Thursday 2 March 2017

It's time to start preparing for a Tory nuclear Brexit


In January the Tory chancellor Philip Hammond alluded to the concept of nuclear Brexit by saying that the Tories would scrap the social democratic model and turn the UK into a giant offshore tax haven if our 27 former EU allies don't give the Tories what they want. 

A few days later Theresa May gave her ludicrous clown costume speech and confirmed that the ridiculous threat of launching a nuclear Brexit is actually her main "negotiating tactic"

Now the Tory Brexit minister David Davis is warning his Tory colleagues to prepare for the nuclear Brexit that would happen if no satisfactory agreement with the EU can be reached.

Perspective


In order to put the warning from David Davis into perspective it's useful to look back to the EU referendum campaign and the fact that the Tories clearly made no preparations whatever for how to handle the situation if the public actually voted for Brexit.

It's beyond doubt to any reasonable person that the Tories had no Brexit contingency plan whatever. You just need to look at their reactions to the Brexit vote to understand that they were totally unprepared for it.

Anyone who thinks this sequence of events is the behaviour of a government that had a proper contingency plan must be completely and utterly delusional.

  • The fanatical right-wing authoritarian Teresa May is hastily crowned as Tory leader and Prime Minister of the UK through a farcical and staggeringly undemocratic "leadership contest" in which members of the Tory party were denied the right to vote.
  • Brexit is used as an excuse to bring the disgraced Liam Fox back into government. It's incredible that the man is still in parliament rather than in jail for allowing his special friend Adam access to all kinds of official secrets. The fact that such a disgraced figure is back in government is quite extraordinary.
  • Boris Johnson is appointed as Britain's top diplomat. And who better to take on the most complex diplomatic challenge Britain has faced since the 1940s than a man who has crudely insulted and demeaned pretty much every other nation on the planet!
The fact that the Brexit minister David Davis is now arguing for a contingency plan for nuclear Brexit is pretty conclusive proof that the Tories in 2017 see nuclear Brexit as being very much more probable than they thought a Brexit referendum result would be back in 2016.

A Tory wet dream


Nuclear Brexit is highly probable because there are many people in the Tory party who have been itching for years to scrap the social democratic model completely in order to turn the UK into a fanatically right-wing corporate tax haven.

The rabid right-wing of the Tory party has been massively empowered by Brexit, and they see it as the perfect opportunity to roll out their fanatically right-wing agenda. In fact, the debate is being framed in such a way by the right-wing press that when this incredibly unpopular hard-right agenda is launched, the blame will be directed at the EU, rather than the rabidly right-wing Tories who always wanted it, and have just been waiting for the ideal opportunity to do it.

Ridiculous demands


Aside from the fact that a significant element of the Tory party actively want the Brexit negotiations to fail so that they can launch nuclear Brexit, Theresa May's demands from the EU are blatantly ridiculous. There's no way the EU can agree to Single Market access for UK-based banks, vehicle manufacturers and other corporations with the financial muscle to coerce the Tories into representing their interests, while the rest of the UK (small and medium enterprises, individual traders, individual consumers ...) get locked out.

There's no way that the EU can allow the Tories to cherry-pick special favours for major UK based corporations while locking the rest of the UK out because such a deal would negate the fundamental aims of the European project.


It's becoming increasingly obvious that the Tories are deliberately setting the Brexit negotiations up to fail so that they can launch nuclear Brexit, and then blame the EU for the devastating social and economic consequences of Britain becoming a tax-dodging international pariah of a nation with a ruined social safety net.
The difficulty of opposition

The problem is that it's going to be incredibly difficult to fight back against this slow motion march towards Tory nuclear Brexit because anyone who dares to question what Theresa May and the three Brexiteers are up to these days gets drowned out by the shrieking of the Brexiter enforced optimism mob.

Any people who try to hold the Tory government to account or question what is going on are immediately shouted down as "traitors", "sore losers", "Remoaners", "enemies of the people" and much much worse (vitriolic abuse, rape threats, death threats ...).

In a toxified political environment like this, where an awful lot of people are so ideologically wedded to Brexit that they'll viciously support it no matter how obvious it becomes that Brexit under Theresa May's rule is a lose-lose situation, opposition to Brexit is incredibly difficult.

A lose-lose situation

Either we somehow end up with the staggeringly unrealistic cherry-picked Tory deal that rigs the economy even further in favour of multinational corporations, or we get the social and economic devastation of a nuclear Brexit.

Anyone who dares to complain about either of these appalling outcomes is certain to be furiously shouted down and abused by the Brexiter mob.

Expectation management
It's highly likely that a Tory nuclear Brexit is coming. Just look at our negotiating team: Boris Johnson (a brazenly dishonest chancer who has insulted practically everyone he's going to have to negotiate with), Liam Fox (a guy who should be in jail, not back in front bench politics), David Davis (a guy who was beaten to the Tory party leadership by a politically inexperienced and shockingly dishonest 2nd rate PR man) and Theresa May (a cardboard cutout of Margaret Thatcher).

When the Tories say it's got to be "a good deal or it's no deal", what they're actually doing is managing public expectations. The Tories know that they're incapable of negotiating a good deal with the EU, even if they actually want one (which is highly debatable). The "good deal or no deal" rhetoric is just to make sure that the public end up blaming the EU rather than the Tory government when the social and economic devastation of nuclear Brexit is unleashed.

Preparations

I would like to offer some advice about how to prepare for Tory nuclear Brexit, but it's hard to think of that many really constructive things to say because it's going to be a bloody mess.

  • Nuclear Brexit will strip British people of their EU citizenship, but it's definitely worth investigating whether you have the right to apply for EU citizenship through citizenship through descent (jus sanguines). 
  • Maybe you could try to pressure the opposition parties into properly holding the Tories to account? 
  • Most of all though. If the Tories succeed in using Brexit to tear down the social democratic system and replace it with a hard-right dystopia, try not to be poor, or vulnerable, or sick, or disabled, or in unstable employment. If the rabid-right of the Tory party manage to use Brexit to push through their extremist political agenda, it's obviously going to be the poorest and most vulnerable who suffer most of the appalling consequences.

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