Chancellor Rishi Sunak steps in to save workers with historic rescue package - "It also emerged that the EU was attempting to ban a part of Mr Sunak’s bailout plan for businesses.He announced this week that all companies in the retail, leisure and hospitality sector would be given a 12-month business-rates holiday as part of a £20 billion package of relief. The European Commission has said, however, that ministers would be allowed to issue only “selective tax advantages” and grants worth £800,000 per company.This means that hotels, supermarkets and other nationwide retail chains, which pay hundreds of millions in business rates a year, could get relatively little benefit from the bailout."
Why Brexit happened
Andrew Sullivan: When the Ideologues Come for The Kids - "The Eurocrats are not doing themselves any favors either. At their party conference last week, the Liberal Democrats invited Guy Verhofstadt, the chief E.U. negotiator on Brexit, to speak of his European vision. Here it is:
The world order of tomorrow is not a world order based on nation states or countries. It’s a world order that is based on empires. China is not a nation; it’s a civilization. India, you know it better than I do, is not a nation. There are 2,000 nations in India. There are 20 different languages that are used there … The U.S. is also an empire, more than a nation. Maybe tomorrow they will speak more Spanish than English; I don’t know what will happen. The world of tomorrow is a world of empires, in which we Europeans and you British can only defend your interests, your way of life, by doing it together in a European framework and a European Union.
So many people assume that the E.U. is about internationalism, openness, transcending the old power politics. It is, in fact, a would-be empire, big enough to compete for power in the world against the U.S., China, and the rest. It is an imperial project that sees no value in nation-states. Britain, on the other hand, has already had a real empire and now just wants to govern itself."
BBC Radio 4 - Moral Maze, Healing the Nation - "‘Jane Robbins… was now famously thrown out of North London Book Group for voting leave. And then with Julie Burchill cowrote a successful play called People Like Us.’...
‘It was quite shocking to me because I wasn't an intentional pariah. And, I thought that the people in the book group were my friends. And I thought that we shared common values. Around, you know, just general civility, and our play actually is really about friendship. And so when myself and a friend of mine were both asked to leave the book group as a matter of honuor, because quotes we weren't open to reason. And it really did quite shake my world. I, I couldn't compute it, I found it very difficult. And the play is not about my book group at all. It, we wrote a play about a very different book group that fell apart over Brexit. But it certainly, I wanted to turn a bad thing into a good thing. And that's how it came about.’...
‘You and your friends got on perfectly well before the referendum loomed. And you do, indeed share lots of, lots of values. So this isn't a symptom of a great cultural division. It’s just that Brexit came along and broke you up?’
‘Well, I think it is a symptom of a great cultural division because I had never expected that that could happen. And when it did happen, and it made me realize that a lot of people in my current world really have a very dim view of people in the world I came from. So I have a very kind of working class background. My dad drove a lorry up and down the A2. And I kind of reshaped myself to fit into a North London intellectual world… [Even now] I've seen things on Twitter, saying that leavers should be put into concentration camps, that we’re all xenophobes and racists.’"
I'm tired of my friends bullying me for being Right-wing - "I was chatting with friends at the bar of my favourite club in Soho, when an old friend, came up to me wagging his finger. “Look,” he said, smirking, “it’s Nazi Kate.”I managed to lob back a few cutting comments and waited for my two acquaintances (a writer and an artist) to join me in a robust defence. Instead, they shuffled uneasily from foot to foot, looked down at the floor and sloped off. They later came up to me and individually apologised, both indicating that they didn’t agree with what was said, and felt awkward about it, but then admitting sheepishly they hadn’t the nerve to speak out, either. This depressing scenario has become all too familiar in my life nowadays. I am that unusual creature: a Right-wing, Brexit-voting professional who mixes with an arty and liberal crowd. As such, I have become a target of bullying by the so called open-minded progressive brigade, who also happen to be many of my friends. So it was with sad recognition that I read a report in Arts Professionals magazine that said 80 per cent of people working in the arts are too scared to voice “controversial” opinions for fear of being professionally ostracised. According to the Freedom of Expression survey, verboten topics of conversation in liberal company now include Brexit, transgender and viewpoints considered Right-wing... When one arts producer acquaintance called me a Right-wing sympathiser and racist simply because I put a cross beside leave the EU and champion Boris, I challenged him to having a grown-up conversation about it. You know, an old-fashioned debate. Yet he refused to enter into any open discussion whatsoever... Society is based on structures that are agreed upon by the majority of people, such as marriage, the sense of nationhood, biological gender differences. I really believe that these structures are now being torn down in the alleged name of freedom. “Gender is a construct”, “nationhood is inherently racist”… these new ideas are not based on a rational discourse, but a trend of feeling and groupthink among a minority with a huge influence... I was brought up in the free-speech Seventies. Back then, being interesting, having something to say, meant you were welcomed in artistic circles... It makes me angry that these people feel they have a greater claim to higher intellectual or moral knowledge... This kind of bullying has become a common occurrence at our universities. The erstwhile bastions of free speech and critical thinking, today’s campuses of “safe spaces, safe minds” have closed down any discussion by students and lecturers that they see as racist, homophobic or as having 'traditional' values.This was illustrated in a report out this week from the Policy Exchange think tank. Critically, it says “the nation is losing faith in our universities due to their sniggering attitude to patriotism and traditional values”... "if you question or ask them to explain their position, you just get more insults.""
Preference falsification strikes again
Of course, we will still be told it is a myth that liberals hate their countries
Morrisons: Customers divided over Union Jack 'unsettling' packaging - "MORRISONS products have caused a huge debate on Twitter as some shoppers have expressed their disgust at the items' "unpleasant" and "patriotic" packaging, which features images of the Union Jack... Accompanying a photo of Morrisons’ Organic Superfast Oats, they wrote: “Very upset by porridge I saw in Morrison’s. This flagging everything is very unpleasant and quite intimidating.” Another person said: “It's all got a lot worse since referendum I think. Horrible.” Some customers even claimed that they were going to boycott Morrisons products that featured Union Jack flags. One shopper wrote: “Retaliate. I'm no longer buying anything packaged as such. Hurt them through their bank accounts.”... One person wrote: “Lidl too. I've got a plain egg box which I transfer the ridiculously packaged eggs into. Why are companies packaging to the deluded Brexiters? The thinking majority of us realise the tackiness of the packaging. They won't brainwash us.” Another shopper said: “Union Jacks are on everything now. Everything and anything. Really unsettling.”... Surprisingly, even British celebrities got involved in the Twitter debate. Anne Hegerty, an English TV personality and chaser on ITV’s The Chase, wrote: “Is it the Irish porridge that's upsetting them, or does it only apply to the British one?” Another chaser, Darragh Ennis, commented too. He said: “Irish one needs more flags.”"
This suggets that some Remoaners hate the UK
‘It’s an absolutely corrupt system’: How EU farm subsidies are abused by oligarchs and populists - "Every year, the 28-country bloc pays out $65bn (£50bn) in farm subsidies intended to support farmers around the continent and keep rural communities alive. But across Hungary and much of central and eastern Europe, the bulk goes to a connected and powerful few. The prime minister of the Czech Republic collected tens of millions of dollars in subsidies just last year. Subsidies have underwritten Mafia-style land grabs in Slovakia and Bulgaria. Europe’s farm programme, a system that was instrumental in forming the EU, is now being exploited by the same anti-democratic forces that threaten the bloc from within. This is because governments in central and eastern Europe, several led by populists, have wide latitude in how the subsidies, funded by taxpayers across Europe, are distributed – even as the entire system is shrouded in secrecy... Even as the EU champions the subsidy program as an essential safety net for hardworking farmers, studies have repeatedly shown that 80 per cent of the money goes to the biggest 20 per cent of recipients. And some of those at the top have used that money to amass political power... Farmers who criticise the government or the patronage system said they have been denied grants or faced surprise audits and unusual environmental inspections, in what amounts to a sophisticated intimidation campaign that harks back to the Communist era."
This article must be written by a racist
Thatcher Warned Us to Go Slow on European Integration. Too Bad We Didn’t Listen - "In a major speech about the future of Europe, delivered in Bruges on September 20th, 1988, she “began with a grand historical sweep, taking in the Romans, Magna Carta, the Glorious revolution and much more, all designed to show that Britain was part of European civilization.” Thatcher also made it clear that “Britain wanted no ‘cosy, isolated existence’ on the fringes: ‘Our destiny is in Europe, as part of the Community.’”What Thatcher did oppose was the project of “ever-closer union,” and the resulting weakening of the influence of nation states. She believed that Europe should not be a centralizing power that incubated supranational institutions—particularly as this model of centralization was just then in the throes of spectacular failure within the Soviet Union. Instead, as she outlined in a speech at The Hague on May 15th, 1992, she favored a looser form of European co-operation, by which states retained their sovereign freedoms—including control of their borders. This, she believed, would accommodate the political and cultural diversity of Europe, including the eastern European countries that, she hoped, would be offered full EC membership. As Moore notes, in fact, she was one of the few prominent European politicians of the 1980s who had recognized that cities such as Warsaw, Prague and Budapest were very much European cities that had been cut off from their historical and cultural roots. In her speech at The Hague, as Moore summarizes it, “she prophesied that large-scale immigration caused by free movement would cause ‘ethnic conflict,’ and bring about the rise of extremist parties, that there would be ‘national resentment’ because of one-size-fits-all financial and economic policies under a single currency, and that a more centralized EC would not be able to work with the influx of new member states from the former Eastern Bloc.”... her concerns about counterreaction—both within Russia, and among Europeans who did not want to lose their national cultures and political prerogatives—proved at least somewhat prophetic. The same goes for her warning of “the emergence of a whole new international political class,” ignoring people’s shared instincts and traditions"
Cambridge Analytica 'not involved' in Brexit referendum, says watchdog - "Cambridge Analytica was "not involved" in the EU referendum, says the Information Commissioner.A three-year probe into the misuse of personal data, centring around the activities of the firm, has now ended."
It's ok, just blame the Russians
Nissan has buried Project Fear for good - "Japanese carmaker Nissan has confirmed that its long-term future in Sunderland is secure. Its chief operating officer, Ashwani Gupta, said that ‘Brexit for Nissan is a positive. We’ll take this opportunity to redefine the auto industry in the UK. In certain conditions, our competitiveness is improved.’Nissan has even committed to bringing more jobs to Sunderland, by manufacturing batteries in Britain instead of importing them from Japan. New post-Brexit customs rules have been dismissed as ‘peanuts’. Nissan has exploded one of the key planks of ‘Project Fear’. From the referendum campaign onwards, Remainers have been issuing stark warnings about the Sunderland plant... Worse still, Nissan was treated by Remoaners as a cautionary tale against democracy. The voters in Sunderland who supported Brexit were mocked as turkeys voting for Christmas. Their supposedly quixotic concerns with sovereignty and democracy would cost them their jobs, the Remainers warned. Of course, Nissan did a fair bit of scaremongering itself. Like many large companies, it had grown comfortable with the protectionist environment created by the EU’s Customs Union. But even as the carmaker publicly stoked fears over Brexit – particularly No Deal Brexit – it was ploughing billions of pounds of investment into the plant. And its contingency planning for No Deal actually involved Nissan closing down its plants in France and Spain, while doubling down on the UK market."
Londoners got a surprise fireworks show for New Year's Eve including a surprise raised BLM fist, and a surprise tribute to the EU from which they just escaped. - "London Mayor Sadiq Khan teamed up with the BBC to produce a surprise fireworks and drone-enabled light show for New Year's Eve, so you know it was going to be designed to bring the country together in a spirit of unity, common purpose, and love of country. Just kidding!In reality, it was more like a $2,000,000 virtue-signalling yard sign... It all started out as so many government endeavors do, with a bald-faced lie.
'This New Year's Eve will be very different:
There will be no fireworks.'...
There was also a globalist environmental message as illustrated by a turtle with the continent of Africa outlined on its shell because... actually, I have no idea what that had to do with anything... While the show included both totally apolitical messages and clearly progressive ones, you know what was missing?Anything remotely pro-conservative. Nothing about Brexit other than non-subtle swipes at it, nothing.And the message intended, one paid for by all Londoners, was clearly received."
We must never forget the Remainer elite’s atrocious assault on democracy - "his confession that the Remainer elites did indeed spend four years trying to ‘reverse the referendum decision’ – that is, trying to void the votes of 17.4million citizens, including millions of working-class people and eight million women – has stuck in the craw of some Remoaners. These people still seem, hilariously, to be labouring under the illusion that they did not actually spend four years waging war on democracy, but rather were just trying to put a stop to an ‘advisory’ proposal from a section of the population that had been misled by lies, misinformation and Russia, yada yada. In this sense Mandelson’s frank confession of anti-democracy is useful. This is a Remainer stating out loud what us Leavers have always known – that the Remainer elites devoted themselves to the bigoted, reactionary project of crushing the votes of millions of their fellow citizens.Mandelson’s confession that his ‘pro-EU camp’ acted against democracy comes at a particularly bad time for the Remain-leaning liberal commentariat. Many of them are currently looking in horror at the Trump camp’s insistence that the presidential election was fraudulent; that Joe Biden didn’t really win; that foreign elements (Venezuela?) may have had a hand in this political atrocity. But of course they themselves have already done all of these things, and on a far grander scale than the ‘rednecks’ they love to mock. These polite, educated Guardian-reading Remainers looking down their noses at vulgar Trumpites for trying to void an election result make those Trumpites look like rank amateurs. They were Trump on steroids for four whole years. Mandelson has reminded them of that, and they do not like it... This lets off the hook the broader, supposedly more moderate establishment, which clearly wants to water down its own role in the bigoted crusade against our democratic rights over the past four years... https://twitter.comThey were fuelled less by love for the EU – no one loves the EU – than by hatred for the apparently ignorant British masses. Their classist contempt for certain voters, and by extension for the entire idea of democracy, was readily apparent in the hateful placards they waved on their demonstrations (accusing voters of being thick, of being brainwashed, etc) and in the warped pleasure they derived from every rumour of economic difficulty as a result of our leaving the EU (‘That’ll teach those stupid poor people!’). I’ve received emails from these kinds of people at 2 in the morning calling me a fascist. I was accosted by a group of them in central London telling me that stupid voters didn’t know what they were voting for. I’ve witnessed these people swarming around an elderly gentleman who was carrying a pro-Brexit banner near Westminster and calling him a cunt, a Nazi, scum. Remain zealots have been a pox on political life since 2016."
Brexit is like leaving a sinking ship - "the European Commission has threatened to sue the German government over a ruling in its constitutional court. Berlin and Paris have agreed to a bailout of southern Europe. But the amount offered is not nearly enough to save Italy and Spain from economic crisis. And at the same time, it is far more than many northern states are willing to give. Each day of conflict brings the EU one step closer to the precipice. Just as the Eurozone debt crisis did before, the Covid crisis has further exposed the power imbalances and fault lines between the various states within the union."
Take it from a trucker, Brexit is nothing to fear - "Watching the media reports on the transport situation at Dover on New Year’s Day was amusing. Reporters stood in the cold with nothing happening in the background. They then waffled on about how, once traffic picks up, the chaos would come eventually.It’s clear that these journalists know little about road transport. Personally, I doubt there will be significant delays. I’m a truck driver, and have recently done work on the continent to boot. I’m also qualified as a transport manager, and I have studied transport management and logistics, so I know a thing or two.The main potential problem from Brexit – the one which is animating the media – is that some drivers might turn up to the border with incorrect documents, which could cause delays. The main new document is a customs declaration. These are filled out by the exporter, although the driver will need to carry them, and operators have an incentive to work with customers to get these things right.Thankfully, there has been a lot of preparation to deal with this potential holdup. The British government has created 10 ‘Inland Border Facilities’ in England and Wales, where hauliers can pre-submit their paperwork before arriving at ports. The government has also made great strides in getting information out to hauliers. There are multiple information points at motorway services and truck stops throughout the country. And there is compendious, well-ordered information on the government website.Of course, any system can have its problems. But the transport industry is used to dealing with problems. There are already many problems hauliers have to face: traffic, road closures, extreme weather (which regularly delays channel crossings), punctures, breakdowns, and so on. It is also something of a myth that journeys across Europe were completely unimpeded before Brexit, and that a trip to Barcelona was the same as a trip to Birmingham. International hauliers in the EU have always needed extra paperwork – such as road consignment (CMR) notes and ‘green card’ insurance forms – for crossing borders. I have personally been stopped by French customs while we were still in the EU because I was in a foreign-registered lorry. But road transport is a mature and competitive industry and it is remarkably adept at preparing for and dealing with issues as they arise. Even a No Deal Brexit would have been less of a problem than many predicted. Any form of Brexit had the advantage of being predictable, unlike road closures, weather and other obstacles. It never ceases to amuse me how much anxiety there has been over potential delays at the Channel due to Brexit, while so few are concerned by the regular, severe delays at the Dartford Crossing or the interminable roadworks on the M6. These problems clearly have a cost to us all, yet they are never discussed. If anything, Brexit could be good for the British haulage industry... The business model of the EU is simply to leverage cheap labour to the fullest extent. Next time you see a foreign lorry, check the small letters at the start of the number plate. You will see that most will have markings like BG for Bulgaria, RO for Romania or PL for Poland. This is all down to driver pay... Overall, as far as I can see, there isn’t much change in the regulations in the Brexit deal from when we were in the EU.The reporting of the situation at Dover tells us more about the media than it does about the road-transport industry. One of these industries might think it runs the country, while the other actually keeps the show on the road."
Ham sandwiches: the first cruel casualty of Brexit? - "In the run-up to the EU referendum, the Remain campaign warned of fire and brimstone in the event of a Leave vote. The then prime minister, David Cameron, said Brexit could lead to a third world war and would be celebrated by Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the (since deceased) leader of Islamic State.His chancellor, George Osborne, was even starker: leaving the EU might lead to house prices going down, he said.But even the most ardent Remainer or #FBPE fanatic could not have envisaged the horrors that have been unleashed since Brexit has become a reality.In a recent special report on Brexit, a Dutch TV network filmed border officials dealing with arrivals from the UK. And in a harrowing scene, a British driver is pulled over and border guards confiscate his ham sandwiches. ‘Welcome to the Brexit’, jokes one of the guards. ‘Sandwichgate’ is the result of EU rules banning imports of meat and dairy products from outside the bloc, which now apply to Brexit Britain.The consequences of this incredibly minor change in rules was covered in every outlet going. The BBC, Sky News, the Guardian, the Mirror, even international news networks like NBC, ran reports on the driver’s ham sandwich. The sandwich fiasco even caught the attention of high-profile politicians... the absurd significance given to one driver’s ham sandwich reflects a Remainer media and political class that is desperate to declare Brexit a disaster but brutally disappointed by the visible lack of chaos since the transition period ended. Project Fear gets sillier by the day."
I hate to admit it, but my Eurosceptic father was right about Brexit - "The 1,246-page Brexit trade agreement has been described as “needlessly long” and “turgid”, but it’s remarkable how it has achieved the twin results of regaining sovereignty [at least, legally] – “taking back control” – and keeping our “special relationship” with the EU... There are three ways in which the new agreement is good.First, it takes the UK back to its position before the Maastricht Treaty - an agreement that extended the EU’s power to influence UK law - was signed.Second, those negotiating the deal on behalf of the UK have added a clause allowing Britain to deviate from the agreement after talks with the EU. How this will be enforced is unclear.And third, it's a far cry from a no deal Brexit."
The pettiness of the vindictive EU is a daily reminder of why Brexit was worth it - "As a youngster on the pop press, I coined the term “non-specific epic-ness” to sum up a certain sort of music which was all bombast and no bite, U2 being the best example.So it was a match made in heaven when their frontman Bono exhibited extreme BDS (Brexit Derangement Syndrome) on tour a few years ago... “Its values and aspirations make Europe so much more than just a geography. They go to the core of who we are as human beings, and who we want to be”. Then: “That idea of Europe deserves songs written about it, and big bright blue flags to be waved about”.But perhaps my favourite example of Bono’s wit and wisdom was: “Europe is a thought that needs to become a feeling.”What a joke! Europe – or rather the EU, which pulled off the con of all times in convincing a significant number of Europeans that they were one and the same thing – was only ever a feeling. A fantasy founded in order to make little men feel big – and for Germany to be the boss of Europe without risking a third bloody nose from Britain – where mediocrities with delusions of adequacy could rise swiftly through the ranks without ending up in an international court when it all went wrong. We Brexiteers are accused of nostalgia for an empire, but how the heck did that ever equate with the desire to break away from a monolith and re-assert ourselves as the small dynamic country we’ve been all our lives – from Magna Carta to the Swinging Sixties – except for a few mostly miserable decades? It’s the Remainers who always craved being part of an empire by another name.They say you never really know someone till you break up with them; their generosity or pettiness when it comes to dividing friends and possessions (in this case, who gets custody of the fish) can make you fall in love all over again or reinforce the reasons you wanted to get shot of them. Gaslighting us like an errant partner (“No one else will want you!”) didn’t work so, like many a rumbled narcissist, the EU is coming from a different direction and treating us like a naughty child – while revealing their own immaturity in the face of not getting what they wanted for Christmas... Such playground petty-mindedness of the EU reminds us every day why Brexit was worth it, as does Chancellor Merkel’s reference to “the British virus”. Is she going to start sniggering about French letters and Dutch ovens when other countries stand up for themselves? And if we’re so immature, how come we never felt the need to call our female leaders “Mutti” as do Merkel’s electorate? The danger of desiring leaders to boss them about often ends badly for nations; Alexander von Schoenburg, editor-at-large of Germany’s biggest-selling newspaper Bild, wrote recently: “The sclerotic and sluggish EU machine has botched the roll-out of the vaccines…delays, in-fighting, national self-interest and sheer bungling bureaucracy have combined to cripple the EU’s vaccine efforts.”"
Apparently Anglophobia is ok with "the British virus"
Yanis Varoufakis: Brexit will lead to 'disintegration' of the EU - "the immediate refusal to accept the referendum result had a major impact on British society: "Once the referendum was done, the hard remainers – people including Keir Starmer – shot themselves in the foot by continuing to back a second referendum.""
Hardcore Remainers are now going through the five stages of grief - "For most people, even Remainers, the EU vaccine tantrum has shaken their faith in the bloc to the core.Twitter over the weekend was littered with gratifying memos from former europhiles who have seen the light and now understand that bigger is not always better, that the EU isn’t quite as competent as it makes out, that an organisation which came into being 27 years ago is not the apex of civilisation - and that the bureaucrats who lead it aren’t all selfless saints whose only goal is world peace.From The Archbishop of Canterbury downwards, the country is almost entirely united in disgust.Perhaps more astonishingly, even a few EU players have realised the scale of the calamity. Carl Bildt, Co Chair of the European Council on Foreign Affairs tweeted last week “I had hoped not to see the EU leading the world down the destructive path of vaccine nationalism. Our continent’s entire history of success has been one of open, global value supply chains”. Meanwhile, erstwhile bogeyman Michel Barnier told a newspaper last week that he wants the EU to “step back” from the vaccine row with Britain. But there’s a fly in the ointment. Because incredibly, there is still a group of hardcore British Remainers who, having taken Brexit as a personal bereavement, simply can’t bring themselves to come to terms with what is going.Over the last few months, as the tweets below illustrate, they have been slowly - painstakingly - been going through the five stages of grief.First, when the Prime Minister decided that Britain would not join up to the EU’s vaccine scheme, there was denial that we were capable of going it alone... Then, when it emerged that Kate Bingham was a venture capitalist married to a Tory MP, we had anger... Next, they started bargaining - trashing the Brexiteer Government in the vain hope of finding some common ground with some old friends in the Remain camp and striking a deal... Now, we are reaching the depression stage. With no other card left to play, they downplay the EU’s catalogue of errors. The FT, which last month published an editorial urging its Remainer readers “not to gloat over Brexit’s failures” is now despondently referring to the events of last week as the “EU’s vaccine hiccough”"
The EU is behaving like a psychopath - "European Commision president Ursula von der Leyen threatened to block the exports of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, seize its factories and override its intellectual property. This was the EU’s ‘crisis of the century’, she said, and therefore extreme, war-time measures were needed to rectify it... the months-long smear campaign against the AstraZeneca jab has been far more successful than anyone intended. When it became clear in January that AstraZeneca would not be able to deliver sufficient doses to the EU because of supply-chain problems – problems the UK was able to solve by sorting its procurement several months before the EU – the EU disinformation machine cranked into gear... This fear has now spread to the UK, which until recently had extraordinarily low levels of vaccine hesitancy. There is also something very striking about the way EU leaders have singled out the AstraZeneca jab. It is the only jab which is produced at cost, for no profit – and therefore the only one which developing countries will be able to afford. The EU’s campaign of lies threatens to derail the global fight against Covid-19. The EU is behaving like a psychopathShareTopicsPoliticsScience & TechUKWorldThe finer details of the ever-evolving EU vaccine catastrophe can often blind us to the bigger picture. There is no polite way to say this but the EU is behaving like a psychopath.One of the most obscene interventions came this week, when European Commision president Ursula von der Leyen threatened to block the exports of the Oxford / AstraZeneca vaccine, seize its factories and override its intellectual property. This was the EU’s ‘crisis of the century’, she said, and therefore extreme, war-time measures were needed to rectify it.But we have to recall that as she said this, the AstraZeneca vaccine in question was no longer in use in dozens of EU countries. They had supplies of this vaccine but had banned them from being administered. A scare story about the vaccine causing blood clots started in Denmark, and by this week it had reached France, Germany, Italy and other major European countries. The European Medicines Agency and the World Health Organisation insisted the vaccine was safe. But, citing the precautionary principle (a long-standing constitutional principle of EU lawmaking), agency after agency took the vaccine out of circulation. An Italian health official admitted that, in his country at least, this was an explicitly political decision. The EMA has today confirmed that the jab is safe and effective… again.But even before the blood-clot scandal, AstraZeneca vaccines were languishing unused in European warehouses. While 77 per cent of the vaccine doses supplied to the EU have been handed out overall, less than half of the AstraZeneca jabs have been used. That’s 7.8million life-saving doses, doing nothing.The obvious reason for this is that the months-long smear campaign against the AstraZeneca jab has been far more successful than anyone intended. When it became clear in January that AstraZeneca would not be able to deliver sufficient doses to the EU because of supply-chain problems – problems the UK was able to solve by sorting its procurement several months before the EU – the EU disinformation machine cranked into gear.Calm down – climate change is not the end of the worldPodcastCalm down – climate change is not the end of the worldspikedA German government source briefed Handelsblatt – at the time a well-respected financial paper – that the AstraZeneca vaccines were just six per cent effective at preventing disease among the elderly (ie, the very cohort most in need of protection from Covid). This was nonsense. But it led French president Emmanuel Macron to claim that the jab was ‘quasi-ineffective’. Then, von der Leyen accused the UK of compromising safety by authorising the AstraZeneca vaccine too quickly – even though the EMA had also approved it days before. French, German and Italian regulators refused to allow the elderly to be given the jab – though this groundless decision has since been reversed. The effect of this has been to cast suspicion on the vaccine, leading Europeans to refuse it in large numbers.This fear has now spread to the UK, which until recently had extraordinarily low levels of vaccine hesitancy. There is also something very striking about the way EU leaders have singled out the AstraZeneca jab. It is the only jab which is produced at cost, for no profit – and therefore the only one which developing countries will be able to afford. The EU’s campaign of lies threatens to derail the global fight against Covid-19.It is of course the UK that is the real target of Europe’s ire. Despite Remainer warnings that leaving the EU’s vaccine scheme would be a death sentence, Britain has only succeeded because it broke free from Brussels. At present, Brexit Britain has vaccinated 40 per cent of its population; the EU just 12 per cent. This is not some sign of British genius or exceptionalism – the United States, Israel, many of the small Middle Eastern states and even Serbia (in Europe but thankfully not in the EU) are steaming ahead. Von der Leyen made explicit in her threats this week that vaccine exports would be cut off to ‘countries that have higher vaccination rates than us’. Aside from the threats, there has also been the gaslighting. Last week, European Council president Charles Michel claimed that the UK had enforced an ‘outright ban’ on vaccine exports. This was totally false. In the same week, the EU announced that it would ban vaccine exports to Australia. And this week the EU made its threats to ban the exports of vaccines and their components to Britain and the US. The EU’s vaccine programme is a disaster of its own making. It was bad enough when it seemed that only European citizens would pay for Brussels’ incompetence with their lives. Now the EU’s malicious lies and lashing out are going to get a lot more people killed."
The EU is in denial about its vaccine failures - "As a coping mechanism, European leaders have responded with spin, denial and obfuscation. Here are some of their most ludicrous efforts:
‘The EU is doing better than Africa’
‘Going slow is better, actually’
‘The EU hasn’t failed – Britain has’
European Commission president Ursula von der Leyen today accused the UK of failing its ‘gigantic responsibility’ to ensure the vaccines are properly safe. She accused British regulators of ‘compromising’ safety for speed. ‘Yes, Europe left it later, but it was the right decision. I remind you that a vaccine is the injection of an active biological substance into a healthy body’, she told European journalists. Of course, the EU is currently using the same vaccines as the UK. In every case so far, the UK’s and EU’s regulators have reached the same conclusions on efficacy and safety, only the UK has done so much more quickly.
‘The vaccines don’t work anyway’
‘That Irish border thing was just an oversight’
‘The EU isn’t perfect’"
Why the EU has struggled with the vaccine - "As the German news magazine, Der Spiegel, reported recently, the EU’s approach to securing vaccine doses has been messy from the beginning, starting with its choice of suppliers. The EU’s ‘vaccine alliance’, made up of Germany, Italy, France and the Netherlands, concluded contracts with pharmaceutical giants Sanofi, Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca early on, while strangely leaving out the companies that had demonstrated some of the most promising results at the time – BioNTech and Moderna. While many countries took advantage of some of these latter vaccines’ hopeful results by securing millions of doses as early as July, the EU did not get around to ordering these vaccines until November, delaying delivery by precious weeks... For all the talk of ‘international solidarity’ within the bloc, the EU’s handling of the pandemic has largely been a story of nation states reasserting themselves against the EU’s supra-nation state. Such was the case during the outbreak of the virus, with the unilateral restrictions on the movement of drugs within the EU and the failure of joint procurement and distribution of what PPE equipment was available. So it is again with vaccination stage: the German federal government is now trying to secure millions of doses to be used exclusively in Germany, separately from the vaccine alliance’s orders. This is likely to be a bone of contention in the bloc. For if this allows Germany to open up earlier, the Mediterranean countries whose economies have been the worst hit by the pandemic will ask why Germany should be able to use its economic clout to get out of the pandemic-induced lockdown restrictions faster than they can. Brexit, of course, has its trade-offs. But had we opted to join the EU’s vaccine alliance, its slow, immobile and bureaucratic decision-making process would have been a potential liability for the UK. Hopefully, the EU can learn from this and adapt itself to better handle future crises. However, as we begin our future outside the bloc, the UK will fortunately not have to rely on it doing so."
Sir James Dyson moves back to Britain after two years in Singapore
I remember how Remoaners were so excited when he moved to Singapore
How the left lost touch with voters, and reality - "The long-held view that economics matters more than culture in predicting voting preferences is under scrutiny. Research conducted after the first Brexit referendum showed that, for Brexiteers, self-determination was a major issue. Britons wanted to exit the EU to regain power over sovereign borders and control the decisions that affected them most. In the recent UK election, voters once again affirmed culture matters. In Lord Ashcroft polls, Tory voters ranked their top five priorities in order of importance as: Brexit; the National Health Service/hospitals; the economy and jobs; having the right leadership; and immigration. The contest for Boris Johnson’s seat was a miniature version of the cultural clash between Brexiteers and EU loyalists. As the conservative candidate, Johnson defended the values of the West, namely freedom of thought and speech; public reason; an apolitical and independent judiciary; and the right to self-determination made manifest by democratic nationalism. Johnson’s Labour opponent, Ali Milani, led a campaign of tiresome identity politics and xenophilia. In an interview with Left Foot Forward, Milani complained about racism and “Islamophobia”. He said that the first time he seriously considered standing for the seat was when “Boris Johnson made one of his racist comments”. Yet he could not remember the offending comment. Like many of the modern left, Milani appears so enchanted by identity politics that he resembles the second coming of Narcissus. Consider his stated reason for entering politics: “The reason I chose to stand is I think there is something deeply interesting and deeply attractive about someone who is an immigrant, who grew up on a council estate, who is a Muslim.”... The left is swift to denounce Brexiteers as uneducated, racist, xeno/homo/Islamophobes. Trump voters and conservatives in general receive the same treatment. But if leftists are so smart, why do they keep losing elections? The consensus opinion in green-left enclaves is that it’s “populism wot dunnit”. The losers’ lament is amusing. Although not hilarious in the style of Democrat voters’ Twitter tantrums following Trump’s election, the UK left is holding its own... The illusion that only stupid people vote conservative cocoons the left like a tearstained comforter. It makes the progs feel better but prevents them from growing up. While research suggests people with lower levels of formal education are swinging away from the traditional left, there is little robust data on the relative intelligence of voting groups by party preference."
Liberals will just mock them for "voting against their interests". Condecension is good if you're a liberal
The blundering EU cannot be trusted on the world stage - "Any lingering doubts about the European Union’s ability to tackle complex global issues will have been well and truly laid to rest by the crass incompetence of its handling of the Northern Ireland issue. It is but the latest example of how the EU’s ineffectual response whenever it is confronted with a major challenge always seems to end up making matters worse. From its conduct during the Syrian refugee crisis in the summer of 2015, to its hopeless response to the coronavirus pandemic, the EU seems incapable of providing satisfactory outcomes. While EU officials have publicly acknowledged that they made a serious error of judgment by attempting to block vaccine exports to Northern Ireland last week – admissions of wrongdoing are a rare event in Brussels – they hardly seem contrite that their behaviour has surely added to the already febrile situation in the province... From the start of the Brexit talks, the EU made a point of singling out the Northern Irish issue, claiming that its negotiating stance was essential to protecting the Good Friday Agreement, which ended decades of violence between the loyalist and nationalist communities. Many suspected, however, that the EU’s insistence on concentrating on the Irish border was motivated more by the belief that it would make life extremely difficult for British negotiators. Others wondered whether it reflected Brussels’ institutional bias in favour of a united Ireland. Now, in one outrageous move, the EU has proved its critics right. The fact that the invoking of Article 16 of the Northern Irish protocol was quickly reversed is hardly a convincing defence for Brussels."
The myth of Britain’s decline - "Robert Tombs: we are a European nation, but not the same kind of European nation as some others. Our connection with Europe has always been somewhat peripheral... geography has been getting less important for quite a long time now – 300 years or more. Our geography gives the context for our history, but it does not tell us what our history must be. Our geographical location is less important in the modern world than other kinds of connection – cultural, linguistic and economic...
O’Neill: for Britain’s leaders in the 1950s and 1960s in particular, entering the European Community was very much driven by geopolitical and post-Empire concerns. There was a feeling that the UK, a country that had once been the global equal of the US and the USSR, was no longer any such thing and was dwindling. The European project was seen as a means of Britain regaining some sense of global authority. How did that idea work itself out?
Tombs: It was a kind of rescue project... it was largely an illusion. The idea that we have declined in comparison with similar countries is clearly untrue. The fact that continental-size states like the US and China have grown does not mean we have declined. There has been a relative decline, but only in comparison with this kind of country. Compared with Germany, France and Russia, there has been no decline at all. Harold MacMillan and Harold Wilson’s generation thought the European states were overtaking us. What was really happening is they were having a period of postwar recovery. They were modernising their economies and had a one-off period of very rapid growth. But then it slowed down. And the consequence has been that since the 1990s, Britain has been outperforming the European economies – slightly but consistently. And yet, economic decline seems to still form a key part of the foundation of the Remainer or Rejoiner mindset – this sense of weakness, marginalisation, decline and failure, which means we must attach ourselves to the European project.
Brendan O’Neill: Your book raises the confusion at the heart of the postwar desire to offset a sense of decline... Why did people believe British declinism could be reversed by joining Europe, while at the same time recognising it would involve giving away a huge amount of British political power?
Tombs: In a way, it’s very odd. It was a feeling that the country was failing, but its elite was still cleverer than everybody else. It was the belief that Europeans may be doing very well economically, but their politicians were a pretty dim lot and did not have our experience of the world. Once we were in Europe, we would be leading it. There was exactly the same thing in France – the same feeling that the country was going to decline unless it could find a role as leader of a new Europe. It was this oddity of an elite that had not lost confidence in its own abilities, but had somehow lost confidence in its country...
Tombs: [The EU] was always political and it was always known to be so by those who were actually making the decisions. But it’s a complicated question, because they did not necessarily agree on how far it would go. There were a lot of British politicians who tended to think that when Europeans were talking about ever-closer union, it was just talk – it was never going to happen. In a sense, it wasn’t a stupid belief because the idea of European federation is so far-fetched in many ways. But diplomats, politicians and lawyers did realise that it meant giving sovereignty away. The argument has always been that sovereignty does not really mean much in the modern world. But people often confuse sovereignty with power, as if by pooling sovereignty we become more powerful and therefore more sovereign. But what really happens – and we see this very clearly in the EU – is that everybody loses sovereignty."
Michel Barnier vs the migrants - "Remember Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator? This week he made an astonishing intervention. He called for France to ban immigration from outside the EU for the next three to five years, and for the EU’s passport-free Schengen area to be renegotiated... It would be wrong to think Barnier has made some kind of Damascene conversion from EU apparatchik to populist firebrand. In fact, his comments are largely compatible with the EU’s philosophy. While fans of the EU celebrate its supposed ‘openness’ – whether it’s free trade or free movement – the EU is only really ‘open’ to other members. Yes, there are few barriers to migration between EU countries, but to the outside world it is Fortress Europe... So desperate is the EU to keep outsiders out that its leaders pay billions to autocrats like Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to host millions of Europe-bound migrants. Erdoğan is then able to blackmail the EU with the threat of releasing them to Greece and Bulgaria. Before Erdoğan (years even before anyone spoke of a ‘migrant crisis’), Colonel Gaddafi would regularly warn that he could make Europe ‘turn black’ if he was not paid to guard Libya’s coastline."
Weird how people think the EU is a haven for migration and if you're pro-Brexit you're anti-migrant, when the EU really is just pro-EU migration
The people were right - "We told you the European Union was not some hippyish, internationalist outfit but rather was a self-interested protectionist bloc. We told you it was a sclerotic bureaucracy whose centralisation of power made it more and more difficult for member states to behave as democratic nations and to respond sensitively and speedily to the needs of their own people. We told you the EU didn’t really give a damn about the Good Friday Agreement and was only using it as a weapon with which to beat Brexit Britain. We told you the EU was exploiting Ireland, cynically marshalling its concerns over a ‘hard border’ to try to further demonise Brexit, and that before long it would forget all about its concern for Ireland and relegate it once again to the status of a neo-colony. We told you all of this. And we were right. The EU’s increasingly unhinged behaviour over vaccines has shocked even many Remainers. But too much of the discussion is positing the idea that the EU has simply made some mistakes, a few rash, desperate judgements. In truth, the behaviour of the EU over the past week – its failings on the vaccination front, its acts of desperate protectionism, its lashing out at Brexit Britain, and its cavalier, sinister mistreatment of the Republic of Ireland – have not been glitches in the system; this is the system. This is how the centralised, self-interested, neo-colonial power that is the European Union operates. And it is why 17.4million of us voted against it in the referendum in 2016. Everything that is wrong with the EU has been on full and depressing display in recent weeks. Its bureaucratic, even byzantine nature, where regulation reigns supreme, meant it was slow to agree vaccine contracts and slow to approve vaccines. This has caused a shocking shortfall in vaccines on the continent, meaning member states have either had to roll out vaccines very slowly or halt vaccination altogether. The European Commission forbade member states from procuring their own stocks of vaccines. This wasn’t an ‘error of judgement’. This is how the centralised, sovereignty-diluting EU works. It requires member states to outsource their sovereign powers to Brussels and submit to rules and regulations that may or may not be in their national interest. The vaccines calamity is a consequence of the very idea of the European Union. Then came the EU oligarchy’s protectionist lashing-out. It has taken increasingly stiff action to try to compensate for its bureaucratic failures on the vaccination question. It has declared a war of words on AstraZeneca and has threatened to take action to force the UK to hand over some of its stocks of AstraZeneca vaccines. It has imposed controls on the export of vaccines. This unilateral act of vaccine imperialism could have a harsh impact not only on the UK but on other nations that had agreed vaccine deals with European producers, including Japan and Australia. Again, this isn’t a glitch; it’s what the EU does. It is 50 years since the legendary Labour Eurosceptic Barbara Castle warned of ‘Euro jingoism’ – here’s that jingoism, once again. We have also seen how ruthlessly the EU will protect its reputation and its power. One of the most alarming things in recent days has been the misinformation that Euro leaders have spread about the AstraZeneca vaccine... It lashes out against perceived enemies – whether it’s Brexit Britain or the producers of certain vaccines – because its overarching aim is the preservation of its own authority. That comes before everything else, even before the important task of generating public trust in vaccination. Then, to top it all off, we had the EU overriding the deal it agreed with the UK just a few weeks ago. As part of its vaccine protectionism the EU invoked Article 16 of the Northern Ireland Protocol, meaning that Northern Ireland, in this instance, would be treated differently to the Republic of Ireland and would be subject to the EU’s export controls on vaccines. Why? In case Northern Ireland were to become a backdoor way for Britain – nasty non-EU member that we now are – to receive vaccines produced in Europe. Vaccines we had already ordered, by the way. This has exposed the cynicism and ruthlessness of the EU oligarchy. For years the EU and its cheerleaders said a ‘hard border’ in Ireland would be an outrage; now the EU has attempted to erect a hard border in Ireland on the vaccine front, so that the Republic would receive European vaccines but the north would not. The EU and its global backers said anyone who disrespected the Good Friday Agreement would essentially be inciting the return of terrorism in Northern Ireland; now the EU tramples over the Good Friday Agreement. The EU constantly claimed that it had Ireland’s best interests at heart; now it unilaterally backtracks on its commitment to Ireland, wilfully ignoring the concerns of the Irish government and Irish people and dividing the island up into those worthy of receiving vaccines (the south) and those not worthy of receiving vaccines (the north). This has shone an unforgiving light on the contempt of the Brussels oligarchy towards nation states... It didn’t even alert the Irish government to the fact that it was invoking Article 16 and dividing Ireland along Covid lines. It clearly views the island of Ireland as its territory, its little colony, a piece of land it can make major decisions about without even consulting its elected representatives. Again, we told you. We told you the EU views Ireland – and many other non-powerful European nations – as colonial outposts, as playthings of the new empire, as territories whose own interests are subordinate to the interests of the capitalist elites in Brussels."
