Brexit: Un-Patriot Games.

Patriot Games was a 1992 American thriller based on Tom Clancy’s novel of the same name. It was a sequel to the 1990 film The Hunt for Red October, but with different actors in the leading roles; Harrison Ford starred as Jack Ryan and Anne Archer as his wife. James Earl Jones was the lone holdover, reprising his role as Admiral James Greer.
The plot: Retired CIA analyst Jack Ryan is on vacation with his family in London. They witness a terrorist attack on Lord William Holmes, British Secretary of State for Northern Ireland. Ryan intervenes and is injured, but he kills one of the assailants, Patrick Miller, while his older brother Sean Miller looks on. The remaining attackers flee, as Sean is apprehended by the police. While recovering, Ryan is called to testify in court against Miller, who is part of a splinter cell of the Provisional Irish Republican Army. Miller is later convicted for his crimes.
When Americans make films about the UK – or “England” as many Americans insist on calling the entirety of the British Isles – there is generally a certain unreal incongruity – that to a British audience is “not quite right” that modern Britain is “not like that.” The US movie makers are well aware of this but are making the film for their primary audience, which is in the USA and American perceptions of “England” differ from reality.
This feeling of unreal incongruity now pervades the whole Brexit process.
I have written this article having got back from my normal walk. It was along the cliffs at Botallack. There was a little disruption that I do not normally encounter. This is because they are filming the latest of the Poldark series. Poldark is set at the end of the 18th Century (1790s). At the early part of the 18th Century (August 1721) there was the bursting of the South Sea bubble. During the 18th Century, gambling was a very big issue in “Society”. This is one thing that the makers of Poldark have reflected with the tendency of the upper classes to wager huge sums of money.
There are the wags at Westminster who mockingly refer to The Honourable Jacob Rees-Mogg, the Member for North East Somerset as The Member for the 18th Century. A more accurate jocular title would be the Member for P G Woodhouse.
Whatever.
The one thing that Jacob Rees-Mogg and such as John Redwood, and yes Nigel Farage, you too, have to understand is that you are shortly likely to make a wager of enormous proportions. You are going to wager the health of the UK economy, the UK’s credit rating and the UK’s gold reserves (or what is left of them!) on an outcome most bookies would quote rather long odds upon!
This is because it looks increasingly likely that HMG is going to “go for broke” – a “No Deal” or a so-called “Hard Brexit”.
This would take place as “Big Ben” would (were it able to) strike the midnight hour on Friday 29th March 2019. As the bell would toll, it would mark the end of the UK as a suzerain state of the supra-national confederacy that is the European Union and it’s re-emergence amongst sovereign nation states. It will also represent a significant event in the fortunes of such diverse characters as Jacob Ress-Mogg and Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission.
We would commend both to read John Donne’s Meditation XVII, “Devotions upon Emergent Occasions” (1623) or to give it it’s Latin title, Nunc Lento Sonitu Dicunt, Morieris (Now this bell, tolling softly for another, says to me, Thou must die.)
In particular it’s most famous lines should give cause for contemplation: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend’s or of thine own were: any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.”
You see, the absolutely gigantic gamble that Mr Rees-Mogg and Mr Farage want Madame Mayhem to make is to set about putting in place ALL the infrastructure needed to enable the UK to function efficiently and to ensure the smooth flow of traffic to and from the 27 remaining members of the European Union within 1 year, 6 months and 3 days!
This will not only mean the construction of many more customs and excise facilities, recruitment and training of additional staff and also an expansion of the necessary IT systems. It will also mean the construction of Border Inspection Posts at British ports and airports. These BIPs will then be handed over to the European Union for they will be the ones to staff these as UK goods will require to be inspected. Since we cannot be sure that the EU nations will construct these on their soil we will have to construct the necessary facilities on our soil and offer them to EU operators.
It this does not get done in time or worse if no attempt is made at all, unmitigated chaos will ensue!
If it happens you will not have long to wait to see the effects! If perchance you turn in after watching BBC2’s “Newsnight” and switch on the radio at 8:00AM the next morning the news will be full of grid lock as the channel ports as well as UK air space effectively being closed!
So who would gain from such chaos?
In the short term nobody!
In the medium term large businesses and the European Union!
Why?
Because the EU will inevitably seek to turn the UK’s chaotic state into what they term as “a beneficial crisis” to advance the interests of the EU. Inevitably the EU would put an emergency offer of re-entry into the EU to the UK – on the basis that it would be subject to a referendum of the British people! The offer would include a requirement to join the Eurozone.
This to many people with savings would appear attractive.
As we write, one Euro is worth 88 pence. Following a crash Brexit it is likely to be worth around £1.25. What this means is that for someone with £10,000 in a deposit account their savings would be worth 8,000 Euros. The offer would probably include Sterling entering the Eurozone at parity, meaning £1 = 1Euro. Thus instead of receiving 8,000 Euros for their £10,000 they would receive 10,000 Euros!
Of course, for Comrade Corbyn and Comrade McDonnell re-entry into the EU and entry into the Eurozone would be a disaster! This is because they would be unable to carry out their plans of renationalisation!
This means that my shares in SSE would be safe!
Thus by taking this huge gamble (of making WTO No Deal Brexit work), Messrs. Rees-Mogg, Redwood and Farage are risking the UK re-entering the EU and entering the Eurozone. We suspect that this is something these three gentlemen do not want! We suspect that certain entities and persons might however! Hence the title of today’s article.