The largest ‘Con trick’ ever attempted by a UK government must be exposed
The EU’s Withdrawal Deal, initially touted by Theresa May, now being pushed by Boris Johnson, and an increasingly complicit national press, has always had one key, overriding objective,
– to delay the UK’s actual Withdrawal from the EU for as long as possible,
– thereby providing as much time as possible for it to be prevented / reversed.
The Tories in Westminster are mostly Remainers, and their beloved party is mostly funded by UK ‘Big Business’, which adores our EU membership for many reasons, not least the never-ending supply of cheap labour which comes with it.
Boris and his Tories are attempting to ‘turn Leave into Remain’, by stealth, and primarily by means of the Withdrawal Agreement.
The key part of the Withdrawal Agreement here is the so-called Transition Period.
The Transition Period, as defined in Boris Johnson’s ‘Wonderful New Deal’… is 100% identical to the Transition Period that appeared in Theresa May’s (the EU’s) three times rejected deal.
The Claim: The Transition Period is a short space of time for ‘the transition’ to take place,
– ‘transition’… from taking many of our laws from the EU, from the EU acting on our behalf, from being bound by it and answerable to it
– to returning to being an independent, free, sovereign nation, making our own laws, trade deals, and answerable to no one.
The Truth: the Transition Period ensures absolutely nothing changes, other than we lose our voting rights, and even the ability to speak out in Brussels/Strasbourg… for an indefinite period, which, according to Mr Barnier, will be a minimum of three years.
So, Boris’s ‘wonderful new deal’, far from ‘Getting Brexit Done’, actually simply delays Brexit for another three years. At least, probably longer.
During this ‘indefinite length Transition Period’, we will be forced to implement all new EU laws, even if they are massively detrimental to our national interest.
Should we somehow manage to persuade the EU to allow us to leave ‘the vassalage’ of the Transition Period, we will be a very long way from ‘a free independent trading nation’.
The conditions that we will be obliged to sign up to by the EU, ‘operating a level playing field’ with it,
– will mean that we will still be severely hamstrung in many ways, unable to provide State Aid to our vital steel industry, or any other one, unable to alter our tax laws… if the EU considers that we might be being ‘unfairly competitive,
– not even able to negotiate and implement new trade deals, because again, the EU might consider that we are being ‘too competitive’, and take us to a tribunal, followed by the ECJ if they wish.
Can you think of an ‘independent sovereign nation’ … that has to operate under all these sort of conditions/restrictions, imposed by a foreign power? Nope, me neither.
The Claim: The Transition Period allows us time to negotiate a new free trade agreement with the EU, and this will definitely be achieved by Dec next year, 2020. Boris solemnly promises it… and he would never break his word, now would he….
The Truth: The EU will have no incentive whatsoever to negotiate a new FTA with us. The Transition Period is in effect, “all EU leaders’ dreams come true”.
The Transition Period already has extensions until end of 2022 built into it, and, just as happened with Article 50, can easily be extended again and again after this, should the EU decide that it needs to be.
We remain fully under EU control during this time. The EU will be able to easily extend the Transition Period, because EU law will remain supreme over the UK’s.
During the, very likely ‘never-ending Transition Period’, we will still be governed by the EU, we will still pay a huge fee for this ‘privilege’ (at least as much as our current massive membership fee),
– but we will no longer have any say, in anything. We can’t vote, veto, or even speak out in the EU’s Parliament, but everything else remains exactly as it is.
However by far the greatest ‘benefit’, a really huge benefit for EU leaders, and those wishing to keep us in the EU here in the UK… in fact, the whole point of the Withdrawal Agreement,
– is that given during the Transition Period we will not ‘diverge’, move away from the EU, in any respect at all. Consequently, when we finally get tired of being in an endless ‘Transition Period Purgatory’,
– tired of being regularly punished for our ‘sin’ …of wanting to Leave the EU… by having to adopt all their new laws, some of them very probably specifically designed to harm our national interest,
– we will be able to simply become Full Members again, ‘at the drop of a hat’. Yay!
Exactly how much will the Transition Period cost us?
The first full year of Transition Period, 2020, will cost us the same as our current standard membership fee, approximately £14bn, plus we will agree to pay anything extra that the EU can find to add on, and almost certainly they will find something…
– you may remember a few years ago EU leaders decided that they had “underestimated the size of our sex and drugs industry”
– and immediately demanded that we pay them an extra £1.7bn.
Prime Minister at the time, David Cameron, said “No!”, “It’s outrageous, we will never pay this!”,
– flat refused. Then quietly paid the EU half of it, and the other half the following year.
No one knows how much remaining in the Transition Period in 2021 and 2022 will end up costing us, but given that we are committing ‘not to walk away’, effectively the EU can charge us whatever it likes… £15bn, £20bn…
– our rebate, had we stayed Full Members, would have been lost by this point, so they could justifiably argue that we should do as we are doing for 2020, pay ‘what we would have paid’… somewhere approaching £20bn per annum.
This is the very expensive mess that Boris’s ‘Wonderful new deal’ plunges us immediately into. This is ‘Getting Brexit Done’, ‘Tory-style’…
There are three potential ways out of the so-called Transition Period, once Boris has plunged us headlong into it, these are:
i) Return to Full Membership: Regaining our Full EU Membership during the ‘Transition Period’ will be the simplest thing ever, as essentially zero material changes will have taken place,
– the pressure from Remainers, or as they will have by then technically become, ‘Rejoiners’, to ‘just slip back in’, will be absolutely immense.
Next year, the year after, the year after that, every year the clamour to simply reclaim our Full Membership will steadily increase.
ii) Free Trade Agreement with the EU. The supposed intended route out of ‘Transition’.
The problem with this is… EU already leaders already have everything they want, as long as we remain trapped in the ‘Transition Period’,
– so why would they want to sign a Free Trade Agreement and let us out?
In order to incentivise them to give us our Free Trade Agreement, and allow us to escape from it, we would have to give them significantly more than they already had whilst we were trapped inside. Not easy when they would have pretty much all they could ever wish for.
Current EU leaders have already drawn up ‘a long shopping list’ of extra things that they would demand, in order to let us escape from the Transition Period, the first being handing them back total control over our fishing waters. So “Goodbye fishing waters” for sure.
The third and final way out of the Transition Period, is, in theory :
iii) ‘Walking away’ : either at the end of next year, when it is initially due to end, or the following year, after the first extension, or the year after, 2022, after the second extension, at these points we could, in theory, just ‘walk away’. (Or, as already mentioned, further into the future… if the Transition Period ends up being extended past 2022).
If we did this, we would automatically move to trading on WTO rules, leave with ‘No Deal’, ‘Clean Break’, call it what you wish. ‘Freedom’, would be my choice.
In other words exactly as we still could do at the end of January next year, but if we just did it then, we would avoid any Transition Period, and effectively a further three years of EU contributions, which could easily top another £50bn in total.
– but if we do it after signing the Withdrawal Agreement, we will have signed up to pay our huge ‘divorce fee’, £30bn, 50bn, who knows… and probably already actually paid a large chunk of it.
This is what the Brexit Party would do, if in power following the upcoming General Election, or would ‘push for’, if perhaps holding the balance of power.
Sound rather familiar? Every year, for the next few years at least, we will be having exactly the same argument as we have been having throughout 2019, so all through 2020, 2021, 2022, we will be hearing:
– “should we extend the Transition Period, or walk away with No Deal?”
“We really need to have No Deal on the table, in order to get the best Free Trade Agreement”… all the same arguments, just this time, regarding the Free Trade Agreement, instead of a Withdrawal Agreement, and the Transition Period (vassalage), instead of Article 50,
– except it’s rumoured that Conservatives will rule ‘No Deal’ out in their manifesto.
Yes, apparently the Tories are likely to promise never to leave without a deal… to effectively ‘bin’ their best negotiating card in getting a decent Free Trade Agreement from the EU.
Many in their party argued hard that they needed to be able to threaten to play this ‘card’… to get a decent Withdrawal Agreement (of course the EU rightly considered that we never would, and continued to give us an awful one)
– but apparently we won’t need it in order to obtain a good Free Trade Agreement, when we will be in otherwise ‘endless vassalage’, aka Transition Period, and the EU will already have everything it could ever wish for…
– “Go Figure”.
(‘No Deal’ in this scenario will be a little different to the No Deal that will happen at the end of January next year, if we didn’t extend Article 50, again… here we will have already signed up to the Withdrawal Agreement, signed up to handing over “insert figure between £30bn and £60bn”,
– so we would not be ‘saving’ this amount, by moving to trading under WTO rules at the end of 2021, or 2022, or whenever after that,
– as we would be if we walked away, left the EU with out a deal and moved to WTO rules at the end of January 2020).
But the arguments would otherwise be identical,
– is this what you want to hear on the News, day after day, year after year, quite possibly for three more years, at least (according to Barnier) ?
– is this ‘Getting Brexit Done’, as the Tories are so very fond of ‘trotting out’ at every opportunity ?
I think not.
Of course Conservatives are ‘solemnly promising’ they won’t actually extend the Transition Period past 2020. Again, ‘sound a bit familiar’ (?)
May’s Tories ‘solemnly promised’ not to extend Article 50 past 29th March (108 times), past 12th April (who know how many times), Boris’s Tories promised no extension after Oct 31st (countless times),
– but no, forget all these broken promises, we really should all believe them now. when they solemnly promise not to extend the Transition Period past Dec 2020, even though they are ruling out ‘walking away’, one of the only other two options we will have,
– meaning that if the EU do not sign our Free Trade Agreement, our final remaining choice will therefore be to take our Full Membership back up (which is of course the real goal here, and always has been).
“Yes Ok Boris, no problem…. We believe you. You would never break a(nother) promise… would you….?”
Extension after extension will take place, but it will never be the Conservatives fault, always someone else’s.
Under the text in the Withdrawal Agreement, the first of these Transition Period extensions will need to be put into place by the end of July next year…
– does anyone seriously believe that a Free Trade Agreement will be sufficiently progressed in just 9 months time, to preclude the need for an extension to the end of 2021?
– certainly not Mr Barnier it would appear. He believes the Transition Period will last for three years minimum.
Summary
The so-called Withdrawal Agreement… is actually intended to make sure that we never really withdraw from the EU.
‘Getting Brexit Done’, to the Tories means trapping us ‘in an endless Transition Period’… or ‘vassalage’, as Boris used to describe it, for many years to come, until :
i) We eventually decide that we have no other option but to cancel our intention to withdraw, and just slide seamlessly back into Full EU Membership again,
– or…
ii) We agree to give the EU everything they have by that time placed on their ‘long shopping list of demands’, starting with signing over our Fishing Waters to them,
– or…
iii) We just walk away,
– except this appears to be about to be explicitly ruled out by Boris and his Tories in their 2019 manifesto.
This will leave simply taking Full Membership back up, or conceding everything the EU wants as our only ‘escape routes’ from the Transition Period.
Nice one Boris. “We’re really Getting Brexit Done”, by signing your horrendous Withdrawal Agreement,
– errmmm…. No, I don’t think so…. it’s the British people who are “Getting Done”.
Boris’s Withdrawal Agreement is without doubt ‘the biggest con trick’ ever attempted by any UK government,
– and we in the Brexit Party have just over five weeks to expose it for what it is.
It’s now crystal clear no other party will help us, and we can no longer rely on any Mass Media outlet: newspapers, tv, radio,
– Boris has them all fooled, they all ‘believe in Boris’, trust him completely….
– because if you didn’t, you would be simply crazy to support the UK entering in to this horrendous new treaty.
Please do not listen to ‘the Tory Press’, it’s not the Brexit Party that is ‘risking Brexit’,
– it’s Boris, with his ‘Non-Withdrawal, endless Transition Period Agreement’.
Pete Durnell 