What price Britain now?
During the Second Gulf War, there was a conference (of the G7 I think) and Bumboy Blair sidled up to the US President at one point.
This was at a time when Blair was more popular than Churchill in the US, and the occupant of the White House was a cross between a chimp and peanut call George ‘Dubya’ Bush.
“Good morning, Mr President,” said Blair in a respectful manner.
“Yo Blair, howz it hangin?” asked Bush.
It pretty much summed up the level of their ‘mutual’ respect. And it felt like a dagger in my British heart. Here was this two-bit, no-account son of a dangerous CIA hawk talking to my Prime Minster as if he might be the first reserve on his ice-hockey team. I mean, OK, I loathed everything about Tony Blair (I took off to the West Indies to avoid seeing him win in 1997) but this midget – referred to in Reagan’s diary memoirs as “George’s useless, whining deadbeat son” – was using male changing-room metaphors in greeting the Highest in my Land.
Hold that thought.
I have been keen to get out of the EU for some time: the 2016 Referendum was the only time I’ve voted since 1983, when I changed the face of British politics by voting SDP. This gives you some idea of my political foresight. In 1975 I voted to stay because I believed in the European ‘buffer between the US and the USSR’ and have always loved travelling in Europe anyway.
It wasn’t until I bought a house in France (1998) and gradually realised (2002-5), the Iraq War was a confection and Brussels was a parody of the Soviet Union, that I began to wake up to just how much of a kept whore the UK had become. Like some kind of Victorian East End missionary, I began blogging about the UK as a prisoner of geopolitical globalism, following the stampede of financialisers over the cliff while poodling along to Washington neocon foreign policy….and getting dragged ever more crazily into the EU’s federalist agenda.
One always knew with Boris that he was pretty much the only port in a storm after 2016. He was (and is) Boris the Spider – as well-connected to the banking, bourse, NATO, media and energy sociopaths as anyone. But his drive for Downing Street on the ‘Real Brexit’ ticket persuaded me and millions of others to hand him a Parliamentary majority.
So far, he and Cummings are standing firm against the disloyalty of MP Remainers, the scheming of Jeremy Tai Ping Errah, the grubby little schemes of Sir Mark Pigswill and the increasingly childish blandishments of Michel Barnier.
But whatever Donald Trump says about his opposition to the US Deep State, that State does not want Britain to destabilise NATO or reduce its military efficiency….given that we still have by far the biggest armed forces and stock of weaponry in Europe.
Covidaphobia did, I admit, take my eye off the ball of British independence. I continue to believe that the United Kingdom can have a peaceful and successful future as – for want of a better phrase – a bespoke maker and convenience retailer of British high-margin goods alongside a new but wiser emphasis on food self-sufficiency……and far less dependence on shuffling paper spivery around the increasingly surreal financial sector.
I do realise that this is not what Boris Johnson wants; but if he is to be a catalyst helping us to get to that stage, then he must stand up to the US as much as to the EU.
Caught in the crossfire of corporate America’s hegemenous war with China, thus far BoJo is not doing terribly well.
There was first of all pre-Covid infection Boris telling Washington to fuck off on the subject of Huawei leading the G5 charge in Britain.
Then there was Boris accepting that the Huawei role should not exceed 35% of the market.
Then there was post-Covid infection Boris agreeing to reduce Huawei’s involvement to 0% by 2023.
Now, there comes the news that ‘The United Kingdom is pursuing an alliance of ten democracies in order to create an alternative pool of 5G equipment and technologies to avoid reliance on China, and especially its telecom giant Huawei’.
The Times got the story first (imagine that?) but the outcome is there for all to see: Deputy PM Dominic Raab was the first to signal revenge on China “for its role in creating Covid19 havoc” – an intelligence view placed into his brain by Sir Mark Sedwill – and so Britain has gone from Huawei adopter to active international Huawei rejector in just two months. Another triumph for US supremicists, NATO and Shadowy Sedwill….another defeat for our elected Executive.
Without doubt, there are grounds to be suspicious of Beijing motives: but when Britain five years ago decided to use China as its main adviser and supplier for the peaceful use of nuclear power in updating our electricity supply infrastructure, Washington showed little or no interest.
Personally, I am alarmed by Britain calling in China on nuclear power, given its dubious safety record. But that’s not how the US sees it. Only threats to America’s ability to bully via war and petrodollar influence are of interest to the US Unelected State. Whenever faced with such threats, America has a hissy fit, and the UK always backs down.
So over the last few days, I’ve been thinking a lot about Britain’s role from here on.
When it comes to me and thinking, there is the eternal line in every other Jewish joke to bear in mind: “OK, now you should worry”.
This is the view I’ve come to.
Among the British political class, the majority view remains that Britain is for sale. But if enough people want to buy, that need not mean being sold down the river.
We have a marvellous opportunity here, in that four behemoths would love to have us in their tent: the US, China, the EU and the Russian Federation. Trust me: when selling a property, multiple tumescent buyers are exactly what’s required.
So now it comes to a question of valuation.
I have sold many things in my life – houses, ad agencies, beds, carpets, tables and briefly my soul – but the permanent aphorism the seller must bear in mind is, “A thing is, in the end, worth what somebody will pay for it”.
What is the UK worth?
Our gdp is roughly £2.7 trillion. Such is the nature of our insane tax laws on property however, UK housing stock is worth a further £7.3 trillion. In terms of military hardware, around half a trillion quids worth of tanks, planes, highly trained staff and Squaddie grunts would be available to the eager buyer.
That’s a total of £10.5 trillion in turnover and assets, but there is a much bigger carrot we can bring into play: the MI5/6 intelligence and scientific weaponry secrets that we hold. It’s all very well to say that the US knows all that stuff already…..but it doesn’t want Vlad Putin and Xi Jinping to get their hands on it. I’d value that info as, at the very least, £9.5 trillion – which brings us to a very nicely rounded figure of An Awful Lot.
Now of course, we’ve made a trading loss with the EU for all but one of the last 45 years, but if allowed to break free – well, the sky’s the limit. It’s also important to remember that Tesla cars has a higher valuation than General Motors despite its market share being nearly sub-atomic compared to GM’s. And finally, current gearing ratios (income related to valuation) are running at around 19 fold. As the hugely desirably assets in Blighty are worth sixteen times more than turnover, I’m sure all those Wall St quants would be creaming their jeans at the thought of acquiring us. Indeed, their creaming would be equal to the rate of brick-shitting in the CIA>Pentagon>Washington axis if the acquisition failed.
All up, I think a multiple of 15 times earnings would be entirely reasonable, resulting in a price-tag of £300 trillion. Assuming a 50% upfront payment and a five-year earnout, it would be the intention of a Slog Government to give every man, woman and child in Britain an initial payment of £4,285,714 for each of them on completion….and to invest the earnout monies in a proper grown-up National Pension Fund going forward.
The name of this game is, of course, Blackmail. I present it here only as a satire upon the politico-bureaucatic British classes’ utter inability to employ any kind of realistic commercial perspective.
These who would belittle us should wise up to just how much our fidelity is worth.
The Slog 