Since The Slog was launched ten years ago, the shot above has been ever-present on this site. It does not make me either anti-American or anti-European. Rather, it makes me a Brit who wants a genuinely independent Britain without any alliances to the egotists of the global bloc system. As Brexit now goes down to the line, we see the perfect illustration of how bloc alliances lead to blackmail.
At least two UK diplomats based in the EU are now convinced that Emmanuel Macron has decided to keep his options open on a deal with the UK…..and not settle anything until we have a Presidential election result in the US – that is, probably some time during November 4th….a week on Wednesday.
The disturbing thing, as the Biden v Trump clown knockabout circus reaches its climax, is the regularity with which Sleepy Joe keeps on reaffirming that he won’t sign a US/UK trade deal if he feels that the Brexit deal undermines the Good Friday Irish Peace Agreement.
Whatever Biden really feels any more (beyond no pain) is neither here not there: he is a Shadow State politico ensuring that the Irish-American vote stays steady in the north-eastern battleground. If he can win – and that results in Brino not Brexit in due course – Joe Biden will give it no more thought than he did towards allegedly taking inappropriate showers with his daughter when she was a kid.
I don’t want Britain’s economic health (in whatever form it finally takes) to be open to damage by an American politician who has spent much of his life since the age of forty bolting on bits to his belief system to please whatever attitude group of harpies he happens to need at any point in time.
Equally, I don’t want the ludicrous claims of French fishermen and the dictatorial tendencies of some wannabe French Boy King to further the fish stock depletion we have seen in our territorial waters over the last forty years.
The Barnier contention – “they may be your waters, but the contents are a different matter” – has to be the most profoundly daft observation in diplomatic history: how about a riposte along the lines of, “it may be your land, but what grows on it is a different matter”?
Our Prime Minister is a man of straw. In the middle of a Covid insanity that is rapidly bankrupting the country, the last thing we can afford is to have American and French politics making decisions for us about how we export more successfully or feed our people.
But you always know where you are with Boris: he always lets you down in the end.
Macron has let it be known he has taken an ‘egregious’ position on fishing rights. He badly needs a win after a year of unmitigated failure. As it is clear that some kind of fishing compromise is already in the air (and believe me, it is) but Macronapoleon wants more, how on Earth is Boris going to deliver on expectations? Lest we forget here, ‘egregious’ means “flagrant, conspicuously bad”.
This is not going to end well.
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