When is sovereignty not sovereignty? When you’re a hypocritical Brexiter, perhaps

Last Updated: October 25, 2016By Tags: , , , , , , ,

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Brexit supporters have been shown up properly over the last few days – and, to add insult to indignity, by Belgium!

After years of telling us that the EU denies member states their sovereignty, the lie has been revealed by three Belgian regions, which have asserted their sovereignty to stop the corporation-pleasing trade deal known as CETA in its tracks.

So the Brexiters, who have spent years telling us trade deals like CETA and TTIP are bad because they deny our national sovereignty, have turned on the spot and are now saying the EU is crazy to allow these regions to overturn a great deal.

They have to do this, in order to maintain their misconception that the EU denies sovereignty to nation states.

But we can all see the hypocrisy behind it – can’t we? Here’s Another Angry Voice:

Either the EU is a giant anti-democratic behemoth which imposes sinister corporate power grabs against member states’ wills, or it’s a democratic organisation that allows member states to obstruct wonderful, amazing. brilliant, marvellous corporate power grabs. It just can’t be both.

One of the worst aspects of TTIP is the inclusion of sovereignty destroying ISDS components that would allow multinational corporations to completely bypass the democratic and judicial systems of any countries that have signed up to it in order to sue governments in secretive transnational tribunals. This means that if any democratic government introduces new legislation that multinational corporations don’t like (plain packaging on cigarette packs, environmental protection laws, product safety standards, consumer rights, improved workers’ rights …) then the multinational corporations could extract £billions in compensation from the taxpayer in secretive transnational tribunals operated by a tiny band of extremely highly paid, mainly US based, corporate lawyers and arbiters.

Fast forward a few months and the adoption of another EU transnational corporate power grab called CETA is being stalled by three regional governments in Belgium. Three of the six Belgian federal parliaments have objected to this deal with Canada (the Wallonia region, the Brussels-Capital region, and the French community) so Belgium will not be able to sign up to it.

This deal between the EU and Canada contains exactly the same kind of shady ISDS tribunals as TTIP. It’s precisely these sovereignty destroying ISDS components that are the main objection of Belgian politicians like Paul Magnette who have led the opposition to CETA.

The reaction from Brexiters has been comically hypocritical. They’re now trying to claim that the CETA is a great thing and that the EU is a basket case for allowing regional democratic parliaments to obstruct this supposedly marvellous deal!

What the hell do these Brexiters want? A few months ago they were telling us that corporate power grabs were evil and unacceptable attacks on our democratic sovereignty in order to push their anti-EU agenda. Now they’re telling us that giant corporate power grabs are the absolute bees knees and the EU is a totally dysfanctional basket case because individual member states and federal regions can assert their democratic sovereignty to obstruct them!

Source: Do Brexiters love sinister corporate power grabs or not?

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7 Comments

  1. Barry Davies October 25, 2016 at 6:23 pm - Reply

    I’m a brexiteer and like every other Brexiteer I support Wallonia for its actions we have slammed the british government for never having the guts to veto anything though. Leave said all along that the only way we could get out of TTIP was to leave the eu and the same was considered to be the case with CETA. The Americans dropped the idea of TTIP when they realised we wouldn’t be a part of it, maybe the same will happen with the Canadians as well.

    • Mike Sivier October 31, 2016 at 2:47 pm - Reply

      The problem with that is, the Tories will simply sign their own deals – offering even worse conditions for ordinary people.

  2. Rupert Mitchell (@rupert_rrl) October 25, 2016 at 9:22 pm - Reply

    Brexiters obviously should not have been voting as most simply didn’t know what they were voting for. You can’t have your cake and eat it!

  3. casalealex October 25, 2016 at 9:39 pm - Reply

    History shows that, more often than not, loss of sovereignty leads to liberalisation imposed in the interests of the powerful.
    Noam Chomsky

  4. casalealex October 25, 2016 at 9:41 pm - Reply

    In England, the sovereignty resides exclusively in the person or individual who is king. All Englishmen are his subjects. And the highest peer in the realm… has no share in the sovereignty.
    Roger B. Taney

  5. Zippi October 26, 2016 at 12:15 pm - Reply

    Who are these alleged Brexit supporters?
    Having spent time in Belgium, recently and spoken with many people (our E.U. membership referendum was a hot topic) the consensus was that the people, there, didn’t like the E.U. but they wanted the U.K. to retain its membership and sort it out. Why the feeling was that we could sort it, I don’t know. Perhaps, had other dissatisfied nations had been more outspoken, things may have been different. Perhaps, the voice of the people was not heard?

  6. Mark Waters October 26, 2016 at 2:26 pm - Reply

    and Mrs Mays goverment signed up to both TTIP &CETA

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