Troubles in Brexitland
Boris Johnson resigns:
Boris Johnson has quit as foreign secretary, claiming in his resignation letter that the UK was headed “for the status of a colony” if Theresa May’s soft Brexit plans were adopted.
The leading Brexiter said that he tried to support the line agreed at Chequers on Friday but while the “government now has a song to sing” he could not manage to support the plan agreed.
“The trouble is that I have practised the words over the weekend and find that they stick in the throat,” Johnson wrote. “Since I cannot in all conscience champion these proposals, I have sadly concluded that I must go.”
Johnson was the third minister to quit in 24 hours following the Chequers deal, although his resignation was announced by Downing Street at 3pm before he had a chance to complete his letter.
Johnson added:
The direction the negotiations had been taking have suggested that we would not really leave the EU and the conclusion and statements following the Chequers summit confirmed my fears.
Is May in trouble over the Brexit issue, much like Merkel in Germany over illegal immigration? Vox thinks that may be so:
The chaos engulfing May’s cabinet has raised questions about whether she could face a vote of no confidence from her own party. If she lost that vote, she would face a challenge for leadership of her party and could be forced to step down.
President Donald Trump will be visiting the UK on Thursday, and the subject of Brexit is bound to come up in talks with May. The world will be watching to see if he decides to try to make her life even harder in the likely event that he weighs in on the issue publicly.
Interesting timing.
The struggles over international control vs. autonomy, elitism vs. populism, open borders vs. stricter ones, are being played out in many countries simultaneously—the US, the UK, and Germany prominent among them. Lately the forces that have been gaining are the latter of each of those binary choices, and that development has proponents of the former of each of those binary choices rattled.
Why hasn’t Trump expedited the US-UK free trade agreement talks? That agreement would immensely strengthen May’s hand when dealing with EU.
Because Trump’s spinning a lot of plates on sticks and can’t pop any old plate stick?
Has it ever been accurately determined that May even wants to facilitate Brexit, or is she trying to sabotage it?
The anti-Brexit forces hope to achieve by stealth what they could not at the ballot box. Subterfuge is always indicative of insincerity.
Over on our side of “The Pond”, McConnell pushing for Kavenaugh because its a relatively easy sell to dems is another example of it.
But I’m not sure that a Brexit-in-name-only is truly meaningful, given that with or without Brexit, the UK is well on its way to becoming a Police State. Rotherham(s), hundreds arrested for “hate speech”, Tommy Robinson’s de facto death sentence, a muzzled media, de facto Shariah zones and now Brexit gutted, all argue for a governance divorced from consent of the governed.
Aesopfan,
FWIW, my perception is that she’s personally against it but thinks that since she’s got the job, she’ll work toward a solution that the E.U. can accept.
That such an arrangement promises to be greatly detrimental to UK interests is… unfortunate. But since a slim majority of the public didn’t listen to their betters, they’re just getting what they deserve… good and hard.
Meanwhile, Merkel met with a head honcho from China today to talk about trade. Money, money über alles.
Andy,
I don’t believe May wanted a stronger hand with the EU. I don’t believe she wanted Brexit to happen. I don’t think she had any intention of seeing it through, though that may have been her stated intention; she’s firmly in the EU’s camp.
Keep Calm and Quisling On, and all that. There’s a good chap.
While populism can be dangerous in that it can lead to mob rule, such as the french revolution, currently the mob is useful idiots agitating for the authoritarian globalists. The antifa are the fascists, those weeping tears about children separated from their families support murdering babies up to the time they enter the birth channel, and up has become down. Intersting and dangerous times.
Geoffrey Britain,
AFAIK the UK has never really had a government of the people, by the people, for the people. It has always been run by elitists.
Only the cast has changed. Never the play.
I absolutely loathe the British chatterati. I doubt their elites are any more honorable than ours. The British Conservative Party appears to be like every other starboard party not run by Victor Orban or Benjamin Netanyahu: quite hopeless.
When Brexit was on the ballot, I read up on it. I discovered the EU actually regulates, among many, many other things, the amount of cinnamon in a bun!
I wasn’t all that open-minded about the EU going in, but that tore it.
Tuvea,
That’s true as far as the UK elite always being in charge. I would argue that there have been periods when the UK’s elite put the national welfare before ideology and that the current elite surpass any other previous generation’s ideological committment. So much so that they are courting cultural suicide to a degree that even willful blindness cannot excuse.
They are rejecting their societal roots and no society can survive severing itself from the source of its societal cohesion.
huxley,
On another site that I frequent, there is a Brexit Concern Troll telling everyone that if the UK exits the EU, they will also leave behind all of the EU’s common sense (and numerous) Aviation Regulations. And while they didn’t come right out and say it, the implication was that planes would start falling from the sky, I kid you not.
Fractal Rabbit:
Well, if the UK leaves the EU
the sky May actually fall
and Humpty Dumpty sat …
Those who were/are against Brexit seem determined to screw it up so that they can claim that Brexit would turn out bad like they claimed it would.
The never Trumpers are determined to do the same thing here.
Both groups come across as spoiled brats who aren’t willing to accept that they can’t always get their way.
Of course Britocrats have done their clever best to minimize Brexit—it has been 25 months since the plebiscite, and the position voted on now by May’s thin Cabinet majority is basically pro-EU rules and rulers. She is craven and must go ASAP.
I wouldn’t be so sure. British were famous in Europe for being damn wicked. And there’s some theories about this being a Therese May wicked strategy.
What would be the point? EU is gonna reject whatever plan UK offers. So May has prepared a ‘soft’ Brexit, so soft that even Boris Johnson is quitting! (but who knows, perhaps May asked him to do so).
WHY? Therese May knows that there will be no final deal in the Brexit. EU won’t accept any deal, no matter it’s hard, soft or softer. So when UK leaves EU with no deal, which will be hard, Therese May can say ‘Look, we were willing to accept a plan so soft than even Boris Johnson quit when he listened about it, and the EU still said ‘no’. So whatever hard times we’re going through, it’s THEIR fault‘.
“…the British chatterati…”
Nonetheless, two sites that are well worth reading are:
– The Spectator
https://www.spectator.co.uk/?nogeoredir=1
Also, with an American version:
https://usa.spectator.co.uk/
– Spiked Online
https://usa.spectator.co.uk/
And if you like your news with a wry smile, there’s (sober but sensational?) Guido Fawkes…
https://order-order.com/
Decades ago, a write in, I think, National Review, proposed a new political entity between the individual American and the State–which latter would have comparatively less power.
He called it the “shire”. It should be considerably bigger than a county, smaller than a state. It should have its own flag, at least some kind of military, and–it’s been a while so I may be wrong–the right to impose customs duties on cross-border trade. The primary point was that you can’t get your head around the concept of the big nation. You can’t get emotionally attached, or something. I think that’s wrong.
I think it’s a stupid idea. Silly. And I was fascinated. The idea of more sovereignty closer to the individual makes me all warm and fuzzy. And so I’ve disliked the EU since forever, since they extended their writ into the homes of the citizens, and I am a fan of Brexit for that reason alone. The smothering British state will not be much of an improvement but perhaps the population will have more opportunity to do something about it, presuming they feel the same way.
Richard says “The smothering British state will not be much of an improvement [over the EU].”
Only several years after signing the Lisbon treaty, the UK rep. to the EU parliament, Daniel Hannan, stated that something like 60% or 2/3 of all laws restricting the behavior of British citizens came from the EU and not UK law. Amazingly oppressive.
Even a growing number of French dislike it, and used to think the French were the prime proponents of the union.
TommyJay.
I am shocked. That is horrible. I can’t imagine the number of people involved in selling out sovereignty, but they all ought to be in prison.