Imagine if Jean-Claude Juncker had spent the last few weeks publicly trashing the EU’s Brexit negotiating position behind Barnier’s back. If half the European press was cheerleading his efforts to undermine the EU. If numerous powerful figures in the EU apparatus joined him in highlighting every EU weakness and predicting catastrophe if he didn’t go cap in hand to the EU.
Ridiculous, right?
It is also exactly what the Chancellor, Philip Hammond and the others the Remain media have dubbed the ‘Sensibles’ are doing to us.
Hammond did not have to give a notably grim Mansion House speech which underplayed our strengths and overplayed our weaknesses. He had no obligation to jet off to Germany and trash our Foreign Secretary, Boris Johnson, for all our EU counterparts to see. In doing this he has damaged our Brexit negotiators at home and abroad.
The more he and others like him undermine our negotiators, the more likely we will be given a bad deal. In other words, the more Hammond attacks Prime Minister May’s approach, the less likely we are to maintain close trading ties to the EU.
Does he not understand how self-destructive his actions are? Hopefully he will soon realise the damage he is doing.
While he ensures we present a divided front to the EU, at least Hammond has had the decency to state his support for a real Brexit, beyond the Customs Union and the Single Market. Some of his colleagues among the so-called ‘Sensibles’ are much worse.
Fanatical Europhiles like Anna Soubry and Jo Johnson are still pushing for a fake Brexit, staying inside the Single Market and the Customs Union. They are joined by none other than former Prime Minister, David Cameron, who has apparently been lobbying MPs to derail Brexit.
Having pretended to accept the result, Cameron is now trying to take a hatchet to it. This is disappointing. On the upside, it shows how necessary his standing down was.
Those pushing for a fake Brexit are billed as ‘Sensibles’ by their apologists because they are supposedly acting in Britain’s best interests. Even if they weren’t making us look divided and weak, however, they would still be pursuing a course which would be hostile to British interests.
By keeping us in the Single Market and the Customs Union, they would ensure Brussels maintains supremacy over our laws, our borders and our trade.
Without even the meagre representation we presently have in Brussels, we would be reduced to the kind of ‘fax democracy’ Cameron had warned against during the Referendum campaign. What is more, the EU would regard this as a favour.
What this means is the EU would make us pay for the privilege of being told what to do by Brussels. It would mean the EU would continue to gouge billions from us every year. It would likely mean we would end up stabbing our coastal communities in the back by remaining in the Common Fisheries Policy. In short, a disaster for Britain and a betrayal of Brexit.
Betrayal is, of course, the point.
Those who would keep us in the Single Market and the Customs Union surely know it would mean foregoing the promise of Brexit. They know it would mean we never truly Get Britain Out of the EU.
Perhaps they seek to trap Britain in a situation many feel would be worse than full EU membership -- to railroad Britain back into the EU, the EU army and the Euro.
Perhaps they are just naïve. What they are most certainly not, however, is ‘Sensible’
http://www.thecommentator.com/article/6619/the_senseless_remoaning_tory_sensibles
