We all knew perfectly well that the billionaire right-wing press barons and their lackeys in the Tory party would attempt to smear the hell out of Jeremy Corbyn during this election campaign.
They hate his policies of standing up for ordinary people and repatriating vital British infrastructure and services out of the hands of profiteering corporations and foreign government like China and Qatar.
They hate his policies so much they're absolutely fixated on trying to destroy his reputation with anything they've got, and his early involvement in the Northern Ireland peace process is seriously the best attack line they can come up with, because they know it feeds into the hateful anti-Irish bigotry that still unfortunately exists in Great Britain.
In this article I'm going to set the record straight by detailing 9 things that every single voter should know about the Corbyn-IRA smear campaign.
1. Condemning the IRA bombings (part one)
When Jeremy Corbyn was interviewed by Sophy Ridge during the 2017 election campaign he clearly condemned the IRA bombings, but the Tories outright lied that he didn't.
The right-wing propagandists really seem to believe that people will mindlessly lap up their reality-reversing lies rather than quickly checking things for themselves (see video)
2. Condemning the IRA bombings (part two)
Anyone who says that Jeremy Corbyn has "never" condemned the IRA bombings is lying through their teeth. In 1994 Corbyn signed a parliamentary motion on the 20th anniversary of the IRA pub bombing in Birmingham which described the attack as a deplorable terrorist atrocity.
It's on the parliamentary record here for all to see.
3. Misrepresentations (Sinn Féin are not the IRA)
Anyone sharing pictures of Jeremy Corbyn with people like Gerry Adams or Martin McGuinness to "prove" that he met the IRA is either being thick, or totally disingenuous.
Adams and McGuinness were not the IRA, they were leaders of the democratic political party Sinn Féin, which is the political wing of the Irish Republican movement, not the now-disbanded terrorist faction.
People who share these pictures are either so blinded by anti-Irish bigotry that they can't differentiate between a political party and a terrorist organisation, or they know the difference perfectly well, but they're sharing the pictures in order to feed into the anti-Irish bigotry of people they consider to gullible and easily led.
4. Peacemaker
In 2013 Jeremy Corbyn was awarded the Gandhi Foundation International Peace Award for his efforts to bring about a peaceful solution to the conflict in Northern Ireland.
You can read his acceptance speech here.
5. The Loyalists
The right-wing smear merchants are always desperate to bring up the fact that Corbyn met with Irish republicans, but they're a lot more reticent about the fact he also met plenty of loyalists too in his campaign for peace.
Corbyn met with Gary McMichael and David Ervine (Ervine was a jailed loyalist terrorist turned politician for the PUP), and he also spoke regularly with Ian Paisley who, according to his widow Eileen, considered Corbyn to be "likeable", "courteous", "polite" and "a gentleman".
In light of the indisputable fact that Ian Paisley was a fierce opponent of Irish republicanism, why on earth would he say such things about a guy, who according to the Tory smears, was undermining the loyalist cause by promoting a peaceful solution to the conflict?
6. Openness vs Secrecy
Corbyn spoke openly to Irish republicans and Ulster Loyalists during the 1980s. Nobody is denying that.
The problem for the Tories is that declassified records prove that Margaret Thatcher was secretly negotiating direct with the IRA terrorists at the time. The shocking thing isn't that she was negotiating with terrorists though, it's the fact that she outright lied to the British public over and again every time she repeated her "we do not negotiate with terrorists" phrase.
People who attack Corbyn for openly talking peace, whilst refusing to condemn Thatcher's secret negotiations with the IRA, or the succession of lies she told to the British public are clearly as happy with secrecy and lies from right-wingers as they are furious with openness and honesty from left-wingers.
7. Abject Tory hypocrisy (that councillor)
If right-wingers really honestly cared about criticising politicians with links to the IRA, why is it that they're perfectly happy to have an ex-IRA terrorist and arms smuggler serving as a Tory councillor in Croydon?
You can find more details on this ex-IRA Tory politician in this article, or by Googling "Maria Gatland" for yourself.
8. Boris Johnson's super-hypocrisy
Of all the people resorting to IRA-Corbyn smears, the crap-haired buffoon Boris Johnson surely has to be the most hypocritical.
Not only did Boris share a picture of Corbyn with a member of Sinn Féin to "prove" that he met the IRA (refer back to point three and draw your own conclusions about whether Boris is being intensely thick or sickeningly disingenuous) he also claimed that this picture of Corbyn and McGuinness in the 1990s (while the peace process was really beginning to move forward) was proof that Corbyn is untrustworthy!
An accusation of untrustworthiness from a man who repeatedly lied that the NHS would get £350 million a week extra after Brexit!
Even if you agree with Brexit, only the worst kind of political tribalist could possibly try to argue that Boris brazenly lying to the British public like that in order to swing the vote was acceptable and trustworthy conduct.
9. Sheer bloody desperation
Perhaps the most important point of all is the sheer desperation that these Tory-IRA smears demonstrate.
They don't have any positive policies of their own to promote. They don't have any coherent criticisms of Corbyn's policies. So all they have left is a sickening smear campaign in the desperate hope that a combination of public fact aversion and anti-Irish bigotry is enough to put people off voting in favour of Labour's transformational manifesto.
They don't have a single legitimate argument in favour of themselves, or against Labour's policies so they're resorting to the dirtiest muck-slinging tactics possible.
I'll leave you with a quote from Margaret Thatcher about that kind of politics:
"I always cheer up immensely if an attack is particularly wounding because I think, well, if they attack one personally, it means they have not a single political argument left." - Margaret Thatcher
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.
If you're not a politics nerd you may not even know who Nick Timothy is, nor how he played such an instrumental role in causing the current Brexit chaos.
Nick Timothy
He's one of those Rasputin type characters who skulks around in the political background giving terrible advice, while other more prominent figures take the blame when it all goes wrong.
He was one of Theresa May's top advisers during her time at the Home Office (where she dreamt up "Go Home" vans, the unlawfully racist Hostile Environment, brutally misogynistic spouse immigration rules and all kinds of other shockingly inept and hard-right authoritarian nonsense) and then during her time as Prime Minister too.
Nick Timothy is widely credited as the adviser who insisted that Theresa May completely eschew political consensus and then draw her ridiculous red lines to completely rule out any form of membership of the Single Market and Customs Union.
He's also advised her to call her snap "hubris" election in 2017, and advised her to continually hide herself away in Tory safe spaces, chicken out of the leadership debates, and make their disgraceful "Dementia Tax" a central feature of the campaign!
As a result of this idiocy the Tories squandered their 20+ point lead in the space of seven weeks, and pissed away their parliamentary majority, leaving them begging and bribing the bigoted DUP sectarians into propping up their absolute shambles of a government.
Oracles of ineptitude
Shortly after the 2017 general election meltdown Timothy was understandably sacked, and soon took up residence as a columnist for the dreadful Barclay brothers' Daily Telegraph propaganda rag, which he uses to settle old scores and blame everyone else for his own messes.
Essentially he's like the Tory version of Labour's John McTernan. The shadowy adviser who oversaw Labour's annihilation of their own Scottish heartlands in 2015, when they lost 40 of their 41 seats with an absolutely useless pro-austerity and rabidly British unionist campaign, both of which were widely regarded as unacceptable Tory collusion.
But somehow both of these useless characters are still given well-remunerated public platforms to spout their lamentable nonsense, as if they're infinitely wise political oracles, rather than two of the most inept political advisers in living memory.
Blame the Irish
Timothy's Telegraph column could, and probably should, be sub-headed "How everyone else is to blame except for me".
In this week's instalment he desperately seeks to blame the Irish, and specifically the Irish Taoiseach Leo Varadkar for the Irish border deadlock with a claim that Varadkar is "playing fast & loose with peace in Northern Ireland"!
This is an extraordinary claim from one of the masterminds behind the "red lines" that created the Irish border deadlock in the first place.
Ruling out regulatory alignment with the EU was always going to end up contradicting the Good Friday Agreement, and endangering the open border between the Republic of Ireland and the North.
That's why political commentators at the time accused Theresa May of lobbing peace in Northern Ireland onto her raging Brexit bonfire.
We could see that she'd put herself into an irresolvable bind, but she was so relentlessly stubborn that she just ploughed on belligerently until this impossible contradiction eventualy destroyed her political career.
Thick Nimothy
○ Nick Timothy was Theresa May's main adviser when she decided to run Brexit as a closed Tory shop exclusively for Tory party advantage, rather than seeking some kind of national consensus (under which we would probably have already left by now).
○ Nick Timothy advised Theresa May to put herself in an impossible bind by drawing ridiculous red lines all over her shambles of a negotiating strategy.
○ Nick Timothy advised Theresa May to call her hubris election.
○ Nick Timothy helped Theresa May throw away her parliamentary majority and render herself utterly reliant on the DUP sectarians with nonsense like "Dementia Tax" and the endless repetition of "Strong and Stable government" from within the Tory safe spaces she sealed herself within.
And now this absolute nincompoop is attempting to shift blame away from himself by cynically whipping up anti-Irish sentiments!
He's not alone
Brexit has already gone spectacularly wrong. The government missed their own self-imposed Brexit deadline in March 2019 and ended up pathetically begging the EU for an extension because we'd failed to sort our shit out in time.
And now we're heading full throttle towards a "no deal" Brexit meltdown administered by Boris Johnson and the most shockingly right-wing Tory cabinet in history.
When it all comes crashing down, the people responsible will obviously resort to the same kinds of Timothyisms:
It's not our fault ... it's the EU ... it's the Irish ... it's the civil service ... it's Merkel and the Germans ... it's the pessimistic Remainers ... it's the social liberals ... it's the EU citizens in the UK ... it's left-wing bloggers ... it's Corbyn and the Labour Party ...
It's always everyone else to blame except for the people who actually did it!
And to think that the Tories are the political party who endlessly bang on about the importance of taking "personal responsibility"!
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.
Now I know I've pissed off a lot of people by pointing out that people on the extreme Remain fringe are every bit as toxic as the Brextremists, but I'm going to have to address the subject again.
And again I'll include a massive disclaimer that I'm not generalising about all Brexit-sceptics - which would be stupid because I'm a Brexit-sceptic myself - but highlighting the ridiculous and counter-productive behaviour of some people on the polar fringe of the debate.
And again a load of Remainers will turn up in the comments to cry victim and cynically pretend that I'm generalising about all Remainers in order to discredit the argument that some people on the Remain side are just awful strategically inept people who do far more harm to the cause than good.
We all know the routine by now.
A.C. Grayling
Anyone who is on Twitter will be familiar with AC Grayling's lamentable output, which consists mainly of intense Remain fanaticism, burning Corbyn-hate, relentless Lib-Dem apologism, endless refusal to address the actual causes of Brexit, and seething contempt for people with different views to his own.
In short Grayling is exactly the kind of smug, insular, arrogant, sneering Remainer that breathes so much life into the Brexiteer caricature of all Remainers being aloof out-of-touch metropolitan elitists.
Sinn Féin
The Irish independence party Sinn Féin have repeatedly warned that a chaotic "no deal" Tory-administered Brexit would ruin the Good Friday peace agreement.
I'm sure we can all see how the re-imposition of a hard border in Northern Ireland is both against the terms of the Good Friday Agreement, and risks inflaming sectarian violence in Northern Ireland.
But instead of simply agreeing with the warning, AC Grayling went a lot further in an extraordinary Tweet, demanding that Sinn Féin MPs take up their seats in parliament, and twice referring to the fight for Irish independence as a "fetish".
Remanier Unicorns
One of the favourite endlessly-repeated tropes in Remainer echo-chambers is to refer to pretty much anything to do with Brexit as "chasing unicorns" or "unicornism".
Of course a lot of the stuff Brexiteers come out with, like Boris Johnson's Gatt 24 nonsense, or the absurd idea of an "orderly "no deal" are flagrant nonsense that absolutely deserves to be ridiculed and derided.
The problem of course occurs when one of the most high-profile Remain campaigners on social media proposes an absolutely ridiculous "unicorn" solution to Brexit.
Sinn Féin will never ever take their seats in Westminster because to do so would involve swearing allegiance to the Queen, and sitting in the parliament of a what they consider to be an illegitimate and hostile occupying power.
Ireland was brutally repressed by the mainly-English aristocracy for Centuries, including the savage execution of the Easter Rising revolutionaries, and avowed Irish republicans certainly aren't ever going to legitimise London-rule by pledging allegiance to the Queen and taking up their seats in Westminster.
Respect them or loathe them, at least they stick to their principles and stay out of the parliament they want to be rid of, unlike the Brexiteers who turn up in ever larger numbers in the European Parliament in order to laze around collecting salaries and expenses for doing absolutely bollocks all beside displays of grandstanding gesture politics for the "stick it to Johnny Foreigner" mob.
Once again. Just to be absolutely clear: Sinn Féin will never take their seats in Westminster.
Never.
Anyone who proposes this nonsense as a solution to the Brexit mess is just as guilty of wildly unrealistic unicornism as any Brexiteer.
Strategic ineptitude
The idiocy of calling for the impossible isn't even the worst of it. The worst of it is the decision to twice portray the fight for Irish independence as some kind of disgusting "fetish", rather than a legitimate political stance.
The use of such language absolutely reeks of entitled British-nationalist imperialism.
It implies that the long fight for Irish independence from London-rule was illegitimate and depraved, and that the entire existence of Ireland as an independent sovereign state is some kind of ungodly perversion.
It should be absolutely obvious that, when asking people to help you out by breaking their own firmly-held principles, it's an impossibly weak strategy to grossly insult their beliefs and the very existence of their nation.
And it's obviously not just Sinn Féin members that Grayling is insulting by delegitimising the fight for Irish independence, and the very existence of Ireland as an independent state, it's all Irish people, and everyone with Irish ancestry too.
When Brexit-sceptics need to form as many alliances as possible with our European neighbours, here we have a very high-profile English Remainer resorting to displays of toxic British nationalism against the Irish, and literally thousands of Remainers liking and retweeting his bile-laden nonsense.
Unionism and Irish reunification
A recent poll of Tory party members revealed that an overwhelming majority of them would gladly give up Britain's claim on Northern Ireland in return for their beloved Brexit.
So that's members of the Conservative and Unionist Party supporting Irish reunification because they're so obsessed with Brexit, but instead of criticising this extraordinary state of affairs, Grayling is trying to get Irish republicans to step in and save his beloved Union by ... errr ... insulting the very existence of their country as some kind of perverted abomination!
The irony and logical incoherence is extraordinary. He doesn't seem to care that avowed Unionists have given up on his beloved Union, but he's going to insult Irish republicans in the hope that makes them step in and save it!
And this guy is supposed to be a public intellectual!
Consequences
Just imagine if the impossible did come true and Sinn Féin politicians did decide to dishonestly pledge allegiance to the Queen in order to enter the British parliament and put a stop to Brexit.
How do you think that would pay in the mainstream media?
You'd have to be utterly delusional to think this wouldn't be portrayed as a nasty bunch of hostile Irish infiltrators sneaking in to ruin our beloved patriotic Brexit, or to think that such a move wouldn't be immensely detrimental to the Brexit-sceptic cause.
Conclusion
Not all Brexit-sceptics are toxic and delusional, but the enduring popularity of AC Grayling, and the fact that even the most delusional, counter-productive, and downright offensive of his Tweets garner thousands of likes and retweets is an indicator that the "dick head quotient" is actually pretty high.
The problem is of course that just because somebody holds the same view as you do on an important issue like Brexit, doesn't mean that they're an ally of yours to be uncritically retweet whatever nonsense they come out with, and tribalistically defended because you see them as fellow members of your tribe.
Once you see people resort to delusional and offensive nonsense it's really important to think about how much damage it actually does to the cause you support.
Any legitimate political movement needs internal criticism and debate, otherwise the loudest and most toxic attention seekers end up forcing their way to the forefront.
And to see a very high-profile Remainer proposing ridiculous unicornism and spitting undiluted British nationalist hate at the Irish, and getting masses of support and retweets is compelling evidence that the anti-Brexit movement is allowing toxic attention seekers like AC Grayling to do exactly that.
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.
On January 30th 1972 the occupying British army in Northern Ireland opened fire and shot 28 unarmed civilians who were attending a civil rights march in Derry, Northern Ireland, 14 of them died and many others have lived with the physical injuries and trauma of that day for the rest of their lives.
For decades the UK government pretended that the shootings on Bloody Sunday were somehow justified, but in 2010 the extensive Saville Inquiry found that all of the victims were unarmed, that several had been shot in the back while running away, that others had been shot while attending to the wounded, and that numerous military figures had given false testimonies in order to cover up the truth.
When the Saville Report was released the Prime Minister David Cameron gave a long-overdue apology to the families of the victims and publicly admitted that the killings were "unjustified and unjustifiable".
Of course anyone with any economic sense or basic human decency must detest Cameron for the ruinous austerity dogma, economy-choking infrastructure underinvestment, and wage repression policies that have trashed living standards for the last 9 years, and for the grotesque systematic abuse of sick and disabled people his government enacted.
However credit where credit is due, he did actually apologise for probably the most grotesquely indecent display of violence and political repression perpetrated by the British state during the "troubles" in Northern Ireland.
But attitudes within the Tory party have shifted dramatically since then with the hard-right Tory Brextremists coming to prominence and the party continually seeking approval from the extreme-right ultranationalist blue-kip demograhpic they're now electorally reliant upon.
The unapologetic Tory contempt for Northern Ireland is quite clear from their continued collusion with the corrupt DUP sectarians, their arrogant stance on the Irish border issue, and from today's extraordinary announcement by the Tory Secretary of State for Northern Ireland Karen Bradley that killings by the UK security services in Northern Ireland were "not crimes" and that those responsible for the killing spree on Bloody Sunday acted in a "dignified and appropriate way".
Of course any government minister with the vaguest grip on reality would know that it's actually up to the judicial system to determine what is and isn't a crime, and that government ministers deliberately interfering in judicial matters is the kind of authoritarian undermining of the rule of law you'd expect to see under crackpot extreme-right governments like the ones in Poland, Hungary and Brazil.
And any minister for Northern Ireland should also know that the UK government has already accepted that Bloody Sunday was outrageous and unacceptable and apologised for it, and that calling the killers "dignified" and their actions "appropriate" is not just grotesque, it's blatantly whacking a political hornets' nest with a stick.
It's as if these hard-right Tories are still upset that the Irish peace process ever happened at all, and they're desperate to actively inflame tensions with their outbursts of offensive and irresponsible rhetoric, their open and ongoing collusion with one side of the sectarian divide, and their outright arrogance over the Irish border issue so that they can settle old scores.
Looking at Karen Bradley's lawless and despicable rhetoric today (and the fact that Theresa May hasn't immediately sacked her for publicly undermining the rule of law) it hard not to notice how an austerity-obsessed inveterate liar with a gambling problem like David Cameron was actually a quite a moderate in comparison to the current Tory rabble!
If Theresa May had any sense she would never have appointed such a gaffe-prone and catastrophically ignorant woman as Northern Ireland Secretary in the first place, and if Theresa May has any respect for the rule of law whatever then Bradley should be sacked for deliberately and publicly undermining it.
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.
You only need to take a brief look at the news to see how the imperialist mindset is still absolutely rife in Britain.
On the one hand we've got Brexiteers telling Ireland that they should quit the European Union and the Euro in order to ally with Brexit Britain, and on the other we've got Tory government ministers confidently asserting that they've got more right to choose who serves as President of Venezuela than the Venezuelan people!
Almost a century after the declaration of the Irish Free State you might have imagined that the British establishment might have figured out that the days of Tory toffs in London telling the Irish what to do are well and truly over, yet somehow this imperialist mindset is still rife.
The BBC Today presenter John Humphrys demonstrated this entitled imperialist mindset when he publicly suggested to an Irish government minister that her country could quit the EU and join the UK!
However this absurd imperialist attitude towards Ireland is far from exclusive to establishment elites in the media and political classes. Just a few months ago literally hundreds of thousands of pro-Brexit Brits signed a petition calling for the pound to be imposed as legal tender in Ireland whether the Irish want it or not.
It's hard to figure out what's more dim-witted, the idea of creating a de facto currency union between the Pound and the Euro, or the idea that the Pound can be forced on the Republic of Ireland by means of petitioning the UK government.
Screw the fact that 92% of Irish people oppose quitting the EU, and that an even higher percentage would oppose a return to London-rule, the establishment mentality seems to be that Brexit would go a lot more smoothly if the Irish would just shut up and do as they're told, and a lot of ordinary Brits share this mindset.
These imperialist attitudes when it comes to our closest neighbours are shocking enough, but when it comes to Venezuela it's not just insulting Brextremist fantasies of renewed British dominion, deliberate interference is actual government policy.
When the British foreign minister Jeremy Hunt feels empowered to recognise coup-plotters who appoint themselves President (despite not having even stood in the 2018 Presidential election at the time) this is a whole other level of arrogance.
What gives the UK more right to determine the President of a foreign nation than the people of that nation themselves?
There is obviously no legitimate answer to this question, but the imperialist mindset always churns out justifications based on how bad the foreign head of state is, and how removal by outsiders is what's best for the people of that country.
We've got two glaring examples of how this imperialist "regime change" mentality has led to unspeakable humanitarian disasters just in recent history.
Yes Saddam Hussain and Muammar Gaddafi were authoritarian rulers, but only a madman could attempt to argue that turning Iraq and Libya into vast lawless terrorism breeding grounds full of ISIS training camps and modern day slave markets was either good for the peoples of those countries, or good for the regions as a whole.
We've been sold this imperialist turd before, yet here we are again with liberals and self-proclaimed centrists clamouring to align themselves with the hard-right to promote the imperialist "regime change" agenda in Venezuela, and desperately smearing anyone who dares raise questions about the dangers of this imperialist mindset as being nothing more than biased stooges for the latest target regime.
If you dared question it in 2003 you were smeared as a Saddam Hussain supporter, and if you question it today you're accused of being a stooge for the corrupt and incompetent Maduro government in Venezuela.
The fact that the very same arguments are being wheeled out to support imperialist "regime change" in Venezuela as were used in Iraq in 2003 and Libya in 2011 proves that this imperialist mindset has never really faded away.
But imperialism is resurgent again now thanks to factors like Brexit, the mainstreaming of extreme-right jingoism, and the destabilisation of Venezuela in a brazen grab for corporate control of the largest proven oil reserves in the world, but it never fully diminishes in the interim periods between the waves of ultranationalist jingoism.
More evidence that this imperialist mindset has never really died down amongst the British can be found in the poll findings that huge swathes of the British public consider the British empire to have been a positive thing!
Yes of course there are some periphery positive legacies like the rail networks that British imperialists left behind, but even then the main purpose of those rail networks was to enable the looting of the invaded countries' natural resources in order to enrich the British establishment class.
The warm glow of nostalgia over rail networks, colonial buildings, and the political remnants of Commonwealth should surely be outweighed by the centuries of political repression, resource theft, racism, slavery, starvation, and outright genocide.
But somehow no! When asked to evaluate the British empire, more Brits will award it an overall positive legacy than admit that the ethical problems might have somewhat outweighed the benefits.
So given the massive proportion of Brits who exalt and glorify the age of empire is it any wonder that our establishment class keep embarrassing Britain on the global stage by pushing the same old imperialist nonsense that Britain has somehow got some special right to inflict our political agendas on our closest neighbours and distant peoples alike?
When they impotently try to boss the Irish around, promote their post-Brexit trade plans as being "Empire 2.0", and push deadly imperialist "regime change" agendas in places like Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Venezuela, they're actually giving a significant swathe of the British public exactly what they want.
If more of us stood up and protested against grotesque displays of ultranationalism and imperialism then perhaps the establishment class would learn to stop doing it, or at least tone it down a few levels.
But as it is now the next unbelievably arrogant insult aimed at our closest European neighbours is always just moments away, and the next Iraq-style humanitarian disaster is always looming just over the horizon.
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.
If you ever wanted more evidence that Brexit is fuelled by delusional thinking, take a look at the ludicrous wording of the "Leave the EU without a deal in March 2019" petition and consider the fact that over quarter of a million people have actively approved this ludicrous display of Brextremist idiocy by signing it.
Just in case you can't see for yourself how idiotic every single sentence of this absurd petition is, I'll break it down, and just like the petition I'm leaving the most extraordinarily idiotic bits until last.
"We are wasting Billions of pounds of taxpayers money trying to negotiate in a short space of time" - Nope, we're actually wasting £billions in public funds trying to make preparations to mitigate the worst aspects of the "no deal" economic meltdown should we crash out without a deal in place. The government just announced they're wasting £4.2 billion more on this "no deal" nonsense.
"Leaving the EU in March 2019 will allow the UK good time to negotiate more efficiently" - Leaving the EU in March 2019 with "no deal" will destroy the single biggest piece of leverage the UK has in this farcical mess. As it stands now the UK can revoke Article 50 at any time before March 29th and the ECJ ruling also states that the EU are not allowed to punish Britain in any way by tinkering with our terms of membership if we do so.
If Article 50 lapses not only will it trigger an economic meltdown, but it'll permanently destroy the option of remaining under the current terms until someone comes up with something better than Theresa May's absolute farce of a deal.
Revoking Article 50 is clearly the sensible action that would stop the clock ticking and allow the UK "good time" to actually come up with a coherent exit plan (without deliberately exploding a bomb under the UK economy and wilfully destroying the single biggest piece of leverage we've got in the process like a "no deal" flounce would).
"The EU will be more eager to accept a deal on our terms having lost a major partner" - The EU will offer us better terms if we implode our own economy in the hope of inflicting a bit of collateral damage on them? How is anyone stupid enough to imagine that the EU would be the ones left begging the economy that just voluntarily self-immolated for help?
"We will save billions of pounds from our EU divorce payment" - Walking away from our debts and liabilities would be a disaster for Britain. What other country would ever consider signing trade deals with the UK if we'd just demonstrated to the world that we're prepared to leave our closest economic allies in the lurch like that?
If you just watched someone very publicly defraud a neighbour would you be stupid enough to sign up to a deal with them?
"as well as a similar amount from Civil Service and Govt costs" - This is just a flat out lie. The UK government is currently diverting thousands of civil servants from important jobs into emergency "no deal" planning at a cost of £billions. Aside from the costs in Whitehall, just think of the cost of all of the extra customs facilities, bureaucracy, and staff when the free trade in goods is brought to a crashing halt.
This is such a brazen effort to misrepresent one of the biggest costs of a "no deal" scenario as a benefit it's extraordinary that anyone could fall for it.
"This money will be used to support our own country whilst we await the EU to talk to us to make deals more in our favour." - We're going to use the money we're not going to save as we wait for the unicorns that are not going to be delivered!
Even the pro-Brexit Tory government admits that a chaotic "no deal" Brexit would trigger a bigger economic meltdown than the bankers' insolvency crisis in 2008. There will be no Brexit dividend, and the EU will not come riding to our rescue if we deliberately vandalise our own economy in the hope of causing them a bit of collateral damage.
"The EU border in Ireland to be managed simply by having a dual Euro / pound currency as legal tender in both the North and South" - Such a "simple solution"! Let's all sign a petition to make the UK government force the Republic of Ireland to accept Sterling as legal tender!
What kind of delusional imperialist dream world are these people living in? Ireland is an independent state. The days of English toffs in London telling the Irish what to do are long gone.
Aside from the sheer stupidity of thinking the Tories in Westminster could do anything whatever to force the Republic of Ireland to adopt Sterling as an official currency, consider the Northern Irish unionist perspective. They're bitterly opposed to Theresa May's agreement because the "backstop" creates divergence between the Northern Irish economy and the economy of Great Britain. Yet this "simple solution" is to create a much bigger economic divergence by saying Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland should adopt a dual currency scenario, while mainland Britain sticks with Stirling only!
How do these idiots think that their ridiculous proposition to economically reunify Ireland would go down with the unionists in Northern Ireland?
"Exports to the South would be dealt with in Euro and vice versa when importing to the North. Rates fixed at time of the deal." - What they've proposed here is a de facto currency union between the UK and the Eurozone!
If rates are "fixed at the time of the deal", then the value of Stirling would have to permanently track the value of the Euro wouldn't it?
This lot voted for Brexit because of "sovereignty" but they've all just signed a petition calling for the UK to abandon its own monetary sovereignty and join the Euro by default!
Conclusion
The wording of the petition is unmitigated gibberish from beginning to end. There's not a single redeeming sentence in the entirety of it, yet over quarter of a million Brexit dupes have signed it anyway.
The fact that this unrelenting display of idiocy is the single most popular petition on the UK government's petition website is nothing short of a national embarrassment. Just think what the Irish must make of this mass demonstration of sheer unthinking idiocy and consider the fact that Brits routinely make jokes about the Irish being thick!
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.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is threatening to trigger a catastrophic trade war with the European Union if the bunch of Brextremists he leads don't get their own way.
In an interview with Sky News he made two specific threats against the EU. One that Britain could deliberately refuse to pay their outstanding liabilities to the EU, and the other that they the UK government could impose punitive 70% spite tariffs on Irish beef in an effort to wreck the Irish economy.
Here's exactly what he said: "If Britain trades on WTO terms, we could potentially slap tariffs of up to 70 per cent on Irish beef. That could bankrupt Ireland, who export £800 million of beef to us every year. And if there is no deal, the EU doesn't get their £40 billion divorce bill money and becomes insolvent."
Irish beef
The problem with threatening to impose punitive 70% tariffs on Irish Beef is that the EU would obviously side with Ireland in such a dispute by imposing tit-for-tat tariffs on the UK's most valuable exports.
It's so ridiculously obvious that the EU would defend the interests of one of their member state against Rees-Mogg's spite tariffs that it feels rather patronising to point out that that's exactly what would happen, and that Britain stands to lose an awful lot more in a bitter trade war with the EU than the EU stands to lose by reciprocating Britain's use of spite tariffs.
UK exports to the EU are worth around £240 billion, so endangering all of that in a spiteful effort to damage £0.8 billion worth of Irish beef exports to the UK would clearly be a massive strategic blunder, but that's exactly what Rees-Mogg is proposing.
Pariah Britain
If the United Kingdom decides to walk away from EU membership without paying what British negotiators have already agreed that they owe in debts and future liabilities, it's mind-bogglingly obvious that the rest of the world would take note of the fact that the British are liable to walk away from their trade agreements without fulfilling their legal obligations.
The Brextremists are absolutely insistent that the UK must leave the Single Market and Customs Union so that the British government can negotiate new trade deals with the rest of the world, but who on earth would want to sign up to a trade deal with us if they've got absolute proof that we're a bunch of deal-breakers who are prone to leaving their trade partners in the lurch?
Populist protectionism
If you think about it, the idea of Britain using punitive "spite tariffs" to attack their nearest neighbour is an absolutely extraordinary thing to hear from a Tory politician. For decades the Tories have pushed hard-right neoliberal economics, globalisation, and free trade. In fact the Tories were one of the main driving forces behind the creation of the Single Market in the first place!
What Rees-Mogg is proposing is a total break with this Tory globalist free trade tradition to push a form of extreme-right ultranationalist populist protectionism.
How is this ongoing shift in the Tory ideological stance from free trade, to militant protectionism isn't attracting more attention/concern from the mainstream media?
The ERG
You might be inclined to dismiss Rees-Mogg's threats as the ravings of an attention-seeking backbench Tory MP, but he's not just a backbench MP, he's the leader of the ERG Brextremists who control Theresa May's every move.
The secretive ERG "party within a party" have easily enough MPs to trigger a Tory leadership contest, so Theresa May knows perfectly well that she has to do whatever they want if she wants to cling to power.
If Theresa May steps out of line and angers the ERG mob, then she knows that she's gone, and Rees-Mogg is one of the bookies' favourites to replace her as Tory leader.
Extremism
It's extraordinary to see Jeremy Corbyn gradually steering the Labour Party back towards traditional centre-left democratic socialism represented in the mainstream media as some kind of scary lunatic take-over of the party, while they provide almost no critical analysis of how the Tory party is actually being taken over from within by a bunch of radical rabble rousing hard-right ultranationalist extremists right before our eyes.
The jingoists
A scroll through the highest rated Daily Express comments about these Rees-Mogg threats reveals the kind of baying extreme-right ultranationalism we're dealing with, and they're precisely the audience Rees-Mogg is targetting with this kind of extreme rhetoric.
"Walk away", "GET US OUT", "the best deal for the UK is no deal", "If May won't do it the Moggster will", "Come on Rees-Mogg, start a new party, you could call it the democratic people party. It would sweep to power".
Rees-Mogg knows perfectly well that the UK economy would be wrecked by a ruinous "no deal" Brexit and a massive trade war with the EU, especially if the UK government signal to the rest of the world that they shouldn't sign trade deals with us because we're unreliable trade partners too, but he actively whips up this kind of extremist rhetoric because he sees it as fundamental to his leadership ambitions.
There's no way such a ludicrous individual could ever seize political power on a tide of common sense, so he's clearly aiming to build a tsunami of extreme-right ultranationalist fanaticism instead.
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.
Not only did Boris share a picture of Corbyn with a member of Sinn Féin to "prove" that he met the IRA (refer back to point three and draw your own conclusions about whether Boris is being intensely thick or sickeningly disingenuous) he also claimed that this picture of Corbyn and McGuinness in the 1990s (while the peace process was really beginning to move forward) was proof that Corbyn is untrustworthy!
