'Brexit ' in death-throes. Everybody resigns. Leader commits hara kiri on live TV.
- Thread starter moon
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moon
Satire for Sanity
Jacob Rees-Mogg has given the game away – even this government knows Brexit is a disaster
he definition of a gaffe is when a politician accidentally tells the truth. So ruled the veteran Washington journalist Michael Kinsley, who would surely take delight in the textbook example of the form served up on Thursday by Jacob Rees-Mogg, the satirically titled minister for Brexit opportunities.
On a visit to the Eurotunnel terminal at Folkestone, hi-vis gilet over his double-breasted suit, Rees-Mogg announced that the government was delaying yet again the imposition of post-Brexit border checks on imports from the EU. He asked the public to celebrate this decision, on the grounds that it would save £1bn a year and help hard-pressed consumers by avoiding an increase in the cost of imported food. Enforcing post-Brexit checks, said the minister, “would have been an act of self-harm”.
You read that right. Jacob Rees-Mogg, arch-leaver and longtime loather of the EU, is now parroting lines from the remain campaign. He is admitting that implementing Brexit in full, honouring the 2016 promise to take back control of Britain’s borders, would be “an act of self-harm”.
There’s plenty to attack here, starting with the nerve of hailing this move as “saving” Britons £1bn, when this was £1bn that Britons would never have had to spend at all if it hadn’t been for Brexit. Or you could share the outrage of British farmers, appalled that, thanks to Brexit, they have been left at a serious competitive disadvantage: they now face onerous and costly checks when they ship their goods across the Channel, while French, Italian or Spanish farmers face no such hassle moving their products in the other direction. Or you could worry along with the British Veterinary Association, which warns that not checking food imports leaves Britain exposed to “catastrophic” animal diseases such as African swine fever – a risk that was reduced when Britain was part of “the EU’s integrated and highly responsive surveillance systems”. Or you could join the lament of the UK Major Ports Group, whose members have spent hundreds of millions of pounds building checking facilities, which now stand unused as “bespoke white elephants”.
But put all that aside for a moment and grasp the full meaning of Rees-Mogg’s admission. He and his fellow Brexiters once looked forward to these border checks, seeing them not merely as a price worth paying for leaving the EU but as a genuine benefit. Britain would at last be free to set its own food standards, superior to the EU’s. And yet now the minister admits that putting up barriers just makes food more expensive for British consumers and risks bankrupting British farmers: precisely the act of self-harm remainers always said it would be. The irony of hearing Rees-Mogg declare that “free trade is hugely advantageous to consumers” after he and his comrades pulled us out of the largest, most successful free trade bloc in the world – the European single market – would be funny if it weren’t so bitter.
At a stroke, the minister for Brexit opportunities has implicitly admitted that there are none – or, at the very least, any opportunities are outweighed by costs so great they represent economic self-mutilation. In the long story of Britain’s needless, pointless departure from the EU, the Rees-Mogg admission should count as a milestone.
Which is not to say the Conservatives won’t keep banging the Brexit drum, hoping it will rally the electoral coalition it summoned back in 2019. But the sound, always hollow, will now be hollower still: thanks to Rees-Mogg, the Brexiters themselves have admitted as much.
https://www.theguardian.com/comment...mogg-brexit-disaster-leaving-eu-boris-johnson
To try to cover for the Brexit disaster- with Brits facing the highest tax rises , shortages and fuel prices right off the scale- they are promoting a hot war with Russia.
Sounds insane ? The death of civilization is the eventual result of capitalism.
Monad Portal
Was it me?
Trump should send larry the cable guy to fix brexit and get er done.
on a special celebrity apprentice.
on a special celebrity apprentice.
Monad Portal
Was it me?
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Familial dynastic figures exchange fiefdoms for a fresh overhaul with outsider eyes
how many millions will die in their sociological pogroms?
find out wednesdays at 6 on wellness!