Jeremy Corbyn's policy of preventing tax haven-based companies from profiteering from public funds isn't radically left-wing, it's not even particularly left-wing at all, it's actually just common sense.
A radically left-wing policy would be to ban all corporations from undertaking government-funded work (or even to turn all corporations into worker-controlled syndicates) but Corbyn is proposing nothing of the sort. All he's saying is that if companies intend to make profits from public funds via outsourcing contracts, they should at least demonstrate that they're paying their fair share in tax.
It's actually a demonstration of how fanatically right-wing the cult-like Thatcherite political consensus really is that any of them ever thought it OK for corporations to dodge paying tax on their publicly funded profits in the first place, and that absolutely nothing has been done to clamp down on these ridiculous practices while orthodox neoliberals have controlled the levers of political power.
Of course the political right are furious with these proposals, because corporate parasitism on the state is a significant business model for the mega-rich.
Tax-dodging corporate parasitism is basically risk-free, because profiteering from desperately one-sided public sector outsourcing contracts and avoiding paying tax on the profits carries way less risk than investment in anything innovative or economically productive. And if the contract somehow fails, the state ends up stepping in anyway to clear up the mess at the public expense.
Dodge paying tax on the publicly funded profits, and then use public funds to pay for the losses!
It's an incredibly brazen business model, but it's been going on for decades (remember when the Blair government actually privatised the HMRC property portfolio into the hands of a private company based in Bermuda for tax reasons?), and Jeremy Corbyn is threatening to put a stop to this ridiculous nonsense.
It's common sense proposals like this clamp-down on tax-dodger profiteering on public funds that the political right are terrified of, because they know that the vast majority of British people would agree with them wholeheartedly if they heard about them.
So instead of openly declaring their support for tax-haven based profiteering from public funds, the political right resort to a relentless cascade of smears, deceptions, and outright lies.
They know they can't counter Corbyn on policy because the more people find out about Corbyn's actual policies, the more people end up agreeing with him and supporting him, so their only hope is to continue with the smear campaign in the vain hope of debasing the standard of political debate to such an extent that people remain largely unaware of Corbyn's actual policies.
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Right I'll try to be concise.
Tax-dodging companies winning government contracts is such an obscene idea that it's ludicrous that it hasn't already been banned.
It's hardly a radical principle to say that if a company wants to make profits out of the taxpayer through government contracts, then they must pay their fair share of tax back into the pot.
Jeremy Corbyn's plan is to ban companies based in tax havens from bidding for government work.
During the 2017 General Election campaign Theresa May's Tory party raked in huge donations from the mega-rich, who were terrified of being made to pay their fair share of tax under a Labour government. Several of these individuals are proven tax-dodgers, or run companies out of tax havens.
Theresa May had absolutely no manifesto plans to prevent tax-dodging companies from bidding for government work, and why would she? She's been at the heart of government for seven years. If she thought it was a problem worth confronting, she's have done something about it by now.
In fact Theresa May's government doesn't even bother to check that most contracts are value for money any more. These days they're just letting the majority of corporate outsourcing contracts roll over with no tendering process, check and balances or value for money assessments at all!
Nice work if you can get it eh?
Especially if you base yourself in a tax haven so you don't even have to pay tax on all the profits you're milking out of the taxpayer!
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I've seen quite a few people saying that they're planning to wilfully ignore the Tories' woeful track record in government and vote for them anyway because they want to see the UK get "the best deal possible" out of the Brexit negotiations.
It's easy to see why people might imagine that Theresa May is the right person to lead the UK into the most important diplomatic negotiations the UK has ever faced because the right-wing dominated UK press have been lauding her every move since she was appointed Prime Minister by her Tory chums, and now the Tory party have taken to repeating the phrase "strong and stable leadership" like a bunch of broken robots.
I feel a tad patronising for actually pointing this out, but it's important to remember that just because someone repeatedly claims to be a strong and stable leader, and their chums in the right-wing press refuse to hold them to account over anything, that doesn't actually make them a strong and stable leader at all.
The problem for this "best Brexit deal possible" argument for voting Tory of is of course that Theresa May isn't actually promising a good deal from the Brexit negotiations at all is she?
What she actually did in her January 2017 clown costume speech was to horrify pretty much everyone apart from her extreme-right fans in the tabloid propaganda sheets by dumping the threat of a mutually ruinous "no deal" strop on the negotiating table.
Remember that an economically ruinous "no deal" cliff edge Brexit followed by Britain turning itself into a low-wage, low-welfare corporate tax haven is precisely what the extreme-right Eurosceptic wing of the Tory party have always wanted*.
The appalling scenario Theresa May threatened the rest of Europe with is exactly what quite a lot of her Tory MPs actually see as the best possible outcome!
The threat of a "no deal" flounce was clearly more of a sop to the extreme-right element of the Tory party than anything even remotely resembling a coherent diplomatic strategy, because shocking and enraging the people you have to negotiate with is a ridiculous thing to do before the talks have even got underway.
If you believe a belligerent threat like if you don't give me what I want I'll do a "no deal" flounce away from the negotiations and then set about turning the UK into a tax haven is going to deliver the UK a really good deal, you really don't know anything about diplomacy at all do you?
It's simply not possible to persuade a much more economically powerful opponent to give you the best deal possible in a 27 vs 1 diplomatic negotiation by starting off with an open threat to blow up an economic bomb over their countries and turn yourself into a tax haven aimed at extracting wealth from their economies rather than actually earning your own.
Just try to have a think about how Theresa May's behaviour looks on the continent.
Try to consider why there's an ever-so-rare total agreement amongst the EU 27 that they're not going to allow Theresa May the quickfire corporate friendly UK-EU trade deal she wants before she's even guaranteed the rights of EU citizens living in the UK or addressed the problems that Brexit has created for the Irish peace process.
Do you honestly think that Theresa May using the lives of EU citizens like gambling chips in the reckless game of brinkmanship she's determined to play with the entire social and economic future of our nation is a good strategy for achieving the best possible deal with the EU?
Or do you admit that this is actually the kind of behaviour that would strongly harden attitudes on the continent against Britain (especially if the British public give her a thumping majority as a reward for behaving in this unconscionable manner)?
If you want any kind of good deal out of Brexit, then it's painfully obvious that a bellicose and belligerent intellectual lightweight like Theresa May is one of the last people in the country you'd trust to lead us into the negotiations, especially given that she's the one who threw the threat of a ruinous "no deal" Brexit flounce onto the negotiating table in the first place!
I'm not telling you who to vote for on June 8th, but what I will say is that if you vote for Theresa May in the expectation of getting a good Brexit deal, be prepared to be bitterly disappointed.
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* = See this article about John Redwood's fantasy of turning the UK into a tax haven from back in 2012.
During the EU referendum debate David Cameron claimed over and again that if the public voted for Brexit he would trigger Article 50 the next day. We all know that he was lying because he resigned in disgrace after the failure of his gamble with the nation's future and left the job of triggering Article 50 to someone else.
Theresa May and the Tory government then spent an infuriating nine months blabbering empty platitudes like "Brexit means Brexit" and bullshitting that they were busy coming up with some kind of winning Brexit negotiation strategy before they finally triggered Article 50 on March 29th 2017.
Within three weeks of setting the two year clock ticking on the most complex and risky set of diplomatic negotiations the UK has ever undertaken, Theresa May made a shock announcement that she's going to call a snap General Election on June 8th.
Now that the two year clock is ticking it's beyond obvious that Theresa May, the three Brexiteers and the Tory government should now be 100% focused on getting the best deal for Britain, but they're actually going to spend the next two months focusing their efforts on fighting a General Election campaign!
It shouldn't matter who you are, or what your party political allegiance is, the idea of triggering Article 50 and then calling a General Election instead of focusing your efforts on the negotiations is absolutely ridiculous.
Theresa May and the Tories had nine months between the EU referendum result and her self-imposed March 2017 Article 50 deadline in which they could have held a General Election, but they've chosen to do it now because it apparently suits their party political interests to do it now, and screw the importance of actually concentrating on the incredibly important Brexit negotiations they've only just set the clock ticking on.
It looks an awful lot like the Tories are trying to get themselves re-elected before the social and economic ruination of the "no deal" cliff edge Brexit they're steering us towards kicks in. They know that if they strop away from the negotiating table with nothing in 2018 or 2019 it will wreck the UK economy, which would have severely damaged their 2020 General Election chances, so they're getting the election out of the way now, instead of concentrating on the Brexit negotiations (presumably because they want the negotiations to fail anyway).
Holding an election now means that instead of having to fight a General Election almost immediately after they devastate the UK economy with a cliff edge Brexit and set about turning the UK into a low wage, low welfare corporate tax haven economy, they'll have three or four years to cling onto power.
Once again this is an absolutely clear demonstration that the Tories will always put their own party political self-interest above the social and economic interests of the nation as a whole.
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The Tory justification for introducing the 2010 Fixed Term Parliament Act was that it would prevent politicians from throwing the country into instability by calling General Elections to suit their own party political purposes, but that's exactly what Theresa May has decided to do.
It's only a few weeks since she told Scotland that "now is not the time" for them to decide their political future because the Brexit deal hasn't been finalised and a referendum would cause too much uncertainty, and yet here she is causing uncertainly by calling a General Election within three weeks of triggering Article 50!
The recklessness of this move is absolutely astounding. The UK is going into the most complex and risky set of diplomatic negotiations in its history, and Theresa May has decided to create a massive distraction for the next two months, just when her and her Brexit ministers should be concentrating all of their efforts on trying to secure the best possible exit deal for the UK.
Brexit only came about because David Cameron decided to gamble the entire economic future of the UK in order to win a bit of short-term party political advantage at the 2015 General Election, and now Theresa May has decided to put the interest of the Tory party above the interests of the nation again by attempting to increase her parliamentary majority instead of focusing on the vitally important Brexit negotiations.
The General Election does however present an opportunity for progressives to try to prevent the socially and economically ruinous "no deal" cliff-edge Brexit that Theresa May has been steering us towards.
Her appalling threat-based "negotiating strategy" and her decision to use the lives of EU citizens in the UK as Brexit bargaining chips have only succeeded in unifying the other 27 member states against her demands, making a catastrophic "no deal" Tory strop ever more likely.
Only the most extreme hardline Brexiter wants to see the UK flounce away from the Brexit negotiating table with nothing, because such a move would cause devastation across the UK economy, but especially in areas like manufacturing, the NHS and social care, agriculture and the services industry.
The Tories have also made it clear that their "no deal" strop scenario would involve turning the UK into a tax-haven and stripping back the welfare system (the NHS, social care, education, in-work benefits, disability benefits, pensions ...) in order to pay for these corporate bribes.
A General Election on June 8th will offer the public the opportunity to reject Theresa May's self-serving and hypocritical gambling with the nation's future, and avert the threat of a extremist Tory "no deal" cliff edge Brexit.
Now is the time to elect politicians who would take a more pragmatic approach to the Brexit negotiations and a more democratic approach to the implementation of Brexit in the UK.
Now is the time to vote in favour of politicians who strongly oppose the appalling Tory threat of turning the UK into a hard-right, low wage, low welfare corporate tax haven, and tearing down what remains of the social welfare system to pay for it.
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After the Brexit vote the Tory government spent six months fobbing the public off with meaningless platitudes like "Brexit means Brexit" as they desperately tried to cobble together some kind of Brexit negotiating stance.
After half a year of blabbering excuses and pathetic distraction tactics Theresa May finally announced that her long-awaited negotiating tactic was going to be the diplomatic equivalent of a toddler tantrum.
In her January 2017 clown costume speech she demanded all kinds of implausible things, like an end to free movement but special access to the Single Market for favoured sectors of the UK economy and a quickfire trade deal to be negotiated in parallel with the exit agreement, and before the rights of EU citizens living in the UK have even been secured. She made it clear that if the EU didn't cave in to her ridiculous demands, the Tory government would set about turning the UK into a low-skill, low-tech, low-wage, low-welfare, low-regulation corporate tax haven in retaliation.
It was the diplomatic equivalent of a toddler shrieking that if they don't get the whole tub of ice cream they'll smash up their own bedroom, and then the adults will all be sorry.
Of course anyone with kids, or experience of kids, will know that the last thing you do in the face of a screaming toddler tantrum is to give in to their demands. If you do that, you reinforce the behaviour by teaching the child that having a massive strop is an effective way of getting what they want.
If the EU caved in to Theresa May's ridiculous demands, they would just be inviting her to resort to threats and extortion at every diplomatic juncture from then on.
A major problem for Theresa May is that she's not just having a toddler tantrum to one adult, she's doing it in front of 27, and not a single one of them has given any indication that they intend to give in and give her what she wants.
The EU's draft negotiating strategy has explicitly ruled out sectoral Single Market access for favoured UK corporations (the ones with the financial power to bribe/coerce the Tory government into defending their interests), and they've also ruled out a quickfire trade deal until after the separation agreement and the rights of EU citizens in the UK have been agreed. All 27 remaining member states have indicated that they will sign up to it, meaning Theresa May's demands for all the ice cream are being denied by everyone in the room, with nobody willing to even negotiate about ice cream until the tantrum behaviour subsides.
This leaves Theresa May and the UK in a really desperate position. The Tory government should probably try to climb down from their threats, then try a belated charm offensive in order to try to at least get a small portion of the ice cream.
But it's obviously very late in the day for that if they've even managed to turn fellow hard-right governments like Spain and Poland against them with their diplomatic toddler tantrum.
It's obvious that the Tories should have been trying to build allegiances from the beginning, not hardening the resolve of the rest of Europe by using the lives of EU citizens in the UK as bargaining chips and making the centrepiece of their negotiating stance the threat of triggering a mutually ruinous nuclear Brexit by stropping away from the negotiating table with nothing.
The other option for the Tories is to actually follow through on their threat to smash up their own bedroom by turning the UK into a universally despised hard-right corporate tax haven economy, and completely wrecking workers' rights, the welfare system, and the NHS in order to pay for it.
Of course the fanatical hard-right fringe of the Tory party would love an economically ruinous "no deal" nuclear Brexit to happen because it's what they've been demanding all along.
Right-wing propaganda rags like the Express, Daily Mail and S*n would love that outcome too. But anyone with any sense at all should be capable of seeing that if Theresa May reacts to the unity of the EU 27 by intensifying her tantrum and smashing up her own bedroom, the people to suffer the worst of the consequences won't be wealthy Tory MPs and comfortable right-wing hacks, it will be ordinary people.
The EU 27 are absolutely right to show resolve in the face of Theresa May's tantrum, and it's now up to the British people, and British businesses to try to prevent her from escalating it into self-destruct mode.
What you can do
Write to your MP to make it clear that the threat of a mutually ruinous "no deal" strop is an unacceptably poor diplomatic negotiating position.
Avoid voting for hard-right candidates at the upcoming local elections. If they support Theresa May's crude threat-based "negotiating strategy", consider voting for a candidate who isn't so keen for her to gamble so recklessly with the lives and livelihoods of ordinary people.
Boycott jingoistic extreme-right newspapers like the Express, Daily Mail and S*n that are pushing the UK towards an economically ruinous "no deal" cliff edge Brexit. Don't buy their papers, and don't share links to their websites.
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.
"Let's take back control" was one of the big Brexiter slogans during the toxic and ridiculously rushed EU referendum campaign. We heard it over and over again during the EU referendum debate, but we never got any explanation of what this appealing little sound bite was actually going to mean in practice.
Now that Theresa May's pitiful threat-based "negotiating strategy" has backfired and totally unified the 27 remaining EU states in their resolve to ignore her threats and deny her ridiculous demands that they start negotiating a EU-UK trade deal before she has even guaranteed the rights of EU citizens who live in the UK.
Theresa May's threat to turn the UK into a giant tax haven if the EU don't give her what she wants may have gone down well with the billionaires who own right-wing propaganda tabloids like the Express, Daily Mail and S*n, but it clearly went down incredibly badly with the people she's actually going to have to negotiate with.
The EU are hardly renowned for political unity but Theresa May's threat to deliberately damage the EU by turning Britain into a parasitical low-regulation corporate tax-haven has backfired spectacularly with all 27 member states unanimously agreeing to the proposed EU negotiating stance.
The shadow Brexit minister Keir Starmer absolutely slammed Theresa May for pandering to the fanatical hard-right fringe of the Tory party instead of trying to secure Britain's best interests saying that she "should have spent the last nine months building alliances across Europe, not pandering to those in her cabinet and her party who want to sever all links with the EU and retreat from our closest allies and most important trading partners".
It was always clear that Brexit was going to leave the UK in a very weak diplomatic position, but Theresa May's toddler tantrum of a "negotiating strategy" and her efforts to use the lives of EU citizens in the UK as bargaining chips have made the situation very much worse than they needed to be.
Britain is isolated and belligerently hurling threats around instead of trying to negotiate in a diplomatically competent manner, and the 27 EU states are unified in agreement that the separation deal comes first, that the rights of EU citizens are vital, and that when the EU-UK trade deal happens, it will happen democratically, with every other EU state getting a democratic vote to ratify it. The only state that won't be guaranteed a democratic vote on the final deal will be the UK. Some "taking back control" that is!
Theresa May's refusal to allow any kind of meaningful democratic vote on Brexit isn't the only display of anti-democratic attitudes, there's also the fact that her government are pushing through an appalling anti-democratic power-grab called the Great Repeal Bill that would allow Tory ministers to rewrite the laws of the land with no democratic scrutiny from the Houses of Parliament.
It's becoming increasingly clear that the disgustingly dishonest Vote Leave mob had no intention of giving any measure of control to the British people. What they actually meant when they said "let's take back control", was "you should hand control over your future destiny to the fanatical hard-right fringe of the Tory party".
If Theresa May decides to continue pandering to this fanatical hard-right element of the Tory party then a "no deal" cliff edge Brexit looks inevitable, meaning control will lie with the most extreme elements of the Tory party who want to turn the UK into a low-wage, low-skill, low-welfare, low-regulation, corporate tax haven economy.
And if she somehow develops some competent leadership skills and decides to ignore these incessant demands for an economically ruinous "no deal" extreme Brexit from within her own party, control will clearly lie with the remaining 27 EU states that will all have a democratic veto over any future EU-UK trade deal.
In light of this appalling lose-lose situation for British citizens and British businesses, I wonder how anyone honestly believes that they actually "took back control" when they voted in favour of a Tory administered Brexit.
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After six moths of dithering and repeatedly fobbing the electorate off with meaningless platitudes like "Brexit means Brexit" Theresa May finally announced her so-called "negotiating strategy" in her January 2017 clown costume speech.
The right-wing press reacted to her woeful speech as if it was Churchillian in its magnificence, but to anyone with the wit to consider her words for themselves (rather than mindlessly allowing the mainstream media to programme their opinions for them) couldn't help but notice a couple of glaring flaws in it.
Fantasy and threats
The first flaw was that much of what Theresa May was promising was spectacularly unlikely to happen. Special sectoral deals to allow Single Market access just for favoured sections of the economy like banking and car manufacturing (while locking small businesses, sole traders and individuals out of it) are not only a terrible idea that would rig the UK economy even more in favour of massive multinational corporations, but also a ridiculous fantasy that the EU were never going to allow to happen.
The second thing was that her long awaited "negotiating strategy" was nothing more than threat-based posturing. If the EU don't cave in and give Theresa May the special corporate favours she's demanding she's threatening to strop away from the negotiating table with nothing, and then use that as an excuse to set about turning the UK into a parasitical and universally despised corporate tax haven.
Ever since this diplomatic toddler tantrum of a "negotiating strategy" was announced, it's been reinforced over and again by the endless repetition of the propaganda sound bite that "no deal is better than a bad deal".
Theresa May's fantasy is impossible
[full article]
The draft EU resolution on Brexit negotiations makes it absolutely clear that Theresa May's fantasy of some kind of quickfire partial free trade agreement is in tatters.
There's no way she's getting special sectoral deals for her corporate mates, there's no way that she's even going to be allowed to start negotiating an EU-UK trade deal before the Brexit divorce agreement is finalised, and there's no way that she's going to be allowed to start making the Trump-Tory trade deal she's been begging for before the UK has actually left the EU.
Theresa May has promised the nation a load of stuff that she absolutely won't be able to deliver.
Concessions, concessions, concessions
The Brexit fantasy that Theresa May has been hawking to the public is completely at odds with reality. This means that she's going to have to walk back on a lot of the stuff she's been saying, and offer numerous concessions to the EU in order to get any kind of deal whatever.
The problem of course is that she's primed the right-wing press and her own Eurosceptic MPs with the propaganda sound bite that "no deal is better than a bad deal" meaning that they will obviously use every single concession she makes as an excuse to shriek "bad deal" at her and demand the socially and economically ruinous nuclear Brexit they've always craved.
Is Theresa May a strong enough leader to withstand such a relentless onslaught, or is she the kind of weak leader who sees pandering to hacks at the Daily Mail, S*n and Express as one of her core objectives?
Merrily marching towards the cliff edge
The Brexit minister David Davis has openly admitted that the Tory government did absolutely no risk analysis on how bad a "no deal" nuclear Brexit would be before they decided to use the threat of it as the centrepiece of their so-called "negotiating strategy".
The London School of Economics has done some analysis on the "no deal" scenario and their findings are horrifying. They have estimated that if the UK strops away from the negotiating table with no deal, it will cost the UK somewhere between 6.3% - 9.5% of GDP (that's an average of £4,200 - £6,400 per household).
If Theresa May caves in to the "bad deal" shrieking of the Tory Eurosceptics and the hard-right press and flounces away from the negotiating table empty handed, the economic consequences will be catastrophic (especially for the manufacturing sector).
The warnings of economic ruination won't stop the baying Brexiter enforced optimism mob from insulting and belittling anyone who tries to raise concerns though.
These people want us to join their merry band, plaster smiles onto our faces and all march off the cliff edge together, and anyone who dares to raise concerns or tries in any way to avert this disaster will be furiously shouted down as "traitor", "remoaner", "sore loser", "whinger", "anti-British" ...
Is this what she actually wanted?
The most charitable interpretation of Theresa May's "no deal is better than a bad deal" rhetoric is that it's a catastrophically inept failure in expectation management. But then there's also the distinct possibility that it's part of a deliberate ploy to condition the public into actually believing that driving the UK economy off an economic cliff edge is the best course of action by presenting any alternative to marching off the cliff as a "bad deal"!
The quickfire pro-corporate EU-UK trade deal that Theresa May outlined in January is pure fantasy that was never going to happen, so threatening to march the UK economy off a cliff if she didn't get it was an incredibly dangerous threat to make.
The big question of course is whether Theresa May decided to make such ridiculously unrealistic demands because she's totally delusional, or if she knew it was impossible nonsense all along but that it's part of a Tory ploy to deliberately walk away from the negotiations empty handed so they can turn the UK into a deregulated corporate tax haven whilst pinning all of the blame for the ensuing social and economic catastrophe on the EU.
As is so often the case we're left considering the age old question: Is this latest Tory shambles down to incompetence, or is it down to malice?
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.
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.
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.
