The Boris Johnson “bait and switch” operation: you won’t be buying what you think he’s selling

The effort to scare Leave-voters into tolerating an Article 50 treaty has taken a turn into bizarre and perhaps desperate territory. As the UK Government plays chess with itself and a nation observes, it has brought its black bogeyman chess piece, Jeremy Corbyn, slap down the middle of the board to create a pretext for its next move whereby its white Brexit-saviour piece, Boris Johnson, can thrill spectators with a seemingly majestic defence of the white king – or the will of the majority expressed in the EU referendum. Being referred to is the plan floated by Corbyn and others that there should be an alternative government that can shut down any possibility of a no-deal Brexit (“Jeremy Corbyn has urged Remainer MPs and Tory rebels to ‘get on board’ with his plans to seize power from Boris Johnson in order to stop a no-deal Brexit.”). That it is the work of the same hand that controls Johnson is clear: it is a move that is designed to create a horrified reaction in Leave-voters, and encourage the investment of faith into a “bait and switch” operation whereby people think Johnson will sell them a “no-ifs, no-buts” Brexit. In reality, the only thing that these people will be buying from Johnson is the same thing that Theresa May was offering: the Fake Brexit, and the continuation of globalism (as written about here). As in all “bait and switch” operations, the desirable object that attracts the interest will be swapped for the shabby alternative at the point of sale.

If the reader doesn’t believe it, consider the first speech of Johnson’s Prime Ministerial career (emphasis added):

The people who bet against Britain again are going to lose their shirts, because we are going to restore trust in our democracy and we are going to fulfil the repeated promises of parliament to the people and come out of the EU on the 31st of October, no ifs, no buts.

And we will do a new deal, a better deal, that will maximise the opportunities of Brexit… based on free trade and mutual support. I have every confidence that in 99 days we will have cracked it…

I say to our friends in Ireland, and Brussels, and around the EU: I am convinced we can do a deal without checks at the Irish border, because we refuse under any circumstances to have such checks and yet without that anti-democratic backstop. It is of course vital at the same time that we prepare for the remote possibility that Brussels refuses any further to negotiate, and we are forced to come out with no deal.

Not because we want that outcome, of course not, but because it is only common sense to prepare. And let me stress that there is a vital sense in which those preparations cannot be wasted, and that is because under any circumstances we will need to get ready. At some point in the near future, to come out of the EU customs union and out of regulatory control fully determined to take advantage, at last, of Brexit. Because that is the course this country is now set, with high hearts and growing confidence we will now accelerate the work of getting ready.

(Source).

Boris Johnson wants to secure an Article 50 treaty deal with the EU. As has been pointed out at FBEL countless times before, the Article 50 treaty is for the benefit of the EU, not Britain, and will work to keep Britain tied into parallel governance and development with the EU. The UK Government never needed the Article 50 treaty to have Britain leave the EU – all that was required was the repealing of the European Communities Act (EC Act) 1972. However, this simple measure, without an Article 50 treaty, would mean that it would be hard to justify all the EU legislation that the UK Government would like to opt back into after it had been made null and void (through the repealing of the EC Act 72).

If the reader doesn’t believe it, notice that Johnson talks about leaving the EU customs union and regulatory control at some point in the near future, and not on October 31st, no ifs, no buts. What he’s saying here is that preparation for a no-deal Brexit is not for the no-deal exit, but for extractions from EU jurisdiction to be made at some unspecified point down the road. In fact, the better term for it would be “modification”, rather than extraction, because – as pointed out above – there will be substitute instruments that defy the sovereignty of the British people. For the umpteenth time: the best that Westminster has to offer is an EU-membership-lite, where Britain will be out of the organisation in name, but still under its legal jurisdiction (not least because of the rights that the UK Government wants to protect for European foreign nationals). If Britain is not in the Customs Unions with the EU, it will have a relationship that is a substitute for it. This is what Boris Johnson means when he talks about leaving certain EU jurisdictions eventually.

Indeed, even with a no-deal Brexit, the UK Government would like to guarantee rights for EU citizens†, meaning adherence to, and some residual supremacy of EU legislation. We know this because of measures already attempted by Parliament; please see the FBEL article, The Lords’ Amendment and pseudo-citizenship.

As has been stressed before, the value of an Article 50 treaty is that it provides justification to enshrine EU legislation into British law. However, just because the UK Government is more likely to risk censure by doing the same without an Article 50 treaty, it won’t necessarily stop it. The one thing that the UK Government is fanatical about to the extent that it would provoke discontent and further imperil the illusion of its legitimacy is the dilution of British opposition to the New World Order by colonisation from the EU. In the little space here that can be afforded an explanation, the UK Government’s right to confer status that equates to British citizenship is dubious in any case, but with regards the EU, it is particularly dodgy. EU citizens, except those having been married to Britons, have no rights to be in the UK on the back of Britain’s EU membership once that thing has ended, and for this fact: they were not resident in Britain, but they were resident in the EU as it extended into the British Isles. The reality of this situation is illustrated by the necessity to retain certain EU legal jurisdictions to provide rights for EU nationals who remain in the UK after Brexit. The upshot is, for such EU nationals, there has been no duration of residence in Britain whereby they could qualify for any kind of naturalisation. Moreover, people who have been awarded citizenship on this basis should have it rescinded – and this is something that could be done whenever Britons re-establish legitimate self-governance (there should not be time limits to prevent this kind of readjustment, but justice must be seen to be done).

Returning to main thrust of the piece, the overriding message that needs to be taken from Johnson’s speech is that not only is a no-deal Brexit not wanted, it is not anticipated. Be that as it may, the coverage of the activity and hustle being produced by the Executive Branch of Government (Johnson and his cabinet) in the corporate-media is such that its consumer would be made to believe that Boris Johnson is committed to delivering to take Britain out of the EU without an Article 50 treaty. Indeed, The Sun newspaper even told its readership that the restoration of trust in British democracy as promised by Johnson in his first speech has been achieved because of how voters had warmed to the Tories in reaction to their apparent determination to deliver a no-deal Brexit. In fact, The Sun made its assertion after the publication of an opinion poll that put the Tories 10 percentage points ahead of Labour. Of course, this survey result does not have to be a true representation of the facts – and probably isn’t; the objective would be to create an impression of support for Johnson’s declared intentions. Unfortunately for anyone who is falling for the con-trick, these intentions do not prefer a no-deal Brexit.

And yet, there will be many who believe the concerted propaganda that is establishing Johnson as the Prime Minister who would make good on Brexit; this is the inevitable outcome of being a typical demoralised and socialised Briton suffering from being propagandised to. Indeed, though we might give them modern names, the fundamental qualities of subordinate masses, whereby it is possible for the ruler of the state to lie, and continually lie and then to not suffer any ill consequence, have been noticed and recorded long before now. And when we look at Niccolo Machiavelli who explained that lying to the people is an age old tool of statecraft, it helps to realise that any fault of the masses, whereby they are abused by their government, is all their own. It is their disinclination to be courageous, honourable and make sacrifices – and then their persistent stubbornness in it – that facilitates the corruption of their leadership.

To be precise, Machiavelli said that because men “are worthless who would not keep their word to you”, then princes who ruled over them should not be overly concerned about honouring their word to them; in fact, it should not be done if it placed the prince at a disadvantage. In short, the justification for lying was “kill or be killed”, and only a fool would let himself be the victim. Of course, Machiavelli has had a lot of grief, from critics over the course of five centuries, for promoting dishonesty and ruthlessness as a norm of state craft, but in this case, all he is doing is giving expression to that well known analysis of the human condition, and an erstwhile truism to boot: a people gets the government it deserves. So, we could say that if people were not dishonest, they wouldn’t expect and tolerate dishonesty from their government. Because people have no moral fibre, they fall for the ploys that are utilized to manipulate them.

As mentioned, an emergent big lie related to Brexit is that faith in British politics has been restored. Obviously, the UK Government had a concern that if Brexit was not delivered as voted for, people would question the value of their vote. None of this is in any way to laud democracy (which is not the same thing as a republic), but as it is the system that people have been told should be dear to them – the way that they are empowered – then when it would appear to be broken, then there would be no apparent empowerment. The Government would not like people to understand that they are not empowered. In reality, then, when Government wants to restore faith in politics, it wants people to be restored into a state of having unflinching tolerance for the lying – which extends to believing that the democratic system empowers them. Moreover, it wants people to reject any instincts they may have for behaving courageously, honourably and self-sacrificially – it is, after all, much easier to abdicate one’s self-responsibility to a politician.

In fact, a little part of the so-called restoration of faith in British politics is the reclaiming of support back to the Tory party from the Brexit Party – the latter having been a placeholder for the former, and an operation to keep people engaged in elections (which FBEL has pointed out from the Brexit Party’s inception). Indeed, there should be very little surprise now if the Brexit Party does not stand in any near-future general election against the Tories. In fact, Patrick O’Flynn, formally of UKIP before its deliberate ruination, has made statements to the media to the effect that he expects the Brexit Party not to participate:

So, as long as Boris – the man who led the victorious Vote Leave campaign – holds to a true Brexit course, the Brexit Party is bound to be squeezed very hard indeed.

The reasoning behind this idea is that Farage won’t want to split the Tory vote – the Tories apparently being the supposedly obvious choice for Leave-voters. No doubt many people will buy this sort of apologetic “can’t be helped” explanation, but the reality would be of the sort that FBEL told its readership to expect: the Brexit Party, being a very different beast from the old UKIP, is to have its support folded back into the Tories. In fact, it was UKIP that actually had the pre-existent infrastructure that facilitated the outcome of the EU referendum, and therefore we should appreciate this contribution from O’Flynn to be part and parcel of the concerted effort to attract people to Johnson’s “bait and switch”.

Ultimately, if the Johnson cabinet does not obtain an Article 50 treaty by October 31st, then Britain will not leave the EU on that date – and all the people who undoubtedly have been and are yet still to be suckered by the Johnson “bait and switch” operation will be bitterly disappointed. They may regret what they perceive to be the failure of the Brexit Party; but this will be misplaced, because the Brexit Party was never for the agenda these people had in mind. Of course, the cause for their regret should be themselves – but too many Britons just don’t have that kind of honesty.

What is required is a fundamental change that starts with an individual’s personal characteristics. Primarily, people need to recognise that they have to take personal responsibility for what they want politics to achieve.  Their development should be such that they acquire a confidence in their ability to deliver a destiny, and not to feel that they are at the whim of forces that are beyond their control. For instance, people need to place themselves beyond concern about which political party at Westminster will deliver Brexit and which won’t. None of them will. Knowing this, Leave-voting Britons must start their own process of rejection of the Westminster parliament. This has been written of hereabouts before, and it has been explained that this evolution will undoubtedly take a while in which, in the meantime, objectionable parties might come to office at Westminster and make things worse. But this should not cause distress, because whatever such a government does can be rolled back at the end of a process where pressure, through the wielding of our sovereignty, has been placed on UK Government so that it progressively cannot function properly – until such time that it can be effectively opposed by an alternative legitimate government which can enact a judgement regarding Westminster’s obsolescence and illegitimacy and force it to comply to bring about its termination. Unless the UK Government wants to make a rod for its own back, this is something that can be achieved peacefully – and it is important to stress this point. In fact, the inspiration is the Swaraj of Ghandi’s fundamentally passive resistance in India against the very same UK ruling class that now needs displacing in Britain.

† For evidence, one need go no further than Johnson’s first speech:

[We] repeat unequivocally our guarantee to the 3.2 million EU nationals now living and working among us and I say directly to you – thank you for your contribution to our society, thank you for your patience and I can assure you that under this government you will get the absolute certainty of the rights to live and remain.

Please see the further FBEL reading (in no particular order):

Not paying, Part One: Remember no taxation without representation? It’s making a comeback (link)

Delegitimising Parliament: why “we the people” must stop voting (link)

So, the British Government is entirely corrupt. What happens next? (link)

A dose of Gandhi’s Swaraj to cure the British Government (link)

Coming soon: The Cheated (link)

Attorney General Funbags says: Brawndo’s got what plants crave; Voting changes politics for good (link)