Eurostar deliberately leaves a third of its seats empty because of border delays
This is the anniversary of Brexit – that ugly word from an ugly government, spoken by ugly people. For Scotland, dragging us out of the European Union has been a disaster. You can be certain the British State analised it would reduce Scotland’s economy and render us cut off from trading rights. We have lost billions in farming grants, annual farm workers, nursing staff, university exchanges, free and open travel. Companies suffer massive amounts of bureacxracy and many have sold up or gone bankrupt. We suffer a great deal more than I can list here. It weakened the EU so much it is now caught up in an American-driven war with Ukraine. England loves being at war with Europe. It wants the Ukraine war to last a long time. The Republic of Ireland flourishes and it uses the Euro. It has twenty-seven other states watching its back. Scotland is now at the mercy of a brutal, racist, corrupt bastard of a British government.
Colonisation of Scotland’s land, institutions and rights continues unabated, nothing stemmed or stopped permanently by our weak nationalist government. We are to be a carbon copy of English society, except second-class and not in control of our own country, our own borders. We are forced to join EFTA (four other nations) and then negotiate an acceptable EU entry later. Sheesh! Writing these few lines has me spitting, blood pressure rising. Safer to leave it to Polly Toynbee.
A BITTER TASTE
by Polly Toynbee
Today’s Brexit anniversary marks three years of political mayhem and economic calamity. It is also 50 years since Britain joined the EEC. Ten years ago this month, David Cameron made his shameless Bloomberg speech pledging a referendum to placate his party and Ukippers, who he had previously called “fruitcakes”, “loonies” and “closet racists”.
Cameron wrongly thought Brexiteers could be appeased, but they proved insatiable. The more harm their Brexit does, the more extreme versions they demand, chasing those impossible phantasms they mis-sold to the country.
“Remoaner” was a clever Brexit epithet for the 48% of us who voted remain. The heartbreak of this act of national self-harm left remainers keening in grief, in a long moan for the loss of an ideal, along with certain economic decline. The ache, too, was over the broken old Labour alliances of interest and belief, cities against towns, old against young, those with qualifications against those with few. With the sorrow there was rage, white-hot and vengeful, against cynical Brexit leaders who knowingly sold snake oil and fairy dust.
Grief ebbs when looking to what comes next. David Lammy, the shadow foreign secretary, last week promised there would be a civilised friendship with Europe under a Labour government. There was talk of reconnecting “a tarnished UK” with its closest allies, “for security and prosperity”; “reducing friction” on trade; unblocking the Horizon scheme; strengthening student links and pledging a “clean power alliance”.
But there is to be no rejoining, no way back to the customs union or single market, Labour says, so as to deny Tory strategists what they yearn for: a re-run of Brexit at the next general election to distract from the economy, the cost of living crisis and collapsed public services. Distressed Labour rejoiners point to how many leavers are now Bregretters. With this rapid shift still ongoing, the pollster John Curtice says that 57% of people are in favour of rejoining, with just 43% for staying out, while 49% think Brexit weakens the economy.
Remainer grief eases at signs of a country reuniting against the liars who pulled off this trick. But it’s rash to imagine that even a 14-point lead means a pro-EU referendum would be won: we know what referendums do. Besides, egocentric Britain forgets that Brussels, with a war on its doorstep and its own economic woes, might shun yet more negotiations with the UK. Let’s not forget the MEPs and envoys we insulted them with, the spite and mendacity spread by the likes of Nigel Farage and Daniel Hannan in the European parliament or David Frost across the negotiating table.
There is some cheer: these polls cause such alarm to the Brexit mis-leaders that they are the moaners now – the Bremoaners. Hannan, the ex-MEP and arch-purveyor of Brexit fabrications, is trying to scare defecting Brexit voters back. “There really does seem to be a plot to overturn Brexit,” he warns Telegraph readers. He uses Lammy’s speech as evidence, plus Labour’s resistance to the EU deregulation law. “There is little doubt the Europhile blob is giving it a go,” he writes, “to hold Britain within the EU’s regulatory orbit pending an attempt at re-entry.”
He also warns: “For their plan to have the slightest chance of success, they need to convince the country that Brexit has been an economic disaster.” But that ship has long sailed. Look what Brexit has done: a 4% shrinkage in long-run productivity relative to remaining in the EU, expects the Office for Budget Responsibility, inflation and energy prices are higher than in the EU, trade has fallen by almost a fifth, while the government itself says the much-trumpeted Australian deal will raise GDP by less than 0.1% a year by 2035. Brexit has raised food prices by 6% says the LSE, while draining the workforce. Eurostar also deliberately leaves a third of seats empty due to crippling EU/UK border delays.
The Brexit press can’t hide these inconvenient truths. Jeremy Warner, the Telegraph’s associate editor, challenges Jeremy Hunt’s bizarrely Pollyanna-ish assessment of the economy, writing “trade with our European neighbours is faltering badly,” due to Brexit, with “the rather awkward fact that the UK is the only G7 economy yet to recover to its pre-pandemic size”. “The grim reality is that the country seems to be falling apart on almost every front” and “car production has fallen to its lowest since the 1950s”.
All that is why Prof Matthew Goodwin says that “Bregret is taking hold in Britain” with only one in five thinking it’s going well. Brexiters are now the minority, Bremoaning like hell because no amount of Brexit boosterism will bring back those lost supporters who know exactly whom to blame. Few will agree that their pet project has failed because it wasn’t “hard Brexit” enough. Eventually extreme Brexiters will subside back into their irrelevant coterie of cultists, unforgiven and moaning all the way.
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Grouse Beater 
Brexit was always the right wing Tory wet dream of deregulation of banking, the protection of tax havens for the rich, the race to the bottom for workers wages and rights, including your human rights. the distruction of the welfare state and NHS. In this dystopian nightmare we are being bled dry by parictical elite carpetbaggers for our electricity, gas and oil even the basics such as food. The greedy 1% have made billions out of us who in turn enrich our politicians through so called lobbying and loans for which purposes is undisclosed. The elites are intent to recreate a medieval feudal society where only the poor pay tax, in the mold of Prince John.
Where is Sturgeons sham independence party in all this mayhem , they are as quiet as mice content with their 84k wages, 240k expenses and then theirs stoker for lobbying, never mind the big fat pension at the end .We need real change now the SNP have now become a big part of the problem holding us in this coercive Union. They have morphed into our colonial overseers. GRA is the only thing that interests thei warped out look. We cannot put our trust in one person or party ever again we need Sturgeon away and to refocused he drive for independence. All Scottish Nationals MPs and MSPs should be made to make an oath to pursue independence above all else. If they cannot do this they should be removed form office. We only vote SNP for Independence not for Narcissist dictatorship cult of no users or GRA distraction politics.
Dissolve the Union.