Of ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking

A new year and another new Brexit Blog.

This one will delight in the fuss created by the Permanent Representative of the United Kingdom to the European Union who decided to resign several months early, and in it, in wonderful civil service speak, ripped the Government and May's Brexit team for the apparent "ill-founded arguments and muddled thinking".

Sir Ivan Rogers had been in the right wing press' cross-hairs because he did not bend to the idea that either Brexit was either good or easy, in fact he said late last year that it would take up to ten years. This angered people who clearly knew less, but thought Brexit should be easy, and that anyway, supporting Brexit is seen as patriotic.

Patriotism is the last refuge of the scoundrel and fascist, and this thought that anyone who works on Brexit should be a believer, or otherwise it be subverted. Which is clearly hog-wash.

In the past few weeks we have seen the independence of both the Judiciary and the Civil Service called into question by both the press and the Brexiteers. Both need to be impartial to ensure separation of law and state, and to make sure tat either the Government follows the rule of law, and that Ministers are given the best advice in the pursuit of their policies, even if said policies are madness.

Nigel volunteered to replace Sir Ivan, but as the Mail said, be-knighted career civil servant replaced by be-knighted career civil servant, as if this was in some way a bad thing. In only in a Brexiteers mind would putting someone with little or no experience in such a vital job be even considered, with Britian's economic and political future at stake.

But these are the times we are living in. Times when the PM won't, or can't, give a straight answer if it is her Government's aim to stay in or leave the Single Market. She just wants the best deal. But then the best deal would be to remain a member of both the Single Market and EU.

Farming is the one industry that has most to fear from Brexit; with vast amounts of subsidies from the EU going to vanish overnight in maybe 2019, although the Government has said these would continue until 2020, but that is just delaying the disaster ahead. British meat exports, unless a deal could be struck with the EU, would be so expensive as to make exports almost impossible. And striking trade deals with counties like, say the US, would mean the UK being flooded with imported meat full of vitamins and chemicals that the EU has banned. On top of that, there would be no labour to pick fruit and vegetables from the fields, but then one of the Brexiteers, Andrea Leadsom, indicated that unskilled EU migration could continue and rules would be bent to allow this to happen. In every negotiation, there is give and take, and in the face of the banking lobby to keep passporting rights, it seems to be a possibility that farming might be sacrificed.

Free movement sounds scary, but when it is EU nationals from other EU countries, doing exactly what hundreds of thousands of Brits do, live and work in another country, what is there really to be scared of? These EU expats, come over here, work, pay taxes and behave themselves. Work in the fields, in our hospitals and in care homes, doing the jobs that British people won't do, at least for that money. BASTARDS! They should come over here, claim benefits, clog up the NHS so the right can moan about them, so instead, the press just makes up scare stories. That EU expats, not migrants; best call them what we call our own British migrants, do what we and hundreds of thousands of Brits do, live and work, pay taxes, raise families and I guess don't learn the language. Now who isn't integrating?