Analysis: The Day Brexit Went Backwards

 “Yesterday” as Franklin Roosevelt said after Pearl Harbor, “is a day that will live in infamy”. Although the header to this post says ‘Analysis’, it is the kind of analysis a midbrow six year old could make – were he or she paying attention. Yesterday, Tuesday the 29th of January, there was a session of the House of Commons that began in earnest around 3.30 pm GMT. This afternoon, we are right back to where we were last Monday: and that outcome was 100% certain before the sitting began. But this has long been the way of things in Britain.

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For the best part of ten weeks now, the Prime Minister Theresa May has been saying one thing with tedious regularity every single time she turned up at Westminster: there is my Deal, or there is No Deal. 

The message was clear. But then it became equally clear that hardly anyone of British nationality wanted her deal, aka “pathetic capitulation to the Nazis of Brussels”. Such became clear by Mid December…..but it was mid-January before Number 10 accepted the reality in public.

She played with the deckchairs for another fortnight, and then appeared to relent: very well, she said, we will get Brussels to reopen the negotiations….the Irish backstop will be replaced with the furtively entitled “alternative arrangements” to a hard border between the two States of Ireland.

If this isn’t time-wasting – please, somebody, give me a viable alternative definition.

A flurry of amendments then ensued – chiefly from the Leftlib-biased Remainers – designed variously to take clean-break Brexit off the table, extend Article 50, or have a 2nd Referendum. All were defeated.

The one survivor from the day’s events was the Brady alternative arrangements hokum. The one certainty before the day’s events began was that Brussels would reject it, asking as it does for the reopening of the withdrawal agreement.

May knew this. The House knew this. The media knew this. But with the usual honourable exceptions (chiefly Brexiteer MPs and commentators) nobody mentioned the Mammoth with BO shitting for the Eurozone all over the Afghan carpet at the centre of the room.

Overnight, the glaringly obvious has been confirmed. Well done Whitehall, the City, the neocon Globalists, NATO and the legislative whores who do their bidding: another 72 hours successfully micturated down the drain.

Two months from today, we are scheduled to leave the EU. Yesterday marked the end of a phase during which – with admirable subtlety – began last November. Prior to then, the tactic had been to bore the British People into a torpor of apathy. Since then, a strategy of narrowing down options (and eventually rubbishing real Brexit) has been the order of day after day after day after day.

At the close of January 2019, it is clear that the expectations of all Brexiteers have been managed downwards massively since June 2016. Those expectations are about to be dashed completely.

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What happened yesterday was a brilliantly conceived exercise in expectation management. Obvious Trojan Horses of anti-Brexit skullduggery were seen off (although by margins of only around 3%) thus giving Leavers the impression that their trusty Theresa was on the case. But of course, No Deal – an outcome with which many Brexiteers are entirely happy – was also declared dangerously toxic….even though in the real world of mercantile commerce, it obviously isn’t.

Thus, the options left open to the Leaver majority in the electorate are what Parliament is prepared to stomach. Anyone trying to break out of that from here onwards will be smeared a non-violent extremist.

Parliament is (as we know) out of touch with the electorate at the level of 4:1. But the 1’s have it, the 1’s have it…order! Order!

There would’ve been a very good chance (especially with Jacob Rees-Mogg buying into a specific Brady alternative to the backstop) of the ERG accepting the residue of the May Deal.

Think about this for a few seconds: it would’ve rendered Boris Johnson and David Davies not just outside the tent, but outside the camp. Men who – until a few months ago – were holding senior Cabinet posts and widely acknowledged as part of the Brexit mainstream.

Thankfully, we are dealing with the European Commission – a collection of national political failures, foul-mouthed megalomaniacs, sleazy leakers and minor-league sociopaths. So they have done what we all knew they would: said NO.

Except for one. No prizes for guessing who this carpetbagger is: our dear old friend, Guy Verhofstadt.

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Verhofstadt was first out of the péages this morning to say that “I do not think there’s room to reopen the [withdrawal agreement] but there is a possibility to discuss the future relationship….If this future relationship for example is a customs union, that makes it completely different.”

Uh-huh. Harken closely unto the siren sounds of the Brussels mindset: “Of course, we cannot reopen a deal worse for you than the one we just signed with Japan….but were you to venture further into our spider’s web, well…..you could become even more closely wrapped in the warm blanket of our protectionist scam, while persuading your dimwitted constituents that they have become enfranchised freemen, as opposed to imperial slaves”.

Theresa May – and all those Conservatives still collaborating with her spineless negotiators and redoubtable filibustering – are following the classic path set by the British political class some ninety years ago: that of leaving all our tomorrows to look after themselves in favour of Party advantage.

They are happily bringing in a future that will hinder all Brexit divisions, leave the Scots feeling neglected, engender yet more enmity in Eire, and cripple all realistic chances of the UK forging serious trade deals to reduce its dependence on the EU. A stifling European Union, by the way, with endemic problems of debt, and a currency with no sovereign responsibility.

‘Ninety years’ rightly accuses our Establishment of long-term, serial fudge.

For its member have done the same on State pensions, North Sea oil, national debt, community salvation, immigration, education, farming, ecological commonsense, the NHS, financial services marketing, privatised social weal, EU deficits, control of the banking sector, and now withdrawal from the EU.

Brexit is being diluted, largely outlawed and fitted with knees that point in the wrong direction. It is being done by all Parties in furtherance of their own allegiance (in manifold ways) to minorities – be they bankers, multinationals, migrants, trade unions, military allies and neocon globalists.

On a much larger canvas, in truth, the World is bending its knee to cold, ruthless, geobloc greed.

More on that in due course.