Tuesday, 31 January 2023

Happy Brexit Day - Or Maybe Not

Today marks three years since disgraced former alleged Prime Minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and his cabinet of grovelling sycophants “Got Brexit Done”. Three years since the UK was removed from the European Union. A few diehard Brexiteers are today celebrating the occasion with a fresh dose of delusion. Many more are nursing Buyer’s Remorse.

What we left ...

So how are those who worked so assiduously to hobble their own country? One of their number, Camilla Tominey, who in the days of Bill Deedes would not have got in the door at the Telegraph, has used the occasion to have a typically sneering and partisan swipe at London Mayor Sadiq Khan for not providing toilet facilities on London Underground’s Metropolitan Line.

Which her hero Bozo didn’t do, and in any case these have not existed for several decades. Thus the Tel gets yet more desperate and downmarket, and readers are distracted from the grim reality: as a new poll has revealed, almost all those Parliamentary constituencies that favoured Brexit in 2016 no longer do so. A vote today would be emphatically in favour of Remain.

Those who use the Eurostar service out of St Pancras International may be some of the ones changing their minds, as the BBC has reported: “The boss of Eurostar has said its trains between the UK and Paris are carrying 30% fewer passengers. Chief executive Gwendoline Cazenave said with post-Brexit border checks and current levels of border staff, there were ‘bottlenecks’ in stations”. Wow! Benefit! Keeps the Forrins out, eh?

There was more. “Eurostar is currently running 14 services per day between London and Paris, compared with 18 in 2019. Ms Cazenave said the company might not restore some services suspended last year due to the problems … Last year, Eurostar announced it was halting its direct service from London to Disneyland Paris and also stopped services calling at Ebbsfleet or Ashford International stations”. Stops Brits travelling, though.

Does any of this get through to the more rabid wing of the Tory party? You jest: one whiff of Rishi Sunak going for a “Swiss style” arrangement with Brussels was enough to have the ERG suffering the wig-out and collective involuntary bowel movement to stink out all of Westminster.

Nor does reality seem to have landed with sufficient force at Labour Party HQ, with the party’s current leadership continuing to assert that they will “make Brexit work”. The only way they will “make Brexit work” will be to rejoin the Single Market and Customs Union. They need to come clean with voters.

... and those who conned the voters

The IMF has brought the bad news to dampen party spirits: the UK’s economy is set to contract this year. That means we will be doing less well than Germany, France, Italy … and Russia. Much of the developed world has enacted sanctions on Russia. But (a) they will still do better than the UK, because (b) Brexit is effectively the UK enacting sanctions upon itself.

But wherever there is bad news, there is also the opportunity to spin it the other way, and, with a significantly-sized dose of rank hypocrisy, the IMF news has been held up as justifying Brexit by the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog. Staines, remember it well, lives in Ireland - an EU member state. Thus the hypocrisy.

The Great Guido this morning celebrated Brexit day, telling readersFor all the refusal by Remoaners to accept the biggest ever democratic decision by the British people, even today’s IMF report on growth forecasts couldn’t bring itself to attribute any faults in the UK economy to our decision to leave the bloc”. It just said the economy would shrink this year. Minor point, eh?

Those at the Fawkes massive get round that one by later putting the boot in on the IMF for getting their forecasts wrong. And they do dishonesty, too, proclaiming “Since this day in 2019 we’ve signed about [?] 71 new trade deals, led the European response to Putin’s war in Ukraine and saved countless British lives with an independent vaccine rollout”.

And as Jon Stewart might have put it, two things here. One, if any country is leading the response to the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s Poland. And Two, the UK was behind Malta and Portugal in getting 90% of its population double jabbed with Covid vaccines. Which, once again, shows that being in the EU would not have stopped the UK responding swiftly to the Pandemic.

Lying. Gaslighting. Misinformation. And all those rich propagandists telling the less well off how we’ve taken back control and put one over on Johnny Foreigner. The reality, as Adam Bienkov at Byline Times has pointed out, is that “Brexit has Left the UK in a State of National Decline”. And looking at that poll and the loss of support for Brexit, it looks like the voters are wise to that.

Just don’t forget who led us here. Don’t let them anywhere near power again.


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2 comments:

  1. Isobel shitpot - her of the third rate ziggy stardust haircut - seems to be missing from the above list of journalist quisling traitors …

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  2. Brexit has been a disaster for the British people, turning us once again into the sick man of Europe. The sunlit uplands have turned out to be a turd swamp, and Keir Starmer is too afraid of the corrupt, Walter Duranty-esque client journalists of the Tory press, to tell the truth to voters.

    So many of these clowns like Staines have no clue how WTO rules work. Being a "third country" means you have to follow WTO rules. Yet they still try to blame the EU.

    The Baltic and Nordic nations have forged closer ties, and have provided the leadership that Germany and France have not.

    On Ukraine, the leadership has come from Poland, Finland, and Estonia. The latter nation is actually the biggest supporter of Ukraine in terms of per capita. Finland's PM, Sanna Marin, has argued that Europe must become a self-sufficient bloc, that it is too dependent on the US. In effect she (and others such as Donald Tusk) has argued for exactly the kind of united, strong Europe that makes Brexiters seethe.

    Let's not forget the words of Mr. Farage's friend, the Russian Ambassador after the Brexit vote, which now sound chillingly prophetic, perhaps because that of course was the plan.

    The they want a divided, weak Europe, just like Putin, funnily enough. Divide and rule.

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