Around the time that we entered the 21st century, the politics of the Western world – and notably of Britain – began subtly to be transformed. Since this happened by a process of osmosis, at least in its early stages it went largely unnoticed; now, however, the process is so far advanced that its excesses have become glaringly obvious to any intelligent observer. The political process which, in the post-War years, was infused with a realism born of the harsh experience of world war, has by now descended into the realm of fantasy. Our leaders are living in a world of delusion.
Of course, politicians have always lied shamelessly to the public, but this phenomenon is different: they have been lying also to themselves. In Britain, the first exponent of this world of mirages was Tony Blair: if ever the qualification of “truth” with a possessive pronoun was appropriate, it was when the Great Charlatan expounded “his” truth, as when Blair presented to the House of Commons intelligence regarding Saddam Hussein’s weapons capability described by the Joint Intelligence Committee as “sporadic and patchy” that, when sprinkled with his gold dust, became “extensive, detailed and authoritative”.
The United States was equally living a delusion. One might have thought the experience of 9/11 would have shaken America back into a mood of serious realpolitik: instead, it indulged in a neo-con fantasy that has indefinitely destabilised the Middle East and brought the United States to bitter humiliation in Afghanistan. The Democratic Party has hugely enlarged the La La Land dimension of public life by using the power of the state to insist that human beings can change sex and to penalise anyone whose integrity and intellectual self-respect inspires them to assert objective scientific truth.
The force behind this infantilisation of the developed world is globalism, seeking to annihilate all obstacles in its path to control of humanity, most notably the family, national identity and objective truth. The globalist left, in response to evolving situations, has gone from a servile scientism, using unverified scientific claims to advance its climate alarmist agenda, to Luddite hostility to science, since its objective truths discredit the “trans” fantasy. But, for the most potent example of globalist delusion, there is no need to look further than Britain’s most proximate contact with the cult, in the EU’s stubborn efforts to retain control of part of Britain.
The Northern Ireland Protocol, simply by being part of the landscape for three years, has attained a spurious appearance of normalcy, when in fact it is totally abnormal. Two sovereign nations of Europe have their territory partly occupied by a hostile power: Ukraine and the United Kingdom. Whatever possessed Boris Johnson to concede the Northern Ireland Protocol – a situation that even Theresa May had said no British prime minister could accept – it is an abdication of sovereignty that has no precedent.
The alleged pretext is that the Republic of Ireland must be protected from acknowledging the objective reality of an international border across “the island of Ireland”. Yet that was the inevitable consequence of Britain’s departure from the European Union. To indulge the susceptibilities of the Dublin government, the border between Ireland and the United Kingdom has notionally been transferred to the Irish Sea, leaving Northern Ireland within the European Union and, by extension, in de facto trade and customs union with the Irish Republic.
That it might seriously discommode Britain and Northern Ireland to submit to such an arrangement is of no consequence: it is Ireland that must be accommodated, because it is a member of the EU. So, the United Kingdom must submit to its borders being altered and officials of the EU – of which it is not a member – imposing checks and restrictions on trade between two areas of the UK. The cliché “You couldn’t make it up” hardly meets the case.
The Goebbels-style Big Lie that is being invoked to justify this absurd situation is that it is necessary to preserve the Good Friday Agreement. Why? Because, supposedly, a “hard border” (surely all international borders are hard) might provoke republican paramilitaries to attack visible border posts. In that barely plausible case, it would be the responsibility of the security forces on both sides of the border to suppress any terrorism as it arose. In today’s changed political climate there would be little support for those resorting to violence.
But the supreme irony is that the Protocol is damaging the legacy of the Good Friday Agreement inside Northern Ireland, with devolved government paralysed. That, of course, is precisely what the revanchists in Brussels intended. They want to punish Britain for Brexit by trying to unravel the United Kingdom. The Dublin government has been a collaborator in that agenda. So has the United States, whose dotard president is subservient to an Irish-American Democrat caucus. Joe Biden loses no opportunity of proclaiming his Irish origins.
What Irish origins? President Biden’s great-great-great-grandfather William Biden, born in Westbourne, West Sussex in 1789, migrated to Maryland in the 1820s. Not even the most creative reconfiguration of the Irish border can credibly incorporate Sussex into the Emerald Isle. Of course, Biden has plenty of Irish ancestors on his mother’s side, but it is more common to attribute a man’s heritage to his paternal ancestry. It shows scant regard for that heritage to disown it and opportunistically embrace the Irish side.
If Biden had true aspirations to be a peacemaker, he would equally cultivate his joint heritage instead of pandering to the outdated Irish-American caucus, capering in shamrock-bedecked costumes on St Patrick’s Day. Biden has let it be known he wants the negotiations over the Northern Ireland Protocol completed in time to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Good Friday Agreement. What kind of way is that to conduct diplomacy?
He will probably get his way, though. We have learned from bitter experience that no British negotiator ever enters into discussions with Brussels without a remit to sell the pass. With a globalist technocrat such as Rishi Sunak running the show, we may confidently expect more of the same. The clever money is on Sunak dropping the Protocol Bill, which would give Britain much-needed powers to overrule EU demands, in return for a rhetorical “victory” that would not even conceal the iron grip of the EU continuing to intervene in internal British policy.
Why are we even having discussions with the EU, which we left three years ago? We should invoke Article 16 and throw out their jobsworths with clipboards, paralysing trade in Northern Ireland. Brussels has no more right to intervene in Northern Irish affairs than has Nicaragua. It is time to throw another douche of cold water over the EU’s pretensions and delusions. What could better express the delusory nature of the EU than an imaginary border that contradicts international law?
Even now, the deluded Remainers are struggling to maintain every possible alignment with EU regulations, in the demented belief it will help them to drag Britain back in before too long. Why would we want alignment, when we left the EU precisely to end alignment and strike out on our own?
From the beginning of the Brexit process, there was a psychological imposition projected by Brussels whereby, because it represented 27 states, it was somehow the high contracting party and Britain a suppliant. The UK was treated like a prisoner before a parole board when, in reality, the electorate of a sovereign nation had determined to resume full sovereignty. The anarchic resistance posed by the political parties in Parliament, including the Tories, to that democratic expression of the electoral will brought home to many how the entitlement fantasies of the deep state had corroded our constitution.
We must tear out from our body politic every last tendril connecting us to Brussels and resume our sovereign borders and rights. We should have left the EU on the “dreaded” no-deal terms that the Remainers tried to paint as the end of civilisation. Article 16 would be the next-best thing. But the EU would punish us! Well, since we have a deficit with the EU of £67bn in trade in goods, that would be what is known in psychiatric circles as self-harm on the part of Brussels.
What Britain needs is a clean break with Brussels bureaucracy. At the same time, we need to regain control of our borders by withdrawing from the ECHR. None of the legacy parties would ever contemplate such moves, which means that under Tory or Labour governance we can never return to being a sovereign nation. But just as Joe Public is undeceived when the authorities inform him that a “trans” individual is of a different sex from his biological make-up, so the voters do not share the fantasies of our rulers.
Rejoin the EU? Adopt the euro and the integrationist programme? Submerge our forces in a European army, when the Germans do not even want third countries to send tanks to beleaguered Ukraine and the chancellor virtually has to be mugged by his NATO allies before he will concede?
You could not look for a better example of the haze of delusion under which the globalist elites labour than the most recent utterance from our old friend Guy Verhofstadt. During the protracted Brexit struggle Verhofstadt produced some gems of entitled Brusselsthink, but nothing to rival his claim this week that, but for Brexit, Russia would not have invaded Ukraine. Of course, in the circles in which Verhofstadt moves, it is de rigueur to blame Brexit for climate change, obesity and the outbreak of the First World War.
However, to strike a note of reality, Russia invaded Ukraine and occupied Crimea by force on 20 February, 2014, at which time Britain was a fully embedded member of the EU, with the egregious Dave gloriously reigning, alongside that Liberal chap with whom everyone agreed, but whose name now eludes us, as Deputy Prime Minister and the EU referendum still 16 months away. It is interesting to see how firm a grasp on geopolitical realities the EU elites possess.
With plea bargaining now agreed in the EU parliamentary Qatar bribery scandal, the unfolding legal process will soon give us an insight into the corruption – running into billions – that is endemic in the EU institutions. It will be interesting to see how the Remainer media spin that. Meantime, the clever money is on Sunak following in the footsteps of his predecessors and selling Britain down the river. The electorate is prepared for that and knows how to retaliate. The old Tory grandees’ adage, disparaging the lumpen electorate – “They have nowhere else to go” – may soon be exploded as startlingly as was Remainer complacency in 2016.
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