LearningIsLife 2h ago
82
83
'Liar, liar, pants on fire!'... For the lawyers, that's 'alleged liar, alleged liar...'
.
(1) £20bn Brexit dividend for the NHS: Johnson Lies Never Die
On the Andrew Marr Show (video clip), May revived Johnson's rightly disparaged 'red bus lie', claiming we'll be able to spend £400m extra per week on the NHS--£18.2bn per year--because we'll get a Brexit dividend by not paying £20bn a year for our EU membership. In January, ABdP Johnson actually upped the ante upped the ante to £438 million per week--£22.8bn per year.
• As fact-checkers long clarified, we were never paying £20bn a year. While the full bill in 2015 was £19.1bn (£17bn in 2016), Thatcher's rebate came straight off the top. So, after that discount at the till, we only sent £250 million a week or £13bn a year.
• We received £4.5bn back from the EU for public sector spending, e.g. development of less well-off regions, agricultural & fisheries subsidies, and research programmes, so congrats Wales & Cornwall, farmers & fishermen, but the PM has promised to rob you to spend extra on the NHS. As for you researchers, continue your Brexodus.
• Any kind of Single Market access, whether for Northern Ireland (to avoid a land border) or whole of UK (to avoid that Irish Sea border) is not free-of-charge.
• May has been offering to pay billions to opt into EU clubs like Euratom, Galileo, European Medicines Agency (EMA), and even the European Defence Fund, part of a shared defence strategy that Cameron & May tried to block!
• The fine print says this wouldn't start for 5 years, when she most likely will not have been re-elected PM. May knows she can't hold a future government to it.
• She's not calculated the cost of replicating all those EU agencies back in the UK, covered by our current membership dues. Unless otherwise agreed, we fall out of those on 29 March 2019, but they've barely started work on the UK-branded ones.
• And never forget the economic damage of any Brexit, especially hard on Brexit heartlands, which the government's own (initially leaked) analysis showed would be many billions, still hitting us over the course of 15 years.
Has Johnson managed to snatch May's body? The reality is more likely to be increases in taxes and borrowing. And what about social care spending?
.
(2) Silencing the Meaningful Vote Rebellion: May vs Democracy, the Latest Chapter
May was caught out personally 'misleading' Grieve & the Tory rebels on the 'meaningful vote', to get them to back down after agreeing to key changes, forgetting how Ping-Pong works.
Today, the Lords get to review and make recommendations on still egregious text. Count on Lords Adonis & Hailsham (former Tory Cabinet minister Douglas Hogg who raised Grieve's original amendment in the House of Lords) to whack it straight back at May in the Commons.
If she continues to refuse, the Tory rebels--taking a page from Rees-Mogg's gang, but going one better--have threatened to actually bring down the government. 13 abstentions on a parliamentary no-confidence motion or 7 votes against her would erase May's slim coalition lead. Calm down, #Corbyn4PM fans
![Wink ;-)](./images/smilies/icon_e_wink.gif)
, I'm betting May blinks first this time. She may well be giving DExEU's Brextremists enough rope to hang themselves, 'See, I tried your way...' Hmm...
.
Does May not realise the EU & the EU27 can see her? Does her mendacity encourage their (or the public's) trust? Perfidious Albion personified.