Friday 31 August 2018

Brexit? The real enemy lies within, says FREDERICK FORSYTH

EVERY day and in every way (as Monsieur Coué did not say) we are threatened and threatened and threatened. You cannot open a newspaper nor switch on the telly but another disaster is solemnly laid before you - and all based on the presumption that we will not bow to Brussels and call off Brexit.
These Jeremiahs promise us no plane will fly, no ship will sail, no lorry will roll and no surgeon will address his scalpel. Why? Because we will have run out of everything.
Remember the Millennium Bug? It was very similar.
The same straight faces, the same ponderous loons assured us that at a few seconds after midnight on New Year's Eve civilisation as we knew it would come to an end.
The computers would all crash because they could not cope with the end of a millennium and the start of another.
The moment came. What happened? Damn all.
Why did the Jeremiahs not resign en masse and in shame? Because they never do.
It all happened again, in miniature, during the Campaign of Fear which preceded the referendum vote.
If we voted Leave, said George Wiseguy Osborne, recession and slump would be our immediate portion. The reverse happened. Investment went up.
Former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne
Former Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne (Image: GETTY)

Start-up companies increased (a sign of optimism). Employment went up (ditto). The pound weakened but that was good for exports.
Now it looks as if the euro is heading for trouble in a big way. If we leave as the majority still wishes, and we prosper, will the Jeremiahs resign or be fired? They most certainly should.
I hope someone is noting every disaster-prediction and the source of it.
A year after Brexit, if we are booming with worldwide exports going through the roof as seems likely, I hope today's doomsayers are given a firm kick in the tailored rear ends.
Prime Minister Theresa May is fighting to keep brexit on track
Prime Minister Theresa May is fighting to keep brexit on track (Image: GETTY)
The fact is that all negotiations start with the two parties poles apart.
But with goodwill and the triumph of reason they move towards each other with matching concessions until victory with a concordat.
But if one side does all the demanding and refusing and the other side all the conceding, that is not a negotiation but a capitulation. That is what Michel Barnier demands.
It is also what the British appeasers, quitters and quislings advise.
 Dominic Raab (L) speaks next to EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier
Dominic Raab (L) speaks next to EU Chief Brexit Negotiator Michel Barnier (Image: GETTY)
Once again the disaster script is waved before all our eyes. Scuttle to Brussels or face utter British ruin.
Even the massively concessionary Chequers plan has been rejected. So why do the Tory weaklings go on advising it? It is dead.
My own prediction is simple: no, there will not be an equitable (evenhanded) new deal to endorse a mutually beneficial relationship because Barnier will not have it.
His agenda is simple: Britain must suffer agonies as a deterrent to any other dreamer of freedom. So..? So there will be a year of dislocation and damage as we negotiate a raft of blistering free trade treaties with the rest of the trading world.

May announces UK plan to become biggest G7 investor in Africa


Then we surge out of the swamp and back to the high ground, trading very profitably with numerous economies we were required to turn our backs on for the past 50 years.
But defeat? Ruin? Eternal poverty? Check the record. We Brits have been around for a thousand years uninvaded. Often threatened, never defeated. Often assaulted, never beaten. Sometimes knocked back, never brought low. And so it will be this time if only we can throw out the weaklings, the appeasers, the capitulators.
Our real enemies are here at home, many in high office, living off hard-grafting taxpayers, strutting, whining, moaning but rarely picking up their own tab.
Ten years from now I think they will be looked back on as the appeasers of 1938. They have the same DNA. Concession before sovereignty.
https://www.express.co.uk/comment/columnists/frederick-forsyth/1011077/brexit-theresa-may-eu-uk-trade-deal

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