The Meaning of Brexit

by Jan Ledóchowski, before the 2019 UK general election

Opinion polls tell us that Boris, helped by Corbyn's extreme political programme, is headed for victory in the general elections next week.  In that event Boris will rule for several more years and presumably deliver the Brexit project that he brought about, and which forms the core of his party’s election campaign.  Some friends keep asking, why does this matter to me?  So I summarise what the Brexit project means, and conclude with its human cost.

The Aims of Brexit

●  Stop the UK’s already very reluctant contributions of around £4 billion net per annum to the EU’s regional funds, which go mostly to the poorer Southern and Eastern member countries, such as the ones I particularly love, Poland, Greece and Portugal.  The UK was a net contributor being, as Brexiteers are fond of pointing out, one of the richer members.

● Stop the rest of the UK’s reluctant contribution, around another £4 billion net pa, which includes the cost of running the single market and structural funds such as agricultural production in the UK and EU, which keeps our farmers going and gives the UK a closer and more reliable source of food in the event of trade disruption.  

●  Keep full access, known as “frictionless trade”, to the EU single market and all its benefits, partly invented by Margaret Thatcher.  So the stronger parts of the UK economy, such as finance, services, British Aerospace, Japanese and other foreign owned manufacturing plants, can continue freely making hundreds of billions more there than these contributions.

●  End the right of EU citizens to come and work in the UK’s businesses exporting to their countries.  Let us sell to your single market, but you can’t come and work here.

●  Sign free trade deals with “all those countries” with which the UK does not already have free trade deals via the EU.  This list has been getting shorter and now seems mainly to consist of the USA, which Trump happily declares, truthfully for a change, to be a competitor economy, and which has broken off trade negotiations with the EU. 

●  Do not mention that the EU is already negotiating a trade deal with the USA, and it is Trump who is stopping it.

●  So the UK would benefit from and compete with the EU.

●  With luck, even become a smuggling operation between the EU and the rest of the world?

●  This strategy of all take and no give was gleefully summarised by Boris as “having our cake and eating it”.

●  Abandon the UK’s earlier rather noble foreign policy of promoting expansion, and defending democratic standards and the rule of law in EU member states, particularly the newer post-Communist ones.   Leave that to France and Germany and criticise them at the same time.

●  Instead, persuade Eastern member countries that “Germany” is their true enemy, and use negotiations and diplomatic contacts to set EU members against each other.

●  Ensure that the UK has no legal or moral obligation to assist any member state such as Greece, should it ever again be flooded with a million refugees from the Syria that the West handed over to Russia in 2015.

●  Make no contribution to the EU’s funding of camps and other assistance for the refugees, such as that given to Turkey to stop refugees coming to Europe, or to Greece to cope with refugees today.

●  Work closely with Trump, who supports Brexit and has started a trade war against the EU.

●  Farage has repeatedly declared that the ultimate aim of Brexit is to destroy the EU.

Selling Brexit

The English people are largely nice, intelligent and tolerant.  The EU is perhaps the largest and most successful altruistic organisation that has ever existed.  It has preserved peace in our continent for an unprecedented seven decades and provides a counterweight to Russia and China.  Its aim is to create a large successful single economy comparable to America’s, which is why Trump hates it.   It has brought prosperity and a cleaner environment to member countries, not only in Eastern Europe, but also Germany and, of course the UK, which specialised as the financial centre of all Europe.   So how do you convince these decent people that the EU is in fact an ogre that Boris should be conducting a heroic fight against?  The answer is a steady drip of propaganda  which became a flood:-

●  Do not mention the regional funds.  Or, if you cannot avoid them being discussed, lie and pretend that they are so corrupt that they are useless, hoping that the audience does not visit poorer regions and see for themselves the enormous amount of good they do.

●  Do not mention agriculture unless absolutely necessary, as British farmers also benefit from agricultural funds and the ability to export to Europe.  They wouldn’t stand a chance exporting to the Third World without such subsidies.

●  Do not mention assistance the funds give to projects in the UK itself – rarely advertised.

●  Lie and pretend that the UK’s net contribution to the EU is unreasonably huge.  It isn’t.  It is very considerably smaller than the economic benefits of EU membership.

●  Do not mention that the UK pays out nearly twice as much, aboout £14 billion pa, in Overseas Aid, because this will suddenly make people realise that the contribution to the EU is relatively small.  This Aid incidentally goes to countries that do not give Britain the benefits of the single market, free trade, etc, is largely invisible at its destination, and is rumoured mostly to end up in dictators’ Swiss bank accounts.

●  Lie that the EU contribution is £350 million a week = £18bn pa, more than double the true figure.

●  Lie and pretend that membership of the EU harms the UK’s economy, when we can all see looking around us that it has been very beneficial.

●  Lie that the EU is undemocratic when it is actually very democratic: the Head of the EU, President of the EU Council, is elected by member states, the EU Council is elected, members of the Commission are appointed by member states and approved by parliament, laws need the approval of member states as well as parliament, and so forth.

●  Avoid any comparison with the UK, whose head of state is elected by nobody, whose House of Lords is elected by nobody, whose Prime Minister and Cabinet do not have to be approved by Parliament, and whose member states such as Scotland have no say at all.

●  No EU education at schools, keep people ignorant.

●  Lie that the EU Commission is a “bloated bureaucracy” when it has only 32,000 civil servants, the same as the number of employees of the City of Leeds, an amazingly SMALL number for an enormous single market economy of 500 million people, one of the biggest in the world.

●  Terrify England that it will sink under the weight of immigration caused by the EU.

●  Do not mention that immigration from non-EU countries, mostly Asian countries such as India and Pakistan, is and has always been significantly larger than from the EU.

●  To the extent that people notice that most immigration is in fact Asian, lie with propaganda such as the lying Breaking Point poster, implying that it is somehow the fault of the EU.  Have a close look at the Breaking Point poster on the right.  The people shown on it are not European are they?  The point of it was clear: terrify people into thinking that the EU is responsible for it and it is"uncontrolled".  The truth of course is that the EU is NOT reponsible for Asian immigration into the UK, this is already "controlled" by the UK and the EU has nothing to do with it.

●  In the meanwhile, to win Asian community votes, Brexiteers made targeted promises to increase Asian immigration and then did so - but didn't tell anyone else!

●  Recently Boris was still lying that the EU immigration he uses as a weapon in his campaign "to get Brexit done" is, "from memory", about equal to non-EU immigration, when in fact EU immigration is far smaller, with non-EU immigration of 229,000 representing over 80% of the total during the year to June 2019.

●  Lie that EU citizens are lengthening health service queues when in fact, representing 10% of doctors and only 4% of the population, they are shortening queues.

●  Lie that EU citizens are worsening the housing shortage when most observant people can see that many Poles and others come to build houses, reducing the shortage.

Article continued at top right

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Fight Brexit

● Europe should be united*
We should all work together.
● The European Union is the
best force for peace we have.
● Biggest market in world.
● Biggest exporter in world.
● Free trade agreements with 56 countries.
● The UK has been doing fine- "if it ain't broke don't fix it".

Brexit is a brutal project to divide us from Europe.
It will not benefit anyone and hasn't even started!

What Brexit means for you

● Pound still down 16% nine months after referendum.
● The biggest collapse in sterling for decades.
● More expensive imports = inflation = real incomes hit.
● More expensive holidays abroad.
● Not part of single market says Gove.
● Harder for your employers to export to Europe.
● Exports also less competitive.
● Importing harder and more expensive.
● Financial services harder to export.
● Businesses already relocating to EU.
● Business difficulties = fewer jobs*
● They also mean lower share prices.
● So pension fund values down.
● So pension fund deficits up.
● Pension fund deficits = pension threat.
● Bank of England interest rates down.
● That means annuity rates down.
● That means pensions down.
● Business, jobs & pensions hit = economic problems.
● Problems for the economy = tax revenue down.
● Government gets less money selling shares in banks.
● Cornwall, Wales, farmers etc, no longer get EU funds.
● They want you to pay instead.
● Government revenue down means budget deficit up.
● Government borrowing up maybe £30 billion a year.
● Borrowing up means pound down and taxes up.
● Borrowing up also brings inflation, job & other cuts
● Bank of England spends your £320 billion on rescue. 
● Costs more than our EU contribution for 50 years. **

● Longer health service queues without 130,000 EU staff.
● No right to visit, work & live in 27 European countries.
● NHS medical card for health services in Europe ended?
● Research & university cooperation with Europe harmed.
● EU Erasmus student exchange programme ended?
● More hate = race crimes up = death threats & murder*

Other countries a tad pissed off with yours include France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Greece, etc etc etc etc.

Why we have Brexit

If 0.95% of voters had chosed Remain rather than Brexit we would not have Brexit. But millions voted for Brexit because people called Brexiteers tell porkies.

● "The economy will thrive under Brexit." Really? Wwhat happen to the millions who believed you?

● "I never said we would spend another £350 million a week on the NHS." Really?

"We must take back control of our taxes." Are you kidding? We are still in the EU and our own Parliament is still setting our taxes.

● The EU is sending us hundreds of thousands of Turks and Syrian refugees. Well it isn't, is it? We are still in the EU and where are all these Turks and refugees?

They Syrians are being bombed by Russia, which is also financing the French National Front and Trump.

● "The EU is undemocratic." Rubbish - all EU countries elect their governments which in turn appoint top EU officials. We don't elect top British civil servants or the Secretary General of the United Nations either. Britain votes on EU decisions and has voted in favour of the vast majority over the years.

● "A bloated bureaucracy." Rubbish - the EU commission has 33,000 employees, the same as the City of Leeds.

● Boris Johnson has been lying about the EU ever since he was fired by The Times for inventing a quote in 1988. The day after the referendum he claimed "the pound is stable". Our Foreign Secretary is a proven liar and an international laughing stock*.

● Top law professor says Leave campaign was "criminally irresponsible". Lawyers have even asked whether under British law the Vote Leave campaign can be prosecuted for its lies.

Choose a Brexit Lie

Here are three different Brexit promises:-

1. Brexiteer leaflets in Punjabi, Hindi and Urdu said that net non-EU immigration of nearly 200,000 a year (more than EU immigration) will increase.

2. Michael Gove said several times that total net immigration will be reduced to around 50,000.

3. David Hannan MEP, Boris Johnson and others said that net EU immigration will NOT be significantly reduced.

Decide which one or two of the above are lies. Maybe even all three? Enjoy.

"We have no plan"

You guessed it. "We have no plan" is possibly the only true statement the Brexiteers ever made.*

But they waited until after the EU referendum to say it.

You wonder why?

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Churchill & Clarkson

"We hope to reach again a Europe united...in which men will be proud to say 'I am a European'....We hope that wherever we go in this wide domain, they will truly feel 'Here I am at home.'"
Winston Churchill, Amsterdam, 9 May 1948

"Our only hope is a second vote...Better to look silly for a bit than to live for ever in a festering nest of of warts, mud and minority-bashing."
Jeremy Clarkson, London Sunday Times, 3 July 2016

The European, English and Polish flags united.*