If you ever needed a demonstration of what a pathetic bunch of charlatans the Tory party are, look no further than Theresa May's lamentable Tweet attempting to steal all the credit for the ban on secret credit card charges that is being rolled out across all EU member states.
It's important to see this latest credit-pilfering effort from Theresa May and the Tories in context. It's absolutely clear that Theresa May turned herself into a puppet of the most rabid hard-right Europhobes in Britain with her ludicrous vanity election.
After losing her parliamentary majority and her authority her every move is dictated by the secretive and fanatically right-wing hard Brexit cabal within her own party, by the DUP bigots (who get a veto on her every Brexit move), by Paul Dacre and the Daily Mail mob, and by the fickle hard-right ultra-nationalist Blue-kip demographic who abandoned the wreckage of UKIP to prop up Theresa May's shambles of a government.
This disgusting rabble would obviously have erupted in outrage if Theresa May had told the truth; that the ban on sneaky credit card charges is one of the many positive aspects of EU membership.
But instead of taking the coward's way out and simply saying nothing about this new legislation for fear of enraging her hard-right backers, May has actually decided to create the absurdly misleading narrative that it's the Tories we should be thanking for the ban on sneaky credit card charges.
The absolute brass neck of it!
According to Theresa May we should be thanking the party that are making an absolute shambles of ripping us out of the organisation that actually gave us this new consumer protection in the first place!
One of the most incredible things of all is that this is the second time in the space of a week that Theresa May and the Tories have tried to steal all the credit for the implementation of EU legislation after they tried to present the extended 5p plastic bag charges as their own policy, rather than the implementation of a piece of EU legislation that Tory MPs actually voted against and worked hard to undermine and obstruct as it made its way through the European Parliament!
Just think about the absolute contempt the Tories must have for the general public (you) that they think that they can get away with repeatedly re-branding pieces of EU legislation as their own achievements.
They're assuming that we're such a bunch of gullible halfwits that we'll just mindlessly absorb their propaganda without clocking the deception, and that nobody is going to capitalise on such obvious deceptiveness by sharing the evidence they've just handed us proving what an outrageously dishonest bunch of chancers they are.
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Most people are aware that ever since Theresa May threw away her parliamentary majority in her vanity election, she's been at the beck and call of the extreme-right Europhobic fringe of the Tory party because she has no room to manoeuvre without continually appeasing them.
What is less commonly known is the fact that this hard-right fringe of the Tory party have clubbed together to form a shady and highly secretive "party within a party" which uses taxpayers' cash to bankroll their push for an extreme and highly destructive hard-right version of Brexit.
This group of Brextremist Tory politicians call themselves the European Research Group, and between them members have claimed over £250,000 in parliamentary expenses for work they claim to have done on behalf of this fringe pressure group.
The Tory MPs who have claimed taxpayer cash for work done on behalf of their secretive Brextremism operation include Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Sajid Javid, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Chris Grayling, David Gauke, Penny Mordaunt, and Liam Fox.
Here is a list of known members of the group (politicians with positions within Theresa May's government in bold):
- Suella Fernandes (the current chairperson of the group & PPS at the Treasury))
- Steve Baker (previous chairperson of the group until promoted into the Brexit department)
- Liam Fox (Minister for International Trade)
- Craig Mackinlay (Former UKIP politician who defected to the Tories)
- Andrea Leadsom (former Tory leadership candidate, Leader of the Commons)
- Sajid Javid (Minister for communities and local government)
- Chris Heaton-Harris (The Tory whip who sent McCarthyite inquisition letters to UK universities)
- Jacob Rees-Mogg (regularly touted as a future Tory leader)
- Chris Grayling (Minister for Transport)
- Michael Tomlinson (low profile Tory MP and deputy chair of the group)
- Michael Gove (Minister for the Environment)
- Penny Mordaunt (Minister for International Development)
- David Guake (Minister for Work and Pensions)
Mackinlay claims that such a move would raise £150 million by charging everyone who visits the UK from the EU, but it's spectacularly easy to spot the flaws in this plan.
The first major flaw is that the £150 million "profit" does not take account of the lost tax revenues caused by driving away potential visitors with time consuming and costly visa applications. It would only need a small percentage drop in tourism from the continent to massively reduce tax revenues and eclipse the £150 million "profit" leaving country significantly worse off.
Aside from the obvious false economics of the scheme there's also the fact that such a move from Britain would obviously trigger a reciprocal response, with the EU requiring visas for British visitors to any of the EU member states. This would create the situation where EU citizens would have the choice of visa free travel anywhere within the EU, or the time and expense of applying for a visa to visit the UK. Meanwhile British citizens would have to apply for visas to visit all ten of our top ten travel destinations (which are in order: Spain, France, Italy, Ireland, USA Portugal, Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Poland).
It's bad enough that this fanatical group of Tory MPs has appointed a rabid former-Ukipper to come up with an absurd plan to kick the UK tourism industry to pieces, significantly reduce UK tax revenues in order to raise a paltry £150 million by rinsing cash out of any EU citizens who still chose to visit Brexit Britain, and trigger a reciprocal tit-for-tat response from the EU that would significantly impact millions of British visitors to the continent.
But the fact is that they're actually claiming huge wodges of taxpayers' cash to promote this kind of hard-right Brextremism is the most extraordinary thing about it.
Then there's the fact that members of this secretive Brextremist group are embedded throughout Theresa May's government, with leading members of the ERG claiming that they have the power to "get anything they want" from Theresa May.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
