BREXIT – The Tories are conditioning us to accept the breakup of Britain

By TruePublica: The Tories are openly discussing whether Brexit will lead to the breakup of the country. In fact, contacts are now saying that after Boris Johnson’s and his team’s fanatical desire to drag Britain out the EU – deal or no-deal, no ifs – no buts, – they are viewing the breakup of the union behind closed doors as a political opportunity not to be missed.

 

Some of them on the radical right – and they now form the government, are becoming very comfortable with the end of their nation and even seem proud of their personal role in its destruction.

Back in the days when Theresa May was Prime Minister a document outlining the “real risk” of the end of the United Kingdom in the form of independence and secession movements in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland emerged, according to the Financial Times. It was a worrying read for that cabinet.

Not so any more. An impending Brexit has dramatically changed the terms of the union – for the worse.

Obviously, the Scots are not happy with Brexit as they voted unanimously to remain and in the very latest of polls are now moving towards full independence from the rest of the UK. This latest result was unambiguous. Brexit also creates an intractable challenge to Northern Ireland’s borderless edge with the rest of Ireland. When Britain leaves the EU, a non-EU customs border must be imposed there, either redividing Ireland or segregating Northern Ireland from the rest of Britain. That could restart hostilities between Republican and Loyalist terrorists who, since, 1998, have agreed to a ceasefire on the premise that Ireland and Northern Ireland are united (with a small “u”) as a geographic entity, while Northern Ireland remains part of the UK as a legal and political entity. That compromise offered symbolic victories and real peace for all.

But Brexit shoves a knife straight through the heart of that deal and slices open old wounds.

The cabinet document says Wales is at risk, too, according to the FT:

 

“In a cabinet document, sections of which have been seen by the FT, [David Lidington, the prime minister’s deputy] said a recent increase in support for Plaid Cymru [the Welsh nationalist party] confirmed ‘we cannot be complacent about Wales’s attitude to the Union and independence’. And in a stark warning about the impact of Brexit on Northern Ireland, Mr Lidington pointed to demands for a ‘border poll’ that could see the island of Ireland reunited, with moderates attracted by social liberalisation in the Republic. ‘There is a real and genuine conversation going on on the island of Ireland about a future border poll,’ he said. ‘A no-deal exit, in which Direct Rule must necessarily be introduced, would sharpen this further.‘”

Former Trade minister Liam Fox was asked by the BBC recently if Brexit might lead to Scottish independence or a referendum on the Irish border. He replied:

“Well, it could. We know they are both real threats. There is no point in pretending they are not there.“

The overarching view of the new Boris Johnson cabinet is two-fold. First, they might need to destroy Britain in order to secure their independence. Second, if the UK were to break up, it would leave the Conservative party with a permanent majority in an English House of Commons.

 

On the right, anti-EU Leavers are becoming very comfortable with the idea that they might need to destroy Britain in order to secure its “independence.” Brexit Party leader and Donald Trump confidante — Nigel Farage was recently asked whether the loss of Scotland was a price worth paying. He said only that it would be “deeply regrettable” but Brexit was the priority:

 

“Being an independent self-governing nation is number one. If there were parts of the United Kingdom that didn’t wish to stay part of it that would be deeply regrettable but I just don’t believe that to be the case – I really genuinely don’t believe it.“

The statistics are not with Farage’s public musings – and he knows it.

Farage’s fellow traveller, amongst many, the conservative broadcaster Julia Hartley-Brewer, appears to have already accepted that fate. She has tweeted: “The people of Scotland have the right to leave the UK if they so wish. We shouldn’t prevent Brexit because of that.  I’m more than happy for Scotland to be independent if that’s what the people want.” She then went on unambiguously :

 

“Any Tory leadership candidate who puts the Union first has absolutely no intention of delivering Brexit.”

And that is exactly what happened. The Conservative party nominated and then elected an anti-unionist because Johnson was the only candidate to stand and say – Brexit at all costs.

Former Prime Minister Theresa May was worried about the break up of the union so she went to Scotland to make a speech about it:

“The question of how we can secure our Union for the future is being asked with ever more urgency,” she said. Farage, “the leader of the party that topped the poll in those elections in England speaks casually of the potential break-up of our Union. All of this against the backdrop of Brexit – a profound constitutional change that is putting political and administrative strains on the Union”

 

All of this was previously unthinkable. Can you imagine any leading political candidate at the 2010 or 2015 election enthusiastically campaigning for a hard Brexit, leading to an economic crash, a constitutional implosion and the ending of the union? He would have been sectioned.

Britain is the world’s fifth-largest economy, one of the world’s parents of democracy and the creator industrial revolution. It reigned over the largest empire in human history. And yet because of this one issue, Brexit and one has to say, constructed by a few on the radical right – the Tories are seriously contemplating ending what’s left of it all.

By any stretch of the imagination, this is not a normal scenario. Democracies are supposed to be ‘strong and stable’. Trump doesn’t openly worry about the secession of the Southern States or California. Macron doesn’t fret overseeing Alsace-Lorraine return to the Germans. Merkel isn’t lying awake at night wondering whether East Berlin might be handed back to Moscow.

Only in Britain are our elected officials openly discussing the destruction of the nation. The desire to reclaim Britain’s sovereignty from Europe, via Brexit, is so distorting that conservatives are willing to sacrifice their country to get there. This is the demise of global Britain being witnessed at break-next speed. The day it happens, many will still not believe it. Like the unexpected death of a close relative – it will take a few days for it to sink in.

 

Psychotic power lust

A cynic might point out that while the UK’s population is 67 million people, England comprises 55 million of them. Without the union, the English Conservatives would be left with a permanent, unassailable majority in England’s House of Commons. Neoliberal capitalism would be seen as really quite centre-of-centre in comparison to what would arrive after that happened.

Statistically, and depending on the source (as they vary a lot) – the economy of Scotland is £177bn or £248bn (incl oil revenues), Wales £80bn, Northern Ireland £50bn and England over £2 trillion. Somewhere between 84% and 86% of the national unified economy is made up of England.

Britain’s fifth slot of the largest economies of the world would fall to eighth – behind France and India and ahead of Italy.

With Boris Johnson’s Brexit on the 31st October the country will be humiliated on the national stage. Its global humiliation would be nothing short of tragic. Within a few short years, the term Gt Britain or United Kingdom will disappear and the country decimated politically, geographically, and economically. From there, it will take decades to rebuild some sort of unity within its own people, perhaps never, let alone repairing the international relations that Britain had fostered over the last 100 years and especially since the last World War. America wants a slice of the chaotic action.

But the prize set in the eyes of the psychotic few is just a lust for power. Here, Britain’s Conservatives see a new utopia – of unopposed power – without compromise from Brussels or the regions of Britain for generations.

 

Boris Johnson’s anti-Scottish prejudice

Boris Johnson is actively driving this dis-union. He has a history of prejudice against the Scots. When he worked as a journalist at the Spectator magazine, he once suggested that Scottish people be banned from becoming prime ministers of Britain.

He also published a poem (written by someone else) joking about the “extermination” of the “verminous” Scottish race.

Johnson is so disliked in Scotland that a majority of Scots would vote for independence if he were prime minister, according to a Panelbase/Sunday Times survey. That majority only appears when Johnson is in No.10.

Worried yet?

The Conservatives are supposed to be the patriotic party, the party of stability both economically and politically and they are proving to be more anarchic than anything else. There was a time – you know, a few weeks back when “One Nation” used to be a Tory rallying cry. One Nation Conservatism advocates the preservation of established institutions and traditional principles – this cabinet is the opposite of that.

 

That is the direction that Britain is heading right now. The Brexit car-crash is almost upon us, the brakes are not being applied and the bricks that made the wall that once made Britain the country it once was is about to be smashed into a thousand shards. I suppose you’ll be able to tell your grandchildren that you once knew a country called Great Britain. It will genuinely be that bad.

 

 

 

---