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Brexit – Is the UK really free from the EU? Part 5 – What we face from the EU post-Brexit

Editor's Note: This series of posts takes a closer look at the Agreement that was arrived at between the UK and the EU and signed on 24th December 2020. The use of the expression, "TCA" in this series of posts refers to the "Trade and Cooperation Agreement" signed between the UK and the EU on December 24th 2020. This series of articles was first written in early 2021, so please bear in mind that some of the content may appear somewhat dated.

[Click here for Part 1]

[Click here for Part 2]

[Click here for Part 3]

[Click here for Part 4]

What we face from the EU post-Brexit

It’s not difficult to see how problems will develop in the trading relations between the UK and the EU, post-Brexit. We only have to look at the struggle Switzerland has had in recent years in maintaining a satisfactory trading relationship with Brussels. The situation is so bad that the Swiss have actually given the UK a friendly warning about trading with the EU as a non-EU country.

As you’ve guessed by now, responsibility for the deteriorating situation here lies exclusively with the EU. This lesson is especially apt for us in relation to Northern Ireland. There is a similarity in that the province has a land border with an EU country – the Irish Republic. Switzerland has a border with several EU countries. It is a non-EU country that trades extensively with the EU (in 2019 it had a trade surplus of nearly 40 billion euros with the bloc).

As a result, the Swiss have found themselves constantly under pressure to abide by Brussels’ rules if they want to continue trading with the EU. These rules relate not just to trade, but to such things as the process of manufacture of products, and impinge more and more on the ability of the Swiss to make their own regulations for the benefit of themselves. More sinisterly, these rules relate also to matters such as immigration control.

It’s not just that. The EU want Switzerland as a “member-state” and to adopt its own insane “free movement of labour” policies. There have been a series of bilateral treaties in recent years that Switzerland has had to agree to as the price of maintaining access to the European Single Market. As a result of these, there has been free movement of people between Switzerland and the EU since 2002.

Each time the EU expands to include more “member states”, Switzerland, which clearly regrets abandoning control of its borders, is pressured to accept the additional influx that inevitably follows. Further bilateral treaties invariably contain clauses forcing the Swiss to do just that. The latest bilateral treaty is the Institutional Agreement between the EU and Switzerland.

The EU covets the unique country’s profitable industries and it’s stock market. It seeks to destroy the noble Swiss culture and way of life by blending it in into the pseudo-culture of multi-racialism, celebrity-worship and materialism endured by the citizens of EU countries. The pressure (i.e. blackmail) brought to bear on this little country has been enormous.

Now the EU is seeking to undermine Switzerland’s financial market. It has been making the same arrogant demand as they are now making of us (see Part 3 – Trade in services). They are refusing to grant “equivalence” to the Swiss, just as they are to us, even though the Swiss have far more expertise in financial trading than any EU country (now that the UK has left).

Can you see, now, why the Withdrawal Agreement was named “Trade and Cooperation Agreement”? A more honest title would be the “Trade and Coercion Agreement”.

This brings us to one of the most important sections of the TCA.

The “Northern Ireland protocol”

This “protocol” was the cause of many sticking points in the negotiations. The EU have used the peculiar geographical location of the province of Northern Ireland to try and weaken the position of the UK both throughout the negotiations and into the future. Their negotiators wrung more concessions out of the UK by seeing problems in the Northern Irish-Republic border that weren’t there in the first place.

Thanks to the TCA the UK now faces the prospect of having the same problems as the Swiss in the future, i.e. more and more erosion of national sovereignty, and millions of man-hours of sheer frustration in trying to do the impossible – to come to mutually beneficial agreements with the EU.

The EU will doubtless continue to use the Northern Ireland “protocol” as a means of separating Northern Ireland from the UK, fostering the break-up of the UK and keeping open the possibility that a future British government, or its regional replacements, will be forced to crawl, cap-in-hand, to be re-admitted, one by one, to the EU.

Their rationale has been that they are afraid of vast volumes of goods coming across the Irish border into the Republic to illegally flood the EU’s Single Market. This “danger” is extremely remote, given the low volume of trade that regularly crosses that border (it totalled about £4.7 billion worth of goods in 2016). Nevertheless, it warranted additional months of “negotiations” and the creation of the “Northern Ireland Protocol”.

Illegal trade (e.g. in red diesel) between the two countries has been the subject matter of regular talks between the UK and the Republic for many years. Overall these have been very satisfactory and productive. But that’s not what the EU wants. It wants total control. It ordered Irish premier (now former premier), Leo Varadkar, to scrap these talks, which, of course, he did.

That left the problem unresolved and ready for the EU’s own “solution”, which, of course, is to leave Northern Ireland effectively stranded inside the Single Market and subject to the rulings of the European Court of Justice (ECJ). It would then be ripe to be handed over to the Republic, and therefore back to the EU, probably by a future Labour government.

Day to day trade through the Irish Sea now faces serious and prolonged disruption. EU red tape ensures that many lorries containing goods for import/export to Northern Ireland are being delayed. Many companies on the UK mainland are refusing to send goods to the province on account of the paperwork and expense.

At least there is Article 16 of the Protocol, which says that if it leads “to serious economic, societal or environmental difficulties that are liable to persist, or to diversion of trade, the EU or UK may unilaterally take appropriate safeguard measures”. It looks like this is one part of the TCA that will be of some use.

For now, the province is bound by over 300 EU directives and regulations, which can be amended at any time by the European Commission unilaterally. The good folk of Northern Ireland will have no say in such amendments. The Republic will have more of a say, being still a member of the EU. The only political entity that has any hope of salvaging this situation and preventing the loyal citizens of Northern Ireland from finding themselves under foreign rule is the DUP. Let us hope they do not flinch from the task.

“Classified Information”

Security and intelligence is covered in a separate agreement, the Security of Information Agreement, (“to fulfil the objectives of strengthening the security of each Party in all ways”) running to just eight pages, which seems rather strange. Why not simply have it as part of the main 1,246 page Agreement, which I’m sure could have its title amended to accommodate security and intelligence, or as the EU likes to call it, “classified information”.

Why have an agreement on this topic at all? Twenty one articles commit each party to adopting certain minimum security requirements and to share security related information. Most of this would be done by any two neighbouring powers anyway, as it would be in their joint best interests. But this being the EU, assuming, as it does, that all governments are as mired in corruption as is the EU itself, it all has to be put into writing.

An example of how whole parts of the TCA were not only drafted in Brussels, but in some cases lifted straight from EU documentation, is contained in Annex LAW-1: EXCHANGES OF DNA, FINGERPRINTS AND VEHICLE REGISTRATION DATA, Chapter 1: Exchange of DNA Data > 5.4. Protocols and Standards to be used for encryption mechanism: s/MIME and related packages.

There, on page 921, is an astonishing statement –

“s/MIME functionality is built into the vast majority of modern e-mail software packages including Outlook, Mozilla Mail as well as Netscape Communicator 4.x and inter-operates among all major e-mail software packages.”

Just above that bloomer is the statement that, “the hash algorithm SHA-1 shall be applied” when encrypting messages between the UK and the EU that contain DNA profile information, i.e. highly sensitive information that needs the highest protection against hackers.

SHA-1 as a hash algorithm was deprecated by the National Institute of Standards and Technology as being insecure as far back as 2011 and was disallowed for use in digital signatures in 2013. This part of the agreement was copied word for word from the EU Council decision of June 23, 2008, on “the stepping up of cross-border cooperation, particularly in combating terrorism and cross-border crime”. No-one in either negotiating team bothered to check if it was still up to date – an elementary measure, given the fast moving world of internet and communications technology.

The same goes for the mention, on the same page, of Mozilla Mail and Netscape Communicator 4.x as being “modern email software”. These software packages date back to around 1997 and have long since been defunct.

One form of communication that is more secure than that adopted by the so-called “European Union”.

At least the Agreement “does not constitute a basis to compel the provision or exchange of classified information by the Parties”. This appears to be one concession wringed out of the EU in the closing days as time was running out. Britain, being a nuclear power, has access to a lot more classified information than does the EU. And that brings us to the next agreement.

The Nuclear Cooperation Agreement

The EU-UK Nuclear Cooperation Agreement attempts “to provide a framework for cooperation between the Parties in the peaceful uses of nuclear energy”. Going through this 18-page document, it’s difficult to see what the point of it is. Much of it consists of preambles, objectives, definitions (including of scope), administrative arrangements, etc.

In a way, this Agreement assists the EU in consolidating its power over its member-states, by providing, in Article 18, that any existing “bilateral civil nuclear cooperation agreements in force between the United Kingdom and Member States of the Community ……shall, where appropriate, be superseded by the provisions of this Agreement.”

What about bureaucracy? Ah, yes. Here we are – Article 19. Naturally, a “joint committee is hereby established by the Parties”.

There’s a complicated provision for determining when the Agreement, comes into force (which had to be resolved by exchanging letters on 30th December and publishing that as a separate document). But then it is to remain in force for an initial period of 30 years, automatically renewable for periods of ten years at a time, unless either party gives notice to terminate.

But even if that happens, several parts of the Agreement are to continue indefinitely under the terms of paragraph 3 of Article 24. Finally, in common with other parts of this whole series of Agreements, it is to be drawn up (in duplicate, of course) in all 24 languages (including Irish!) spoken in the EU.

So much for securing the UK’s departure from the EU.

Not a restoration of national sovereignty

The EU’s negotiators went into the withdrawal negotiations fully expecting to get exactly what they wanted from the UK government, without having to make any concessions at all. And while Theresa May was still in 10 Downing Street they very nearly succeeded.

Boris Johnson, career politician that he is, at least got us an agreement that means that, technically, we are free from the worst parts of the numerous treaties that previous treacherous prime ministers had signed us up to without our consent.

But we have to live with some uncomfortable truths. This isn’t a “restoration of national sovereignty”. It’s a recipe for either future enforced subjugation to Brussels or future conflict. Of the two, conflict is, of course, preferable.

The cost of not standing up to the demands from Brussels over Brexit is huge. According to Facts4EU.Org, by late 2020 UK taxpayers had paid the EU “an eye-watering £41 billion since voting to quit the bloc in 2016”.

Year by year, that’s been £5.1 billion in the second half of 2016, £9.3 billion in 2017, £9.1 billion in 2018, £9.4 billion in 2019 and £8.2 billion in 2020.

According to Facts4EU.Org, that’s not the end of it. “Britain faces the prospect of forking out billions more to Brussels with payments scheduled for the next 44 years.”

But there’s one more factor to consider when looking into the future, and it’s an encouraging one for us. The way we as a nation have conducted ourselves over the long drawn out negotiations to leave has been noted by people living in other EU member countries. And the appalling way in which the EU negotiators have behaved has also not gone unnoticed.

Others will follow us

It’s true we’ve had our share of traitorous remainers, well funded and with powerful friends in high places. And that includes the remainers who paid the EU £39 billion of our money at the start of the Brexit negotiations in return for nothing. But we’ve overcome everything that they could do to try and prevent our leaving, and we’ve done it surprisingly peacefully.

This has set a good example to countries such as France, Greece, Italy, Hungary and Poland, and even perhaps Germany as well. Millions of people in those countries yearn to be free from the EU, its restrictions, meddling and bureaucracy. It won’t take much to spark the creation of a new anti-EU political party, or a sub-division of an existing one, that is dynamic and determined enough to copy what Britain has done.

Other encouraging developments include an initiative from Switzerland, a non-EU country that, as we have seen, has been treated appallingly by the EU. This initiative is for closer cooperation between Switzerland and the UK in the realm of financial trading.

Given the volumes of financial trade conducted by both countries, there is potential here to form a financial market/stock exchange powerful and attractive enough to threaten to cripple all the EU financial markets. This would be a further impetus towards the EU countries affected seeking their own version of Brexit.

The European Union is a bloated, corruption-ridden, tyrannical, modern day Tower of Babel run by failed politicians whose only talent is in lining their own pockets. Like the old Soviet Union, it had to expand in order to survive, and when no more expansion is possible it will collapse. The inevitability of this now stares it in the face. All we have to do is keep a good distance and enjoy the spectacle.

Brexit – where are we now?

Philip Gegan

Brexit. This post was first published in November 2019, before the General Election of the following month swept the bulk of the Remainers out of the House of Commons and gave Boris Johnson a mandate to "get Brexit done" no matter what.

Brexit – We’ve heard so much in the news about

(a) the need for a “deal”; Remainers in Parliament have even passed a law prohibiting a “no-deal” Brexit;

(b) how a second referendum would “let the people decide”; and

(c) if we do insist on leaving, the need to follow the procedure set out in Section 50.

What are we to make of all this? At this time, only two things are clear.

(a) The majority of people in this country want us to leave the EU without any further delay. This includes the “Single Market”, the “Customs Union”, the “European Court of Justice” (sic) and all the other myriad institutions and bodies set up (both before and after the 2016 referendum) in order to make leaving the EU, for any “member-state”, impossible.

(b) The Establishment is determined to prevent us from leaving. If it goes along with Boris Johnson’s “deal” then that will only be because, although considerably better than Theresa May’s deal, it is still not a genuine withdrawal.

Do we need a “deal” at all?

Contrary to what many supporters of Brexit say, we do, strictly speaking, need a deal of some kind in order to continue trading with member-countries of the European Union.

The over-riding problem is this. Over the years the EU has gradually absorbed more and more powers and functions that were formerly exercised by the sovereign nations that were foolish enough to surrender such powers. One of these powers was the ability to conclude trade deals with other countries, both inside and outside the EU (the Customs Union and the Single Market saw to that).

This power is a fundamental component of national sovereignty. Now, no member of the EU can conclude such deals; they’ve lost the power, along with their national sovereignty.

This is an unfortunate fact, but the key difference between it and what the Remainers would have us believe, is that the correct order of events should be not to negotiate a deal and then leave the EU, but to ignore Section 50, leave the EU and only then negotiate a deal.

Let it not be lost on us that individual European countries would invariably be pleased to negotiate a trade deal with us, if they still had the power. But the EU has usurped that power, and will undoubtedly use it against us instead of for the common good of all. They do not want us to thrive outside the EU, and they are not interested in giving us a deal. All they want to do is to try to coerce us into re-applying for membership.

Negotiate from a position of strength

The next problem is this. Any dispute involving two “member states” of the EU, or involving a “member state” (which is what the UK still is) on the one hand and the EU Commission on the other can only be resolved by the EU itself through its Court of Justice (ECJ).

Such a system is contrary to natural justice and to common sense. The ECJ will always rule in favour of the EU. That’s what it’s there for. For that reason alone, the procedure of trying to negotiate a deal whilst still inside the EU is madness.

We should have placed ourselves in the same position as Canada, Mexico, or Japan. That is, outside the EU, and negotiating from a position of strength, free from the jurisdiction of the ECJ.

Another tool to try and stop Brexit

There’s another important point about not leaving the EU without a “deal”. I’ve covered this before, but it’s worth mentioning again. If you go into negotiations of whatever kind loudly declaring that you won’t come away without an agreement with the other side then you seriously need certifying. Yet this is what the Remainers have done, time and again.

You have to reserve to yourself the option to “walk away”. For anyone claiming to be compos mentis to vote in favour of a law making a “no deal” Brexit unlawful is simply absurd.

In reality, these people knew exactly what they were doing. They were using all this nonsense as another tool to try and stop Brexit altogether.

Remainer hypocrisy about
a “Second referendum”

Now let’s deal with all the Remainer pressure for a second referendum.

There’s a very important reason why a second referendum should not take place. A referendum in UK politics is a very rare event, and rightly so. Up to 1975, when the first referendum took place over whether we should remain in what was then the EEC, there had been no referendums in our history.

The 2016 referendum was the first nationwide referendum in the UK to have taken place since 1975. The device has been used as infrequently as it has because it has been universally recognised that too many referendums would weaken the government and tend to make the country unstable.

It is completely unacceptable to have another referendum on the same question (whatever the question may be — not just Brexit) so soon after the original (the same applies to the proposed second referendum for Scotland on “independence” from the UK).

The reason is that if there is a second referendum it would completely undermine the whole concept of referendums. Not only that, but,

(a) if the result is the same as the first one, then it would be shown to have been a complete waste of time and money, and

(b) if the result is different then which result should prevail? And who should decide?

If the first result, then why have the second referendum at all? If the second result, that would almost certainly lead to civil unrest, as supporters of the first result will rightly feel they have been gravely wronged and deprived of the result they worked and made sacrifices for.

The end of referendums?

In either outcome, it would fatally weaken the concept of referendums (as well as democracy itself), as the next time a referendum was proposed people would be inclined not to vote at all on the basis that, “if we vote the wrong way they’ll simply make us have another one until we vote the way they want us to vote“.

And they would be right. The concept of referendums would thereby be section 50destroyed.

In any event, calling for a second referendum is intrinsically hypocritical. Had the result in 2016 been the other way round and Leavers had called for a second referendum then you can imagine the avalanche of derision and mockery we would have had to endure at the hands of the Remainers and the mass media. They would have pulled no punches in telling us to grow up and accept the result.

When the 1975 referendum produced a “Stay in the EEC” outcome, we who had campaigned to leave stoically accepted the result without calling for another referendum, even though we still continued our opposition to UK membership of what was then the European Economic Community (EEC).

Do we need to comply with Section 50?

This article was signed up to, on our behalf, by Tony Blair, in December 1997 as part of the Lisbon Treaty, which was ratified by Parliament in 1998. Blair and his government had absolutely no mandate to bind this country in such a way, and it’s especially ironic that this nonentity of a former Prime Minister now struts around pretending to be a “democrat” and telling us that we can’t leave.

The truth of the matter is that such a clause would never be upheld by an impartial court. It would most probably be held to be unnecessarily burdensome, so there was no need to comply. We could have parted company with the EU before the end of 2016.

Boris Johnson’s new deal

Now Boris Johnson has a new deal, essentially the same as Theresa May’s deal, though with a few concessions in our favour. It has got rid of the Irish backstop, but at a price. The EU will have powers to station customs officials (all of them, of course, immune from prosecution) at our ports to ensure that goods shipped to Northern Ireland (and therefore not subject to any excise duties) are charged duties as if they were going to the EU.

Only when they have arrived in Northern Ireland will they be de-bonded and the excise duties made liable to refund. Northern Ireland businesses selling their goods to the mainland will have to complete a customs declaration. What a charade!

And all, of course, subject to the over-riding jurisdiction of the “European Court of Justice”.

Ongoing obligations under the “deal” inhibit our ability to modernise industrial infrastructure and practices by requiring us to prevent them from acquiring any competitive advantage compared to similar industries in the EU.

Using this part of the “deal”, the ECJ can step in at any time and sabotage any trade deal we are about to sign with an outside country, e.g. the US. So much for regaining our national sovereignty.

It must be said, however, that Johnson has been far tougher than May (who basically agreed to everything the EU demanded). For example, at least Northern Ireland is staying within the UK’s customs territory, and not ceded to the EU as it would have been under May’s appalling deal.

The coming general election

Until recently, hopes have been high in the Brexit camp that the Brexit Party would do sufficiently well in the coming General Election to win at least several seats, and possibly hold the “balance of power”. Johnson would be forced to implement a genuine Brexit in order to save his political career.

If only it were this simple. Those of us hardened racial nationalists who were around in the heyday of the National Front, in the 1970s, know just how difficult it is for a new political party to make any impact at a General Election.

In by-elections and European elections voters are more prepared to vote for the party or candidate or party leader that they most prefer. Minority and new parties often do well.

But in a General Election it’s different. The electorate, at a General Election, vote negatively. That is, they tend to vote against the candidate, or the party leader, or the party, that they hate and fear the most. There’s too much at stake to do otherwise.

The likely outcome

It’s never wise to try and predict the outcome of a General Election. Probably most voters currently hate and fear Labour and Jeremy Corbyn most, and want to keep them out of office. Sadly, in most constituencies the only way to do that is to vote Tory. This doesn’t bode well for the Brexit Party, and Nigel Farage knows this.

That, and not wanting to risk splitting the pro-Brexit vote, is probably why he has decided not to contest seats won by the Tories in 2017. It is alleged that some other Brexit Party candidates have been bribed by the Tories to stand down at the last minute.

As a result, it looks increasingly likely that the Tories will be the largest party after December 12th, and possibly have an absolute majority. As a political party, they will be united, on the surface at least.

The pro-Brexit faction will think the UK is free from the EU, while the Remainers will smirk in the knowledge that secret entanglements prevent a genuine withdrawal, and in the meantime they will work secretly to facilitate the UK’s re-entry into the EU in a few years’ time when a suitable pretext arises.

Meanwhile, the mainstream media will be able to convince us that democracy prevailed and that the strings still tying us to the EU and neutralising our sovereignty were authorised by the Tories’ convincing win at the polls. The fact that hardly anyone knew about them until afterwards will be ignored.

Johnson’s real motives

Johnson is a chancer by nature, and he took a chance in early 2016 when, with the referendum taking place in a few months, he threw his hat into the “Leave” camp, resigning from David Cameron’s Cabinet in order to be free to campaign.

Since then he has been careful to take advantage of all the in-fighting in the Conservative Party over Brexit so as to (eventually) manoeuvre himself into the leadership of the party and, as such, the post of Prime Minister.

So for Boris Johnson it’s all about his career in politics, his position as Prime Minister, and the success of the Conservative Party in the forthcoming General Election. He’s happy for most Brexit supporters to carry on believing that his “deal” with the reptilian “European Union” is the real thing, as long as he wins the election and retains his role as Prime Minister. He’s riding a tiger and he’s betting everything he has on staying on top of it.

Hope for the future

Boris Johnson’s deal is far from being a genuine Brexit, but we can console ourselves in the knowledge that it is merely the start of something much larger. Just think – if the Remainers had won the referendum then without a doubt further centralisation of powers in the EU, and further transfers of national sovereignty and power to the EU would have swiftly followed.

Even now we would most likely have the reality of a European Army, the Orwellian “European Arrest Warrant”, and the pending abolition of sterling, to be replaced by the Euro.

Even entrenched pillars of our ancient system of common law would be eroded by now, with the abolition of such guarantors of our liberties as the Bill of Rights, Magna Carta, and Habeas Corpus (in the name of “harmonising” our laws to EU law).

So we have much to be thankful for. We have managed to avoid having the doomed Euro foisted upon us, and we also kept out of the Shengen Agreement. And key parts of our ancient liberties remain more or less intact.

Under the deal, we’ll be free of the ECJ at the end of the transition period, in January 2021. That alone is a massive blow to the Euro-federalists.

All these things, together with the Soros/Merkel backed Afro-Asian “refugee” invasion of Europe, the economic downturn the more prosperous European nations are now facing, and increasing Europe-wide opposition to Brussels, will lead to even more EU instability.

This in turn should encourage other Euro-sceptic nations, such as Hungary, Poland and Italy, to follow Britain’s example in regaining their national independence.

The days of the European Union are now surely numbered.