Wednesday 27 September 2017

How will Brexit fanatics react to the Americans' 219% Bombardier tariff?


Given the way Theresa May shamed Britain by pathetically grovelling at the feet of Donald Trump for a post-Brexit trade deal in January 2017, the 219% import duty the Americans have just whacked on Bombardier (endangering thousands of jobs in Northern Ireland) should be seen as a total disaster for hard-right Brexit fanatics.

Winning a beneficial trade deal for the UK from a guy who is continually promoting "America First" protectionism would have been pretty much impossible to achieve under the best of circumstances, but with weak and directionless Theresa May and her three inept Brexiteer clowns representing UK interests, only the most delusional of hard-right Brexiters could still be looking at this absolute mess with any kind of confidence.

This move from the Americans (despite Theresa May's widely reported efforts to beg them not to do it) should be a clear wake up call for those who see Donald Trump as some kind of wonderful white knight who will ride to Brexit-Britain's rescue with a glorious new US-UK trade deal (rather than a ruthless opportunist with decades of experience of trampling all over the little guy).

But sadly it won't be a wake up call for them, because the kind of people who envisage Trump as their shining white knight of Brexit are also the kind of people who are oblivious to Nigel Farage's outrageous extreme-right tendencies; blind to the outright Brexit lies spewed by Boris Johnson, Iain Duncan Smith, Michael Gove and their ilk; and totally unconcerned about the way Theresa May and the Tories are turning Brexit into an excuse for the kind of elitist hard-right anti-democratic power grab they've always quietly craved.

A punitive 219% trade barrier endangering British jobs is just another inconvenient fact for militant Brexiters to evade or avoid until the subject dies down again, then it will be left in the collective memory hole like the rest of the facts that don't fit into their glorious Brexit narrative.

Let's face it, if they're the kind of people who were prepared to give the green light to the fanatically right-wing fringe of the Tory party to haphazardly redesign the UK's political and legal systems to suit the interests of their billionaire backers (which the vote for Brexit has undeniably done), then they're the kind of people to actually perceive Theresa May as a "strong and stable leader", to actually see the likes of Boris Johnson and the disgraced Liam Fox as competent diplomats, and to actually consider Donald Trump to be their shining white knight of Brexit, rather than the relentlessly dishonest opportunist that he is, and has always been.

These types are so invested in their delusional fantasies of a glorious Brexit with no downsides whatever, that they'll put on yet another display of demeaning mental contortionism to pretend that this ridiculous act of US protectionism has nothing to do with Brexit, has no bearing on the likely outcome of any future US-UK trade deal, and tells us nothing about the true character of their shining white knight of Brexit, nor of Theresa May's ineptitude and impotence. 

Just you watch them. The feats of mental contortionism from hard-right Brexiters are only going to get ever more absurd and demeaning from here on in ...

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