Brexit….. please!!!

Well, it’s really a good time for people like me who watch the news as entertainment. The Brexit fiasco is in full swing as of this writing: Boris has just (partially) sidelined Parliament to keep them from effectively blocking. (<< Yes, that’s a period. Normally a noun comes after an active verb. But Parliament has blocked everything coming their way, simultaneously offering no ideas of their (aggregate) own!)

So, is this a good thing that Boris is trying? Well, think of it this way: is the glass half-full or half-empty. For three (count them: 1 year, 2 years, 3 years!!!) Parliament has come up in total with 1 conundrum – rejected everything coming their way and offering no new ideas. They are mostly and adamantly in favor of “Brexit Only With a Deal”, but repeatedly reject the only deal the EU will give them! One can easily see that getting Parley-mess out of the way can clear the path to some resolution, some action. On the other hand, if you’re hung up on the machinations of democracy, an extended suspension of Parley-mess for political expediency reeks of demagoguery.

My point here is that time is running out for the EU itself!! It needs to deal with corrupt and undemocratic heads of state in Slovakia and Poland, and has formally recognized corruption running flagrant in several member countries – at all levels. Its agricultural policy machinery is infested with dirty money from chemical firms. The list goes on and as long as Britain sends so many overt, active anti-EU representatives to Brussels to strengthen the ranks of the existing anti-EU forces, no progress will ever be made. What doesn’t grow, stagnates. So, I favor what the majority of Brits voted for: an exit from the EU; for the sake of the EU! Whatever form that takes …. who cares on this side of the Channel (After 3 years, yes, a bit of indifference.)

One of the things that irks me are the standardized story-line that Brexit without a deal will leave gaps in Britain’s supply chains. And the news channels dramatically make it worse by erroneously stating that Britain will no longer find certain articles. Britain can buy anything in Europe, the same things they bought before, they simply need to follow WTO regulations. That is what they voted for: the ability to choose for themselves from whom they buy & to whom they sell. And who knows, maybe that pompous loudmouth in the White House #10 will be right: it will turn out better for Britain. But the longer it takes (my bet is Britain will still be in the EU in 2020) the worse – maybe even deadly – it will be for the future of a true European Union!

Brexit Schmexit

Probably everybody not living in England is pretty weary of Brexit news… if “nothing accomplished” can be made into news. Don’t get me wrong, I love the English and I especially feel for those that voted for Brexit. They are actually the ones at the end of the line in this sham.

First, lets look at 2 possibilities:

  1.   PM May is ambitious (maybe power-hungry) enough to want to be PM even when the government’s current primary mission –  Brexit –  is something she didn’t vote for nor support earlier.
  2. PM May is diabolically, purposely making a mess of Brexit, after wasting almost the whole 2-year transition period by allowing useless, irrelevant arguments to prevail; and culminating in a half-baked plan guaranteed to satisfy very few on either side.

 If it’s #1,then history will not be kind to her for taking on and botching something she did not believe in. England will face the “hard Brexit” as the EU is keen to reinforce the advantages of being “IN” the EU. Possibly a clean break could have worked, England may even make something of it after a botched EU-Exit, bu it will all be much worse than if someone who supported Brexit from the beginning and could give the British people a sense of hope and spirit had taken the reigns early and prepared for a real, an honest, a complete &ambitious Brexit.

Now #2 is much more intriguing! And I dare say some of the facts on the ground support the thesis of a saboteur PM May. Have you noticed how so many voices  in English Parliament suddenly equate the ever-delayed (endlessly delayed just like the original Brexit referendum) vote on PM May’s deal as a referendum itself? What I mean is, the choices presented or insinuated – as if already somehow hard-coded into the whole process – seem to be: Vote for this deal or there will be no Brexit. The deal is being slowly e.g. the delays, presented as the Brexit itself. It is being substituted for the actual embodiment of the Brexit concept (“the best deal possible”, “no time for anything else”…) Result: If you don’t vote for this deal, you’re voting against Brexit itself.

Another scenario supporting #2 is to simply waste the whole transition period (already done!); continue to sow fear of the great Brexit “UNKNOWN” (continually done!);establish a EU court ruling that Brexit can be simply cancelled (with conveniently no mention by whom specifically); and March next year simply let PM May declare we “can’t do it – not enough time…”; make an endless transition period out with the EU; wait for a more politically propitious time.

The EU and Germany I will leave for separate articles, only to say that there has been nothing surprising or out of the ordinary for the EU’s response to Brexit. It was decided by the British people, after they finally got a say in the matter.Unfortunately all the Brexiteers were forced to quit or have resigned from their government posts. Can anyone thereafter expect a successful, popular-supported Brexit?

One aside about Germany and their Political Correctness. We have an old politician from Bavaria where his CSU party is very strong but who’s time (his) has come and gone. I think he’s interior minister, but mostly spends his time peeing in Angela Merkel’s lunchbox. He’s sour ‘cause he never made it on the national stage and few in the rest of Germany have any use for the old fart. But the point is: All he said was “Immigration is the mother-of-all political issues.”[My translation!].That’s all he said – no more, no less. Boy, did he get hell in the press. There was no end to the lambasting him of being bigoted, illiberal, intolerant, narrow, narrow-minded, small-minded – all of the terms were used in one or the other broadcast. But here we are in the same time-frame and 160+ countries are represented by heads-of-state or close, to sign a UN mutual agreement about… migration. Look at the elections in Italy, Hungary, rest of East Europe, etc.

Q: What was the deciding factor in the Brexit referendum?

A: Immigration was the kicker in the Brexit vote!

Anybody think the main factor was fishing rights? .. the status of Gibraltar? Just look at the mainstream news channels – on any continent. The only country in the whole world with no immigration issues is China! Uiguirans raise their voices for freedom, just put their whole country in “re-education” camps! Africans bitch about lost land,just send a few thousand Chinese laborers for the fields and few thousand Chinese soldiers to keep the piece (of land).

So, my point here is that maybe Britain is a little ahead of us all on this important issue! I’m not taking sides, I’m simply saying that they discussed it on a national basis with the referendum. More laudable than the chaos here in this EU.

If I have endeared myself with too many Britons, allow me another observation that may or may not please. The US encouraged England to join the EU, a competitor to the US on the world commerce stage, because as a closest ally, England could hold the EU back and prevent anything too drastic, too optimistic. All one has to do is read the venomous US business press about the Euro to recognize the adversarial stance – from the very beginning. Now powers in the US are chuckling over how Brexit is tying up EU energies that could be better spent on progressive issues, large and small.

Before going further,let me say I am a proponent of EU 2.0, a restart with an emphasis on the common human values and the mutual respect of European cultural & political values.I am a critic of a current EU: led by the influence of monopolistic conglomerates; producing a hundreds of pages of dilettante, sometimes asinine regulations – per day! An EU with leaders so enamoured by their might that they could never envisage shrinking the EU by throwing un-democratic countries of East-Europe out. Instead they are eager to expand at any cost, to include countries plagued by corruption and embroiled in cold war politics. All in the interest of monopolistic business interests.

Speaking of corruption and getting back to Brexit: All efforts by the EU to tackle the billions of Euros being stolen by agrarian mafias has been steadily blocked by the British elite through the House of Lords & their representatives to the European Parliament. They collect billions also, as they own most of the farmland in England and the EU agricultural subsidies are a real boon for them. Money from EU taxpayers – including British taxpayers – all going into the pockets of the aristocracy.

Brexit is a chance for Britain to move forward on its own path and an opportunity for the EU to start tackling its own major issues. But this current Brexit will never be allowed to succeed by British bureaucrats with different agendas and the EU will address problems by adding some more bureaucracy on top of what it already has and call it a solution.