Thursday, July 11, 2019

TLDR News on the latest attempt to avoid a hard Brexit

If the UK Parliament is unable to come to some sort of brokered resolution regarding Brexit, then on October 31, the UK will experience a so-called "hard Brexit," i.e., the act of the British exit from the European Union will occur automatically and by default, without any trade arrangements having been made. The economic damage of a hard Brexit will be enormous, possibly even catastrophic, if no measures are put in place to soften the severity of such an amputation. TLDR News, below, explains how a parliamentary vote this past Tuesday might keep a prorogation (i.e., a pause in parliamentary actions and decisions) from happening. It's very likely that Boris Johnson will be the next UK prime minister, and everyone is predicting that Johnson will insist on proroguing Parliament until past the October 31 hard-Brexit deadline, thus ensuring a hard Brexit. Johnson's strategy is something of a "let the disaster happen, then clean it all up later" action: use your battleaxe to cut off the patient's arm, then cauterize the wound before too much blood is lost. Anesthesia is for pussies.

While I think that Johnson (or whoever) needs to work quickly to establish deeper trading ties with the US, Eastern Europe, et al., well before October 31, I'm basically for a hard Brexit. It's going to be hell on the British people, and it's going to mean years of economic hardship while the country builds itself back up, but the long-term results will be worth it: Britain will no longer be a slave to the EU; it'll enjoy full sovereignty and the return of its ancient dignity, and once the UK gains the ability to broker trade deals on its own terms, unmindful of over-restrictive EU regulations, the country will right itself economically. I might be a very old man by the time that happens, but I'll smile and hoist a glass to Old Blighty on the day I get the news that the United Kingdom is officially in the clear.


The unfortunately named MP Dominic Grieve, mentioned in the above video, is doing his damnedest to keep a no-deal Brexit from happening. I think he's standing in the way of history. Grieve, for his part, apparently views the coming prorogation as a violation of democracy, which is something of a joke to me, now that I'm beginning to understand a bit more about how the UK Parliament is run (i.e., not very democratically). We'll see how all this plays out over the coming months. October 31 is no longer very far away.



3 comments:

  1. Unless Britain undoes much of her socialism, including the National Health System, her chances of recovery will be slim.

    Bill

    ReplyDelete
  2. I'll be curious to see what Boris Johnson has in mind re: the UK's priorities post-Brexit.

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  3. I fear the UK is already in "has been" territory and I'm not sure Brexit will reverse that.

    Still, to paraphrase what an ex told me "no country is totally worthless, it can always serve as a bad example".

    Seems to me the policies being proposed by the Democrats are exactly the type of programs that led to the UK's decline. It will be interesting to see if Americans turn out to be as ignorant as the Brits.

    ReplyDelete

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