No Exit; and no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

The other day a little bird alighted on my window ledge. As it looked for little scraps to eat, the movements of it’s head were quick as the little creature was on the lookout for predators. These highly tuned senses were responsible for keeping the inoffensive little creature alive and free from the claws and teeth of the local cats – of which there are several! Still the little bird had no need to be concerned in this instance as I have a first floor flat!
I remembered that little bird yesterday afternoon as the car’s “sat nav” (Where would we be without these little boxes? Lost – Ed.) as I was guided to the Holiday Inn on Armada Way in Plymouth yesterday for the South West Vote Leave meeting.
The reason for remembering that little bird was of course that I was now in the position of the hunted! This is because of the snares and traps laid by the establishment rulers of our formerly sovereign land to trap the unwary motorist. Plymouth is generously strewn with a plentiful collection, large numbers of speed trap cameras, traffic light enforcement cameras and the ever present CCTV with eagle eyed council staff looking at the monitors at the other end ever on the wait to press the record button to record the number plate (license plate for our many US readers) should the unwary motorist enter a bus lane or find themselves unable to exit a dreaded yellow box junction! (indicated by criss-cross yellow lines painted on the road, again for our US readers). It is as a very great friend and a very great patriot living in Huntingdonshire says; “It is almost as if the politicians have declared war on the people!”
Running the above gauntlet is of course something that your Editor shares with many of his readers. Every day for many! We now we have to be always on our guard!
That caution and awareness however needs to be displayed now however in the Brexit campaign.
From the day the Chameleon “named the day” the Brexit campaign in reality kicked off then. Since then a curious sense of unreality has developed about it. For your Editor, this sense of unreality persisted at yesterday’s meeting. To date the campaign has been remarkable for a number of reasons; firstly the points scored by each side have invariably been own goals! Were let us say Arsenal and Chelsea to perform in a similar manner one can imagine what chants, shouts and taunts would emanate from their respective supporters! Then on course there is the soon to be expected prospect of President of the United States, Mr Barack Obama going “on the stump” to campaign for the “Remain” side! As this organ has previously stated, it is unprecedented that a leader of a foreign government should do this!
Insofar as yesterday’s meeting is concerned, fellow EuroRealist, the excellent Mr Tim Witherspoon made a speech but the audience had turned up to hear Mr George Eustice, Minister for Farming, Food and Marine Environment and the Member for Camborne, Redruth & Hayle. Mr Eustice turned up and competently delivered the speech that was expected from him. He had a friendly and supportive audience and there was nothing to be gained from your Editor taking part in the questioning and attempting to point out that what he did not say. You see, the scoring of own goals may now be de rigueur, but your Editor is a very old fashioned sort of fellow: He takes the attitude that the tripping up those on one’s own side is the job of one’s opponents!
So far, many of the blows landed by each side upon their opponents have been glancing blows that clearly indicated that “something is afoot”. The reason for the trip from one end of Cornwall into Devon was to confirm this and your Editor can now report after having a little chat with Mr Eustice after the event this can now be confirmed.
It is this: this campaign is a charade! It is – as this organ has previously stated – a coup de théâtre on an international scale.
In our little chat, Mr Eustice was of the opinion that the necessary bureaucratic resources for Brexit but not Flexcit could be put in place by the civil service and a trade deal could be negotiated in a little over two years because UK industry and commerce already was in the EU and as as such was familiar with the regulations and procedures.
Your Editor will deal but briefly with the above nonsense as the job has been done before and the purpose of today’s article is to put these things into their proper context.
Conducting the negotiations for a Brexit will be something akin to trying to play a quiet piece in a Mozart symphony in a night club where the DJ is playing some “heavy metal” at full volume! This is because those in the international markets would be speculating and “going short” or “shorting” – this is what Old Etonians do. Those who went to comprehensive schools visit the bookies – or “turf accountants” as Mr Johnson refers to them. A valid, worked out exit route is ESSENTIAL. Not so much to convince the British Electorate but the international currency and equity markets! Not to mention the all important Credit Reference Agencies!
Rather than go into detail – as we have done before – therefore let us describe it in a simple easy to understand analogy that even those such as the unfortunate Mr Cummings might understand!
Yesterday’s event was held in Plymouth. If a traveller wished to travel by train to London from that city he or she would board the train at Plymouth (originally named Plymouth North Road) and get off at London Paddington. The train would pass through and generally stop at Bristol Temple Meads station. Now here we come to a very important point, something that Messrs. Eustice and Cummings must understand (but appear to have difficulty doing so!) – in order to reach London (from Plymouth) it is necessary to pass through Bristol. This is NOT optional! It is no good Messrs. Eustice and Cummings declaring their earnest wish that the train run through Sailsbury in Wilstshire as that train does not go there! Now I know what Mr Cummings will be shouting. That it is perfectly possible to get to London via Salisbury by changing at Exeter St. Davids and then to London Waterloo. But then the object is to reach London Paddington! Yes Mr Cummings, you can take the Jubilee line to Westminster then change to the Circle line that gets you to Paddington. But the journey will take longer! The point Mr Cummings is this – in order to reach London you have to go through Bristol (or Salisbury if you insist)!
Thus going through Bristol (or Salisbury) presents one with a choice. One can choose to alight there and not proceed onto London. One may indeed come to the opinion that Bristol (or Salisbury) is a very nice city and that one will never proceed further to London and indeed spend the remainder one’s entire life in Bristol – or Salisbury. In which case your Editor would agree with Mr Cummings on one point: given a choice of spending the rest of one’s days in Bristol or Salisbury I would agree with Mr Cummings, Salisbury is the better choice!
As it is with the train journey to London from Plymouth, so it is with Brexit! In order to reach “the promised land” (full independence and control of borders and immigration policy – and everything else) it is necessary to pass through what the Chameleon calls “the Norway option” (and what the excellent and learned Doctor Richard North calls Flexcit) first! If it is the wish of the UK government to have the UK remain in the Single Market and EFTA it will be free to do so. It will also be free to work towards a newer more flexible arrangement!
Since those in the establishment (such as Mr Eustice) persist in this erroneous course we must draw one of two conclusions:
1. They are delusional to the extent that they need referring by their GPs to the NHS mental health services.
2. They have another objective.
That the conclusion we should draw is number two and not number one and that Mr Eustice is not mentally ill (the jury is still out on Mr Cummings) is borne out by the results of the Chameleon’s so called “negotiation” with Frau Doktor Merkel and her underlings (the presidents and prime ministers of the other EU member states).
When the Chameleon went up to Brussels your Editor was expecting Frau Doktor Merkel to at least give the poor man a fig leaf as she does not strike us as a cruel and vindictive woman. That she did not is an indication not that she is cruel and vindictive but rather that such concessions necessary to ensure the UK remain in the EU following a Brexit vote in a first referendum in the subsequent second referendum are going to be very hard to get. This will be of course the notion of “Associate Membership” that has been alluded to by this organ in previous articles.
This also explains the rush of this first referendum. As was pointed out (correctly) by several other commentators and some MPs, a proper agreement with concessions would require “treaty change” and this would be a long drawn out process. “Treaty change” of course is already on the cards as the EU is going to be forced to implement treaty change in order to preserve the Euro and also the requirements of all EU member states – apart from Denmark and the UK – to adopt the Euro as their currency after 2020.
Frau Doktor Merkel’s (and the EU’s) strategy is now clear: send the Chameleon back to “Blighty” with “nothing pretending to be something” and hope that the British People will vote to have the UK remain in the EU. If they do then “die Britische Problem” (the British Problem) will have been postponed. If not and the Brexit vote goes in favour of independence Frau Merkel will then have the unpleasant task of forcing painful concessions from the Belgians, the Dutch, the French and the Spanish in order to hand Mr Boris Johnson (the Chameleon’s replacement) a substantial set of concessions.