All that has been achieved in just over three weeks.
How many of the Left Remain camp can now – in all honesty – stand up and say that we would’ve have achieved that change of tone and heart on the Continent with a vote to stay? The answer of course is none of them would admit it, but then such is their hallmark: it is not in the bile-spitters’ nature to be honest with themselves, or accept reality…or indeed a mistaken view of outcomes. As Solzhenytsin was wont to say, “They never make mistakes”.
By contrast, I am very happy to admit that some things have become more depressing….but they were always going to do that because of (a) the systemic spinal atrophy that is the country’s voting and corruption status, and (b) the Left’s inability to engage with other groups in order to challenge the rampant Right.
May’s victory was achieved by sidestepping a popular vote that would’ve, at the very least, made Andrea Leadsom a Big Player. Murdoch has been back to his old levels of interference throughout. It is highly unlikely that Damien Green will have any sympathy for destitute female pensioners. Proportional representation and the removal of money from politics are a distant gleam in the eye of we The Disenfranchised. May is a confirmed surveillance State enthusiast and NATO supporter. And the chances of an Opposition in any kind of shape to stay the new witch’s broom in 2020 have gone from slim to dim.
No doubt The Eagle and her knitting circle will find reasons why a multiply split and ethically bereft Labour Party is also down to Brexit. The only thing I can do in countering that sort of blindness (although it won’t) is to ask whether the election of either an Eagle or Corbyn Government in 2020 would emerge as unscathed as the Brexit decision has.
For myself, I don’t care what the external Forces of Darkness think about anything my countrymen decide to do or not do. The problem is, both major Parties do. And therein lies the real British tragedy.
The Slog 