Majorityrights Central > Category: British Politics

Summary: Part three of a roundtable between Guessedworker, DanielS, and Kumiko Oumae, about Brexit and the leadership contest which is emerging in the aftermath of the decision.

The curtailment of the leadership contest within the Conservative Party, is discussed.

Recorded on 11 Jul 2016.

ITV, ‘Theresa May to become prime minister on Wednesday’, 11 Jul 2016:

Theresa May will take over as prime minister on Wednesday, David Cameron has announced.

Mr Cameron said Mrs May would assume control after he has taken his last Prime Minister’s Questions and offered his resignation to the Queen.

It comes after Andrea Leadsom withdrew from the Conservative leadership race to succeed David Cameron.

Interesting events happening in the UK. We’ll be covering this development once the dust has settled and we are able to more comprehensively assess the lay of the land.

A radio show will also be coming soon on this subject.

       
        Rather, change its course and throw them overboard.

This article at The Right Stuff uses a metaphor that I have always liked, of Europe and its states as analogous to a ship and its compartments:

TRS, “For Europeans to Live, the EU Must Perish,” 5 July 2016:

      - Tom Paine

Think of the EU as a ship, its 28 member countries as compartments below the waterline, Europeans as passengers, Mohammedans and Africans as the sea around them. When the ship’s hull is breached, its rules (EU Freedom of Movement) require all hatches between compartments to remain open. (It is impossible to exclude anyone with EU papers from moving to another EU member except in extreme cases). Crazy but true.

While the ship’s crew could in theory protect passengers by closing hatches to contain flooding to one compartment, in practice the crew devotes its efforts to silencing the passengers’ “hydrophobia” as the sea pours in…

The article focuses too much on law change, however. That is an arduous and vastly insufficient answer to what we need: which is a compelling argument for mass deportation, a call emphatically understood, undertaken with the action of a flood of combined nationalist effort that would simply drag laws and bureaucracies along or bury them underfoot if they will not willingly comply to our will.

#NationalistDeporationists

I.e., rather than abandoning ship we ought change its course and throw them overboard.

Michael Gove faces the cameras.

Summary: Part two of a roundtable between Guessedworker, DanielS, and Kumiko Oumae, about Brexit and the leadership contest which is emerging in the aftermath of the decision.

Thoughts about the situation in Turkey are again explored.

Recorded on 01 Jul 2016.

Left to right: Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Theresa May.

Summary: A roundtable between Guessedworker, DanielS, and Kumiko Oumae, about Brexit and the leadership contest which is emerging in the aftermath of the decision.

Thoughts about the situation in Turkey are also explored.

Recorded on 30 Jun 2016.

Welcome, welcome to the theatre of ‘I told you so’!

In my previous post on Brexit, I said:

Majorityrights / Kumiko Oumae, ‘The coming battle over the meaning of Brexit.’, 26 Jun 2016 (emphasis added):

The European Union’s leaders really don’t want to sacrifice their mass migration agenda or their austerity agenda in order to save the union itself. They want to have their cake and eat it, and the only way they can do that is to try to convince the broad mass of the European population that the root problem is somehow actually the opposite of what it really is.

So instead, everyone will be told that somehow the reason for Brexit is because the EU itself somehow stoked ‘Islamophobic tendencies’ by implicitly approving of [those tendencies]—astonishingly—because it somehow didn’t prostrate itself to the needs and concerns of Turks as well as Arabs and North Africans quite enough for their liking, and that by not prostrating itself it somehow gave the signal that it was okay to not prostrate oneself, which somehow led to Brexit.

Sounds impossible? Oh, it’s possible. [...]

Today:

Sky News, ‘Turkey And EU Begin Brussels Accession Talks’, 30 Jun 2016 (emphasis added):

A senior Turkish politician has said right-wing extremism is threatening “European civilisation” and that following Brexit, the EU needs a “fresh start with a fresh vision”, which must include Turkey.

Omer Celik, Turkey’s chief negotiator in the process of the country’s proposed accession to the EU, also condemned the “anti-Turkish sentiments” expressed during the recent referendum campaign.

He was speaking at a media conference in Brussels following a meeting between EU officials and a delegation from Turkey that also included the country’s foreign, finance and justice ministers.

The substance of the meeting was the opening of the latest phase of convergence reforms, known as ‘chapters’, that a state must fulfil before accession to the EU.

So far, of the 35 chapters that must be completed and ratified, 16 have been opened but only one - on science research - has been closed.

During the media conference, the Turkish delegation exchanged polite, but pointed barbs with EU officials.

Dutch foreign minister Bert Koenders and EU commissioner Johannes Hahn both called on Turkey to address concerns over “short-comings” on human rights, the rule of law, freedom of expression and the independence of the judiciary, indicating these were major sticking points to progress.

Mr Celik responded by saying it was Europe - not just Turkey - that needed to change.

“Without sorting out its problems it cannot give hope to its members or its neighbours… it needs a fresh start with a fresh vision. Such a start will have to include Turkey,” he said.

“There are extreme right wing movements, there is anti-semitism and racism. These are the main threats against European civilisation,” Mr Celik added.

Turkey joining the EU became a major topic of debate in the UK referendum, with the Leave campaign regularly voicing their alarm about the prospect of visa-free travel for “79 million” Turkish citizens - a point dismissed by David Cameron and Remain campaigners, who insisted that Turkey was “decades” away from joining.

Mr Celik condemned the tone of the debate in the UK, saying anti-Turkish rhetoric masked deeper problems across Europe.

“The extreme right are expressing themselves with anti-Turkish sentiment but these are all products of the same mentality,” he said.

“The mainstream politics should stand up to this, not be weakened in the face of the extremist movements.

“When mainstream parties use these arguments against Turkey, they are making a mistake, they have to take responsibility, they have to stop this tendency.”

No. We won’t stop saying unkind things about Turkey. Not ever.

In the environment of Brexit as it presently exists, there are very few things which can be said as a certainty. Any real analysis of events really is going to begin after markets open on Monday morning, once political actors find themselves at work trying to figure out how to guide the UK’s ship of state forward.

One thing which can already be seen however, is the budding counter-narrative which those who are in favour of continuing the EU’s mass migration trend inside of the remaining 27 member states of Europe, are going to make up.

But before I present the counter-narrative which they are going to make up, I should first present what the actual reality is.

The presently existing and frankly obvious reality is that Brexit was largely a consequence of:

• The pro-migration decisions made by the European Commission and the Council of the European Union, along with specific leaders such as Angela Merkel and Stefan Löfven.


• The stances of the US State Department and the UK FCO during the 2011 - 2013 period which created the perfect storm of conflict which opened up routes for a whole wave of rapid migration from the Middle East and North Africa to enter the European Union.


• The policies adopted by the ECB which exacerbated the 2008 crisis, prolonging it in the South of Europe and left much of South Eastern Europe in a state of underdevelopment, making the European Union one of the worst economic performers in the world in the post-2008 environment.


• David Cameron’s attempt to renegotiate the terms of UK membership of the European Union so as to placate the concerns of the British public and dis-incentivise a ‘Leave’ result, were handled incompetently by the Commission and the Council, because they seemed to think that Cameron was trying to troll them, when in fact what Cameron was trying to do was help the Commission to help itself. Statements from Jean-Claude Juncker and Angela Merkel hotly asserting that the agreement made with David Cameron was ‘non-binding’ in front of the whole world, were a classic case of the Commission’s incompetence as a political player, and Merkel’s actual stupidity.

The pro-European faction of the British bourgeoisie could not contain the populist response to these developments, and so incapable were they of containing it that one rival faction of the British bourgeoisie began to believe that charting a course outside of the EU was better for their own interests as well as the country as a whole. That rival faction correctly surmised that harnessing the populist response could take them to that place. This is what led to the creation of a ‘Leave campaign’, led by a collection of prominent Tories implicitly in alignment with a small segment of the Labour Party (Labour Leave), and UKIP. This faction of the British bourgeoisie expertly and valiantly exploited the situation as it was unfolding, to guide the British people toward a Leave vote, which enabled that faction to claim a mandate to de-pool the UK’s sovereignty out of the EU and exit the bloc entirely.

The above observations—also known as ‘the facts of reality’—are unacceptable to the European establishment on the continent, because the implications of this mean that they would see increased calls for them to stop doing what they are presently doing or else risk the total dissolution of the European Union as the same pattern could potentially emerge in other member states.

The European Union’s leaders really don’t want to sacrifice their mass migration agenda or their austerity agenda in order to save the union itself. They want to have their cake and eat it, and the only way they can do that is to try to convince the broad mass of the European population that the root problem is somehow actually the opposite of what it really is.

So instead, everyone will be told that somehow the reason for Brexit is because the EU itself somehow stoked ‘Islamophobic tendencies’ by implicitly approving of them—astonishingly—because it somehow didn’t prostrate itself to the needs and concerns of Turks as well as Arabs and North Africans quite enough for their liking, and that by not prostrating itself it somehow gave the signal that it was okay to not prostrate oneself, which somehow led to Brexit.

Sounds impossible? Oh, it’s possible. Indeed, they would have to have some real gall to try to flip the script at this stage in the game, yet they are going to try it, and Erdogan is leading the way as the first one to attempt it this absurdity:

Daily Sabah, ‘Erdogan: EU’s reluctance to accept Turkey has Islamophobic motives’, 24 Jun 2016 (emphasis added):

President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said the European Union is reluctant to accept Turkey as a full member due to its Islamophobic motives.

Speaking at an iftar dinner in Istanbul on Friday, Erdogan said “The EU’s double standard policy towards Turkey has become an undeniable fact,”

Touching upon the referendum held on June 23 in the United Kingdom to decide whether or not to stay in the EU, he said that the Britons’ decision to leave the union will mark a new era for the EU.

Erdogan further added that the EU is likely to face more exits in short term if it “continues on the same path.”

U.K. voters opted to leave the EU in a historic referendum on Thursday, sparking worries across European capitals over the political future of the bloc.

Almost 52 percent of voters rejected their country’s 43-year EU membership.

Erdogan stressed that Turkey has always given its due importance to the acceleration of Turkey’s EU membership bid but the bloc has always been delaying the process.

“Double standards are no longer hidden. They have put more obstacles on Turkey’s path. They have been keeping Turkey waiting at their door for 53 years.”

During his speech, Erdogan also criticized EU’s asylum procedures.

“The EU bloc’s bad humanitarian and immoral approach to immigrants has led to a serious debate about the trustworthiness of the European Union,” he said.

The EU and Turkey signed a refugee deal on March 18, which aimed to discourage irregular migration through the Aegean Sea by taking stricter measures against human traffickers and improving the conditions of nearly 3 million Syrian refugees in Turkey.

The deal also allows for the acceleration of Turkey’s EU membership bid and visa-free travel for Turkish nationals within the Schengen area, on the condition that Ankara meets 72 requirements set by the EU.

Although Turkey fulfilled most of the criteria last month, differences between Brussels and Ankara on anti-terror legislation have forestalled the visa-liberalization deal.

Turkey began its EU accession talks in 2005. In 1963, Turkey and the European Economic Community (the EU’s former name) signed an association agreement.

Welcome to topsy-turvy land. In coming weeks I can almost guarantee that the political figures in Europe will begin partially echoing Erdogan’s sentiments, and Europeans will be told that the only way to avoid future ‘exits’ is for people like Merkel and Löfven to show even more ‘leadership by example’, so that ‘love can triumph over hatred’.

Achieving Frexit, Nexit, Czechxit, Polexit, and every other kind of exit, becomes increasingly more likely as the European leadership increasingly proves itself to be mentally retarded. Now that Brexit has actually succeeded, I’m perfectly happy to nihilistically contribute to propagating the narrative that ends the whole EU and gives space for something stronger and better to rise in its wake.

The strong shall live and the weak shall die. This applies to people, but also to institutions. The first word in the term ‘European Union’ is ‘European’, and if the European Union can no longer coherently act as the economic arm of Europe’s defence in complement to NATO, then the European Union shouldn’t exist. It’s obvious. If the EU leadership couldn’t handle a simple problem like the migration crisis and its political fallout, and if it couldn’t even see off challenges from diverse opportunists like Boris Johnson, Michael Gove, Gisela Stuart, Nigel Farage, Priti Patel, Liam Fox, Andrea Leadsom, Iain Duncan Smith and Lord Ashcroft, then frankly the EU does not deserve to exist as a structure.

The flag of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the symbol of the strongest political power in Europe, and those who want strength gather around it.

        Brexit Wins! Leave 17,176,006 to 15,952,444 Remain.