b. traven
Traven asked an American ex-pat who lives in England to explain what is goimg on in the British Parliament, particularly on the inability of the Tory and Labour parties to come up with a viable plan for Brexit (British exit from the European Union). Leaving the EU will totally disrupt England’s trade relationship with Europe and have a profound effect on their international trade and diplomatic relations. In travens opinion this tragedy is what happens when the right wingers (tories) have free reign and start pandering to the extremist right as we see in our country today.
Here is our correspondent’s reply.
Both parties are too busy trying to keep themselves from exploding because both parties are riven by Brexiteers vs. so-called “remainers.” It has paralyzed both parties and, consequently, Parliament. May never wanted to give Parliament a say in Brexit. She just wanted to do it and have them accept it, but Parliament forced the government to accept that Parliament would have a “meaningful vote” on the outcome.
Anyone that truly had the interests of the country at heart would work to suspend the Brexit process at this point, one day after May has promised for two years it would happen. That would give the government and Parliament a chance to work out a real plan. It is, of course, amazing that the Brexiteers never had any plan at all and that three years after the referendum, no one has really done the leg-work to figure out how to proceed.
I think that some form of Brexit will happen. It may still take a while, but worse, it will solve nothing as far as the divisions in the United Kingdom. To the contrary, whatever shape it takes, it is likely to have the result of further dividing opinion. No matter what form Brexit eventually takes, the Brexiteers will never take responsibility for the harsh results that are sure to follow. They will only say that the “cock up” was in the implementation.
The Contrary Perspective 
Any discussion of Brexit, in my opinion, is inaccurate if it doesn’t start by pointing out that the UK was never a full member of the European Union. When overtures were first made, those nostalgic for the British Empire cried “Give up the Pound Sterling? Never!” Additional conservative objections were aimed at the notion that the EU countries suffer excessive regulation. Somehow, despite this burden, Capitalism has survived on the Continent. So the UK negotiated a deal that gave it certain trade advantages but sidestepped many aspects of EU membership. Brits have traditionally eschewed the idea that they’re part of Europe, anyway, what with that Channel (albeit only 26 miles wide, as swum by various athletes over the decades) separating the British Isles from France and Belgium. It was a “Britain First!” attitude, its flames stoked by what the media constantly refer to as a “populist” movement (which sullies the term for this observer), that ignited the push for a referendum. Well, at least the UK is ahead of USA in that regard. We don’t get to vote on crucial issues in this country, only for the crooked politicians who vow to act in our interest once in office. We also have a tradition of crooks refusing to step down when they’ve been found out, with the one notable exception of Mr. Nixon. So now the UK is roiled in turmoil. Will Labour get to take the reins, after the vile efforts to undermine that party via accusations of “anti-semitism”? Quite a soap opera!
Oh, and I have something to say about the problem of the border between the Republic of Ireland and the six counties still occupied by Britain. This is currently contentious because the Republic is a full EU member. But, of course, the real problem dates back centuries and has an easy solution: Britain, get the hell out of those six counties!!!
Too bad the world doesn’t get it. Whether its trump, brexit, yellow vests or any other movement, the people of the western world are tired of same old elitist leftist song. It’s is genetic in nature to out the old and bring in the new. Cycles are in play in a big way.
I couldn’t agree more that the Old Establishment needs to be dumped into the famous Trash Bin of History. On the other hand, I certainly won’t endorse racist, xenophobic so-called populist movements. Hitler’s gang shook things up, alright (while leaving the real rulers in command, of course). Turned out real well for the German people, didn’t it??
The British Tory government has had almost three years to implement Brexit. Had they simply gotten on with the job, they would have completed it by now. As I learned long ago when my own US government — especially its fuck-up-and-move-up military brass — kept demanding more years, more blood, and ever more taxpayer dollars to “get Vietnam right” [as with Afghanistan today, after seventeen years]:
“If they could have, they would have; but they didn’t, so they can’t. Time’s up.”
If the government cannot do the job assigned it by the people, then who needs such a government? Making endless excuses for the “difficulty” of the task amounts to an admission of either hopeless incompetence or criminal malfeasance. Such an admission, in turn, invites demands for the resignation (if not prosecution) of those not up to the task that these “representatives” — when campaigning for election — requested the people entrust to them. In the common vernacular: Either shit, or get off the pot and give someone else a chance.
A little history of this farce from the RT Crosstalk show: Bullhorns: What’s next? (April 1, 2019).
Glenn Diesen: It was David Cameron who gambled on it. Then again, the first rule of gambling is that you shouldn’t gamble if you can’t afford to lose. But he just wanted to bring the conservative party back together, to get over this divisive element. The problem that they have now is that they have to actually deliver Brexit. In short, they don’t want to” [emphasis added].
Peter Lavelle: “They don’t want to [emphasis added]. They’ve invented things, gone back to procedural law. … If you look at the Speaker of Commons, he’s obviously a Remainer. … the elites are not solving problems that the people think ought to be solved” [emphasis added] .
Annie Machon: “… David Cameron tried to tweak the system in Brussels, came back with no result when he tried to re-jig the relationship in 2015-2016, and suddenly he had to call a referendum, not really because he had any faith in Democracy or the people or anything like that, but to try and merge the antagonistic sides of the conservative party in the UK which had been at loggerheads since the 1980s. That’s all he was trying to do. It had nothing to do with democracy. It had nothing to do with Europe. It was just trying to provide cohesion to his political party. The irony being, of course, they got a result they completely did not expect. It was a protest vote. It was the biggest democratic vote in the entirety of UK History. And now it is being ignored [emphasis added]. So it is sundering not only the conservative party in parliament. It has broken the people’s trust — from whichever side: Remainer or Brexiteer – in the parliamentary process. The whole thing has been staged. The whole thing has been manipulated through the courts. There is a lot of anger. And I’m afraid it is only going to get worse.”
Peter Lavelle: “The lesson is ‘Don’t Mess With Brussels.’ It’s Hotel California time. Once you check in you can never check out. You will feel the pain if you challenge the dictates coming out of Brussels. …”
Glenn Diesen: “… The political elites in the UK have been more or less, to some extent, on the side of Brussels all along. They don’t want to leave, either. … A lot of debate, pro and con, took place up to the referendum and after the referendum the same debates continued, and instead of competing for the people’s voice, now the debate is whether the people voted wrong …” [emphasis added]
Peter Lavelle: “Why don’t we just revoke the electorate. That would make it really simple. … the biggest question that I’ve had is that [Prime Minister Teresa] May has intended to do this all along. Just wear everyone down, with all the scaremongering as the cherry on top of the cake.”
Annie Machon: “I think that when David Cameron was scaremongering in the run-up to the referendum, that if he lost, he would immediately invoke Article 50. And then, he just resigned and ran away from the whole mess. And Theresa May tried to pick up the pieces. And I’m not really sure that she had the momentum behind her, the will to enforce Brexit. She was a Remainer. So that’s where a lot of this mess comes from. And then she dithered about invoking Article 50 and that allowed the EU to get their ducks in a row and put together their negotiating position [making] sure all the other 27 countries were aligned. So the UK went into [these negotiations] with a very poor hand, anyway. By taking away the option of No Deal, she lost her key negotiating point [emphasis added]. So its been a mess every which way. And let’s not forget that the Irish voted against the Mastricht Teaty. So did the Dutch. As did the Danish. And they were told to go back and have another vote because they got the result wrong. That’s what they’re trying to do in the UK. So the notion that if your vote makes a difference, the politicians and the elites won’t allow it to happen, I think has been proven time and time again across the EU. And I think we are heading that way again in the UK” [emphasis added].
Or, as Mark Sleboda observed on another Crostalk program: “It’s also a matter of political representation. Because we have this transnational, ultra-wealthy, ultra-privileged economic and political elite that associate with and get along with – and have far more in common with – their cosmopolitan peers around the world than they do with their own people in their own country. And that creates a backlash.”
Bottom line: Can the enfeebled “Nation State” reassert itself against the Global Corporate Oligarchy? Both the British Tory Government (along with the Tony Blair types in the Labor Party) as well as the two-right-wing US Republican/Democrat Duopoly identifies not with the British and American electorates, but with the Global Corporate Oligarchy that runs the US, UK, EU, and many other ostensibly “sovereign” nations like subsidiary fast-food franchises. The predictable populist backlash has started, most notably in France with the sustained (and hardly reported) Yellow Vest rebellion, now in its eighteenth week. The British Tory government couldn’t afford to lose but gambled on public apathy anyway. They lost. And now these losers want to pretend that they never sat down at the table in the first place. Pathetic.
The Capitalist Ruling Classes of the economically/technologically developed nations have a long history of cross-border cooperation, of course, to suppress working-class unrest. A couple of 19th Century sages named Marx and Engels understood this very well. Thus their call for worker solidarity ACROSS the artificial national boundaries as the response. This, in turn, is the root of the campaigns of ugly demagogues to vilify “the other,” playing on racial animosities that should have faded long ago in enlightened societies, sowing divisiveness. (Sound like a certain very famous real estate magnate?) “They sneak across the border and steal our jobs!” I am still waiting to see an interview with a “native-born” American citizen who was hankering to work picking lettuce or strawberries under a burning sun in California, for below-minimum wage, without sanitary facilities provided, but alas! Some darned migrant from south of the Rio Grande took that job right out from under the sorely disappointed Yank’s nose!