There's no rush to invoke Article 50

After 40-odd years of EU membership we have voted to leave the failing, undemocratic and outdated organisation and despite all the rhetoric from the denialist former Remainers to the contrary, leave is exactly what we will now do.

It may take some time to unpick all the tentacles of the EU that have found their way into the fabric of UK society but essentially, now that the decision has been made - and accepted by our government, and in particular our new Prime Minister - we are now firmly on our way towards a new level of freedom, democracy and a global outlook that has been denied us for decades.

I won't go back over the ridiculous crap spouted by the Remain camp, other than to say that the 'we're too small to have any influence in the world' was the absolute worst load of old bollocks I've ever heard and was, I think, one of the key defining voting influences on the June 23rd Referendum. We have always punched above our weight as a nation - we are resourceful, honest, practical and we think big. We are also loyal partners and we look after our friends and allies. In short we are exactly what most inward investors - be they nations or individuals - are looking for in a partner. We don't renege on agreements and nor do we see the only way of securing a beneficial deal as being that the 'other side' must lose out as part of the process. It's always a mutually beneficial thing.

These qualities cannot be attributed to many other nations and certainly not to the EU.

So now what?

Well it seems to me that now we have a grown up in number 10, things are looking better than ever. I trust Theresa May - yes I know she was on the side of Remain during the referendum but not in a high profile way and she seems to me to be pragmatic and making all the right noises about Brexit so far.

Can you imagine Dave leading our negotiations?

I liked him as a bloke but he was a child promoted way above his capabilities. A terrible negotiator, a figurehead not a leader, a PR man not a visionary,  a crowd pleaser rather than a tough negotiator with the interests of the UK as his main priority.

His approach to these upcoming negotiations would have been to tell the world what he was trying to achieve in advance - so that our 'opponents could decide on their stance and stitch up well in advance - and then, having failed in his quest, he would have tried to tell us that he'd succeeded.

Theresa, on the other hand is keeping her cards close to her chest. She is not pre-judging the outcome of negotiations. She has stated that Brexit must mean Brexit and that negotiations will not officially start before the end of the year, when Article 50 will be invoked. She has also stated that it will be about what's best for the UK going forward and not a half-arsed (my words not hers) compromise approach which frankly would be no good either for the UK or the EU.

So whilst many people who I would consider to be on the same side as me - i.e. Brexiteers - are jumping about calling for Article 50 to be invoked quickly so that the initiative is not lost and so that the Remain camp cannot fudge and curtail what will happen; so that the whole thing cannot be watered down, the fact is that it won't be.

She has made her position clear and not contradicted herself and she is sticking to her guns.And it's more important (than anything in our recent history), to get this right and to make sure we get the best possible outcome from Brexit, than it is to rush the whole thing.

The EU will want to see us suffer, will want us to feel the pain, because it would be a disaster for the EU if Britain prospers and thrives outside, as it will encourage many others in Europe to want to leave. But they don't have the machinery to cause us this pain without causing themselves even greater pain. Which is what they're now slowly starting to realise.

So while Theresa states that 'Brexit will mean Brexit' and then keeps quiet about it, so our former partners in the EU are being allowed the time to wake up and smell the coffee; to slowly realise that we are serious and that they really ought to stop with the threats and other bollocks that they had been spouting during and immediately after the referendum and that actually they need us more than we need them.

Their language has become much more conciliatory, they are now talking about 'special deals' and a good ongoing relationship and while a few are still saying 'we can't let the UK keep the nice things' post Brexit, these people are now very much in the minority and, other than in the denialist media including, in particular the frankly traitorous BBC, they are not gaining any traction.

I'm sure Theresa knows that we can, if needed just walk away. We don't need the EU to grant us any favours. Our economy is strong. We buy more from the EU (to the tune of £106.4 billion in 2015) than they do from us. We have other countries around the world queueing up to do business with us.

On the other hand the EU is in decline, almost in recession. Italy is bankrupt, as is Greece and France is teetering. It has just fucked up (technical economic term) it's trade deal with the US (which was - TTIP - a crap deal but that's not the point I'm making) and is on the brink of failure without us to prop up the whole sorry edifice.

In many ways we might well be better off just walking away from the EU, like a watertight and relatively comfortable lifeboat leaving the Titanic. Of course we'd like to remain friends with our trading partners in Europe - but this will almost certainly be better if it is on the basis of trading with nation states rather than via the clunking machinery of the EU.

I think if the EU doesn't play ball, we should offer deals to Germany, Italy, Spain and Scandinavia (but not France initially) and see what happens. I think they'd be falling over themselves to trade with us.

We should also establish special relationships with Iceland, Norway and Switzerland as well as re-establishing and building on the great relationships we used to have with the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the rest of the Commonwealth.

The fact is we have better relationships on a global scale than any country within the EU and than the EU itself as an organisation. Better relationships with India, China, Russia. Because we have always punched above our weight and, post Brexit, we will not only continue to do so, but we will enhance this position and reputation as a welcome new driving force for trade in the world.

And the EU will continue to bicker and (technical economic term) 'fuck about' while we get on with it.

And as we leave - the only member that has ever actually and consistently played by the rules - the EU will realise that every time it bends and breaks the rules to accommodate economic failures by the likes of Italy, Spain & Portugal earlier this year and for Greece (which should never have been allowed to join the single currency) it stores up massive problems for the future for everyone in the EU and reduces everywhere except Germany to economic and employment chaos. Big problems. Problems that we are no longer responsible for and can simply, now, walk away from.

Go Theresa, we're all firmly behind you. Or at least those of us who understood what was at stake in the referendum are. Those of us who understood the nature of trade and sovereignty and those of us who voted with the interests of the whole nation rather than selfish, short-term interests at heart.

Thank God for us old, thick, racist bigots eh?

Thanks for reading.

'The Brexit side won because of lies' - what utter bullshit

Like a giant game of 'Wack-a-Mole' they just keep popping up with another threat or lie to scare people

No real point in going back over what happened on June 23rd: The fact is we won the referendum and the UK will now leave the EU. Thank God for all of us old, thick bigots and racists eh? Or to put it another way, thank God for sensible, clued-up people who have, once again, saved the terminally stupid, hope not soap, rent a march idiots from themselves, for the good of everyone in this great country.

Having gone to bed on June 23rd, depressed, at 11pm with a Remain victory quoted by the bookies at 10 to 1 on, I woke at 4am to find the odds exactly reversed and described this event as feeling like all my Christmases as a kid rolled into one.

After 30 years' of anti EU campaigning I am, I think, allowed to savour the moment although, had Remain won the vote, I would have been extremely pissed off but I would have accepted the verdict and moved on. Unlike these fucking idiot deniers who think we'll have another referendum or that Theresa will stall the invocation of Article 50 and Brexit won't happen. Of course it will.

However one issue does still keep coming up on twitter and, rather than having to go through the entire argument, 140 character message by 140 character message, I thought I'd put down my thoughts in a single short blog.

The issue being the lies that were peddled by both sides during the campaign. The Remain side spokespeople took great offence at the lies that were told by the Brexit campaigners, saying what a monstrous liberty it was.

Why are they doing this? Because they know, full-well, that the reality is that if the Brexit side did tell any lies, they were as nothing - mere fibs - compared to the utter - and continuous - falsehoods and blatant, monstrous and massive lies being told every day by the remain camp. You think I exaggerate? Read on.

Just as Mr Bliar made it a tactic to shout loudest about the issues he was weakest on - so as to nullify the impact of his failure - that is exactly what the Remain camp did by suggesting that Brexit lies were much worse than the Remain ones - which, of course is utter bullshit.

Not sure about this? OK, here's an exercise for you. I'll give you, let's say, ten of the big lies told by the Remain side. All you have to do is provide me with the ten equally massive lies that the Brexit side told and we'll then know the answer to the question as to which side was telling not only the most lies, but the most ridiculous and outrageous lies. Here goes:

1. Brexit will cause a new war to erupt in Europe.

2. Brexit will cause economic meltdown in the UK - a DIY recession with mass unemployment.

3. Brexit will lead to massive trade sanctions against UK industry by the EU.

4. Brexit will mean that major international businesses and countries will not want to trade with or invest in the UK.

5. Turkey will not be joining the EU for at least 900 years.

6. The EU will not seek to create a Europe-wide army

7. We will be able to control immigration into the UK without leaving the EU.

8. We will be much more vulnerable to terrorism if we leave the EU.

9. There will have to be an emergency budget with a further £30bn of austerity cuts in the UK and each family will be £4,300 a year worse off.

The Treasury told Remain campaigners not to use this spurious research - they turned it into a campaign poster

10. We're campaigning to stay in a 'reformed' EU - i.e. the EU has been substantially reformed by Dave's renegotiations.

OK your turn. Good luck.

Just as a starting point you should be aware that the £350 million a week claim by Brexit was confirmed as being the budget figure for the UK but that the net figure (according to the BBC's own fact check website) was £271 million a week. So this was a bit of a moot point - whether it was a lie is debatable, but obviously £271m/wk remains a significant amount of money and this level of lie (even if I concede that you are allowed to label it as such), is clearly not of anything like the same magnitude as any of the nine falsehoods already outlined.

And the second point you should bear in mind is that the official Vote Leave campaign said that the £350m/wk could be invested in UK infrastructure like the NHS. It did not say, ever during that campaign, that £350m/wk would be spent on the NHS every week if we were to leave. So that obviously cannot be construed as a lie.

The third one - (these are the main issues outlined as 'lies' by Remain as far as I am aware - but of course you are going to convince me otherwise with your ten examples) is that taking back control (voting to Leave) would mean cutting immigration, pretty much to zero. Er, no. Controlling our borders would allow us to cut immigration if we want to - there is no way to do so if we remained in the EU because of its free movement of people stance - but taking control means just that. We can now control the numbers who come in and, critically, where they come from - so we're no longer discriminating against the potential immigration of people from outside the EU (the Commonwealth for example) but instead operating a much fairer system on a world-wide scale and not just on a protectionist EU level.

We may well want to reduce the numbers of migrants coming into the UK from the 300k that is the current annual figure, but we may not: We may decide that high levels of immigration are needed and a good thing for the UK economy - but the deal is that now we have control we can control the numbers and know what numbers we're dealing with so that we can plan to provide the levels of infrastructure - healthcare, education, housing etc - that will be needed to meet the needs of all UK citizens not just immigrants but everyone. That's the key point.

And whilst it may be true that significant numbers of people voted Leave because they want to see reduced numbers of migrants coming into the UK - and this may well happen - the main issue was regaining control of our borders so that we the people of the UK can decide on this in a democratic way.

OK just taking those obvious ones out of the mix - they're either not lies at all, or a deliberate misconstruing of what was claimed or said by the Leave side - off you go and good luck. I look forward to reading the ten other major issues that were the subject of Brexit lies that were of the same magnitude as war or recession or loss of global trade or mass unemployment. Take your time.

Thanks for reading.