Tony Blair by Marc Muller (CC-BY-3.0-DE)
VIDEO TEXT:
The Labour Party and its former leader are trying to put the pressure on to keep the UK as close to inside the EU as they can get us.
Labour's Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, is said to be looking for an amendment to the EU Withdrawal Bill that would stop the UK leaving the EU without having ironed out a deal with the bloc (a no deal Brexit). That would make any no-deal planning redundant and ensure that the UK negotiating position became almost untenable.
He is also expected to say in a speech to today that:
“If Parliament rejects the Prime Minister’s deal, that cannot give licence to her, or the extreme Brexiteers in her party, to allow the U.K. to crash out without an agreement. That would be the worst of all possible worlds.”
And for his part the former Labour prime Minister, Tony Blair, is also due to give a speech today where he will call for parliament to vote on the deal then for it to be put to the people in another referendum. He is claiming that Theresa May is avoiding giving out any details until the UK is at the point of being irreversibly out of what he calls 'Europe', I think he must actually mean the European Union, don't you?
One thing that Remainers who call for a second referendum forget, is that just legitimises the force of the 2016 referendum, which many said should not have taken place because the question was far too complicated! Wouldn't that be the same in a second one?
Personally I think we're possibly close to or even past the point of Remaining anyway. So they should all now just concentrate on making the UK a successful sovereign nation.
And on to the continuing blue passport saga. We now have politicians, MPs and Peers alike, all lining up to say that our new blue passports should be made in the UK. With even that Remainer, Keir Starmer, saying the decision should be reversed and his party of Remainers say it would print them in the UK.
While I agree with what they are saying I dislike their hypocrisy. All Remainers should be hailing this as a testament to the EU and the trust we are showing its member states. But what these Remainers seem to be saying is that they don't trust the system they support and that the jobs should be UK jobs – you'd think they were just jumping on a bandwagon wouldn't you?
And now the EU wants to be able to rely on UK defence muscle, but not to allow our forces to access the military part of the Galileo satellite system, which I will point out, the UK has helped to fund.
"For a year or more, London and Brussels have been squabbling over Galileo, with Britain’s EU exit inevitably creating doubt over its future participation in the programme. In January the European Commission escalated matters further." Says a Financial Times report.
"In a letter to London, the commission explained that the UK would be frozen out of work on Galileo’s secure system, the Public Regulated Service to be used by military and governments. Sharing such sensitive information with a departing member state would “irretrievably compromise” the systems after Brexit, the commission said."
If our forces do not have access to the navigation system to be able to train with it, know its capabilities and be able to use it confidently and with ease, how are we meant to help the EU fight its wars?
Every UK warplane, warship, submarine, tank, infantry unit, missile system, auxiliary unit etc etc etc needs accurate navigation data. So if the EU wants us to help then they can give us what we need! For free!
Should they be unwilling to do so then we need to distance our armed forces from theirs. We should be doing that anyway in order to be free to forge our own independent foreign policy.
The UK establishment either stupidly or by design promises the 'unconditional support' of UK defence assets to the defence of Europe and in response the EU uses Galileo as a Brexit bargaining chip.
Some will say that it will lock UK companies out of lucrative contracts – but remember that we are talking about a taxpayer funded system here, not a commercial one.
The EU already has a massive hole to fill when the UK stops pouring its £10 billion a year plus into its maw.
So cash for projects such as Galileo may dry up as the EU finds it has to divert funds to meet the immediate concerns of its farmers, businesses and people. And if the EU forges on with Galileo, military capability and all, at the expense of ordinary trade business, then that will tell the whole world exactly where the Eurocrats' priorities lie.
Galileo has cost the UK as a net EU contributor untold millions (probably billions) and I have to ask what sort of so-called trading bloc needs a military grade satellite system? It doesn't unless it is hell-bent on becoming an armed superstate – those who think the EU is just about the economy and still advocate remaining in this duplicitous organisation should think very carefully about that!
As I understand it the UK defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, is worried about this so his department is looking at the feasibility of a UK system.
And I say, why not!? In fact, I say let's get on with it!
And before people say that the EU is bigger than the UK and has more money I will point out that the EU annual budget is 145 billion euros, that's about £126 billion and the UK government spends over six times that every year – £772 billion.
And under the topic of 'space' on the europa.eu web-site it says quite clearly that the EU commission manages and fully funds the Galileo navigation programme. And if there is some sort of back door from national governments to fund EU projects outside of the stated budget, then bang goes your precious EU transparency and it opens a whole nest of vipers about how much the EU really is costing us. So let's just go with the stated budget.
Now, if the EU can fund a 30 satellite system that can pinpoint to with one metre with a full military grade encryption attachment on a sixth of UK government spending, then so can we! All we need to do is start getting our priorities right!
