I was pretty happy on the morning of 24th June. I had not always wanted to to leave the EU, but after the disaster of the Euro and how they had handled the financial crises of 2008, I had come to the conclusion that this organisation was no longer fit for purpose. And so I was happy: we were going to leave. We had been told that the referendum results would be respected.
I knew that the £350 million claim on the side of a bus was exaggerated (more like £250 million), and that Turkey was not close to joining. They had not been a factor in my choice to leave. Now though, the lies of the Remain side were exposed. There was a drop in the pound, but there was no emergency budget or major job losses. There was no economic pandemonium as predicted. Project Fear had not been correct. More on that later.
There was political pandemonium however. David Cameron had resigned, which I was sad about, I had liked him as Prime Minister. He fitted the part and had the emotional intelligence required for the role. I did not want Boris Johnson as PM and rather favoured Michael Gove as an intelligent man with radical ideas and very good at explaining himself. Unfortunately, Theresa May got the premiership by everyone else taking themselves out.
She was immediately popular and I could not understand why. She had survived as Home Secretary for 6 years which is a great feat for the most difficult office of state. But she had done that by keeping her head down. You can't do that as Prime Minister. In my mind she had been impressive once, when telling the party that they were described as the nasty party back in a party conference years ago. I could not expect her to carry the public with her for long because of that lack of emotional intelligence. It would be found out soon.
The Prime Minister did say the right things, however, about the direction of Brexit. She wanted to respect the results and go for a free trade agreement while leaving. No longer in the customs union or single market. This was what had been promised in the leave campaign and by the leaders of the remain campaign. She did make a few mistakes though. Her speech of 'people of somewhere vs people of nowhere' rubbed some up the wrong way.
While the Prime Minister was formulating how to proceed, the losers of the referendum started trying to find ways to frustrate the way. First was Gina Miller making it necessary for Parliament to agree to Article 50 to be passed rather than the Prime Minister. Although this was a pretty good idea it made it so that the Government was wrapped up in this supreme court case rather than creating a good view of the process. The Government should have accepted that the UK parliament should have a vote quickly without fighting.
Instead the Government should have started preparations for no deal. Six months to a year of intense planning and legislation should have been prepared. All the while this would be a contingency. The Government should also have been forming a settled view on what they wanted for a future partnership. The Prime Minister made an impressive speech at Lancaster House. It was what I had wanted.
She need to steel herself to fight against the EU plan for a two stage process, withdrawal then trade talks. This needed to be rejected outright. The Irish border would make a catch 22 situation out of these two stages. There was no way the withdrawal could be completed without a settled view on the border for the ending trade deal.
Unfortunately, agreeing to the two stage process has brought us to where we are today. There would be a further major mistake along the way to make everything so much harder.
And then we had the General Election. Theresa May was exposed as the deeply unimpressive campaigner. The 'Maybot' was coined. Her popularity plummeted and Corbyn's improved. What a disaster. The very reason why I had not wanted Theresa May as Prime Minister in the first place was now the general view. She could never fight another election as Prime Minister. We now had a Government dependent on the DUP and much harder numbers for parliamentarians to get a majority. Again, what a disaster!
We had triggered Article 50 and the date set for March 29th 2019 for our exit earlier in April, but due to the stupid EU rules the clock was now ticking, and we did nothing visible really apart from fight a pointless general election.
After the election, we engaged in talks. During that time the forces of remain had started to gather again and it looked like not much progress was being made. In October the Prime Minister had her disastrous coughing fit at conference, and I could not watch. It wasn't her fault, but it did signify everything that was happening.
It was at this time that it felt like the talks were going awry. The Irish border was becoming a problem. In December the Prime Minister was desperate for a signal that the deal was getting closer and so there was some artificial milestone for which she got some agreement. But, it had a bad form of words around the border and this was damning. The Prime Minister told her colleagues it was just a form of words and not sacrosanct. In fact this was the time that the 'Backstop' came about. David Davis, our Brexit secretary, had been blind sided as the PMs adviser Olly Robbins had taken over the negotiations. It was definitely going the wrong way.
But it was some kind of agreement. They had decided on £39Bn payment and some more on the way forward including a transition agreement. But it wasn't the end of the first step, withdrawal, it was just the beginning. How depressing.
The remainers continued to gather.
2018 continued along with the EU saying 'we don't know what the UK want'. They did, the Lancaster house speech specified the direction. A further Florence speech had re-iterated the way. But the Government did not have a settled view on how close to the EU we would be. Would our rules mirror the EU's, or would we go our own way? The lack of a decided view kept popping out into the open, with Government ministers speaking against each other. Philip Hammond vs Boris Johnson epitomised this conflict. The Chancellor wanted to stay in the customs union. The Foreign Secretary wanted a free trade agreement but with good alignment, so called Canada+++. After all we started from a position of being fully aligned. The speeches of the Prime Minster had set the path for Canada+++.
Then the bombshell. While the Brexit department had been planning for a Canada+++ kind of arrangement, Olly Robbins acting on behalf of the PM had prepared a much closer relationship with close alignment. The Chequers agreement was unveiled. The Government secretaries had not had much of a view on this, it was being done behind the scenes by civil servants.
The Brexit secretary and Foreign secretary resigned, as did many other ministers. Theresa May had lost the trust of many and ripped up her previous speeches. It was disgraceful. The Tory European Research Group (ERG) were outraged. The Prime Minister had lost them.
And the backstop.
The backstop had emerged from the text from those seeds in December. It would continue to be argued and negotiated by the new Brexit secretary Dominic Raab, but he also didn't realise that he was just the face of Brexit and it was still Olly Robbins behind the scenes.
We were getting close to the withdrawal agreement emerging in full. The remainers had started a second referendum campaign, the so called 'People's Vote'. The first vote only having included the undead, animals and racists. Under the guise of 'we must be able to vote on the deal' this was just another way to undo the original referendum. If it wasn't then why would 'Remain' still be an option, and why is it only remainers who want a so called 'People's vote', who then say if it were to happen they'd vote remain, i.e. nothing to do with the deal.
The Withdrawal Agreement was agreed. The Backstop came fully into the open as a mechanism we may drop into as a customs union but with no exit clause. It was the worst aspect of the EU. Trying to trap us whilst saying they weren't. How could our Government agree to this constitutional hell?
The Brexit secretary again resigned as did many other ministers. This was truly dire.
Some remainers were now pushing a 'Norway for now' deal'. A kind of stop gap on the way to a Canada+++ deal. A way to stay in the single market. This would evolve into a Norway+ deal, the plus being for the Customs Union - as a way to solve the Irish border problem. This really is awful, it is essential EU-. We would have the single market and customs union without any voting rights. So much worse than now. This would be rebranded again into Common Market 2.0. An abomination of a solution that should never have been born. The one thing that they didn't really explain, was that the Withdrawal Agreement would still have to be agreed to anyway.
So to the votes. It was clear there was no chance of it being passed. The Tories were largely split. The Labour party would not agree to anything. Their own position as clear as a muddy field. Corbyn wants the Tories to take the blame and then come in as PM through a General Election. He desperately doesn't want the 'People's vote' as many of his backbenchers do. In that case he would have to come down on one side of Remain and Leave again, and he'd not done it well the first time. He would continue to obfuscate.
Half way through the debate the PM decided to pause the process. What for, who knows? But now the ERG were completely up in arms and submitted their letters of no confidence, which she won and would now be safe for a year. It was high drama. But the clock was still ticking.
Christmas came and went. 2019 and three months left. The calls in parliament by remainers now is that 'no-deal must be taken off the table'. What? How does that work? You cannot legislate that one side of a negotiation has to agree no matter what. So that's not the reason - it's so that we remain in the EU. Of course it is.
Project Fear 2.0 is around again. Mars bars won't be in Britain, we won't have lettuces, tomatoes, medicines, water. Britain will be a massive car park. The scare mongering hasn't worked time and time again, why does anyone think we'll buy this bunkum again. Yesterday the BBC said a survey had announced a third of UK businesses would move operations abroad in the event of no deal. Not big business alone, all businesses. Now only 6% of UK businesses export to the EU. 85% of UK businesses are completely internal, but of course all those hairdressers down the high street will up sticks and move to Germany because of Brexit. They take us for fools.
The vote started again with no reason for the pause. She lost big time, 230 votes down. A calamity. What now?
The media panels are infuriating. The referendum was won 52% leave, but since the referendum 70% of panellists on Question Time have been those who voted remain. On any Question Time panel there is one who favours leave, a Corbynite who voted remain and who can't give any straight answers but that we can't leave on no deal, a remainer who wants Common Market 2,0 (i.e. EU-) or a People's vote where they would vote to remain and some comedian who thinks that all leavers are racists. Oh and a Government minister who voted to remain but now, through gritted teeth, thinks we should leave with this horrible plan. It is so biased.
There's been a series of votes in parliament as the EU is still saying 'We don't know what you want'. A second referendum wasn't even voted on as there aren't the numbers in parliament for it, but it won't stop them saying it's the only way forward. Taking no deal off the table has had a semi-thumbs up, intention but no legislation. Norway+/EU- has not been put forward as it will go down in flames even harder than the 'People's vote'. But there was a vote to change the backstop.
Some progress. The Withdrawal Agreement is woeful but the backstop is the worst of it. We won't agree to it, and now we have Donald Tusk still saying, what do you want. Well, we've told you that we may just swallow the withdrawal agreement but the backstop has to be removed, time limited, or have an exit mechanism for the UK. No the EU says. 'The agreement is agreed it cannot be re-opened'. Well, it is not agreed. Parliament has not agreed to it. It is a worthless collection of 585 pages without parliament agreeing to it.
They may get the message, but for now we just get Irish, French and German politicians on our airwaves saying it cannot be changed. If there is an argument for leaving the EU, this is it. We cannot have any agreement because the EU is so inflexible. If anyone still thinks the EU can be reformed from within, take a look. It cannot.
Our remainers in parliament cannot reconcile themselves to the result of the referendum. They will try any way to stop us leaving. Norway+, EU-, Norway for Now, Common Market 2.0, People's Vote, Article 50 delayed, No deal off the table. They are all mechanisms to make sure we don't leave. And all those politicians are liars. They don't say that the real reason is to remain, but it is.
We can and should leave on 29th March. It will be bad if there is no deal, but we'll manage, and then we can put it all back together again. From outside the EU, they will will want a deal very quickly but without the threats. This time we won't be paying £39Bn. They will have had their chance, and their brinkmanship will not have worked, liked it didn't work when they brushed aside David Cameron's attempt at a meaningful renegotiation.
Maybe the EU will see sense and do something with the backstop, but they're holding out for our gutless remainers in parliament to take no deal off the table and do the EU's bidding for them. And I think that will happen.
If we don't leave soon, there will be a new party and we will leave one day soon when that party comes into power and revokes our membership at the drop of a hat.
We must leave on 29th March and move on with our lives, we cannot keep going around this. We are getting very angry.
Our crappy government led badly from the top has badly served us but the alternative is worse and this rotten rump of parliamentarians are helping the EU. Meanwhile the EU watches on saying 'NO' to anything reasonable.
That's why I'm More Leave Than Ever.
Squiffy.
