Britain will not leave the EU without a deal and the EU will not kick Britain out. This impasse could continue for a very long time until Britain withdraws Article 50, holds another election or holds a second referendum.
Before any of those three things happen, we need a new Prime Minister, who will be a Leaver and prepared to leave with no deal, though if he does this Parliament will not allow it.
Before any of those three things happen, we need a new Prime Minister, who will be a Leaver and prepared to leave with no deal, though if he does this Parliament will not allow it.
However many Remain Tory MPs are deselected nor will the next one, assuming Nigel Farage's party does not win hundreds of seats. This is one reason why there is not much point in another election for now.
Another is that Jeremy Corbyn would probably win, in coalition with the various nationalist parties including his friends in Sinn Fein.
The Tories have handled Brexit appallingly, but if the Tories lose office Brexit will never happen.
Their only hope is to find a new leader, achieve Brexit somehow (but how?) and hope people forget the last three years.
Thank God the European Parliamentary elections will enable the British to give their opinions on their political rulers, via proportional representation (something I think is undemocratic, but not this time). I'd be surprised if the Conservatives win any seats. I can imagine Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party doing very well indeed.
Another is that Jeremy Corbyn would probably win, in coalition with the various nationalist parties including his friends in Sinn Fein.
The Tories have handled Brexit appallingly, but if the Tories lose office Brexit will never happen.
Their only hope is to find a new leader, achieve Brexit somehow (but how?) and hope people forget the last three years.
Thank God the European Parliamentary elections will enable the British to give their opinions on their political rulers, via proportional representation (something I think is undemocratic, but not this time). I'd be surprised if the Conservatives win any seats. I can imagine Nigel Farage's new Brexit Party doing very well indeed.
Europe and the British political elite, by not allowing Brexit, illustrate why the people wanted independence and why it is necessary. We have seen that the EU and the UK are so enmeshed that the EU controls Britain, Britain seemingly cannot escape and the people know it.
I used to be in favour of the EEC, as was Fraser Nelson, editor of the Spectator. He, like most Brexiteers whom I know, went along with British membership until the year before the referendum. Had it not been for the referendum things would have carried on as before, but now they can't (and how can that not be a good thing in a democracy?)
Fraser Nelson says today in the Daily Telegraph:
A democratic realignment, forcing politicians to realise that the rules they are playing by, forged in the late-Nineties, are long out of date. The nation state is back. Border control is back. Neither is a bad thing. Those who value them are not bad people.
If support for Brexit were dependent on how the Tories have handled it, a second referendum would be a slam-dunk for Remain. But it’s about far more – which is why, after weighing it all up, I’m more inclined than I was in 2016 to think that Brexit is necessary. Trying to ignore the demands of those who want it guarantees far worse problems later on.
What, you might ask, could be worse than the political mess we see now? If we give up on Brexit, I suspect we will find out.The curtain has fallen on this act of the drama and we can move on to thinking about other things. I am bored with Brexit and so are you.
The larger European stories are more interesting than Brexit: the crisis in the Christian churches, especially in the Catholic Church; the declining birth-rate; the imminent recession in the Eurozone; continued economic and political decline; mass immigration into Europe; the accelerating rate at which Europe is ceasing to be Christian and, as foreseen by such historians as Bernard Lewis, Neagu Djuvara, Tom Gallagher and Ruth Dudley Edwards, slow Islamification.
These things will, I imagine, lead to anti-establishment, anti-immigration parties coming to power in most countries. It is least likely to happen in the UK, because our electoral system makes it hard for third parties to do well, though the Liberal Democrats and Scottish Nationalists proved it can happen, and because our geographical position should in theory make it easier to resist demands to take in migrants. Germans will be late to join the party but they will do so.
After that I cannot foresee, but I somehow suspect that even new parties in charge will not be able to save the nation-states of Europe. It is the elites of each country that have to change. An election or referendum result will not change things if the establishment refuses to accept it. The one real problem Europe suffers from is very misguided elites in church, state and the education system.
It may be boring now, but it could get interesting really fast if Corbyn wins the elections and he does Brexit, then nationalises things left and right, blocks immigration from the EU, etc.
ReplyDeleteThe hard left sees the EU as an obstacle due to its rules about state aid and so forth. Also, it takes a very negative view to low skilled migration.
These things are bound to destroy the UK economy, which would lose competitiveness.
I am always amazed by members of the 1m disenfranchised UK citizens living in the EU, having any sympathy for the Brexit cause in which they had no say. I have found that many have an EU passport they keep quiet about in the debates, like Farage.
ReplyDeleteRegrettably Britons living abroad can vote unless they have lived abroad fifteen years. This is unjustifiable but does win the Tories votes, though expats are not the right-wingers they were in the 1970s but as globalist and socially liberal as their contemporaries back home.
DeleteThe larger European stories are more interesting than Brexit: the crisis in the Christian churches, especially in the Catholic Church; the declining birth-rate; the imminent recession in the Eurozone; continued economic and political decline; mass immigration into Europe; the accelerating rate at which Europe is ceasing to be Christian and, as foreseen by such historians as Bernard Lewis, Neagh Djuvara, Tom Gallagher and Ruth Dudley Edwards, slow Islamification.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. But solving those problems would be hard work. Unlike Brexit, which to many of its supporters is a magical solution that will automatically make everything OK again.
It is possible that these problems can't be solved, that the illness of our civilisation is in fact terminal.
Birth rates have plummeted everywhere, apart from sub-Saharan Africa. There may be no way to keep capitalism going. Can capitalism adapt to a world of rapidly declining populations? A world in which GDP steadily declines?
And sadly I don't see a future for Christianity. It has made so many concessions to liberalism and secularism that the heart has been torn out of Christianity. Christianity faced some very determined and implacable enemies but to a large extent it destroyed itself.
You said, in a comment on another post, that our leaders can keep out immigrants if they want to do so. Birth rates are falling, not just in the white or rather formerly white countries but in much of the Third World, but not in most African countries. It is expected (by the UN) that Africa will have about 9 times as many people by 2100 as it had in 1950, while the population of Europe only grows slightly and that growth is due to immigration. World population overall is rising fast. Sufficient unto the day...
ReplyDeleteIt is expected (by the UN) that Africa will have about 9 times as many people by 2100 as it had in 1950
DeleteThe overall global trend is downwards. Countries that had high birth rates in 1950 now have catastrophically low birth rates. It is difficult to think of a single example of a country that has had a sustained long-term increase in birth rates.
I can still remember a time when it was believed that China was facing disaster due to overpopulation. Now China is facing disaster due to demographic collapse.
As the cancers of liberalism, feminism and consumerism spread fertility rates plummet. This has happened everywhere outside of sub-Saharan Africa so there is no reason to think it won't happen there as well. Population growth predictions for the year 2100 are unreliable to say the least.
You said, in a comment on another post, that our leaders can keep out immigrants if they want to do so
How are these sub-Saharan African hordes going to reach Europe? They can't walk across the Mediterranean. Stopping the flow of immigrants from Africa is a childishly simple task. It hasn't happened because European leaders don't want to stop the flow. The European elites want these immigrants. Sadly, most European Christians seem to want those immigrants as well. In fact most Europeans want the immigrants because they believe immigration means economic growth and they believe that economic growth means more money in their pockets.