Now that both the House of Commons and the House of Lords approved the necessary enabling legislation, the U.K. will formally exit the European Union on January 31 at 11 p.m. local time at long last.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson and his Conservative Party won a landslide in the December 12 general election on the “get Brexit done” slogan. It remains to be seen during the ongoing negotiations whether the U.K. will, in practice, actually break free of the EU regulatory entanglements and trade policy and resume full national sovereignty.
EU officials and Johnson signed the withdrawal agreement today, so it’s a done deal, to this point, at least. The mostly ceremonial European Parliament also needs to give its approval, but that is expected to be a foregone conclusion.
Britain First = America First
In reflecting on the nearly four-year struggle to implement the June 23, 2016, Leave referendum, former politician Douglas Carswell reflected on how the fear-mongering, London-centric political and media Remain (Remainiac) establishment, including what he appropriately described as fraud-casters, tried night and day to block Brexit and thwart the will of the people.
American readers will find that his comments can also apply to the similar forces that have tried to undermine President Trump’s America First agenda. This includes the Democrat/media complex, the federal bureaucrats in the so-called Deep State, the Never Trumpers, and Obama-appointed radical federal judges.
Trump’s foes are the same geniuses that allowed China to hollow out American manufacturing, threw open our southern border to massive human trafficking and drug smuggling, love crony capitalism and corporate welfare, pushed Russia collusion and impeachment hoaxes, got us bogged down in endless wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, turned Libya into an ISIS them park, tried to get us into a war in Syria, and bribed Iran to enter into a phony nuclear deal.
These anti-MAGA experts have never stopped demonizing Trump voters in the same way that their limousine liberal counterparts caricatured Brexit supporters in Britain.
Trump has consistently said, moreover, that he will prioritize a post-Brexit trade agreement with the U.K., unlike Obama who meddled in the 2016 vote by asserting that the Britain would be in the back of the queue.
Fake News Peddlers
In an assessment that will resonate on this side of the Atlantic, here’s, i part, what Carswell opined in his essay posted at Brexit Central:
‘I am still stunned by the anti-democratic antics of the political classes, the BBC, the Civil Service, Supreme Court, and the clique of mediocrities with which Theresa May surrounded herself. Their efforts to cheat democracy are unworthy of a developed democracy…
“The post-Brexit antics of the establishment is the game changer. Ordinary folk can see the anti-Brexit elite for what they are – and voters are not going to come to heel ever again. The deference has gone and soon, I hope too, the self-serving elite that presumed our democracy was their choice. I suspect Brexit means the death of the idea that a small technocratic elite can order human social and economic affairs from above for us. The opinion-forming classes are also now very vulnerable. For years, broadcasters portrayed those of us who wanted democratic self-government as xenophobes and bigots. Millions of ordinary folk can now see that it’s the broadcasters are all too often fraud-casters…
“I want Britain to have more liberty – in economic terms, with more free trade and business innovation. Liberty in terms of more competition of ideas – especially ideas to tackle public policy challenges. I would also like more liberty in terms of political discourse. Instead of third-rate career politicians and media pundits, with a only a glib understanding of the world, lording it over us, we need to ensure politics is a competition between the best people and best ideas.”
It’s worth noting that Carswell was somewhat opportunistic if not disingenuous as a member of parliament. For various reasons, he jumped ship from the Conservatives to Ukip in 2014 and then left Ukip in the lurch by becoming an independent in 2017. He declined to run for reelection June 2017 general election. It’s perhaps roughly kind of like the four Brexit Party MEPs who defected to the Conservative Party just a few days before the December 12, 2019, general election.
Nigel Farage was the leader of both Ukip at the time and now the Brexit Party. It was Farage’s decision to stand down in 317 constituencies plus winning a huge chunk of the Labor Party Leave vote elsewhere that allowed Johnson’s Conservatives to win a “stonking” majority in parliament.
