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Monday 1 May 2017

Post-election Parliament must be ready for a raft of emergency Bills

The government has recently realised that our powers to impose sanctions currently arise from the EU - and that when we leave, we will need domestic legislation in place to legally do so. Legislating to remediate this situation may be no great problem. Now it is clear that we are leaving the EU, one way or another, an Act can be passed with a 'Coming into force' date co-terminous with our formal exit date. However, not all the legislation we will need will be so straightforward.

As Juliet Samuel makes clear in a cogent and compelling piece for the Telegraph;
Despite the EU’s moderation on paper, however, prospects for a smooth Brexit are currently far from rosy. The weekend’s headlines were flavoured with a classic Brussels tincture – a poisonous media briefing and a Jean-Claude Juncker soundbite. None of this would have been unleashed without Berlin’s blessing and suggests that German attitudes are hardening. Chancellor Angela Merkel appears to have bought into the idea that the EU must make an example of Britain in order to protect itself. The wrong side is winning the argument. This may be because most EU governments don’t yet believe they have much to lose. They cannot conceive that Britain would ever walk away from a deal, however unpalatable its terms. On this, they have misjudged.
Samuel makes clear that we must prepare now to walk away without a deal, and assume that this will be the outcome of the negotiations. If we manage to reach a satisfactory deal, fine. But if we don't, as seems more likely, we will be ready. 

We should not underestimate the global economic and financial shock of leaving with no deal. We must be prepared to look after the UK's interests, and if possible those of the Commonwealth and of the USA - the anglosphere. We will need emergency wartime powers and more importantly a national consensus that may mean a wartime cabinet - with opposition ministers sitting in government. Parliament needs to be ready to legislate on the hoof, reservists ready to be called up, the red duster fleet ready to serve the nation and yes, possibly even rationing systems to be devised and rolled out and temporary state control of food, fuel and power. Bills must be drafted NOW to meet an emergency.

This election is an essential fore-runner to facing a time of such emergency. The Prime Minister needs the backing of the country - the Commons will not be of one voice in the debate to reject a humiliating and wounding offer from the EU, but once the house has voted in favour of walking away, they will all be behind it or face the wrath of voters. The Lords are a different kettle of fish. We cannot allow these deeply corrupted and befouled fifth columnists to sabotage the national interest. Mrs May no doubt also has a reserve plan to deal with these foreign agents in our midst.

I do hope the Bank has been quietly buying back the nation's gold reserves so foolishly squandered by the last Labour chancellor. As the talks collapse and gold shoots past £1,400 an ounce we will need every kilo we can get. 

18 comments:

wiggiatlarge said...

The EU can threaten all it likes, no one should go into negotiations without knowing what is being offered, no one pays first and then askes what have we paid for, if we take that route we are stuffed, and if they demand the money first, walk away, that is exactly how any business would react.

DeeDee99 said...

The EU is basically demanding money with menaces: it's an updated version of the tactics the Danes used in the 6th century.

Our political class should read their Kipling:

We never pay anyone Danegeld
No matter how trifling the cost
For the end of that game is oppression and shame
And the nation that pays it is lost.


http://www.kiplingsociety.co.uk/poems_danegeld.htm

Our political class have made the fundamental mistake of letting the Germans acquire through economic and legal means the European empire they couldn't get through more violent methods. We are going to have to fight back through economic and legal means.

Boycott German and French products.

RAC said...

Can anyone explain, in simple terms please, what we owe and why we owe anything at all. By my way of thinking we have been regularly paying (through the nose) into the eu, pay as you go if you will, I don't reckon we owe them a penny.
Instead of being presented with some ludicrous amount it needs to be broken down into infinite detail and each part of that examined closely.
We have paid our past dues and given them ample notice of our leaving. That a nation may one day leave has always been a possibility, if they built their empire on the notion that it could never happen and didn't plan for that contingency, tough shit.

anon 2 said...

Well said, RAC @ 08:57.
Problem is: Franco-German-Claptrap-Artists (aka Deconstructionist/Postmodern commies) never, never, ever, express anything simply.
That's the MO.
It keeps us idiots busy while they . . .

backofanenvelope said...

I think we should ask them if they meant last weeks statement. If they did, stop the transfer of UK money to the Commission at once. Pay the money into a holding account. Any planned EU expenditure in the UK can be met from this account. If we get a deal, they can get the money.

John Brown said...

Although the immediate rhetoric and threats emanating from Brussels/Berlin is designed to influence both the UK and French elections there is no doubt that this axis wishes to harm the UK and the reason given that it is to "save the EU" is just an excuse to propagate economic war on us for historical reasons.

The government needs to prepare for a UDI as the EU will try to keep us in their club for as long as possible to maximise our payments and obligations whilst restricting our freedom to act in our best interests.

Peter MacFarlane said...

"...temporary state control of food, fuel and power..."

If you think that in the current anti-freedom climate, such things would be in any way temporary, you delude yourself.

Let us hope and pray that wiser counsels prevail.

rapscallion said...

The EU has yet again seriously misjudged the situation. The notion of having to pay silly money, effectively allow a United Ireland and bend the knee on Gibraltar is utterly ridiculous and no PM should even entertain the idea. Have we not paid enough over the years for God's sake? I feel much like Steven Woolfe does in this speech in the EU parliament - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ef4RocljNAE

I fear wiser heads will not prevail and we will leave with a very hard Brexit. If that's the case, then fine, but the EU will have shot itself in the foot. They really don't think that we're going to walk away do they. Oh, how they have so badly misjudged us.












Dadad said...

Don't be so alarmist. Mrs M is calling this election so that she can ignore her extremist brexiteers and go for the EEA/EFTA option which will do us very well in the interim as a holding pattern while we negotiate what we actually want.

Don't forget that leaving the EU is a process, not an event. It will take 10 years or more to accomplish all we desire.

Read EUreferendum.com every day.

Mr Ecks said...


Don't waste your time with EU referendum as it is a ego trip by Richard North.

Stuff the EEA/EFTA --it is just the EU lite. Once BluLabour get us in we won't ever be leaving.

Scrobs. said...

If the awful bunch of time-servers in Brussels think they can bill us, then let's see the accounts they haven't had signed off since the likes of Kinnock and Mandelson were hanging about, doing bugger all.

It's easy, tell them all to piss off.

Cascadian said...

We will need emergency wartime powers and more importantly a national consensus that may mean a wartime cabinet - with opposition ministers sitting in government....yes, yes, yes that's what yUK needs! Corbyn as minister of defence , McConnel negotiating the UDI threat, Ms Balls (if she survives the election) as tea-girl. That's the route to certain destruction.
Whatever the future holds for yUK, nobody could wish a worse prescription for another century of managed decline.
You had better wish that LePen gets elected or you will be freezing in the dark very soon.

APL said...

Mr Ecks: "Once BluLabour get us in we won't ever be leaving "

The one thing we don't want to be doing is finding things so buggered we try to rejoin.

And sure as eggs is eggs, the thing to get Labour re-elected with a three hundred seat majority would be for the UK economy to be crashed as a result of loss of Continental trade.

Mr Ecks: "EU referendum as it is a ego trip by Richard North."

1. Richard North has been contemplating our exit strategy for a good eighteen months before the referendum. At least he has one.

2. The Tory party had been counting on a remain result, how else can you account for their utter surprise at the result - and lack of any exit strategy at all!

Dave_G said...


Brexit will be decided the same way all decisions are made - by those with the most to gain financially. If those elite money-grubbers think Brexit would deliver them a windfall from their investments/double-dealings then it will go ahead. If there was any possibility of those elitists LOSING so much as a penny then it won't happen.

The needs of the nation fall into insignificance when compared to the greed of the rest.

Anonymous said...

Mr Ecks is quite right about Richard North. Basically he wants a new EU on his terms and anyone that disagrees will be shot.

Perhaps we need to send Brussels a new version of 'No Charge' by Harland Howard - For coming to yoir aid in 1914, no charge; For coming to your aid in 1939, no charge; For giving child benefits to imaginary Polish children, no charge etc. etc.!

Poisonedchalice said...

Our negotiating position for starters is actually really simple. "We are leaving without any deal - goodbye."

We don't need two years, it's just a waste of our time. Let's just get on with it.

That particular stance (which is the correct one) would jolt other EU members to their senses because right now, they think Germany will sort all this out for them. It would also jolt Germany's major manufacturing industries into pressurising their own government into seeing sense.

Dadad said...

Being in EEA/EFTA does mean that we are outside, repeat outside, the EU.

Budgie said...

Dadad, The EEA and the the EFTA are quite separate. They should not be conflated.

The European Economic Area is the EU's single market extended to nations outside the EU. As such any nation (EFTA or not) must obey EU single market rules, which only the EU makes and imposes.

The European Free Trade Association is a treaty organisation quite separate from the EU, and does as its name suggests. A nation can be a member of the EFTA without being a member of the EEA.

Norway is a member of both. Switzerland is only a member of EFTA.