Jacob Rees-Mogg isn't just a ridiculous "Lord Snooty" cartoon caricature of a man, he's also the leader of the secretive 'party within a party' group of Tory ERG Brextremists who are pushing Theresa May towards an economically catastrophic "no deal" Brexit meltdown.
I'm not the only one to have pointed out the way that a significant number of Tory Brextremists are positioning themselves to benefit from Brexit, from Jacob Rees-Mogg opening investment funds in Ireland to maintain access to the Single Market, through top Tory Brextremists like John Redwood and Michael Ashcroft advising their wealthy speculator mates to get their cash out of Britain while they tank the economy, to former Brexit junior minister Steve Baker investing in a company advising their clients to buy gold as insurance against the approaching Tory Brexit meltdown.
It's absolutely clear that a number of Tory Brextremists are simply hard-right disaster capitalists looking to make fortunes betting against Britain, then use the ensuing chaos to tear down the remnants of the social safety net, gut workers' rights and environmental protections, and make £billions buying up distressed British assets on the cheap.
They're steering the UK economy towards the "no deal" cliff edge with the aim of asset stripping the wreckage like vultures stripping the meat off the carcass.
And for anyone arguing that such a deliberate act of national vandalism is far-fetched, consider the fact that the Tory government's own impact assessments rate a "no deal" Brexit as by far the most economically damaging option, (a scenario that would cause an economic meltdown to make the 2007-08 Bankers' crisis look mild in comparison) and that Jacob Rees-Mogg's father actually wrote the book on how to profit from economic crises.
And what better kind of economic crisis is there for profiteering from than one where the speculator class know the exact date it's going to happen in advance?
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.
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.
- 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.
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.
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.
Theresa May's directionless incompetence never ceases to amaze. Her latest chaotic blunder came when she decided to sling some anti-immigrant red meat to the powerful hard-right Brextremist faction of her own party by claiming that EU citizens in the UK would lose their freedom of movement rights during the transition period that she's just spent so much time begging the EU for.
The problem of course is that the EU27 have no intention of allowing the Tories to cherry-pick which bits of EU legislation they want to abide by during the Brexit transition period.
As the EU negotiating team have stated a ridiculous amount of times before, the four freedoms are indivisible.
If the British government want free movement of goods, capital, and services to continue between the UK and the EU during the transition period, they also have to accept free movement of labour too.
Then there's the fact that Theresa May's proposal to revoke the rights of EU citizens appears to be completely unworkable anyway because the UK government has no infrastructure in place to actually enforce the proposed rules that May appears to have just made up on the hoof just to placate the rabid Tory Brextremist mob.
Then there's the leaked immigration analysis from the Brexit Impact studies that Theresa May and her Tory chums were trying to hide.
The impact studies have revealed what a lot of us knew to be the case already; that tighter immigration rules on European workers will significantly harm the UK economy, and no trade deal with the US to asset strip the NHS, and flood the UK market with their chlorinated chicken and their hormone-riddled beef will make up the shortfall.
If her government's own impact studies show that draconian new immigration restrictions on EU workers are set to harm the UK economy, then why on earth is Theresa May so keen to try to bring them in early?
The answer of course is that she's a powerless prisoner of fortune who is entirely beholden to the secretive hard-right ERG Brextremist faction of her own party.
She knows that her position as Prime Minister is entirely dependent on their support, so she feels the need to regularly promote their leaders into her government (Steve Baker and Suella Fernandes so far, with Jacob Rees-Mogg next in the queue), and to placate them with unworkable anti-immigrant and anti-EU diatribes.
She knows that her Brextremist backers will be delighted if her ridiculous demand to be allowed to discriminate against EU citizens wrecks the possibility of a transition period and triggers a ruinous "no deal" Brexit, because they'll be able to cash in by buying up distressed British assets and infrastructure on the cheap in the resulting economic meltdown, which was always their game.
Theresa May has already demonstrated that she's so weak that she allows these Brextremists to go completely unpunished for spewing the most extraordinary conspiracy theories in the House of Commons, and now she's actually throwing them the red meat of fresh anti-immigrant rhetoric, and the possibility of trashing the transition period that they hate so much.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
If Theresa May wasn't such a weak and directionless leader the under-secretary of state for Brexit Steve Baker would be in serious trouble for the lunatic conspiracy theories he's been spewing in the House of Commons.
The Brexiteer conspiracy-mongering began in response to Buzzfeed getting hold of a leaked copy of the Tory government's damning Brexit impact assessment.
The conspiracy theory was introduced into the House of Commons by Jacob Rees-Mogg, who is the leader of the hard-right ERG Brextremist pressure group that Baker himself used to lead until Theresa May promoted him into her government. The conspiracy theory is that someone called Charles Grant from the CER had uncovered plot by civil servants to "develop an economic model to show that all [Brexit] options are bad".
Instead of dismissing this bonkers conspiracy theory as the nonsense that it is, the Brexit junior minister Baker responded by saying "I'm sorry to say that my honourable friend's account is essentially correct".
Opposition MPs reacted furiously to this attack on the impartiality of the civil service and Charles Grant immediately released a statement that "I did not say or imply that the Treasury had deliberately developed a model to show that all options outside the customs union were bad with an intention to influence policy."
The leader of the civil servant's union Dave Penman slammed Baker's conspiracy-mongering by saying that "to stand at the despatch box and refuse to challenge a half-baked conspiracy theory about the civil service - one that even now is being disowned by its supposed source - is the height of irresponsibility from a serving minister."
Penman went on to say that Baker is "incapable of separating his ideological position from being a minister of state" and called on Theresa May to reflect on whether he's fit to be a government minister.
Aside from attacking the civil service Baker also provoked fury by claiming that the Brexit impact assessment should not be believed because all government reports are "always wrong".
So here we have an actual government minister undermining the government and the civil service with crackpot conspiracy theories and claims that all government research and evidence is worthless, yet Theresa May does absolutely nothing to hold him to account.
The reason for her cowardice is obvious. Both Baker and Rees-Mogg are influential members of the secretive ERG Brextremist pressure group. May knows that this group has sufficient members to force a vote of no-confidence in her leadership, so she doesn't dare stand up to them in any way.
In fact she keeps bribing them by promoting their leaders into her government. First she promoted Steve Baker, then Suella Fernandes in her shambolic January cabinet reshuffle, and now their new leader Jacob Rees-Mogg is clearly angling for a similar promotion.
May won't punish Baker or Rees-Mogg because she's terrified of them, so instead she's been throwing a load of red meat to the baying ERG dogs with a renewed attack on the rights of European citizens and a public dressing down for the Tory MP Phillip Lee who dared to suggest that the government should be led by "evidence, not dogma".
Incredibly Lee was disciplined by Theresa May's whips and told to air his (actually incredibly sensible for a Tory) views "in private", while Baker and Rees-Mogg have been let off scot-free for airing their bizarre conspiracy theory in the House of Commons, and bringing the government and the civil service into disrepute.
It's quite clear that Baker and Rees-Mogg's decision to engage in bizarre Brextremist conspiracy-mongering right underneath Theresa May's nose is a way of demonstrating their power over her.
As long as they go unpunished they've proven to the rest the Tory party that they're an untouchable faction who can do and say whatever they like with total impunity, while anyone else who steps out of line from the Brextremist agenda will be hit by waves of abuse and death threats sent by the vile hard-right Blue-Kip mob that Theresa May has welcomed into the Tory party with open arms.
This debacle just goes to prove once again that Theresa May is a pathetically weak and directionless leader who is totally in hock to the hard-right Brextremist faction of her party.
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.
Most people are aware that ever since Theresa May threw away her parliamentary majority in her vanity election, she's been at the beck and call of the extreme-right Europhobic fringe of the Tory party because she has no room to manoeuvre without continually appeasing them.
What is less commonly known is the fact that this hard-right fringe of the Tory party have clubbed together to form a shady and highly secretive "party within a party" which uses taxpayers' cash to bankroll their push for an extreme and highly destructive hard-right version of Brexit.
This group of Brextremist Tory politicians call themselves the European Research Group, and between them members have claimed over £250,000 in parliamentary expenses for work they claim to have done on behalf of this fringe pressure group.
The Tory MPs who have claimed taxpayer cash for work done on behalf of their secretive Brextremism operation include Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, Sajid Javid, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Chris Grayling, David Gauke, Penny Mordaunt, and Liam Fox.
Here is a list of known members of the group (politicians with positions within Theresa May's government in bold):
- Suella Fernandes (the current chairperson of the group & PPS at the Treasury))
- Steve Baker (previous chairperson of the group until promoted into the Brexit department)
- Liam Fox (Minister for International Trade)
- Craig Mackinlay (Former UKIP politician who defected to the Tories)
- Andrea Leadsom (former Tory leadership candidate, Leader of the Commons)
- Sajid Javid (Minister for communities and local government)
- Chris Heaton-Harris (The Tory whip who sent McCarthyite inquisition letters to UK universities)
- Jacob Rees-Mogg (regularly touted as a future Tory leader)
- Chris Grayling (Minister for Transport)
- Michael Tomlinson (low profile Tory MP and deputy chair of the group)
- Michael Gove (Minister for the Environment)
- Penny Mordaunt (Minister for International Development)
- David Guake (Minister for Work and Pensions)
Mackinlay claims that such a move would raise £150 million by charging everyone who visits the UK from the EU, but it's spectacularly easy to spot the flaws in this plan.
The first major flaw is that the £150 million "profit" does not take account of the lost tax revenues caused by driving away potential visitors with time consuming and costly visa applications. It would only need a small percentage drop in tourism from the continent to massively reduce tax revenues and eclipse the £150 million "profit" leaving country significantly worse off.
Aside from the obvious false economics of the scheme there's also the fact that such a move from Britain would obviously trigger a reciprocal response, with the EU requiring visas for British visitors to any of the EU member states. This would create the situation where EU citizens would have the choice of visa free travel anywhere within the EU, or the time and expense of applying for a visa to visit the UK. Meanwhile British citizens would have to apply for visas to visit all ten of our top ten travel destinations (which are in order: Spain, France, Italy, Ireland, USA Portugal, Germany, Netherlands, Greece, Poland).
It's bad enough that this fanatical group of Tory MPs has appointed a rabid former-Ukipper to come up with an absurd plan to kick the UK tourism industry to pieces, significantly reduce UK tax revenues in order to raise a paltry £150 million by rinsing cash out of any EU citizens who still chose to visit Brexit Britain, and trigger a reciprocal tit-for-tat response from the EU that would significantly impact millions of British visitors to the continent.
But the fact is that they're actually claiming huge wodges of taxpayers' cash to promote this kind of hard-right Brextremism is the most extraordinary thing about it.
Then there's the fact that members of this secretive Brextremist group are embedded throughout Theresa May's government, with leading members of the ERG claiming that they have the power to "get anything they want" from Theresa May.
Another Angry Voice is a "Pay As You Feel" website. You can have access to all of my work for free, or you can choose to make a small donation to help me keep writing. The choice is entirely yours.
