Yet another Tory Brextremist is cashing in by betting against Britain on the sly

The Tory Brextremist Steve Baker has been caught investing over £70,000 in a company advising its clients to invest in gold in order to avoid the financial hit of a Tory "no deal" Brexit.

This isn't just any old Tory either. Baker was until recently an actual government minister working under David Davis (the guy who wasted practically all of the Article 50 negotiating period before huffing off in a strop because Theresa May's hard-right economically ruinous Chequers proposal wasn't hard-right or economically ruinous enough for his tastes).

Before Theresa May invited this ideological fanatic into government, Baker was actually the head of the secretive ERG group of Tory Brextremists which is now headed up by Jacob Rees-Mogg.

The company Baker has invested in is called Glint Pay Limited, and they've regularly advised clients to invest in physical gold in order to financially insulate themselves from the negative economic impact of a Tory "no deal" Brexit.

This is far from the first example of leading Tories publicly pushing the hardest possible version of Brexit whilst personally insulating themselves from the social and economic disaster they're attempting to trigger.

• John Redwood promotes "no deal" Brexit to gullible dupes in The S*n whilst simultaneously advising his wealthy clients to get their cash out of Britain because of Brexit.

• Jacob Rees-Mogg (leader of the ERG Tory Brextremist faction) pushes bizarrely innumerate pro-Brexit lies on Twitter, but has opened two investment funds in Ireland in order to maintain his investment fund's access to the Single Market after Brexit.

• Nigel Lawson (chairman of the Vote Leave campaign) has applied for French residency in order to maintain his own personal Freedom of Movement in Europe as the Brextremists seek to revoke Freedom of Movement from millions of their fellow Brits against their will.

• Michael Ashcroft has been promoting Malta as a destination for wealthy investors to move their cash during the Brexit meltdown.

Their behaviour makes it increasingly obvious that all of the leading Tory Brextremists know that the hard-right "no deal" Brexit they're pushing for will trigger a massive economic recession that will likely dwarf the impact of the 2007-08 bankers' insolvency crisis that we've still not even recovered from a full decade later.

The way they're advising their wealthy backers to divest from Britain (into overseas assets, foreign currency, gold) just goes to prove what Brexit is really all about.

Their argument that Brexit is about parliamentary sovereignty has long since dissolved after they sought to over-rule the sovereignty of parliament in the courts, and then included anti-democratic Henry VIII powers in their Brexit legislation to allow Tory ministers to rewrite thousands of laws with no parliamentary scrutiny whatever.

Their argument that it's about the "will of the people" has also crumbled away with their determined opposition to a second EU referendum on the final terms of the Brexit agreement. Apparently, according to them it's important to listen to the "will of the people" when the people are voting blindly on a potential future deal they can't possibly know the final details of, but equally important to deny them a say when the terms of the deal actually become clear!

So what Brexit is really all about is disaster capitalism. 

Not the kind of disaster capitalism as described by Naomi Klein that sweeps in after a natural disaster like Hurricane Katrina to socially cleanse neighbourhoods and force the privatisation of public assets. 

Nor is it the kind of disaster capitalism that bombed Iraq to smithereens and then handed out £billions in outsourcing contracts to western companies to rebuild the infrastructure, and attempt to keep the peace in the deadly terrorism-riddled power vacuum the disaster capitalists created there.

Brextremist disaster capitalism involves cynically appealing to patriotism in order to trigger a deliberate economic meltdown in your own country in order that your mates in the mega-rich international investment class can swoop in and pick up £billions worth of distressed British assets on the cheap like vultures picking the flesh off a carcass.

The audacity of it is astounding. The Brextremists actually pose as patriots standing up for plucky little Britain against the horrid EU, but their behaviour betrays their true objective: Deliberately wrecking the British economy in order to benefit their friends in the mega-rich international investment class, and to unleash a terrifying hard-right power grab to crush the last remnants of democratic socialism in the ensuing crisis (the NHS, local government services, emergency services, the social welfare system).

The saddest thing is that millions of people remain completely unaware of this increasingly obvious Tory disaster capitalist agenda, and react with the cultish mantra of "Project Fear" to dismiss any and all evidence that a Tory "no deal" Brexit will be a social and economic catastrophe.

All you need to do is look at the furtive betting against Britain on the sly by Tory Brextremists like Steve Baker, and their true agenda shines through.

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OR

The doubly ridiculous Tory spin on BAE's Australian warship contract

The Australian government has announced a new deal for the construction of nine Hunter class frigates, but the Tory spin on this story is doubly-misleading and absolutely ridiculous.

The Tories are attempting to present the story as if the contract represents some kind of £20 billion boost for the British economy, but in reality the vast majority of the £20 billion will be spent in Australia, creating Australian jobs, and stimulating demand in the Australian economy.

The only significant benefit to Britain will come indirectly through profits made by the British-based arms company BAE Systems. The biggest single investor in BAE is an American investment company called Capital Group. And one of Capital Group's most notable employees happens to be ... Theresa May's husband!

It's not like we're building the ships and sending them over there, and it's not even like the profit margin will actually make its way back to Britain either, it'll be divvied up amongst the mega-rich multinational investment class.

To put this Tory spin into perspective, just consider how the Australian government have been presenting this deal to their own people (see picture). The overwhelming majority of the investment is staying within Australia, it's going to create thousands of Australian jobs, and it's going to stimulate the Australian economy.

Also consider what BAE themselves have said about the deal making a "significant contribution to the Australian economy" and "creating thousands of jobs, supporting new industries and boosting the national supply chain for decades to come".

Even worse than their misleading presentation as if this contract is somehow a £20 billion boost for Britain, is the way the Tories have misleadingly presented this deal between the Australian government and a multinational arms company as some kind of justification for their Brexit farce.

In reality the Tories know that Brexit is going to be an economic disaster. That's why Michael Ashcroft has been praising Malta as a business base during Brexit. It's why John Redwood keeps telling the public that Brexit will be wonderful whilst telling private investment funds to get their cash out of Britain during the Brexit process. It's why Nigel Lawson is seeking French residency. It's why Jacob Rees-Mogg has opened up a new branch of his investment fund in Ireland.

The behaviour of these leading Brexiteers makes it obvious what's going on.

It's engineered disaster capitalism.

The Brexiteers have engineered the economic disaster that is Brexit and Tory Brextremists like Jacob Rees-Mogg are striving to ensure the disaster as destructive as possible with their constant "no deal" posturing. Meanwhile them and their mates are shifting as much cash as possible out of the UK before the economic implosion, so as to flood back in again like vultures once the Brexit recession hits to pick over the bones and gobble up £billions worth of distressed British assets on the cheap.

The Tories are not only misleadingly dressing up a financial benefit for them and their mega-rich investment class mates as some kind of £20 billion boost for Britain, they're using this deception in order to propagandise for the disastrous hard-right "no deal" Brexit they're plotting, which will also end up benefiting them and their mega-rich chums, but this time at a massive cost to the British public, British workers, and the British economy.

 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.

OR

John Redwood is spewing delusional Brexiteer gibberish again

The Tory MP and Brexit fanatic John Redwood has written a ludicrous article for The S*n in which he outlines his argument that Theresa May should address her spectacularly failing Brexit negotiations by escalating her threats to do an extreme "no deal" strop away from the negotiating table.

In this article I'm going to critique Redwood's article line by line to demonstrate how billionaire propaganda barons like Rupert Murdoch are providing fanatical Brexiteers like Redwood public platforms to peddle an absolute crock of misrepresentations, contradictions, shallow nationalist rhetoric, and outright lies in order to make incredibly reckless brinkmanship look like a good idea.

Critique

"Next week there is a big European Council meeting which is likely to tell the UK they are not willing to talk about trade without us paying a shedload of money that we don’t owe."

The idea that we don't owe anything to the EU is pure fantasy. Just take the example of all the pensions of the British MEPs and civil servants who have worked for the EU over the last four decades. Of course the UK should cover the cost of these pensions, and all of the other financial obligations the country signed up to, otherwise who on earth would ever sign a trade deal or treaty with the UK again in the knowledge that the British government has a track record of reneging on their financial commitments whenever it suits them?

"Theresa May can and should turn the tables on the unhelpful EU at next week’s meeting. She can tell them the UK is preparing to leave the EU on March 29, 2019, with no deal."

Theresa May has been spewing her reckless "no deal is better than a bad deal" rhetoric for months, but it doesn't work. The EU27 are unified and they're not going to budge because her "no deal" threats are completely delusional. It's like threatening your neighbours that you'll burn down your own house in the hope that they suffer some disruption and smoke damage.

"She can say this will mean we will trade with them all on World Trade Organisation terms. That will be just fine for the UK. It’s how we do our trade with the rest of the world today."

This is an outright lie. The UK does the vast majority of its trade with the rest of the world through treaties negotiated though our membership of the EU. A "no deal" cliff edge Brexit would mean Britain doesn't just end up outside the Single Market and Customs Union, but also outside every single trade deal we've entered with the rest of the world over the last four decades too.

"Just leaving brings us lots of advantages. It means we don’t have to pay them another penny once we are out."

You'd have to be as mad as a bucket of frogs to imagine that the few £billion in net savings from no longer paying our (significantly rebated) EU membership fee is not going to be absolutely dwarfed by the costs of economic meltdown that would be triggered by a ruinous "no deal" strop away from the negotiations.

"We don’t owe them anything beyond our contributions up to the date we go."

As I pointed out before, we do owe them for the cost of stuff like the pensions of British EU employees, the costs of ongoing infrastructure projects the UK has signed up to, and a range of other things. Just saying we don't owe it, isn't the same as not owing it.

"We can spend that money on our ­priorities. It means we can get rid of VAT on things which the EU makes us charge, where we disagree. That includes insulation, better boiler controls and other energy-saving ­measures, and female hygiene products."

Another hazy promise from a Brexiter that isn't worth the (toilet) paper it's written on. Even if we believe the absurd fantasy that leaping off the "no deal" Brexit cliff edge would result in a net economic gain for the UK, who on earth would be naive enough to imagine that a Tory government would spend it on stuff like environmental measures and alleviating period poverty, rather than distributing it to their £billionaire backers in tax cuts for corporations and the mega-rich?

"It means we can decide how many people to welcome into our country."

In 2010 Theresa May (who was Home Secretary at the time) promised to reduce net migration to below 100,000. What she actually did was oversee the biggest migration inflow in UK history peaking at 336,000 in 2015. Even if the UK commits a massive act of economic self-harm by banning all migration from the EU, the rate of non-EU migration is still well over 100,000, and quitting the EU won't have any effect whatever on that.

"We can police our borders as we wish, to make the country safer." 

This claim is a sick joke from a member of the ruling party who let the Manchester bomber come back through the UK border from hanging out with his terrorist mates in Libya and Syria, then didn't even bother to keep him under surveillance despite numerous warnings from the Manchester Muslim community and a tip-off from the US intelligence services that he was actively planning a terrorist attack against the EU. 

Additionally, a "no deal" Brexit would mean the UK bailing out of all of the policing, security and intelligence sharing agreements with the EU, which would obviously make the UK an awful lot less safe.

"It means we can pass the laws we want."

The Tories are currently using Brexit as an excuse to launch an audacious anti-democratic power grab that would allow them to rewrite thousands of existing laws with no parliamentary scrutiny. There's a huge difference between the kind of stuff that Tory politicians might want to write into UK law without any democratic scrutiny, and what "we" the British public, would actually want.

"We can amend and improve the EU laws we are inheriting. It means we do not have to accept any more EU ­regulations unless we like them."

You'd have to have a significant level of contempt for the concept of parliamentary democracy to believe that the process of "amending" and "improving" the EU laws we've signed up to over the years should be done in secret by Tory ministers with no democratic scrutiny whatever.

"The problem for the EU states is they export a lot of food to us." 

That the UK has a vast trade deficit with the EU is not a problem for the EU, it's a problem for us.

"Food is the only area under World Trade Organisation rules where tariffs are high, designed to keep out imports. Danish bacon, French dairy products, Dutch flowers and vegetables, Irish beef will all be subject to tax penalties if they go for a no trade deal. It is ­massively in the EU’s interest to keep their tariff-free access to the UK. They sell us much more than we sell them across the board."

This summer I have been making sure I can buy non-EU food and drink at my local supermarket. The English tomatoes and vegetables have been good so I didn’t need the Dutch ones. English, Australian and New Zealand wines are great, so no need to buy French or Spanish. Scottish beef and English lamb are tasty, UK dairy products fine and English fruit touches the right parts. When Europe is in winter we can buy from the southern hemisphere or from our farmers’ heated greenhouses."

An estimated 70% of the UK's food imports come from EU countries, and the vast majority of the rest comes from countries with which the UK has trade deals that have been negotiated through the EU. A ruinous "no deal" Brexit would mean new or increased tariffs on 97% of the food we import.  

The idea that trade with the rest of the world wouldn't be disrupted by tearing up all of our EU negotiated trade agreements is utterly delusional, and you'd have to be a total idiot to be placated by a fluffy personal anecdote about how John bloody Redwood has been "buying British at the supermarket"!

"Some say we could not do this. After all, it will be our customers who have to pay the higher prices of EU food with tariffs on while we wait for UK farmers to increase their output to serve more of our needs."

Just like his fellow Brexit fantasist Chris Grayling, Redwood completely fails to explain how UK farmers are going to dramatically increase their output when Brexit drives away the EU seasonal migrant workers that the British agricultural sector relies on so heavily. Who is going to do the backbreaking agricultural work? Pensioners? Disabled people? unpaid Workfare slaves?

"They don’t understand the cards in our hands as the EU’s main customer."

Back to the shit Brexiteer poker analogies. 

Everyone in the world can see that Theresa May has got a handful of duff cards and she's resorted to bluffing. There's no other way to explain her lunatic "give us what we want or we'll blow up a massive economic bomb under ourselves in the hope that you get injured by the shockwaves" approach to the negotiations. 

"The Government will be able to give us all a tax cut out of the tariff ­revenue it collects, so we need not be worse off."

Ah ha ha ha. We'll all have to pay the cost of tariffs on our supermarket shopping, and we're to trust the Tories to redistribute that wealth back to us, rather than distribute it to their billionaire backers in tax cuts for corporations and the mega-rich. 

If you believe that, you'll believe anything! 

"We can also cut the tariffs we have to impose on food from outside the EU to balance things up a bit. Why should we put a tariff on South African oranges to help the Spanish industry when we grow none for ­ourselves?"

This is just delusional. We'll have to put WTO tariffs on produce from all over the world because we'll be bailing out of all of our trade agreements if we do a "no deal" tantrum. Maybe we could sign up to new low-tariff trade agreements with minor trade partners like South Africa eventually, but there are several things to consider.  

1. Trade deals take years to negotiate, and we don't have anything like the civil service capacity to negotiate scores of replacement trade deals all at once, so the WTO tariffs on non-EU produce will be in effect for years, if not decades. 

2. Countries like South Africa will understand that we need trade deals with them an awful lot more than they need trade deals with us. They will be in the driving seat with the power to demand all kinds of favours and concessions from our massively over-stretched, inexperienced, and time-pressurised negotiators.

3. If we do a "no deal" strop, why would anyone want to sign trade deals with us anyway? If you witnessed someone rip off their business partner by unilaterally abandoning the deal they had together, would you rush to sign a business deal with them, or would you keep well away?

"Your shopping basket may change a bit but there is no need to worry. Our farmers will boost their output."

Again. How? How do they boost their output when Brexit has chased away a huge chunk of their labour force?

"The EU negotiators do not seem concerned about the damage they could do to EU exporters. Their overwhelming concern is losing all that cash we pay them each year."

Outright lies. The EU have outlined their three main concerns over and again: Protection of the rights of EU citizens in the UK, a resolution to the Irish border problem, and a financial settlement to cover the UK's ongoing commitments. 

Until these three issues are resolved they're not going to get into trade talks over how much the UK might pay for preferential access to the Single Market. Everyone knows this. David Davis agreed to this sequencing of events in June.

"They have jeopardised an agreement about a good trading relationship in the future to try to wring more money out of the UK after we have left."

No. The agreement over future trading relationships comes after the rights of EU citizens and the Irish border situation are resolved. The ones who are guilty of jeopardising the future trading relationship are the Tories for trying to use the rights of EU citizens as bargaining chips, and failing to make any meaningful progress on the Irish border problem.

"The PM needs to remind them we owe them nothing under the law and their treaty. Why would we pay extra when there is no benefit for us?"

In one paragraph he's accusing the EU of jeopardising the future trading relationship, and in the very next he's demanding that the PM lies to the EU negotiators about the UK not having an obligation to honour the costs of the laws and treaties we signed up to. as if they'll just say "yes, abandon your financial obligations, here have a trade deal that's better than the deal that we give to actual members of our club".

"When we entered the EU — then the EEC — for the first time we inherited a lot of payments the others had agreed to without us. No one said we did not have to pay for things agreed before we got there. So why does anyone think we need to go on paying for things after we leave?"

This is a nonsense argument. It doesn't even make sense. If you sign up to a club, you abide by the membership rules, whether you're a founder member of the club or not. If during your membership you sign up to agreements to cover the cost of certain things, then you can't just quit and refuse to pay what you'd agreed to. Otherwise you end up massively pissing everyone off, and making yourself look like a fundamentally dishonest and unreliable chancer who doesn't stick to their word. 

"The EU is not planning on paying us anything after March 2019, so they save what they used to give us back from the money we send them."

Such backwards logic! Why would the EU pay the UK anything? The UK is causing disruption by quitting the EU, not the other way around. 

"Out of the EU we will end the ­uncertainty." 

A "no deal" strop out of the EU would cause massive uncertainty for millions of workers, businesses, investors, and government agencies. Dressing such a drastic move up as "ending the uncertainty" is a stunning example of "black is white" Orwellian propaganda.

"We will be able to sign trade treaties with countries elsewhere in the world, which we cannot do as a member of the EU."

Yes. But this process will obviously take a lot of time, and the UK's reputation as reliable trading partners would be absolutely devastated by a "no deal" flounce away from our trade agreements with Europe over a refusal to cover the cost of ongoing commitments.

"We will get our fishing grounds back and put in a fishing policy that works for us."

The fishing industry accounts for a tiny fraction of the UK economy, but the subject is a reliable touch-stone for Brexit fanatics, so it's no surprise to see Redwood randomly lobbing it into his article. 

It would take a spectacular amount of optimism to think that a Tory government that is massively over-stretched by their own Brexit mess would somehow make a better job of regulating the UK fishing industry than the status quo. 

What's actually highly likely to happen is that the Tories will use access to UK fishing territories as a bargaining chip in order to win favours for the UK financial services industry (over half of Tory party donations come from the financial sector, virtually none come from fishermen or fleet owners).

"If Theresa May sounds positive about no deal, she greatly increases the ­chances that they will want to offer a trade deal for their own sakes."

Even if we're delusional enough to accept the idea that Theresa May suddenly sounding more positive about the insane "no deal is better than a bad deal" threat she's been making since January will cause the EU27 negotiation team to suddenly fold and give the UK a wonderful deal, this completely contradicts Redwood's previous attempts to argue that "no deal" is a great idea in its own right.

Which is it? Is "no deal" a ludicrous and futile we're holding the gun to our own heads so do as we say threat, or is it actually Redwood's preferred endgame? He is trying to have it both ways in the same damned article!

"If she accepts the advice of the Treasury and looks worried about leaving without a deal, she should expect a larger bill and more delay in settling anything."

You'd have to be a unbelievably reckless and sociopathic ideologue to have no worries about the social and economic destruction a "no deal" strop would wreak on the UK, or about the extreme damage to the UK's reputation as a reliable trading partner. 

Additionally we've already established that the delays are stemming from the Tory refusal/inability to guarantee the rights of EU citizens in the UK, and resolve the Irish border problem, not from the EU.

"The best few hundred millions the Treasury will spend this year and next is the money to ensure we are fine without a deal."

The idea that the estimated £250 million the Tories are spending on planning for a "no deal" strop away from the Brexit negotiations would be enough to mitigate even the tiniest fraction of the social and economic fallout of such a reckless act of national self-harm is utterly delusional. 

"That will save us billions that some want us to give to the EU to end up with something like the single market bureaucracy we voted to leave."

A "no deal" tantrum wouldn't "save us billions", it would plunge the economy into chaos and trash what remains of our national reputation.  

Additionally, it's an outright lie to say that "we voted to leave" the Single Market because the Single Market wasn't even mentioned in the referendum question, in fact a load of high profile Brexiters like Nigel Farage, Daniel Hannan, Owen Paterson and Arron Banks argued that we should stay in the Single Market after we quit the EU during the referendum debate.

"It is also money well spent if we do get a deal, because we still need ­borders and customs that work."

This is an utterly bizarre conclusion. We should waste hundreds of millions planning for a "no deal" tantrum in the vain hope that openly planning to try and screw the EU over by exploding an economic bomb under ourselves will cause them to suddenly offer us a wonderful deal!

If we spend our money buying a big gun so we can point it at our own heads, Redwood is arguing, they'll back down because they won't want to get blood splatters on their clothes!

Conclusion

Essentially what John Redwood seems to be arguing (in a shockingly dishonest manner) is that Theresa May should "turn the tables" on the EU by ... errm ... doubling down on her delusional policy of making the reckless threat to do a "no deal" strop the centrepiece of her spectacularly failing negotiating strategy. 

The incredible thing isn't that the propaganda baron Rupert Murdoch provides a platform to fanatical ideologues like John Redwood to promote this kind of delusional and downright dishonest Brexiteer rhetoric, it's that anyone ever took this kind of fanatical hard-right Brexiteer idiocy seriously in the first place.

As a result we're now in the extraordinary situation where the 27 remaining members of the EU are far more united than the UK governing party, which is catastrophically split. 

Theresa May is being pulled in opposite directions by one bunch of Tories who actually want to negotiate sensibly in order to avoid an economically ruinous "no deal" national meltdown, and other Tories like John Redwood who insist that the best approach to the most complex and risky set of negotiations the UK has faced in decades is to play an increasingly hysterical game of brinkmanship.

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OR

John Redwood's Twitter meltdown

John Redwood is a hard-right Tory who hates the EU with a burning ideological passion, and who has been suggesting that the UK should turn itself into a low-wage, low-regulation, low-skill corporate tax haven for years.

On the morning of June 28th 2017 he posted a series of Tweets that demonstrated just how ideologically deranged the hard-right Eurosceptic faction of the Tory party has become.

The EU is not ready to negotiate yet: https://t.co/ADuWDsqGDN

— John Redwood (@johnredwood) June 28, 2017

Redwood started off by posting a link to his own blog in which he tried to argue the reality-reversing nonsense that it's the EU that is not ready to negotiate, rather than the absolutely shambolic situation Theresa May and the three Brexiteers have cobbled together.

The blog post was full of errors, misrepresentations, omissions and bizarre conflations of different issues, and the comments beneath were a foaming pool of frothing hard-right anti-EU diatribes (which is exactly what you'd expect from the kind of people who follow John Redwood's blog).

We are still months off the EU being ready to discuss our future relationship in a productive way.

— John Redwood (@johnredwood) June 28, 2017

His next Tweet is actually true, but not for the reason he's claiming. The EU are not unready to discuss the future UK-EU relationship, they're unwilling to until three primary issues are settled (citizens' rights, the Irish border, and the separation agreement).

Theresa May's decision to completely ignore the EU's opening offer on citizens' rights, and instead launch an absolute insult of a lowball offer is a demonstration that the Tories are determined to stall the the first round of negotiations for as long as possible by playing silly beggars.

The EU will not negotiate the future trade agreement until the three primary issues are sorted. The longer the Tories spend stalling over stuff like citizens' rights, the less time there will be for the trade talks.

The EU seem to think we have demands, when they have rather more demands that we do not have to grant.

— John Redwood (@johnredwood) June 28, 2017

This is just diplomatic baby talk. In any negotiation both sides have demands. The important issue is not the number of demands that are being made by either side, it's what legitimacy these demands actually have.

The EU negotiating position has been agreed by all 27 of the remaining EU states and democratically approved through a vote at the European Parliament. The UK negotiating position has been crudely cobbled together by the hard-right Eurosceptic faction of the Tory party and has been democratically approved by nobody.

The hard-right Eurosceptic faction of the Tory party have no democratic mandate to define the UK negotiating position on Brexit, but they see it as their God-given right, and they insist on describing anyone who dares question their mandate to negotiate on behalf of the entire United Kingdom in the language of treason (consider Andrea Leadsom's Stalinist claim that the mainstream media are unpatriotic for simply asking questions about the Tory negotiating position).

It will take time for the EU to understand they are the ones who want us to pay them money when there is no legal basis for such a claim

— John Redwood (@johnredwood) June 28, 2017

There is an obvious legal basis for the EU to request a financial settlement to cover the cost of ongoing commitments. Take the issue of EU parliamentary pensions paid to British former members of the EU Parliament, and pensions paid to formed British diplomats and technocrats in Brussels. Do the EU have an obligation to cover the entire cost of these pensions, or should the UK make a contribution?

Another cost is the removal of the prestigious EU agencies that are based in London (the European Medicines Agency and the European Banking Agency). What Redwood is trying to argue is that the UK took the decision to leave the EU, but it's the EU's responsibility to pay all of the costs of that decision!

Additionally talk of "no legal basis" is utterly bizarre coming from someone who sees the result of an advisory referendum as an excuse to tear up Britain's international obligations.

What Redwood is arguing for is a totally lawless attitude to international contracts and obligations. A total free-for-all where people and organisations can simply walk away from any contract or agreement, which is completely at odds with Conservative economic theory that relies heavily on contract law and the sanctity of contracts.

Redwood's hatred of the EU is so rabid that he's willing to abandon one of the fundamental pillars of the conservative ideology in order to achieve Brexit.

The EU have large exports in agricultural products & cars. Under WTO rules we could impose tariffs that will hit demand for their products

— John Redwood (@johnredwood) June 28, 2017

Talk of resorting to WTO rules and imposing import tariffs to damage the EU trade in cars and agricultural produce is the kind of nuclear Brexit nonsense that the UK public rejected in Theresa May's vanity election.

There is no public appetite for an economy-wrecking, job-destroying, global recession-triggering nuclear Brexit, but John Redwood and the hard-right faction of the Tory party are absolutely fixated on achieving this outcome regardless of what the public want.

What Redwood is describing is the threat of an extreme hard Brexit with no trade deal in place followed up by a protectionist trade war in which either side imposes import taxes on the other in order to damage the other economy as much as possible.

Aside from this threat being another abandonment of a central pillar of conservative ideology (free trade) it should be obvious that as the smaller and less diversified party the UK would be in a much weaker position in a protectionist trade war than the EU.

If the Tory government decided to make a "no deal" situation even worse by using import tariffs to deliberately attack the EU economy, then the obvious EU response would be to impose tit-for-tat import taxes on UK produce.

44% of all UK exported goods and services go to the EU. 

9% of EU exported goods and services go to the UK.

How could anyone in their right mind believe that Britain could win a protectionist trade war with the EU?

It is quite normal of the EU to leave agreements to the last minute. They may well go on posturing and misunderstanding for many months.

— John Redwood (@johnredwood) June 28, 2017

This bit is just bizarre. Redwood knows that we've all seen the Tory party spend an entire year stalling Brexit as they tried to cobble together some kind of plan. 

He knows we all saw Theresa May stall the Brexit negotiations for another two months with her vanity election. 

He knows we all saw Theresa May throw a spanner into the citizens' rights negotiations in order to stall the onset of the trade talks for as long as possible.

He knows that we can all see that the Tories are catastrophically unprepared for the magnitude of the diplomatic task they are facing and stalling for as long as possible, but he thinks we're gullible enough to believe the Orwellian reality-reverasal that it's the EU who are the chaotic unprepared charlatans who are posturing and delaying everything for as long as they can get away with!

Conclusion

In a delusional outburst of Tweets John Redwood has demonstrated that he's so riddled with hatred of the EU that he's willing to sling two pillars of right-wing ideology on the Brexit bonfire (the sanctity of contracts & free trade), and that he's determined to distort reality to such an extent that in his mind the EU are the chaotic, endlessly stalling chancers with no proper mandate, and the Tory party are the well prepared negotiators with a proper mandate!

Under any other circumstance Redwood's delusions would be laughable, but the terrifying reality is that Theresa May has put the hard-right Eurosceptic faction of the Tory party in charge of the Brexit negotiations in the full knowledge that most of them, like Redwood, actually want the negotiations to fail, and that some of them even want the UK to enter an economically ruinous protectionist trade war with the EU.

I've been warning since before the EU referendum that the hard-right fringe of the Tory party are the last people you'd ever want negotiating on your behalf, but now you don't have to believe me, you just have to look at John Redwood's Tweets and have a think about the absolute lunacy of what he's saying.

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Beware of right-wing Brexiters blaming the EU for their own post-Brexit chaos

It's beyond obvious that there are plenty of Eurosceptic Tories who would absolutely love to see the Brexit negotiations fail so that they can set about turning the UK into a universally despised hard-right corporate tax haven economy.

The far-right fringe of the Tory party actively want the negotiations to fail so that they can turn the UK into a parasitical economy intent on siphoning off the wealth of other nations rather than producing our own.

Hard-right Tories like John Redwood (a passionate Brexiter) have been blabbering on for years about their dream of turning the UK into a tax haven economy. The idea that hard-right Tories wouldn't use Brexit as an excuse to push their rabidly right-wing agendas is the same kind of ludicrous wishful thinking that had people believing in the post-Brexit fantasy land (in which a right-wing Tory government would put an extra £350 million a week into the socialist NHS, clamp down on corporate tax-dodging, stick up for the British steel industry ...)

Theresa May's ludicrous demand is that the EU allow the Tory party to cherry-pick Single Market access for major Tory party donors (the City of London financial sector) and for institutions with the financial clout to coerce the Tories into representing their interests (vehicle manufacturers, other major corporations), and she was absolutely clear in her clown costume speech that if these demands are not met, she'll launch an economically ruinous "no deal" nuclear Brexit in retribution.

Right-wing Brexiters like Boris Johnson have already been working hard to establish the propaganda line that the EU will be to blame for any nuclear Brexit fallout by chuntering on offensively about how they're like Nazi concentration camp guards. 

Anyone who thinks that slurring the people you're going to have to negotiate with as Nazis is a debating strategy that makes a successful outcome more, rather than less likely, clearly has no understanding of diplomacy whatever. 

It's down to you whether you believe that Theresa May's woeful threat-based "negotiating strategy" is born of shocking diplomatic ineptitude, or of a deliberate desire to see the negotiations fail ... but one thing that simply can't be denied is that if the negotiations do fail, which they seem highly likely to, the right-wingers pointing the finger of blame at the EU will be doing it solely in order to deflect criticism away from the Tory party for the appalling social and economic devastation that their nuclear Brexit would deliver.

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Do Brexiters love sinister corporate power grabs or not?

I'm pretty sure we all remember how Brexiters chose to fearmonger about TTIP in order to sell the case for Brexit. The argument against the TTIP corporate power grab is a very strong one, so it's no wonder Brexiters jumped on the anti-TTIP bandwagon.

One of the worst aspects of TTIP is the inclusion of sovereignty destroying ISDS components that would allow multinational corporations to completely bypass the democratic and judicial systems of any countries that have signed up to it in order to sue governments in secretive transnational tribunals. This means that if any democratic government introduces new legislation that multinational corporations don't like (plain packaging on cigarette packs, environmental protection laws, product safety standards, consumer rights, improved workers' rights ...) then the multinational corporations could extract £billions in compensation from the taxpayer in secretive transnational tribunals operated by a tiny band of extremely highly paid, mainly US based, corporate lawyers and arbiters.

It didn't matter how many times people like me pointed out that although TTIP is a very bad idea, it would have to be approved by every national government in the EU before it could be implemented. It didn't matter that we pointed out that the Greek government had already sworn to veto it. It didn't matter that we pointed out that the left-leaning governments in Portugal and France would be extremely unlikely to endorse it either. It didn't matter that we pointed out the massive scale of pan-European opposition to TTIP ... it was a fabulous anti-EU attack point for the Brexiters to use, and they did in their thousands.

Brexiters opportunistically jumped onto the anti-TTIP bandwagon despite the fact that the Brexit movement was driven by hard-right fanatics like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, John Redwood and Iain Duncan Smith who would just love to see British sovereignty completely over-written by a corporate take-over charter like TTIP. Before the Brexit vote the Tory party was one of the biggest cheerleaders for TTIP in the whole of the EU. Boris Johnson even wrote articles lavishing TTIP with praise and savagely condemning anyone who dared to criticise any aspect of it!

It should have been absolutely clear to any anti-TTIP Brexiter that handing even more power to the hard-right fringe of the Tory party by voting for Brexit would give them a perfect opportunity to ram through hard-right corporate power grabs to make TTIP look like a walk in the park, and without any democratic avenues to fight back against it either. Sadly lots of Brexiters just bought into the anti-EU rhetoric and chose to believe that that people like Boris Johnson (who so loved the idea of TTIP until a few weeks before his Brexit conversion) are genuinely concerned about protecting British sovereignty and "taking back control"!

Fast forward a few months and the adoption of another EU transnational corporate power grab called CETA is being stalled by three regional governments in Belgium. Three of the six Belgian federal parliaments have objected to this deal with Canada (the Wallonia region, the Brussels-Capital region, and the French community) so Belgium will not be able to sign up to it.

This deal between the EU and Canada contains exactly the same kind of shady ISDS tribunals as TTIP. It's precisely these sovereignty destroying ISDS components that are the main objection of Belgian politicians like Paul Magnette who have led the opposition to CETA.

The reaction from Brexiters has been comically hypocritical. They're now trying to claim that the CETA is a great thing and that the EU is a basket case for allowing regional democratic parliaments to obstruct this supposedly marvellous deal!

Before the referendum it was pretty much impossible to find a Brexiter who would argue in favour of TTIP because criticising TTIP conformed with their anti-EU agenda. Just a few months later it's pretty much impossible to find a Brexiter who will admit that CETA is exactly the same kind of sovereignty destroying corporate power grab as TTIP. Additionally the facts that regional parliaments in Belgium can obstruct it, and that all national governments will have a veto on its implementation are suddenly signs that the EU is "utterly dysfunctional", not conclusive proof that the EU isn't half as anti-democratic as the Brexiters were shrieking a few months ago.

What the hell do these Brexiters want? A few months ago they were telling us that corporate power grabs were evil and unacceptable attacks on our democratic sovereignty in order to push their anti-EU agenda. Now they're telling us that giant corporate power grabs are the absolute bees knees and the EU is a totally dysfanctional basket case because individual member states and federal regions can assert their democratic sovereignty to obstruct them!

Either the EU is a giant anti-democratic behemoth which imposes sinister corporate power grabs against member states' wills, or it's a democratic organisation that allows member states to obstruct wonderful, amazing. brilliant, marvellous corporate power grabs. It just can't be both.

It seems to boil down to this. If progress towards a massive corporate power grab can be used to attack the EU, then hoards of Brexiters will do it ... but if the democratic obstruction of another massive corporate power grab by Belgian regional parliaments can be used to attack the EU, then hoards of Brexiters will do that too.

The double dose of hypocrisy is absolutely searing. Before the referendum Brexiters told us that corporate power grabs are terrible, but now they're out in force to describe CETA as the bees knees, and before the referendum they wouldn't shut up about the importance of democracy and national sovereignty, but now that Belgium is asserting its democratic sovereignty within the EU they're shrieking "dysfunctional", "basket case", "red tape nightmare", "the EU is broken" ...

This multi-layered Brexiter hypocrisy is a perfect illustration of the blinkered and anti-intellectual ideological puritanism that is toxifying British politics. Screw the facts, screw the politics, screw the economic indicators, screw the experts, screw the evidence, screw rational consideration, screw ideological consistency, screw the consequences ... As far as millions of people are now concerned the EU is pure evil and they are determined to attack it from every angle, no matter how utterly hypocritical they make their cause look in the process.

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