The Prime Minister tells us that incalculable damage will be done to our democracy if we do not leave the EU, with or without a deal, by October 31. This from a man who, over the last three years has inflicted a good deal of damage to our democracy.
- Narrowly winning a referendum in 2016 on the back of a campaign full of lies.
- Destroying his predecessor as Prime Minister’s attempt to deliver on the referendum in order to grab her job.
- Junking the Irish backstop on the grounds it was undemocratic when its purpose was to ensure that the provisions in the Good Friday Agreement, enshrined in our own statute law, were properly applied following Brexit.
- Unlawfully (and unsuccessfully) trying to prevent Parliament from sitting at a critical stage in the Brexit negotiations.
- Openly preparing now to flout the Benn Act which would require him to ask the EU to delay Brexit if he cannot get a deal.
Hardly a sound basis from which to preach about respect for democracy.
And then there is Boris Johnson’s claim that Brexit can be done and dusted by October 31. He really must be joking if he believes that.
Complex changes to the earlier agreement to be negotiated with the EU; the new agreement to be approved by the European Parliament; not only the agreement itself to be approved by our own Parliament but also all the changes to our domestic law needed before we can ratify to be agreed. But in all probability he does not really believe that can all be done in that time and is counting on leaving without a deal.
This is a deeply flawed prospectus to have put to his party and one that lacks any credibility. They may have cheered him to the rafters but, as a previous Prime Minister said in a different era: “Today they may be ringing the bells but soon they will be wringing their hands.”
Demand a vote on the Brexit deal
Click here to find out moreEdited by James Earley
I marvel that anyone is even prepared to discuss this oral flatulence that so characterizes Johnson. One doesn’t expect reasonable behaviour from that odious troll any longer. Just don’t honour him with attention!
The most overused phrase from Johnson is ‘our friends and neighbours in Europe’. How hypocritical, how patronising, how false.
He is a chanced willing to risk the economy and well being of this country for the sake of his own ego.
You know what really is sad? I recently was in the Arnhem and Nijmegen area to attend the 75 years since Operation Market Garden celebrations. It was big and it was beautiful, many thousands attended among whom British, Belgian, Dutch, Polish AND German citizens. It was exactly what the EU was set up for. Yet it felt almost like a final fling at this festival. Something so obvious in the previous years, a relaxed gathering of the children who fought that war, wasn’t there. Brexit’s odious tentacles doing their job?
Poor baby Boris, poor delicate brexiteers, poor currency traders making money hand over fist even as we welcome thousands more to the world of poverty and the joys of street sleeping and food bank shopping.
All these British citizens demanding their right to freely choose to be enslaved by Trump and his gang of thugs. Poor Farage obliged to fill his pockets while fulfilling his essential role of denigrating the EP and protecting his no neck team of supporters.
Where in all this barrage of self pity and indignation is there a moment’s thought given to the impact of our actions on the EU and all the citizens who live there? They did not ask for this. They did not ask for their efforts to improve the lot of the British workers and our countryside to be described as heavy handed interference. They did not ask for our europhobes to infect their parliament with insults and obstruction. Or our government to resist efforts to curb tax havens and the dumping of commodities into their marketplace.
What is all this self serving nonsense we are dishing up costing them? How much time effort and money is being wasted by this misguided effort to resurrect the Empire?
A quick look at the history of our behaviour shows us to be among the greatest destructors of civilisations that ever were. Our treatment of the working classes in any country is without equal. The Irish potato famine, Land clearance in Scotland, major famines on the Indian subcontinent during British rule from 1765 to 1947.
We are among the most selfish, self serving countries in the world, bursting with inequalities and false pride. The biggest surprise is that the EU still wants us in.
Withdraw A50. Save our country.