Northumbrian independence?

One of the possible outcomes of brexit has always been the risk of the UK breaking up. But there’s also a possibility that England itself could break up. A new political party has recently launched looking to create a new independent state of Northumbria (which was a historical entity and a state in its own right going back many centuries). While it might sound bizarre there is some logic to it. And it also highlights some major issues within the UK which brexit has, if anything, made a lot worse.

Firstly, if you buy into the brexit rhetoric about sovereignty, then I don’t see how you can argue against Scottish independence. Scotland has ceded far more sovereignty to Westminster than it ever ceded to Brussels. And Scotland voted overwhelmingly to remain, their economic interests are not the same as those of England (as the brexit trade deal makes clear). And Scotland tends to be more left wing politically. So it stands to reason they should be either allowed greater regional autonomy to pursue these goals. Or, if that’s not possible, then full independence.

Well you could apply the same arguments to Northumbria, or indeed much of Northern England. The economy of England is dominated by the financial markets centred around London. And Westminster under the Tories mostly panders to their needs, as well as those of the wealthy in the home counties in the south. Consider that the average Londoner has an annual salary about double that of the average person living in Northern England (which sort of counters the main argument for staying in the UK, i.e. you’ll be worse off if you leave, well you’re already getting that anyway!).

The north is very much an after thought as far as Westminster is concerned, typically placated with slogans such as “northern powerhouse”…which they’ve been repeating for 10 years while turning the place into a poorhouse. So its not unreasonable for those in the north to want independence.

Some good examples of this attitude can be seen for example with Tories insistence on a new Runway at Heathrow airport, when London already has 5 airports. In fact, Boris Johnson’s would actually prefer to build an entire new airport to the east of the city on a massive artificial Island. Which would be great for Londoners, but not much good for anyone else in the country, who would then have to travel through London to get to these airports. Building a new airport to the north west of the city, or perhaps upgrading another airport (such as Birmingham’s) would be a far better use of public money.

Similarly, while there are arguments for and against HS2, the main argument against it is that there are more pressing transport needs in the UK. Notably, better east to west connections between northern cities. HS2 seems to be more aimed at giving London bankers an easier way to get to their second home in the Cothswolds. And the odds of any connection being built in the north under the Tories is somewhere between slim and nil.

And the aforementioned brexit deal, sold manufacturers, fishing and farming down the river, while ensuring the banks won’t need to worry about new EU anti-tax avoidance rules. Indeed the Tories just introduced new financial services regulations designed to help firms avoid scrutiny of their trading positions. In other worse, its a cheaters charter to the benefit of the banker and at the expense of everyone else.

Brexit is in short, just another in a long list of times the north’s economy has been screwed over to the benefit of the south and the wealthy. Part of the reason why many of the UK’s manufacturing industries collapsed was due to the lack of support they received from the UK government (again while the Tories have to take most of the blame here, labour aren’t entirely free of any).

By contrast other European countries, both before the single market and afterwards, went out of their way to try and protect their industries, making sure they stayed up to date and competitive. In fact one could argue that what saved UK industry from an even larger collapse, and led to something of a revival of some industries (such as car manufacturing), was entry into the single market. Largely because it served to shield manufacturers from the worse excesses of the Tories.

Of course the one thing the Tories have always been good at is deflecting blame. So with no hint of irony, they blamed the EU for many of the problems they had created. And now that they’ve managed to drag the UK out of the EU, they’ve inflicted a massive power grab, centralising yet more power in London. And, as noted, they are prioritising the financial industry in the south ahead of the rest of the economy. And this is an industry which is getting ever more greedy and corrupt (the recent revelations about Greensill for example), whose goals are increasingly at odds with the rest of the country (as the shadow banking industry wants to do deals with repressive regimes, that means jettisoning any principles the UK still has).

Now granted, you could argue many countries have the problem of a capital city creating an imbalance in terms of political and economic power with the rest of the country. But there’s usually some sort of counter balance. So for example in Ireland, Dublin represents about about 40% of the population and about half the economy. However, this is counter balanced by the fact that its Dublin has a much more diverse economy, dominated far more by industries such as manufacturing and tech companies rather than finance.

Then there’s is Ireland’s constitution (something the UK lacks) which puts limits on government power. The independent judiciary, who have launched investigations into political scandals. And Ireland’s voting system using proportional representation basically means it would be impossible to ever win an election in the way the Tories do (i.e. pandering to the rich, upper middle classes and any tabloid reading bigots that can be conned into voting for them). No Irish government could afford to ignore groups such as the farmers or the manufacturing sector. It would be political suicide. And of course the other major balancing factor is the EU and Ireland’s membership of the Euro.

And you see much the same in other EU states. Many also use the PR voting system. This, as I’ve previously noted, is why when the Germans shut down their deep pit coal mines they did so without a single involuntary redundancy. Meanwhile in the UK, coal mining towns were reduced to welfare colonies when the pits closed. As in Ireland, no German government could inflict that on its people and expect to win an election.

And as further check on power, some of the larger EU countries are federated states. So for example Germany breaks down into 16 federal states, each with its own parliament, court system and individual laws. Indeed, the largest and most powerful of these isn’t Berlin, but either Baden-Württemberg or Bavaria (depending on how you count it). And both of their economies are largely dominated by heavy industry, technology and farming. And similarly Spain has its regional governments, as does France.

So really I’d argue the solution is for the UK to copy this model. Firstly introduce PR voting. This would, as noted, make many current Tories policies political suicide, as they’d be setting themselves up to lose election after election. Similarly labour could not afford to neglect older working class voters at the expensive of young middle class voters in the major cities.

Secondly, make the UK a federal state. You’d be devolving more power to Scotland, Wales and NI, but also setting up regional assemblies within England, presumably including the North, Midlands, South and South west. Each region would be able to pass its own laws via its own parliament, including setting local income tax and business rates or sales taxes (which would effectively replace things like VAT, council tax and water rates).

Effectively the only political power held by the capital would be in matters such as foreign policy, defence and deciding how to allocate federal taxes (in the US for example about 50% of all tax is collected by the states and 50% by the federal government). And I use the word capital because I would not leave it in London, but move the capital somewhere else, preferably somewhere north of the Watford gap.

Of course what swings me in favour of Scottish independence (or Northumbrian independence), is the knowledge that you’ve not got a hope in hell of getting any of this passed. Not now, not ever. If all of the above were implemented, the Tories would be screwed. PR would effectively make it impossible for them to ever end up with a majority UK government ever again (recall their “landslide” election in 2019 amounted to just 40% of the vote, well short of a majority under PR).

Worse still, most of these new federal states would end up under the control of left wing parties, who would be now free to pursue whatever left wing policies they wanted. In fact even labour head office wouldn’t be happy, as it would mean more power to rank and file party members (who often complain about being treated as a branch office).

So for example, these UK federal governments could align their standards with those of the EU and enter into some sort of customs union, effectively reversing brexit in all but name. Or they might even have a pop at reversing brexit altogether. They’d be free to put up taxes in their region, increase public spending and close off tax loopholes the wealthy take advantage of. And given they’d effectively have a collective veto on any federal policies it would be impossible for the Tories to pass any of their preferred legislation, indeed much of it would be quickly rolled back.

In fact, even in the south, where the Tories would be in overall control, it wouldn’t work out so well, at least for the Tory party elites (who similarly treat party members like minions). If you are a conservative government in Cornwall for example, you might be tempted to lower your taxes in the hope of persuading some of those financial service companies into moving out of London. This is something that happens all the time in the US, where individual states try to eat each others lunch. And suffice to say, it would be nightmare for the Tories as it would destroy any form of central control (and they need that, cos not everyone in the Tory party knows the secret handshake and might do something silly like arrest a couple of bankers for tax avoidance or embezzlement).

Ultimately this distorted distribution of power in the UK means nothing will change. The problems many in the north voted leave in the hope of solving, won’t be resolved, they will get worse and worse. There’s only so long the Tories can gaslight half the country (not least because most of their supporters are fairly old and will die off eventually). Which makes some sort of breakup of the country inevitable if its not reformed.

Sometimes it helps to have the attention span of a goldfish

One of the things you’ve got to love about right wingers is how they are predictably hypocritical. For example, I predicted that very soon after Biden was elected, the republicans would suddenly remember that deficits exist and are potentially a bad thing. This despite the fact they were fine with Trump running up some of the largest deficits in US history. While this can be blame partially on Covid, but a better response from Trump would have avoided the need for such spending. And its not like he wasn’t bad before covid came along. Of the 4 largest deficits in history, 3 were run up by Trump. Of all the dollars that the US has issued in the last few hundred years, 40% of all of them were issued under Trump’ watch.

Anyway, guess how long it took the Republicans to start using the deficit to attack Biden? A year? Couple of months? Nope, it took them 6 days after Biden’s inauguration. So it would seem deficits are only ever a problem when a democrat is in charge. Much like how, the Tories complained about how Corbyn was going to nationalise the railways…which they themselves promptly did the next year. Or that we need to leave the EU because its run by unelected bureaucrats (which isn’t true)….then the Tories began appointing unelected bureaucrats to run UK government departments.

Speaking of brexit, I also predicted it would only be a matter of time before brexiters would start blaming the EU, not just for the consequences of brexit (which they’ve repeatedly done), but blame the EU for forcing brexit onto the UK. And low and behold we now Dominc Raab, the foreign secretary, has accused the EU of trying to erect a border down the Irish sea. This was in response to a recent bipatisan resolution being adopted by the US congress confirming America’s support for the GFA and the NI protocol. Instead Raab tried to argue any threat to the GFA is down to Brussels and not the UK, WTF!

Remind me, when did the EU throw the UK out? It was the UK’s decision to leave under terms decided on by the Tories. It was also the brexiters idea to impose a hard brexit, even thought they campaigned for a soft brexit and even after the potential risks to the GFA were repeatedly pointed out to them. This was a Tory decision, endorsed by anyone who voted for the them over the last two elections. Unless you’ve been on Mars for the last 5 years none of what is now happening (i.e. the 40% drop in UK exports to the EU) can possibly come as a surprise. Grow a pair and own it.

And besides if you buy into the brexiter rhetoric, you should actually want border controls. Without them how can you get to those sunlight uplands. If you are going to sign all these wonderful trade deals around the world, well then those filthy EU types will be able to benefit from them via the back door if there aren’t customs checks in NI.

Of course the reality is more about the UK struggling to get cut and paste trade deals its lost due to brexit (as the EU’s signed trade deals with about 60 other countries around the world) on the same terms (the Japan deal for example resulted in the UK accepting harsher terms in some areas than applies to the EU/Japan trade deal or UK/EU trade deal). In fact Raab also suggested that the UK would be okay signing trade deals with countries with poor human rights records. Ya that’s where we are with brexit, selling arms to dictators so they can rob their people on the UK’s behalf. Colonialism 2.0.

And remember brexit is not just an issue at the NI border. Three months into brexit and not only have no checks been implemented on incoming goods from the EU at the channel ports, which is illegal btw (and grounds for other trading blocs to take the UK to court over), but they are saying they aren’t going to implement border checks until 2022….maybe!

Well first of all, there’s the obvious risks of who knows what being smuggled into the country (drugs, guns, chemical weapons, Justin Bieber). You can pass all the immigration laws you want, but if an EU citizen can just fly to Ireland and get a bus to Belfast, or migrants can be smuggled into the UK the back of a lorry, its an unenforceable law. Its just a matter of time before the migrants at Calais start to spot the obvious loopholes (the other being to head for the channel islands).

Plus nobody is going to sign a trade deal with you if you just leave your border open as you are essentially giving everyone in the world free trade access without them having to agree to anything (they can restrict UK trade to protect their local industries while exporting to the UK paperwork and tariff free). To draw an analogy, you want to go to a concert, you can queue up for hours, pay £100 to get in, get searched and have your booze confiscated, or you can walk in through an open unguarded gate, and pay nothing, what do you think most people will do?

And there’s also the problem of stuff being smuggled in that is actually dangerous. For example, meat from a region in the world where Foot and Mouth disease is endemic. And this danger extend to the EU as well. In the event of a UK/US trade deal items banned in EU, US Chlorinated chicken or opioid medicines for example, could be smuggled into the EU via Ireland.

Plus by not enforcing the UK’s own laws, it makes it frankly dangerous for other countries to sign trade deals with the UK, as it creates a whole bunch of loopholes that smugglers will drive a bus through. For example, I know of a hipster coffee place in Ireland that sells coffee from around the world, including Cuban coffee (which is actually quite good btw), which is legal in Ireland (as are Cuban cigars), but banned in the US. Now if there’s a UK/US trade deal and no border checks I can quite legally order a few tons of Cuban coffee (or a few million cigars), ship them into the UK, slap a big union jack label on it, then sell it in the US to conservatives, claiming some of the funds will go to support brexit and/or Trump’s campaign (ya like I’ll give em five bucks!) and the ingredients are sourced from “a variety of Central American sources” (theoretically if I mix in just 1% from Nicaragua or Colombia that’s technically accurate).

We’ve now found a way to use the brexiters lack of understanding of the very brexit laws they themselves drafted and voted for, to not only make a mockery of UK trade and immigration rules, but also potentially American rules as well. So, regardless of who is in charge (or your views on Cuba), the US would have to be mad to sign a trade deal with the UK under the present circumstances.

The reality is that much as the Tories vision of Singapore on the Thames actually amounts to Pyongyang on the Thames, their policy towards the very brexit border they campaigned so hard for amounts to turning the UK into a giant smugglers cove. How can the UK be “taking control” if its instead delegating control of the UK’s borders to Irish and EU customs officials? And remember its their job to enforce Irish and EU laws not UK laws.

Finally, it also services to demonstrate just how out of touch the brexiters truly are. They claim to represent the leave voters, yet they clearly had no idea of what leave voters voted for, nor of the implications of their policies. And now that its obvious what the consequences are, their solution is to just try and hide the problem and blame others for their stupidity, even if it ends up starting a war.

The ingrained racism of the UK’s elites

I don’t tend to follow royal events, as they are mostly just one of the ways the UK media distracts the people from more important topics. Such as the fact that the UK now has one of the highest per capita recorded death rates from Covid in the world, with nurses rewarded with a defacto pay cut (once inflation is accounted for), with some of their jobs to go later once the NHS is privatised. But this Meghan Markle business is worth commenting on. As it reveals a lot about the UK media, the rich and the institutional racism at the core of both.

The media and the UK’s wealthy elites have always had it in for Meghan Markle and its not difficult to understand why. The ultimate goal of many of the UK’s wealthy is to climb the social ladder. And there are various ways you do that, being rich is obviously one way, better yet old money (a million of old money and a baronet is worth a billion in new money), having a title (baron, duke, peer, etc.) or as many middle names as possible, going to the right school (Eton, Harrow, etc.) or best of all being a member of the royal family. So you can see how the Mayfair set would react to this upstart (as they would see Meghan) rolling in and jumping the queue ahead of them all, just by marrying a prince.

And then there’s is this issue of institutional racism and class snobbery. Its one of the way’s the UK’s wealthy elites sleep at night. Rather than accept they have attained this wealth by screwing over the poor, either in the UK or overseas (and a lot of the old money wealth was built on the back of the slave trade, or exploitation of colonies during the age of empire), instead they engage in victim blaming. Its poor people’s fault that they are poor. Nothing to do with Tory policy. If ethnic minorities are being discriminated against, it must be their own fault as well because insert racist stereotype here. And, as I mentioned in a previous post, you don’t have to be white to be a racist. Its not unusual for some of those from non-white backgrounds to start adopting the same racist views after awhile.

Which may have something to do with the UK’s public school system (what they call private schools over here) where racism is practically part of the curriculum. They are, to the wealthy, what the madrasa’s are to Islamic State. They are institutions which indoctrinate kids with a wide variety of dangerous ideas, such as that you can just blag your way to success, British exceptionalism (the failure of UK brexit negotiations can largely be blamed on this), as well as the glorification of the British Empire, without dwelling too much on its many downsides (you know slavery, murder, massacres, the Opium wars, famines, overall tens of millions of people killed).

So inevitably you end up with a bunch of casually racist posh twits being churned out to replace the current crop of racist posh twits. They are basically a re-spawning system for upper class bigots. And you can imagine the social horror for these posh gin swilling types when they are told that, not only is Meghan (a commoner, American and of mixed race) now above them in the pecking order. But protocol now means they have to bow to her and call her “your Royal Highness”. And inevitably this hatred boiled over into the media.

While tabloid newspaper journalists are also a pretty racist lot (many of whom went to the same private schools), royal correspondents tend to be on a different level. If you are a bit posh, have an obsession with horses, at least 3 middle names and are a bit more racist than everyone else in the office, congratulations, you’re now the newspaper’s royal correspondent. In most other companies making a racist remark earns you diversity training and being put in charge of the United Way, in a UK tabloid they just make you the royal correspondent.

And we’ve seen some absolute howlers as the media tried to defend themselves. There was the very public downfall of Pier’s Morgan. But also a whole bunch of other articles from Royal correspondents along the lines of how could we be called racist for constantly attacking the one black woman in the royal family? Another preposterously suggested that the UK media have a long history of “holding the elites to account”. Ya, sure pull the other one.

The tabloids would happily run 50 page specials on Meghan (or some other celebrity with left wing sympathies), based mostly on rumour, dubious sources (such as her estranged dad, after they’ve bribed him to say what they want him to say) or just plain old lies. Yet they’ve largely ignored the many affairs Farage is rumoured to have had (never mind his involvement in doggy ponzi schemes), nor the fact we still don’t know exactly how many kids Boris Johnson has had out of wedlock from his numerous affairs.

Similarly they’ll do a 28 page special on Corbyn’s links to the Sinn Fein, but ignore the links between the DUP and loyalist terrorist groups (whom the Tories regularly go into coalition or work closely with). They’ll go to town on the slightest mistake a left wing politician makes (as is the case with Nicola Sturgeon right now), but a Tory can be caught essentially stealing from the public purse to the tune of tens of billions, or openly breaking the law to help their mates and not a peep out of the right wing media. This is the very definition of racism and media bias.

Much like the police in the US, its not just one or two rotten eggs, its the entire system. The UK media is no more fair and balanced than the news media is in Pyongyang. And while one could look at ultimately passing new laws to make the media more accountable for its actions, but that’s not going to happen. No way labour’s going even talk about that for fear of making waves. I mean despite what’s happening with brexit, they still won’t even admit it was a mistake.

Instead, I’d take a leaf out of the book of a wine merchant who recently had issues due to brexit. He simply tweeted about these issues with the hashtag #teethingproblems and within a few hours the head of HMRC was ringing him up to apologise. Yes its true the Tories and their allies have used social media to good effect, most notably in the run up to the brexit vote, but its also their Achilles heel. They know that if certain facts, that they’d otherwise like to keep hidden, start going viral they can’t rely on their control of the media to keep it quiet. And there’s now a host of new media outlets operating over the internet (the Byline Times is a good example). Some even doing news casts via youtube. It could be a way forward.

Pyongyang on the Thames

I came across a documentary from French TV about the North Korean “Ghost Fleet” of fishing vessels. Large fleets of North Korean fishing boats have been raiding the fishing grounds of neighbouring countries, most notably making intrusions into Russian waters, overfishing and using banned techniques such a drift netting. Which is causing all sorts of environmental problems. And as many of these fishing boats aren’t terribly seaworthy, there is believed to be a fairly high death toll from ships sinking, or their engines failing and ending up adrift and becalmed until the crews starve.

Anyway, it was interesting to watch Russians and Chinese fishermen complaining about how they have to follow all of these complex rules, yet the North Korean don’t. They seem to be allowed to do whatever the hell they like. Now why does that sound familiar? Because that’s what the brexiters want. They see brexit as their chance to get Singapore on the Thames. However, in reality what they are actually pitching for is Pyongyang on the Thames, where the UK becomes a Pariah state, who routinely breaks international law and gets by through a combination of criminality, intense propaganda and brainwashing (even now in UK schools, as if control of the media wasn’t good enough) as well as constant threats if they don’t get their way.

Consider that in the last week the UK government has broken international law twice, unilaterally reneging on parts of the EU trade deal, before the EU’s even had a chance to ratify it. And meanwhile many Tory MP’s and cheer leaders are urging for even stronger action, such as fighting a trade war with the EU, or banning EU made bottled water, or forcing people in the UK to eat more shellfish (I’d love to see these brexiters try that outside a Glasgow takeaway on a Saturday night, they’ll likely just get stabbed with a plastic fork).

Up in Northern Ireland the DUP are trying to undo the trade deal (which in December they’d been praising) by any means necessary, including simply not building the infrastructure to enforce it (so basically they campaigned for brexit, the results of which they are refusing to implement). They’ve also begun to use threatening language, including calling for “Guerilla warfare” against the EU, clearly a dog whistle to their terrorist allies. Which was received loud and clear, as shortly afterwards several loyalist terrorist groups announced their break with the Good Friday agreement.

And, as regards corruption and criminal behaviour, we have the health secretary being found to have acted unlawfully in the award of PPE contracts during the pandemic to his chums (of course he’s not going to resign, don’t be silly!). The prime minster setting up a charity slush fund to redecorate his flat and using taxpayers money to pay for fake news articles (adverts masquerading as real news) to sell brexit as a success.

Consider for a minute if anyone else behaved the way the brexiters behave. Imagine if a Muslim stood up and talked about launching Guerrilla warfare. How many seconds before they’d be arrested? Consider how the Tories were calling for Nicola Sturgeon’s head for the last few weeks, while ignoring the far greater scandals from within their own party. If labour had won the election and they heard Corbyn was going to use taxpayers money to fool Daily Mail or Telegraph into reading articles promoting his socialist policies, how would they have reacted? Likely by rolling around on the ground and chewing the carpet, then calling for him to be arrested for misuse of state funds. There is one rule for brexiters and another one for everyone else.

I recall a conversation I once had with someone who worked for the Brazilian government (under the previous left wing administration) who bemoaned the fact that any time the country implemented any sort of left wing policy, stronger environmental protections, raising taxes for the wealthy, better labour laws, the credit rating agencies in the west would cut the country’s credit rating. Yet whenever the right wing parties did something, such as lowering taxes for the wealthy or selling off state industries to the private sector, the credit ratings would be raised (even when the measures were clearly going to lead to higher levels of borrowing and a higher risk of default for investors).

So we now have the situation where the UK has essentially imposed sanctions on itself and its led by politicians who are deliberately trying to sabotage the UK economy, yet the UK’s credit ratings aren’t being cut. Again, one rule for one group and another for everyone else.

Of course there is a difference between North Korea and the UK. North Korea survives on the basis of the CFC gambit. Or Crippled (anyone attacking North Korea will be stuck with the bill for rebuilding a crippled country from scratch), Fearsome (as they have a vast arsenal of conventional, as well as nuclear, biological and chemical weapons) and Crazy (while they would be all but guaranteed to loose any war they are just about crazy enough to use this arsenal as an act of national suicide). In short, its better for its neighbours to treat North Korea with kid gloves….because Kim Jung un’s gloves are likely made from real kids!

In short, CFC works for North Korea because they are an impoverished nation whose leadership have nothing to lose by self isolation. Its a little different with the UK. The EU’s likely response will be targeted sanctions and tariffs. These will be used to cause maximum pain to the the UK and Tory politicians in particular, while minimising the harm to the EU. So likely measures could include heavy tariffs on fish or agricultural products, or a financial transaction tax on UK/EU trades (which would hit Tory voters and donors hard).

And while some cosmetic tabloid friendly retaliation from the UK might happen, the UK can’t really do much, given how dependant it is on things like food, medicines, electricity and energy supplies from the EU. In fact customs checks they should currently be undertaking, which they delayed till July (illegally), might be watered down even further due to fears of possible food shortages (so they wanted brexit so they can shut the border…but now they are angry because they don’t want anyone to shut the border WTF!).

The GFA is underwritten by the US. They will take a very dim view of any effort to undermine it. Measures they could take could involve, joining in with EU’s sanctions, ruling out any trade deals (or making it plain to other countries that they should drop their trade deals with the UK if they want to remain friends with Washington) or boycotting of international events (such as the upcoming G8 meeting).

Its also not clear how they will react to any resumption of violence. There were some Americans back in the troubles who argued for a more robust American stance (e.g. refusing to sell miltary hardware to the UK until it negotiated with the Irish), or an American led UN peace keeping force in NI (the unionist wake up one morning to find US Marines standing on every street corner). So its kind of up in the air what happens next, particularly if its seen as the UK provoking a unionist bombing campaign in the Republic.

So the brexiters are in for something of a rude awakening. And its clear they still don’t know what brexit means. And even if they do, they are plugging their ears. They want a fantasy brexit, where they still have all the benefits of EU membership, but (much as North Korea pretends they won the Korean war) they get to pretend they’ve also gotten their Empire 2.0.

Boris burrow part II – the Boris bend, or more than likely the Boris bluff

So you if you thought Boris Johnson’s proposal for a train tunnel between Scotland and NI (aka the Boris Burrow) was crazy, well it would seem they are doubling down. Now they want not one, but 4 tunnels connecting the UK mainland with NI and the Isle of Man.

The longest of these would run from near Liverpool to the northern part of the Isle of Man, a distance of +130 km’s (that’s double the likely distance of a Scotland to NI route and over 2 and a half times longer than the world’s current longest tunnel). Straight away, this tells me that nobody who knows the slightest thing about engineering could be involved in this project.

Generally with tunnels the longer you want to build them, or the deeper under water you want to go, the harder it gets. You have to be able to maintain a water tight seal to resist the hydrostatic pressure of the water above. You need to have the right kind of rock to drill through (the channel tunnel was only able to be built because there was a layer of rock through which a water tight tunnel could be easily drilled through). The tunnel needs to be maintained at a suitable slope such that trains can easily ascend and descend. And you need to be able to circulate air into the tunnel and pump any water out. And the further you are from shore and the deeper you go the harder this pumping process gets.

Quite simply put, even with an unlimited budget and an unlimited amount of time (again it took decades to build much smaller tunnels) it might be impossible to build such a tunnel. Not least because a lot will depend on the geology of the Irish sea. I don’t know, maybe Boris thinks the fictional Island of Sodor from Thomas the Tank engine is real and he can just build the line across it.

As a quick aside, you may ask, why does it have to be a rail tunnel? Well because a road tunnel will need to be much bigger (to accommodate several lanes of traffic), you’ll have to supply air, not just for the people, but also the vehicle engines and pump out exhaust gases (trains can run on electricity). And to be blunt, trains are driven by professional drivers who are less likely to have an accident. As rescuing people from such a deep and remote location under the sea is going to be difficult at the best of times.

Anyway, the fat controller Boris big idea is to have a big roundabout tunnel under the Isle of Man linking everything together. Of course what he’s actually going to need is a series of vast marshalling yards. Go to google earth and look up the town of Ventimiglia in Italy (see below), you’ll notice the entire north end of the town of just 50,000 is dominated by a vast area of railway marshalling yards covering the entire north end of the town, of which only a small fraction is currently in use (with an even larger set of marshalling yards a few km’s to the North west). Why? Well because its on the Italian/French border. And before the EU’s single market came along every train passing between the two countries had to stop. All the passengers had to be offloaded and stamped out of one country and stamped into the other and customs inspections plus checks had to be undertaken.

Similarly, as NI is now a separate customs area to the UK, you’d have to stop and check every single train passing through. Quite apart from the break of gauge issues I mentioned before (as the UK uses standard gauge while the Ireland uses broad gauge). And, as the Isle of Man is also a separate customs area to the other two, you’d have to have a separate area to check goods and people in and out of the Isle of Man. Oh and speaking of breaks of gauge, the Isle of Man’s railway network is mostly narrow gauge. So you’re now linking together 3 incompatible railway systems.

For some strange reason there’s another tunnel leading to Scotland. And why would someone use this tunnel to get to Scotland when there’s a perfectly good road (the M6) and railway line running along side it that goes directly to the central belt? Furthermore, in the timescales for construction of this tunnel, Scotland might get independence. So you’d then need another large marshalling yard to check good into and out of Scotland. You’re going to be digging up half the Isle of Man and covering it with railway yards!

So why is such a crazy proposal being pursued? Well not because they actually plan on building anything (no doubt some Tory consultant will get a contract to waste a few million to prove the viability of the project). No, as always, Boris Johnson’s goal is to control the narrative. With the help of his media allies he aims to gaslight the public with propaganda and lies.

For example, the UK is on top for vaccinations you have likely been told. Well firstly that is largely down to the NHS (which the Tories want to sell off) not anything the government’s done. The only contribution to the vaccine made by the Tories was to try and insist on putting a union jack on the labels. Secondly, no, the UK is pretty high up the list but not on top, as the UK government is only issuing a single dose (then counting that as someone has been vaccinated) while most most other countries say you have to have the 2 doses within 4 weeks to count. And inevitably this means the UK is now slipping behind other countries.

Similarly we have the situation in NI where the DUP, aka the old testament with weekly bin collections, campaigned for brexit and are now upset with the consequences. Arlene Foster (who always seems to look like someone whose just swallowed a bee), back in December was touting the benefits of NI staying in the single market. Now they (with a little help from Kate Hoey, aka the Corbyn ally who pretends to be a labour supporter when she’s really a UKIP 5th columnist) are launching legal action, trying to have the NI protocol scrapped, even thought they know this would lead to a hard border with the rest of Ireland and likely a break down of the GFA.

Like the Tories, the DUP’s entire political position is based on lies and fantasy. They believe that they can have all the benefits of staying in the EU, without suffering any of the consequences of leaving, while ignoring the impossible trinity of brexit (CCP Grey has a good video on this here). And far from being worried about destroying the GFA, that’s their ultimate fantasy. They never wanted it in the first place and signed up to it only halfheartedly (Ian Paisley was famously known as Dr No for his tendency to say no, no, never… then maybe).

This was the problem with the GFA. The treaty was mostly negotiated by the moderates (John Hume of the SDLP and David Trimble of the UUP), with SF and the DUP (the political fronts for the terrorists) only supporting it because they’d have gotten frozen out of the political process if they hadn’t (and then likely all gotten arrested and sent to some US supermax prison). It should have been a condition of the Irish, British and the US that anyone who’d be previously involved in terrorism should stay out of politics (which still applies to quite a number of the front bench in SF and the DUP to this day).

Unfortunately, they naively assumed that the SDLP & UUP would take power…which ignores how elections work, how tribal the two communities are in NI and how populists can win by making outlandish promises they never keep. Consequently SF and the DUP have pretty much run NI into the ground, using Stormont as means to settle petty scores against one another while engaging in various money burning parties as they squander public money. NI receives far more tax payers money per head of population than any region of the UK, yet its GDP (per capita) is 80% that of the UK average and less than half that of the Irish republic.

And the situation in NI should serve as a warning for how the Tories policy, of basically running the country as a Chumacracy, could have serious long term consequences. The point is that this tunnel project shows that all the Tories have are their lies and empty promises. The UK has become a country where brexit is now the state the religion, ignorance is considered an asset and the truth is seen by the government as a threat.