Leaked Memo: UK Faces Medicine and Food Shortages if Brexit Goes Through

The parallels between Trump supporters and Brexit supporters continues and now a leaked government memo indicates that economic chaos, including medicine and food shortages are likely if the UK crashes out of the European Union. Despite such potential dire consequences, pro-Brexit supporters motivated by anti-immigrant - read non-white - animus and delusions of restoring a lost empire continue to push for economic suicide.  The parallels with Mid-West American farmers who continue to support Donald Trump despite his policies that are driving many farms towards bankruptcy are stark. Like their British counterparts who long for the days of rue Britannia, these Americans are driven by racism and a delusional dream of a return to a society of the 1950's when blacks, other non-whites, women and gays "knew their place" and  remained invisible and downtrodden.  Highlights from the Washington Post look at Britain's potential self-inflicted harm:

An increasingly likely “no-deal” Brexit could wreak havoc on Britain’s economy, infrastructure and social fabric, the government says in classified documents leaked to a British newspaper.

The costs of food and social care would rise, while medicines could be delayed, the Sunday Times reported. Border delays would interrupt fuel supplies. Ports would suffer severe disruptions and recover only partially after three months, leaving traffic at 50 to 70 percent of the current flow.

Those are some of the effects predicted by “Operation Yellowhammer,” which the newspaper said was compiled this month by Britain’s Cabinet Office and available to those with “need to know” security clearances.

Brexit critics have warned that crashing out of the European Union without an agreement with the rest of the bloc will damage the British economy, devalue its currency and create instability. British leaders have sought unsuccessfully since the 2016 Brexit vote to pass a “divorce” plan.

New Prime Minister Boris Johnson, a leading Brexit supporter, has promised to get his country out of the E.U., deal or no deal, during his first 100 days in office. He’s set to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel and French President Emmanuel Macron this week to press his case for a new deal. At the moment, negotiations are at a standstill.
Opposition lawmakers have been discussing ways of blocking a no-deal Brexit, including bringing down the government by calling a no-confidence vote in early September.  It’s unclear whether Johnson would win such a vote.

The Sunday Times said the government predicts a need to restore a “hard border” of limited, controlled crossing points in Ireland, which could cause protests.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has said there would be “no chance” of Congress approving a U.S.-U.K. trade deal after Brexit if it undermined the Good Friday agreement, the 20-year-old deal between Britain and Ireland that helped advance peace in Northern Ireland.

The government warns that some businesses would halt trade to avoid tariffs, while others who keep trading would pass higher costs on to customers. Agriculture “will be the hardest hit, given its reliance on highly integrated cross-border supply chains” and high trade barriers. And the black market could grow, it says, especially in border communities.

Other possible ramifications detailed in the memo:

• Increased costs for social-care providers caused by inflation could lead some providers to fail.

• Temporary cuts in tariffs would render the oil industry uncompetitive, closing two refineries, causing the loss of 2,000 jobs, spurring strikes and further disrupting fuel supplies.

• Delays at European airports, the Eurotunnel and other transportation hubs.

• Months of slowdowns of over four hours at the Spanish border with Britain’s overseas territory of Gibraltar, which could harm the area’s economy.

• Shortages of certain fresh foods leading to less choice, higher prices and potential panic buying.

• A risk of disruption to supplies of chemicals used to treat water.

• A risk of dust-ups between British and European fishing boats in British waters.

[T]he leaked documents show Britain is mostly unprepared amid “E.U. exit fatigue” after the country missed a planned departure date in March, the Sunday Times reported.

The Imperial Myths Driving Brexit - and Trump Supporters

A blimp depicting Boris Johnson hovers near a statue of Winston Churchill.Simon Dawson / Reuters).

As noted in prior posts, the parallels between pro-Brexit voters in the United Kingdom and Trump voters are considerable. Both groups long for a glorious mythical - and much whiter - past and seem willing to commit economic and national suicide in order to chase after a past that never quite was as they would remember it.  Both groups are also obsessed with a myth of their respective nation's exceptionalism which typically means they do not want to work with other nations and they seemingly never are open to learning from other nations.  Worse yet, only a sanitized version of the past is remembered and past misdeeds and horrific mistakes and failures are ignored as if they never occurred. A piece in The Atlantic looks at Brexit and the myth of British exceptionalism that in so many ways tracks what one sees among those wearing MAGA hats and attending Trump rallies.  Here are highlights:

For more than three years, the world has watched Britain attempt to act on the result of its 2016 referendum and leave the European Union. Yet while the causes of the Brexit vote were complex, the causes of the catastrophic handling of the Brexit process might be familiar to anyone versed in imperial and post-imperial history.

They stem from what appears to be a belief in British exceptionalism: the idea that Britain is inherently different from, and superior to, other nations and empires.

Margaret Thatcher asserted British exceptionalism with regard to the EU in a 1988 speech, and each of the past three prime ministers has approached the EU from that standpoint—believing that Britain deserves preferential treatment and more-than-equal status.

They have all also believed in their own personal exceptionalism. . . . Now Boris Johnson is voluntarily manufacturing a crisis over no deal—in which Britain would leave the EU without any agreement on the rules and regulations governing how it would trade and work with the bloc—that could send damaging shock waves through Britain, Ireland, and the rest of the EU.

There has been much discussion of the roles of history and memory in relation to Brexit. It may be easy to overstate a simplistic, literalist connection between the empire—imagined as glorious, and unjustly lost—and the impulse to leave the EU. Yet it is hard to avoid the sense that embedded in Brexit is a form of “Make Britain great again.” Sharper parallels are perhaps drawn between Britain’s collective recollection of its part in World War II, heavily mythologized as the moment it stood alone against Adolf Hitler, and the attitude of Brexit supporters to the isolation and hardship Brexit may bring.

While the myths constructed around the history of empire and World War II reinforce British exceptionalism, they are contradictory. The first casts Britain as a superpower; the second as a lone, plucky underdog.

Brexit is a public withdrawal from a voluntary union; Suez [Canal crisis] was a covert invasion of a sovereign state. They are wholly different. Yet there is a familiarity to the grand aspirations undercut by slapdash and delusional strategic planning; to the frantic rush to act, even as it becomes clear that most or all of the options are damaging; to leaders fixated on a path that many can see will probably end badly.

In general, Britain remembers Suez as a blip in what is widely viewed as a mostly well-intentioned and competent imperial policy. Far from ending British exceptionalism, the disaster has been used to reinforce it. Suez can be framed as a unique aberration if it is blamed on what is erroneously held to have been a betrayal by the United States, and on the folly of one man, the physically and mentally exhausted Prime Minister Anthony Eden. That heads off more troubling questions about whether there were deeper problems with cabinet decision making, military advice, foreign policy, the political culture as a whole, and even the nation’s understanding of itself.

Exceptionalism is again visible in what was by most metrics a far bigger disaster than Suez or Amritsar: the partition of India and Pakistan, which left between 1 and 2 million people dead, created 10 million to 20 million refugees, and established a hostile relationship between successor states that threatens global security to this day.

The last British viceroy of India, Lord Mountbatten, has been blamed ever since for speeding Britain’s exit deadline up. What he achieved by that was to ensure that most of the fallout did not happen on Britain’s watch. . . . . Only in the days and weeks after partition did the shocking reports of death and destruction ramp up, and so British exceptionalism was able to remain unscathed. The British could sigh sadly at the appalling outcome, and murmur “après nous, le déluge.” The writer Pankaj Mishra has described a “malign incompetence” common to Mountbatten and the Brexiteers.

A British leadership that wanted to deliver Brexit safely and was not in thrall to exceptionalism might have learned from past mistakes. Suez might have taught it to prefer reality over fantasy, compromise and conciliation over arrogance and vaingloriousness. Partition might have taught it to respect and understand complexity rather than oversimplify difficult problems, to make a plan before setting tight deadlines. Both might have taught it that you should never, ever imagine you’ve had enough of experts.

But to learn from mistakes you must confront them, and exceptionalism means you never do. . . . Brexit is exposing flaws in the British political system and culture, but they are not new. Exceptionalist thinking has long helped insulate that system from the criticism and reform it needs.

For advocates and critics of Brexit alike, it may be tempting to imagine a golden age in which Britain was competent, reliable, stable, and sensible. Looking at its history, though, if it turns out to be none of those things, we shouldn’t be surprised.

So much of this likewise describes the United States.

Boris Johnson, Brexit and the End of the United Kingdom

Previous posts have looked at the parallels between Trump supporters and pro-Breixt voters in the United Kingdom: both groups are motivated by racism and a longing for a past that will never return. Now, in the person of Boris Johnson, the United Kingdom has a prime minister who is the equivalent of Donald Trump who is antagonizing allies and causing division with in the country.  Some believe it could end in the dissolution of the United Kingdom, with Scotland leaving the union and Northern Ireland ultimately joining the Irish Republic.  If this happens, Brexit supporters will find themselves in a much smaller and far weaker country that will only make the past they so long for even more impossible to recreate. With both groups - Trump supporters and Breixt supporters - racism and delusions have set them on a course for long term national disaster.  A piece in the Washington Post looks at the potential collapse of the UK as a untied country.  Here are highlights:

In his first speech last week as Britain’s new leader, Prime Minister Boris Johnson exhibited his customary bravado: “The people who bet against Britain are going to lose their shirts because we are going to restore trust in our democracy,” he said, reiterating his promise to lead the country out of the European Union, “and we are going to fulfill the repeated promises of Parliament to the people and come out of the E.U. on October 31st. No ifs or buts.”

But already, it’s Johnson who is starting to look like the prime minister with no clothes.

On Tuesday, the British pound dropped to its lowest level in two years, a reaction to growing alarm over the likelihood of Johnson’s government crashing Britain out of Europe in a “no-deal” Brexit. His cabinet is packed with hard-line Brexiteers who, like Johnson, want to see Brexit achieved at almost any cost. One minister has already indicated that the government is operating under the “assumption” that it must prepare for a “no-deal” departure: a scenario that would see tariffs immediately slapped on British exports to the continent, financial chaos, lines and delays at border checks, and an endless assortment of other (in some cases, still unforeseen) problems.

Johnson, undaunted, has engaged in a game of brinkmanship with Brussels and Dublin. Over the weekend, he talked tough on his Brexit intentions, voicing his opposition to the “Irish backstop” — the current understanding forged between Britain and the European Union that would preserve a soft border between Ireland and Northern Ireland and therefore theoretically keep all of Britain in the E.U.’s customs union.

Officials in Brussels, meanwhile, may be hoping that Johnson is compelled to blink first and that Britain’s Parliament acts to block a no-deal Brexit. That also may be a scenario Johnson actually wants. Another impasse at Westminster could prompt a snap general election that may yield a Parliament more inclined to back Johnson’s agenda.

[T]he domestic picture for Johnson is hardly rosy, either. For two days in a row, the prime minister was greeted by jeering crowds of protesters as he embarked on a tour of the United Kingdom’s home nations. On Monday, he received an icy welcome from Nicola Sturgeon, the first minister of Scotland, and was compelled to leave her residence in Edinburgh through a back door to avoid the angry demonstrations.

"The people of Scotland did not vote for this Tory government, they didn’t vote for this new prime minister, they didn’t vote for Brexit, and they certainly didn’t vote for a catastrophic no-deal Brexit, which Boris Johnson is now planning for,” Sturgeon said before his arrival. As my colleagues reported, the chaos and damage of a “no-deal” Brexit may speed calls for a new independence referendum in Scotland — a cause backed by Sturgeon’s Scottish Nationalist Party.

The next day in Wales, Johnson met a similarly dubious Welsh first minister. Mark Drakeford, a member of the opposition Labour party, warned in an interview with the Guardian that a no-deal Brexit would endanger Wales’s agricultural and manufacturing sectors and “a whole way of life that has existed for centuries.” He stressed that Johnson’s characteristic “bluff and bluster” was testing the unity of the United Kingdom itself.

“The prime minister’s twin ambitions are on a dangerous collision course,” noted an editorial in the Financial Times, referring to Johnson’s stated desire to both strengthen ties among Britain’s four home nations and lead the country swiftly out of the European Union. “Brexit in any shape promises to weaken the bonds between the nations of the British Isles. In the extreme form that seems to be the working assumption by Johnson’s new administration, it will impose intolerable strains. This could set in train a process that ends with the break-up of the union.”

On Tuesday, almost a full week after taking office, Johnson placed his first phone call to Irish Prime Minister Leo Varadkar. Their exchange was reportedly “testy” and not particularly productive. According to an Irish readout, Varadkar reminded Johnson that the backstop was “a consequence” of Britain’s political decision to embark on Brexit and that Ireland had the full strength of the E.U. behind it.

On Friday, Varadkar hinted at the possibility of Northern Ireland severing its ties with the United Kingdom in the event of a no-deal Brexit. “I think increasingly you see liberal Protestants and Unionists who will start to ask where they feel more at home,” he said. “One of the things that ironically could really undermine the union of the U.K. is a hard Brexit, both for Northern Ireland and for Scotland, and that is a problem they are going to have to face.”

Not for nothing did former British prime minister Gordon Brown remark at a London event last week that Johnson could be remembered “not as the 55th prime minister of the U.K. but as the first prime minister of England.”

Vladimir Putin must be truly smiling.

Is a Tide Turning Against Populism?

Slovakia’s new president, Zuzana Caputova.

Populism is defined as "a political approach that strives to appeal to ordinary people who feel that their concerns are disregarded by established elite groups."  It certainly describes the nature of Donald Trump's base which is enraged that it is losing white privilege and/or its ability to impose its toxic form of Christianity on the nation.  It is also the mind set behind the Brexit vote in the United Kingdom and the election of various right wing, authoritarian politicians across Europe.  To take hold, of course, there was a need for other voters who did not celebrate racism, the embrace of ignorance, and the destruction of democratic norms to be apathetic and fail to vote thereby allowing foul individuals like Trump to triumph.  As a piece in the New York Times explores, the tide may be beginning to turn on populism with voters realizing the need to vote and throw aside complacency.  One can only hope the piece is correct and the rejection of populism and authoritarians occurs in America as well.  Here are article highlights: 

While most eyes are fixed on Iran and China, the competition between the liberal international order and the populist demagogues who threaten it has taken an unexpected turn. In a seemingly unlikely region, a rear-guard action has quietly begun to challenge the “populist surge.”

With Britain seemingly on the verge of Brexit and Donald Trump something of a global albatross, some analysts have written off liberalism. But others have kept faith that liberalism remains strong, and that they still expect a “backlash to the backlash” to emerge in Western Europe.

They may be right. Intriguing developments are taking place, but not necessarily in the West. Instead — surprisingly — they are to be found in Central and Eastern Europe.
The region’s countries became part of the liberal order only after the dissolution of the Soviet bloc in 1989 . . . . But in recent months they have become ground zero for what is beginning to look like a comeback for liberal forces, at least within the region. More than ten different countries have voted out populists, undergone serious protests, or taken strong stands against Russia.

The reigning orthodoxy is that it’s only a matter of time until far-right populist parties begin winning elections in country after country. But the evidence from across Central Europe runs counter to that: Liberal leaders and activists have begun to push back against populism.

The most interesting case is Slovakia, where the polls leading up to this spring’s election showed a pair of populist candidates in the lead. But in the end a less bombastic Western-oriented political novice eked out an impressive victory. The victor, Zuzana Caputova, took advantage of anti-populist sentiment spurred by the murder of a crusading anti-corruption journalist.

Likewise in Poland, local elections and major mayoral races over the past two years have been won by liberal candidates, rather than Poland’s populist governing party. While in Bulgaria, in 2017, Bulgarians voted out a populist Russia-centric government and brought back to power a pro-NATO and pro-European Union former prime minister, Boiko Borisov.

What’s more, Ms. Caputova’s rise and solid block of support . . . . are inspiring opposition leaders in other countries. In the Czech Republic, for example, hundreds of thousands of protesters have been marching against their prime minister, Andrej Babis, a former businessman with alarmingly demagogic leanings who has been accused of corruption.

Hungary, Romania, Moldova and Georgia have also experienced significant anti-populist protests in the past two years. Hungarians turned out in large numbers this spring to protest against the most well-known populist head of government in Europe, Viktor Orban, who has a reputation for undermining democracy through his corruption, economic mismanagement and clamping down on the media. The Romanian people recently celebrated the jailing of Liviu Dragnea, the country’s most powerful politician and head of the ruling Social Democratic Party, which had defied the European Commission and made repeated efforts to shield politicians from the law.

Central European countries have also taken strong stands or direct actions against Russia. Greece expelled Russian diplomats in response to Russian interference in the naming of North Macedonia. In 2016, Montenegro arrested a range of violent coup plotters who were backed by Russia. This year, 14 of them were convicted and sentenced to prison.

These anti-populist trends have occurred in the face of heavy Russian interference in the form of cyber warfare and in some cases the direct intervention of Federal Security Service agents. Russia also interfered in the European Parliament elections in May, which polls and pundits had predicted would bring a populist takeover. However, not only did numerous populists — like Germany’s A.F.D. party — perform less well than expected, but they are also far from being able to form a majority.

Populists have also been kept out of recent governments formed in Finland, Sweden and Estonia. . . . Spain’s Socialist Party routed the populists with ease, and the right-leaning young Austrian leader Sebastian Kurz, after losing a vote of confidence that cost him his role as chancellor, appears well positioned to fight for a new term in coming elections, having jettisoned the populist contingent from his coalition. And last weekend, Greece’s far-right Golden Dawn party performed surprisingly poorly in an election that brought to power a traditional center-right party and prime minister.

Yet the question remains: Is a discernible trend at work here? Either way, logic may well be on the liberals’ side. First, populist leaders tend to be poor at governing, particularly in the area of economic policy. Second, the more Russia continues to rattle its sabers and make European countries feel insecure, the more places like Poland will avoid becoming too populist. Third, while electorates in Europe have been withdrawing their support from traditional center-left and center-right parties, liberal, green and other parties offer decidedly anti-populist policies.

We may need more time to ascertain whether a larger global “backlash to the backlash” trend is afoot. But in Central Europe the evidence is clear. . . . . the battle against populism has been joined by regrouped liberal forces. The vaunted liberal international order, however damaged, remains intact to a significant degree.

Here in Virginia, a blow can be struck against the populism and arrogance of the Virginia GOP in November if people get out and vote the corrupt, political whores of the GOP who have sold their souls to the gun lobby and far right Christian extremists out of office. 

Brexit Was Sold by "Liars"and Britain's Exit Plan is Unworkable

British PM Theresa May and French President Emmanuel Macron

Much like Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" presidential campaign, the supporters of the "leave" British Brexit vote engaged in baldface lies and were aided by Russian election interference that played upon rural voter's racism, xenophobia, and delusional dreams of restoring a never to return empire.   Having just returned from a week in London (I was in Paris the week before), it is readily apparent that a hard Brexit will savage Britain's economy, especially in "leave voting rural areas and the always reactionary Northern Ireland.  After disastrous meetings today in Austria, British Prime Minister Theresa May is facing a huge backlash at home which, with luck will bring about a re-vote on the question of leaving the European Union.  While in London, we heard numerous people say that May's days in office were heading towards an end and that leaving the EU would be a disaster on everything from tariffs to tourism and renewed difficulty crossing borders (currently, with Britain in the EU, travel from Paris to London and London to Amsterdam on the high speed Eurostar trains is smooth as can be).  A piece in CNN looks at the growing realization that the Brexit effort was lead by liars and will have horrific consequences.   Here are article highlights:

If Theresa May hoped that a two-day summit with European leaders in the birthplace of Mozart would bring harmony to the fraught Brexit process, she will have left sorely disappointed.  A lavish dinner in the opulent setting of the Felsenreitschul theater in Salzburg on Wednesday evening failed to smooth the way. By Thursday, there wasn't much left but bitterness and rancour.

Donald Tusk, President of the European Council, said key aspects of Brexit proposals presented by May "will not work" in their current form.   Angela Merkel, the German Chancellor, said there could be "no compromise" on the integrity of the single market, the bloc's economic free-trade zone. Emmanuel Macron, the French President, was harshest of all. The entire Brexit project was sold to the British people by "liars" who immediately fled the stage, unwilling to see their project through. May could be forgiven for looking like thunder at her post-summit press conference. But she showed no sign of backing down from the proposals hashed out with her Cabinet at her country retreat of Chequers in July -- so controversial with her own party that they provoked the resignation of her foreign secretary, Boris Johnson, and Brexit secretary, David Davis. [T]he prospect the UK crashing out without a deal seems greater than ever. "Everybody shared the view that while there are positive elements in the Chequers proposal for economic cooperation, the suggested framework will not work -- not least because it risks undermining the single market," Tusk told reporters.

The main sticking point continues to be how to handle the border between Northern Ireland, which will remain part of the UK, and the Republic of Ireland, which will continue to be part of the EU. Neither side wants an arrangement that would require the rebuilding of border infrastructure, the removal of which was a key part of the Good Friday Agreement that brought peace to Northern Ireland after years of sectarian strife.
 May promised to bring forward new proposals that would ensure trade could move freely across the Irish border, but would not require different customs regimes in Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK, a key red line for the British Prime Minister. Under the EU process that governs Britain's withdrawal, the UK leaves the bloc on March 29, 2019 -- deal or no deal. In practice, to allow for parliamentary ratification, that means a deal must be struck in the next couple of months. It's clear that significant gaps remain between both sides. "The Irish question needs something more than only good intentions," Tusk said. "Without clear a precise solution to the Irish question, and for the whole context of our economic future relations, it will be difficult even to imagine a positive process after October," Tusk said. Macron acknowledged that Brexit was the choice of the British people but added that it was "pushed by those who predicted easy solutions."  "If Brexit tells us one thing... it shows us that those who say: one can do easily without Europe, that it will all go well, that it is easy and will bring lots of money -- are liars," Macron said. "They left the next day so they didn't have to manage it." May faces a rough ride at the Conservative party conference in a few weeks, with challengers to her leadership waiting in the wings.
 And EU leaders want to make an example of the UK's pain to any other countries even thinking of leaving: Breaking up is hard to do.

Those who voted to leave the EU, in my opinion, are idiots and are little different than Trump's white supremacist/Christofascist supporters.  The irony is, as mentioned above, that those hurt the worse by a "hard" Brexit will be the very fools and bigots who voted against their own best interests due to bigotry and a proud embrace of ignorance, all of which was fanned by Russian efforts.