Question: what do all the people pressing hardest for the UK to leave the EU have in common? I’m thinking in particular of the politicians, newspaper owners (who set the agenda for their editors – and, all too often, for the BBC to follow) and the small minority of Leave-supporting business leaders.
Answer: they are either non-UK citizens or have made financial plans – being rich to very rich – to protect their own interests in the event of a “no-deal” departure. This generally means transferring funds to a secretive off-shore tax haven or moving (some of) their business interests outside the UK. In short, they have no concern about “the national interest”, even if many of them mouth the words without understanding their meaning.
A disproportionate number of them were privately educated, usually at the poshest of schools where a sense of “entitlement to rule” was taught above all else. The celebrated author John Le Carré recently condemned Eton alumni as “the curse of the earth”. See, for example, this article: (NB: I think this is a first for me! An article from Mail Online!)
Our Government
It’s likely that Theresa May is doing her best. The trouble is, her best is crap. As Polly Toynbee writes in today’s Guardian, “Never in living memory was Britain worse governed.” I agree. Since I wrote my post Hopeless just under a month ago, virtually nothing good has come from May. True, the Conference season has come and gone. For the most part, the Tory main hall was two-thirds empty, with activists crowding to fringe meetings to hear even worse Tory politicians. Oh, and May’s speech contained at least one big lie: the end to austerity.
EU negotiations continue to stumble from crisis to crisis: above all, no solution is in sight to the Irish border issue. It gives me no pleasure to say I warned on this in my February 2016 post We Are Entitled to Proper Government. And this was four months before the referendum vote (and when Cameron – who he? – was still PM).
The “confidence and supply” agreement by the DUP was designed to prop up the failing minority Tory government. Despite this, Arlene Foster has issued threats to vote against the budget later this month unless May conceded to her logically impossible demands. There has been no visible response to this from May and this weakens her position further.
EU Summit
And so, here we are, just two days away from the EU summit. The 18th of October was supposed to be the “absolute final” date when negotiations were completed in detail and the UK agreed terms with the EU27. It’s not looking like that. Talk of an additional “emergency” summit in November is conditional on “maximum progress” being made by the 18th. That doesn’t seem credible unless May changes tack and embraces the reality of what would pass a vote in the House of Commons. Held hostage by the DUP and the Leave extremists (and fantasists) in her own party, May’s actions and inactions make a failure to agree terms with our European neighbours ever more likely.
Who’s All Right?
Either way, those who fund and propagandise for the Tories will be all right, whichever way things turn out. Jeremy Corbyn has made sensible suggestions for compromise (with which I don’t entirely agree, but it’s better than anything May’s government has said). He was genuinely speaking in the national interest. When are a sufficient majority of people in this country going to wake up to the stark fact that the Tories work only in the interest of the privileged few?
