After more than a year of spin, agenda and outright presenting things upside down; the Guardian is actually telling the truth about Brexit.
I must admit I do have to wonder what is behind it. The BBC and Independent continue to push their Soft Brexit agenda to the hilt, so why is the Guardian, that bastion of Blairism and the EU, not doing the same? I have to ask myself.
Now, to be fair, I don't particularly like the Guardian politics but I give them full marks for their Climate reporting. It is absolutely world class and means I will, more often than not, read an article in the Guardian that I know I won't agree with, due to the respect they have created in other areas.
So what does it say to you that the Guardian is running down the EU and the Barnier team? That, after months of telling us the UK is "just not ready" and "run by amateurs", the Guardian is telling us that the EU offering is "back of a fag packet" and that the UK spent 3 hour with a presentation (generated by our ~100 negotiators), tearing it to shreds and sending it back with the contempt it deserves. Given that:
The British team thinks the EU is trying to extract more than it is legally entitled to, on the basis of an “unsatisfactory” paper that runs to less than four sides of text and some tables.
How does this fit with the Guardian's long held assertion that the EU has been "well prepared" for 6 months and the uk has "just been playing at it"??
Or that the Guardian is intimating that
Meanwhile, British negotiators fumed at suggestions they were not serious – a charge levelled by Barnier on Monday because the UK has not published a paper on the Brexit financial settlement.
<snip>
“It is also clear that they have an issue with the current view around town that ‘serious’ means agreeing with the commission. The UK doesn’t agree with it.”
Then the reality I have been saying for quite some time now:
Throughout the negotiations, the UK has railed against this “inflexible” timetable, but the Brexit secretary’s calls to merge talks have been rejected.
Barnier’s hands are tied, because his brief has been agreed by the EU’s 27 leaders, who have no wish to rewrite the mandate.
In short the EU has already decided how the negotiations are going to go, what they want, what they will and will not do and that the UK has no choice but to simply say YES and sign on the dotted line no matter what the price is to the UK.
When, not if, the UK winds up in Hard Brexit with No Deal, it will be all blamed on the UK negotiators. The truth is the EU did not come to negotiate, they spend six months writing the terms of our surrender. Perhaps they might just have revisited the records of WWII. The _only_ country on that list which did not surrender, in one way or another, is the UK.
The Remoaner press has been making much of the "Fuming" of Brussels about delay and lost time. Yet, the Guardian tells us that..
EU diplomats say they are not concerned about delays until the end of the year.
Meaning that the EU has allocated till the end of 2017 to create the full capitulation of the UK and if the UK has not capitulated, by then, things will start to go off the rails pretty badly for the EU as the alliance of 27 begins to fall apart.
Let us not forget that if the UK does not capitulate it will be 5 of the 8 net contributors who will face the full burden of the lost UK revenue and, also, the same 5 who will also feel the largest drop in GDP from trade barriers with the UK blocking their exports. Even worse, those 5 countries, who import from the UK, will either have to face higher prices for those imports or pay even more from the rest of the world, if, indeed, it is even possible to get those imports from the rest of the world.
I have said, over and over again, that the EU does not take UK imports if they can either get them, or get them cheaper, anywhere else in the world.
Whilst I'm sure that Italy would not worry that much about the Spaghetti we sell them, Germany and France might worry excessively about the industrial design services we sell to them; something the UK excels in all over the world.
In a turn around as startling as Lincoln City winning the FA cup, the Guardian buries the spin and EU fear mongering right at the very bottom of the article, as if they can't resist but also can't afford to put it at the top and set the tone of the article.
I must admit, I'm baffled as to what has changed. Perhaps the very next one will be back to normal and the reporter with the temerity to "tell us as it is" firmly castigated.
I shall await further news with interest.
