Leave Means Leave to sue for Euro elections if Art 50 extended

Leave Means Leave to sue for Euro elections if Art 50 extended

Leave Means Leave, the cross party campaign group for a true Brexit, is to mount legal action against the UK Government to ensure that European Elections will be held in the UK on May 23rd 2019 if Article 50 to leave the EU is extended. The organisation has appointed City law firm Wedlake Bell as well as Counsel from Field Court Chambers to prepare this claim.

The Prime Minister confirmed in Parliament in January 2019 that in the event of an extension, such European Elections would most likely be held. Leave Means Leave has written confirmation from the Chief Executive of the Electoral Commission that it is preparing and will be ready for these polls on 23rd May. However, concern is mounting amongst many Leave supporters that senior politicians are looking for ways to avoid holding such elections, for fear of the result.

There have been suggestions that a limited extension to Article 50, ending before the new EU European Parliament sits in early July, would negate the need for the UK to participate in EU elections. Leave Means Leave does not accept this argument. Such timing is clearly a tactic to avoid UK participation and cannot be trusted. Moreover there is nothing to suggest that a very short extension would change anything, especially since there will be no EU decision making capability while the Commission is in transition pending the May 23 polls. There is every likelihood of a further delay, leaving the UK a member of the EU without representation. This is unacceptable.

Leave Means Leave’s legal action is designed to ensure that if the UK is still a member of the EU on the 23rd May, European elections must be held on that day.

John Longworth, Chairman of Leave Means Leave, said: “Recent events show that politicians can no longer be trusted to stick to their word on Brexit. European elections must be held in the UK if we have not left on 23rd May."

FOR FURTHER INFORMATION PLEASE CONTACT:

John Longworth - Chairman, Leave Means Leave - 07775 876986
Richard Tice - Vice Chairman, Leave Means Leave - 07785 900300

Not just the UK the Brexit Betrayal of Europe

It is now clear that Theresa May and the metropolitan elite have betrayed the British people in a grand conspiracy undreamt of in modern times.

The Brexit deal that she and her allies have signed up to could not have been worse, if the EU bureaucracy itself had sat down and written it for her. The likelihood is that that is exactly what they have been doing.

The plan seems to have worked beautifully. For over two years, the people of the United Kingdom have been strung along, been made to believe that May was negotiating a Brexit trade deal. But at the end of it there is no trade deal, just a Gordian knot designed, if accepted, to give the UK no legal route out of a permanent vassalage, unless the EU agree to free us from it, which of course they will never do.

At the same time her allies in all political parties, the Conservatives, Liberal Democrats, Labour, Scottish Nationalists and Greens have all been carefully manipulated and orchestrated in a well paid for campaign (paid for by people who got very rich in the EU controlled market) to seek a second referendum to reverse the popular vote.

The future ploy of this minority Prime Minister is now clear. Unless the House of Commons has lost its wits entirely, they will reject this ridiculous deal. The conspirators will then say, as May has now said, the alternative to this bad deal in not, as was promised, no deal, but no Brexit. The Government will bow to the orchestrated campaign for a second referendum. Huge resources will then pour in to persuade the British people that they were wrong to choose independence and that they must, to save their very lives, vote to stay in the EU.

At the same time as this has been going on, supporters of Brexit, both big and small, have been and continue to be bombarded by legal challenges. The fact that more than twice as much money, money from the Government and shady foreign-backed characters was spent on the Remain campaign is ignored. The money spent by the EU itself, by the IMF, by numerous overseas interests, including the then President of the USA, has been and will be ignored in the grand push for the UK to remain under the yoke of Brussels.

Every critical referendum in EU history has been reversed, either by a second referendum or Government capitulation. Ireland, Greece, Netherlands, Denmark France, the EU has always managed to coerce and cajole a reversal of the anti-EU vote.

They knew, however, that the UK would be harder, the 2016 referendum having been the biggest popular vote in the UK's history. But the EU is used to playing a long game. Just look at Greece, locked into ant-austerity measures by the neo-liberal dictatorship of the EU for the next 42 years. Or Italy, where Governments have been rejected and brought down by the EU.

I myself would not have dreamt of such a conspiracy until I read Yanis Varoufakis' book "Adults in the Room" which showed the lengths that the EU deep establishment would go to bend the will of a sovereign nation towards its own agenda. As Varoufakis said in that book, it is the death of democracy in the EU.

No sovereign nation in Europe is now free to choose its own path. There are sufficient traitors, used to living off the EU's shilling, who are willing to continue to conspire to keep the tyranny of the unelected elite who control and run the EU forever in control. The fourth Reich is here, a reality that, unless a decisive revolt happens now, this time WILL govern the enslaved peoples of Europe for a thousand years.

Revisited: Why you should vote to look Forward and not Back. Why you should vote for Leslie Rowe as leader of GPEW

This blog is linked to the Green Party website to give members an insight into the alternative paradigm for the Green Party being championed by Leslie Rowe in his bid to be leader of the Green Party in England and Wales. Here is the statement accompanying his application repeated and updated, so that it appears first on his blog. No other candidate is putting forward such a radical ecosocialist agenda.

Have you looked out of the window lately? You know as well as I do that climate change is not a campaign for the future, its effects are being felt here and now.

That is why I am standing for leader of the Green Party. I want the Green Party to focus on climate change, on localism, democracy and economic de-growth and not on the EU. Prior to the 2016 EU referendum we, in our 2015 General Election manifesto, faithfully promised to accept the result. We should do that now and move on.

Our basic message has long been of replacing a pro-growth consumer society with a society wedded to conserving our environment. We have been told many times that if the world wishes to avoid exceeding the 2°C rise in global temperatures that will trigger non-reversible climate change, then the wealthiest countries, including the UK, have to adopt a de-growth strategy for a limited period.

"Having even a 50/50 chance of keeping the planet under a 2-degree level of warming is incompatible with economic growth," author Naomi Klein said at the 2014 Leipzig De-growth conference.

We should return to our roots and actively campaign for a UK de-growth economic policy, a beacon for the rest of the world to follow.

In the Green Party policy statement, EU100 we state "In our Green vision for Europe we seek to replace the unsustainable economics of free trade and unrestricted growth with the ecological alternative of local self reliance and resource conservation, within a context of wider diversity."

This is totally at odds with the declared aim of the EU for continuing Economic Growth. In his opening statement laying out his vision for the single market, the President of the European commission, Jean Claude Juncker put economic growth as the main goal of the single market.

There is no evidence that this policy will change in the foreseeable future.

In fact, economic policy in the EU is controlled by the unelected and secretive Eurogroup. As Yanis Varoufakis said in his book "Adults in the Room" ..."democracy had indeed died the moment the Eurogroup acquired the authority to dictate economic policy to member states without anything resembling federal democratic sovereignty" (page 237). It is the Eurogroup who continue to force privatisation on Greece and other EU states.

So it is time for the Green Party to campaign not for the EU and continued growth, but for a sustainable future based on de-growth and meeting the societal needs of the British people.

We can carve out a unique position by opposing ALL UK free trade agreements (including the EU single market) and focus on reducing the out of control UK trade deficit by supporting sustainable UK manufacturing, agriculture and fisheries. This may lead to disputes within the World Trade Organisation (WTO), but it would re-balance the UK economy and give us a unique position in UK politics.

Campaign to embrace localism in our procurement policies for schools, hospitals and other public institutions, making it a virtue of buying local, preferably organic, food and other supplies.

Step up our opposition to the creeping privatisation of the NHS, especially now that the Tories would no longer have the excuse of EU neo-liberal policies on procurement. Campaign to use the extra money for the NHS in tripling the number of training places for doctors and nurses, reintroducing bursaries and abolishing student fees.

Point out that leaving the EU does not mean that we have to leave the European Court of Human Rights, which is a separate and older institution. Indeed we can champion the Court in our opposition to Tory attempts to water down our rights.

Campaign for a progressive UK Government, supporting universal basic income and Positive Money; to reverse the neo-liberal economic policies favoured by all successor governments since Thatcher, both Labour and Tory.

Campaign to re-nationalise the UK railways and utility companies unhindered by EU Directives such as 2012/34/EU establishing mandatory competition in a Single European Railway Area.

Solve the Northern Ireland border issue by actively campaigning for a referendum for a United Ireland.

Renew our campaign for the abolition of the House of Lords and the creation of a new elected senate of the regions.

Actively campaign for more local democracy with proportional representation, a new independence referendum in Scotland and greater autonomy for Wales.

In this way we can renew and invigorate the Green Party by following a more radical agenda. If you agree, please vote for Leslie Rowe as GPEW leader.


Leslie Rowe is a retired accountant who stood for election for the Green Party in Richmond (Yorks) in the general elections of 2005, 2010 and 2015, the European Election of 2009, along with many other local council elections. He has been a Green Party member since 2003 and is a former treasurer of Yorkshire and Humber Greens and Richmond (Yorks) Green Party.

Promoted and Produced by Leslie Rowe as part of their campaign for election to the post of Leader. This is not an official communication from the Green Party of England and Wales.
Voting is open to all paid up members of the Green Party in England & Wales as at the 29th July 2018.

CETA, TTIP, "Common Rule Book" & all Free Trade Deals

If you look at the fine print of Ms May's Chequers compromise on Brexit, you will see that resolution of disputes may be done through "binding independent arbitration".

This will be the notorious Investor State Dispute Settlement (ISDS) so discredited as part of all Free Trade deals, such as NAFTA, TTIP and CETA. These arbitration decisions undermine democracy and have forced changes in laws that protect the environment and even changes in taxation.

In this article I discuss the dangers of Free Trade Deals like May's "Common Rule Book" proposals, using the example of CETA (Comprehensive Economic Trade Agreement between Canada and the EU currently going through the ratification process, but, in the words of War on Want, "under the EU’s anti-democratic procedures, it has applied most of the content of CETA on a provisional basis already, without worrying about any accountability to the people of Europe".)

There was a vote recently in the House of Commons on the ratification of CETA. There was very little debate and this infamous trade deal was backed by Tories, Lib Dems and Labour MPs, who, frankly, should have known better.

By signing up to CETA, the UK has given away far more sovereignty than was given to the EU.

At this point I must be honest about the debt I owe on this subject to David Malone, the Green candidate for Scarborough. If you haven't seen his talk called "The Death of Democracy" on YouTube, then please see it ASAP. It is three years old, but still relevant as all he says about TTIP applies equally to CETA. Most especially, because, as War on Want also point out, "CETA not only gives rights to EU and Canadian companies but also for any US firms with offices in Canada (which is most of them)."

The biggest threat to the UK from CETA is the threat to our food standards. The EU claim that they have built in safeguards to our food safety standards in CETA; no chlorinated chicken, they claim. But if standards remain, why have a trade agreement? The declared aim of a free trade agreement is to lower mutual tariffs, to gain access to each other's markets and to harmonise regulations.

The corporate lawyers have, time and time again, shown themselves to be more adept at drafting legislation in their own favour. That's why they get paid millions.

The EU itself said that 80% of the benefit of Free Trade deals is from reducing non-trade barriers (i.e. standards).

The heart of a Free Trade Deal (FTD) like CETA and the proposed "Common Rule Book" between the UK and the EU is the Bilateral Investment Treaty (BIT). These treaties always have four main elements and CETA is no exception.

1. Expropriation: to protect the assets of any company trading in the Free Trade Area (FTA). That includes any future profits of that company as was shown when Vattenfall, a Swedish nuclear energy company sued Germany for abandoning nuclear power generation at the International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID).
Even changes in tax have been successfully stopped as being a form of expropriation.

2. Equal Treatment: Governments are not allowed to stop Companies from bidding for any service, such as the NHS and the BBC. So if you have a Government, as we do, that favours privatisation, it becomes irreversible and as we have seen, companies can sue if they are not awarded contracts in the NHS.

3. A Fair and Equitable clause. This was used to stop the Canadian Government from banning a petrol additive, MMT. The Ethyl case set a precedent where, under NAFTA and similar agreements, a government has to compensate investors when it wishes to regulate them or their products for public health or environmental reasons.

4. Arbitration via the toxic Investor State Dispute Settlement procedure. ISDS is not a court, has no judge and no jury. Traditionally, three corporate lawyers decide the merits of an arbitration dispute. Civil society has no representative; there are no rights to know what evidence was considered or who brought it, no right of appeal and no right to know the reasons for the decision. Worldwide, just 15 corporate lawyers have decided 55% of all disputes.

The EU claim in their document, "CETA, ISDS" that arbitration will be done " in a transparent and impartial manner". Apparently our national courts are not good enough to settle these disputes. Personally, I have no faith that the corporate lawyers will not be too clever for them on this and dominate any permanent investment Tribunal set up by CETA.

In the past this arbitration has been used to overturn laws, moratoria and even taxes.

Defenders of this insane policy argue say that only countries that sign up to this arbitration will receive foreign direct investment (FDI). There have been several studies, however, notably from Yale and the World Bank in 2003 that conclude that there is no correlation between Bilateral Investment Treaties and FDI.

The General Equilibrium economic models that state that CETA will increase UK trade, in common with many of the economic models used by the Treasury, have been shown to be flawed. For instance, the models assume that if any part of our economy shrinks, then another part will automatically expand. So why has the UK developed such a massive trade deficit since joining the Single Market?

In October 2014, the UN policy economic model was used to assess the effects of TTIP (and by implication CETA) and showed that TTIP would result in a loss of net exports, a reduction in GDP, a loss of Government income, an increase in inequality and 800,000 job losses across the EU.

Sources:
David Malone "The Death of Democracy" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6fDCbf4O-0s
War on Want: https://waronwant.org/what-ceta
Michelle Sforza and Mark Vallianatos Chemical Firm Uses Trade Pact to Contest Environmental Law April 1997 https://www.globalpolicy.org/component/content/article/212/45381.html
European Commission February 2016 Investment provisions in the EU-Canada free trade agreement (CETA) http://trade.ec.europa.eu/doclib/docs/2013/november/tradoc_151918.pdf

A History Lesson: Did the UK join the EEC for the wrong reasons?

Giving all the fuss about Brexit, you may have wondered why did the UK join the EEC in 1973 and did the UK achieve the goals it set itself?

The reasons can be traced back to a study made by the Macmillan Government in 1959. The "Future Policy Study" was a long range study of UK overseas policy during the decade to come (1960 to 1970). It revealed amongst other things that the then French President, General De Gaulle, regarded the Treaty of Rome, which created the European Economic Community in 1957 (the EEC, the forerunner of the EU) as a purely commercial treaty, which De Gaulle admitted he would not have signed, if he had been French president at the time.

The Britsh prime minister Harold Macmillan still wanted the UK to be a world player. However, the summit meeting in May 1959 between the four "great" powers of the time (USA, USSR, UK and France) had failed to achieve any positive outcome, because of the shooting down of an American U2 spy plane over Russia earlier that month. It was at a time when the UK was losing its Empire and Macmillan realised that on its own, the UK could no longer be the "World player" that it had been. The study suggested that the UK had two possible routes, either to help develop the emerging economies of the Commonwealth or to throw in its lot with the EEC.

As historian Peter Hennessy wrote in his book "Having it so good: Britain in the Fifties" , "EUROPE, for the British was not a shining collective goal in itself, but a means of sustaining BRITISH power." As the French philosopher Raymond Aron put it in 1962, "those for whom Europe is to be a fatherland cannot avoid recognising that in British eyes (except for a small minority) it will never be anything but a means for something else".

The main reason for joining the EEC then, was to sustain Britain's powers in international affairs. Indeed the reports suggested that the UK expected to become the lead player in the EEC, if it joined. Hennessy described UK "wishful thinking" in not believing what the Treaty of Rome said about ever closer union in its opening paragraphs on the grounds that only French "mystics" could subscribe to it.

However the report acknowledged that joining the EEC might be unpopular. " It is to be expected that , if we were to join the Six (the original six countries of the EEC) there would be considerable opposition from some sections of public opinion.."

In a conclusion that Hennessy describes as "chilling", the 1959 report declared " This opposition would require careful handling; intensive RE-EDUCATION would be needed..."

This re-education started before 1973, when the UK joined the EEC and continues to this day. However, the UK never did achieve the dominance over the EEC that was its original goal. That honour now clearly lies with Germany. Indeed the Maastricht Treaty in 1992, then the Amsterdam, Nice and then Lisbon treaties increasingly took power away from Westminster and gave it to Brussels. The UK went from being a net exporter to the EEC to having a massive trade deficit with the EU (£82bn in 2016).

Notes to the 1959 report also concluded that the UK " should consider full membership, but seek special terms to meet our fundamental interests and those of the Commonwealth." Edward Heath, who took the UK into the EEC, failed to achieve any special terms and the UK has continued to fail to negotiate any meaningful "special terms" even when the EU was faced with Brexit (as David Cameron discovered).

The time has come to recognise that the UK failed in its original objectives and that the EU juggernaut will continue towards its goal of "ever closer" union until a United States of Europe is achieved or the EU implodes as its nation states collapse.

It may or may not be too late for plan B, to develop economic ties with Commonwealth countries. But it is time to recognise that the massive private and public debt (more than doubled since 2010 under Tory "austerity" to over £2 trillion) that the UK has amassed by being part of the EU must be addressed. As the 1959 report predicted:

"Whether we join the Six or not, we shall have to reduce the proportion of our output devoted to consumption and increase the proportion which is invested or exported."

We have ignored this advice in the forty five years since we joined the EEC, which has left the UK in massive debt. Now is the time to reverse that situation, exacerbated by the urgent need to reduce consumption in order to reduce the risk of global warming. We need to stop pretending we are a global power and instead put the needs of the British people and the country first.

TORIES USING BREXIT NEGOTIATIONS TO CLING ON TO POWER

The so-called agreement announced yesterday (19/3/18) proves just one thing. The Tory government has yet again kicked the can down the road on the Brexit negotiations. They should be dealing with the difficult issues first, not last, to avoid wasting time making agreements that can never be implemented. Many people realised months ago that this Tory Government is incapable of negotiating a fair Brexit deal and are spinning it out just to remain in power for a few months more. They know that admission of failure is likely to trigger an immediate general election, especially as they will lose the support of the DUP over the Irish border.

The big issues the Tories are not able to deal with and have therefore postponed:

1. The Irish border: there is no way that you can have a soft border with the Irish Republic unless Northern Ireland effectively remains part of the Single Market and the Customs Union. Green Leaves recognised this from the start and have been calling for an Irish re-unification referendum since before the 2016 EU referendum. The only other alternative is to move the customs border to between Great Britain and Northern Ireland, a situation totally unacceptable to the DUP and Ulster Unionists. A referendum vote to re-unite with the republic is the only way that that Unionist veto can be over-ruled.

2. Fishing: under Article 125 of the agreement, the UK will not be taking back control of our fisheries when we leave the EU – something which the Government had previously promised. I predict every MP representing fishing communities will agree that we must have absolute control of our waters and fish from the end of March 2019 and anything less is totally unacceptable. As this must be put to a vote, there is no way that this will pass in the House of Commons.

3. The EU is suggesting that the EU Court of Justice should decide on any impasse between the UK and the EU. For instance if there was no agreement on Northern Ireland, the EU’s draft protocol for a ‘fallback’ option to resolve the Irish border would take precedence, which would see Northern Ireland remain in the EU Customs Union and aligned with much of the Single Market after Brexit. Again unacceptable to the DUP.

4. But the big issue: not even mentioned by the UK Tory negotiating team, is the massive trade deficit that the UK has with the EU and the unsustainability of this ever expanding trade to the world's environment. The UK must develop self sufficiency after Brexit; learn to live within its means if it is not to become bankrupt, both financially and environmentally. Financially its trade is in a worse situation than the likes of Greece, which has been crippled by austerity. Environmentally, we are still learning just what a horrific disaster 100 years of plastics have been and we know that drastic action to vastly reduce our consumption is needed now. Not in three years, ten years or fifty years. We should be campaigning for Brexit be the catalyst for action on the environment NOW!

Remain supporter condemns EU interference in elections

It is a shame that so main "Remain" supporters like Vince Cable resort to personal abuse when describing "Leave" voters. It's as if they know that they own arguments often lack veracity, so they similarly make up reasons why the majority of UK voters in the EU referendum opted for Brexit.

For myself, there were a number of reasons why I voted for Brexit, including the lack of sustainability of the EU economic model and the undermining by the EU Commission of European democracy. In particular their (I believe illegal) interference in the election of Governments in EU member states and the outcomes of EU referenda.

A classic example is described by ardent "Remain" supporter, former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis in his recent book, "Adults in the Room". He describes how the European Central Bank (elected by no one) deliberately tried to affect the outcome of the Greek general election in 2015.

Varoufakis says "..the ECB had just announced that in the near future it would stop accepting the IOUs issued by banks and backed by the governments of bailed out countries as collateral for further loans. In other words, a vital component of the smoke and mirrors machinery (set up by the ECB, EU and IMF to mask Greece's insolvency in 2010 and stop them leaving the Euro) used by Greece's four largest banks to ensure their day to day liquidity would be removed. The date on which the new policy became effective set alarm bells ringing in my head: March 2015 - the month the president of Greece's term expired, when new elections were likely to be held and in all probability Syriza would form a government."

"The ECB was creating the conditions necessary to close down the (Greek) banks without any warning or reason just as Syriza was taking over."
(Yanis Varoufakis "Adults in the Room" page 84).

Coming from such an ardent "Remain" supporter, this criticism is striking and nor is interference by the EU an isolated case. There are literally hundreds of examples, including new "technocratic" governments put in place to replace democratically elected governments who refused to toe the (unelected) EU Commission line. Further examples can be found not just in Greece, but also in Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Italy and Cyprus to name but a few. The bullying attitude of the EU now displayed in the so called negotiations on Brexit with May's weak Tory Government is, therefore, par for the course. Let's hope it won't be too long before the UK can walk away from this corrupt institution and that other countries will see the light and follow suit.

The Establishment talks to the Establishment

Have you noticed how it is always the usual suspects who appear on all the talk shows and write all the newspaper columns?

What the establishment says needs to be treated with such scepticism, as lies and half truths spew out of the TV and radio.

The BBC yesterday in parliament programme reported this week, for instance, that the Liberal Democrat former minister Tom Brake had claimed that the EU referendum result was in part because of Russian cyber terrorism. Then they reported the Tory grandee Edward Leigh saying that this was just sour grapes, because liberals could not accept that the working class rejected the left wing in the EU referendum!

Finally "Yesterday in Parliament" shamelessly reported, that "the UK democracy is the most robust in the world." Robust yes, democratic no. Just look at the makeup of the Houses of Parliament. The Lords full of unelected establishment yes men. The Commons full of brown nosed sycophants, who also owe their position to patronage and an undemocratic electoral system which allows a government to be elected by just one third of the electorate. No surprise that MPs do not reflect the views of the majority in the country on such a fundamental issue as Brexit. No, democracy to Parliament is voting to allow themselves to overturn the will of the people on Brexit if they disagree with the dog's breakfast being served up by this minority government.

There are many such examples touted as truth by the Ministry of Truth, aka the BBC and the mainstream media.
If you believe the establishment, there is no such thing as a left wing supporter of Brexit or a right wing remainer. How often do you see Labour Leave invited onto the talk shows and yet we hear from Tony Blair all the time, despite the fact that he has been out of office for almost ten years. As a member of Green Leaves, the organisation of Green Party supporters who support Brexit, I am not aware that any of our members has ever been invited by the media to comment since the EU referendum. Why are the views of Labour Leave or Green Leaves less relevant than those of Nigel Farage or Tony Blair? More importantly, why are the alternative paths to Brexit they propose not reported?

The establishment continues to have the same agenda that the BBC have had throughout its history. To limit the voices you hear through the establishment media to the people who control the selection of MPs, the appointments to the House of Lords and the rest of the ruling class.