Welcome To Zelo Street!

This is a blog of liberal stance and independent mind

Saturday 12 September 2020

Brexit Lawbreaking? Blame The EU

It is sadly true that, despite all the effort put into its promotion by alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his ministerial accomplices, the publicity given to the Polecat Enabling Act, more formally called the Internal Market Bill, has been severely adverse, except for the Daily Brexit, still called the Express, and the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph. So a new tactic has been deployed.


This latest divertissement is a dead cat of quite magnificent proportions, a feast of improbable victimhood so ridiculous and pointless that it can have only one target audience - diehard Brexiteers. The premise is straightforward: the EU figures out that Bozo and Co are considering breaking international law, it tells the UK side not to bother on pain of not getting a Free Trade Agreement, the UK then blames its behaviour on the EU.

You think I jest? Look no further than today’s Telegraph, for which Bozo has dashed off another of his “chicken feed” generating columns. “BORIS JOHNSON has accused the European Union of threatening to impose a food ‘blockade’ in the Irish Sea that would destroy the ‘economic and territorial integrity of the UK’”. There’s diplomacy for you.

And if that looks bad, what about this? “The Prime Minister makes a passionate defence of his decision [most likely not his decision] to alter the Brexit divorce deal, saying that he has to protect Britain from the ‘disaster’ of handing Brussels the ‘power to carve up our country’”. Then, having single-handedly made the prospect of getting a trade deal with the EU next to impossible, Bozo claims he still wants one. Perhaps.


He also issues a direct plea to Tory MPs threatening to rebel over his plans, telling them that if they stand in his way they will reduce the chance of getting a trade deal with the EU … Mr Johnson has come out fighting, using his article today to warn off the EU and the rebels within his party”. Baloney. The Tories fouled up, so it’s someone else’s fault.

What is yet more bizarre is that senior Tories outside the cabinet are prepared to play the same tune, with Andrea Leadsom (no, don’t laugh) telling Sky News “What Michel Barnier needs to accept is that the UK has left the European Union and we are not about to continue to be subjected to EU rules having left”. Want to trade with the EU? Guess what, you have to play by agreed rules. Which will in most cases be their rules.


She goes on to claim “The integrity of the United Kingdom is vital. We want a free trade deal with the EU that is in all our interests. But we cannot accept them either keeping us under their rules, or putting a border down the Irish Sea”. What she - and Bozo - manage to forget is that it is the UK Government that agreed to put a customs border down the Irish Sea. Theresa May refused that option, hence the “backstop”.

A supposedly rational politician is descending through a spiral of paranoia and desperation, while We The People can only look on, powerless, as he and chief Downing Street polecat Dominic Cummings try to screw our country beyond repair.

But don’t worry, there will always be a scapegoat. Remember that Nazi playbook.


Enjoy your visit to Zelo Street? You can help this truly independent blog carry on talking truth to power, while retaining its sense of humour, by adding to its Just Giving page at

https://www.justgiving.com/crowdfunding/zelostreet7

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

If the EU is Hitler and the Withdrawal Agreement is the Munich Agreement, then why is Johnson pretending to be Churchill instead of Chamberlain?

Arnold said...

Without a border in the Irish Sea, EU citizens will be able to enter and leave the UK unrecorded. Brexiters seem totally unconcerned for some reason.

Anonymous said...

@Arnold

Moreover, given that the GFA proscribes a border between NI and ROI, without a border in the Irish Sea, trading on WTO terms would appear to be impossible. Or, a least, that was the position of Karen Bradley in 2018, when serving as Secretary of State for Northern Ireland.

Steve Woods said...

I've maintained ever since that referendum in 2016 that the Tories' tactics would be to waste time, crash out of the EU without reaching a deal and then blame everyone else for their failures.

Anonymous said...

Well, we KNOW the target scapegoats after Brexit - Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and anywhere outside the M25....propaganda "opportunities" notwithstanding. That's what happened in the 1980s and there's no reason to think the perpetrators have changed. If anything the current far right racist sociopathic gang are even worse. Their true nature can be gauged from the tiny example of David Starkey and his demise.

There will be a short euphoria after Brexit. But the worst adversities will begin to get traction by the end of 2021/beginning of 2022. The reactions to that phase will be severe. After which there will be a period of great danger to what remains of British democracy. Nobody will be safe. More war will loom.

And we let it come to this. No mistake, WE LET IT HAPPEN.

Anonymous said...

Anon 3:08 - yes, have a look at the anti-Scottish stuff the Express is cranking out by the hour. Oh no, Orkney is declaring independence!

Think they'll also opt for the traditional scapegoat of the poor. When unemployment blows up over the next few months they'll be filled with stories about 'hard-working people' risking the virus while 'scroungers' sit round and watch telly on their 75 inch OLED screens paid for by the taxpayer. Then it won't be corona/Brexit tanking the economy, it'll be indolent unemployed types.

Remember they got away with it totally after 2008 with the poor being hit with austerity lasting a decade while the rich got tax cuts.

They'll pull the same stunt again.


Anonymous said...

Comment 1: if, IF??

Anonymous said...

@23:14

Yes, I realise that the analogy between the EU and Nazi Germany is invalid but I wanted to point out to the Gammon that has begun to infest us that their Churchill is in fact Chamberlain.

The analogy would break down further if you believe Churchill was nothing more than your common or garden Imperialist and that it was in fact the Soviets who were ultimately responsible for the defeat of National Socialism.