Brexit quotations

Tom McTague

@TomMcTague

So: The Boris Johnson who was involved in sham negotiations, wasn’t. The Benn act which chopped the legs out from under the negotiations, didn’t. The EU which would never reopen the exit agreement, did. The Irish govt that would never engage in bilateral negotiations, did.

Tom McTague

 @TomMcTague

Final counter intuitive thought. David Davis (remember him) used to say two things which received much mockery: 1) UK should fight sequencing 2) It will all be decided at last minute —Was he wrong?

"I support EU exit even if I don't want it."

Ruth Davidson

“I say this once and for all, and I hope that nobody inside or outside my party will raise this issue again. The Lega does not have any intention of taking Italy out of the euro or the European Union.”
Matteo Salvini

Historians do not understand current affairs as well as taxi drivers

Toby Young

@toadmeister

·

4h

If Boris succeeds in taking us out on October 31st some Remainers are literally going to go mad.

Quote Tweet

Simon Schama

@simon_schama

· Oct 14

Should this non- government succeed in forcing our exit from the EU on Halloween let all of us who bitterly mourn ring funeral bells and light bonfires of rage and grief and resolution at 12 pm - up and down the nation

This is the news

Boris and the Tories, including most of the ones who who have lost the whip, minus a very few Remain extremists like Philip Hammond, very badly need a deal. Even the Spartans do, but Leo Eric Varadkar needs one just as badly to win his election and the DUP needs one very badly to hold on to its supporters. 

If the Tories, DUP and Eire agree it is hard to imagine Michel Barnier, Emmanuel Macron or Mrs. Merkel preventing  a deal. Though what is most important for me is getting a Canada Dry trade agreement: free trade for Great Britain with Europe but free of the need for regulatory alignment. I do not know if Boris can get that.

The Daily Telegraph, that loves its former employee Boris, has this lead headline.

Brexit latest news: UK and EU closing in on a deal, as negotiating teams work on legal text

The Guardian that detests him has this, a bit cavilling but saying much the same :

Boris Johnson 'on brink of Brexit deal' after border concessions

The BBC's lead headline is

Brexit: Talks continuing amid claims deal is close

The Independent, which has campaigned for a second referendum, manages to make the same thing sound like Boris has been rebuffed by the EU with contempt.


Not good enough says Barnier tells Johnson to agree deal by midnight or return to MPs empty-handed

But at least they have much the same news. I have seen the Hungarian local elections portrayed as a massive defeat and a great victory for Viktor Orban's party in English language newspapers, depending on the paper's point of view, without any explanation for readers that another interpretation is possible. 

This is not acceptable. 

In the USA no coverage of Donald Trump is worth even reading outside avowedly conservative sources, whatever your politics, because the others so distort the truth, from over-powering indignation and an essentially religious idea that he represents the forces of darkness. 

The same is true of news in all the mainstream media about populists.

Barnier thinks a Brexit deal possible this week

Michel Barnier just said

“This work has been intense all over the weekend and yesterday, because even if the agreement will be difficult, more and more difficult to be frank, it is still possible this week - reaching an agreement is still possible, obviously any agreement must work for everyone, the whole of the UK and the whole of the EU.

“Let me add that it is also high time to turn good intentions into a legal text.”

Last night, on the BBC's TV programme Newsnight, British cabinet minister Robert Jenrick said rightly, 

"The EU is capable of moving extremely quickly if they wish to. Like any negotiation with the EU, and in fact with any major negotiation in life, everything happens at the last minute." 

Boris Johnson has postponed the cabinet meeting this morning till tomorrow. That makes me hopeful.

The Telegraph’s Peter Foster has a very interesting and detailed account of the negotiations and Boris Johnson’s insistence on regulatory freedom from the EU.“The negotiations remain on a knife-edge,” he adds.

Tom McTague in the Atlantic writes interestingly as ever, though being American he sees Boris as a Trumpian figure, which he is not (he's much more like an interesting, eloquent, likable Hillary if such a thing is imaginable). 

Tom McTague says that 

“Politically, winning is not about the score sheet of diplomatic concessions. Nor is it concerned with whether Brexit is sensible, stupid, visionary, or disastrous.” 

He thinks that the PM’s strategy is doing well with voters.

Jacob Rees-Mogg says a deal can pass the House of Commons.

Brexit today

Mr. Macron and Mrs. Merkel had dinner together last night in Paris, presumably to discuss Brexit. I wonder in what language they spoke to each other.

Angela Merkel does speak English, but rarely does so in public. Growing up in East Germany learned Russian is her second language. In February 2014, when she addressed both Houses of the British Parliament she delivered the first half of her speech in English. Mr Macron however speaks English and German well, so I imagine they spoke in German.

Boris speaks French and Italian well and German and Spanish reasonably well, since you ask.

Is Boris's proposal a reheated version of Mrs May's custom partnership as so many people hostile to him are saying? No, because it would enable the UK to make free trade agreements with non-EU countries.

But all is fiendishly complicated.

Jennifer Rankin of the Guardian in her Twitter thread: 

"What if, EU officials are asking, “chicken (chlorinated perhaps) is imported into NI and then made into ready meals that are sold in the EU market. In this case, how do you make distinction between goods entitled to enter the EU market and those that are not?”

Oliver Wright in the Times says:

“In a move that will put more pressure on No. 10, the EU said that it was prepared to back the plan in principle even if a legal text could not be finalised in time for the summit — provided that Mr Johnson gave ground. This could lead to the prime minister returning from Brussels with a political deal that could be put to a vote in the Commons on Saturday, with a legal agreement to be finalised afterwards.”

Alex Wickham and Alberto Nardelli, writing for BuzzFeed, surmise that

“If the EU accepted in principle Johnson’s customs partnership for the Northern Ireland proposal without a backstop, but said it needed more time to iron out the details, Johnson could agree a three month technical extension to Article 50.”

He said we would leave on 31 October (17 days from today) do or die. Would everyone understand if he had to delay it by three months for technical reasons? 

Even if they don't, if in three months time we have left thanks to him, the delay will be forgotten.

'In normal times, and don't they seem a very long time ago?'

'In normal times, and don't they seem a very long time ago, all our would have been focussed on today's Queen Speech.. '

Mishal Husain on BBC Radio 4's Today programme just now.

Apart from Brexit, as the Government has a majority in the House of Commons of minus 40 the proposals in the Most Gracious Speech stand absolutely no chance of being enacted before an election. Her Majesty is therefore reading out the Tory election manifesto. I am a bit surprised that she is reading it herself. Queen Victoria was the first monarch to do so regularly and it was part of her reinvention of the monarchy.

When Harold Wilson came to power in 1964, Private Eye put the monarch, reading her speech, on its cover with the speech bubble: “And I hope you realise I didn’t write this crap” but this is the case every year.

Trump's foreign policy is neither isolationist nor interventionist, but America First

Trump's foreign policy is neither isolationist, as Pat Buchanan and Paul Gottfried would like, nor warlike as John Bolton and the neoconservatives would like, but finds a midway path between the two. This does not mean it has no logic. Its logic is 'America First' and, if you like, nationalism. What it certainly is not is about values and Trump has saved a lot of American blood and treasure by, for example, not going to war against Syria or helping the Saudis against Iran. 

This time Trump has made a very bad move, though the real story behind his decision is one that we do not know and probably is linked to Saudi Arabia and Yemen, where a nastier war is taking place in which the UK and US are complicit. Erdogan is blackmailing 'MBS', the Crown Prince of Saudi Arabia, with the tapes of Khashoggi's torture and murder.

Few Republicans support the President's action but one who does is Sen. Rand Paul who tweeted that Trump was fulfilling “his promises to stop our endless wars and have a true America First foreign policy.”

Kurds turn to Syrian government and Russia to save them from Turkey

Jenan Moussa, reporter for Arabic Al Aan TV, says Turks invading Syrian territory have been welcomed by pro-Turkish Islamists. The Kurds, with no choice, have asked help from the Syrian government and the Russians. 

Turkish-backed Arab militias have been executing Kurds, say US military officials.

It is the end of their statelet, Rojava. 

They would have done better to have made a deal with the Syrian government sooner. They could not remain on the Turkish border indefinitely without Syrian and Russian help, nor could they indefinitely rule Arab areas.

I have blogged before about the links between the Turkish government and the Islamists. I also said years ago that Britain and America should leave Russia and Iran to sort out Syria, which has been in Russia's sphere of influence for fifty years, rather than make things worse by interfering. 

Keeping out of Syria is what Obama appeared to do, although covertly there were many Anglo-American troops in the country. Trying not to be the world's policeman is a big thing he had in common with his nemesis Trump.

In the end though, Obama armed and backed the PKK against ISIS.  Had Hillary won the election she had said that her top priority was regime change in Syria. This would have infinitely worse than the disaster we see today.

She intended to use the Kurds to overthrow Assad, just as Trump did use them to defeat ISIS. The Kurds therefore failed to see that the Americans would stop protecting them, though they should have done so.

But though leaving Syria made sense in theory, since the Americans had a thousand troops in Syria they should have used this to leverage an agreement involving the various parties, rather than this grand guignol. 

The curiously shabby and ill thought-out way in which Donald Trump decided to remove troops from two towns, immediately followed by a Turkish invasion, may hurt him very much in Congress and at the election next year. 

The Yazidis and some Christians are Kurds, though they are usually classed separately. Around 750,000 Kurds are in the area under Turkish attack, and they are said to include between 40,000 and 100,000 Kurdish Christians (though the numbers may be inflated as many Christians have been leaving Syria since long before the war).

The  Christian Right in America will not take kindly to the persecution of Christians by Turks.

This, from Patrick Cockburn in 2018, is prescient.

Retired U. S. General John Allen, who supported Hillary at the last election, wrote this in an email to Jake Tapper of CNN:

"This unfolding humanitarian catastrophe was completely foreseeable. The US green lighted it. There was no chance Erdogan would keep his promise, and full blown ethnic cleansing is underway by Turkish-supported militias. This is what happens when Trump follows his instincts and because of his alignment with autocrats.

"I said there would be blood, but could not have imagined this outcome. There is blood on Trump’s hands for abandoning our Kurdish allies.

"His gesture of $50m in aid is hollow. Who’s going to administer it and for whom? Hundreds of thousands are fleeing and the relief agencies are on the move. 

"NATO and the UN have to take up this matter immediately; UN as to whether or not to endorse Turkey’s invoking Article 51* and NATO and the EU to demand Turkish clarification of Erdogan's threat to release 3.6m refugees -- a direct threat to Euro stability and NATO security."

I do not usually read Ron Paul but shall start doing so. I do not trust many people who write about world politics but I see that his view of the world is close to mine. He is one of the very few genuine American republicans with a big and small 'r'.

Here is what he wrote four days ago and it makes sense to me. 

"Trump’s detractors in Washington have denounced his decision as a “betrayal” of the Kurds, accusing the president of abandoning the force that the Pentagon has used as boots on the ground against IS in eastern Syria. Recall that it was the Kurdish-led “Syrian Democratic Forces” (SDF) that liberated Raqqa – “capital” of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) – in October 2017.

"Thing is, the Obama administration sought to create some kind of parallel government in those territories, in line with its policy of demanding regime change in Damascus and the overthrow of Syrian President Bashar Assad. 

If Kurdish leaders thought this would somehow translate into support for statehood, or dominion over traditionally Arab-majority territories, they were dangerously deluded. Trump has made it clear from the beginning of his presidency that he had no interest in “nation-building” anywhere, and has tried to put that info effect despite constant pushback from the US establishment.

"What happened in August 2016 should have also been a clue – and offers a possible way out of the present conundrum. Back then, Turkey invaded from the north in 'Operation Euphrates Shield,' attacking the Kurds from the rear just as the SDF was launching the major push against Raqqa. The US did nothing to stop this. Only when the Syrian Arab Army – accompanied by Russian observers – stepped in to create a buffer zone between the Turks and the SDF, did the invasion stop.

"While Ankara thinks nothing of attacking the Kurds, it is hard to imagine it would dare open fire on Syrian troops – or the Russians fighting alongside them. The obvious solution for the Kurds is to make a deal with Damascus and secure the protection of the Syrian government that the US could never provide. This would keep them safe, while keeping Damascus happy and Ankara without grounds to object.

"The only ones displeased by this would be regime-change advocates in Washington – but that’s their problem."

Pope Francis canonises St John Henry Newman

Here is the clip.

St John Henry Newman, as Catholics must now think of him, said to a friend when he became a Catholic priest, 'I no longer have the right to be considered a gentleman'.

This is the Irish Prime Minister's comment which makes no sense. 

Leo Varadkar

@LeoVaradkar

· 2h

Canonisation of Cardinal Newman is significant day for all Catholics and for Ireland. Left remarkable legacy here including founding UCD, and changed our idea of education. One of finest writers of his time, and committed to ecumenical cooperation between churches

'Ecumenical' in Newman's day referred to Councils of the Catholic Church only. Ecumenism in its modern sense was invented in the 20th century and St John Henry Newman would not have approved of it until required to by the Second Vatican Council. His attitude to the Church of England after his conversion was not in the least 'ecumenical'. I imagine he thought Anglicans could be saved from hell by their invincible ignorance that the Church of Rome was the True Church.

He wouldn't have approved of Mr Varadkar's sex life, either. The Church thinks it an unnatural mortal sin that deserves damnation.

Cardinal Burke, a leading critic of Pope Francis, told the 'Daily Telegraph' that he was praying to Newman to “intercede” to protect the Church from error.
Here are more things St John Henry Newman said.

'To be deep in history, is to cease to be Protestant.'

'The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the

Robert Tombs: 'Misguided Remainers do not understand European history'

There's another corker of an article in today's Sunday Telegraph by my quondam supervisor Professor Robert Tombs.

Some quotations.

'If Europe needs a security guarantee for some of its borders, it comes from NATO, of which Britain remains the leading European member. But the real guarantee of European peace is that its states are democracies. Democracies do not go to war with each other. The only threat to European peace is whatever threatens its democratic stability, which I fear today includes the EU itself.

Can a government led by Bercow unite the British nation? Do me a favour

Since September 11th 2001 world politics has resembled a cheap novel that has little regard for plausibility. That is why, after all, Jeremy Corbyn is leader of the Labour Party. According to the Sunday Times today, he has told allies that he will step aside and allow someone else to become prime minister if Boris is forced from office, thus denying him a wonderful opportunity to campaign against a pro-IRA Trotskyite Prime Minister put in office by Remainers. 

His choice would be a Government of All the [Remainer] Talents, led by the Speaker, John Bercow, whom the sainted Rod Liddle aptly described in last week's Sunday Times as

"Everything you loathe about our current parliament — its narcissism, its contempt for the voter, its bumptiousness, its idiocy — all wrapped up in one tiny little bundle. For comedy value, that has its attractions."

Speaker Bercow was a Tory MP who had moved a long way to the left after he married and had been expected to cross the floor before Labour MPs made him Speaker. They did so to annoy the Tories, a plan which has succeeded better then in their wildest dreams.

A letter to the Sunday Times says

“A puppet government, led by a noisy garden gnome, will unite nobody”

but a Government of National Unity led by him might unite the country because few people can stand him.

But then a 'government of national unity' is a deceitful name for a government formed to impose the view of 48% of the people over 52%, so unity is beside the point.
John Bercow would be the third Speaker to be Prime Minister, the other two being Henry Addington, who replaced Pitt the Younger from 1801 till 1804 and signed the Treaty of Amiens with Napoleon, and William Greville who, following Pitt's death in office in 1806, headed the previous "Ministry of All the Talents". 

Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman was offered the Speakership and considered accepting it while Liberal leader but this would have meant ceasing to be leader of his party. Instead he became Prime Minister when the Tory Prime Minister A.J. Balfour resigned unexpectedly in 1905, the last time a political party has come to power in the U.K. without a general election.

Why would Boris be forced from office? Ostensibly to prevent him somehow taking the UK out of the EU on Hallowe'en, in reality to make sure a referendum is held before an election because this is the best chance Remainers have of preventing Brexit altogether. 

Very recently they simply wanted to prevent the country leaving the EU without a deal. Now thanks to the long campaign by Tony Blair, Sir Keir Starmer and others, they see a good chance of stopping Brexit altogether.



Very recently they simply wanted to prevent the country leaving the EU without a deal. Now thanks to the long campaign by Tony Blair, Sir Keir Starmer and others, they see a good chance of stopping Brexit altogether.



A second referendum is always called a 'People's Vote', as if dogs and cats voted in the last one, the result of which has not been implemented. Like 'government of national unity' it's the technique of the Big Lie.

To be or not to be, that is the question

An anonymous source in the EU told the Tim Shipman of the Sunday Times that the chances of a deal between the EU and the UK were 50-50. Presumably it was another anonymous source who told the Andrew Gimson of the Independent that there was no chance that the EU would accept Boris's proposal.

John Rentoul in the Independent today:

'I do not know how likely a deal is, but I observe that the interests of the parties are aligned. There is a majority for a deal in the House of Commons, including the Democratic Unionist Party. And the EU27 want a deal, including the Irish government. If there is something that satisfies both Arlene Foster and Leo Varadkar, it will happen.'

Daniel Hannan, in today's Sunday Telegraph, does not expect a Brexit agreement and blames Remainers :

'You can hardly blame the EU for behaving as it has. Once it became clear that most British MPs, and a fair chunk of the electorate, would applaud its every action, right or wrong, it toughened its position. Each new Commons vote was met with incredulous joy in Brussels. “You mean if we keep saying ‘non’, you’re legally not allowed to leave? OK, then: ‘Non!’”


'Which brings us to the latest negotiations, and the speculation about a new breakthrough based around some sort of all-Ireland economy. I am less optimistic than most commentators about an agreement. As long as Eurocrats believe that a failure to strike a deal will result in our staying in, they have little incentive to engage. I reckon we are headed for an impasse, an extension, an election and a victorious return for a turbo-charged Boris Johnson.'

 Here is a source who is not anonymous, quoted by Adam Boulton in the Sunday Times.

'The Hungarian MEP Klara Dobrev, who is a vice-president of the European parliament and wife of Hungary’s former prime minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, told me there was a real possibility that her country’s premier, Viktor Orban, will veto any extension for the UK at the summit, not so much to please Johnson as to please Vladimir Putin by fomenting disorder in the West.'

She however is a daughter of the Communist nomenklatura, a social democrat and not privy to Viktor Orban's thoughts. 

Quotations

“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.”

Epictetus

"It is a misfortune," thought Augusto, "that we need the service of things and have to make use of them. All beauty is marred by use, if not destroyed. The noblest function of things is that of being contemplated. How beautiful is an orange before dinner!"
Miguel de Unamuno (1864-1936), Mist

“Fame is not really real. Nobody is real except the people we're close to.” 

Allen Ginsberg, quoted by Michael Rectenwald

“The educated differ from the uneducated as much as the living differ from the dead.”
Aristotle

“No great mind has ever existed without a touch of madness.”
Aristotle

"A man loses contact with reality if he is not surrounded by his books."
François Mitterrand

Free Speech on the Internet: the Empire Strikes Back

'The former Belgian prime minister’s choice of the word “empire” — with its connotations of conquest — was unfortunate. The EU is an empire by invitation. Nobody is forced to join. And, despite the difficulties of Brexit, any member is free to leave. It would be more accurate to say that the EU can and should aspire to be a superpower — one of four or five major global powers, capable of shaping the world order. That aspiration is eminently achievable. Indeed, in important respects, it has already been achieved. Last week provided an interesting illustration when the European Court of Justice ruled that individual countries can demand that Facebook take down defamatory content, on a global basis. The ECJ ruling was made in response to a complaint from an Austrian politician — and prompted an immediate and concerned response from Facebook. If this had just been a ruling by an Austrian court, the Californian internet giant would have been able to brush it off. But the ECJ has sway over a market of more than 500m people — compared with the 9m in Austria.'

Many do not recognise the European Union as an empire that is easy to leave, but let's leave that aside 

Gideon Rachman, writing in the Financial Times on October 7, 2019, rejoiced that criticisms of politicians on Facebook can now be banned worldwide by courts in European Union countries. 

Although a journalist he is pleased about restrictions on free speech. Many journalists these days are. I heard an FT man deplore 'breaches of privacy' by the Daily Mail.

This is the story about Facebook. On April 3, 2016, a Facebook user posted a news article with the headline,

“Greens: Guaranteed Minimum Income for Refugees Should Stay”

Said by Professor Michael Rectenwald

“The politics that most clearly aligns with the world-wide global interests of monopoly corporations is contemporary left-wing politics.”

“But the governmentality of Big Digital is now engaged in directing, constraining, and framing of online behaviors. As such, Big Digital may be a means by which the oversight and control functions that were formerly the province of national governments have been delegated to the market.”

"But “racist” is to the contemporary U.S. what “enemy of the people” was to the Soviet Union. Social justice ideology is the religion of the state and “racism” is the chief heresy."

Democracy

'There is in all democratic power, a fortiori in all pure democratic power, a hidden oligarchy, which is at the same time contrary to its principles yet indispensable to its functioning.'
François Furet, Penser la Révolution française, 1978

Robert Kaplan on the Chinese

'The American foreign policy elite does not like to talk about culture since culture cannot be quantified, and in this age of extreme personal sensitivity, what cannot be quantified or substantiated by a footnote is potentially radioactive.… Anyone who travels in China, or even observes it closely, realizes something that the business community intuitively grasps better than the policy community: the reason there is little or no separation between the public and private domains in China is not only because the country is a