The On-going Never-ending Brexit Story Part Four

Is there anything dodgy that Zahawi isn't involved in?

Zahawi and Crowd2Fund

💥benefited from government deregulation

💥headed by Zahawi’s government friend’s bro

💥 co-founded by Zahawi’s parents firm Balshore

💥💥💥web domains registered and owned by…Zahawi himself!

So why has he said NOTHING before?https://t.co/tjRzYaIxCt

— Jim Fitzpatrick (@jimfitznews) January 27, 2023

 

Nope.

Zahawi even personally froze Prince Harry's "Todger."

 

Zahawi sacked.

 

It takes a special skill to drag out a bad story that long.
He should have been sacked as soon as it emerged he had settled with HMRC after threatening legal action against the journalist who reported it. All of the subsequent reports on him would have been largely meaningless to Sunak then.
Pressure should now be on Zahawi to stand down as an MP. Too many dodgy stories about him makes his position untenable.

 

Good question. Further highlights Sunak's weakness.

Rishi Sunak needs to explain why, if breaking the ministerial code is now a sacking offence, that he chose to reinstate Suella Braverman just days after she was found to have broken it.

— Adam Bienkov (@AdamBienkov) January 29, 2023

 

Leader of the Leave campaign in Brexit referendum calls for other country to join EU. It's almost as if Brexit was a vehicle for his personal ambition rather than an act of conviction.

Boris Johnson says Ukraine should join the EU 🫠 pic.twitter.com/oDaEEwl6DF

— Farrukh (@implausibleblog) February 2, 2023

 

Now that his dad is French, has Boris tried applying for French citizenship so he can get an EU passport?

 

Journalists need to press him on this contradiction in every future interview with him.

 

I'd guess he'd say it's the same as Churchill's suggestion just after the war that there should be a 'United States of Europe' but that Britain shouldn't be part of it.

Of course, even that's a one-eyed version of history anyway...

https://blogs.lse.ac.uk/brexit/2020/10/01/churchill-the-european-has-been-written-out-of-history/

A year later, in Zurich, he made a more famous speech calling “for a kind of United States of Europe”​

It goes on...

In a recent book (Churchill on Europe), the Dutch historian, Felix Klos, has ranged far and wide in archives, the Churchill papers, diaries, memoirs both in English and continental languages. His research goes well beyond the limited inquiries by Tory English Churchill hagiographers. They are not quite honorary members of the Stalin school of falsification of history, but they go out of their way to belittle, or reduce to nugatory importance, Churchill’s enthusiasm for European unity between 1945 and 1951, and in the 1930s, or during the war.​

But he'd made speeches and comments before the war as well...

A decade earlier, in the News of the World in 1938, Churchill said Britain should promote “every practical step which the nations of Europe may take to reduce the barriers which divide them and to nourish their common interests and their common welfare.” At the high-water mark of Tory isolationism, under Stanley Baldwin and Neville Chamberlain, Churchill urged the creation of common European postage stamps, a single currency, and a tariff union. He argued the menace of fascism and the threat of war would “draw together the peace-loving states and so contribute indirectly to the development of the pan-European ideal.”​

This is the problem. For clowns like Johnson, history is an a la carte menu where you can choose to include some 'facts' whilst ignoring others.

 

Oooooffff!

I’m sure @American Brummie is feeling this:
Leaving the EU has almost completely dried up funds for university research. Faculty are leaving for US and EU, post docs aren’t applying to UK universities, leading to what will be a pretty significant brain drain.
https://www.theguardian.com/educati...an-research-funding-for-oxbridge-universities

link from @Belgian guy in another thread.

 

Basically the country is in open revolt over Brexit and the revolt won't end until we are de facto back in.

 

Well, you're the last in the line, behind the Ukraine.

 

If, and that's a big if, the EU ever welcomed the UK back in, then it would be 100% on the EU's terms with the UK accepting whatever they had to accept. You simply don't welcome the problem child back in without setting strict ground rules.

 

Pretty sure they'd rather have us on the inside pissing out than the outside pissing in. They certainly don't want a heavily deregulated, potentially rogue market on their doorstep. Everyone can see what a disaster it's been, so I doubt anyone else is going to be looking to jump ship any time soon.
Maybe some stricter terms in relation to the veto and a few other restrictions, but I think most would rather go back to where we were and pretend the last 7 years were a bad dream. I certainly don't think Schengen and the Euro would be required. We'll promise to keep Farage out of the parliament if that helps.

This doesn't read like someone taking a hard line.

Brexit made Britain poorer, Europe weaker… and worst of all, it made liberal democracy’s enemies happier !

An unforgivable mistake… but a great democracy like Britain’s can always turn around and fix its mistakes. #rejoin

🇬🇧 ✊🏻 🇪🇺 https://t.co/8SIy9Nfhpq

— Guy Verhofstadt (@guyverhofstadt) January 31, 2023

 

I'd have gotten away with it if it hadn't been for those pesky Capitalist Marxists.

Writing around 100 words for every day she was in office, Liz Truss has tonight issued a 4,000 word essay on why her premiership was thwarted by a ‘left-wing economic establishment’. pic.twitter.com/zeCpzVFc3f

— Paul Brand (@PaulBrandITV) February 4, 2023

 

How weak is Rishi Sunak if both of his predecessors are openly flaunting his leadership.

 

I suppose needing to have previous, failed leaders flaunt Sunak’s leadership is an indication of weakness, but is it possible that having them flout it would be a more overt signal of weakness?

 

More so that both of those predecessors resigned for not having the confidence of their party, and are widely regarded as the two worst PMs we've ever seen.

 

God damn it

 

Yeah, there's a degree of wish fulfilment in some of this thinking, as if international political agreements are a morality play where bad behaviour is always punished..

Frankly, it would be nice if it were.

But, tbh, I think a closer working arrangement will be a gradual process and politicians will be looking toward their own interests at the time of the agreement.

The euro is pretty much a non-starter I'd think because it would imply the ECB making itself responsible for UK public and private debt levels and neither they, nor us, would want that.

QMV has only ever been in certain areas anyway, (despite what the brexiteer head-bangers claim), so, again, the issue of vetoes is probably moot in some respects.

But I think the wider context is that what we're mainly talking about in terms of damage to the UK AND the EU economy has been the interruptions to trade and commerce and that's got very little to do with political matters. If we were either inside the SM and CU or 'closely aligned with them', (AKA back in them, effectively), there would be some stuff to be negotiated like who decides trade disputes but the reality is, it's largely irrelevant as most things in that area are decided on the legal position, not whether someone 'likes' someone else.

 

Actually, on that front, I just read this...

https://www.theguardian.com/politic...ut-the-road-back-to-brussels-is-long-and-hard

 

Yeah, it's never going to be a simple matter of rejoining on the spot. It could realistically be done over several electoral cycles, with manifestos offering increasing closer alignment.
I just don't see any serious resistance from the EU