Currently reading: Brexit: what it means for the British car industry
The way Brexit plays outs will be pivotal for car manufacturing in the UK. We gauge the current feeling within the industry

The entire automotive industry talks nervously of disruption. Autonomy, China, electric vehicles… these days it’s a case of pick your threat.

In the UK, however, disruption is coming much faster and from a much more traditional source: politics. Brexit and, to a lesser extent, the decline of diesel are probably the two biggest forces acting on our industry right now, and the fate of both, by and large, lies in the hands of the Government and its opposition.

Brexit: Bentley could shift production to Europe in ‘worst case scenario’

No matter where you stand politically, you’d probably agree that’s not where you’d want to place the future of an £82 billion industry that, in terms of export value to the country, accounts for a whopping 13% overall.

The chief executive of automotive supplier Unipart has warned that Brexit has the potential to wreak even worse devastation on the industry than what occurred in the 1970s. “I fear hard-line Brexiteers are in danger of achieving what that rabble of militant trade unions failed to do: destroying the British car industry,” John Neill wrote in the Daily Mail in May.

Bentleys factory at crewe 1

If there was ever a company that tracked the recent downs and ups of our car industry, it’s Unipart, which was once a division of the state-owned dinosaur British Leyland but is now a thriving independent parts and logistics firm.

Neill’s worries are those of the wider industry. Tariffs would be bad, but worse would be the delays resulting from car parts held up at what’s increasingly looking like being a hard border between the UK and the Continent. That threatens to destroy the finely timed movement from supplier to manufacturer that has evolved over years of membership of the EU.

The loss of easy access to our biggest market and parts suppliers could put the brakes on a strong period of growth for British car manufacturing, argues David Bailey, professor of industry at Aston University. From a record 1.92 million vehicles made in 1972, UK car production has slumped, peaked and slumped again, but this decade it came roaring back to 1.7m vehicles (and 2.7m engines) last year, thanks in part to a resurgent Nissan and Jaguar Land Rover, our two biggest manufacturers by far. Brexit could reverse that.

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BMW UK boss: We will not close UK factories post-Brexit

“There’s a real danger we’ll have another decline,” Professor Bailey said. “Production is not guaranteed to be here; it can be shifted around, and we’re in danger of a self-inflicted wound that seriously damages the automotive industry.”

Manufacturing jobs have already been lost – at Vauxhall in Ellesmere Port, at Jaguar Land Rover in Solihull and at Nissan in Sunderland. To what extent they were lost due to Brexit, the slump in diesel sales or simply cyclical market upheavals is a point that has been much debated, but the timing looks ominous.

Brexit so worries Jaguar Land Rover that its normally reticent boss, Ralf Speth, warned last month that a bad Brexit deal would cost the company more than £1.2 billion a year in lost profits and inflict serious job losses. “We want to stay in the UK… but if we don’t have the right deal, we'll have to close plants and it will be very, very sad,” he told the Financial Times.

1186065 The ford fiesta remains the uk s best seller 2 1 1 0

Jaguar Land Rover is also reeling from the diesel crisis, as are many other firms. “It’s been a huge issue for the market,” said Bailey. “Government has been all over the place on this.”

In the first six months of this year, diesel demand tumbled by 30% to the point where the fuel type accounts for just a third of sales, down from more than half at its peak from 2011 to 2014. Jaguar Land Rover sales are more than 90% diesel in the UK and the company has seen demand fall by 9% in the first six months of 2018, despite fresh product. The body that represents car makers in the UK, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Traders (SMMT), has called on the Government to throw its support behind the latest cleaner diesels and help change public opinion that ‘diesel equals dirty’.

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Are there any upsides for the car companies?

A hard Brexit would put barriers up and force businesses to look inward, which could boost the UK parts industry. Currently an average car built in the UK uses 44% of UK parts in terms of value. Post-Brexit, car makers might want to increase that to hit ‘rules of origin’ requirements (see below). The lack of tariffs and border hassle could make a UK part that much more competitive compared with an EU part.

For example, Aston Martin and McLaren both use Italian-made Graziano gearboxes. In the event of a hard Brexit, McLaren Automotive CEO Mike Flewitt said he would try to persuade Graziano to build a UK plant. “If the duties were there and it was harming our competitive position, absolutely we would,” he said.

McLaren currently sources 50% of its parts from the EU (outside the UK), a figure that will go down to 40% once it starts making its carbonfibre tubs in Yorkshire in 2020. That decision to shift production from Austria was made prior to Brexit, but we could see more of this. McLaren and Aston Martin have both said they’ve benefited from the fall in the pound’s value since the 2016 vote.

What do UK auto makers want from Brexit?

“We want free trade, zero tariffs, frictionless trade across borders,” Flewitt said. It’s a common refrain. Essentially, they want what we’ve got now: a customs union, free trade, common rules (and a say in how they’re made) and the freedom to hire staff from across Europe. “We need unrestricted access to the single market of Europe, our largest trading partner,” the SMMT said.

Last year, 54% of UK-built cars were shipped to customers in the EU. The SMMT reckons a no-deal shift to World Trade Organization (WTO) tariffs would add £1.8bn to the cost of exports, forcing price increases. Meanwhile, an extra £2.7bn would be paid collectively for new cars coming from the Continent.

Ford puts the blame squarely on Brexit for its loss-making second quarter in Europe this year. “The biggest issue we face is the UK,” Jim Farley, president of global markets, told investors last week. “Brexit and the continued weak sterling has been a fundamental headwind for our European business.”

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So what will happen?

The latest white paper from prime minister Theresa May proposes that we stay in a version of a customs union and single market while maintaining the EU’s rules on goods such as cars. So no tariffs, no border checks and no real change, apart from making it more difficult to hire people from outside the UK.

The SMMT called it a “welcome step” that shows the Government is listening, but the hard Brexit wing of the Tory party hates it for proposing we take EU rules without having a say in how they’re made, and have forced amendments to the White Paper. There’s little evidence to suggest the EU would accept either version.

“There’s a sense of relief among auto makers that there’s a desire to stay in the single market, but they don’t know what they’ll end up with,” said Professor Bailey. “That is deterring investment in a very big way."

What is ROO?

Rules of origin (ROO) are an essential part of a free-trade agreement made with another country to make sure a third country isn’t piggybacking the deal. If you allow a car in tariff-free from country A but 80% of parts in the car come from country C, then you’ve given away a benefit to country C for nothing in return. Trouble is, cars made in the UK are so dependent on EU parts that we would struggle to satisfy ROO when we tried to strike post-Brexit trade deals.

Key players in an £82bn industry:

Honda

Honda’s future in the UK was looking gloomy way before Brexit. It mothballed one half of its Swindon plant after sales failed to recover following the 2008 financial crisis, and then decided to produce just the Honda Civic hatchback, dumping the Honda Jazz and Honda CR-V. But the new Civic is now also exported to the US for the first time, and production numbers rose 24% last year. It still makes a diesel in the attached engine plant but has been able to swing production more towards petrol. Swindon’s future probably hinges more on whether US president Donald Trump’s threatened tariffs come to pass. That plus a hard Brexit could sink its UK manufacturing. “We struggle to see a bright future for Honda in Europe,” auto analyst Max Warburton wrote for Bernstein Research earlier this year.

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Nissan

The UK’s single largest car factory, Nissan in Sunderland, is regarded as a bellwether for Brexit because of its size; nearly half a million vehicles were built there last year, of which 80% are exported. In April, Reuters reported Sunderland would shed “hundreds” of jobs after demand slumped. Nissan’s UK sales were down 30% in the first half of this year, but that’s mostly due to ageing product. Expect production numbers to climb again after the Nissan Juke and Nissan Qashqai are replaced and it gains the Nissan X-Trail SUV. No start dates for those cars have been given.

Vauxhall

Luton and Ellesmere Port looked vulnerable to closure after the brand’s sale to cost-cutting PSA Group coincided with Brexit uncertainty. However, PSA came to Luton’s rescue with news that the factory would make a new range of vans on PSA platforms. PSA boss Carlos Tavares said no decision would be made on Ellesmere Port until 2020, closer to the time when the current Astra is replaced. A third of its workforce was cut at the beginning of this year in an attempt to increase its cost-competitiveness. If that works and we have a deal on Brexit that mirrors current benefits, it could yet survive.

Future of Vauxhall's Luton plant secured

Ford

The union Unite gave an indication of the paranoia among manufacturing workers in the UK over the upheaval surrounding diesel engines when it called for Ford’s two vast engine plants, the petrol-focused Bridgend and diesel-making Dagenham, to switch to making electric powertrains instead. Ford is too pragmatic for that, but its big problem is losing JLR as a client for the V6 petrol and V8 in Bridgend, and the V6 diesel in Dagenham by 2020. The V6 diesel has a new life in the F-150 pick-up in the US, but production at Bridgend will fall by some 150,000 engines. A new range of 1.5-litre engines in both plants will give them a boost, but most head to Ford’s assembly plants in Europe, so any Brexit-derived disruption will hurt.

BMW

BMW is unlikely to leave Mini’s ancestral home in Cowley (it’s due to add the electric Mini from next year) but has other options in the case of a hard Brexit. The firm ramped up Mini production at its Dutch contract manufacturing plant to 170,000 units in 2017 and has increased the head count there, Reuters reported in June. The company has been vocal on the threats of Brexit, particularly in terms of customs hold-ups, but its engine plant at Hams Hall is well positioned to ride out the diesel slump: it doesn’t make any.

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Brexit 1

Toyota

“Let’s be clear, Toyota, Nissan and Honda came here to access the European single market, which is why they’ve got a particular problem with Brexit,” says Aston University’s Professor Bailey. Toyota’s 2500 employees in Derbyshire breathed a sigh of relief when the firm announced the next Auris for the plant starting early next year. It should boost production after a lean couple of years, but the Avensis has now gone and won’t be replaced. Toyota’s engine plant in Deeside in North Wales, meanwhile, has thrived thanks to the interest in Toyota hybrids amid the diesel slump.

Jaguar Land Rover Britain’s biggest auto maker made just over half a million cars in the UK last year, but 2018 has brought problems. First it said it was cutting production at Halewood, then in April it announced the loss of up 1000 agency jobs at its biggest plant in Solihull. To make up the shortfall, JLR shifted over 362 full-time staff from Castle Bromwich, where it builds Jaguars suffering some of the biggest sales declines this year. JLR has blamed the diesel slump and model cycles, but its global strategy is also a cause. Production is growing in China and it’s just about to start production of the Discovery in Slovakia. After being saved from closure when Tata took over JLR in 2008, Castle Bromwich now looks vulnerable.

The luxury brands Bentley, Rolls-Royce, Aston Martin and McLaren might grumble about Brexit, but they have no real choice but to ride it out; too much of their global brand allure is tied up in the ‘Made in Britain’ promise.

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To McLaren’s Mike Flewitt, it’s just another challenge to negotiate. “In one market, Singapore, I have a 180% tariff. We’re talking maybe WTO tariffs at 10%,” he said. “I’m not even convinced there will be tariffs.”

Tariffs are fourth on the list of Brexit fears for Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer. “That’s least of my concerns,” he says. Number one for him is border drag, two is rules of origin and three is hiring the right people. “We’re employing people from the likes of Ferrari, and I need to be able to say to them they’re going to be able to stay after Brexit,” he said.

Nick Gibbs

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professor x 29 August 2019

Brexit and Consequences (Parts One to Six)

The heat between the No-Deal posturing of Johnson and feckless Farage resembles the rash, reckless rhetoric of some of the most insane dictators in recent human history. Watching Farage address his brainwashed flock is akin to replaying Adolf and the Nazi's burning books and slaughtering anyone who doesn't fit with their aryan ideal, because they too thought they were the master race.

Any idea that the EU should bend to Boris's bobble head politics is equally ridiculous as the EU still needs to ensure that the Irish back stop remains so that Ireland does not ever descend into yet more entirely preventable terrorism which caused so much pain and trauma over successive decades.

As new Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson noted the electorate of the so-called United Kingdom did not vote for a No Deal Brexit in 2016 as that option was never, ever on the ballot paper.  And as such all the movement (some say wholly from some people's bowels) is undemocratic as it was not part of the campaigning prior to the vote and has no place in the context of leaving at all, never mind the fact it betrays the content of the Leave campaign in the first place.

It's now wholly preposterous, as its extremely unlikely that Boris's rash decision to suspend the UK Parliament in order to progress Brexit will be tolerated by those people who have seen through his many disguises and subterfuges.

What Johnson and his Privet Council Queen botherer Jacob Rees-Mogg seem to forget is that whilst the basic parliamentary process of prorogation is normal what is most certainly not normal is the length of time Johnson is seeking. Especially when the base factor is the most important, and in so many ways a dangerous choice when, not if, it all goes pear shaped after Halloween.

Rees-Mogg himself is being phony with the notion that so many people who are and have been protesting against Brexit and signing petitions. It is fundamentally true that anyone who seeks to continue walking a path based on the phony claims made by people like him prior to the 2016 vote.

In one crassly misjudged move Johnson and his band of ne'er do wells have also done that most unparliamentarily thing, made the Queen, who is a figurehead of the church and state the main focus of events as she now has to decide whether this suspension really is the best for her subjects. All of this pressure on a monarch who has presided over so many previous UK Prime Ministers and Boris has caused more constitutional carnage with this decision than anything else.

If the remainder of the parties against the biased, cluelessly dumb and myopically cretinous No Deal shenanigans do not stop Boris completely with all the legal powers possible, not just in the Scottish courts but the Supreme Court too, before the true horrors that can be vested in the villainous No Deal scenario begin then the entire so-called "country" (but actually still a distinct four) will be split and severed forever after the most gormless of gambles backfires in an even more spectacular fashion than the staggering set of misjudged and ill-advised scenarios the world has witnessed under the witlessness of the Brexit Omni-shambles thus far.

For Johnson, Rees-Mogg and latterly Alistair "Boris Sock Puppet" Jack (the Scottish Secretary) to suggest that this is all the SNP's fault for not listening to people after the results of the referenda is beyond any form of credulousness.  This is just more of the smoke and mirrors deception these dim-wits think using on the populous is acceptable when its atypical behaviour of con men and other charlatans.

That some people are now speculating a suspension of the Scottish Parliament to stifle debate on a post Brexit second independence referendum when Scotland did not want Brexit is another dangerous action Boris and his band of crooked vultures with a self serving ulterior motive will find themsleves with an even bigger constitutional crisis than the one they've created. If Boris and his clueless cabinet pull the same unconstitutional trick on the devolved governments all hell will break loose even more than it did at little Kathy Wilson's place.

There's also a significant petition against No-Deal Brexit which has gained in a fairly small timescale one million signatures and that will undoubtedly rise as the days progress. That number is also more than ten times the amount f people than actually democratically elected (within the extremely limited confines of the Johnson constrained Conservatives) Boris.

Ask yourself why the pro-Brexit side have not been motivated to show once and for all that amount of people in a similar but opposite fashion, and it's not at all difficult to surmise that despite all their posturing and huffing and puffing they actually know how weak their argument is in the first place. After all if there was that much touted 17.4 Million of us and we're bigger than you where, just where, is the current democratically acceptable evidence via protests, marches and petitions that proves that the number is still the same (or larger)?

Because if anyone with an impartial democratic mindset looks over the legally permissible evidence to the contrary it still not there. And again, I am back to the observation about Farage and his march to London and how small the "I'm too busy to show how engaged I am with Brexit" Brexit voters in an earlier part of this saga.

Not least as the general public still have not been allowed to speak on all the significant issues which still remain to be resolved in any form of democratic way since the non legally binding referendum which ignited the idiotic inferno which has engulfed so-called "British life" since 2016.

Suspension of Parliament is a process completely  unheard of in modern times. It is not something that should be used as plaything for those with dictatorial diatribes against the people in your own country, such as those with opposing ideas and political views. Using such an extraordinary step in action is unprecedented and does not encourage the much needed political debate at this most extraordinary time but suppresses it like a bully kicking the living daylights out of the weakest kid in the class just to make itself feel better about its inadequacies and deficiencies. And so it is with Boris and his cohorts. For they are the bullies. And they behave like total scumbags.

That this too has riled the Irish and Welsh will be in no doubt and I can still foresee a day when the Irish, the Welsh, the Scots and the people of Gibraltar may decide to stand together on the 1st of November and tell the English where to go, and maybe not in polite terms. That they too may also decide to go straight to Brussels and ask for immediate discussions and be accepted back by the EU whilst the English suffer the truth of the consequences of their own Brexit-Apocalypse may also happen.

It's also quite hilarious in another way entirely that Ruth "I'm no fan of Johnson" Davidson chose the same day, of all days, to retire due to family reasons (however temporarily that may prove to be). It leaves the seemingly separate Scottish tories rudderless and directionless as Davidson's seen her party is paying the price north of the border for Boris's lies and deceitful behaviour. Maybe she'll look at that and think she's better off out of the endless squabble and squawking from the oiks behind Brexit.

The idea that Corbyn has of a "vote of no confidence" in the UK government alone may not be enough to stop a No-Deal Brexit from happening no matter how brilliant a ploy he might have thought it was.

To me a much more stringent and different approach regarding their fitness to govern, their mental capacity and thus insanity should be added into the legal argument why Johnson, Gove, Rees-Mogg, Farage and the rest of the misguided miscreants should be stopped. And if, after a period of psychological investigation has occurred and they are found to be "sane" then that should leave the door firmly open for the fullest of criminal proceedings against them for the crime of the Brexit coup d'état dividing the country based on the lies of an out of date (by more than three years now) non legally binding referendum itself based on a scam by Farage.

Boris may well have shot his last if its decided that he's committed an act equivalent to treason or has shown himself, alongside others in the Farage misled Brexiteer cabinet to have taken steps which show he's mentally unstable and unfit to govern in his position as PM. And if it can be legally proven he's misled the Queen into agreeing with proroguing Parliament for the highly unusual period of time this suppressing the much needed debate for Brexit business and other parliamentary matters then Boris and others should be tried and stripped of their privileged positions immediately.

Maybe some people out there will reason that taking Johnson and Farage and the rest of the Brexiteer's behind what is clearly a coup d'état to the Tower of London and meting out some medieval punishment of the kind only reserved for traitors like Guy Fawkes may be in order.  But that is up to others.

Parts One to Five....

Before  anyone gets their political knickers in a twist I'll preface this by stating I am 100% apolitical. Furthermore as someone with a unique automotive design qualification and a cv which also includes self employment and running a franchise I have wider business knowledge too. I have also spent the last eight or nine years putting Elon Musk's deluded fans in their place, and as there's twenty three million of them, compared to 17.4 Million anti-EU Brexiteer's  who don't scare me one bit either.

As far as Brexit itself goes there's quite a lot that can be said when viewing that Nigel Farage created and Conservative misled mess from afar. Starting with what can only be described as misguided notions of imperialistic, monarchical delusions rooted firmly in the past, as part of the so-called "Great Britain" or as its latterly been called "One Britain" (really what the heck is that? and I mean that in all sincerity not in some sense of not knowing), which has been muddied by dim-witted views of (firmly) English nostalgia for the second world war and ideas that they were (through that imperialism and cluelessness related to outdated colonialism) world leaders.

I mean really, get real. Even when that was the case, say with series one Landies and minis designed y Alec Issigonis (ironically to the average dim-wit whose fallen for Farage Issigonis was born in Greece thus proving the necessity of being part of something larger in the car world). Furthermore without the help of the EU and Europe in general automotive safety would not be what it is today. Using the might of Sweden's Volvo as a good example of why European ideas which saved motorists lives in the so-called "Britain" and then directly influenced the remnants of the British Leyland companies, many of whom have disappeared in the wake of the European , and Japanese competition beating them at their own game, and being better built and more reliable as well.

And where was the great British motor industry back then? Dying on its bandaged knees, much like Theresa May(hem) and her plan to get all of the allegedly United Kingdom parliament in Westminster behind the get out of the EU deal she's brokered. But that's not her only problem. looking as she does like a Skeksis from Jim Henson's cult classic "The Dark Crystal" and with a deranged sense that she's uniting the country (the country in question is always England as the Scots have been fundamentally against leaving the EU and see that there are many, many positives to come out of EU membership in terms of the world's view, trade and travel and any number of other socially led possibilities) when all she's done is create yet more division, hatred and uttered more nonsense than any nonsense poem you might be able to think of.

Ask the pro-Brexit leavers where they have bought their cars from in recent decades, and who owns those companies and what mechanisms which enable those sales they've benefitted from as owners of shiny new BMW's, Audi's and Mercedes-Benz's, alongside VW's, Seat, Skoda and others actually are.

The costs of which will rise in the wake of Brexit, especially with a No Deal scenario being the preferred option of so many of the retired coffin dodging half wits who are still banging on about a No Deal being brilliant without ever thinking of the real world consequences. It's no joke that Porsche, part of the mighty Volkswagen Audi Group has raised its RRP for its entire model range prior to Brexit's alleged leaving day on the 29th of March. Just wait till every other car manufacturer and business follows suit due to the extreme negative market conditions that's been created by Brexit and watch the morons beg to let back into the EU.

Ask them too where many of them have spent time on holiday and remind them too just how pain free and harmonious travel  actually is if you are a member of the EU.  Ask them if they have ever drunk wines, beer and spirits made within the EU. Ask them where their weekly and monthly shop really comes from. Ask them too about who some of their favourite football players are (given some of the names in the English Football Leagues) and look at the awkwardness of their "monochrome flash and my mind is grazing" gaze.

Ask them where the disadvantages of the European Court of Human Rights, in Strasbourg, actually are and ask them how any of that UK involvement was negative. Then witness the blank faces. Then ask them about all the advances in all forms of medical science and access to prescription medications which is dependent on  seamless EU trade and benefits us all.

Ask them where the UK housing market has been at the same time - incidentally it like most other businesses has flat-lined, or where the "growth" in the UK's economy has been too, most months since the vote it's been almost in negative equity much like the housing market, as 0.1% really is nothing to write home about. Ask them about the NHS being unable to fill vacancies, ask them about who has been picking the UK's fruit which is then exported for them. In fact just ask all the people who voted for Brexit as many awkward questions as possible and watch them run from you in horror.

Examples of the continuing gross stupidity and hypocrisy from Brexit voting zombies include people like Dr David Bull, one of the grinning like he's on the same "Smylex" that feckless Farage is on. A doctor who has spent a whole lot less time in his beloved "England" than he would like to admit to as he's been living it up on the masses of money he's made out of dumb Californian's. So he's less than convincing to say the least.

Then there's Lucy Beresford who regularly appears on television as a "go to" psychologist whenever the nations mental health is in question. She too has been big on pushing the Brexit button of late and is dissatisfied with the wastes of space of Westminster. However, she too is not immune from political lampoonery too as she admitted she likes a bottle of Blue Nun (a German wine in case you don't know) and loves, yes loves, the Eurovision Song Contest. You know that singing contest that would not exist if not for the very same Common Market and EU that the Brexiteer's hate with a vengeance.

Farage's tories in scheming, the pro white supremacist racist lot they are, virtually all love Donald "The Dump" Trump and his own particular brand of mafia led thuggery passing itself off (though not the well read or well informed) as making Britain Great Again via "Making 'Murica Great Again". Just take one look at Boris Johnson for buffoonery on a wholly different plane, Liam Fox and Michael Gove, or Andrea Leadsom or that stuck in the eighteenth century moron born with a silver spoon in his stuck up gob Jacob Rees-Mogg  and you find a pathetic bunch of half-wits, who unlike the aforementioned SNP, were so scared of being found out and getting their separatist ideas mauled that they didn't produce a single line of a manifesto beyond an (intellectual) knuckle dragging "We want out of Europe and We want it Now". And the gullibles who barely engage with the political system in Britain bought it, hook, line and sinker. Some have even said they were more fished in than a scene in "Wayne's World".

With a real prospect of leaving the EU with a "No-Deal" scenario looming the automotive sector and many other business sectors must be extremely worried indeed. In fact for a party that alleged to be pro-entrepreneurs and business the Conservatives under May-hem spineless leadership have fallen foul of so much common sense. All the big business with precious few exceptions,  like James "I make expensive vacuums in Singapore" and the numpty behind woefully dull pub chain Wetherspoons, have warned all the pro-Brexit politicians of impending doom, and so have the Federation of Small Business (which makes up the majority of UK business interests accounting for 80%)

Right now that "United Kingdom" is anything but and the only things that will place it back on track are another referendum which the insane Brexiteer mad men and women have been afraid of since the beginning of the truth about what it really is the fools actually voted for was first aired. Its well understood that May-hem's deal has been voted down twice and the idiot she is she insulted all of Westminster's politicians in one go meaning her (quite possibly illegal) third vote has gone down faster than a lead balloon.

Indeed with a reported one million people marching for a "People's Vote " in London, and throughout the UK,  on 23rd March and the "People's Vote" petition crashing due to the number of citizens adding their names to the pressure for some level of common sense to accurately gauge the current public opinion, not that of just over three years ago, it's about time the politicians started listening.  Within a matter of days that petition has gained over five point eight million signatures and yet May-hem, the cabinet and the UK parliament still have got their assorted heads in the sand.

One look at Westminster in recent months, especially over the last year,  has witnessed a large amount of pro-EU flags waving and not an awful lot from the pro-Brexit lobby. It also doesn't take much to see that not one of the anti-EU Brexiteer's has mustered a protest on the scale seen by the pro-EU Remain side, and that too is rather telling.

Ask yourself where they all are, ask too why with an alleged 17.4 Million people in favour of leaving the EU we have not seen one iota of sense from their side if they are so right, ask too where their large protest is. And the answers to that is they have not got one iota , on all those significant counts. For the record Farage's pro-leave protest mustered a mere 200 people including Farage himself, which says so, so much.

Yes, I hear you cry there were "thousands" on the march protesting against the UK parliament on the 29th during the day. And yes, there were cries of "let's leave without a deal, it's what we voted for" but thousands does not even begin to equal the slightly more than one million from the previous weekends Pro EU protest and is absolutely nowhere near the almost six million who have signed the petition to completely revoke article 50 in its entirety. Not by a long, long, long way.

Because "thousands" is not in any way at all equivalent to 17.4 Million. Never has been, never will be. To me, reading all the comments about the many who voted pro-Brexit and their perception of being right and only their way is the solution to it all, if there were 17.4 million truly in favour of Brexit three years on from the vote then Parliament Square in London should have been completely saturated and over-run with protesters on Farage's side.

And yet, they simply did not turn up en masse as you might reasonably expect.  So where were they all? Off getting tanked up in a local boozer (read craft beer emporium) somewhere? Was it giro day? Did the best tattooist in town have an offer on? Or was there a special consignment of real ale going a-begging? Did they have an urgent hair and nail appointment they'd booked months ago and only realised it was today this morning? Or was it their bikini wax day? Incidentally that's just the men I'm talking about.

And too there were howls of derision and frustration from the leave camp yelling "Betrayal" at every moment they could. However I wonder whether any of the people who were gormlessly grunting that have the intellectual gumption to realise that the true betrayal of the Brexit vote, as history may well conclude if my assertion is as correct as I think it is, was the betrayal of the Brexiteer politicians who led the country down the path to its own self made and deluded destruction. 

What really showed their utter inability to accept how inane and stupid their own understanding of the UK political process was the fact so many were still outside the, entirely shut for the day, House of Commons late on Friday night. It's clear that the idiots doing the shouting at that time of the day have little real sense at all when all you are doing is getting hoarse yelling at an empty building.

Similarly Leadsom's talk of following the "will of the people" still negates that most awkward of facts that the true will of the people has not accurately been fully tested by electoral process since the vote all the Brexiteer's including Leadsom herself, are still so keen to point to.

And where does that really put May-hem? Firmly on the political chopping block as not one UK parliamentarian wants her deal, and not one really wants the no-deal either if truth be told as that would be as cataclysmic and catastrophic  as many outside the UK think it will be. And if the (alleged) UK goes for WTO rules then all the deep level comments about tariffs which the automotive industry has written in the small print (it's some paragraphs down in the stories about Honda closing the Swindon plant, and all the manufacturers depend on the same global supply chain, not just the Japanese firms like Honda and Nissan), and some media has not highlighted near enough then pretty much every single UK business , large and small will suffer.

So what then does that mean? Well as some may predict May-hem will shrug her scrawny shoulders and fly off to some tax haven or other with her venture capitalist husband, who as I write this stands to gain quite a few pence betting against Brexit and its consequences.  But the tories don't want anyone talking about that, oh no. That is far, far too inconvenient for them.

In Scotland too, the tories are in deep, deep trouble given how many of the recently elected Scottish conservatives have taken the May-hem line completely disregarding the idea of public representation they should stand for when elected to parliament. So any gains they think they have over their hated Scottish adversaries the SNP (Scottish National Party) will evaporate when the Scots public realise that one.

The notions many Scottish Conservatives, including Michael Gove and Ross "I like to have a grope in Westminster" (if you walk round his home town) Thomson, have of Brexit managing to continue with a seamless border and business tariffs enabling the Scottish Fishing fleet and farming sectors to carry on as before is, frankly ridiculous. WTO rules and anything like Canada Plus Plus will annihilate that in a swift and savage move.

As any of the proposals being mooted involves arrangements which automatically add to the paperwork and business costs of the Scottish farmers and fishing fleet, and I am not factoring in the ultimate harm of Theresa May-hem's Deal or No Deal scenarios (both of whom would be substantially worse for the so-called UK economy) its utterly idiotic and beyond any reason that anyone would then follow through on the options now being considered to deliver Brexit in a post May-hem compromise world as touted by Rees-Mogg and Johnson.

Furthermore it's as ironic as it is unintentionally hilarious to note that not that long ago, the very same Scottish fishing fleet was sold out by the very same political oiks in Westminster actually causing the grief the fishermen of Scotland have been moaning about as if it was all the EU's fault.

Big clue it 's not. Its more to do with the hopeless incumbents and ne'er do wells which have frequented Westminster and in recent years too, created the expenses scandal, numerous sex scandals and generally treated the poor and the populace as a means to their end. Or if you want it another way the same morons who sold the so-called  "Britain's" fishing fleet down the river due to their spineless negotiation skills.

But did the people who voted for Brexit account for the fact they voted with exactly the same sorts of morons who "gave" the country all that?

No they did not.

Crucially the EU weren't involved in those situations which lost public support for the misguided MP's who brought the country into disrepute.

And do many people who voted for Brexit really have the level of political knowledge they need to understand in a well informed manner how the local, national and international political systems  which "Britain" and its trade benefit from?

That answer to that too is no. In fact there's been a staggering amount of naivety from those who voted leave.  They have attacked legally here EU citizens, who are here to study or working and thus contributing to the countries well being,  whilst ignoring the fact the UK Government (yes them again) have hammered anyone who is poor, ill or both with their lack of humanity evident in the social care policies introduced after the banks killed the economy.

None of the pro-Brexit commentators have made the connection between the bank induced meltdown, the fact nobody's really been held accountable, or even jailed for the billions of the resulting UK government bailout , or for the losses of thousands of people in the UK,  or the businesses which folded in the wake of the scandal, and then how those UK decisions made by wholly career politicians have as massive negative effect on people's lives whilst the system rewards itself for a job badly done via the morally flawed Honours system, which in essence lie at the root of the reasons why the Brexiteer's including Farage have latched onto like parasitic lice on a salmon.

Whilst Brexit has been thoroughly boring the pants off of everyone throughout the so-called UK and in Europe and the wider world, there's so many more pressing parts of government business, in some cases absolutely urgent cases at that, which simply have been thrown on the fire of indifference and contempt as direct result of the 2016 vote. And seemingly that's just fine and dandy with the politically inept who vote Brexit through. Guess what? It isn't for so, so many other people and that is not on at all.

The sad fact though is there are many, many other reasons why the majority who voted to leave have felt left out and ignored by the system, but that does not negate the counter argument that so many people who voted leave have never, ever engaged with the politicians and used the system to change it for the better, instead of forming their own ideas, contacting local and national politicians and using their voice to raise issues and facilitate positive change in an adult way.

The Scottish parliament in Holyrood has already systematically thrown out every single Westminster option with good reason too. Only, and this is wholly ironic too, the Scottish tories have towed the Westminster party whip, thus ignoring the true democratic will of many thousands of their own constituents, to then talk about being democratic and of democratic will, when they actually mean the English will, not Scottish. And that means wee Davie Muddle (David Mundell) as well as Jack-ass KerLaw (Jackson Carlaw) both of whom crawled all the way up to mummies teat and sucked as hard as possible. And in this scenario "mummy" is the nickname allegedly given to May-hem by her most loyal half-wits in waiting.

One of the funniest quips came from Scottish First Minister Nicola Sturgeon whilst she was talking about the hollow worded emotional blackmail of May-hem by saying "She fell on her sword and missed" regarding May-hem's alleged decision to resign. No wonder too that when Scottish MEP Alyn Smith said "Leave a light on" for the Scottish he got much the same reaction from the European Parliament as he got when he made his "Scotland is European" statement after the Brexit vote.

The Welsh and the Irish may well decide that Brexit and the tories must be vehemently challenged given all the toxicity that Brexit has brought over the last three years or so and what that will bring may turn a lot of the current mis and preconceptions on their heads. It's also not for nothing that the Welsh have joined forces with the Scots on some earlier parts of the last lap of Brexit. So watch that space too.

The ever thorny issue of the "Northern Irish Backstop" means that the dim-wit Brexiteer's still want out of the EU at the entire expense of peace in all of Ireland, a peace that took many, many years to gain, and ultimately through a vital piece of legislation agreed upon 100% by Westminster at the time called "The Good Friday Agreement". Brexit selfishly removes that agreement in one blitheringly baffling swoop. And do the Brexiteer's actually care about the peace loving people of Ireland on that one? No, not all as long as they get out of the EU who cares seems to be the irresponsible prevailing attitude.

No wonder then that the so-called "New IRA" have begun terrorising the alleged "United Kingdom" with suspicious packages left in Glasgow University and other places within the UK as May-hem has been dangerously counting down the clock till the 29th March. Do not be fooled into thinking that those two are at all unrelated, because they are not.

That too brings to mind Donald Tusk's all too humorous, and true, "There's a special place in hell" for Brexiteer's as the hell of a substantially more active Irish terrorist group whose main raison d'être is to cause carnage, confusion and destroy the hard gained peace  is not something that many Brexiteer's will want when it's on their doorstep. And that extremist behaviour is something very, very real due to Brexit. Unless Brexit and the Withdrawal Bill disappear the so-called UK is on the cusp of another era of terror within its own borders. Do any Brexiteer's really want that? Because most people who voted Remain probably don't either. Even Frankie Boyle noted this on the first episode of his new "New World Order" series on Friday night.

The idea that Theresa May-hem has had of forever denying the Scottish people another vote on independence is extremely dangerous, as dangerous for her politically as denying the entire so-called UK electorate another say on what they want now that so much of the lies the ever feckless Farage and his blithering buddies hawked on the people in a worse manner than some side street second-hand car dealer with a line in "clocked motors".

What the tories, and the English casually forget is that if the Welsh and the Irish sympathise with the Scots (who in turn ally themselves with their independence seeking Catalan cousins) it could be that Brexit Britain will hasten the need for Scotland to be independent once more, as it was before the act of union. A further danger for the English, who are still bleating on about their lost empire will probably lose Wales and Ireland too if the way they treat them is anything to go by too. Another aspect which precious few will have realised is that any potential pro-Brexit English person who currently resides in any of the (non England) post independence countries of Britain, may well find themselves quietly ushered over any relevant borders and told "Don't come back".

So what of the middle England at the heart of this god forsaken mess that has the world laughing their heads off in disbelief and the in-fighting and back stabbing as each party and politician in favour of Brexit has gone into apocalyptic meltdown at the thought that they were wrong and the entire scenario is bringing the truly dysfunctional and dis-united kingdom into serious disrepute on the world's stage?

Well part of little En-ger-land will more than probably still vote tory even after this Brexit mess has been wiped from history and the bitter recriminations have eventually ceased. In fact with some of the noisy pro-Brexit tories being hypocritical (stand up Lord Lawson as you allege to hate Europe and the EU but in the last year he bought a house in France) and some like Farage married to EU citizens by birth it's clear that those blatant liars will go to ground.

To say that the EU parliament must have been glad to see the back of him is probably understating it somewhat when Farage's UKIP imploded after the 2016 vote. Farage is absolutely kidding himself with his new "Brexit Party" as that was what UKIP was and all it did was openly waste the very same EU money Farage had the audacity to moan about during his self-aggrandising stint inside Brussels.  His threats to the EU in Brussels show a man who has forgotten what an imbecilic relic he and his UKIP party were, and he's still on the same drugs (for want of a better phrase and that's to really say he's drunk on his own ego and self-perceived power) with his Brexit Party. For his own sake somebody really should find a nice quiet padded cell for Farage and do it soon.

Theresa May-hem's decision to immediately step down after her latest defeat on the 27th March shows a woman who has completely and utterly failed on every single level at all to "unite the country" (which is still really just England) as being the tory she is she regards Wales, Ireland and Scotland with the same disdain and hatred as Thatcher did. Proof of this lies in how she's rolled out the poverty inducing policies which now means that so many in an alleged first world country are surviving (barely) by relying on food banks and has created so many children at a major life disadvantage due to that poverty, whilst she and Cameron bailed out the immoral financial institutions who caused a worldwide fiscal meltdown and fell for Farage's ruse in the first place..

The never ending merry go round of the muddled mess and miasma that is making the elected politicians vote on the same deal and expecting the result to be different is straight from the lunacy booth of the most deranged and deluded.  The idiocy of a third vote, still likely to be defeated and then having another on April Fool's Day and one on the 12th of April (the Titanic anniversary) is equally hilarious and shows a Prime Minister who has lost all her marbles.

Really what is May-hem on? Does her GP know? Does anyone? Because it looks increasingly like she's escaped from the same institution as Chief Inspector Dreyfus from the "Pink Panther" films whilst she acts with the incompetence of Cluseau, but crucially and unlike Cluseau, never solving the case. 

There's been some talk of replacing May-hem with someone pro-Brexit but the real question is who? Too many of the Brexiteer's are back benchers who significantly lack the leadership skills to run a country. Some of the majors names are literally a joke. Most are so deluded and stupid that they make Dubya's term in the White House seem like an oasis of brilliance.

With Boris Johnson once more being touted as a replacement for May as viable it negates the fact that he's another self promoting wind bag, a buffoon and a carnival sideshow  who could not find his way out of a wet paper bag with a hole in it, a way out sign written in 200 foot tall illuminated letters lit up like a Christmas tree. As a figure of fun and a "Have I got News for You" panellist he's fine, and still that aforementioned joke, but Prime Minister? Get real. He's been scurrying away far too much when asked questions which indicates far too much political weakness to be credible.  

Do not be fooled by his "serious" haircut he's been sporting of late as that's just him pretending to be a "grown up", which he isn't. Voting Boris Johnson in as PM is madder than a box of frogs. Frogs which at this particular time may just be dipping their heads into a bender to see what its like, and then wondering what the strange slicing sensation is. And don't get me started on the even more idiotic candidates like Leadsom or Gove. For some real fun watch Frankie Boyle for his view on what lies behind Gove's glasses. And then think of having him as PM. In fact don't, it's even more horrific than who I mentioned before him.

Notions of some Norwegian or Canadian style WTO deal or No Deal should have been dismissed long ago due to the many negative implications for citizens and industries as they will mean increased levels of tariffs and thus will harm what  is left of "British Business" in the wake of HBOS, RBS, Northern Rock and the rest of the closing their branches with alarming frequency banks.

Funnily enough they actually were with the indicative votes when all conceivable options were debated and voted on in Westminster as ways forward to resolve the catastrophe that is Brexit. And nobody was in favour of any of them.

Some idiots have decried the entire parliamentary process since the 2016 vote as undemocratic whilst ignoring the inherent basic fact that all of Brexit has had to be enshrined in UK law, just as entering the European Union was. To do anything less, and ignoring due diligence and political process itself would have been undemocratic. The same too can also legitimately be said of the early decision by the UK's lawmakers in the Supreme Court to ensure that a legitimate course in the negotiations and forming the necessary Withdrawal Bill was taken. That those previous idiots also want nobody to vote in another referendum or have another say from the public should actually be more worrying if you adhere to the notion of a democracy in the "United Kingdom".

Those same Brexiteer's have also conveniently forgotten a long held political truth. That sometimes three hours is a long time in politics, never mind three days of even three months, let alone three years. And, as we all know it's almost three years since that vote so it does have as much resonance as relevance. It's also true to state that the public has been allowed through democracy to change its mind through the regular elections for local councillors, national and international politicians too. To argue, a some Brexiteer's have done that there was only one vote in a wholly democratic system is as weak minded as its ill-informed and shows people who are fundamentally deeply scared of losin now that so many truths have been uncovered about the 2016 vote and the lies connected to the claims about the NHS and others during the referendum.

What too of the £4 Billion pound plus cost of Brexit to the UK taxpayer when so many are stifled by austerity and squeezed salaries? What of the yet to be fully accounted cost of the lengthy "next stages" and what that does to the economy? What about the true cost of the "final payment" to the EU? What of the likelihood of burdening the young people who are still at school with the dim-witted debts produced as a result of what amounts to a con-trick? Is that really an enlightened way to treat the citizens who will shape the future of Scotland, England, Ireland and Wales?

Right now the only real world options are another referendum to ascertain what the public thinks,  including all possible options, revocation of Article 50 (quite possibly soon after a public vote) as May-hem's notion of any parliamentarian being in favour of a deal which has been thrown out three times is utter lunacy of the kind I'd expect from Elon Musk and his twitter account.

05.05.19 (Part Three)

The Brexit bumbling and belligerence shows no signs of abating with the news that Theresa May-hem lost the most council seats since 1994 with 1334 councillors out of jobs in the wake of the Brexit negotiations. The same Brexit negotiations that have to all intents and purposes failed so miserably that they have made the so-called united kingdom an international laughing stock.

May-hem may like to point to Labour losses, totalling 82 seats, but the Conservatives haemorrhaged   so many people that it cannot ever be explained by May's dim-witted response of the tories being sent a message about getting on with Brexit. Not by a long way in fact as there's more than one or two not exactly inconsequential facts which prove otherwise.

The first is the previously mentioned six million signature petition for another referendum which thus far the so-called democratic UK government is keen to ignore regarding Brexit. Then there's the Westminster protests which saw over one million people march for another say on what should happen. And the fact that Nigel Farage's big march on London (for Brexit) only got about two hundred people including him and the other people who make up the alleged silent majority of 17.4 million were apparently washing their hair that do and didn't turn up.

So where oh where does that leave an allegedly Pro-Brexit England during the local elections? Well not voting for the pro-Brexit parties. With Labour and the Conservatives getting "a bloody nose" and "summarily drubbed" (as the media has expressed it) and no major wins for either UKIP or The Brexit Party the case for removing the so-called United Kingdom from the EU is even more non-existent than it was when it was first touted by Farage all those years ago.

Lest we also forget Farage has failed to be elected as an MP not once but seven times. And that does not strike me as "leadership material" or a mark of someone the public can trust with public finances, a point also proven by his EU expenses and way he's openly milked the same system he allegedly despises (the EU, for those not keeping up at the back).

So, who gained seats in the local elections? Well the Greens made some small gains which will please them, but the bigger winners were the Lib Dems. Yes them. The same Lib Dems most people had written off as a dead and gone political party in the wake of their collaboration with the tories in the wake of the worldwide financial meltdown created by scumbag banks like RBS, Northern Rock, HBOS and the rest of the morally repugnant greed merchants who ripped so many people off for the sake of a few quid they could squander to their heartless content.

703 seats gained in a post Brexit world where the so-called United Kingdom still wants Brexit seems incredibly odd if you follow May-hems ever more deluded and befuddled reasoning. However I see other things at play with that result.

After all, if you were a Brexiteer and still wanted Brexit why in your right mind would you knowingly vote for a party with a pro-EU and anti-Brexit policy at the heart of their campaign?

The simple answer is you would not do that at all. Not in a million years in fact. So my own conclusion is that the English local election result is another major marker in the sand which shows the UK politicians that Brexit is bust and simply should not happen.

Farage's fear of a second referendum and full revocation of article 50 will undoubtedly douse the dying embers of his dream of EU departure which has divided the so-called United Kingdom and splintered the union like never before.  But some people and politicians question whether they should happen, as that is their right.

The counter argument is that the post EU referendum democratic process and the indicative votes has not worked at all as its still left so many negatives and animosity in its wake.  So that means finding ways forward and if that ultimately means returning to the basic questions of the following many politicians and citizens will have to adjust to it.

1. Leave the EU as per the Conservative "Deal".

2. Leave with No Deal and WTO rules.

3. Remain in the EU with full revocation of Article 50 and a return to the previous UK/EU arrangements with immediate effect.

With the next EU elections we have another massive test of Farage and his EU exiting dream and it will be incredibly funny if people turn out and vote for pro-EU candidates and both UKIP and The Brexit Party fall flat on their faces.

May-hem has no more than a month in post with all those losses and so many of her defeated councillors calling for her immediate resignation. But, anyone with sense, given the scale of her many, many, many losses prior to this devastatingly crushing humiliation would have gone long before now. May-hem and her doggedness is so utterly devoid of credibility and will probably be remembered for being even worse than Cameron and his clueless cronies who got us into the mess in the first place.

And the potential May-hem successor still leaves the allegedly united kingdom with a scurrilous bunch of despotic, dim-witted desperadoes with not an ounce of decency between them. Whether it's Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom or any other they are a pathetic plethora of not-wits and ne'er do wells who are best suited to the kind of life they have consigned so many to with the way they voted through so many Cameron and May-hem policies. And by that I mean send them to work in a modern warehouse for a pittance and see how they like welcoming in big business and the harm they've done to the welfare state.

Meanwhile the Scottish tories are so scared (if Scottish read feart) of a second independence referendum for Scotland that wee Davie Muddle (aka David Mundell) mentioned it not once but thirteen times on the first day of the Scottish Conservatives Party Conference in Aberdeen. Talk about a scaredy cat and a hypocrite when his party has done more in the last three years to create division than anything made by Indy Ref One in 2014.

Post baby Ruth Davidson, the Scottish tory leader is equally showing signs of being on the same "happy pills" as Davie Muddle too with her notions she's going to replace Sturgeon when the tories have less than the minority government SNP in Scotland and are only at their present level due to some SNP backlash. She also still negates and let's face it, avoids the truth that Scotland is predominantly pro-EU and that her party have done everything to openly frustrate the political will of the people of Scotland and their right to decide if or when they may, or may not want such a thing as another referendum on Scottish Independence.

Then there's Aberdeen's very own Ross Thomson, a Boris Johnson wannabe with an alleged penchant for pinching men's bums in Parliaments many pubs, who claims that the drubbing May-hem got at the local elections was not really worth bothering with. Some people in the Granite City (thanks to tories and their pariah's of oil tycoon pals and their "hingers oan") think that the city has less granite and is substantially worse off due to him, his party and his careering political pratt-falls and that Ross Thomson should stop himself, or better yet resign like May-hem,  before he causes any more embarrassment to Aberdeen.

But has he?

Well no, and indeed no. With his behaviour being stringently questioned in The Guardian on Thursday 16th May and the vacant empty headed gazing out the window during one of the last Scottish Select Committee meetings being televised at the end of April on STV News at Six Ross Thompson's doing a very good job of cooking his very own bacon in a spectacular act of self sabotage not seen since Ian Wood declared war on contemporary art and Union Terrace Gardens in November 2008. I predict just like Wood Thompson will lose big time if he presses ahead with his

The fact that it's still a hot topic is down to the way the tories under clueless Cameron promised the Scottish population they would be still within the EU if they voted to still be within the UK if they did not want to live in an independent Scotland after the 2014 Indy Ref. That betrayal has sown the seeds of discontent with Westminster and, as such, the tories have not one single shred of dignity when it comes to the truth about the real culprits behind why Scotland wants another referendum in a post Brexit vote world. No those thoughts are too inconvenient for them, and the English Brexiteer's living in Scotland too.

However with Ireland showing signs that the so-called  "New IRA" might be here to stay in this post Brexit (dis)United Kingdom with senseless acts of violence being perpetrated against innocent individuals its time the Brexit question was wiped from history before any sign of new troubles begin on a much larger scale as nobody really wants that on their conscience.

Wales, like Ireland is now talking up being a country with more independence too which makes the split of the United Kingdom seem inevitable. There's no way that with three out of the four countries wanting to wholly manage their own affairs that little England can stop any of it from occurring. Not if that is what the Welsh, Irish and Scots want. And like I have said before, if you want a Brexit and you feel like you're alienated in any of those countries England will probably be the best place for you and your separatist views.

What the Brexiteer's fail to realise is that its wholly selfish and undemocratic to foist their views upon the rest of the country (and countries) when so many people do not see things the same narrow and nutty way they do.

Proof of this is shown with the mailshot to all of Scotland's citizens by the feckless Farage and his "Brexit Party". Its ultra desperate tone is set with the words "We must leave the EU" and the paragraphs that follow.  It's almost as if Nige didn't get the memo that Scotland does not like him, his previous party (UKIP), his UKIP cronies or his new "Brexit Party" or the massive news that Scotland is still predominantly an pro EU country.

As if that wasn't a hollow howler enough the English's Nige carries on (so apt a metaphor given what's happened because of him in the run up to that referendum and what's been going on since 2016) decrying the EU elections that "weren't supposed to happen" - and yet they did due the aforementioned woolly headed "thinking" of all Nige's ickle pals and Nige himself.

He also slates the UK government for a betrayal all the while ignoring his own part in the story and why the nation (i.e. the four nations) got here due to his lies. That to me is a betrayal worth getting angry and upset about, not some rubbish about an ill-defined and ill-judged notion written on the back of a fag packet after a few swift ales down the local boozer.

However the notion "politics is broken"  may well be true but certainly not for the reason Nige claims on his partly political bumpf. And "Enough is enough"? Especially when his "Brexit" has meant so much damage and so little real parliamentary business regarding running the country and keeping people in better positions than the post worldwide financial meltdown has offered them. Yup. enough really is enough of Brexit and the waste of tax payers money whilst people starve on the breadline due to tory austerity and paying for Brexit.

The English's Nige even has the front to claim that "Trust, Honesty and Integrity" should be put "at the heart of our democracy". Rich given his spending claims and total dishonesty in the EU parliament and the scandals associated with Nige and both his political parties (UKIP included) which have further sullied the lack of trust and faith people actually have with politicians in the UK in the wake of the Westminster expenses scandal.

To put it even more bluntly Nige has been absolutely nowhere when it comes to sorting out the very mess and cluelessly  chaotic claptrap he created. Nowhere at all.

Now I for one do not call that leadership material. Shonky, shoddy, and some other words beginning with S with a negative slant, yes. So why would anyone trust him in an EU election? Why indeed when the Brexit Party and UKIP too failed once more to set the political landscape alight with their posing and posturing during the English council elections.

And what of Nige's "policy" (which in real provable legally acceptable electoral terms is not) of claiming that his leave the EU plan is policy to his politically illiterate fans, who history will prove have been duped by one of the world's worst  people, when it's nothing more than a state of mind and has not managed to pass due diligence in political process. The same process which has to be legally enshrined in law if it it's to be taken seriously. Or if you want a shorter way of looking at Nige's claims its total lunacy.

Any political party who cannot bother themselves to make a manifesto is not worthy of public trust too. And that is another thing little Englander Nige and his Brexit Party has blissfully forgotten about. And why is this? Because Nige doesn't want anything in written form that he can be held legally accountable for, or as I like to express it, just as he's done before. Which is as cowardly as it is lame and shows what a pratt the man actually is. And you can also add the fact he's unwilling to appear in a public debate with other parties as Heidi Allen noted too.

But that's not all that's seriously wrong with little Nige's political stunt career. Take  a more intelligent view of his "performance" on the Andrew Marr Show on Sunday 12th May. Little Nige took significant umbrage at being held fully accountable for the words he previously stated on a number of EU and Brexit matters. As that other Andrew (Neil) suggested, Nige was upset at the temerity that Mr Marr had doing so.  Imagine that! A politician being held accountable for their actions, deeds and words. Who' da thunk it!

Then little Nige blamed the BBC in his usual Donald "The Dump" Trump-esque lets shift the blame away from me and my dodgy actions onto the media with his dim-witted diatribe. Of course with the very media you need to help spread your political message as your enemy you are in no way, shape or form, at any time ever, shooting your big mouth in the foot.

Another woeful example is Nige's Brexit Party launch at Holyrood in Edinburgh on Monday the 13th. Not only did little Nige not turn up (mostly rooted in the reason that Scots found him out sooner than the English for the moron he really is) because he still hasn't  realised he's got a snowballs chance in hell of getting mass support for his latest jolly wheeze.

Oh no that wasn't enough of a grave error that Nige made. He did what the political elite always does when Scotland is mentioned, he flew in a few little Englander's from the south to talk down to the Scots. Or, again in Brexit's latest alleged non-news, is just like the considerably diminished conservatives when they want to control the Scots by having their flying visits in an out lasting no more than an afternoon in a country they have little regard or respect for.

Kind strange for a party that bemoans the political establishment and then does exactly the same thing. Or as I've said before, just like Nige and his EU spending which is dodgy as the lot in Westminster and what they get up to.

Meanwhile lentil-headed anti-Semitic Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn's indication that the tory minority UK government is "disintegrating" in and around the cross party talks to break the Brexit deadlock. None of that seems like any of the Westminster politicians can unravel the mess created by the feckless Farage and his con-trick he played on the con-servatives. And, given that the certainty of the EU elections and the UK still being in Europe becomes clearer. In as much as it's still the common sense alternative to the chaotic, cataclysmic dross that the Brexit vote has always been.

The cross party talks too are another total waste of political time and money connected to the wastage that Brexit has already incurred at public expense. It's not at all surprising to know that over six weeks of talks have produced absolutely zero in real terms for a reasonable solution to the bumbling Brexit mess. And yes, we are right back at Farage and his conniving collusion deluding the people who voted for him, because they are still the root of the problem.

Other observations worthy of note are the facts that the Conservatives look all serious and shouty with furrowed brows like Ruth Davidson's campaign. Likewise Jeremy Corbyn and Nigel Farage and his Brexit Party have got some major unhappy stern looks. Now I don't know about you but I prefer people with positive things to say and who look calm and happy. Which leads me to how both Nicola Sturgeon and Patrick Harvie (of the SNP and Scottish Green Party respectively) seem in their EU election literature. In fact they  look the exact opposite of the crumbling Tory and Labour leaders and their support and of The Brexit Party.

And that must count for something, maybe even something significant when May 23rd rolls around. With recent Brexit voting towns like Grimsby being spotlighted by the BBC it's clear that workers in the smokehouses which export smoked fish to the EU  still want Brexit while caring little about how much that will directly affect their own (EU protected) job they have. And why is it EU protected? Well that's due to the status given by the EU to indigenous foods and without that status it will mean that the legal protections and money earned from gaining it disappears. Hardly big or clever thinking there people. And yet that is exactly what Brexit voters have done. Or, to put it another way, shot themselves in the foot.

The rest of the Brexit debacle, which will undoubtedly cause more consternation, division and fuel the hate which is ruining the so-called union is the fact that next vote in Westminster must decide on the Withdrawal Bill's technical aspects. The fact that some very smart people have foreseen many problems with how even that will have an extremely slim chance of being passed by the time May-hem steps down from her embarrassing tenure as Prime Minister may also be moot too. So it looks as if June will be as unresolved and as damaging as every other month that Brexit has stifled business in parliament to the detriment of all other parliamentary matters.

The further fact that it may come down to two options or either a No Deal Brexit or a No Brexit may worry some people but the direction of travel seems to definetly point to many people who voted for Brexit doing so out of protest with the effects of the worldwide financial breakdown, the extreme levels of austerity and the way that Westminster governs itself with issues like the expenses scandal. It may also work in the pro EU remainer's favour with the levels of Brexiteer voter apathy atypical of the way they have predominantly failed to engage with the political system in the first place. But the Brexiteer's seem oblivious to their own ineptitude with that one too.

The direction of travel also points to Brexit having run its course having essentially boring everyone in sight with the deluge of dim-witted dirge thrown at the public before, during and since the referendum. So despite what many Brexit voters may think their inability to get what they want is actually wholly down to the lies feckless Nigel Farage told you and that is that.

21.05.19 (Part Four)

The Brexiteer's getting upset with the Farage Newcastle milkshake moment on Monday 20th May should be mindful of the following facts. It wasn't a "hipster" who attacked him. The man, though bearded was wearing chinos and no self respecting hipster wears those, similarly his beard was substantially underdone for a hipster too.  Farage called the man a "yobbo" too which aside from the "hipster" comment also stokes division (so atypical of him) and seems to have an extremely negative view of those people less well off than him. In  fact the incident had the distinct air of being a Brexit Party political stunt to gain media coverage and thus get votes before the 23rd).

Farage's further fecklessness also manifests itself in the fact that he equates a milkshake with the levels of violence suffered by Jo Cox who was murdered for her views on Brexit. Reality check time. Both are  not the same. Now whilst there's the right to protest, as valid as the right to vote itself, there's no place for what amounts to common assault irrespective of what I personally think of Farage and his "I'm a man of the people with a pint" persona, or people like Tommy Robinson.

And what of Farage's claim to have been working for the people to protect "Britain's fishermen"? Well, do some serious research about his time as an elected member of the EU parliament and it's clear that little Nige simply wasn't there to discuss fishing at all for at least half the relevant meetings. Then ask yourself whether you really want to vote in someone like that in the first place. Yes, really do. And that lack of a manifesto still shows a party with complete disregard for being held accountable for their own actions and words. None of which engenders the very trust little Nige loves to say is missing in his (and it is still his fault it is) "Broken Britain" like he's run out of clichéd sound bites to feed the gullible.

Little Nige's political posturing is dubious when other facts about him and his deeply cynical views are considered. The biggest one is his anti-elite stance. Rich for someone who is a former city trader and was educated at private school. Hardly the kind of background that's at all credible as a (self professed) "man of the people". And yet his supporters seem to care little about facts.

Farage also moans about due political diligence from the Electoral Commission's desire to investigate how The Brexit Party are funded. However with Aaron Banks being less than squeaky clean regarding his involvement in UKIP's funding the concerns into how little Nige and Banks are connected may still prove to be justified. The further irony is that little Nige is all too happy to see the political establishment have a hard time from public pressure and be investigated when negatives in the public interest come to light but the minute the spotlight's on him he's back in hissy fit mode. Which proves that he's rather childish indeed, and not the sort of character who is worthy of public trust.

 

His parties inability to produce viable plans that not only define what Brexit is without any shadow of doubt beyond that one liner I stated previously and the complete lack of any kind of cohesive detail behind his machinations of politics do have a dangerous machiavellian aura about them and the wider public should be 100% aware of the many pitfalls engaging with someone like him actually means before they place an X in any box.

Meanwhile in Scotland Ruth Davidson has been banging on about a "Blue Collar Revolution" using the embarrassment to Aberdeen that is Ross Thomson as one of her pro Brexit henchmen in the process.  I suspect, as do many serious political analysts, that this will do more harm than good and support for the tories in Scotland will be as diminished as Tokyo usually is after a visit from Gojira. And the revolution she aims for will mean drowning her sorrows later. That it may involve more than one wee dram may also prove accurate.

May-hem still fails on every level imaginable with her Brexit strategy and the fourth vote has the hallmarks of utter hopelessness running through it like Blackpool Rock. I fully expect it to fail for a fourth time. As do many others. The notion the clueless cabinet she's cobbled together backing it means it will actually fly is hysterical. As is the notion parliament will back it.

May-hem and the Conservatives idea of "seeking common ground in parliament" is extremely laughable to the point it looks like Emperor's new clothes syndrome or something very reminiscent of a line about trusting the new boss in a Who song. The smartest of political commentators are once more forecasting another massive defeat for this blink and you miss it bill with a likelihood over one hundred people more than she can muster will be against it. Even the front bench pro-Brexiteer's are against it.

Labour's stance is as confused as the parties politics itself, much like the state of confusion voters have in general about the thing they voted for in the first place and could have cost them dearly again by the 23rd. Keir Starmer seems to have been one of the few willing to speak out about what could happen next and has shown himself a bit more switched on than Euro sceptic lentil head Corbyn. Gordon Brown's late intervention may too hold some truths but also some dangers as people still have not forgiven him for the financial sectors deregulation which was at the root of the worldwide financial crisis, the bailing out of the banks and the following austerity which has pained so many people.

And what's been happening to "Britain" or that so-called "United Kingdom" whilst that's been droning on in the background like maniacal comic book villain in their final monologue? Well Europe had a further long hard laugh at the "British" during a thing called a "Eurovision Song Contest". True to the rubbish form this alleged united countries got, the lame, anodyne, mass-manufactured rot we rolled out (again) came last. So well done us. Further failure due to Brexit bumbling.

Then slightly more seriously we had the news "British Steel" is in significant trouble. And why is that? Well manufacturing is being harmed by Brexit and as the steel industry directly feeds the same UK based car industry this country needs as part of its balance of payments, if that car industry is in decline with Brexit as a factor in how it does its business, then the steel industry which is part of the global supply chain also suffers. So Brexiteer's give yourself a big hand and whack yourselves on the bum for that one. What an absolute masterstroke of stupidity! You've cost the country at least five thousand jobs if not a further twenty thousand in the supply chain with the lacklustre thinking on show there.

And that's  still on top of the warnings that large parts of the business sector have been giving since day one and the inconvenient fact that car sales are also down for the tenth month in a row due to consumers holding off on major purchases. Which, over much of the last three years has affected house sales and the retail world too, both of which are used as indicators of a healthy, strong economy.

The last three years of division, toxicity, hate, bias, in-fighting, squabbling and general ham-fisted fudged bickering has reduced so-called "Great Britain" to a joke of truly epic proportions on the international stage. Of that there can be no doubt.

With the polls still suggesting that The Brexit Party has some 33-34% of the potential vote that leaves another 66% which could be made wholly of votes for Remain and staying in the EU. Which is a fairly large majority in favour of potentially revoking Article 50 and getting back seamless borders for trade and travel. Maybe, just maybe some, possibly enough people will decide to silence Farage once and for all. Stranger things have happened...

23.07.19 (Part Five)

With the Brexit Party making gains on the Conservatives and stupid gestures in the EU Parliament (turning their backs on the assembled parliament on its first post EU election sitting) some may say that they have it all in their hands. Others may say that they have it all to lose. Not least as some other people in the world, most notably within the EU Parliament and the Scottish MEP group,  have noticed that "Little Brexiteer Nige" really is a "feckless Farage" and have used exactly those words in their commentaries of late after I wrote and published the earlier parts of this political analysis.

No matter how much the pro-Brexit politcians want to tell the world that Brexit is a good idea it does not negate the inherent truth and fact that Brexit is being wholly engineered by people who are against the EU's proposed tax avoidance and evasion measures which will ensure some clarity, parity and balance is brought back regarding the levels of tax ordinary people pay versus the minimal amount large multinational's pay as a percentage of their earnings. As ever the architects of Brexit do not want people to know this as fooling the people with a pack of lies from day one has been, and still is, the plan.

That this plan will have dramatic, far reaching and extremely negative consequences both politically and in terms of the business future of the so-called "United Kingdom" is moot. In fact anyone who's been watching the excellent Lisa Hilton presented BBC4 series "Charles I: Downfall of a King" will see the abundantly obvious parallels between the events which led to Charles the first losing his head and how it's affected and shaped the relationship between Scotland, England and Ireland ever since. It's not difficult to view "Charles I: Downfall of a King" and see John Pym's character as being as dangerous and divisive as those of both Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage.

Just like the current situation with the "Northern Irish Back-Stop" the removal of Charles led to bishops being hung, drawn and quartered and the slaughter of one religious group in favour of another (and thus the entire Catholic versus Protestant troubles ever since) after the bitter divisions were created questioning the right Charles had to be in charge of the Parliament as head of the church and state in his position of monarch.

How this still fits with Brexit is obvious with Boris's and latterly former Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab's insistence that the Northern Irish Back Stop  is "undemocratic" on the 29th July. Aside from the forecasts that it will undoubtedly increase tensions and incidents of terrorist activity with the so-called "New IRA" will show the Brexiteer's that all the warnings were correct.  But back to the claim of the back stop being undemocratic. As this part of the EU Withdrawal Bill is based on the much needed Good Friday Agreement made between both the UK Government and the Irish Government using all legal and political protocols to reach an amicable and peaceful solution to the decades of sectarian violence which killed hundreds of innocent people any notions of that process being of "undemocratic" means are not only factually inaccurate but completely moronic.

Boris Johnson becoming Prime Minister  is a Brexit-apocalypse in its own right. Though some tories and Brexiteer voters will undoubtedly be absolutely ecstatic  (the 92,153) the rest of the so-called United Kingdom  (aka Scotland, Ireland and Wales) will see his tory party only election (and thus not a full public democratic vote) as a clueless coup by the anti-EU fundamentalists and separatists who are only out for themselves. Boris's true political trajectory is one littered with lies, lies and yet more lies ladled upon that. He's shown a cavalier attitude in his time as Foreign Secretary which has probably been at the root of the current UK tensions with Iran. In fact his handling of the Nazaneen Zaghari-Ratcliffe case shows that he has not one ounce of intellect vital to sensitively handle a human rights case. Boris's oh so very, very clever intervention has led to her going on hunger strike.

He lied about the £350 Million NHS in the Brexit referendum, he lied about the zip wire getting stuck - truth is he asked to get stuck, there was nothing faulty about it at all, and he's been lying for so long he's forgotten what way is up, and what the truth really is. Don't believe me? Seek out the documentaries Channel 4 has on him and his pre-PM vote such as "Boris Johnson: Fit to be Prime Minister". Whilst I am on a roll also seek out tory train fanatic Michael Portillo's two part doc on the post Brexit implosion of the Conservatives on Channel 5. 

And as if all that wasn't enough portent for you also watch former Prime Minster and eternal man of grey underpants (that is if you've seen "Spitting Image") John Major go apoplectic about the dangers of what Boris and his misguided bunch of miscreants have in mind for a post-Brexit "Britain" on the BBC News Channel's "Hardtalk" with Stephen Sackur.  Quite illuminating to see Major actually get animated and passionate about the potential of a disastrous post Brexit economy and a break-up of the very union he and Boris allegedly like.

Which by any estimation makes Boris a serial liar and a fantasist. Now where has the UK seen that ill-behaviour in the media recently? In the Carl Beech child abuse case which got thrown out on the grounds that Beech had made the entire story up and could not ever have been a victim.

And just like Brexit his lies have ultimately cost him dear as the police have realised their errors, after initially believing all of what he stated was based on real events and situations. Sound familiar? It should as you will also see it writ large across Boris's big pal across the pond Donald "The Dump" Trump and his equally psychopathically unhinged series of untruths which he's told since day one.

His plan to have an extra 20,000 police officers on the streets to tackle, amongst other, England's rise in knife crime may well grab headlines and get tongues wagging but, as ever, the devil is in the detail. Most of which seems to get bogged down in hopelessly ill-conceived ideas which may well hinder the notion before it's got off the ground. He has no idea how people will be attracted to it particularly when there are caveats which will put people off such as being degree qualified. There's no training mechanism in place at all, nor are there enough police stations to house these new (but still replacing old to make the numbers up to pre-tory led austerity levels) officers as some six hundred stations were sacrificed in the wake of the banks and the UK government, and there's no mention of how he will afford all this with the likely cost of Brexit escalating in the wake of the alleged "No Deal" pressure these morons think they are applying to the EU.

That similar things can be noted on his pre-latest leaving date of October 31st plans for both high speed northern rail and the beleaguered under the tories austerity NHS should also be ringing major alarm bells throughout the so-called United Kingdom. Anyone who thinks that will actually happen and is not in any way some kind of Boris bodging to butter up the baa-heids who fell for Brexit should really, really, really start thinking, And then think again. Otherwise what will happen is akin to the Toddbrook reservoir  doing some karmic payback on the dim-wits in Derbyshire who voted Brexit in the first place, but crucially on a far more monumental scale thus far unfathomable to those who love little Nige and his pint.

Boris's views on Scotland and even Scottish devolution are utterly debased and deplorable and is yet again totally atypical of the fly in, fly out southern effete tripe which passes as intelligent political discourse anywhere near Westminster. Similarly his views on Muslim women are like something out of the dark ages and do not fit with his "I'm a clever boy but I like to play the buffoon ploy" persona he's cultivated over the years.

Mr Johnson's plan that he will give the northern regions of England a new faster rail system is also part of the same system of using bribes to fool the people as he used whilst in his two terms as Mayor of London. That he is also trying to use the same technique on the Scots with his idea to stop Scottish Independence happening still negates the very real provable facts that during the 2016 Brexit referendum (still 100% non legally binding) Scotland voted  against leaving the EU and in the 2019 European elections Scotland voted for the SNP and neither the Tories or The Brexit Party.

To anyone with common sense, wit and intelligence that would not only reaffirm the Scots position in the world as an inclusive, outward looking and internationally intuitive nation but Boris seems to be like his half-wits in waiting Michael Gove and Ross Thomson on that one too. And, as such Johnson is totally at odds with the interests of Scotland and Ireland.

Ask yourselves this:

Does Boris have a massive majority? The answer is no as he's inheriting the very same post Brexit mess May-hem had to deal with. Meaning a tiny majority government, division throughout the so-called UK and virtually nothing tangible that withstands serious scrutiny.

Does Boris have it easy? Not with a three time defeated Withdrawal Agreement totally dead in the water, never to be resurrected again, a "Back Stop" he doesn't want and will create another Irish religious war if he's not careful (and truth is Boris ain't),  and certainly not with the Scots against him, such as the disdain most SNP voters have for him. Even amongst the Scottish tories he has enemies like Ruth Davidson and David Mundell. And that's not good at all. It should also be noted that on the day he was announced as new tory PM (23.07.19) a group in Glasgow organised a protest against him. That's Boris's version of "Uniting Britain" right there ladies and gents, boys and girls. In London on the day he was sworn in (and there's more than one meaning to that) there was another protest Boris had to get round too.

Mind you his big statement he's going to bring Brexit and defeat Corbyn show another even more idiotic side to the man too. Why? Because old Jezza is doing so little to stop anti-Semitism engulfing Labour in a tory-esque scandal that its now making many a Labour faithful wanting a new better Labour leader. Which, if you are  Boris means he's running scared of someone who is to all intents and purposes imploding his own universe.

The appointment of Alister Jack as Scottish Secretary after BoJo had banjo'd wee Davie Muddle (David Mundell) by sacking him because his face didn't fit anymore shows that the new cabinet is actually made up of either newbie's who can be used for his nefarious purposes or the cabal of the clueless already known to the world as the blitherer's of Brexit.

Not that Alister Jack is anything but a muddled, misguided, mouthpiece for what the English Brexiteer's want o hear anyway. He seems as brainwashed into the cult of Brexit as the rest. And he may prove to be the epitome of another word beginning with Jack not unrelated to a donkey. Still talking of "optimism" and the sort of harking back to the past personified by all the rot (and it will be seen as that by history at a later date) spoken by Boris with his "United Britain" and a "New Golden Age". Sounds to me like Mr Johnson's been over-dosing on costume dramas starring Cate Blanchett.

And "Uniting Britain"? That won't ever happen as its been wholly divided by the very Brexit he still seeks to deliver. Because Brexit divides people it does not and never has united them. If it did all 100% of the so-called "Great Britain" would have voted for it. And, as we all know that simply did not happen due to the corrosive claptrap on offer.

Notions of a No Deal Brexit being not bad for the so-called UK have been summarily dismissed by the UK Government's own think tank regarding what will happen to the economy and that places Alister Jack and Boris Johnson on a collision course to fiscal oblivion. As per usual it's the idea of tell the idiots what they want to hear and bumble it later in the hope that you don't get found out. That being Boris's chosen method of "working" in case you didn't know.

A really good example of what will happen to "Britain" in a Brexit No Deal scenario is happening right now across the pond in the U. S of Eh under Predator in Chief Donald "The Dump" Trump. As his racist, hate fuelled rhetoric has taken hold over the equally as gullible voters over in the states, "The Dump" has gone to war with China over trade allegedly on the grounds of a better deal for the U.S.

However, as the BBC's own U.S correspondents have pointed out the opposite has happened with many more poor and working poor (just as we have here in the so-called United Kingdom) have lost out to the real world effects of "The Dump's" policy. A policy in the states that's also due to have even more disastrous effects on "The Dump's voters who were struggling before and are going to lose even more. And so it will be with Brexit.

Why? Because the policies have to be paid for by the taxpayer somewhere down the line and ninety nine times out of a hundred that means the poorest paying more than their fair share of taxation. And, if you are thinking Boris will sort it because he's a man of the people (funnily enough the same lie feckless Farage and "The Dump" told) think again. Then do some research into who these people really are and you will find exactly that self aggrandising bunch of ne'er do wells and incompetent hypocrites who'd sell their own grandmother as part of a pyramid scheme. Which, funnily enough describes the recent post May-hem Tory Party leadership "race" (to the bottom) which has once more embarrassed the world.

And we have also had the usual selection of BoJo sycophants litter TV and media since again talking what is only firmly in fantasy land talk. Whether it's how all of Brexit will be paid for, how the so-called UK won't haemorrhage jobs and factories, how it will afford the billions necessary to do the Brexit divorce or any other really important question the political journalists keep asking. What do we get? Just the same Smylex faces and  lack of tangible, credible detail that proves their argument. Yup, more than three years on from the vote the credible Brexiteer solutions and answers simply are not there at all.

He's certainly scared of the Scottish question regarding potential independence in the wake of the Brexit referendum otherwise why would he be so keen to hot tail it up to Scotland for an afternoon of Jock bashing?

Not that any of his time in Scotland, at Faslane, Bute House and a tete a tete with tiny tory on a misguided Scottish mission, Ruth Davidson was ever likely to go well. The Faslane choice all too southern jessie posh boy obvious and shows that he's still got the English upper class fool nonce about with quips (such as it was) about "boats" and "ships" as well as "getting "stir crazy". His idea that ramming English imperialism's dying embers (in the form of the "We're not having it in Enger-land, give to the (expletive deleted) Scots" Trident shows so much arrogance and disregard for Scotland.

When he finally made to the Scottish Capital for the tongue bashing wee Nicola was always going to give him whether he liked it or not, he was faced with many, many more demonstrators than supporters of his dumb rhetoric for the imbecilic.  History may yet prove that Nicola Sturgeon's attitude towards Boris was in fact totally correct.

The criticism Ms Sturgeon has faced by some quarters too may also been seen as unjustified too given that the visit by BoJo was part of the same unionist, imperialist dogma which has plagued Scotland for over a millennia including in Edward the Longshanks poor view of the Scots, the banning of tartan and traditional songs amongst many other issues which are far too countless to mention. And lest the so-called UK also forgets Scotland has been a "proving ground" usually of unwilling guinea pigs due to the English subjugation of Scotland as part of the wholly English desire to control, bully and directly profit from its colonial programme. For that look at the history of a thing called a "Poll Tax" (under Mugger Thatcher) and look into the history of certain songs by The Proclaimers and other eighties Scottish pop acts.

Nor does the entire argument for Scotland being in the EU and out of the UK ever negate that David Cameron lied to Scotland's citizens by claiming during the 2014 Independence Referendum that Scotland would never leave the EU. Of course that lie, and it is definetly a lie, plain and simple, is why the SNP have taken the stance they have after having listened to those who voted against them in the Indy Ref of 2014.

And what of the Davidson meeting? If reports of a far longer meeting than expected are accurate that could also mean Ruth was on the rampage against Boris and his methods. However, that too is not the whole story as Brexit Gimp Michael Gove openly seemed to contradict what Boris said at Faslane. Which in turn highlights the make it up as they go along, retardation that passes for Brexit rhetoric which they fob the masses off with very single hour of every day.

But the real peach of pea brained preaching for the man henceforth known as Boris-a-Jobby was his repetition of his self appointed "Minister of the Union" title. Aside from the atypical delusions of grandeur this suggests it lays bare Boris as someone living in the past with notions which bear zero resemblance to the new reality post Brexit with  the four nations so bitterly divided by the absurdist nonsense that is his alleged "policy".

Funny too that the same day both the CBI and Vauxhall, now part of the PSA Group, made more stark warnings and that the Brexit "War Cabinet", as some in the media have tagged it. And what did the Brexiteer's like Raab do? Fudge dome half hearted and ill thought out answers annoying the interviewers in the process.

The tour Boris is doing to kid himself and everyone else on that there even is a union worth saving is full of the usual hysterics and hypocrisies. He followed up his whistle stop tour of Edinburgh by going to Cardiff and given what was mentioned prior to his appearance the Welsh, who like the Scots are dependent on EU sales of their agricultural produce, in the same way Scottish fishermen sell many fish to restaurants within Europe, were extremely unlikely to give him a warm reception at all. And they didn't give him many reasons to claim he's loved there either.

Similarly his trip to Ireland went the same way. I sincerely doubt his insistence of removal of  the Irish Back Stop will win many friends or favours there either in the remaining time left before October.  As the Irish have many, many good reasons to keep open borders between Northern Ireland and Eire it would be extremely foolish to state time and again (as Boris has done) that the back stop must go. My challenge to Mr Johnson is this. Let's see you do what you want and not have a sectarian civil war with wholly unnecessary deaths occurring and see what happens in England with the "New IRA" in existence. Because, as I have stated before, Boris is opening the entire sectarian violence Pandora's box once more. And that as anyone who was born in the seventies knows is far, far from a sensible idea.

Mentioning the seventies, and indeed and the decade before the sixties, has some resonance with other effects of Brexit too. Not least will be the expense and lack of availability of all the foods which so many so-called "British" people have become accustomed to (just like cheap foreign travel on package holidays) because of that thing they allege to not like, the EU and the Common Market. Now I don't know about you but being dictated to regarding any choice and also removing many choices is deeply offensive as improving diet and looking after a nations health is one of the primary functions of a responsible government.

So if the so-called "United Kingdom" returns to the dark days prior to the EU and Common Market and the lack of fruit and vegetables all year round instead of putting up with and bearing it because of a thing called a Brexit  I'd say it would actually be the opposite we should be doing. In fact getting very noisy and vocal about it is exactly what we should be doing. That this will apply to the manufacture and sales of all cars within the so-called UK is also still worth mentioning as car sales will likely plummet farther than they've already done over the last three years. And as we know not all of that is due to "Dieselgate" or taxation changes.

We too should  be extremely mindful of the pound's value on the world's stock exchanges and how its spent the last twenty eight months spiralling ever downwards. The more financially astute readers out there know that a poor pound means easy pickings for visitors to the so-called UK but is no use for many other things including when people want to travel outside the so-called "Great Britain".  

And Brexit has been at the root of that disaster in much the same way the same UK government were at the root of the banking meltdown due to the irresponsible and greedy deregulation of the banks around the turn of the 21st century. That same UK government who have proceeded with a strategy which has resulted in not one prosecution or prison term for the creators of that fiscal fiasco and shows zero backbone and leadership skills compared to Iceland who have done the opposite due to public anger.

In addition I will also say that the destruction of the value of UK's  currency on the international markets will continue well beyond the Brexit date and make what's left of the fictional English empire a complete laughing stock beyond the one it's been made by Brexit in the first place.

Mark Carney, Governor of the Bank of England knows this and his latest stark warnings about the financial regarding should be another massive wake- up call for the hard, harsh realities to come. But again the predominately English Brexit voters are still clinging to an outdated past its sell by date non legally binding referendum which was a pack of lies from start to finish.

The Brecon by-election in Wales, called because of the Westminster  arrogance and financial misdeeds of the previous Conservative incumbent, who was bizarrely put back in by the tories as a candidate (showing untold levels of political arrogance), was won by the Lib Dems.  This brings down the Conservative majority in Westminster to one person.  Aside from gains the Lib Dems made before Jo Swinson was elected as party leader  this shows that parties who aren't about divisive policies are gaining ground due to the way parts of the demographic have been ignored because of Brexit in the first place.

The result was not an opportunity for the Brexiteer's to decry the outcome because with both The Brexit Party and the Conservatives getting some 49% of the electorate's vote in their minds the Leave camp are the winners. Do you know why? Most Brexiteer's apparently don't as the by-elections, local elections and general elections are won wholly democratically by the candidate who has the most single votes from the electorate. In this case it was the Lib Dems with 43%. Plain and simples. Even a retarded meerkat could understand that. But not Brexiteer's.

 These elections have never ever been "won" by block voting on a single issue. That's reserved for single issue voting situations like referendum's which are a rare event historically and politically.  And what does that also highlight? Aside from an embarrassing lack of political and intellectual nous, it shows that there's substantial confusion surrounding the mechanisms of the so-called UK's method of governance.

The idea still being bandied about by so many English people that just because they voted for Leave in 2016 that only that option should be followed through on because anything else is "undemocratic", such as a confirmatory referendum with Leave, Remain, Revoke Article 50 and all the other options on the card so the people can decide do we all really agree as we allegedly did in 2016 (but actually did not given the split caused), is frankly absolutely nonsense.

Politics, by its very nature involves many decisions happening as knowledge and information makes our thoughts and feelings on any given subject an ever changing, ever in flux  thing. Nothing is ever set in stone or irreversible in the political realm. Not one thing.

It would de "undemocratic" to push ahead with a dim-witted, dangerous and divisive idea meaning that no matter how you may have voted at least fifty per cent of the population will feel alienated and that the government has not listened. And that dissatisfaction breeds not only contempt but is the seed of anarchy. The extreme toxicity of Brexit is an extremely unhealthy thing for any nation.

Can anyone including the blithering Boris and feckless Farage really live with the potentially  horrific consequences of that if the so-called United Kingdom tears itself further apart because people have not been listened to?

Boris's ideas to stem the tidal wave of crime created by the poverty due to the banks and the desperation many feel is little more than headline grabbing tinkering for the dumb and dumber with deaf ears who've fallen for the false, foppish, flagrant arrogance of Mr Johnson's misguided rhetoric. As with his other claims like helping the equally savaged so-called UK Education budget, the budget for policing has been reduced dramatically by the tories, firstly by Cameron's clueless coalition and then by Mayhem and her maniacally deranged dirge.

That similar criticisms can also be fairly aimed at the tories under Boris for other plans they haven't got money for like the  "Northern Powerhouse" and the public transport wish list is also totally true and when people wake up and realise that Jonson's plans are for intellectual jackasses (or worse) and have zero credible value at all (especially after October 31st) then what?  

Factor in the costs of Brexit and Leaving the EU when looking seriously at the escalating costs of the mostly unwanted and extremely over budget HS2 which also sits at odds with the tories latest claims about being more environmentally aware and friendly. Think too just where are the Brexiteer (mis)led UK government going to find all the finances necessary for all the buttering up the public they are doing. And the answer's still the same. They don't have it. Because the banks broke that so-called "Great Britain".

Really, really  nobody should be fooled either by Boris, Brexit  or Farage or the notion the prospect of a Donald "The Dump" Trump misled U.S and UK trade deal would be good for the extremely likely diminished and wholly isolated so-called United Kingdom at all. With a sadly desperate for any kind of (trade) deal from anyone at all the so-called UK would be at an even bigger disadvantage than it has been within the existing framework if it went into a deal scenario with the U.S in the wake of Brexit. Lambs to the slaughter with even more horror comes to mind. Lest we also forget the UK has missed out on the benefits of two significant EU trade deals due to the derisible decision to leave.

Just wait till the real world fall out (nuclear cataclysm pun intended) from the Leave voting farmers like those interviewed on TV realising that they are being wholly undercut by cheap imports like the U.S's chlorinated chicken which is so bad for your health and  undoubtedly part of Donald "The Dump" Trump's plan post Brexit should not be misunderstood. Because right now the UK government seem totally unfazed by the prospect, more realistically the much mentioned "sleep walk" into a stupid self made oblivion.

Think too just where all the new food production is actually going to come from after Brexit. Remember that the tories have been behind so much arable land destruction to create homes and business parks as they stupidly and in an extremely short sighted way   build, build, build, on every available bit of land previously used for farming and good for the soul.  Because with substantially less space for people, homes and faming and nature the conflicts of demands and uses will only be greater when the little island that is "Britain" becomes smaller still. A further issue with that policy or notion is that the soil is a precariously balanced thing and it won't take too much to take that into uncharted territory with a negative effect on the populous due to the finite conditions necessary for crop production being harmed.

Then there's the small matter of how the tories ickle best friends in the downturn beleaguered oil industry  (those old fossil fools usually misled by Jim "I'm kidding buying the former Team Sky gives me eco cred" Ratcliffe and that controversial culture destroying idiot from Aberdeen in his red Continental GT V8 on a 1975 N plate) are going to cope with increased tariffs when the remnants of the fossil age is due to be decommissioned in its entirety and has got everyone dependent on its use without any thought as to the scale of the task ahead to convert all the homes in the UK to renewables and away from gas fired central heating, which the better informed know is one of many components which have contributed to the climate change some idiotic Brexiteer's deny too.

It's no coincidence that a cross party group is making a legal challenge in the Scottish Court of Session on the subject of stopping a No Deal Brexit and is using laws which are still 100% valid dating from Cromwellian times in order to do it. Just think some more about what I said about the parallels between Charles 1sts  Downfall and the architects of that plan and Brexit and you'll get there soon enough.

Jeremy "I'm anti-semitic (but won't admit it)" Corbyn is doing himself zero favours with the growing amount of Scots who are now wanting Independence in Scotland as opposed to those who're in favour of Brexit. By siding with a predominantly pro-union English ideology, which has been around since Edward the Longshanks, the man who stole The Stone of Destiny and the Scottish Crown Jewels amongst many other of his crimes against Scotland and the Scots, which have been echoed in the many years since the period in history known as the Wars of Independence, Corbyn has shot himself not only in the foot but in the mouth as well.

Furthermore he and his southern jessie Scottish infiltrator Richard Leonard are undoubtedly doing more harm to their own standing than if they actually let the people of Scotland decide what they want to do. But again, this shows the sheer arrogance of the English and their politicians and monarchs in their selfish, controlling, manipulative and deceitful ways which Scotland, Ireland and Wales has suffered from for at least a millennia. It's always been a case of "good luck with that" telling any Scot that they cannot do something. By denying a Scot any form of entirely reasonable democracy and to ask of themselves in an autonomous grown up manner how they'd self determine their own future all England's politicians are doing is furthering the very cause they seek to stop.

Corbyn's plan to stop a No Deal Brexit by attempting to gain a foothold in Number 10 is on many levels disingenuous  as its dim-witted. Not least as Corbyn has annoyed so many in his own party with his own failure to stamp out all that anti-sematism. Then there's his wavering stance on Brexit itself which seems wholly non-committal and like he's playing an ill-advised game of hedging his political bets. No wonder so many Labour voters now want him ousted.

It's also quite telling too that a French family whose fourteen year old son fell down a cliff and was rescued by a number of Scottish emergency services were openly singing the praises of how good the people of Scotland and their rescuers have been. I am quite sure many of Scotland's European neighbours, including the French (part of what was once called "The Auld Alliance") will have noticed and seen that yet again Scotland looks after people from the EU, even after the anti-EU Brexit vote.

That I've spoken to some Russian's recently who've remarked that Scotland and the Scots are much more welcoming and friendly than the English is true, as is the fact that Brexit has caused a Polish exodus from Scotland to Germany since 2016. However that last part may come unstuck due to the potential that Germany might be about to plunge into recession.  Not that "Britain" is doing brilliantly since that Brexit vote or is forecast to do so after the latest leaving date.

The leaking of "Project Yellowhammer" in the Sunday Times proves that once more the Brexiteer and Leave side are lying through their teeth if reports on the BBC News are correct. Not only does it still show the total disarray of the "trust us" (without anything credible beyond it) mismanagement of the pro-Brexit numbskulls but it highlights just how much they are clinging to their own cluelessness.

The Brexiteer's within cabinet claimed it was an "old" document yet the BBC News at One on Monday 19th August stated it was shown to ministers only three weeks ago. Yes you read that right,  the end of July.

Hardly what you'd call a plan gathering dust and one that was out of date. Though you might well want to reassess the deceit and subterfuge that your own government including Boris "Jack of No Trades" Johnson is plying on a cluelessly compliant and easily distracted public.

James Cleverly was not living up t his surname on BBC Breakfast  on the 20th August with his insipid and idiotic attempts claiming that this worst case scenario document which is for internal use only is not in the public interest and thus should not be in the public domain.

Frankly that's utterly ridiculous when all of Brexit and thus all its relevant UK Government documentation is entirely relevant to the so-called British public. As such it should not be kept secret out of public view and is a deliberate attempt to keep the truth away from public transparency and public accountability Or, a theme that's been abundantly obvious since the Brexit question first reared its ugly head.

Boris's latest jolly old wheeze of writing to the EU stating that the "Irish Back Stop" must be removed is a collision course to the No Deal calamity with catastrophic effects. It's time for him to get real, join the world of the grown-ups and realise that he will be the reason history will view his crass actions as the point when Ireland descended into preventable terrorist chaos once more.

Mr Johnson also forgets that he was involved in voting down the same Withdrawal Bill in parliament on the three occasions it has been just as all the other anti-EU, pro-Leave Brexiteer's have been. Did they view their own democracy shunning the Withdrawal Bill as undemocratic? No. And as such that was the only document the EU have approved with all other twenty seven member states in agreement (no small feat) so any notions that there's enough time to perform a similar process as part of some wholly mythical "new deal with the EU" is as much of a lie as any others told over the whole torrid tall tale that is part of the Brexit bobble head's blundering which still shows zero clarity at all.

Boris's mission to take his Brexit blunders to both  Angela Merkel  and Emmanuel Macron is as misguided as everything else. All they are likely to do is send him and his nonsense packing back to his self guided delusional doom. And what Macron and Merkel have stated about a thirty day deadline to come up with realistic ideas to the conundrum they face shows that three years on Johnson (and feckless Farage too) and the rest, simply have no clue.

The ball's been in both Johnson's and Farage's court regarding how to resolve the issues. And it always has been.  Farage has had twenty five years and Boris latterly three years to produce a cohesive plan. And yet they still play the blame game and pretend it's all somebody else's doing.

Really?

Do they think that the public are going to swallow that lie too, that it was a "big boy and he ran away", or whatever lame excuse they use this time?.

It's not up to the EU to come up with ideas beyond the agreement via the Withdrawal Bill that it's done. Boris's "demands" to the EU are wholly unrealistic and belie the all too obvious fact that a No Deal was always his intellectually inept and insidious intention.

Realistically in thirty days from  this latest watermark expect zero action and zero credible solutions and results. Because three years after the vote none of the ant-EU mob have any solutions that are worthy of any intellectual scrutiny as serious, cogent and cohesive notions. And then they will blame the EU. Just as they always have done, in a wholly "look over here, not over there" kind of way that's a torrid trademark of the entire Brexit process.

The idea he has that all EU citizens resident in the so-called UK will have to apply for citizenship when they have been resident in much the same way as those from the West Indies in the post war years is as despicable and downright as inhuman as the Windrush scandal. But on an even bigger scale.

Yes. That's another wonderful way that so-called Britain is "Great". Not. No wonder other world nations look on with utter bemusement (but mostly horror)  at the regurgitated rot doled out on a dim-witted daily basis from the Brexiteer's. And that never, ever negates the ever constant contradictions in terms which pop up every time a Leaver or Brexiteer opens their noisy noggin to feel validated by their own way of voting. Look closer on that particular nugget and it's in every single person interviewed or talking about Brexit in a positive light in all forms of media.  

Examples include Carole Malone (that Jeremy Vine TV programme "firebrand") who is against the cost of HS2 but cannot fathom (by joining the real world dots using joined up thinking) that Brexit is going to cost way, way more and is even more delusionally dim-witted than the reasons presented by those behind HS2. The same can also be said of those other Brexiteer commentators on Tim Vine's brother's panel show like Lowri Turner (herself an MMR sceptic) and Mike Parry who may well have got a hostile reception on his trip to the Edinburgh Festival if any people of a Scottish Independence or pro-EU persuasion were around.  

Mike Parry clearly has very little real world knowledge of border controls relevant to sustaining much needed peace in Ireland if he equates, and he did, controls like those you get in supermarket self-checkout tills. The two are in no way comparable. Don't believe me? Just try "checking yourself out" as per that idiotic analogy next time you're in Heathrow's Terminal 5 and watch the security team's reaction. He also showed his poor levels of perception when challenged by author Jemma Forte on a reversal of the Brexit situation with Germany (not the so-called UK) leaving. True to his form Parry did not want to hear it, listen to it or entertain just how bad it would be.

And once you see it you cannot ever "unsee" it. Funny how the doors of perception work...

At this point I could phrase all of this in terms of politics from the cbeebies  schedule but that would demean the more intellectually demanding BBC Children's content in much the same way to call the Brexiteer's "Muppets" would be an insult to Jim Henson's creation's, his family and his legacy. So I won't in either case.  It is however substantially worse than Charlie Brooker's "Black Mirror" prediction of a blue bear.

The only certainty is there is none with the cavalier attitude of the Brexiteer's. If there was there would have been publically available documents which could have been scrutinised as part of a mature minded debate. But as I said before deception and being not held to account seem to have been the main raison d'être of the plan to get out of the EU in the wake of the Scottish Indy Ref of 2014. 

The idea that "everything will be okay" after Brexit (still allegedly on 31st October) and that its similarly okay that the personal freedoms of choice which so many people including Brexiteer's enjoy  disappears when it comes to what you might want to eat, or even the countries you want to trade with or visit on holiday is not "Project Fear" but something else.  Something the Brexiteer's really, really don't like at all.

Project Reality.

And the cold, harsh, undeniable realism is that the most powerful trading bloc that the so-called United Kingdom (but actually isn't due to Brexit and English over-lord Imperialism) is nearest to is under no legal or moral obligation to trade with or continue with a cosy relationship with a bunch of morons who could not even complete a join the dots book for a four year old. And more crucially are acting a whole lot worse.

It's also no joke that other politicians and journalists have picked up on the real reasons for Brexit and the attitude of the English, who are still predominantly behind the idea, and the "Post Imperialist Superiority Inferiority" complex is at its root because the English don't have a "world daubed pink" and still hark back to "winning two world wars" proves the point. As does the fact those observations completely prove that they have all been sold the numerous lies still 100% connected to the entire Brexit con still being hawked on the ultra gullible public.

When the pro-Leave and Brexiteer's find all the prophecies surrounding the harsh realities of their own incredibly stupid choices bite down extremely hard upon them taking massive chunks out of their own cosy existence  just as they have been warned that it would will they still be calling it all "Project Fear" or, as I have stated "Project Reality"?

Do tell!

Paraphrasing Tom Petty, it won't be quite what Boris and Little Nige tell you, when you finally wake up and realise that you've painted yourself in a corner and are dancing alone in your own little zombie zoo...

So now that's been established what are the ways to resolve the Brexit issue?

1. A Confirmatory Referendum with all options on the ballot.

2. A General Election.

3. Full revocation of Article 50 and thus total removal of the Brexit issue allowing the divisions to heal and the so-called United Kingdom to regain a stronger pound and not threaten its business interests.

 This means that all three celtic nations not only could have, but actually do have significant reasons to summarily dump the English Unionists and their Brexiteer, imperialist and monarchist ways and form an alliance with Gibraltar within the EU trading block.

What Brexit will lead to is the following:

1. Boris will push ahead with his dangerous Brexit plan and totally fail. Which if you voted Remain you will find hilarious. And  his other plans will crash more often than Space-X rockets. That is  before Elon Musk has gone even more deranged on his social media when NASA pulls funding.

2.  The Scots, the Irish, the Welsh and Gibraltar will form their own pro-EU union group and go to the EU after they have had their fill of yet more Boris based disasters. And the Scots and the rest will directly benefit from the EU block trade deals as a result as England sinks into its own Brexit mire.

3. England will continue on its "We want Brexit at any cost" way. This will mean the dismantling of the country as it becomes another state in Donald "The Dump" Trump's nefarious plan which will destroy anything and everything left in the post worldwide financial meltdown world taken over by greedy Silicon Valley industrialists on a misguided quest to commercialise space.

4. Boris will end up on the same, but considerably worse trajectory as May-hem. Possibly in an even shorter timescale. And some may even call for May-hem back, all is forgiven. Clapped out (in many more ways than the one in Westminster) she is but she may well prove not as clapped out as the cluelessly inept Brexit plan in the first place.

5. And to anyone (especially Boris) who thinks that they can dictate to the Scots that they can never live autonomously within an independent Scotland, dare to say that to the face of a Scot who knows different. Big clue: there are plenty who have ideas that aren't as unstuck as unionism currently is due to the B word.

6. Item 5 also applies to Ireland and Wales as much as Gibraltar. And what are the pro-Brexit English unionists going to do if that happens?

renster 13 August 2018

All very sad

I have friends at both Nissan and JLR, and there's real concern that Brexit is basically going to make our car industry uncompetitive. There'll be no day-zero "shut down all the factories" but one of these companies has a business plan that involves "reinvigorating manufacturing approaches based on a number of Brexit manifestations".  Read into the plan and it's all about a 5-7 year plan for ramping down manufacturing in the UK and offshoring it to circumvent tariff and non-tariff barriers. Basically the only reason why ops are here in the UK is because we're an easy gateway to the EU, and that is increasingly looking like it's going. Even if some sort of superb negotiation is pulled off, UK ops has been sidelined, which means we need to work twice as hard to regain trust in the future.

Very sad days.

 

Peter Cavellini 13 August 2018

Halloween!....already?

  I dint know why this has turned into a Witch hunt?, instead of discussion we have a few going for the jugular of Autocar, all they asked for was opinions of the current situation which affects 99% of us ( if your well off, retired or ever Brexit you lucky things doesn’t really affect you) and hoped to get a few insight into how or what would or should be done, none should be chastised, it’s how they feel, they should be respected just like you’d expect to be.....