Will BoJo be shown to have lied to the Queen?

I despise Boris Johnson, (hereinafter BoJo).

I have always despised the mendacious fuckrat and I am not about to change my mind now.

I have had the misfortune to meet this loathsome man on two separate occasions before, and on both occasions his words have been nothing but empty hot air. I have watched him over the years and I have never had any occasion to change my views that he is an unmitigated liar, a self-appointed braggart and bully, who learned his ill-treatment of women from his disgusting father; who acquired his truculent manners at Eton; and who honed his aggressive behaviour as a member of the infamous Bullingdon Club at Oxford. His bullying conduct has been evidenced in the past by his agreement with an old Eton and Oxford friend, Darius Guppy to arrange for a journalist to be the victim of a grievous bodily harm attack.

And now, he is a carpetbagging, unelected Prime Minister, shoe-horned into office by a miniscule bunch of dysfunctional and non-representative aged Tory geriatrics who believe, somehow, that this truculent priapic man-child will restore the UK to a world position of influence and power, but based upon nothing other than empty sound-bites and lies gerrymandered by this most dishonest of politicians.

BoJo's behaviour has been to ride roughshod over the hugely important elements of our unwritten constitution, aspects of public behaviour which are vital in order to make our peculiar system work effectively. These include the importance of 'conventions' and 'precedent', and if these well-defined elements are not recognised and adhered to, our constitutional functionality breaks down.

BoJo and his selected satraps, including the modern Lord Snooty, Jacob Rees-Mogg, claim that his decision to drag H.M.the Q into this most disreputable of debates, is perfectly normal and a proper use of Her Majesty's time. Well, this is so obviously a lie that it hardly needs nailing, but because there are so many ignorant and ill-informed members of the public who claim a democratic right to spout their uninformed opinions and to pour abuse on anyone with whom they do not agree, it becomes necessary to try and put this debate into context.

Thankfully, some very brave and informed individuals are now seeking to bring legal constraints upon BoJo and his team of publicly-funded liars, and Gina Miller has sought an action in the High Court to challenge the legitimacy and truthfulness of BoJo's advice to the Queen in order to force her to sign an Order proroguing Parliament.

I have used the word 'force' deliberately because I do not believe for one minute that H.M.the Q is unaware of the unconstitutional quality of this action, but she has no choice if confronted by what appears to be a proper request from her Prime Minister to prorogue Parliament, than to accede.  She is not a lawyer and she is not required to debate the legality of the action, that is the prerogative of the High Court.

So the Court will look at the nature and quality of the request by BoJo, and they will judge its bona fides. It is perfectly clear to anyone who has been watching this debate that the primary aim of the prorogation is to prevent and to stymie any legitimate Parliamentary time to debate the issue proposed by BoJo and his team of liars.

What will weigh very heavily in their deliberations will be the public utterances made by Tory politicians in the past few months about the possibility of shutting down Parliament.

In order to be persuaded that the Prorogation is lawful, the Court must examine the evidence of the reason for its request to the Queen. If the Court is satisfied, on a balance of probabilities that the request was made entirely and purely for the purpose of facilitating a Queen's Speech, (a process that usually takes no longer than 2 weeks), which is the explanation being proffered by BoJo the Liar, and his bought and paid for fellow-liars, like Jacob Rees-Smugg, then the Court is likely to deny the request from Gina Miller.  

However, if the Court, having considered all the evidence, (and that will now include the evidence of Sir John Major which is likely to be highly persuasive; the evidence of the Government minister saying too much at a conference recently, and BoJo's own conduct earlier in the year when he privately assured Tory Brexiteers that he would not rule out suspending Parliament to ram through a No Deal Brexit on October 31, will be highly difficult to overcome.

The then front-runner for the Tory leadership publicly voiced his opposition to the idea of proroguing this session of Parliament, and his spokesman repeated the candidate was 'instinctively averse' to the option.

He told MPs that he was 'strongly not attracted to' the option at an event after the official launch of his campaign yesterday.

But The Times was told the former foreign secretary had privately assured the hard-Brexit European Research Group (ERG) of backbench Tory MPs that he would not explicitly rule it out.

All this is evidence, and there will be a whole lot more which should point overwhelmingly to BoJo being found to be a liar and a charlatan, and to have acted in bad faith, and if the Court so finds, they have the option of saying so loudly and at great length. Even if they did not overturn the decision to prorogue, it would still make BoJo's position untenable, as a Prime Minister who lied to his Queen.

I myself have no doubt he lied to the Queen, even by default, but that is BoJo's leitmotif. He is a liar, pure and simple, and we should never forget it.

Spuddling the facts, muddying the waters.

In his very cleverly worded piece in the Sunday Times of 18.8.19, entitled "...It casts itself as the good guy, but the EU's aim has been to humiliate and cheat..." Sir Peter Marshall, adopting frankly undiplomatic language states;

"...Our partners (The EU) also loaded the dice against us. Article 50(2) specifies that the European Council shall provide guidelines in the light of which “the Union shall negotiate and conclude an agreement with that State . . . [The agreement] shall be concluded on behalf of the Union by the Council” (not the European Council, comprising heads of government, but the body a rung below, known as the council of ministers)…". The words in brackets are those of Sir Peter.

"...But they were not having that. The guidelines announced that the European Council “will remain permanently seized of the matter”. The whole withdrawal process was thus further prolonged by its subjection to the European Council’s ponderous timetable..."

Marshall's point is that the EU have deliberately made the negotiating of the EU Withdrawal Process as convoluted and difficult as possible. He appears to effect surprise that the EU would want to fight tooth and nail to protect the integrity of their Union and to make it difficult for members to leave whenever they wished.

His words are pretty clear, and he rings in a dubious interpretation of the meaning of the word 'Council', suggesting that it means something other than that which it became. What is clear is that Sir Peter appears to be of the opinion that the European Council, by remaining "...permanently seized of the matter..." was a matter for regret at the least, but he builds it up to support his wider allegation of bad faith and cheating.

Now consider his words in an earlier article he published in a piece called "...Light at the End of the Tunnel..?, published as a 'Brexit Briefing' on 28.3,18.

In the polemic it states; 

"...Sir Peter Marshall reviews the course of the negotiations over the year since invoking article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty. His assessment is “very positive”.

Maundy Thursday March 29^th marks the first anniversary of the despatch of the letter from the Prime Minister to the European Council triggering the Article 50 process. At the half way stage in the allotted span of two years for settling the withdrawal process, how should we assess our progress? The answer is “very positively”..".

Later in the piece it states;

"...the European Council wisely decided to remain seized of the matter of UK withdrawal throughout, instead of delegating it in effect from the board room to the shop floor, as specified in paragraph 2 of Article 50..."

Sir Peter chooses to interpret these words as meaning that the work should have been carried out by the Council of Ministers, but the legislation does not use those words at all, in fact there is no mention of the Council of Ministers, and this is only Sir Peter's interpretation. In any event, he says that the decision to keep the matter in the hands of the European Council, was a 'wise decision'.

So in March 2018, this former Mandarin thought the process '...is proceeding very positively..,' while now, he has significant cause to doubt the bona fides of our EU friends, and accuses them of bad faith and cheating.

So what is the truth?

My points here are only small ones, but from little acorns, etc, etc.

Having had quite a wide experience of the devious nature of some senior Mandarins in my career, I know only too well how they can swerve seamlessly around issues which do not appeal to them.

Why the Tories cannot come to terms with the end of the last war!

Michael Portillo has fronted a superb documentary for Channel 5 "...What's the matter with the Tories..."

He seeks to try and understand why the UK is still so bedevilled with our apparently damaging obsession with our membership of the EU.

What the programme demonstrates most clearly is the dysfunctional way in which our constitutional democracy is run, and how, most politics, even today, are deeply infected by  the British disease of looking backwards over our shoulders to a mythical and frankly non-representative time when this country was overwhelmingly white, Protestant, when the Church of England represented the Tory Party at prayer; when MPs were mostly middle-aged and older men, when cricket was still played on Sundays in country villages, and there was still honey for tea!

Alright, I may have been guilty of a small degree of hyperbole, but what the programme demonstrates is how generations of Tory politicians have exercised and demonstrated severe anxieties about Europe and the political dimension.

There is a significant degree of chatter about sovereignty and the inalienable rights of Nation States to determine their own policies and financings, but very little, if any debate on the impact and disregard for historical change.

One element was very instructive. Nicholas Soames, Winston Churchill's grandson was interviewed and he was asked why the Tories find it so hard to engage sensibly with the EU. He said; "...The Tory Party has never come to terms with the end of the last war..."

In this one simple observation, Soames, a true blue Tory to his bootstraps, put his finger on the kernel of the conundrum..

This country has always been obsessed with the part we played in defeating Hitler. It is an issue which some people in Parliament, like that pint-sized clown, Mark Francois (whom Soames, to his eternal credit, clearly loathes with a passion), cannot seem to put down, and are forever invoking its memories and image.

Soames believes it has something to do with the psychology of 'standing alone', a kind of 'backs to the wall' meme, and a rejection of any kind of solidarity with other European countries. For myself, I think this conflates with the traditional British dislike of foreigners of whatever kind, their distrust of the French, their lack of respect for the Italians and their fear of the Germans.

What is fascinating is how the most committed members of the EU and some of the earliest members committed to the success of the European construct were those countries, France, Germany and Italy, closely followed by the Benelux countries, which had suffered so much in World War 2.

They had been invaded, colonised, their political models smashed, their legal structures trashed, their people abused and massive volumes of death and destruction visited on them. To re-build, they could begin again with a tabula rasa, and adopt the new and emerging emphasis on trading bloc status.

The focus on integrated trading blocs was designed to reflect the emergence of other supra-national consolidated trading groups elsewhere in the world. The age of the Nation State was over, it finally died in the rubble of 1944, and a new economic and political model of closer cooperation and trading interests was emerging.

The European Economic Community (EEC) was a regional organisation which aimed to bring about economic integration among its member states. It was created by the Treaty of Rome of 1957  Upon the formation of the European Union (EU) in 1993, the EEC was incorporated and renamed as the European Community (EC). In 2009 the EC's institutions were absorbed into the EU's wider framework and the community ceased to exist.

The Community's initial aim was to bring about economic integration, including a common market and customs union, among its six founding members: Belgium, France, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands and West Germany. In 1993 a complete single market was achieved, known as the internal market, which allowed for the free movement of goods, capital, services, and people within the EEC.

This was a new, and very different way of looking at the world, and because it did not incorporate the United Kingdom, the UK looked upon it with great suspicion. Nevertheless, the British Empire was breaking up, and the Commonwealth no longer looked to Britain for its leading role in their autonomy.

But Britain had not experienced the same degree of invasion, colonisation and destruction as the Europeans and they would not willingly liken themselves to being in the same political position as the Euro countries.

The British national position adopted by all the Little Englanders and right-wing loopies was that we had won the war, and therefore we did not need to change. They forgot, or at least overlooked the fact that despite not having been the political losers of the conflict, our country was ruined. We were financially bereft, and that we existed entirely due to the willingness of the Americans to bail us out financially on a temporary basis while we tried to rebuild our economy which we had mortgaged to defeat Hitler. We also overlooked the fact that without the USA and to an even greater extent, Russia who lost in the region of 26 million people in defeating the Nazis, we would never have emerged victorious.

Effectively, in terms of finance, manpower, and infrastructure, we, the British were the losers in WW2, and we were not even in a similar position to Germany to benefit from the reconstruction process in Europe. I believe that this was very influential in developing an integral and visceral distrust of Germany and therefore an unwillingness to face the new future as an open and committed partner of the new emerging Democratic Republic of the new Germany.

For me, this is one of the biggest influences behind the Little Englander's dislike of anything that hints of European-ism.

All the time we, the Brits, refuse to accept that the times have changed dramatically and that we now live in a new political paradigm where the power-blocs are no longer determined by outdated and irrelevant 19th century concepts such as the Nation State, we will continue to be the sheet anchor on any ability to move forward. It is imperative that we understand this and accept that the political and cooperative model of economic and corporate co-existence in Europe has moved on, and we will never again revert to the models of the post-war era.

We have to learn to get over the outcome of WW2 and stop surrounding ourselves with replications of invasions and reiterations of old battles. There is no need to forget the sacrifices of those who died to protect their country, but those people would find it very hard to recognise the present state of affairs in the UK. My father who fought through both WW2 and Korea was a committed European and believed in the need for us to make common cause with the other European countries.

Those politicians like Mark Francois and the other petty dictators in the House of Commons who so ritually trot out the useless and outmoded memes of nationhood, sovereignty and control freakery (ever noticed how many of them are former military types?) need to start reading some modern history and recognise that our development as a modern outward-looking nation did not come to an end in 1945, but in reality, began to develop a new way of looking at the world.

Our future lies in trade, but trade with our closest neighbours, not with the USA which doesn't give a flying fuck for us or our people. The Americans parrot the trash about 'special relationships' when it suits them, but that is only when they want to invade some hapless country and they want the UK to sacrifice our young people in support of American 'shock and awe' tactics.

A close and meaningful relationship with the EU, the biggest trading bloc in the world, is our real future. Never forget, Napoleon, quoting Voltaire once said; "...God is on the side of the big battalions..."

Why the Brexit debate has taken on such a hate-filled rhetoric.

I have been following the debate on Brexit with mounting dismay and concern in  recent days.

Last week I made a contribution to a FaceBook page posted by the European Parliament. encouraging EU citizens in the UK to register to vote if they wanted to vote in the forthcoming EU elections. I posted a mild supporting statement because I want the EU Parliament to encourage men and women of good faith and best intentions to become EU Parliamentarians. I want them to put a spoke in the wheel of the emergent neo-Nazis and extreme right-wing radicals that are being increasingly thrown up in Europe, and whose hate-filled views and septic memes are poisoning the well of debate.

Recall, I said the EU parliament.

If the UK gets to vote in this election, I do not imagine that anyone elected to sit in the EU Parliament will be members for very long, much as I would like them to be. I fear that the UK will be dragged out of the EU by the swivel-eyed anti-EU nutters who increasingly populate our debates in Parliament and on social media.

The page suddenly became the target for an attack from the denizens of extremist opinion and angry, irrational rhetoric, the like of which I have never before experienced. It was as if every flag-waving, tattooed, pit-bull owning, motor-cycle riding, and every other form of uninformed right-wing political fantasist decided to air their lack of logic, their factual ignorance about the EU, and, yes, let's admit it, their downright visceral hatred of Brussels and everything that spells European Union.

It was a truly horrible experience. I don't mind personal attacks, I just ignore them. If ignorant and uneducated "...graduates from the school of hard knocks and the university of life...", (which a lot of them proudly claim to be, parading their uneducated ignorance like a badge of honour) want to bad mouth me for expressing my views, well, so be it. They simply make themselves look ridiculous and ill-informed for anyone with a modicum of intelligence to identify. But the levels of sheer hatred and vituperation that some of these Neanderthals voiced was truly awful, and did not bode well for the safe future of this country or of Europe. 

Most of them appeared to parrot the same memes of support for that charlatan, Nigel Farage and his new Brexit Party. None of them appear to have realised that the new entity is a private vehicle for Farage and his galere, over which he has absolute control, and over which he has absolutely no intention of allowing hoi polloi to exercise any control. I wish them joy of the worm, Farage will soon disabuse them of any sense of honour or dignity if he gets his way.

I am far more concerned with the level of hatred and vileness more generally which is flooding into public life and debate presently. Where is this level of rhetoric coming from, who is generating this 'Dad's Army' level of swivel-eyed and misplaced Imperialistic nonsense?

Some of the blame has to be laid at the door of some of our more egocentric MP's. Men like Jacob Rees-Smugg, parading his deliberately mal-manipulated logic, or Mark Francois with his war-like rhetoric, identifying the fact that despite being too young for WWII, he wants to start WWIII so he can get a walk-on part.

Most recently, Nicky Morgan, M.P, a sensible, logical and caring woman, has accused veteran Euro-hater and antediluvian roadblock to progress, Sir William Cash for fuelling violence with a 'vain and bitter' article. This is a very important allegation, because it identifies how the ignorant and the uninformed can be encouraged to engage in vile imprecations, incited by the rabid mouthings and the hysterical language employed by a senior MP, albeit one who has revelled in his anti-Europeanism for many years.

  

Senior Eurosceptic Cash has been accused of fuelling violence against politicians after he accused Theresa May of "abject surrender" and "capitulation" to the EU. Just reading this use of language, one could be forgiven for believing that Cash and his flag-waving band of false patriots believe we are at war with our colleagues and friends inside Europe. No wonder the Little Englanders and the loony-tune Brexiteer tendency feel empowered to parade their ignorance, and vile hatreds. 

Former cabinet minister Nicky Morgan generously said Sir Bill's words were "not helpful" while former Foreign Office minister Alistair Burt accused the veteran MP, a senior member of the European Research Group of anti-EU Tories, of a publishing "a vain and bitter article".

Writing in the Sunday Telegraph, the house magazine of Euro-haters and the headbanger-brigade membership, Sir Bill compounded the wartime memes and the adoption of his Captain Mainwaring persona when he said this was an "abject surrender" and accused the prime minister of "capitulation" and "appeasement".

His comments were strongly condemned by pro-EU Tories.

Ms Morgan, a former education secretary, told BBC Radio 4's Today: "I understand that Sir Bill Cash has written an article in which there are all sorts of phrases about betrayal and capitulation and all the rest of it.

"As my colleague Alistair Burt has pointed out, this kind of language is not helpful. It's not the kind of language that our councillors or frankly any normal people would use."

Nicky Morgan, who has previously received death threats, said she saw a link between the type of comments made by Sir Bill and violence directed against MPs. I say its influence extends even further and influences public debate more generally. Her answers are instructive because they point up the connection between these silly and juvenile remarks by someone who should know better, and the kind of pure nastiness being spouted by supporters of the new Brexit Party.

Asked if she believed there was a connection, she said: "I do. I think it's been shown that the language that MPs or campaigners, mainly in favour of Brexit, are using is stoking up other people, often who are sitting at home watching all this stuff and it gets them really, really angry and fired up and then they say things that they would never say face to face."

She added: "Language is important and the One Nation group of MPs that I am co-chairing has said very clearly that we should all think about the language that we are using in these debates. We need to remember that politics is about much more than Brexit."

Mr Burt, who resigned as a Foreign Office minister last month in order to vote against the government on Brexit, wrote to Sir Bill on Twitter: "A vain and bitter article focused on your prime minister, with your opinions expressed in words such as mendacity, surrender, betrayal, appeasement, bended knee...Does it ever cross your mind what you're contributing to?"

I am afraid that Cash and his satraps know precisely what they are doing. These are dog-whistle words, and he and his  Ton-Ton Macoutes know that they play well with the narrow-minded and blinkered false patriots who are now flooding to support the Faragista circus of clowns and wibbly-wobbly men.

Let us always remember the words of Dr Johnson when he succinctly observed that (False) patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel. How many of these new Brexit party supporters will turn out to be simply misinformed and mistaken or downright scoundrels, only time and Brexit will tell!

Armistice Day 2018

I have watched the service from the Cenotaph and I have also seen the various ceremonies taking place around Europe.

I have watched while old enemies have engaged in services of reconciliation and have held out the hands of peace to each other.

I have listened to the words of solace and heard the songs of peace, and if there is one thing I take from all these images and sounds it is the huge importance of the concept of European harmony and integration.

The concept of Europe has kept us safe and secure since 1945 and it will continue to operate as a bastion of hope and understanding for many years to come.

I take no note of the idiot cynics who argue that it is not Europe but NATO which has held back the tide of new wars. NATO is mostly a creature of the USA, and we all know, particularly under the regime of the orange-stained golfing buffoon who presently sits in the White House, what that means. I ignore the mad Little Englanders who in their insecurity as British people, feel they must insult and confront every other race ,religion and creed which seeks to make a home in the British Isles. 

After over 40 years of EU membership, I thought we might have come to terms with our European status. We have played an important role in Europe, and we have only been besmirched and let down by the crazies in UKIP who cannot see the EU as being anything other than a corrupting influence, draining our British identity, and who feel the need to insult every other European politician, because it makes them feel big and important, which they surely are not.

I have news for the Faragistas and the loony-tunes  racist Ukippers. Being proud members of the EU hasn't made any Frenchmen less French. The Germans have not felt any less German in their status, it is just that they have worn their European identity like a second coat, identifying its ambitions whie revelling in their own identities.

Watching Angela Merkel and Emmanuel Macron holding each other's arms today, resting their heads in symbolic peace on each other's shoulders has made me realise even more how important the European continuum is and why we British must, even more than before, continue to make common cause with our European friends and relations.


Those who know my work and writing know that I am an unreformed European. I believe in a Federal Europe, a common tax-base, a European armed service (if that is what is wanted), a European Intelligence service, and a common cause in information sharing and intelligence gathering and dissemination. I want to enhance Europe, I want to enlarge its remit, I want to make more common cause with its police agencies, its political thinkers and its philosophical leaders/

In the Press yesterday, an important piece in the Guardian lambasted the British approach to Europe, particularly in the way in which we are behaving like poltroons in our negotiating position. In a scathing critique, the author state;

"...It is often unclear if the UK is trying harder to hoodwink the EU or itself. Ministers have repeatedly called for things they must know to be impossible. Davis promised that a trade deal would be ready to sign next March; May insisted free movement in its current form would end during the transition period; and now Raab declares that he can unilaterally terminate a backstop that both sides agreed will last “unless and until another solution is found”. In sacrificing trust, we have also sacrificed credibility. After two long years, the government not only appears duplicitous, but demonstrably out of its depth.

Brexit’s slow unravelling was both predictable and avoidable. Officials frequently remark that if they had trusted the UK’s motives and competence, they would have afforded the government more leeway. But instead of building bridges, the UK quickly burned them. The EU now suspects the government will do everything it can to wriggle out of the backstop, and is determined to thwart Britain’s faithlessness with a watertight withdrawal treaty. If, in the final weeks, the EU is holding our feet to the fire, it’s because we have shown it that it must..."

Our politicians have sought to hoodwink us, and behaved with such duplicitous mendacity that they are no longer to be given any consideration. They cannot be trusted, they are consummate liars and they have relinquished any right to support or belief. They have wasted every important opportunity to negotiate a decent outcome of the Brexit nausea. 

We must hold out for a permanent solution to this madness, so that we can finally put this insanity to rest and finally and for ever manifest our commitment to a lasting European status and membership, the centenary acknowledgements of the end of the Great War and the lasting peace and prosperity that our European membership has delivered, demand no less.

Why David Davis and his Tory mates make such piss-poor negotiators in the Brexit affairs.

An old merchant was lying on his death-bed, and he called his only son to his side.

"Son" he said, " I am going to teach you the most important thing I have ever known in life. When a man comes to you to do business he wants to screw you for as much as he can. You, in turn don't want to pay any more than you absolutely need to. You ask him his price. He says 'Ten'. He means Eight, so he wants Six, so its worth Four, so you bid him Two..."

The other night on 'Question Time', you know that dreadfully slanted and biased, pro-Right-Wing Tory soapbox, usually packed with UKIPpers and other swivel-eyed Brexiteers, Nadim Zahawi, Tory M.P and well-known rent-a-quote opined on the way in which the Brexit affair should be being negotiated. He prayed in aid, so he said, his years of negotiating as a businessman, and in so doing he, like so many other Tories displayed his total ignorance of the true nature of the Brexit discussions.

Tory businessmen always seem to think that life is a simple process of doing deals, and that their commercial expertise fits them well for negotiating the UK exit policy. Their uni-linear minds only think one way and they believe that by holding their cards close to their chest and bullying the other side by threats of walking away from the negotiating table, that this will somehow bring the deal home, advantageously to them.

David Davis maintains this line in commercial tarradiddle all the time. Ask him why we cannot be shown the contents of the so-called 50 secret dossiers (which in truth I do not believe exist) and he says we mustn't display our negotiating hand. Ask him about the price for our divorce bills and he says that if we disclosed that figure, then the Europeans would only ask for more. And so it goes.

When we come to dissect the UK approach to the Brexit negotiations, we quickly come to the glaring conclusion that we don't have any real proposals to make at all, and we are just simply waiting for the EU team to lay their hand on the table, so we can find out what they want us to stump up, and then hope to finesse our way round it.

In so doing, our people forget that it is we, the UK, who are asking to leave the EU, we are the ones conducting the proposals for our case to be given a fantastically beneficial deal, but without belonging to the club or making any meaningful contribution, and that therefore it is for us to lay out our suggestions and ideas, and convince the EU team that we have a good case for them to answer.

But no, like a rabid dog in a manger, and on the basis that this is super-effective negotiating expertise, we have hidden our hands and refused to make serious proposals, so much so that it is increasingly infuriating the EU team, who feel that they are being required to negotiate blindly.

And what we are seeing are the usual predictable tactics of the British businessman in a commercial deal, waiting to see who will blink first.

But this isn't a commercial sale agreement, and there are significant differences between the two concepts.

First of all, the EU side doesn't want us (in principle) to leave at all. They would far prefer us to stay as members. So they don't come to the table with any desire to win or lose. If we want to go, well they won't try to stop us, they can't, so no sweeteners there are possible, but they won't lift  a finger to help us. So there is no need for them to be accommodating and move towards making our decisions any easier. This is what so many whining, ugly Brit 'Leavers' don't seem to comprehend. Davis and his team keep moaning on about why the EU  are not being more flexible and coming round to discussing a new trading agreement, but why should they? They don't need to, they already have a superb trading agreement with us, and nothing they put in its place will be any better, and for them it will be a loss-making deal, so what possible motivation do they have for having any discussions at all about a new trading deal?

Davis grizzles on about the EU needing to start talks about Trade, but until such time as we have answered their outstanding questions about the management of our legal commitments to them, what motivation do they have to believe that we will keep our word?

So, secondly, before we can leave, we have to settle all our debts. These are legally-binding agreements we have already made as members in full and good standing, and upon which the EU has already made commercial and financial forward commitments. Those will have to be paid.

How much are they? Well we should be able to calculate them to within the odd million or two because we will know how much we have committed to, and this really shouldn't be a difficult decision or process.

Theresa 'No Mates' made a derisory first proffer at the Florence meeting, but it was so transparently stupid and unrealistic that no-one in Brussels was going to take her seriously. It was the political equivalent of bidding 'Two'! Everyone present knew that, no-one was fooled, no-one was impressed and all it did was reinforce the image of Britain being a nation of skinflints who would renege on the deal at the end!

More difficult will be the decision about the Irish border, but some sensible and workmanlike discussions with the Irish Prime Minister should be capable of coming to a general agreement in principle, upon which we could leave the civil servants on both sides of the divide to finalise the small print in detail, after all, it's what they are good at. The Eire Government needs to be kept firmly on-side because we don't want them vetoing any final deal that might eventually be put on the table.

The future of EU citizens in the UK and the other way round should be the work of 5 minutes discussion. How long does it take to say 'everything will remain exactly as it was for those citizens on either side  of the Channel who were in situ as of (date to be agreed)"? As this is still an issue about EU status, it is natural that the relevant Court of Arbitration should be the European Court. Even David Davis is now willing to agree that issue in certain cases.

I know I have perhaps (over) simplified these points somewhat, but not a lot. But Theresa No Mates and David Davis have turned these discussions into a 5 ring circus and they are still dragging their feet, making this country look vacillatory and stupid.

If we had decent sensible commercial calculations based on logic, fact and bounded by law, then armed with these  figures we could begin to have sensible talks with Brussels.

We have lost sight of our end-game in all this. David Davis is so keen to keep on trying to pretend that he has got bigger 'cojones' than his opposite numbers. he keeps on bidding 'Two', and is then surprised when M.Barnier tells him to 'fuck off' , or whatever the equivalent phrases is in educated French ('Va te faire foutre). when in fact he needs a totally different strategy altogether.

You see, Davis is already well and truly hoist by his own petard.

The EU know we want to leave, and our stupid politicians keep telling the world we are leaving. They now even know the date on which we are going (maybe we could tell them the time as well and leave them in no doubt whatsoever!

This is the negotiating equivalent of going into a deal meeting and saying to the other side that if we don't have the deal we want by 4.00pm we have to leave. If the other side doesn't want to deal and is in no hurry to agree, then we can go whistle up our kilts for any deal at all.

This is so stupid I find it incredible that it was ever mentioned, but of course we started the clock ticking when we exercised Article 50. We didn't need to do that, it was a futile gesture, but it was done to keep the Brexiteers, the Little Englanders and above all the new 'bastards' in the Right-Wing Tory ranks happy, but from that moment, trying to negotiate this deal in the same way as buying a factory or a hotel chain was deeply flawed.

If we really wanted to come out of this mess with any semblance of credibility, we should first of all have to have started off by finding a way to morally commit the EU into wanting to do a deal with us. The EU prides itself on being on the moral high ground and they would not want the world to view them as morally corrupt.

If I were negotiating this deal, I would have kept away from the exercise of Article 50 until such time as I had all the best possible answers to the burning questions that I knew the EU would ask, money, Irish question and EU citizens rights. I would have made sure I had the best possible views on the divorce bill, crunched by accountants, lawyers, academics, main businessmen, CBI etc, etc, and then, and only then, when I had both a best case scenario and a worst case scenario, with which I could live with dignity, would I have started negotiations.

Within the first week I would have informed Brussels, formally and in writing what my proffer was to settle the divorce bill, and I would have made it clear that the amount payable would be settled on the last day of the Article 50 process, but conditional upon and when and only when, we had a commercial deal that suited both sides.

If they wanted to haggle, well I would know how far my worst case scenario could extend, but I would have made it clear that the deal was not intended to be open to too much negotiation. If they then started to haggle needlessly, then I would know they were not serious and I could hold out on the tabled offer. As time slipped by, the Europeans would have found themselves under such pressure from member states to settle that a settlement would have followed, of that I am certain. Once that had been achieved, they would have had nothing more to hold out for and the rest would eventually have become achievable. Perhaps not in every detail, but to a very large extent.

The beauty of this model is that we the UK could not have been accused  of being vacillatory nor unwilling to deal, and we would have been seen as being strong and purposeful (I deliberately avoided the word 'stable').

As it is, we are now royally fucked because we have told so many lies and have beaten around the bush for so long that the EU does not believe us.

Getting this deal done in principle should have been achievable within a couple of weeks, following this model. This would not mean that all the details which still needed to be ironed out would have been completed, but that will be the case now, in any event, and we haven't even reached a workable deal yet, and show no signs of so doing.

My point is that the Tory Government and its dinosaur-like members have always been difficult about our European membership. To these men and women who are so keen to see us crash out and burn, they have always hated Europe. They are the direct descendants of John Major's 'Bastards' from the Maastricht negotiations. Any sign of being willing to work hand in glove with Europe is seen as a sign of masculine political weakness, so our negotiators have to grind the EU noses in the dirt, kicking them in the balls all the while, screaming all the while' '...There, take that you dirty foreigner and let that be a lesson to you..." 

They just don't seem to realise that the people they are really hurting are the rest of us Brits who don't want to leave the EU, who want to stay and work within the best commercial arrangement we have had in this country in my lifetime, and of which we could have been the de facto leader, if they did but have the sense to see.

We must continue to stand up to them, call out their lies, and stick out for an outcome which still leaves us full members of the EU. A majority of people canvassed in the country now think that leaving the EU will be an expensive mistake and there is still much time to go. Never mind the 'will of the people', this was another lie based upon fraud, falsehoods and deceits, and manufactured by a small coterie of wealthy men who want to damage the traditional Parliamentary democracy in this country.

We are all Europeans now, it's time for the Little Englanders and the swivel-eyed Brexiteers to grow up.

  

The Little Englanders now intend to blackmail the EU.

Ian Duncan Smith and his fellow Brexiteer loonies are now showing signs of real desperation.

Part of Theresa 'No Mates' difficulties in negotiating the exit from the EU is the number of competing voices she is forced to listen to, all giving her conflicting advice. Being the vacillatory dodderer she is, she is incapable of ignoring those, like the Tory dinosaurs, Duncan Smith, Gove, Bo-Jo, Redwood, Rees-Smug, et al, and she ends up being torn every which way but loose.

In the Saturday Telegraph of 11th November 2017, Bo-Jo Hairdo is to be heard pontificating again on the size of the divorce settlement. Anxious not to be seen to be being openly contemptuous of the feeble leader, Bo-Jo's words are dressed up as being those of his 'allies' or his 'friends' although, 'as every fool know', these are drips of pure venom straight from the Bo-Jo's fangs.

Britain, we are instructed, in the siren tones usually adopted by our useless Foreign Secretary, must not cave in to EU demands for a bigger Brexit divorce bill.

These bullying requirements come at the time when Theresa 'No Mates' is preparing to increase the UK's offer to the EU, after her initial proffer was considered to be insufficient. The EU, so the Torygraph advises us, wants at least €60 billion.

This is where it begins to get interesting, so follow closely.

The talk of the figure in the region of €60 billion has been in the public domain for quite a few months now, it is no stranger. It reflects a round figure of what the UK would owe to the EU in terms of its financial commitments, already agreed to, and to which the EU is committed in terms of future liabilities. We are not talking about some spurious sum of money which the EU wishes to prize out of the UK's fingers, but a financial commitment, freely undertaken as part of our continuing EU membership.

Bo-Jo Hairdo, the bumbling Foreign Secretary who always allows his loose mouth to rule his judgement wants the UK to 'hold its nerve' ahead of the December summit. What does this  piece of schoolboy doggerel advice mean in these circumstances? After all, at Eton they speak of little else when the wall game is underway.

One of Bo-Jo's army of allies (sic) opines; '...You don't pay your bill at a restaurant halfway through: you pay at the end. That's sensible business...' (Clearly a Bullingdon Club member)!

Well, maybe, but at least in a restaurant the owner knows what your bill is likely to be and he doesn't expect you to pay until the end.

Taken together, we are now able to begin to construe the real motive behind these posturings, which is that the Little Englanders are hoping to blackmail the EU in doing a better deal for the UK over the free trade agreement we have repeatedly been promised we are going to get out of the EU. They are now getting desperate because they are finally seeing that the EU ain't gonna give them any better free trade terms when we leave, and why should they. 

This has been the big lie all along, and one which has been repeatedly parroted by all the slack-jawed Little Englanders and the swivel-eyed Brexiteers. I mean, even the vast majority of the rump of dumb 'Leavers' who want so desperately to believe they will be better off outside the EU, will have some difficulty in reconciling this triumph of hope over experience, when they realise that there is no free trade agreement waiting for us with the 27 other member states who have stayed loyal.

Why would or should there be? You don't stick two fingers up to the club, tell them repeatedly what a bunch of inefficient useless tossers they are, and then walk away with all the financial benefits you had before, and get them for nothing.

I never believed that piece of lunacy from the start and I don't believe it now.

Well, returning to the blackmail argument, the Brexiteers now realise that they have to start getting rough with Brussels, if they don't show more signs of being willing to compromise over the free trade deal. Up to now, M.Barnier and his team have stuck closely to the script of expecting the UK to finalise their commitment to their side of the leaving bargain. David Davis has dragged his feet and obfuscated, claiming he cannot show his hand, and praying in aid a host of what I now suspect are illusory files and dossiers, all of which tactics have been designed to buy him time.Time to try and put pressure on the EU in the fear that the UK will not pay our full and legally-committed share of the bill as outlined above.

There is some bizarre belief among the swivel eyed and the slack jawed that the EU is absolutely bowel-looseningly desperate for our money, and that more threats of non-payment and pressure will cause them to cave in.

These are the arguments of the British bully, the playground swaggerer, the playing fields of Eton adherent, and it is not true!

But still they promote it. In the same piece from the Saturday Reactograph, it is reported thus;

"...Tory Eurosceptics have warned the Brexit Divorce bill is 'critical' and that the UK cannot afford to give any more ground. Ian Duncan Smith, Tory M.P and former Conservative leader" (although not the brightest bulb in the box) "...told the Daily Telegraph...; "   '...They think we blinked in Florence and now they believe we will blink again. We must not blink...'.

'...The one big hand we have is money. They are desperate. If we give away that we give away any chance of getting a good free trade agreement. The two get decided at the same time...'

'...The money is critical, we cannot give any more ground on this. Tory Eurosceptics are getting really unnerved by this. It is stretching them to breaking...'

Well, there it is, the Tory Dad's Army of Eurohaters is in a panic mode and believes, in their monocular way, that the only thing they have left is to try and blackmail the EU by threatening them that the talks will break down.

What they don't get is that there is no downside to the EU if this were to happen. True they will lose out on a voluntary payment from the UK, but then they can probably pursue at least some of that through the Courts, while the implications would play havoc with the UK reputation.

So, come on Davis. Grow up and man up, and sit down with the EU team and make a sensible binding financial proffer which they can live with. Stop farting around thinking you can finesse a better deal out of them by threatening them, Michel Barnier knows what kind of man you are, he probably knows how much you drink and he knows exactly how far you will go before you roll over. Take the wind out of his sails, make an economically sensible offer and put it in writing. Stop listening to Bo-Jo and the other Euromadmen and make up your own mind.

Then, when you finally fuck up, you will have no-one to blame but yourself,