Brexit has been mismanaged from the start. Much of the problem has been the many competing priorities and motivations belonging to the key influencers who have been involved, but this itself is in no small part due to the biggest Brexit problem of them all. The absence of good, decisive and responsible leadership.

The Brexit process over recent months could have gone in different directions at many different points and it is regrettable that there has been a distinct absence of vision and understanding on the benches of the Commons. Vision which could have seen that a deal, formula, pathway or whatever you want to call it has never been just about an agreement itself, but about the people involved, the chronology of events, the changing landscape and yes, a whole lot more besides.

We are where we are. So no matter what has come before, there is no sensible option beyond trying to play with the hand that is available.

So when a compromise arrives in a form which could work for our MPs and our Country too, the focus should be shifting to identify and remove the blocks to realising that opportunity for progress. Not dwelling on who has ownership, who claims the legacy, who will be upset or anything more.

The reality is that the very best ‘deal’ that would be available to the UK could only be negotiated from the position and mindset of already being out of the EU.

With the obsession over plans and having to have a strategy in place which our MPs have, it is clear that the current Parliament will not willingly support this pathway.

As such, it is vital for MPs to accept the closest thing to that which they find acceptable.

From the information now available, it looks very much like the Malthouse Compromise could be the opportunity that everyone – and not least all of us outside of Westminster have been waiting for.

This Plan is far from perfect for either side. I say this with a firm belief that in the right hands from the start of this process, Brexit could immediately upon Leaving in March have promised the UK a massive amount more.

Because of what has happened during the Brexit process, the decision and therefore the method of our departure has become about so much more than just Brexit itself.

From this point alone, the Malthouse Compromise has to be seen as potentially the least trouble-free pathway to getting out of the EU, on time, with the prospect of building a working relationship with our former partners and in a way which at the very least honours the spirit of the Referendum Vote, even if at this stage it would be impractical to expect any more.

As a lapsed, but nonetheless lifelong conservative, it gives me no pleasure to feel or openly be so very critical of a Conservative PM.

But the situation we are facing over Brexit and beyond is so very, very serious, there must be a collective acceptance that with May at the helm, compromise penned by anyone other than her and her coterie of advisers, is not in her plan. It is not in her mind an acceptable form of what this Brexit process will become.

Never mind the missed opportunities and the what could haves, what should haves and everything that has gone before and been done. The way to get this problem solved is to remove the obstacle of a spent force as a Prime Minister to whom owning the legacy of a Brexit deal is all that her premiership has now become.

The Conservative Party has the ability to remove her right now if there is collective recognition amongst the Parliamentary Party of how dire this situation has become.

Personal ambition must be put to one side so that a leader can be Elected and installed in No.10, who will embrace the catalyst for change over Brexit. A new Prime Minister who can set off the reaction and chain of events now needed here within our own Parliament.

And then take it to Brussels not as a question, but as a statement of intent and overview of what our departure from the EU will look like.

Something that the EU can choose to embrace or reject. But with the consequences made very clear that failing to engage with what is on offer to them will leave the EU responsible for what follows, and that it is our commitment to prosper and be a friend to all Nations who are friendly to us, no matter what they think or then do.

On Thursday 23^rd June 2016, the British People, by a solid, democratic majority, Voted for the UK to Leave the EU.

There was no division of choices within the Leave option on the Ballot Paper.

No label on the Ballot Box that said it was in fact Pandora’s and that Leave could as such end up being Remain.

There was no get out of jail card provided for Remainers to trash democracy and arrive here today thinking that it is they who will have the last laugh.

But while our weak and rudderless Prime Minister has exploited the given trust of the People to deliver a non-deal which would deliver everything less than Brexit itself, it’s failure today and its being outed for the lie that it actually is has itself given the lie to everything that Politicians will now try to pass off as Brexit. That is other than Leaving without anything that resembles a deal – which otherwise will be at any level nothing less than capitulation to Brussels and Remain in all but name.

Politicians are dreaming up an entirely different reality if they think that Brexit is itself an opportunity to play out some kind of bizarre Spartacus moment.

My plan is Brexit! No – MY plan is Brexit! NO – MY PLAN IS BREXIT!

There is only one real Brexit and that’s Leaving through OUR OWN DOOR, the one that only we, on our own have the ability and genuine purpose to create.

Not one of the EU’s making. Not one in which we have agreed what is no better than a day pass. A reality in which we never really leave, function as a satellite thereof, but in reality FOREVER Remain within.

Whilst the ineptitude, incompetence and ignorance of our current Political masters will now make the immediate process unnecessarily tough, the only way to achieve Brexit properly is to Leave without a deal, on WTO terms and get on and embrace our future as one which is not and never will be in any way dependent upon approval from any EU Executive of Member.

We must accept the way forward is where we will find our future, not backwards. We are and will soon value ourselves as a great Independent Nation and can deal with whatever we need to, alone and with friends who are not determined to undermine us, come what may.

 

images thanks to unknown/from ‘Spartacus’ the Universal Film 1960 & unknown (background)

 

Well here you have it. Again.

More meaningless words from the EU that are supposed to bolster a meaningless withdrawal ‘negotiated’ by a powerless PM who thinks we will believe her when she says she has achieved something new that without her stopping the ill-fated vote in December, could never otherwise have been done.

The Government’s loss of the Vote tomorrow is now all but inevitable. It’s what happens next that should perhaps really be concerning us all.

No matter what self-congratulated strokes of genius are pulled by the many Grieves and the Speaker over the coming days, this self-serving majority within our Parliament are in the process of creating a constitutional mess within an outward-flowing chaos which is going to seriously affect us all.

That Parliament is in desperate need of being changed is a given. Because if nothing else, somebody and some government that we have yet to materialise even as just a picture in our minds, is going to have to sort out every bit of the mess that these self-serving politicians have created for no good reason, rather than what they promised to do when they were seeking election and then what they were subsequently elected to do.

There is no control left within Parliament.

As such we are at a point where only astrologers, psychics and fortune tellers really have any legitimate chance of telling us now what will follow, once this quisling Parliament does whatever it is that one way or another it seems inevitable that it is going to do.

One of the travesties surrounding the stories and soundbites that our sitting MP’s actively propagate is the myth that the problems facing the Public Sector are just about money and money alone.

Whether it’s the NHS, Local Government and the cut back of services that touch our own and the lives of the People we love each and every day, even the merest hint or suggestion that the issue of overstretched and collapsing services will evaporate if we add just add more cash is itself the biggest lie possible. It is a whopper borne only from ignorance or a lack of willingness to address the real issues on the part of the Politicians Elected to look after us, who would make honesty a priority if their priority wasn’t just getting elected again.

The hard and unpalatable truth is that as a Country, we already spend enough money to deliver very good Public Services.

The real problem facing Public Services is the way in which the money allocated to them is actually spent.

Culturally, Government has for too long been one giant job creation scheme. Not only that. It has also embraced the creation of terms and benefits for employees at a level of generosity that would not be affordable for any commercial enterprise which itself would have to provide realistic terms for any employee as a bare minimum, in order just to survive.

In return for this increasing generosity, expectations for productivity, responsibility and due diligence have lowered in a like-for-like amount and the result has been a situation where for a disproportionate amount of Public Sector roles, the Taxpayer gets a fraction of the value that it should do and there are a many multiples of roles now in existence to complete the functions that at one point – in a non-IT-assisted point in our history – would have been carried out very efficiently by no more than perhaps just one or a few.

But before you get carried away with the idea that I am suggesting our frontline nurses or other ‘technical’ or ‘at-the-coal-face’ staff are just not bothering to do their jobs, I am not. I am pointing my ire at the plethora of backroom jobs, many of which none of us will have ever heard of, which have been created rather than being required by what we would know to be practical need.

The protectionist culture that exists in Public Services, further fuelled by the insidiousness of our growing blame culture and the unwritten rule that nobody has to take responsibility for what they themselves do, has also led to the situation where decisions are inevitably passed to others and then to those who brand themselves as consultants or interim managers, being paid inflated salaries for undertaking tasks that people employed within substantive roles are more than qualified and actually have the experience needed to do.

The difference between what we should be paying for and receiving and what we are paying and actually getting is significant.

The money already available would pay for much much more to be done if people employed within jobs which are necessary were allowed, encouraged and felt free to do everything that they actually need to do.

But the problem doesn’t end there. There are travesties such as the Local Government Pension Scheme and the so-called privatisation of Public Services too.

Many People do not realise that much of the Council Tax they pay on the understanding that it will be used locally to cover the provision of local Public Services is actually used to directly cover the cost and deficit created by the Local Government Pension Scheme, which the Councils are obligated to cover and as such prioritise first before providing the services that Taxpayers both expect for their communities and people out in the real world actually need. The irony being that the architect of this evolving problem was a Labour Chancellor, one Gordon Brown, who like all Labour Politicians looks no further than quick ways to win Votes without any consideration for the consequences of such irresponsible actions when they are long gone and no longer around.

This concoction of unrealistic and unnecessary costs created through ignorance and a lack of understanding of how organisations actually work and what for decision making will actually do has only been exacerbated by the embracing of restrictive employment laws by the same range of politicians who are happy to play up to the employee-based audience by giving them freebies which look great at face value, but have unimaginable costs to the organisations and businesses which are then obligated to honour them. Not something that any politician with a real grip on practical consequences of policy making would willingly do.

The upshot of this is that it now appears cheaper to engage the services of private contractors to provide the same services that Council’s once did themselves, because is is cheaper to pay a business which will make a margin to provide that identical service, because even without making a profit themselves, the ridiculous obligations they now have imposed on them by rights this, rights that legislation has made it impossible for not-for-profit statutory Public Sector organisations to do.

This cauldron of chaos has created massive opportunities to be exploited deliberately and also without intent. Opportunities that allow more and more too be taken out of the system by individuals, organisations and companies who are gaining more and more, whilst reducing what is available for legitimate purposes, but neither being identified or made responsible for all that they actually do.

There is no better way to describe the situation facing the Public Sector than to call it a perfect storm. And what we actually need to solve the problem isn’t a fire-hose shooting money the Country doesn’t have at the problem. It is true, comprehensive and meaningful reform.

The Public Sector will remain unsustainable and services will continue to be cut until all the people, companies and organisations taking money from it without adding value are removed.

 

 

 

We can only imagine that the MPs who voted against the Government yesterday are very proud of what they have achieved.

Oblivious to the reality that the delays, obfuscation and catalogue of attempts to do everything possible to thwart Brexit may actually achieve everything that they fear most, they blithely continue with their sanctimonious campaign, paying scant regard to the cost to our democracy caused by their complete lack of regard for it.

Make no mistake. The Amendment to the Finance Bill yesterday may be painted as a very clever and indirect route to prevent a no-deal Brexit when there has been no way for this Remain-led Parliament to overturn the Will of the People in an openly direct way. But the mere fact that MPs are having to deploy such Machiavellian tactics to get their own way itself speaks volumes about the respect they have for the People who appointed them.

The complacency and arrogance which powers this affront to everything that we hold dear will inevitably force its own end if this malaise should continue.

As the only different between what many of these same MPs project and deride as fascism and their own behaviour is they are not just one leader alone, but number some 300 and above.

Being a collective rather than an individual makes no difference when it comes to the end result.

This behaviour is simply wrong.

It is dictatorship in all but name, cleverly disguised within the machinations of a so-called democratic government system which is being aggressively manipulated in order to serve a community of autocrats who have had far too much power for far too long.

No matter how hard they try to maintain what they perceive to be the status quo, the status quo is in fact something that in the terms of Brexit extends way beyond the period of their political lives and their own lifetimes. The status quo is in fact an Independent UK and the return of that power to our own Parliament and out of the hands of anyone who puts the interests of others above those of the People that our Parliament exists to serve.

With the UK committed to its departure in 79 days on the 29th of March, the actions of these MPs makes the real Brexit that the British People Voted for increasingly likely. It does nothing to reduce the chance of it, or build the case for this mythical nirvana of the Remain faction which does little more than rely on duping the British Public who Voted for Brexit for a range of different reasons and not least of all because they have realised that they have for too long been duped by the politicians who are supposed to serve them.

The self-serving action that these MPs are undertaking will have consequences beyond their view. And whilst these consequences will be far reaching and punish the same People who are on the receiving end of all this ineptitude over and over again, the travesty is the fact that any resolution is likely to be left in the same old self serving hands for these incompetent MPs to deal with all over again.

We may have never needed a change in British Politics as much as we do today.