EUROPE COULD ‘GO DOWN THE DRAIN’
Warning as the world watches how Britain handles EU exit
A BADLY handled Brexit would send Europe “down the drain”, a top German politician said yesterday.
Chancellor Angela Merkel’s deputy Sigmar Gabriel warned that if the UK got everything it wanted, other countries would leave the EU and the union would be “in deep trouble”.
He said that the world was now looking at Europe as an unstable continent. He said: “If we organise Brexit in the wrong way, then we’ll be in deep trouble. We need to make sure we don’t allow Britain to keep the nice things, so to speak, while taking no responsibility.”
He also said talks between the European Union and the United States on a massive new free trade deal had essentially failed “though nobody is admitting it”, boosting hopes of a swift transatlantic deal for Britain when it quits the EU.
He added: “Brexit is bad but it won’t hurt us as much economically as some fear – it’s more of a psychological problem and it’s a huge problem politically.”
On Wednesday, Theresa May will gather her Cabinet at the Prime Minister’s country retreat Chequers for talks on a successful Brexit.
Ministers have been ordered to
produce a “blueprint of opportunities” for their areas of responsibility.
It comes amid claims “miffed” proEU civil servants are trying to frustrate the work of Brexit ministers.
Mr Gabriel, Germany’s vice chancellor and economy minister, leads the centre-left Social Democrats, the junior partner in Mrs Merkel’s coalition government.
Conservative MP and leading Brexit campaigner Steve Baker said: “The minister needs to be absolutely clear what he is talking about. To govern ourselves is to take responsibility.
“The British public are clear they wish to have migration determined by the British Parliament.
“Of course we are not going to be joining in to bail out other European countries. It seems to be an admission that other countries know the EU isn’t working for them either.
“Certainly we need a new basis for trade and friendly co-operation across the whole of Europe.”
And pro-Brexit Conservative MEP David Campbell Bannerman added: “It’s all bravado. The reality is, they need a trade deal more than we do.
“How are they going to punish us? We import a lot more goods from the EU than we export to it, therefore we are in a stronger position.”
Mr Gabriel also claimed that US talks on the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership had essentially failed after three years.
“Negotiations have de facto failed because we Europeans did not want to subject ourselves to American demands,” he told broadcaster ZDF. “Things aren’t moving on that front.”
Mr Campbell Bannerman said he had also heard indications that the TTIP was “in serious trouble”.
And citing US President Barack Obama’s pre-referendum threat that Britain would be “at the back of the queue” for a trade deal with the States if it left the EU, Mr Campbell Bannerman insisted that if TTIP fails “Britain could shoot to the front of the queue – we as a single player can move much faster”.
Fellow Tory MEP Daniel Hannan said: “I’ll offer a pound to a euro that there will be a US-UK free trade agreement in place long before a US-EU agreement, if indeed that happens at all.
“What’s more, it will be an agreement based on free competition and maximum advantage to the consumer, rather than on corporatism and the protection of vested interests.
“Leaving the EU won’t just allow us to pursue a more deregulated, more mercantile, more global future, it could revitalise free trade worldwide.”
Tory MP Mr Baker said that if TTIP failed it would be because of a wide variation in laws and standards across the EU. He said: “The UK is better placed to strike trade deals with the Anglosphere, when we’ve got the same common law tradition, similar low levels of corruption and a commercial mindset.
“We are already well aligned to eliminate all barriers to trade and create a zone of prosperity far larger than the European Union.”
Meanwhile, pro-EU MPs are backing a new group called Open Britain – based on the failed Remain campaign.
It is expected to argue for continued closer ties with Europe.
THE European Union is the enemy of democracy. Completely unaccountable to its member states, run by a vast oligarchy of unelected officials, it despises the very concept of the popular will.
This contempt for electorates is shared by the EU’s fanatical supporters in Britain, as shown by their refusal to accept the outcome of the recent referendum. Never in modern political history has there been a more arrogant bunch of sore losers.
As they continue their pig-headed campaign against Brexit, they parade their disdain for the public. Convinced of their own superiority, they snobbishly deride Leave voters as ignorant, bigoted, xenophobic, reactionary and gullible.
But it is the Remoaners who are prejudiced, foolish and deluded. They are the ones who swallowed all the hollow propaganda about the need for European integration. They are the ones who fell for the scaremongering of Project Fear, which has now been exposed for its emptiness by Britain’s continuing economic success.
Yet still the pro-EU zealots continue with their quest to subvert British democracy. Next Saturday they will hold a “March for Europe” in London to protest against Brexit, backed up by other demonstrations across the country.
The march will be immediately followed on Monday by a debate at Westminster on the possibility of holding a Second Referendum on Britain’s EU membership. This discussion in the Commons is the result of a petition calling for another vote, signed by more than four million people, though that total is less than a quarter of the 17.4 million who voted for Brexit in June, by far the biggest display of popular support for any cause ever in Britain.
AHOST dogmatic pro-EU politicians have taken up the theme of the need for a second referendum. These include the Labour leadership contender Owen Smith who proclaimed last week that as “a passionate pro-European” he would “fight tooth and nail to keep us in the EU”. His proposed tactics include not just a second referendum of but also a Parliamentary challenge against any Government move to trigger Article 50, the clause in the Lisbon Treaty that signals the start of the process of EU withdrawal.
Smith’s stance is mirrored by Tottenham MP David Lammy who has claimed that the Brexit decision can be ignored because the referendum was “advisory and non-binding”. In a pathetic battle-cry that mixed apocalyptic hysteria with anti-democratic scorn, Lammy recently told his followers, “Wake up, we do not have to do this. We can stop this madness and bring this nightmare to an end.” What nightmare was that: the return of freedom?
In case they cannot directly overturn the Referendum decision, the Remoaners are also plotting to thwart the majority by opportunistic delaying tactics, legal obstructions, and drawn-out negotiations.
The theory is that if Brexit is prevented for long enough then the public will lose their appetite for change and the status quo will be maintained.
It is an approach that was summed up last weekend by the former head of the civil service Lord O’Donnell, a classic establishment type, who told the BBC that Brexit “is not inevitable”, partly because self-governance and
BUT mass EU immigration was precisely what the British people voted against in June. Democratic control of our own borders, in place of the anarchy inspired by Brussels, was a key factor in the Brexit triumph.
Contrary to what the Treasury might pretend, free movement has nothing to do with economic growth. The policy is a political tool for building the new EU superstate through the creation of a new concept of European citizenship.
Thankfully we have voted to reject any British involvement with all that destructive federalism and social engineering.
The wishes of the public must be respected. Any stitch-up by the establishment will be intolerable. Outside the selfindulgent ranks of the Remoaners, the British people are fed up with a smug elite that for too long has ignored their views and treated their national identity with contempt.
For their own cynical ends, the Remoaners prattle about the complexities of the Brexit process. But it is simple. We do not need armies of officials and endless negotiations as if we were still in the EU and had to bow to Brussels dictates. We are now in charge of our own destiny.
The whole point of the Referendum result is that we decided that our national sovereignty should no longer be the plaything of foreign bureaucrats. The sooner the Tory Government gets on with Brexit the better.
‘The Remoaners have disdain for the public’