Maybe a war would fix things
Trump says he is declassifying all the things, and Boris Johnson appears to be hoping for a war with France.
Senior Conservatives have criticised Boris Johnson’s handling of the Brexit trade negotiations and his threat to deploy Royal Navy gunboats to patrol UK fishing waters in the event of no deal.
With the Sunday deadline for reaching an agreement fast approaching, the Ministry of Defence confirmed four 80-metre armed vessels had been placed on standby to guard British waters from EU trawlers from 1 January, in the absence of an agreement on fishing rights.
Tobias Ellwood, the Conservative chair of the Commons defence committee, called the threat of deploying gunboats “irresponsible”, when attention should be focused on striking a deal, while the former EU commissioner Chris Patten accused the prime minister of behaving like an “English nationalist”.
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Patten, also speaking to [BBC Radio 4’s] Today, accused Johnson of being on a “runaway train of English exceptionalism”. The former Conservative party chairman added: “I hope that I’m wrong to feel so depressed about the outlook but I don’t think that Mr Johnson is a Conservative, I think he is an English nationalist.
“And all the things that Conservatives used to believe in – like standing up for the union, like not attacking our institutions, like the judges, like believing in international cooperation – seem to have gone out of the window.”
We know the feeling. Boy do we know the feeling.
I have decided not to send out Christmas cards this year. I cannot, in conscience, bring myself to write ‘Merry Christmas’ or use a card with that printed on it, when the great, big, wonderful Christmas present that de Pfeffel & his boys & girls is providing the hapless British is a No-Deal Brexit decorated with clamourings & posturings about ‘sovereignty’.
Funny thing (OK maybe not so funny) is that for nearly ten years following the scraping of its Nimrod fleet (in 2011 I think) the UK had no long distance patrol aircrafts to speak of, the replacement program having been cancelled for budgetary reasons. Also because of the gross incompetence of the MOD, don’t get me started! Obviously, Russian subs really advantage of the situation and from 2014 Britain had to rely on its allies to patrol its own seas, and US, Canadian, and yes, French aircrafts were based temporarily at RAF Lossiemouth to that purpose until this year.
So my first reaction on seeing that Daily Mail headline today was: “What? Are they going to ask us to do that for them too?”
That would be good, we could re-designate all French fishing boats as military vessels and send the bill to the Brits for fishing in their own waters!
Ha!
It seems Boris is finding out that non-union member states don’t get the benefits of being a union member. Who could possibly have known??!/?
I’m reminded of the comment made about the Parti Quebecois’s advocacy of “sovereignty-association” back in the 70s/80s, which was vaguely defined but seemed to be a similar sort of “we’ll be independent, but keep all the stuff we like” — that it was “divorce but with bed privileges.”
Turns out the EU isn’t willing to grant those privileges.