This morning I woke up to the news that the Minister charged with leading us out of the EU, one David Davis, has resigned only a short while after the weekend at Chequers when the Government was meant to ‘unite’ around a negotiating position for Brexit. The cynic in me wonders if Davis, the man whom Dominic Cummings once described as “thick as mince, lazy as a toad and as vain as Croesus” couldn’t face the walk down the Chequers drive if he resigned then and had his Ministerial car taken off him.

To say that Brexit is a shambles is being kind. Shambles? It’s a train crash! After 2 years the Government managed to hammer out an agreement amongst itself that didn’t survive a weekend. What’s even more stupid is that agreement was never going to be acceptable to the EU, as the EU made clear years ago!

Meanwhile, whilst those determined to drag to UK over the edge of a hard Brexit cliff play out their games, more and more businesses warn of the consequences (the latest being Philips). What’s should be blindingly obvious by now is that – despite agitating for over 30 years for us to leave the EU, none of these Brextremists had a workable plan. When they finally (narrowly) got their wish, they hadn’t got the faintest clue what what to do next. Their only ‘plan’ is for the country to commit economic suicide by crashing out of the EU without a deal and then blaming the EU!

The arrogance and hollowness of the Brextremists claim that “they need us more than we need them” is plain. Not a single one of their claims has come to pass. The EU hasn’t blinked (it was never going to). Their threat to leave without a deal was always crass stupidity, the equivalent of pointing a shotgun at your own foot and saying “If you don’t give me what I want, I’ll pull the trigger. I’m serious!”

Meanwhile, the rest of us are caught up in this political (and economic) farce of epic proportions. Yet many people seem completely unaware of the consequences and dangers. They’re bored with Brexit. They just want the Government to “get on with it”, without having the faintest clue what ‘it’ is. Never has political apathy been so dangerous.

Sadly, my prediction from a couple of days ago that Parliament abdicating responsibility for democracy would speed up the brexodus has already come to pass. The juxtaposition of two headlines on the front page of today’s Times sums up Brexit perfectly.

We’re about to lose thousands of skilled jobs and £bns in revenue to the Exchequer if Airbus, but hey people, fruit picking isn’t as bad as you thought!

Airbus’s stark warning to the Government has been published on their website. You can find it here. This is part of it (with my highlights):

“Tom Williams, Chief Operating Officer of Airbus Commercial Aircraft, commented:
“In any scenario, Brexit has severe negative consequences for the UK aerospace industry and Airbus in particular. Therefore, immediate mitigation measures would need to be accelerated. While Airbus understands that the political process must go on, as a responsible business we require immediate details on the pragmatic steps that should be taken to operate competitively. Without these, Airbus believes that the impacts on our UK operations could be significant. We have sought to highlight our concerns over the past 12 months, without success. Far from Project Fear, this is a dawning reality for Airbus. Put simply, a No Deal scenario directly threatens Airbus’ future in the UK.”

Here’s a hollow laugh, remember when David Davis said this?

I don’t expect Airbus will be the last company to spell things out so starkly. Needless to say, the reaction of the Brexit fundamentalists has been complete denial. According to one on Twitter all we’ve got to do is ‘grow some balls’ (as opposed to them thinking with theirs) as apparently I’ve been ‘brainwashed’ by listening to experts!

Actually, this tweet sums up the reasons for the Brexit vote. It was the revenge of stupid people. But, because they’re stupid they’ve not had the brainpower to think the consequences through. It’s not the people they’re lashing out at who will be hurt the most, it’s them. The rich who funded and led the Leave campaign are already walking away to safety, carrying their Belizian diplomatic passports, or retiring to their villas in France or the Caribbean. Many others who have the option to leave will be doing so too as Brexit has created a poisoned country – as this tweet from Professor Tanja Bueltmann describes.

Who would have thought that a mature democracy could have been brought so low so quickly? We’re falling further into what’s looking more and more like a fascist state. I’ve always refrained from drawing parallels with Nazi Germany – until now, but now I think they’re too clear to ignore as the language is the same. A country where papers like the Mail can describe High Court judges as ‘traitors’, where MPs are afraid to vote with their conscience because of death threats and have to be escorted by SIX armed police. Where a Prime Minister can tell outright lies with a straight face on national TV (the Brexit ‘dividend’) is in deep, deep trouble. yet we seem to be sleepwalking over the edge of the cliff. Where’s the outrage at these things? Where’s the outcry? Where’s the push-back?This is how fascism takes over, when good people do nothing.

I fear for my country.

As each day passes it’s becoming more and more obvious what an utter shambles Brexit is. So much so that even some of its architects are starting to make their excuses and distance themselves from the looming disaster, hence Daniel Hannan, the Tory MEP being quoted in the London Evening Standard as admitting leaving the European Union is “not working out” the way it was planned.

What makes me want to bang my head on the table in frustration at this is the fact there never was a bloody plan! Brexit was always a dream that was never achievable, and Hannan is as culpable as the others in conning people by pretending Brexit could ever work. Here’s his fantasy Brexit in full flow.

https://reaction.life/britain-looks-like-brexit/

Meanwhile, in the real world, the arrogance of the Brexit fundamentalists in believing “the EU needs us more than we need them” has collided with reality. The EU hasn’t rolled over in the face of the British ‘superiority’ the Brexit fundamentalists believe in. The opposite in fact, the EU’s stuck to its position on the major issues such as access to the single market and ‘bespoke’ deals, whilst the Government has clung to fantasies and keeps kicking the can down the road rather than facing up to the truth. This was summed up rather nicely by Steve Bullock (a former British EU negotiator, who’s in a position to know what he’s talking about) on Twitter…

Part of the UK’s problem is that many people just don’t realise how the Brexit shambles is seen from outside the UK. The older generation still get their views from the likes of the Daily Mail or Express, whilst many of the younger generation don’t seem to engage with  news at all. Mind you, talking of the Daily Mail, is it any wonder many people are clueless, just take a look at the Mail’s front page from yesterday, when they went full Goebbels on the news that the House of Lords had held the Government to account!

The fact that a national newspaper is describing the members of the House of Lords as “traitors in ermine” should send a shudder down the spine of any right-minded person, no matter what their political persuasion is. This is pure poison, but it’s also a reflection of the terrible political times we’re living in – as is the news from today. The Leave.EU campaign has been fined £70,000 for breaking electoral law by the Electoral Commission who’ve also referred Leave.EU chief executive Liz Bilney to the police. Are they repentant? Are they hell as like. Arron Banks called it a “politically motivated attack” which is a rich irony as that’s exactly what he’s funded – an attack on democracy!

Needless to say, the Brexit fundamentalists who claim they love democracy so much we needed to leave an ‘undemocratic’ EU are strangely silent about the obvious subversion of the democracy they’re meant to cherish.

Meanwhile, the Brexit clock continues to tick and the Brexit camp inside and outside of Government continue to cling to the delusion that everything’s going to plan. The plan they never had in the first place…