Brexit is a waste of money, Lynn News Letters
Yet two years later after the hollow Leave victory and with the actual UK Brexit negotiations in turmoil, it’s quite intriguing when Obama’s successor Donald Trump arrives in the UK on an official visit and literally starts via an interview with The Sun newspaper to politically “blackmail” a pathetically weak and divided Tory government to impose a hard Brexit or else there will be no US trade deal.
Prominent opportunist Brexiteers like Nigel Farage say absolutely nothing about political interference and actually rejoice over the fact.
Yet the Brexiteers’ predictable double-standards should be quite understandable because many make simplistic even juvenile comparisons between the likes of PM Theresa May’s leadership with Donald Trump’s.
Brexiteers ignore the fact that how leaders come across as strong or weak to the voting public mainly depends on the prevailing economic, social and political events and circumstances they have to deal with from their own sovereign state angle. It doesn’t matter whether there is a hard line Brexit PM or a “semi” remain PM, both would face exactly the same problems.
It should be obvious in any rational sane democracy, which the UK is supposed to be, that after the latest Tory resignations of Brexit Secretary David Davis and Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson’s in retaliation to the latest cobbled up Chequers ‘cakist’ proposal of some dubious UK-EU free trade area just to make it appear that Britain had left something, that in reality neither soft or hard Brexit or indeed any type of Brexit would work and the only type that will is no Brexit.
So instead of openly admitting that the whole Brexit fiasco is a monumental waste of money that will reap havoc on the UK economy and jobs, all the career politicians both in the Tories and Labour, who are clearly doubtful or dead against it, is wail that Brexit must go ahead because ‘it's what the people voted for’ albeit there was no proper Leave manifesto at the time where all the problems and the economic impact of Brexit which we are witnessing today would have been made available for voter scrutiny beforehand. They argue that to reverse Article 50 would undermine the democratic process.
Yet this is arbitrary sensationalism. One vote every five years in a non-proportional party system where’s there’s little difference between any of them is hardly democracy particularly alongside an unelected head of state, House of Lords, civil service all of which makes the structure of the EU with its elected parliament, council and commission look remarkably more democratic by comparison.
Quite simply there are referendums and referendums. Why was there a referendum on Europe for example when there was in fact little yearning for it by big business who after all are in the front line of Brexit hence the threats of giant firms like Jaguar and Siemens to pull their operations out of the UK if Brexit goes ahead especially with no deal?
Although he may have many deluded gung ho UK Brexiteers wrapped around his little finger nobody should doubt Trump’s current Republican administration's true intentions toward the EU and that is to weaken it in order to protect the USA’s economic and geopolitical interests in the face of a growing Asian market. So much for ‘looking after one’s own’!
That is not how global capitalism works.
Nick Vinehill
Snettisham
