People keep misleadingly claiming that there's absolutely no difference between Labour and the Tories on Brexit, and even that there's nothing to indicate that a Labour Brexit would be any less harmful than a Tory one!
In reality there's an absolute mountain of evidence from the last 30 months of chaos that it couldn't possibly be anything like as bad as the Tories running Brexit exclusively for their own selfish party political interests.
I'm certainly not advocating a Labour Brexit in this article, in fact I feel they should move position at some point in the near future towards offering a "cancel Brexit" vs "back to square one and try again" referendum. However I'm so utterly sick of the despicable campaign of lies from disingenuous Remainer fanatics that I need to point out just how dishonest they're being when they pretend there's no difference between Labour and the Tories on Brexit.
- Labour have repeatedly assured the public that they would never deliberately trigger a disastrous "no deal" meltdown like Theresa May keeps threatening, because they say it's "the worst possible deal for Britain". So at least this devastating nightmare scenario would be completely off the table under a Labour/progressive coalition government.
- The fact that under a Labour/progressive coalition government the highly competent Keir Starmer would be in charge of the Brexit negotiations instead of a succession of absolute Tory numbskulls like David Davis and Dominic Raab. Even if you don't like Brexit surely it makes sense to have someone competent and intelligent in charge of Britain's side of the negotiations instead of a parade of utterly dense Tories?
- The fact that if Labour or a progressive coalition were put in the position of trying to negotiate Brexit (if a repeat EU referendum was lost by the Remainers for example), at least they'd do it with a good faith cooperative approach rather than repeating Theresa May's bad faith threats and tantrums, or idiotic Tory ministers mouthing off to the British press about how they plan to renege on the agreements they've just signed up to (as if they imagine that Europeans can't read English or browse the Internet)!
- Far from "enabling Tory Brexit" as many Remain extremists allege, Labour has repeatedly voted against the Tory government in practically every single Brexit related vote in parliament. Consider Labour's Amendment 58 to the EU Withdrawal Bill as just one of many examples of firm Labour opposition to shifty hard-right Tory Brexit scheming.
- The fact that Labour (and other opposition parties) voted against Theresa May's EU Withdrawal legislation because it did not protect workers' rights, environmental laws, food standards, consumer protections, and freedom from discrimination. A Labour/progressive coalition government would work to enshrine these rights and protections into UK law.
- The fact that under Corbyn Labour policy is being handed back to the membership. If the Labour membership vote for a second referendum, or vote for assurances that Labour would remain in the Single Market, that's what Labour would do.
- The fact that the majority of Labour members are strongly opposed to a "no deal" Brexit, while a hefty (and rapidly increasing) proportion of Tory members are of the Brextremist blue-kip headbanger persuasion.
- The fact that Labour have been very careful not to rule out the option of another Brexit referendum. They're not promising one yet, but they're also not ruling one out either if the Tory Brexit shambles continues to get worse (which seems inevitable). Given that Theresa May's deal is dead in the water and a "no deal" meltdown is unthinkable, a referendum with the options of "cancel Brexit" or "back to square one" would seem like the most sensible approach from a strategic perspective.
- Labour's repeatedly stated but widely ignored six tests.
Of course it's entirely fair to argue that "no Brexit" is still a better option than a Labour Brexit (an argument I'd actually agree with at this point), but anyone trying to argue that there's no evidence that a Tory Brexit would be worse than a Labour one is brazenly lying through their teeth for ideological purposes (making them no better than the Tory Brextremists who created this atrocious mess in the first place with their deliberate campaign of politically motivated lies).
It doesn't matter whether these people are lying through pure ignorance, through tribalist loyalty to the Lib-Dems, or just because they saw the Brextremists win the 2016 referendum with their outrageous campaign of lies so they're adopting the same tactics for themselves.
Outright lying degrades the political discourse and drives political apathy. And it's utterly unacceptable no matter who is doing it, or for what purpose.
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After wasting an incredible 15 months of the Article 50 negotiating period on their internal squabbles and distractions like Theresa May's failed vanity election, the Tory government have finally released their long-awaited Brexit White Paper.
In this article I'm going to address some crucial issues with the White Paper, but I strongly advise you to have a look through the document yourself (I'll provide a link at the end of the article) and to check out other people's analyses too, because the way Brexit is implemented is of such importance to our future as a nation that it would be grossly negligent not to investigate what the government is proposing for yourself.
An anti-democratic shambles
If the way the Tory government released their Brexit White Paper is indicative of their approach to Brexit, we're in for an anti-democratic farce of epic proportions.
The Tories decided to completely ignore parliamentary protocol by sharing copies of the White Paper with selected members of the press at 9am, while only providing opposition MPs with copies during the new Brexit minister's speech (necessitating the extraordinary spectacle of the Speaker suspending parliament for five minutes in the middle of the speech as copies were literally thrown around the chamber).
The reason the government is supposed to provide copies to opposition MPs in advance is obviously to provide time for them to read the proposals and formulate questions in order to hold the government to account.
The decision to cut out the opposition parties in favour of providing preferential access to their mates in the media just goes to show the absolute contempt the Tories have towards stuff like democratic scrutiny and due process.
Filler, fluff, and sound bites
Before we get to the actual details of the White Paper it's crucial to note that it's absolutely stuffed full of slick pro-government fluff, much of it utterly devoid of real meaning.
Take the repetition of the phrase "principled and practical Brexit". It's just more evasive and essentially meaningless floss from the "Brexit means Brexit" and "red, white, and blue Brexit" school of empty sound bite trickery designed for no other purpose than appealing to the hard-of-thinking.
Superfluous waffle
Take this concluding quote from just the 2nd point in the whole paper:
"The UK hopes that this will be the basis of a serious and detailed
negotiation in the coming weeks and months that will lead to a historic agreement in
the interests of both sides".
Why on earth is it necessary for the UK government to waste space by stating that it hopes that negotiations will take place and an agreement be reached, given that this is the entire purpose of the White Paper we've waited 15 wasted months for?
Toddler tantrum diplomacy
In the preceding days the new Brexit Minister Dominic Raab has reiterated the threat that if the EU don't cave into Tory demands, they're going to inflict an extraordinarily damaging hard-right "no deal" Brexit in retribution, and to underline the point the Tories have been briefing their allies in the press that they're planning to stockpile canned food and emergency generators to show that they're serious about their threat to plunge the UK economy into "no deal" chaos.
"Give us what we want or we'll destroy our own economy" is a totally crackpot negotiating strategy for two key reasons.
One is that the underlying threat completely undermines any goodwill that is earned from all the kind words, hopeful aspirations, and begging for cooperation in the White Paper.
the second is that the majority of the economic, social, and reputational damage from a "no deal" flounce would obviously fall on Britain, meaning the EU actually has an incentive to call our bluff, and then welcome the massive flood of businesses, skilled workers, and capital fleeing the self-inflicted "no deal" chaos in the UK.
Cakism
The economic partnership section calls for a new free trade zone for goods to avoid disruption to the modern cross-border supply chains that have built up over the last four decades, but this call for free movement of goods is totally undermined by the demands for the destruction of the right to free movement of people.
What the Tories are demanding is an agreement that provides greater freedom of movement to a British-made packet of crisps, than to a British citizen.
Not only is this proposal something that's already been rejected by the EU as cherry-picking, it's also a pure distillation of the warped Tory mentality that property has more inherent value than people.
Agencies
The White Paper proposes that the UK should be allowed to retain membership of multiple EU agencies such as European Chemicals Agency, the European
Aviation Safety Agency, the European Medicines Agency, the Rapid Alert System for Food and Feed
(RASFF), Rapid Alert System for Serious Risk (Rapex), the Information and
Communication System for Market Surveillance (ICSMS), Interpol, the European Criminal Records Investigation Sytem (ECRIS) and Interjust.
It's beyond obvious that the UK would be absolutely crackers to quit these agencies, especially given the necessity of spending £billions to replicate the regulatory roles they perform, and the total impossibility of replicating the functions of agencies like Interpol and ECRIS.
The decision to request continued membership of these agencies is one of the rare outbreaks of common sense in the White Paper, but continued alignment is likely to send the hard-right deregulation-obsessed Brextremists into fits of irrepressible rage.
European Court of Justice
"Where the UK participates in an EU agency, the UK will respect the remit of the
Court of Justice of the European Union."
Brextremists will be incandescent with rage at this bit too because they hate the European Court of Justice with an undying ideological passion.
Customs
One of the most contentions issues for the fanatical Tory Brextremists is the customs issue. The White Paper proposes the establishment of a Facilitated Customs Agreement (FCA) with a common rule book on goods, including agri-foods.
This is obviously going to be completely unacceptable to the hard-right Brextremists who see a free trade deal with the Trump administration as their number one priority.
A Trump-Tory trade deal would be completely incompatible with continued regulatory alignment with EU food standards because one of the main US negotiating objectives is to crack the UK open to cheap substandard American produce like chlorinated chicken, hormone riddled beef, and unlabeled GM produce.
If the UK government begins allowing cheap substandard US produce into the UK as part of a Tory-Trump trade deal, then the EU will obviously need to enforce customs checks to stop this American crap leeching across the UK border into their territory.
Standards
Food standards are not the only area that is under threat from a Tory administered Brexit. In November 2017 Labour put forward an amendment to the Tory EU Withdrawal Bill to prevent the Tories from using Brexit as a Trojan Horse to attack our workers' rights, environmental laws, consumer protections, equal rights protections, and food standards.
The Tories and their bigoted DUP backers stripped out this amendment, saying that we should just trust their word that they have no intentions to trash our rights, standards and protections (but why would they remove the amendment to stop them from doing it if they had no intention of doing it?).
Now they're making similar claims to the EU, claiming they have no intention of attacking and undermining workers' rights and environmental laws because they've made "strong domestic commitments" not to.
it's important to remember that the Tory party also made "strong domestic commitments" to not raise VAT during the 2010 General Election, then raised VAT within weeks of being enabled into power by the Lib-Dems.
One suspects that the EU negotiators won't be quite as naive as the British public when it comes to believing Tory promises.
Rule-takers
The White paper proposes that the UK would maintain regulatory alignment with the EU by continually updating its own laws (in Westminster and the devolved parliaments) in order to avoid the necessity of customs checks.
This raises a couple of really crucial issues.
What happens if one of the British parliaments decides to defy new EU standards (which is likely to happen sooner or later)? Do we then get customs checks by default?
And what's the sense in quitting the EU where we had the power to shape and influence new EU rules and standards as one of the largest and most influential member states, if we're simply going to accept the rules and standards they decide, without our input, in perpetuity?
Disputes
In the section on how the UK and EU deal with disputes the White Paper proposes an extrajudicial system of dispute resolution with no appeals process that is very similar to the hated ISDS components of the thankfully abandoned TTIP corporate power grab.
Here's the section:
"An independent arbitration panel, which would include members from both
parties. In some instances, the arbitration panel might include specialist expertise
such as where a dispute required detailed sectoral knowledge ... with the decision of the panel
binding on the parties."
So if the Tories get their way, instead of disputes being decided in open courts, they'll be decided in closed rooms full of corporate lawyers with no scrutiny, and no right of appeal.
Mutual recognition
Throughout the White Paper the British government begs for mutual recognition of qualifications, mutual recognition of geographical origin designations, as well as for continued access to stuff like the Erasmus scheme and the EHIC travel insurance scheme.
All this begging raises the question of why we're leaving at all if we're so damned keen to cherry-pick so many of the benefits of membership as we leave.
Lexiter hell
All the left-wing people who voted for Brexit because they thought it would free the UK from the neoliberal influence of the EU should be spitting blood at this White Paper because the Tories are promising to tie Britain into all the hard-right, anti-state, pro-privatisation dogma the Lexiters voted Leave to escape from.
Here's an extract:
"To support the depth and breadth of the future UK-EU economic partnership, the UK
would propose to incorporate its domestic choice to maintain a robust state aid
regime into its future economic relationship with the EU. In light of this, the UK would
make an upfront commitment to maintain a common rulebook with the EU on state
aid, enforced by the Competition and Markets Authority."
Anyone who voted Leave in 2016 because they thought it would mean an escape from the hard-right anti-state dogma in the EU rules should be absolutely kicking themselves for imagining that such an escape could ever have happened under the Tories (who were instrumental in pushing these hard-right rules on the EU in the first place).
Outright dishonesty
"The Government has already
demonstrated during the passage of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill that it will actively
engage with suggestions from both Houses"
Anyone who actually followed the progress of the EU Withdrawal Bill knows that this is total bullshit. The Tories colluded with DUP to strip out all but one of the opposition amendments from the House of Commons, then they quickly stripped out all 15 of the amendments from the House of Lords with virtually no time allocated for debate over the amendments they were removing.
A more truthful statement would read: "The Government has already demonstrated during the passage of the EU (Withdrawal) Bill that it will actively ignore suggestions from both Houses".
Public reaction
One of the most alarming things about the Brexit White Paper is the bizarre public reaction to it, with an astounding 40% of the public claiming that Theresa May's approach is "too soft" as opposed to just 13% who think it's "about right", and 12% who think it's "too hard".
One wonders what percentage of the respondents to the YouGov poll have actually read the White Paper and found for themselves that it's clearly "hard Brexit with cherry-picking". I'd guess well below 1% of them. Which raises the question of how they have come to believe that it's "too soft".
My view is that it's come about through strategic Tory media manipulation. An absolute mass of coverage has been given to hard-right Brextremists like Boris Johnson, David Davis, and Jacob Rees-Mogg to slam May's proposals as "too soft", with virtually no coverage given to those who would accurately describe it as "hard Brexit with cherry picking".
The orchestrated Brextremist resignations have played a vital role in framing the public debate so that millions of people who have no intention of actually reading what's being proposed are left believing that the main problem with the White Paper is that it's "too soft" when the real problems are that it's too hard, too right-wing, and too much of an unrealistic shambles.
The Tory intent is obviously to move the public towards the economically ruinous "no deal" catastrophe the Brextremists have been craving from the beginning, and if over three times as many people see this White Paper as "too soft" as those who see it as "too hard", then their perception management strategy is clearly succeeding.
Conclusion
It's taken the Tory government an incredible 15 months to come up with this strategic document, when it's beyond obvious that they should have figured out what they wanted from the negotiations before they even considered triggering the time-limited Article 50 process.
Having left it so late to set out their objectives huge numbers of people remain spectacularly under-informed about what the White Paper actually proposes.
What they've actually come up with is a right-wing hard Brexit shambles that is massively over-reliant on unrealistic cherry-picking of the benefits of EU membership, while all of the good will necessary for any such cherry-picking to be allowed is being continually eroded by their toddler tantrum threats of a ruinous "no deal" flounce away from the negotiations if they don't get their own way.
Here's a link to the White Paper so you can have a look through it for yourself.
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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.
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The regional Brexit impact assessment figures that the Tory government were trying to hide have been leaked, and they spell disaster, especially for the North East, North West, West Midlands, and Northern Ireland.
The Brexit assessment looked at the regional impact of three different Brexit scenarios, a Single Market Brexit, a free trade deal, and a "no deal" reversion to World Trade Organisation rules.
In every single region it turns out that "no deal" is by far the most damaging option, ranging from a 3.5% fall in the London economy to an astounding 16% collapse in the North East.
The analysis suggests that aside from London and the South West, a "no deal" Brexit would trigger a financial collapse that is worse than the recession that followed the bankers' insolvency crisis.
The terrifying thing is that as a result of ruinous Tory austerity dogma and their unprecedented campaign of wage repression the UK still hasn't recovered from the last recession, yet the Brextremist faction of the Tory party are pushing for a "no deal" Brexit which would hit us with another, even worse recession.
The second worst scenario is a free trade deal Brexit, which would still see significant economic contraction across every single region.
The least bad option is the Single Market option which would cause a slump of between 1% in London, to 3% in the North East.
It's important to recognise that the least bad Single Market scenario is off the table as long as Theresa May and the Tories are running the negotiations for their own purposes, because they have continually ruled it out.
Whether Jeremy Corbyn and Labour could be convinced to adopt a pro-Single Market/Customs Union stance remains to be seen.*
One of the standout things about the analysis is the way London is projected to suffer the least under every Brexit scenario, yet London voted heavily in favour of Remain, whilst some of the strongest Leave-voting areas like the North East look set to suffer the most extreme economic downturns from the Brexit they voted for.
This contrast certainly adds some more statistical weight to the Turkeys voting for Christmas narrative.
However it's not all totally clear-cut, because Wales and Scotland look set to suffer very similar levels of economic damage as a result of Brexit, despite Wales voting in favour of Brexit and Scotland voting very heavily against it.
Anyhow, the reason the Tories wanted to keep this analysis secret is beyond obvious. There's no way they can pretend that there's any economic benefit to Brexit now that their own evidence says that it would cause an economic downturn/recession in every single part of the UK.
Another reason they must have been desperate to keep this research under wraps is that it completely destroys their endlessly repeated propaganda trope that "no deal is better than a bad deal".
Their own evidence demonstrates beyond doubt that "no deal" is the worst possible deal, so they'll surely have to bin that appalling nonsense for good after this.
It's important to recognise that anyone still pushing for Brexit under these circumstances is aiming to inflict damage on the UK economy, so the onus is on them to clearly explain what it is that is so damned important that they consider it worth triggering a recession for ...
And no, blue passports (that we could have had anyway without quitting the EU) just won't cut it.
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* = If I were to give advice on how to achieve such a change of approach I'd suggest that politely pointing to the facts and evidence to request a change of Labour Party policy in order to "protect jobs and the economy" is more likely to succeed than a relentless barrage of #FBPE abuse, revisionism, misrepresentations, and lies from Lib-Dems, Tory concern trolls, and the very same people who were shrieking anti-Corbyn nonsense during the spectacularly failed chicken coup of 2016.
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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