THE Observer’s lead story on Sunday began: ‘The only way forward is to stop posturing and begin a dialogue.’ The pro-democracy movement in Hong Kong is seeking proper honest and realistic talks from the central dictatorial autocracy in Beijing, but is being met with intransigence. As reported in TCW yesterday, this unbending unelected autocracy is intensifying its propaganda offensive, with the help of saboteurs, apparently intending pre-emptively to convince a watching world that any action it might take to quell the unrest would be justified. Maybe it hopes to convince itself, too.
For weeks, the Chinese media ignored the Hong Kong turmoil. But now whereas everybody in China knows what is happening – and what is at stake – this does not seem to be the case in Europe because the extremist Remainers, bitterly hostile to democracy, are managing to convince the EU that the UK will cave in to the Withdrawal Agreement’s menu for further debilitating delay and its ‘not a deal yet’ control mechanism.
Yes: the Hong Kong situation is in fact well worth comparing with ours in relation to the utterly intransigent EU and their refusal even to start talks for a deal to regulate trade with the UK after October 31. As the Observer article concluded: ‘This problem is of China’s own making – and it is China’s to resolve. Typically, authoritarian governments like Beijing’s, lacking a democratic mandate, cannot tolerate opposition for fear it will expose their innate weakness. A similar state versus people stand-off has paralysed Moscow in recent weeks. China must overcome its fears. The only sensible, mature way forward is to forswear the use of force, stop shouting and begin an open-ended, unconditional dialogue with its critics. It’s what strong, responsible leaders do.’
This comparison of the EU and the Chinese autocracy may seem far-fetched; certainly it would never occur to the Remainer elite who for some reason call themselves ‘liberal’. But what in fact are the extremist Conservative saboteurs of Brexit proposing for the future of the UK if not an accelerating trajectory, politically and economically, towards a Chinese model of a command structure attempting to use controlled capitalist-type production and marketing methods while gradually removing democracy from our nation state? That is where the EU project is heading. The democratic nation state is now out of date for the likes of Dominic Grieve and the Tory desperate renegade MPs prepared to bring down the legitimately elected Conservative leader by highly illegitimate and anti-democratic means. I suppose at least this gang of desperados are no longer referred to by the pundits as ‘moderates’, as they plot with the politicised Speaker to stop what Parliament has decreed happening. They are appealing to Parliament in order to hand Parliamentary sovereignty to the central autocracy in Brussels. Never has France had such wonderful value for its Légion d’honneur award as it has from Dominic Grieve: he might as well be appealing for the UK to become a province of Macron’s. How a rational political party can fail to expel an MP who is actively seeking the destruction of his own government, even considering the neo-Marxian Jeremy Corbyn as preferable, is extraordinary. Hammond, Grieve, the lot, have sought to undermine the Prime Minister’s negotiating hand with European leaders by publishing a reheated ‘Yellowhammer’ – Whitehall Project Fear cubed – document painting an Armageddon picture of a no deal Brexit.
As with the Chinese government, the EU is adamant that it will not deal with the UK outside its acceptance of Trade Colony status, as commanded by the Withdrawal Agreement. That has been rejected by Parliament thrice, the very Parliament Hammond, Bercow, Grieve and the wild bunch affect to respect so much, and yet they are happy to go under the yoke of this EU dictatorship with no way out.
The EU and these desperate renegades are determined to enforce the Withdrawal Agreement and its diktat; that is the only conclusion we can reach, and that is not ‘a deal’, only a spell in the deep-freeze till a deal might be offered, only more delay and loss of confidence. Johnson’s meeting with Merkel has been sabotaged, to ensure that no good deal might even be proposed.
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, in another magisterial article about the USA in contrast to the EU as our trading future, concludes: ‘To present the British dilemma as a choice between two variants of infeudation is to misunderstand the European project. The US is offering a trade deal. The EU aims to maintain a lockhold over how this country governs itself. Chalk and cheese.’
Exactly so: a China/EU model of being under a subservient lockhold or a free trade agreement with all its haggling, but as a free-standing democratic nation state. That is the choice. The renegade Tories, with their plutocratic financiers and lawyers, want infeudation. We still have no inkling as to why they find this a good future for the UK.
