Politics & Government Brexit 2016, the people have spoken

[Bomberboyokay]

The end of the dream. The start of the resistance.

By Ian Dunt
Friday, 31 January 2020 2:08 PM

Terrible day. The worst. There's no other way to put it.

You deal with it as best you can. Maybe you watch the news. Maybe you make sure it's off. Maybe you go party to forget it all. Maybe you settle into quiet contemplation. Be with friends. Be alone. Mark it. Ignore it. Whatever. Deal with it however you think best. There's no political meaning to how you take it, nothing to be achieved. So just be kind to yourself. That's the main thing.

There are good things that can come from this. As of tomorrow, the Brexit mandate is discharged. Remainers, in total defeat, can fight now without their main weakness - the democratic argument for fulfilling the referendum result. And Brexiters will have to argue without the only positive proposition they have been able to make over the last few years.

It will be easier to convince people that the government is doing Brexit wrong that it was to suggest that it should not do it at all. A project that was based on dreams, on vague talk and unfounded aspirations, is about to come head-to-head with reality. It'll be up to Remainers to fix on that reality.

It must be done. It is a duty, not a goal. The damage that is about to be inflicted on us must be shown to be the consequence of the decision to Brexit and the manner it is conducted, or else we allow the government and the right-wing press to blame someone else for it. And they will. Brussels, traitors at home, immigrants. It's what they do when faced with their own failures. The chief defence against that attack is to make damn sure people understand Brexit's responsibility for what happens next.

It is also a duty for a larger and more substantial reason than that. We are living in a world in which truth is a devastated property. That's often the result of hermetically-sealed tribal identity groups online and the malicious impact of hostile actors, like Putin's Russia. But it is also because the government we live under is defined by falsehood.

Dominic Cummings, the power behind the throne, won a referendum on the basis of conscious deception. He conducts his relations with the press through the manipulation of reality. The prime minister is an inveterate liar. He lies as easily as he breathes. If we do not keep a firm grip on objective fact, they will prise it from our grasp completely. And then it will become impossible to scrutinise the government at all.

But there's no point pretending that you can only see the bright side today. It's not possible. What is happening is a tragedy. A betrayal of Britain's role in the world. A betrayal of the Europeans who came and made this their home. A betrayal of the idea that this is a calm, sensible country, that thinks in practical and pragmatic terms about what it is doing, that deals in small ideas instead of grand ideologies.

After the Second World War, the leading countries of the world came together to make sure it could never happen again. Britain's John Maynard Keynes and America's Harry Dexter White cobbled together the Bretton Woods system to control banking crises. The General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade was established to regularise trade. The Universal Declaration of Human Rights was enshrined to protect individuals and minorities.

In Europe, that project had a more severe imperative. The continent had destroyed itself twice. If it tried a third time, it would probably end the world. So it did something which had never been done before. It began to meld its economies together, so that war would become unthinkable. That started with coal and steel, the two industries which powered conflict. And it blossomed into the most advanced example of international cooperation in the history of humankind.

Britain joined late, but when it did it brought something unique: a caution which is needed in any grand project. That detachment is now portrayed as a sign that Britain never fitted in. It's nonsense. Any number of European states, except for perhaps Germany, could have succumbed to jingoistic populism. We were just the only ones stupid enough to hold a referendum on it. Britain's careful approach to Europe suited it and provided something valuable to the manner in which the project evolved.

The European system was carefully and painstakingly put together. It works for everyone, but requires sacrifices from everyone too. It creates its own problems, but also provides unexpected advantages.

The EU is perhaps the greatest example of what was achieved in those post-war years. Over the Brexit period, Leavers have portrayed the Europeans as sticklers for the rules, dull and unimaginative bureaucrats who can't think outside the box.

Sometimes people look at something beautiful and can only see the flaws. The EU is the pinnacle of the rules-based international system. It is part of an architecture which is designed, from the ground up, so that countries work together instead of fighting one another. So yes, it is based on rules. Rules are at the heart of what it is. Because rules are better than the alternative.

It is so much easier to destroy than to create. It is so much easier to lie, to pretend the world is simple, to make people blame outsiders for problems which have complex origins. It is so much easier to burn stuff down than it is to build it up. And that is what they have done. They have destroyed something beautiful.

One moment this week provided a stark visual representation of that. Nigel Farage and his little gang of cronies sneered and waved tiny plastic flags in the European parliament, on a night in which European MEPs from across the continent joined hands and sang Auld Lang Syne. It typified what is happening to us. On the one hand, international solidarity and common decency. On the other, bitterness, delusion, imagined victimhood, small-mindedness and spite. Britain reduced to a stump of itself, stripped of its better qualities. The replacement of patriotism with nationalism.

That is what we are now. Farage and his little flag.

But underneath it all, the seeds of a better Britain are already in place. Over the last four years, millions of people have discovered their values and their commitment to fighting for them. Openness. Internationalism. Liberalism. Reason.

That movement is online and offline, national and local. It exists in million-strong marches and small regional meetings. It is something new: a 21st Century variant of principles which go back through our history, a new generation carrying the flag for a proud intellectual tradition - one which embraces diversity, accepts complexity, believes in cooperation, and aspires to the confidence of a nation which can create instead of merely destroying.

History doesn't have a direction. We were wrong to ever assume that the pathway is always towards greater freedom. Progress goes backwards as well as forwards. There is no guaranteed victory. But this movement has much on its side. It has commitment. It has identity. And, more than anything, it has the young. It has the future. There is no law that says that it must win. But it can win.

Today is a day of despair. There's no point denying that. But tomorrow is a new day. And what happens in it is up to us.

The end of the dream. The start of the resistance.

Tomorrow is a new day. And what happens in it is up to us.

politics.co.uk

 

[Procrastinator35]

The people have spoken Bomberboy…..Time to wake -up & smell the Democratic process of a Sovereign Nation, declaring it's independence from despotism & tyranny...…Besides....The EU is the means by which the City of London Boys & their Anglo-U.S mates rule over & run Europe anyway....Which includes NATO.

 

[raskolnikov]

Damn Brits. So long EU passport.

 

[Gough]

Damn Brits. So long EU passport.

It's going to be blue again though so that's over half the f***wits who voted for Brexit satisfied already.

 

[Procrastinator35]

'Rule Brittannia, Brittania rules the waves.
Britons never ever ever shall be slaves.'

The first stanza is still true.....Not sure about the second though.

 

[Procrastinator35]

Unfortunately, Farage & his UKIP mob, were always going to prove the spoilers for Jeremy Corbyn....That's the only reason Bozo the Clown is now the PM.

 

[Hawk Dork]

Damn Brits. So long EU passport.

Irish passport FTW now

 

[Gough]

Irish passport FTW now

Passed the drinking and singing part of the citizenship test, failed on the fighting and sectarian weirdness.

 

[the fly]

Passed the drinking and singing part of the citizenship test, failed on the fighting and sectarian weirdness.

But I thought that Northern Ireland was still part of the UK.

 

[ash_1050]

Kudos to Boris for getting it done, even if it was an absolute mess from everyone involved and shouldn't have happened in the first place.

 

[Scotland]

Did he get it done, though?

They are officially out, but nothing will change until the end of the year and no planning for what will take place at that time has occurred.

 

[Procrastinator35]

Kudos to Boris for getting it done, even if it was an absolute mess from everyone involved and shouldn't have happened in the first place.

It was a mess because it went against the wishes of the establishment....In truth, it's still a mess, as Boris is PM....Which is more a joke than it is a mess.

Expect yet more delays as the wishes of the people & Democracy itself, get torn to shreds in a slow burn.

 

[Hawk Dork]

It was a mess because it went against the wishes of the establishment....In truth, it's still a mess, as Boris is PM....Which is more a joke than it is a mess.

Expect yet more delays as the wishes of the people & Democracy itself, get torn to shreds in a slow burn.

We used to be able to laugh at the clowns that became US presidents and wonder how did they get to the top of the list and how did they actually get elected.
From Tricky Dicky to Ronny to Dubbya and the Donald, we had Billy as a hic up, but now its become a theme with Abbott and Sco Mo with a side order of Pauline and Palmer and the Poms are catching on with Borris.

The unelectable buffoons getting into power, who would have thought this is what democracy would become, a version of entertainment wrestling with all the bad acting and the corny scripts

 

[Procrastinator35]

We used to be able to laugh at the clowns that became US presidents and wonder how did they get to the top of the list and how did they actually get elected.
From Tricky Dicky to Ronny to Dubbya and the Donald, we had Billy as a hic up, but now its become a theme with Abbott and Sco Mo with a side order of Pauline and Palmer and the Poms are catching on with Borris.

The unelectable buffoons getting into power, who would have thought this is what democracy would become, a version of entertainment wrestling with all the bad acting and the corny scripts.

The est love to mock us & take the piss out of the very notion of Democracy, by rubbing it in our faces with these corporate bought clowns.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Week in Review: Johnson's clown-car government is veering us off the road

They're all over the place. It's like a moral lesson in what happens if you're foolish enough to hand the keys to the country to a blithering clown. And the damage he'll do will stay with us for decades.

We barely see Boris Johnson. He doesn't really deign to emerge anymore. It's all very funny, apparently, the bumbling jester act. Until there's floods, or a coronavirus. And then it's not so funny anymore.

But even behind the scenes, you can sense Johnson's responsibility for what is happening. It's in that tell-tale sign of laziness and ineptitude with which government operations are conducted.

Yesterday No.10 confirmed it was pulling out of the unified patent system. This new arrangement, which operates half-in and half-out of the EU, aims to replace the disparate national patent arrangements in Europe with a streamlined single-issue patent and associated court functions.

With Britain on board, the new system would have covered 400 million consumers, including four G8 economies, with a GDP close to that of the US. Many experts believed it would make Europe a major patent jurisdiction, possibly overtaking America.

Even David Cameron, an afterthought of a prime minister who nevertheless appears an intellectual titan next to what we have now, recognised the opportunities. He made sure British judges were involved in developing the court's procedure. He fought to establish the pharmaceutical and life science division of the court in London - part of a plan to turn the UK, which at the time had the European Medicines Agency as well as the Francis Crick Institute and the Wellcome trust, into a global life sciences hub.

Theresa May knew it made sense to stick to this system even after Brexit. Johnson himself ratified it in 2018. But now we are pulling out. Why? Because the patent court will refer back to the European Court of Justice on matters of EU law.

This is such a tiny thing, such an inconsequential detail, as to be beyond comprehension. The European Court of Justice wouldn't decide cases. It would simply be asked to make rulings on matters of EU law. But even that apparently is too much. 'That's not Brexit', or whatever word it is we're supposed to use for Brexit now that MPs have been told never to utter it.

"Participating in a court that applies EU law and bound by the European Court of Justice is inconsistent with our aims of becoming an independent self-governing nation," the PM's office said. They had to be approached to find out. There was no official statement.

Britain loses and Europe loses. And there's really no reason for it. It's doubtful that a single individual in this country voted to leave in 2016 on the basis of EU law on patents.

It doesn't make the headlines, because it is an act of vandalism against something which would exist, rather than something which already does. But this is what it looks like when a country dismantles its own future.

Meanwhile, Michael Gove was in the Commons, delivering a standard-issue machine gun round of untruth. "We will respect the withdrawal agreement, implement the Northern Ireland protocol," he said, mentioning a document which makes it clear there will be a customs border between Britain and Northern Ireland. And then: "There will be no border down the Irish Sea".

It is a lie. That border will exist as point of fact due to the contents of the agreement. And it will take place in a heightened way due to country-of-origin checks if there is a trade deal with the EU.

What he could confirm is that the UK is going to have to employ up to 50,000 people for customs checks. It is extraordinary. We are eradicating growth where we could have been world leaders, only to replace it with growth in an area dedicated to demolishing our own trading networks. As the FT calculated, that's "four times more people to fill in customs forms than the 12,000 people working as fishermen in the UK - the industry that is supposedly one of the big beneficiaries of Brexit". Actual madness, on an industrial scale.

This government, which seemingly has no interest in the job and no understanding of how to do it, is then going to negotiate the two most important trade deals in this country's history. And it is going to negotiate them at the same time.

The UK published its mandate for the EU talks this week. In it, Johnson rejected the commitment to level-playing field requirements which he signed in his future relationship deal with the EU, just as he is undermining the commitments he made in the Northern Ireland protocol. He then asked the EU to trust him that those commitments were not required. It is like a perfectly illogical argument, one which refutes itself in the process of being uttered.

At the same time he is going to pursue an American trade deal, with the most aggressive nationalist president that country has had in its history. The mandate for that deal is expected on Monday. Liz Truss, the woman who whipped herself up into imbecile outrage over the fact Britain imports cheese, will be in charge there.

That's two simultaneous talks in which Britain is by far the junior partner, against seasoned negotiators, operating under an impossible time frame, with a ministerial team selected for cattle-like obedience, a leadership strategy based on deception, and no basic grounding in empirical reality or the consequences of our actions.

The sheer scale of the inadequacy and irresponsibility is mind-boggling. A clown-car, tottering down a high speed motorway, surrounded by heavy-duty vehicles travelling at speed. And we are going to have to live with the outcome of these decisions for years.

Week in Review: Johnson's clown-car government is veering us off the road

This what happens when you hand the keys to a blithering clown.

politics.co.uk

 

[Bomberboyokay]

 

[Procrastinator35]

Still going then.....a simple cut of ties would do it....Clearly the est set have zero interest in following the will of the people & Democracy itself.

Lets make the simple seem complicated....They're fooling no one by it.

 

[Bomberboyokay]

If Brexit is so great, why is Britain acting like it’s not happening?

Our neighbours are still struggling to believe that Brexit is a real-world event

Sat, Jul 18, 2020, 06:00

Fintan O'Toole

Last autumn, the British government spent £46 million (€50.6m) on its largest propaganda campaign since the second World War. Its aim was to prepare the country for Brexit. In January, the UK National Audit Office reported that “it is not clear that the campaign resulted in the public being significantly better prepared”.

So this week, Boris Johnson’s administration launched a massive advertising blitz to prepare Britain for Brexit.

Might this not suggest that, four years after they voted for it, our neighbours are still struggling to believe that Brexit is a real-world event, and not just a grand gesture. Why, otherwise, does so much effort and money have to be expended on convincing them of its reality?

The slogan for the new campaign is “let’s get going”. That is what you say to children pretending to be sick because they don’t feel like school. Given that Brexit is officially the dawn of a new golden age, why does Johnson’s Vote Leave regime implicitly accept that a reluctant populace has to be chivvied, not even into embracing this glorious future, but merely into accepting that Brexit is actually happening?

A fug of denial hangs over the whole thing. A fortnight ago, the House of Commons select committee on future UK relations with the European Union heard evidence from a man called Tim Reardon, “head of EU exit” at Dover, the most important port for goods passing between Britain (and Ireland) and the continental mainland.

In normal times, 10,000 trucks pass through it every day. It is Reardon’s job to make sure they can still do this after New Year’s Day 2021, when the current transition period ends and, to coin a phrase, Brexit really means Brexit.

On the other side of the English Channel, Dover’s twin port, Calais, has built a system for handling the flow of lorries after January 1st and, as Reardon put it, has “tested its system . . . a couple of times”. So obviously Dover has done the same? Well, explained Reardon, the system at Dover “needs to be built before it can be tested. At the moment, we are still at the stage of making sure that the specification for the system is correct, so that it is built with a fighting chance of doing what it is needed to do.” So the situation is not just that the system has yet to be tested, nor even that it has yet to be built. It is that the specifications for the design of the system have yet to be finalised.

Last weekend, Michael Gove, who is supposedly in charge of such things, announced the construction of a 27-acre holding pen for those 10,000 trucks heading to Dover. It will be in Ashford, Kent. In the 2016 Brexit referendum, Ashford voted 60 per cent for Leave. Yet the shocked local Tory MP, Damian Green, complained that the idea of this vast parking lot has now come “out of the blue”.

Almost everything about Brexit still comes out of the blue for the people who voted for it and their political leaders. On Monday, the Commons Northern Ireland Affairs committee issued a despairing report on preparations for the operation of the Northern Ireland protocol: “Businesses are still in the dark about what they should be preparing for on January 1st, 2021 . . . Those trading across the Irish Sea have been told to prepare without knowing what to prepare for.”

Meanwhile, the London government has published a checklist of things it suggests British subjects may have to consider if they intend to travel to the continental EU from next year on. Their European Health Insurance Cards will become invalid in December, so they will need to buy health insurance. They may need an international driving permit and a “green card” as proof of insurance. Mobile phone roaming charges will apply.

Most terribly of all, EU pet passports will no longer be available to animal-loving Britons. “Before your dog, cat or ferret can travel . . . your pet must have a blood sample taken at least 30 days after its last rabies vaccination”. This sample will then be sent to an “EU-approved laboratory” and the ferret-fancying traveller will then have to “wait three months from the date the successful blood sample was taken before you can travel.” If only the pro-EU side in the 2016 referendum had thought of a bus with “Ferry your ferret freely – Vote Remain”, surely the result would have been different.

It is as if there are two Britains, one in which Brexit is the greatest national project for almost half a century and one in which it is not really happening at all. To get a sense of the latter, go to the website of the UK’s Department of International Trade. It has detailed information for would-be exporters about markets they should consider entering after Brexit.

The site literally says “There are six markets in the western European region” and lists them as Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Ireland and the Netherlands. Apparently, Spain or Italy or Belgium are not in western Europe anymore. This is just sloppiness, presumably, but it is symptomatic of the strange absent-mindedness I like to call BAADD: Brexit-acquired attention deficit disorder. Anyone who does pay attention to Brexit becomes inured to the complete disjunction between the seriousness of what the UK is doing on the one side and the lack of seriousness about what it means on the other. But as summer drifts towards autumn with no sign of agreement on a trade deal, the idea that obvious things are still coming “out of the blue” becomes ever weirder.

Last week, the EU’s lead Brexit negotiator, Michel Barnier, had to reply to a letter of complaint from Mark Francois, chairman of the parliamentary group of Brexit ultras, the European Research Group. Barnier had to point out that everything Francois was complaining about is in the political declaration “agreed by your prime minister and voted for by the House of Commons, including yourself.” But pointing this out is hopeless: the Brexiteers will continue to fulminate against the consequences of everything they themselves have done.

Why shouldn’t they? Consequences are boring details. And the problem with details is not just that it takes some work – and, more problematic in the case of Francois, a stim of wit – to grasp them. It is that they are innately unheroic: port control systems, giant lorry parks, passports for ferrets. Brexit is drama, and these minutiae are like the dreary bits of Game of Thrones when someone has to explain about the lineage of the House Targaryen instead of getting on with sex, violence and dragons.

For the Brexiteers, the particularities are too, too tedious – get on with the glorious act of liberation. And there are only two ways in which the outcome of the current negotiations can be sufficiently dramatic: either the EU capitulates to all Britain’s demands, or Britain tears up the withdrawal agreement and stomps off into international outlawry.

There is no rational universe in which either of these outcomes makes sense, but this is not a rational universe. It is a twilight zone in which the Daily Telegraph still runs opinion pieces from Tory MPs with headlines like: “Frictionless trade with the EU is there for the asking”. The delusion that the EU will, in the end, give the UK all the benefits of the single market, even though it has left the single market, is very much alive. When the EU capitulates, there will be no need for border controls at Dover or passports for ferrets – so why plan for them?

But, in this binary mindset, the refusal of the EU to give the UK all of these benefits is proof of the EU’s bad faith – and Britain should retaliate by tearing up everything it has already agreed. The former Brexit secretary David Davis tweeted this week that: “In the event that the EU is not offering a deal, we should certainly consider John Longworth’s suggestion of reviewing the Withdrawal Agreement.” Longworth is a former Tory MEP who now heads a pro-Brexit think-tank, the Centre for Brexit Policy, chaired by the former Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson. (Its directors include the DUP’s Sammy Wilson.) Longworth’s “suggestion”, published on the Politico website, is yet more of the never-ending mania about the second World War: “It is outrageous that Germany – a country that had its national debt written off after World War II . . . – should now seek what amounts to reparations from the UK for having the audacity to want to break free of the Teutonic chains . . . So toxic is the [withdrawal] agreement that it would be quite legitimate in international law to repudiate the treaty, and that is exactly what the UK government should do if the EU refuses to adjust its implications.”

Should we take this stuff seriously? Probably not in any literal sense, though in the fever of this derangement no proposition, however extreme, can be discounted. But the danger is that these fantastical binaries – complete triumph or utter repudiation – continue to crowd out the urgent necessity to come to terms with the reality of Brexit. Anyone who thinks that the approach of a real danger will force Johnson’s administration to get a grip must pause to ask: how did that work out with the pandemic? The capacity of some people for delusion, denial and distraction has just caused about 20,000 avoidable British deaths. If they are willing to pay that price rather than face reality, the costs of a chaotic Brexit scarcely count.

Fintan O’Toole: If Brexit is so great, why is Britain acting like it’s not happening?

Our neighbours are still struggling to believe that Brexit is a real-world event

www.irishtimes.com

 

[Bomberboyokay]

Week in Review: Tony Abbott and the vortex of international stupidity

The former Australian prime ministers is deficient in his values and his understanding of trade.

politics.co.uk

So now we know what Global Britain looks like. It looks like Tony Abbott. And that in itself makes a certain degree of sense. It's the only kind of international organisation this government can imagine itself pursuing: the replication of its own failings on a global scale, amassing all the most defective, morally bankrupt, intellectually inadequate political figures they can find from around the world and placing them in one team. The Hapless Avengers.

Abbott, who is on the list of possible candidates for the Board of Trade, is a walking dinosaur. He once asked if it was so bad that "that men have more power generally speaking than women", has insisted that "middle class women do not have enough kids", says he feels "a bit threatened" by homosexuality, insists climate change is "probably doing good" and this week suggested that covid might be better handled by people making "elderly relatives as comfortable as possible while nature takes its course". In short, the man is an imbecile.

Since then, minister after minister has emerged to defend his appointment. "He's a homophobe and a misogynist," Sky's Kay Burley told Matt Hancock this week. "Well, he's also an expert in trade," the health secretary replied. Liz Truss, who, by some bleak eclipse of irony, is both trade secretary and equalities minister, responded to criticism of the idea in the Commons by branding it an attempt to "virtue signal" from "those on the left of politics".

Those responses tell us something quite revealing. Abbott's appointment is part of the own-the-libs strategy - the government's rejection of the objective point of something in favour of who it upsets. Abbott is therefore the perfect appointment. He upsets all the right people - Amnesty International, the Fawcett Society, Stonewall, Greenpeace, etc - and represents the triumph of the plain-speaking, stands-to-reason pub bore over expertise, comprehension or basic suitability. He is the nonsense dispute over the last night of the Proms in appointment form - just another culture war battleground, in the same endless tawdry administration of nothingness, with no idea of what it wants to do but a very clear impression of who it wants to enrage. The government is like a dog chasing a car: loud and determined, but without any idea of what it would do if it were to achieve its aim.

The criticism of Abbott, which is ferocious and wide-ranging, is actually too modest. Most of it tacitly accepts Hancock's argument by focusing exclusively on his various comments on gender or sexuality rather than his suitability for the role. But in fact Hancock was wrong. Abbott is not an expert on trade. His utterances on this topic have been so feeble and misconceived as to challenge even the most ill-informed of British Brexit commentators.

It's instructive to read his article in the Spectator - where else - from March last year. "Officialdom is warning that a no-deal Brexit would mean trucks backed up for miles at Dover," he started, briefly touching on objective reality before, at lightning speed, reaching back for the safety of imperial bombast. "Apparently the country that saw off Hitler, the Kaiser, Napoleon and the Spanish Armada is now paralysed with fear at the very thought of leaving the EU."

The rest of the piece bore the classic machine-gun fire of nonsense - a classic of the period. "As a former prime minister of a country that has a perfectly satisfactory 'no deal' relationship with the EU, let me assure you: no deal would be no problem," he wrote, seemingly unaware of the way that an existing absence of a free trade agreement between two distant trading entities differed from existing regulatory and customs harmonisation between two neighbours.

"Might there be queues at Calais?" he asked. "Perhaps, if a vengeful EU imposed one-sided tariff and regulatory burdens on Britain." In fact, the EU would have had no option but to put tariffs on UK goods and impose regulatory checks under no-deal, or else it would break WTO most-favoured-nation rules barring discrimination.

But the real moment of significance in the piece came in a sentence which demonstrated not just a lack of understanding of basic trade dynamics, but of elementary logic. Britain, he said, should "unilaterally" declare that "there would be full mutual recognition of standards and credentials".

Extraordinary sentence, that. The unilateral declaration of a mutual arrangement. You might as well walk into a shop and tell the guy behind the counter that you've both agreed to pay £5 for the latest smartphone. You can say it as much as you like, you can announce it with all the trapping of 'unilateral declarations', but that will not make it real. Deals are different to no deals. Individual decisions are different to mutually-agreed decisions. Most people do not need these basic sorts of facts pointed out to them and yet Abbott is seemingly incapable of grasping them. This is the intellectual record of the man touted as an expert in trade.

In that error, you can see the basic psychological, emotional and ideological instincts which made him attractive to the Vote Leave administration in the first place. It has the taint of imperial nostalgia to it, an echo of the days in which Britain could just send out the gunboats and do whatever it liked. And it has that distinct quality of those who refuse to engage with the complexity of the world, who insist that simple, instinctive, emotionally satisfying, macho solutions will do what all those limp-wristed experts fail to do - the dream that sheer common-sense can penetrate the harshest of conditions and make the universe bend to its will.

That's Global Britain. They have finally found a practical meaning to fit the branding. They're going to find all the most inadequate minds from around the world and amass a great super-team of imbeciles.