We need to leave May in office until .....

When the Conservatives fight the next election, we need to do so under a new Leader. That much is absolutely clear; Mrs May is finished. 

We also need to ensure we either leave the EU next March either with no deal, or a deal very different to the May-Robbins capitulation. So the first job is to ensure May's travesty is defeated in Parliament.

The Win situation would be the Neutron Bomb option - defeating the Robbins Treaty but keeping May in office to sort out the chaos and disruption that could have been avoided had she prepared contingency plans in time or sought a deal that the people of Britain could accept.  Since May has been responsible for the screw-up, it's only right she should be in office when it all goes down.

But as events of the last week have proven, outcomes are impossible to predict. Even in Brussels where they were discreetly chilling the champagne yesterday to celebrate Britain's humiliation, they're not now so sure. 

There are few Conservative party members and fewer Conservative MPs that have confidence in Mrs May, but don't discount the Doenitz Vanity*. Even as the Third Reich was collapsing in ruin and defeat, just days before her unconditional surrender, ambitious functionaries were still seeking appointment to government and ministerial posts. Better to have been a minister for 48 hours, they reckoned, then never to have been a minister at all.

You can be sure that there are enough Conservative MPs who think the same way to ensure she can fill her Cabinet table.  

*With the Daily Mail taking the role of the Völkischer Beobachter if this morning's edition is a guide ...

It's got to be NO DEAL

Oliver Burkeman presented a neat little 15 minute programme on radio 4 yesterday - available on podcast - that really is worth a listen. It explains why pushing for a No Deal outcome that sends Europe into chaos and forces each side to take an economic hit may not only be the rational choice, but the beneficial choice. The answer is faith, hope and charity. 

If we accept May's humiliating deal it will leave only the members of the CBI, the FTSE100 and the global corporatists of the European Round Table happy. If GDP hardly changes, she can claim it as a victory. But this will be short lived. And it is a victory for international money, not for the United Kingdom. Both Leavers and Remainers will become even more angry, even more negative, even more disillusioned with politics and the political process. The nation will become polarised, divided and discourse will become violent, vituperative and schismatic. The smug grins on the faces of Barnier and his corrupt cabal at Britain's grovelling humiliation will become unbearable. The EU will try to keep the UK in this permanent state of internal division and rock-bottom morale until the nation is too exhausted to resist further.

A No Deal exit next March on the other hand will cause short-term chaos. The big matters will be swiftly sorted and both the UK and EU will get back to almost normal service on key movements and facilities. A host of lesser matters will remain unresolved, and both we and the EU will take a hit to GDP. Unemployment will increase and manufacturing production will decrease. Most of all it will allow us as a nation to come together and focus on the future - we have shared goals of peace and prosperity, we want cordial and mutually helpful relations with the 27 nations of Europe that are members of the EU, we have great strengths. Most of all we will work together for a new future, a future of hope. It will give us a chance to make changes that allow greater intergenerational equity, deeper local democracy, a more trusted politics, a bigger stake in housing, secure in national defence and with the aid and encouragement of our anglophone cousins from the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and, yes, India. But only the shock, the disruption, the hiatus of a sudden exit and the challenges it brings will achieve this.

So it has to be No Deal. But not a No Deal of hatred, anger and nihilism but a No Deal that is the only way to heal this fractured nation and secure a future for all in the British Isles. 

 

Crunch time

There's a Cabinet meeting to come, and none of us have seen May's draft agreement, and more importantly Parliament hasn't seen it. So I'm not going to join in a chorus of hysterical skirt-waving until there's something to shriek about. 

Of more import this morning is Merkel's call for an integrated European Internal Security Force - see John Vasc's comment to the piece below for an overview.

Herr Tusk - psychologists call it 'Projection'

In 1943, the tide of war had turned and Goebbels realised that Germany faced defeat. His propaganda ministry daily pumped out news of victories as German armies retreated everywhere, and allied bombing reduced German cities to ruins. He said in a speech;

"It is clear that the enemy does not hesitate to tell the most outrageous lies, even when we possess irrefutable and persuasive numerical evidence. They clearly are not trying to impress us with their figures any longer. The sole goal is a more or less short-term impact on world opinion. They no longer have the courage to tell the whole truth, since they begin to realise that it could be a shock to domestic public opinion that could not be controlled."

It's what the psychologists call 'Projection' - ascribing to an enemy or adversary our own worst fears of our own faults.  

So When Donald Tusk - one of the EU's several unelected 'Presidents' - said in an interview;

"In this Parliament, it is possible to have two movements represented: one becoming more and more “brown shirt” nationalist and anti-European, the second wanting to push integrating with the EU as much as possible"

What he really meant was;

"In this Parliament, it is possible to have two movements represented: one becoming more and more "brown shirt" in seeking to force Europe's nations and peoples to surrender their sovereignty to the EU, the second patriotic and determined to preserve their freedom"

And when he said;

"This doesn’t apply to MPs just yet, but these forces are gaining strength right in front of our eyes. Forces that create conflict rather than cooperation and work for disintegration rather that integration"

What he really meant was;

"This doesn't apply to MPs just yet, but these forces are gaining strength right in front of our eyes. Forces that resist national disintegration, ready to oppose losing sovereignty to the EU, working against their nations being integrated into the Federation"

It's a clear warning, a warning that an authoritarian EU is preparing to deploy social and political controls to counter internal dissent.

Be afraid.  

Macron pitches for globalism and world government

At the Arc de Triomphe yesterday, with the Place Charles de Gaulle and Champs-Élysées smothered in French tricolours and nary a different flag in sight, President Macron pitched for the benefits of world government. 

The papers are pitching the speech as an attack on President Trump, with Macron saying 'Patriotism good, Nationalism bad' but it was really a little more nuanced than that. It was an explicit plea for the UN, the EU and for collective globalist government. It declared that nations which sacrificed their own interests to the collective good were 'moral' whilst those that did not were a threat to peace. It was as much an attack upon Brexit as Trump. 

So eager is the press to portray this speech as a public rebuke for Trump, few have managed to recall what Trump actually said to provoke it. On 22nd October, Trump said "A globalist is a person that wants the globe to do well, frankly not caring about our country so much, and you know what, we can’t have that. I’m a nationalist. OK? I’m a nationalist. Nationalist. Use that word."

Trump went on to say "We’re giving all of our wealth, all of our money, to other countries and then they don’t treat us properly. For many years other countries that are allies of ours... they have not treated our country fairly. So in that sense, I am absolutely a nationalist and I’m proud of it."

Macron raised the spectre of nationalism fomenting war, and praised the role of the EU and UN in the past 70 years in maintaining peace. The same old tripe, in other words, with nary a mention of NATO, or of the costs to nations such as Britain of maintaining an army on the Rhine for forty-three years. Europe's failure to pay for its own defence, and its 'leaching' of US money and goodwill, have also angered President Trump.

I couldn't help but conclude that Macron's whole speech was no more than a chauvinist plea for everyone else to make sacrifices to help France. Without British taxpayers subsidising French farmers, American taxpayers subsidising French defence commitments and German taxpayers paying for France's economic inefficiency, France would return to being the poor, rural, open dungheap and Gites nation of our youth, with squat toilets and tap water unsafe to drink. 

Do you know, I actually preferred that France - the crumbly, pavé, Gitanes-tinted formica skintness of her. Better than the global sponger. 

Surrounded by a sea of Tricolours, Macron criticises Nationalism

Thankyou.

There is really nothing I can add to the words, the verse, the painting, sculpture and music of the men who have seen our nation in War. Or to their silence and inward turning. So to all those men, and today women, quick or dead, I say simply thankyou.

And for my father. A bigger man than I will ever be. 

We will remember you.