Thursday 19 January 2017

You're doing it wrong...

Everybody is blaming the wrong people for the "weakness" of our Brexit strategy. Let us rewind a little.

In January 2013, David Cameron gave a speech in which he committed to an in/out EU referendum if the Tories won in 2015. This should have put this on everybody's radar. If you trade with the EU or are responsible for implementing EU regulation, this would affect you.

In 2015, the Tories won, much to everyone's amazement. This should have been the alarm klaxon. How did Cameron improve his position, despite his milquetoast record? It was the promise of the referendum.

At this point, people should have started making serious plans to cope with a possible Leave win. And the people who would face the most immediate consequences would be lawmakers. The people who should have been preparing for a possible Leave win are the civil service.

Do you believe that ANY minister actually has a proper grasp of their remit? Of course they don't. They are reliant on briefings prepared by their department. Do you think a minister would or could decide on their own how to put in place Brexit? It would never happen. No, the mandarins and their lackeys would come up with their strategy. They would create a narrative so that what they wanted sounded like the minister's views. The minister is their human shield.

The civil service is Europhile, if only for pragmatic reasons. The UK has lobbied for some of the most draconian EU regulation. Are you aware of what your MEP actually votes on? Unlike our laws, EU regulations are opaque and almost unreported. This means that civil servants can hide behind the EU.

Our civil service gold plates them on implementation. No other country implements EU regulations to this extent. The civil service has also taught us to believe that we have to accept EU regulations. We can't ignore them, or part apply them. Other countries do!

The reason for any bureaucracy is to feed and grow itself. The British civil service is the very acme of this. The EU is a very useful cover for the civil service to grow. You could almost see it as rent-seeking by bureaucrats. They've become too lazy to justify their plans and aspirations to the public. It's much easier to lobby the EU and do a deal in a smoky room.

The civil service sabotaged Cameron's half-assed negotiations with the EU. They removed any meaningful compromises from Cameron's wish list to make it easy for the EU. This make him feel like he got everything he asked for.

The civil service made no plans whatsoever for a Leave win. They had no intention of of leaving the EU. They still have no intention of leaving the EU. They are fighting a desperate rearguard action to try and stop it ever happening.

The resources of the civil service are being brought to bear: briefings, research (that we pay for!) and ready access for pro-EU journalists. They are also scrambling to come up with a half-assed plan for Brexit. It would not surprise me in the least if some last-minute excuse came along.

The civil service has already briefed that we're not losing any EU regulations. They are being cast into law, so that their precious empires are not destroyed, the way they should be.

Furthermore, David Cameron ran away like a faggot when he lost. He had promised to put in place Brexit if he lost the vote. He didn't. He ran away and left the mess to someone else.

Shouting at Boris and Gove for not having a plan is fatuous. They had no authority or remit to make such a plan. If they had a plan, the civil service would have ignored it or briefed against it.

Shouting at Theresa May is stupid. She inherited this situation. She wouldn't be making the plans anyway.

No. Look at the faceless mandarins if you want to be angry with someone for the lack of Brexit preparation.

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