The UK is on course to leave the European Union at the end of the month – becoming much less just in the process, thanks to Boris Johnson.
After the Lords modified his Brexit Bill to bring a modicum of decency back into it, Johnson made sure all their amendments were reversed before the Bill was passed at its third and final reading in the Commons.
This means post-Brexit Britain will not give unaccompanied child refugees the right to be reunited with their families in the UK.
Only Tories voted against the amendment. Apparently “caring Conservatism” will disappear into history alongside the UK’s EU membership.
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Boris Johnson: Give it a few months and he’s likely to be the only person happy with his Brexit law.
It may be hard to believe but the Tories have changed their Withdrawal Agreement Bill – the Brexit Bill – yet again, right before bulldozing it through Parliament.
The Bill, as passed yesterday by 330 votes to 231 – a majority of 99 votes, all of which were Tory – has stirred up a huge amount of outrage.
But most people voted for it – right?
It enshrines in law that the transition period must end in December this year, making the possibility of a “No Deal” Brexit almost certain.
But most people voted for it – right?
It makes the possibility of Scotland splitting away from the United Kingdom more likely, as SNP MPs and MSPs have made it clear they cannot accept the Bill.
But most people voted for it – right?
Also opposing the Bill are MPs from Northern Ireland. The DUP – who propped up Theresa May’s minority Tory government for two years – abstained from yesterday’s vote because they disagree with Boris Johnson’s plan to have a customs border in the middle of the Irish Sea.
But most people voted for it – right?
According to Labour’s David, Lammy, “Thousands of jobs will be lost, young people will lose the right to live and work freely in 27 EU countries, our rights and freedoms will be eroded, and our NHS is at risk. All we will get in return is a third-rate trade deal with Donald Trump.”
But most people voted for it – right?
And Liberal Democrat Brexit spokesman Alistair Carmichael said the Tories had supported “a bill that strips away our guaranteed environmental protections, despite the fact that we are facing a climate emergency”.
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Boris Johnson: As Opposition MPs tore into his new attempt at a withdrawal agreement, he didn’t look happy.
Boris Johnson has told Parliament he is prepared to break the so-called Benn Act and commit to a “no deal” Brexit if MPs – and MEPs – reject his latest pretence at offering a withdrawal agreement to the European Union.
See for yourself:
This Site has already explained why stakeholders in this matter – in both the UK and the EU – believe Mr Johnson’s latest deal is a sham.
Now BoJob has confirmed what we all expected – that he will break the law to push ahead with the “no deal” Brexit has has wanted all along.
This will fuel speculation that he is in hock to high-powered financial speculators who backed his bid to become leader of the Conservative Party. Hopefully John McDonnell’s demand for an immediate independent inquiry will win more support as a result.
Meanwhile Jeremy Corbyn and Ian Blackford have already confirmed that Labour and the SNP will not support the new attempt at a deal, and it seems unlikely to gain the votes it needs.
It seems the only immediate choice is a vote of “no confidence” in Mr Johnson’s government followed by a bid to form a temporary government led by Mr Corbyn. If this fails, then Speaker John Bercow may be prevailed upon to seek another delay of Brexit while a general election is held.
Perhaps Mr Johnson is hoping for that. It certainly seems the Liberal Democrats are supporting him in it, by refusing to back a Corbyn-led government.
Perhaps he thinks the Brexit-supporting public will put him back into Number 10 with a majority.
But after a series of failed attempts at Brexit, is anybody really stupid enough to think he has anything to offer us?
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MPs have voted against Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement, with 286 votes in favour and 344 votes against it.
The zombie prime minister has been defeated yet again.
Mrs May says the legal default is that the UK leaves the EU on April 12 – not enough time to ratify a deal, and Parliament will not countenance leaving without a deal.
The UK will now most likely go into a longer extension of Article 50, and be required to take part in European Parliament elections in May.
The inertia dogging the UK will continue to hold us in its grip for many months to come, it seems.
Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Opposition, has demanded Mrs May’s immediate resignation and a general election to break the deadlock. He has been supported in this call by Ian Blackford, leader of the SNP in the House of Commons.
She won’t do it, because as a Tory she would never accept the possibility of losing power. But until she does, the UK will not have a functioning government.
The conclusion is obvious:
The problem is Theresa May. No progress will be made as long as she stays in Downing Street and denies democracy.
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Having failed to get her imbecilic Brexit deal passed after no less than two attempts, Theresa May is threatening MPs with a third.
Does anybody remember – it wasn’t that long ago – how we were all told we couldn’t have another referendum on whether to leave the EU because it was “undemocratic”?
We were told the people had spoken and the decision must be respected.
Well, MPs have spoken on Mrs May’s draft withdrawal agreement. But Mrs May won’t respect their decision.
Why is the former decision sacrosanct while the latter is treated as a mistake?
Why is Mrs May insisting on vote after vote until she gets the result she wants? Remember the outrage over that behaviour when EU nations were forced to vote again on major treaties that they rejected?
Why is this monumental hypocrite trampling on democracy in this way?
Theresa May will make a third attempt to get her EU withdrawal deal through Parliament in the next week.
She told MPs that if her deal fails again to get their backing, a lengthy delay to Brexit may be needed.
The prime minister’s warning comes ahead of a Commons vote later on whether to ask the EU for permission to delay Brexit beyond 29 March.
MPs voted on Wednesday evening to reject a no-deal Brexit under any circumstances.
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Leaving by the back door? Theresa May could be forced out of 10 Downing Street as a condition of Tory MPs accepting her withdrawal agreement.
The last two Tory prime ministers have been among the worst in UK history – if not the very worst. But they could be models of good practice in comparison with what may repace Theresa May if some of her party members get their way.
Remember when I suggested that the agreements Mrs May brought back from Strasbourg on Monday could represent an attempt to pass the difficult decisions of Brexit on to a successor? It seems I was right.
Professor Simon Wren-Lewis drew the same conclusion in his Mainly Macro blog piece on the future direction of Brexit negotiations.
He wrote: “At some point during the transition period Theresa May could be replaced as Prime Minister. It seems very likely, given the views of Conservative Party members on Brexit, that a Brexiter will be elected in her place. The likely outcome of that, as far as Brexit is concerned, is either that nothing changes, or that the government attempts to persuade the EU to do the impossible.
“For example Theresa May is determined that we should leave the Single Market (SM) because her primary aim is to end Freedom of Movement (FM). Any successor is likely to want to leave the SM because they do not want to be bound by EU regulations on minimum workers rights or the environment.”
He went on to argue that a Brextremist prime minister would most likely want to do a trade deal with the United States, forcing us to accept weakened workers’ rights, weakened environmental regulations, weakened food standards (such as chlorine-washed chicken), a full metamorphosis of the NHS into a US-style healthcare system, and of course, absolutely no say at all in what the US does.
So a future Tory prime minister is likely to force the UK down a road that will (as Prof Wren-Lewis argued, and I accept his conclusion) make us all worse-off by at least £3,000 a year.
And today, moves to secure just such a prime minister have started. George Freeman, a former Tory minister, has said Mrs May should offer to resign after the withdrawal agreement is approved – to help persuade Conservative MPs to back her deal.*
The implication is that she would be replaced by a Brextremist who is more likely to support the views of other Brextremists, making Prof Wren-Lewis’s prediction more likely.
The Guardianstated, in reporting Mr Freeman’s call: “If the UK leaves the EU in the next few months, Brexit will not be over. Arguably it will just be starting, because the talks on the UK’s future trade relationship with the EU are expected to be longer and more acrimonious than the negotiations we have had so far. The UK’s ultimate aim is still, to a large extent, unresolved and there are some Tory Brexiters who want to know that someone more attuned to their way of thinking will be in charge.”
We can see that this may be factually accurate – although it doesn’t tell the whole story.
“Someone more attuned to their way of thinking” is likely to be someone who’ll tie us to the United States in perpetuity. It would be a way of getting the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership that was abandoned a couple of years ago after a popular protest, by another means – with all the adverse effects on the people of the UK that it entailed.
And we could end up with Michael Gove as prime minister. How do you fancy that?
*One aspect of this that I find disturbing is that Mr Freeman is not as Brextremist as some of his colleagues. He has advocated an EFTA-style Brexit, keeping us in the Single Market without tying us to EU free movement rules. His suggestion seems not to make sense, in the context of his own beliefs.
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The United Kingdom is in turmoil over Brexit. The government hasn’t got a clue; Parliament itself is divided and we are the world’s laughing-stock.
And it is going to get much worse – because all the trouble so far has been about the withdrawal agreement, which is only a part of the matter.
Years of trade negotiations are to follow – and it seems likely they will be acrimonious.
The bottleneck in Parliament at the moment is happening because backbench MPs don’t expect to have any influence on those long trade talks; if they want to have any control at all over Theresa May’s lunacy, they must make it a condition of accepting the withdrawal agreement.
Oxford University’s Simon Wren-Lewis has written informatively about this in his blog, Mainly Macro, where he states: “If May’s deal is approved we can look forward to a politics dominated by internal squabbles within the Conservative Party, and the absence of constructive negotiations with Brussels, for perhaps the next four or more years.”
This is because the withdrawal agreement does nothing to resolve internal conflicts within the Conservative Party, or conflicts within Brexit itself.
This is what the conflict over the Northern Ireland ‘backstop’ is all about, according to Professor Wren-Lewis. Its existence means part – or all – of the UK must stay inside the Customs Union, but Brextremists in the Tory Party won’t accept this because they don’t like it.
The reason they don’t like it is that it ties the UK to Europe when they want to do a trade deal with the United States at the earliest opportunity.
Prof Wren-Lewis states: “In an age where the regulations governing trade in goods and services are increasingly decided by large regional blocks, the only rationalisation of Brexit that makes any kind of sense is that we move from the EU block to the US block.”
He makes the consequences clear:
Weakened regulations on workers’ rights
Weakened regulations on the environment
Weakened food standards (meaning we accept chlorine-washed chicken)
Metamorphosis of the NHS into a US-style model of healthcare
And while the UK was able to influence EU decisions, it will have no say in what the US does.
I fear that people will be lulled into false security about such matters by the fact that nothing is likely to change immediately after a withdrawal agreement is approved – whenever that may be.
The UK would enter a transitional period in which we remain in the Customs Union and Single Market but have no say in either.
But the long-term consequences are devastating: A study by the Centre of Economic Performance and The UK in a Changing Europe suggests that from 2030 onwards UK GDP per capita will be lower by between 1.9 per cent and 5.5 per cent as a consequence of leaving the Single Market.
The midpoint of that range puts household losses at £3,000 every year.
In practise, the effect is likely to be worse, because of other effects not included in the model like lower foreign investment and reduced competition.
And that’s before you add in the impact of changing to a US-style economy and health service, in which household expenses are certain to increase.
There will – of course – be a large hit to the public finances, implying higher taxes or less public spending, even after allowing for an end to contributions to the EU, according to Prof Wren-Lewis.
Conservative Brextremists will benefit from all this – but I doubt that will be any consolation to you as you are plunged deeper into poverty and debt by a decision most of us didn’t want to take.
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