The UK’s Enablement Acts 2023, Part 3: Brexit-branded treason is the contagion
From demonically dancing around the half-prepared pyre, irrationally repeating maniacal mantras about sovereignty and small boats, to swiftly suffocating its first flickering flames, fearing the backlash of the old faithful, briefly bargaining for barely a bonfire, begging for but only a bin fire. Before abruptly re-U-turning, doubling down, pulling an Andrea Jenkyns and sticking two fingers up to the country by casually chucking £4 million of legal aid in firelighters in the regulatory bin fire. And finally, for now, a re-re-U-turn announcing an amendment, headlined by only 600 laws intended for immediate incineration and supported by a new policy paper, “Smarter regulation to grow the economy.”
Sunak and the Conservative party have had quite the time with the Retained EU Law (REUL) Bill. Seemingly as scared, confused, and captivated by the looming, all-consuming inferno as the rest of us.
In a mere matter of weeks, the plans for the REUL Bill have come full circle at least twice, or is it now thrice?
The blockbuster bonfire is now a beguiling bin fire. But battalions of London’s best lawyers have re-worked the regulatory evaporation to rush it through under the radar.
The first part of this series examined a very different version of the REUL Bill than is now on offer, and part two reviewed the Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill (LURB) in the same manner. Of the two, the LURB is the more significant threat to our democracy, and yet, it has received little to no media scrutiny.
The constantly shifting sands the Conservatives have been desperately dancing across appear simply as sheer incompetence, but it is nothing of the sort. We have witnessed the Government and their clients burning through their redundancy planning options quicker than any bonfire ever could, but these moves and many more will have been pre-planned for precisely this moment, and there will be many more yet to be revealed.
Given that so much has changed, this final part of the series will now assess the changes to the REUL Bill and how the two Bills will influence the next phase for “Freeports” and The United Kingdom.
REUL recap
First, former Conservative MP, Baroness Mcintosh of Pickering, tabled an amendment to extend the “sunset” deadline by five years, then a group of senior Conservative Peers quickly threatened to join a cross-party coalition supporting the amendment, seemingly ending the point of Bill’s existence.
As if conducted in unison, the moment senior Conservative Peers piped up, Labour suddenly found their spine and straightened it out to mumble from the back that they opposed the REUL Bill and favoured a more rational approach. Perhaps even following proper procedure, reviewing and voting on alterations to our laws and regulations as a Parliament.
With the threat of rebellion from the Tory Lords and Labour reluctantly partially resuscitated, common sense and parliamentary jurisprudence prevailed, no matter how hypothetically resource-hungry. Or so it seemed.
Radicals retreating, R-EU-Laughing?
But then, Big-Bad-Enoch was back to get this Bill on track.
Much was made of the watered-down list of 600 laws and the great retreat from the previous palpitation-inducing figure of >4,600 laws that were due to disappear overnight. This narrow focus by the media on the overall number of laws, an effigy for all things European to sit atop the revered REUL bin fire, misses several key points.
The new policy paper, Smarter Regulation to Grow the Economy sets out plans to reform regulations in a completely different manner. They now plan on roaming from sector to sector, slashing and burning as they go, and they are going in hot, starting with employment law. The consultation is open until 07th July and can be accessed here:
https://ditresearch.eu.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_06Sa8wldAZYeGTs.
The first concerns for employment law are lightening the “disproportionate burden” of recording working hours and ”other administrative requirements” for businesses and introducing rolled-up holiday pay, so it is paid monthly alongside your regular wages, putting the onus on us to budget and save for even a short sanity-preserving break.
The cost of exploitation crisis will consume employees’ holiday pay alongside their regular wages before it barely clears their bank accounts, leaving those already struggling unable to take any time off. Businesses will then begin coercing their captives to continue working unrecorded and unpaid hours, with no chance of reprieve.
British laws for British bonfires
The policy paper casually mentions that it is not only EU-derived regulations but all regulations, including exclusively British-made ones, that will now be bunged in the bin fire (Figure 1). Ministers will now have the power to review, re-write, or revoke all regulations in the name of the elusive Almighty Glorious Growth.
This is a seismic shift in scope that no mainstream media outlet has bothered to mention.
Regulators reigned in
Independent regulators of every major sector, including OFGEM, OFCOM, and OFWAT, are set to be hijacked with a new Strategy and Policy Statement (SPS), ensuring they prioritise growth. The sectors they regulate, already extorting citizens for core services and running rackets most Brexit-backing businesses could only dream of, are to be minded by regulators who are explicitly directed to prioritise their growth — this is another seismic shift in scope that has seemingly escaped the attention of the British press.
The paper clarifies that “direct rule-making powers, how the regulator interacts with and collects information from those it regulates, or the potential disproportionality of any sanctions it imposes” are the ways regulators are inhibiting growth. Monitoring sewage and industrial pollution is for weaklings. Selling all your morals and your country is for real men.
This couldn’t be clearer. The SPS will restrict regulators’ rule-making powers, rearrange responsibilities for information sharing, shifting the burden of reporting to the shackled, under-resourced regulators, and set limits on the sanctions they can impose without a sign-off from the Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Michael the melter Murdoch’s greasy gelder Gove.
This should go without saying, but forcing a regulator to prioritise growth in the sector they moderate is about as sensible as asking your babysitter to start a fire in your house to keep the kids occupied for the evening.
Still in the Bill
The Bill still contains unprecedented powers for Ministers to rewrite or revoke laws behind closed doors, bypassing proper parliamentary scrutiny, the limits on which have been dramatically extended, bypassing any media scrutiny in the process.
The Bill still plans to eradicate the interpretive effect of EU law and “enshrine the supremacy of UK law.” While EU-derived legislation may technically remain on the statute books, no court or lawyer in Great Brexit will know how to interpret it.
Democracy’s Death by 600 cuts
The Bill still intends to immediately irradicate enough important laws to wreak havoc in round one, including the National Air Pollution Control Plan, controls on industrial air pollution, arrangements with a host of tax havens, several Environmentally Sensitive Area Designation Orders covering areas in and around “Freeports”, regulations outlining minimum standards for granting and withdrawing refugee status, protections for posted workers, and the requirements for all UK ports to keep transparent and accurate financial records.
Removing the restrictions on granting and withdrawing refugee status and tearing up protections for posted workers alongside the latest apparent backpedal could do the polar opposite of speeding up the claims of >55,000 people and clearing the manufactured asylum application backlog. This could leave every single one of them, no matter how they arrived, open to being shipped offshore to the prison barges. Only allowed back into the bits of Britain that are no longer British to be exploited in munitions factories in Plymouth, mines in the north and oil fields in the south, or good old toxic Teesworks.
Where work will set them free.
Presumably, this is what £4 million of legal aid and advice from British-American law firm Hogan Lovells buys a Government now privatising the preparation of legislation as they desperately attempt to undermine democracy before handing over the smouldering rubble to the next stooge waiting across the floor. Strategic policy advice resulting in revisions that render the Bill nearly unrecognisable, media coverage of minor changes shielding the extreme extension of tyrannical powers that are unprecedented in merely half a millennium, and a shiny new policy paper that seems sensible until you read beyond the title.
Levelling Up perfidious Albion style
When Johnson began repeating his mantra to unleash the benefits of Brexit and Level Up the UK, the smelling salts should have snapped us all from our collective slumber. But bogus bumbling Boris — the propaganda persona — was in full stride. Most media outlets were more interested in maximising the Brexit benefits that platforming him or mocking him would bring them rather than defending democracy.
They turned mountains into molehills, making us misremember the man we always knew him to be.
Now, the clown’s catchphrase has spawned the ill-defined Government Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities, led by his old pal, Michael Gove.
Quietly and quickly, Gove has drawn his plans, amassing power and influence from his ever-expanding portfolio and a post-Brexit plague of legislation riddled with sly clauses that line after line are gearing up the Secretary of State with unprecedented new powers.
The low-down on Levelling Up
The Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill (LURB) has had a quieter few weeks of late, and the powers it proposes handing to Gove remain unchanged at the time of writing. Quickly, they could lead to local authorities being lured into insatiable black holes of debt traps, devouring every dime and trace of democracy in their orbit. With their engineered insolvency being used to justify their inclusion in a new Combined County Authority (CCA.)
Combined County Authorities may then be manipulated using their marionette Mayors or self-styled greedy “Governors” to restructure the regional balance of power, like Imperial Viceroys. Individual Mayors, Executive Bodies and vested private interests can corrupt CCAs from within and gain extraordinary influence over their region, granting themselves favourable voting rights to outweigh those of elected officials and seizing control of critical functions of local and central governments, potentially including regionally devolved healthcare, taxation and welfare provision, and new regionally devolved legislative and judicial jurisdictions.
From flagship Freeport to flagship feudal fiefdom
The LURB also has mechanisms to devolve these same powers to existing Mayoral Combined Authorities or solely to their Mayors by amending the Local Democracy Economic Development and Construction Act 2009. Therefore, the Rootin’ Tootin’ Pollutin’ Houchen should soon expect an upgrade in his abilities to undermine his community before he bows out and becomes Baron Ben Houchen of Ecological Annihilation.
This move could take Teesworks from the flagship Freeport to the flagship feudal fiefdom. If that is, Houchen can avoid becoming the flagship fall guy for long enough.
Decades in the making
The decade of austerity preceding the Levelling Up white paper’s release in February 2022 deliberately exacerbated deprivation across the country, particularly in northern former industrial cities. Those driven to destitution by austerity and the deliberately directed deindustrialisation preceding it now desperately desired change and were coerced into believing that Brexit’s red tape ripping, Johnson’s pseudo-anti-EU bravado, and Gove’s libertine Levelling Up plan would deliver their dreams of industrial renewal.
The media widely dismissed the white paper as merely more unhinged Johnsonian hollow hype. But it sets out the long-term goals of the Conservatives and their clients via Levelling Up and “Freeports”. It should have sent shockwaves through the country and our media, but it was barely mentioned before being quickly written off.
Nine regions for mortal men consumed by lies
Nine regions are outlined in the white paper that England may soon find itself divided into, with eight now having “Freeports”, and it alludes to the handful of Mayoral Combined Authorities (MCAs) and CCAs that would collectively form each region:
· The North East, from Middlesborough to the Scottish border, including Teesworks and a network of 13 Enterprise Zones
· The North West, from Cheshire to Cumbria, including the Liverpool City Region (LCR) Freeport
· Yorkshire and North Lincolnshire, including the Humber Freeport
· The East Midlands, from West Northamptonshire to Derbyshire and Lincolnshire, including the East Midlands Freeport
· The West Midlands, from Herefordshire and Warwickshire to Staffordshire, including another pocket of Enterprise Zones and skirting the edges of the East Midlands Freeport
· The East of England, from Hertfordshire to Norfolk, including Freeport East
· London, including the Thames Freeport and the City of London
· The South East, from Oxfordshire to the Isle of Wight and Kent, including the Solent Freeport and,
· The South West, from Cornwall and the Isles of Scilly to Gloucestershire, including the Plymouth and South Devon (PASD) Freeport.
Trailblazers
The North Tyne MCA and the North East Combined Authority already have a “trailblazer” devolution deal with the Government to become a new singular behemoth Authority, the North East Mayoral CCA.
The North of Tyne and North East regions have had their developing devolution deal since 2018, and they are not alone in having longstanding and evolving devolution deals. The Tees Valley Combined Authority (TVCA), London, Cornwall, Greater Manchester, West Midlands, and LCR regions all have deals that slowly but surely have been sequestering more powers for nearly a decade.
The North of Tyne and North East regions are home to a network of 13 enterprise zones that counts the Newcastle International Airport Business Park and the Port of Sunderland, which recently announced it could soon bring 20 acres of development land to market among its assets for sale.
The Government has now invited Devon, Plymouth and Torbay; Derbyshire (including most of the peak district) and Derby; Hull and East Yorkshire; Leicestershire; Nottinghamshire and Nottingham; and Suffolk to start formal negotiations for new CCA deals.
The drive to diverge
The website of every “Freeport”, their associated Local Enterprise Partnerships, Local Development Corporations, captured Local Authorities, and the private partners backing the projects are parroting the same pre-scripted lines provided in their ‘plotting a Freeport’ starter packs.
Wild claims of £ billions of inward investments, unbelievable numbers of jobs, igniting green(washing) revolutions, or how they are ‘uniquely’ positioned as the gateway to the UK are plastered across all of their websites.
Every “Freeport” and its surrounding region has a unique selling point, a particular natural resource or national asset waiting to be exploited, a concentration of companies from a specific sector to be serviced with their sovereignty, or a flagrantly for-sale and feeble figurehead who is willing to double-cross their community for personal gain and hopes of a lifetime of legal immunity.
Once the roaming regulatory incinerator rolls through their relevant sector(s), each “Freeport”, CCA, and morally malleable Mayor will be eager to leverage their new legislative laboratories to bolster the businesses backing and benefiting from their novel variant of Brexit-branded betrayal.
Toxic Teesworks’ aversion to environmental protection
Benny-the-butcher, the East-coast-executioner, will be desperate to break down the burdensome barriers to his ecocidal extravaganza and advertise his aversion to environmental protection. Turning the North East into the Wild East will be the TVCA and Teesworks’ unique selling point.
The Humber “Freeport” may pursue similar strategies to accommodate surges in fossil fuel imports and exports, acutely aware of the environmental catastrophes in waiting that are their blue hydrogen and Carbon Capture Storage (CCS) projects. They will require rafts of regulatory wrangling guaranteeing decades of further fossil fuel dependence before bungs are bestowed, ecosystems are exterminated, and communities are stripped of all remaining assets.
The great greenwashing revolution
Blue hydrogen creates hydrogen fuel from natural gas and uses CCS, also powered by burning gas, to store the CO2 emissions. With considerable lobbying power behind them, blue hydrogen and CCS are cornerstones of the UK’s woefully inadequate decarbonisation strategy.
A study found that combined CO2 and methane emissions from blue hydrogen are >20% worse than directly burning gas or coal for heat (Figure 2). The study accepted “optimistic and unproven” assumptions from the industry that captured CO2 can be stored indefinitely and still concluded that blue hydrogen has “no role” in a carbon-free future and is “at best a distraction.”
The UK is leading the blue hydrogen brigade with their hydrogen and CCS “Power up Britain” strategies, aiming to produce 35% of the UK’s energy from hydrogen projects by 2050 and capture the carbon to be stored in North Sea caverns.
Four blue hydrogen production facilities are currently planned for “Freeports”. Vertex Hydrogen at Ellesmere Port in the LCR Freeport, H2 Teesside and H2NorthEast in the Teesworks “Freeport” and Hydrogen to Humber in the Humber “Freeport”. These projects will only serve to prolong or increase fossil fuel dependence, and unsurprisingly, they are all backed by big fossil fuel companies, such as Shell and BP.
Most of the new fossil fuels extracted from the North Sea are likely to be sent to the Green “Freeport” sites in Scotland (Cromarty Firth and the Firth of Forth) before being piped or shipped to English “Freeports” with blue hydrogen projects or those with deep water freight capabilities and connections to international trade routes. This will tie national and local politicians up in knots, pushing fossil fuels far from the interfering reach of any democratic oversight. Of course, it will all be completely untaxed.
New nuclear, a new racket
New nuclear projects are the other centre-piece of the UK’s dire decarbonisation strategy. The UK Government has a world-beating track record of over-spending and under-achieving with most development projects, but especially with nuclear projects.
The Low-Cost Nuclear Challenge, initially proposed by a consortium led by Rolls-Royce, aims to develop and start producing Small Modular Reactors (SMRs) in the UK by the early 2030s.
In an incredible coincidence, Rolls-Royce SMR (the subdivision of Rolls-Royce specialising in SMRs) have now been awarded £210 million in Government funding to develop their design and move towards production. They have three sites shortlisted on their website for the first of three planned production facilities, including Teesworks the Teesside “Freeport”, the Northern Gateway in Deeside, Wales (an existing enterprise zone), and the International Advanced Manufacturing Park, part of the North East Combined Authority’s network of enterprise zones.
The LCR “Freeport” might also desire to dispose of any environmental protections and air quality standards, following reports of the Peel Groups’ toxic environmental impacts reducing local life expectancies by as much as twelve years.
The smugglers charter
The LCR, Humber and Thames “Freeports” will likely look at loosening or letting go of their customs regulations, hoping to attract the most coveted criminals, world-beating warlords, aristocratic arsonists and supreme smugglers trafficking weapons, drugs, stolen and laundered art, and most importantly, people. Many such regulations were set to be shredded with the original version of the REUL Bill, including the need for goods to pass customs checks before crossing our borders and requirements for records of the owners of excise warehouses and the goods stored within them to be kept. They will likely fuel the roaming regulatory incinerator when it rolls into town.
Following Braverman’s reclassification of modern slavery as solely an illegal immigration issue, if such requirements are ripped up at the sites with higher trade flows and now planning to host prison barges for refugees, the Conservatives will be enabling human trafficking and slavery on a scale far beyond the capabilities of millions of small boats.
The national security threat
Other “Freeports” set to be partnered with CCAs already have a vast array of concerning national assets and will be looking to leverage them to maximise their influence. The British press briefly covered the inclusion of National Parks and protected environments in some “Freeports”. But “Freeports” swallowing up several vital military assets has seemingly escaped their selective attention.
The Humber “Freeport” contains several RAF facilities, including its Air and Space Warfare Centre. The Solent “Freeport” captures HMNB Portsmouth. While the PASD Freeport encompasses Britain’s (and Western Europe’s) largest naval base, HMNB Devonport, a vital nuclear base.
Relinquishing control or oversight of several strategically important military assets, especially HMNB Devonport, is a considerable national security threat. What happens to the base when a Mayoral CCA encompassing the PASD Freeport, whose operators are responsible for site security, receives regionally devolved legislative powers?
What happens if a Mayoral CCA / “Freeport” becomes corrupted by proxies of a foreign state and votes in favour of hiring mercenaries like the Wagner Group or Erik Prince’s Frontier Services Group (FSG) to provide their site security? Such examples are extreme, but with powers like these, they must be considered.
Another potential serious national security threat is that with many private defence companies already based in “Freeport” territories, alongside a plethora of vital military assets and the likely influx of private security contractors often linked to foreign states, “Freeports” will become a worrying potential flashpoint, the perfect cauldron to cook up an ‘accidental’ war on UK shores.
Plymouth and South Devon, brought to you by Babcock
Several defence contractors, such as Babcock, already provide critical services for the MoD at HMNB Devonport. Babcock has a significant presence in the region, and their backing of the project is crucial, owing to the multiple plots of land they own within the boundary and their cosy relationship with the MoD.
Babcock are set to be the customs site operator at the temporary Burrington Way customs site in Plymouth. They have also pledged to invest £6.5 million into developing the South Yard customs site and redevelop two key buildings ‘behind the wire’ of MoD land to expand their manufacturing capacity. The Sherford customs site will also be a bespoke Babcock operation, building a logistics hub outside the customs site boundary “providing integrated warehousing, storage and engineering space for a single defence contractor, Babcock.”
This dominating presence and control of the customs sites within the “Freeport” boundary, along with one of their former senior managers, Mark Shayer, now simultaneously serving on the PASD Freeport Board and as a Plymouth City Councillor, will give Babcock an incredible amount of influence over the PASD “Freeport” and soon-to-be Devonshire CCA.
Presuming Gove uses his new powers to make provisions for appointing Babcock representatives as associate members of a Devonshire CCA with beneficially weighted voting rights. Shayer will have a crucial role in the potential outcome of the vote. As such, thousands of officials’ personal and professional connections should be receiving maximum attention from their local press.
What democracy?
The £4 million revamped REUL strategy lends itself perfectly to helpful headlines of Conservatives in chaos quarrelling over concessions when it is nothing more than the pinnacle of pantomime politics. In the grim reality of Greater Brexit, the new strategy will see the original anti-democratic powers for Ministers dramatically extended to include all UK regulations. The headline-grabbing figure of only 600 regulations being ripped up placates concerns, but it is far from the whole picture.
There might not be an overnight Trussian implosion of >4,600 laws looming ahead any longer. However, the legal system will still be battered, bruised and left in limbo. Not forgetting that the roving regulatory incinerator will be wandering from sector to sector, torching anything resembling a restriction on extorting the people and resources of Britain.
Regional devolution has been building up behind the scenes for decades with cross-party support from the Conservatives, Labour and Liberal-Democrats, and was seemingly always leading to the LURB, MCAs and Mayoral CCAs. Such sweeping changes to the systems of power are unlikely to go unnoticed for much longer as the destructive destination approaches. The natural endpoint for this long-term coordinated deception is the devolution of core functions from Westminster, including healthcare policy, tax and welfare policy, and ultimately regional legislative and judicial jurisdictions to regions far more extensive than “Freeports” spanning 75Kms.
In 2021, The London School of Economics (LSE) published a scathing criticism of the regional devolution plans developed during the Conservative’s decade of demolition. In summary, their evidence-based analysis (unlike any Conservative policies) concluded that the larger the population a local authority serves, the greater the damage to local democracy, trust in local officials, local culture, public engagement and voter turnout. Combined with the introduction of First Past the Post voting for Mayoral elections under the Elections Act 2022, the consequences will be catastrophic and far beyond the conclusions of the LSE critique published before the Elections Act became law.
Return of the Kingdoms
The nine regions laid out in the Levelling Up white paper, soon to be formed from handfuls of MCAs and CCAs, will centre around some of England’s most significant assets and areas. Wales and Scotland may eventually gain their independence. With both countries already seeded with two Trojan horses a piece, independence will be worthless and probably far worse. The handfuls of MCAs and CCAs in each English region will likely merge in the not-too-distant future and could even stake their claims for independence if and when their new authorities combine.
If these areas were gradually consolidated, we could quickly end up with economic regions that look eerily similar to England’s former mediaeval kingdoms. The overlap is uncanny (Figure 3).
Welcome to the Unlit Wastelands
We all know Johnson is not the court jester he plays so well that it is almost Oscar-worthy. A narcissistic, calculating, and ruthless killer who betrayed 68 million people repeatedly. He is a walking, talking propaganda machine, arguably more effective than Goebbels.
Bestowing Britain with the bounties of Brexit, festivities of fascism and the marvels of Levelling Up. He has caused more harm than any other Prime Minister in history. And yes, that includes Liz Truss, for she is just the fool for hire that she resembles.
As he finally leaves parliament, hopefully for good, he can’t resist leaving us with one final gift. Fifty of his favoured enablers and sycophantic slugs that clung to his coattails will now sit in the House of Lords. Johnson will forever be remembered as the man that broke Britain and finally allowed the façade of Great British democracy to fall.
He will be well looked after, watching the country burn from afar, but I doubt he can outrun it for long. Now that Trump is in hot water, and they are all closely connected, it will not take much for his legacy to come back and haunt him.
That legacy is one of mass needless death and disablement, condemning the country to horrors we are yet to realise fully. Economically, politically and socially, perhaps even irreversibly.
He came to power with promises of raising living standards, pouring money into the NHS, and talking of the mysterious sunlit uplands. Yet all he delivered was chaos, suffering and strife, and now we are left sitting in the dark, damp squalor of his unlit wastelands.
Catch-22, the Lexiteers are here
But, in all of this, I have yet to mention the biggest problem with the plans unfolding before our eyes. That is the remarkable resemblance between Starmer’s plans, born from the Brown Commission, for a Senate of Nations and Regions and Gove’s Levelling Up and Regeneration Bill. The only real difference is a shiny new elected, massively downgraded second chamber replacing the House of Lords. If this doesn’t scream “we’re reading from the same script” to the electorate, then nothing will.
Amongst Starmer’s “fuck people and let the business-friendly policies pile high” approach, proposals for Proportional Representation (PR) are being pondered and proposed, particularly by his most likely successor, Andy Burnham. But for now, Sir Starmer remains proudly bound by his Establishment chains and refuses to be drawn on the commitment.
Whether Starmer pledges to introduce PR in a Labour manifesto next year is largely irrelevant so long as they prop up the cross-party plans to carve up the country.
Under Sir Colonel Keir’s rule, the only people permitted to ask questions are those who never do
You’ll be told it is a great victory for democracy to celebrate, much like the Senate of Nations and Regions. You’ll be told your vote now matters more than ever before. But introducing PR for Westminster will be meaningless if it is hollowed out and has no control over important decisions. The real power will long since have been sold to private interests on CCA boards and to those fronting for others who remain unwilling to be exposed.
There is only one catch
That is Catch-22, which specifies that a concern for your safety in the face of real and immediate dangers is the process of a rational mind. We are all crazy and should do something to stop this. All we have to do is stand up and refuse to accept it, but as soon as we do, we will no longer be crazy and so have to sit tight and hold out. But we would be crazy to sit tight and hold out and sane if we do not, but if we do not, we are sane, and we have to do something to stop this. That is some catch, that Catch-22. It is the best there is.
Starmer’s Neo-New Labour have pledged to repeal the Trade Union Act 2016 and any new anti-strike legislation. Signs of solid opposition providing an alternative vision. They have tabled a meaningless motion of regret at the 11th hour in response to the Public Order Bill; they cannot wait for their turn to play Churchill. They have pledged to invest £28 billion a year in a new green revolution; that is not just opposition but a Government in waiting. They know they cannot possibly afford that after 13 years of economic sabotage and stagnation. So, it is just more lies. Oh, what a surprise. They have pledged to block all future North Sea oil extraction. Finally, we could have a leader that believes in environmental protection. They have backed new nuclear, with its immortal untreatable waste, to be the centrepiece of their green transformation. Perhaps while in Davos, somebody promised a sizable donation. They have stated that now that we have a law abolishing our right to protest on the statute books, we should “let it settle in”; it is clear he is just another authoritarian-in-waiting. He has slogans galore. That is what makes a politician. They have copied Gove’s homework, planning to carve up the nation. And what yet of “Freeports”? Only one or two backbenchers are trying to draw our attention. Starmer has barely given them a mention.
Insanity is contagious, that’s not my quotation, but Brexit-branded treason is the contagion, and there is no denying that they all want to keep letting it rip and carve up what’s left of Grim Britain.
Cormack Lawson
