Why Brexit won’t happen

This article is later than planned because I am in China; I simply cannot access email, search engine or social media (no doubt to the relief of many).

I have, however, seen former deputy prime Minister Nick Clegg arguing persuasively that the Brexit decision should be reconsidered by the British public again:

“The world, in terms of the world that Britain has to inhabit, in the decades ahead, has changed out of all recognition. Strategically speaking since the summer of 2016.”

I couldn’t agree more.

Malta is the epicentre of World gaming design but I doubt anyone was even remotely dreaming of a World of Treason game in 2016 which would have included:

• The President of the USA saying the EU is a bigger threat to the US than China and Russia
• A trade war started by America designed to destroy the same global system established to benefit America and largely policed by America
• American law, liberty and democracy as enshrined in the American Constitution and the current American President in an existential fight against one other

As I flew out of internet access, I caught the breaking news that the official British Leave Campaign had received heavy fines and had been referred for criminal prosecution.

The day of reckoning for the ‘Bad Boys of Brexit’- Nigel Farage, Arron Banks, Cambridge Analytica, dark money through the Democratic Unionist Party in Northern Ireland with links to Julian Assange and Steve Bannon, and points East (Russia), yet to come.

Theresa May is the accidental Prime Minister in a Cabinet of no talents.

“A week is a long time in politics” and there are 34 of them before Article 50 officially dumps Britain out of the EU on 29 March 2019.

“Events dear boy, events,” former British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan had answered when asked what was the biggest challenge as British Prime Minister.

To quote another Tweet I have just seen:

“Donald Trump’s day so far: Indictments & arrests left and right – GOP running away from him – Michael Cohen trolls him – Paul Manafort flipping on him? – It’s still only 7am.”

I think you get my drift, events outside of Westminster are almost certainly going to overwhelm Brexit before Article 50 takes effect. For what it is worth, I suspect Malta is another cork on the ocean wave where external events could impact domestic politics decisively.

There are also overwhelming British domestic reasons for believing Brexit doomed:

• Labour rebels habitually vote with Conservatives (Corbyn did so over 600 times before being elected leader) and are Brexit’s best friends but the Tory split on Brexit looks irreconcilable and terminal. Don’t ask me how or when the split will happen but they really, really hate each other. It is the old adage that civil war is the most vicious.
• Theresa May is the accidental Prime Minister in a Cabinet of no talents. Lawrence Gonzi could give her a master class on Machiavelli. Seriously, I have crossed swords with her – she is rigid, self-righteous and not very bright.
• The extra Parliamentary anti-Brexit movement has momentum, multiple lines of attack and crucially has won the argument that it is not patriotic to trash your own economy and destroy your own people’s entitlements.
• The association of Brexit with Trump and Putin is beginning to stick in people’s minds, so only 20% of the population passionately supports it now- the hanging, flogging, wogs begin at Dover brigade.

We know who our friends are and they are our fellow Europeans.

And to the killer arguments:

• Tragically for the UK, ‘Project Fear’ became Boardroom contingency plans to relocate and is now the Great Brexodus of economic activity. It is uncertainty business abhors the most and we have no more idea what Brexit means today than we did on 24 June 2016.
• People are waking up to the hard reality that without any “progress”, Britain really does wake up to driving licenses being invalid, flights stopping, the Kent lorry park and emergency food rations on 30 March 2019. This is no exaggeration- these things automatically happen if the Tories fail to agree what they want to ask from the EU.
• And of course, there has been zero preparation in the UK for the biggest civil upheaval in living memory.

A parting plea:

British public opinion has been pro-European in every opinion poll for 45 years except for a tiny aberration around the Brexit Referendum. Please Europe, welcome us back, embrace us when we overturn Brexit.

The most passionate, best informed Europeans are now in the UK. Unlike the EU27, we have had to seriously look at leaving and we know how terrifyingly vulnerable and inconsequential we are outside on our own.

We know who our friends are and they are our fellow Europeans.