Brexit Bribery

How very convenient! A £6 billion plan has been proposed to improve areas in which people voted for Brexit. Those who have done the sums reckon that £6 billion is chicken feed. But will the impression of a sizeable fund fool the people of those areas? There again, the purpose of the bribe might be to influence MPs from those areas. Pick off a few at a time here and there. Give them a reason to support May’s deal. They can always claim that their opposition brought about the ‘massive’ injection of funds into their area. No doubt they will be in control of what the money is spent on – their own vote-winning pet projects. Waverers are they target and will be individually selected. It does not matter if they are Labour.

Of course, the scandalous nature of this open bribery will pass right over the heads of the vast majority of MPs. They are used to it.

Has anyone noticed that Theresa May has no ‘fire in her belly’ at all? Ever since she became PM, uttered countless soundbites, none of which have any substance. “Brexit means Brexit” – what else could it mean?  Where people slip up is to interpret that phrase to mean ‘and it is going to happen’. It means nothing of the sort.

“Doing the best for the UK” is another. What is ‘the best’? Is it some botched arrangement where we leave the EU in a few areas, but not altogether?

I don’t understand what the Tories have been doing for the last three years. They could have removed May shortly after the last GE when she lost their, admittedly slim, overall majority.

The UK has been a thorn in the side of the EU ever since we joined. It would not surprise me one bit if they want to see the back of us. That would be a reasonable explanation for their intransigence. It would take only one EU State to block an extension of Art 50. In which case the UK would leave on 29th March 2019 with no deal, or totally cancel Brexit.

Despite the widespread belief that the EU is desperate for our £39 billion contribution, I have my doubts. Quite a lot of that money comes back in the form of multi-million pound grants for EU projects in the UK. And don’t forget that the EU has control of the EU Central Bank. ‘Quantitative Easing’ is not a problem. What QE means in practice is that you will still get the same wage, but it will not buy as much. Most people will not really notice the gradual effect. For example, the newspaper that I buy weekly went up by 5p recently and my pint in the pub also went up by 10p recently. God only knows how many price increases have occurred in the last year or so.

It is people on the fringe who are most affected. They are not the people who May described as ‘just about managing’. Such people are not ‘managing’ at all. They are almost dead.

And, of course, they have had to put up with the beatings of TobCON. The tax persecution and the bans. Since Blair, our own elected representatives have persecuted smokers with rigour, and it does not matter what political party. They all act the same.

I dare say that other bribes are quietly being employed across the Tory Party. They may succeed, but there will be massive anger across the nation if the Will of the People is watered down to vague hopes.