What If The United Kingdom Never Quite Left The European Union?
David Lindsay
(Photo credit should read DANIEL LEAL-OLIVAS/AFP/Getty Images)
I am writing this from one of the areas the votes of which decided the EU referendum. We voted to reject 39 years of failure under all three parties, going all the way back to the adoption of monetarism by the Callaghan Government in 1977, the year of my birth.
Brexit needs to meet our needs, which are for trade deals with the BRICS countries even while remaining thoroughly critical of their present governments, for integration into the Belt and Road Initiative, for full enjoyment of our freedom from the Single Market’s bans on such measures as State Aid and capital controls, for an extra £350 million per week for the National Health Service, and for the restoration of the United Kingdom’s historic fishing rights in accordance with international law: 200 miles, or to the median line. We must not be opposed in principle to trade deals with the United States, Canada, Australia or New Zealand. But the NHS and food safety standards are among the things that are simply not negotiable.
Then again, what Brexit? As things stands, either the United Kingdom is to become a colony and a satrapy of the European Union, taking the rules without making the rules and having to pay while having no say, or it is simply not going to leave the EU at all. Either outcome now seems equally likely. Therefore, five points of primary legislation have become necessary.
First, the restoration of the supremacy of United Kingdom over European Union law, using that provision to repatriate agricultural, industrial and regional policy, and using it to restore the United Kingdom’s historic fishing rights.
Secondly, the requirement that all EU legislation, in order to have any effect in this country, be enacted by both Houses of Parliament as if it had originated in one or the other of them.
Thirdly, the requirement that British Ministers adopt the show-stopping Empty Chair Policy until such time as the Council of Ministers meet in public and publish an Official Report akin to Hansard.
Fourthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of any ruling of the European Court of Justice or of the European Court of Human Rights unless confirmed by a resolution of the House of Commons, the High Court of Parliament.
And fifthly, the disapplication in the United Kingdom of anything passed by the European Parliament but not by the majority of those MEPs who had been certified as politically acceptable by one or more members of the House of Commons. Thus, we should no longer be subject to the legislative will of neo-Fascists and neo-Nazis, of members of Eastern Europe’s kleptomaniac nomenklatura, or of Dutch ultra-Calvinists who would not have women candidates.
Moreover, even inside the EU, we need a British Government that will work for trade deals with the BRICS countries, for the Belt and Road integration that Italy is already pursuing, and for trade deals with anywhere only if they protected the NHS, food safety, consumer rights in general, and workers’ rights.
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It’s symbolic of the declinine of British political culture and indicative of the competence of the ruling elite, when the real debate about Brexit begins to take place… after the referendum vote. I suspect the next referendum will be about reversing decimalisation and returning to pounds, shillings and pence, inches and yards. Why not?
We need to bring back furlongs, bushels, gills, chains and hundredweights as well.
Jesus, how misguided the British elites are! In their wild arrogance, narrow-mindedness, incompetence, aggressiveness. How much they could do for their people! How many opportunities are missed. How much time is wasted. How much benefit is lost. How many relationships are spoiled. What an interesting and useful projects could be implemented – in the economy, in the field of security, in the cultural sphere, in politics and so on. How much Britain could get from cooperation with Russia! Look, Turkey agreed to such cooperation (in many respects by going “against” the NATO colleagues) – as a result, Turkey is now one of the most important countries determining the balance of power in the Middle East, and taking a direct and important part in such a global issue as the Syrian settlement. Turkish experts themselves admit that, they say, “thanks to Russia, we have reached the international level, Russia has led… Read more »
I am not a fanatical EU supporter by any means, but I am afraid the last three years demonstrates in spades why leaving is a bad idea. We have seen a British elite talking among themselves and projecting their own wishes on to the public. recklessly ignoring both public opinion and economic reality. Are our government any more capable of representing the British people in trade and laws than the EU? I doubt it, on the evidence of the Brexit negotiations.
It seems to me that some kind of semi-detached Common Market-style arrangement would probably be the best chance of keeping the country together while not harming our economy unduly. All we need now is the leadership!
I fear that the benefits of leaving the European Union, after almost half a century of closer and closer integration with what is our biggest market for goods and services; is a warm, rosy and dangerous illusion. I suppose it’s natural for people to cast around looking for somone to blame when their lives aren’t what they thought they would be. Americans did it when they voted for Trump. The Brits chose Brexit. Both are mirages. Look at the map. The UK is part of Europe. The only question, though it is an enormous, complex and important one, is what kind of relationship is the UK going to have with the rest of Europe, no? I’ve heard Brits talking about Europe as if the UK is going to have a total clean break from Europe. This is an illusion. The UK’s economy will still be aimed at Europe, by far… Read more »
The EU was never destined to be be our biggest market ! Currently UK does nearly 60% of all trade under WTO rules & US is our biggest trading partner.
Re-think who you use as sources – BBC etc lie a lot ……….
I know I’m wasting my time, but …has anyone ever heard of entropy? Well, you soon will, and bio-physical limits. And violence. And tribal blood-scrambles over scarce resources. The longer we engage in fantasy magic realist thinking – the closer we get to our planetary limits. The less we understand how the earth system functions: the more difficult it becomes to do something rational about it. Other than articulate violence with violence: which will be the likely outcome. And with the earth system working at 170% of a bio-sustainable rate: we may well have already passed that event horizon. We are past peak-everything: and EROI is kicking in – and yet we act and fantasise like we can keep going forever. Why are we so entangled in AI-magic unicorn thinking? Fantasy politics that entails a fascist-violence teleology. I’d like to know, if only for personal reasons. We are unlikely to… Read more »
BigB It’s amazing. Not only are people prepared to give up sovereignty and democracy to the EU and globalists they are fully prepared to give up personal sovereignty and privacy too. Corporations such as Google, Amazon, Apple, Microsoft are filling people’s homes with surveillance equipment which if the government imposed people would be up in arms but because its a corporation people sleep walk into accepting it. The consumer is fast losing sovereignty over his or her possessions and they are starting to rule us. The human owner and user is at the end of the queue when they boot up their PC or Laptop and it gives priority to updating itself and all the software installed on it. People can no longer think or act for themselves. A girl in my office gets out of her seat once an hour and does a few meaningless exercises because her watch… Read more »
Simon I despair. The girl at work can be used as a metaphor for the techno-Borg collectivisation of thought. She has no real reality of her own. She has lost her autonomy unto a ‘machinic-Becoming’ – probably without ever noticing. To be clear, I am not talking of an actual person: just using this as an analogy. There are enough people who really are seduced by the techno-sky-castle to justify my statement. Unfortunately, among them are the ones who make the big decisions day in, day out. If we define a world without entropy: it is not the real world. If we have a set of definitions for a negentropic economy: it is not the real world. If we define a set of definitions for a negentropic environment: it is not the real world. If we base our socio-political-economy on these hidden variables: it is not the real world. If… Read more »
All things considered, we’re more likely to go out by nuclear war well before environmental deterioration could finish us off.
Caitlin Johnston summed it up perfectly recently. There are three main outcomes to our current situation. Absolute Fascism; absolute annihilation; or absolute freedom. There is only one of those outcomes I prefer, and it seems the most unlikely. But it is the one I will continue to advocate for: even though it seems to me that very few even understand what freedom is. It is not something technology can manifest. We have to do it for ourselves.
That’s Johnston with an ‘e’!
You cannot win.
You cannot break even.
You cannot leave the game.
Crank You cannot quit the game I disinherited Steve from a whole £3 a month when he ‘quit the game’. His ecological attitude turned to ‘spend now/pay later’ – which was ironically to invest in a future technofix for the entropy we are creating. Let the children deal with it is not an attitude I can contribute to. Not even 3 quid! There are solutions being created – as mentioned – what we cannot sustain is the current levels of techno-industrial production. And we do not need to. I am not a techno-Luddite, nor do I want a reduced standard of living – especially not if my poverty is to maintain someone else’s immoral standard of living …but I do want to survive. Preferably without fascist control. The laws of thermodynamics are broken everyday – it is what is called life. Living organisms operate far from thermodynamic equilibrium – as… Read more »
For some, turning down consciousness is deemed an answer to the problem of conflict. So turning down industry is a similar strategy. Symptom management so as to persist in an ‘out-of-true’ sense of self, life and world. Broad spectrum Meds are already in place – with the IoT life can be micromanaged globally toward the phasing out of carbon life forms and upgrading to silicon consciousness. Wholeness is not the result of all the kings horses and all the kings men – but the prior state and quality of being – of Life and of a Living Universe that is more like to an organism – excepting it is the ‘environment that brings forth’ through self sustaining expressions, rather than an autonomous life packages murdering each other. My point is that quality is missing in large part from any economic strategy or system of survival. The qualities of Life are… Read more »
Since Blair and Brown politicians have abdicated from power and have outsourced and handed it over to third parties. We saw it in the response to the GFC where the governments abdicated a response to the central bankers and the central bankers in turn abdicated responsibility by giving $trillions to the same market actors who created the crisis without any direction as to how the stimulus was to be ‘invested’. The same with the EU. Politicians transfer power to third parties so they no longer have to be accountable and democracy gets lost in a blame game when everything goes wrong and the next financial crisis hits some time in the near future. Our parliament clearly doesn’t believe in national sovereignty, democracy and it doesn’t believe in the power of its own authority. If this is the case one wonders by what rationality they have the temerity to even stand… Read more »
The European Court of Human Rights is not part of the European Union, as you appear to think. It was created by the European Convention on Human Rights back in 1959 under the Council of Europe – again not part of the European Union – whose members are all signatories to the Convention – all forty-seven of them, including, for example, Russia, a country that I am sure no one thinks is part of the European Union.
It is all of a piece. If you need that to be explained to you, then there is no point trying to do so. But I doubt that you really do.
Sorry mate Brexit is about the upcoming hand over from the Queen to either her first son or his first son…and the dominions of the crown…which cannot be given to the thing called the EU. Brexit could not have taken place nor could it have succeeded without Royal help.
“Brexit could not have taken place nor could it have succeeded without Royal help” — Same goes for the Entry into the EEC. It’s called “royal assent”.
Brexit: out of the frying pan into the proverbial fire? How would Brexit enhance workers’ rights in and of itself? As things stand, isn’t it just as likely that things will get much worse, along chlorinated chicken lines? What kind of trade would be we be doing with Brazil, and what about THEIR
workers’ rights?
Do you work for minimum wage? ZHC? Obviously not, otherwise you’d be reading The Mail or Sun (people like me are few and far between (I don’t like reading about who shagged who and whose new song is great)) My wages are already climbing because free movement isn’t so popular now. Rose warned business that wages would rise if we voted out. If the middle class and above wasn’t so self centred, maybe the vote would have planned out different? But they are, so here we are. I can’t really afford (proper, decent) chicken, so it makes bugger all difference to me. The middle class scare stories only frighten the middle class… Oh yeah, one more thing. Given the pace that minimum wage is rising compared to everyone else’s pay cheques, how long before the middle class lose their status? Unless you’re a barrister or doctor, it’s coming for you… Read more »
I would add environment, ecology and stopping global heating by moving to zero carbon to the proposed protections. RE; “only if they protected the NHS, food safety, consumer rights in general, and workers’ rights.”
https://off-guardian.org/2019/01/08/red-and-green-should-never-be-seen/
I recommend reading the BTL responses to that (linked article), which show it up for the hogwash that it is.
The structure of rules and regulations that operates a paralysis of powerlessness, for any real change, is set up to protect a top down canopy or ‘trickle-down’ economy, of outsourced pain, penalty, pollution, sickness and enforced dependency. Monopoly cartels and monocultured humans operate a mafia-like capture or infiltration of regulators as the fronting mask of a sold out leadership. Corporate and state dependency swap roles as good and bad cop – where both operate the capture and management of people as systems of control – using the face or terms of ‘security’, healthcare’ or a ‘growing economy’. The word and phrase usage is developed as doublethink to feed and entrain the people in compliance and conformity to their own self-deprivation, degradation and destruction. There is a vision of the future rolling out in which the population is culled, herded into smart cities and indentured to robotic status with privilege to… Read more »
Fine term “paralysis if powerlessness”
Pro-Brexit political figures tend to divide into two main camps: those on the true-left like George Galloway who regard meaningful democracy as the bedrock of our political values, and those on the far right like JRM, Nigel Farage, and Priti Patel who are salivating at the prospect of handing over what’s left of Britains capsizing economy to their allies in the banking and corporate world. Since there is not a snowball’s chance in hell of socialism gaining sufficient traction to translate into a parliamentary majority the most likely post-Brexit scenario is venture capitalism feasting on what remians of Britain’s dwindling wealth while hard fought for rights such as employment conditions or benefit entitlement will whittled away in order to funnel more money to off-shore business accounts. The NHS will be one of the jewels in the crown since it costs £120 billion to provide and will be a major sweetner… Read more »
NHS is already gone. So many companies either hide behind the NHS logo, or claim to be working in partnership.
Virgin suing the NHS for losing a contract and the ads for immediate doctor access (at a price) are some of the evidence to prove this.
Then there’s the asset/land sell offs, and semi closure of services (in the name of centralising) in order to sell off yet more sites.
All that’s going to be left for the Septics will be the inflated insurance policies. They’ll be a few UK firms snapped up too (Interserve for example), whether they like it or not.
Magna Carta 1215 is the bedrock of British Law. It is a fallacy to imagine that sovereignty can be voted away, or sold off to the highest bidder. The present ‘governance’ of the UK is a government of a foreign occupant with no, (zero), Lawful standing. Article 61 of the Magna Carta 1215 commands the sovereign subject to ‘distress and restrain’. Article 61 was invoked in late March 2001. What are you waiting for?
Hey guys, what a relief, nothing to worry about, coz’ one of the Top 10 stories in the Fraudian today, states clearly that >>> “Uri Geller promises to stop Brexit using Telepathy” There you go, nothing to worry about any more . . . 😉 Oh wait, has anybody seriously checked Uri’s bloodline & security clearance @GCHQ ? ! I dunno’ ’bout Alice, but who d’f**k is URI to interfere in politics & bent forks for MI6@theG. World gone MAD ! ? (& NO, i did not open the article designed for dumbos & dumbed downers, but i’m guessing the request for your money was longer than the article) 🙂 When 2 years of Mueller finding effectively nothing to incriminate Trump on ‘Russiagate’, the above story serves as fine example & signal of the Rocker-Feller’s Deep State concerns >>> Expect FAR worse ! ! BTW, Christchurch ? BTO. “You ain’t… Read more »
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/mar/22/uri-geller-promises-to-stop-brexit-using-telepathy
Somebody should start a campaign to cancel Geller’s passport, under suspicion of working for a foreign entity, Mossad, and interfering in UK Politics & Politicians’ lives, after all, the nation has already had their referendum. His statements, no doubt are Tantamount to TREASON
and clearly against the will of the people !
Sanction him Publicly ! !
It’s truly becoming hard to remember that the Guardian was once considered by some to be an almost serious journalistic effort, turned ‘Hell hole’ : now, the expression ‘heel hole’ 4whores of the AshkeNazi Khazarian Mafia, seems more apt, as their news becomes more & more of a joke than The SUN ! What a dumbed down bent spoon-fed bunch of morons for MPs, you get today in the UK . . . let alone, poverty stricken joe public. Not even one MP publicly discussing seriously CLIMATE CHANGE and how WE have Geo-engineered the >>> WEATHER, the Tech. involved & its’ Moral implications. The UK has only one option. GTFO out of Europe, raid GCHQ, suspend or arrest all personnel and start getting the SCIENTIFIC FACTS on the table, before you even discuss Climate Change or any other political matter, for that MATTER is key to comprehension of everything-everything !… Read more »
The Brits ending up a colony, subject to a foreign parasitic superstate what a shame.
Which parasitic superstate – EU or USA? They’re both draining UK down and using us.
Israel?
As soon as I read £350 million to the NHS, I was wary. That was a lie made up by the politicians you complain about. There would be that much to share and the NHS could get a fair amount. You seem to be too interested in what the EU legislation would be doing. Repeal the 1972 act that put the EU laws above ours and we can tidy up all the rest at our leisure. WE gave the EU most of the things people say we will miss when we leave, such indoctrination is shocking. The media often say ‘you don’t want to go back to the 70s’ – well, yes I do actually. Well paid jobs that paid for rent and food with a little left over for leisure, double pay on holidays and Sundays (triple on bank holidays in some cases). I haven’t even put my rose… Read more »
What is to stop us from spending the extra £350 million on the NHS? It is not “a lie” at all.
No, none of them were lies,they need us more than we need them, the German car manufacturers will be screaming to do a deal, we have all the cards, we can have our confectionary whilst devouring it at the same time, they will blink at the last minute, possible 80,000,000 people can come here from Turkey , bloody difficult woman,easiest trade deals in the history of mankind, Irish border is dead easy to resolve, the list is endless, and still people are being fooled by them, unbelievable
I am now working with all of the non-Labour members of Durham County Council and with the trade unions, to bring Volkswagen’s production for the British market to County Durham after, or even before, Brexit. I am more than open to further suggestions along similar lines. Among many other things, this project will guarantee the financial future of the Durham Miners’ Gala and of the Durham Miners’ Hall. The absence of the County Council Labour Group is that Group’s own sorry fault.
The Irish border is a red herring. We’ve had free travel with Ireland since 1922. The Irish border has only ever been closed once for a couple of weeks – just before D Day in 1944. The only problem with the border has been pig smuggling – pigs being smuggled by farmers back and forth across the border to collect double subsidies from Eire and Britain. The trade issue could have been resolved with a five minute phone call. “We’re going to carry on importing your goods free of tariffs and quotas, until such time as you impose tariffs and quotas on our exports. Then we will reciprocate, euro for euro.” The only reason the whole process has been so torturous is because the political elite wanted it to be. They never accepted the referendum result and sought to undermine it from the moment it was announced. This could have… Read more »
I never said that £350 million to go to the NHS was a lie, I said I was wary, because it is an irrelevance – the amount would be decided by whatever government was in power and I can’t think of one that would spend it all on one single project.
Ignore that, I shall refrain from trying to edit on a phone from now on 🙁
Why not spend £500 billion on the NHS instead?
That’s what we have paid into the EU.
Every day we stay in the EU costs us another £50 million.
Dave, ole boy. Yer tokkon’ from a nationalist pointa view; bit non-u in the present climate of global outreach, eh? Or have I misreadyas?
Helmut.