#Brexit Aftermath #1 - Chaos in the British Political Class
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Isn't it funny?
You know when I came here 17 years ago and I said that I wanted to lead a campaign to get Britain to leave the European Union, you all laughed at me.
Well, I have to say, you're not laughing now, are you?
I, like practically everyone who voted Leave in the EU referendum, expected to lose.
I had a video planned out in my head of what I was going to say.
I was going to say something along the lines of, even though we lost, we did our best, and we must respect the democratic mandate of the referendum.
Instead of being bitter that we didn't get what we wanted, we should use this as a way of pushing for reform inside Europe, because the European Parliament and Commission's relationship does need reform.
To be democratic, the Parliament must gain the ability to propose legislation, and the Commission must lose it.
That's what I was going to ask for.
But instead we won.
Which appears to be the result that no one was expecting and nobody is prepared for.
And this is causing a great deal of turmoil in the British political system.
You're probably already aware that David Cameron has announced his resignation, stating that he would stay on in a caretaker capacity, but expected a new leader to be in place by the time of the Conservative Party conference in October.
There is of course now a battle for the Tory Party leadership, and Theresa May is actually hedging out Boris Johnson in the polls.
I think this is probably due primarily to Boris Johnson's lackluster appearance after the victory, but we'll talk about that a bit later.
I expected the Conservative Party to be quite damaged and have severe internal divisions that it would struggle to overcome.
I didn't expect the Labour Party to also have a giant meltdown.
47 MPs have resigned from the Labour Party.
That's two-thirds of the shadow cabinet.
It seems that the Labour Party is in full-on revolt against Jeremy Corbyn.
Now, I just want to give some background on how Jeremy Corbyn was elected, because this was quite unusual in and of itself.
When the Labour elections came around, 300,000 regular folks paid their £5 membership fee so they could have a vote for the leader of the Labour Party.
These are the people who voted for Jeremy Corbyn, and he won by quite a margin.
As you can imagine, this does not reflect the will of Labour MPs, or the existing members of the Labour Party.
And so this, I think, is the reason that they have turned on him.
He doesn't represent them.
They wouldn't have voted for him personally.
And they are now laying him under accusation that he didn't campaign hard enough for the Remain vote.
One MP described the mood as despairing, with MPs taking it in turns to tell Mr Corbyn that he would destroy the party if he did not resign.
Others used words like heartbreaking and just awful.
Outside Parliament, a noisy rally of the hard-left momentum group was shouting its support for Mr. Corbyn, in between calling for re-nationalisation of pits and power stations.
Corbyn decided to go and join them, returning to his comfort zone of standing on a makeshift stage shouting into a megaphone.
Just in case you were wondering why Corbyn is such a divisive figure.
So 47 Labour MPs decided to tweet out 47 letters of resignation in an attempt to virtue signal to those who are also dissatisfied with Corbyn.
The most amusing of those was my old friend Jess Phillips, who unironically says, Writing or saying anything against you risks my job, the livelihood of my family.
The threats are already rolling in.
I live my life as a socialist.
I speak up regardless of risk.
I am considerably less important than the struggle.
I love being an MP in Yardley.
She ends it by saying, the Labour Party is not about you.
It's about us.
I'm really worried that you cannot see that you've made this all about you.
Jess, did you even read your own letter?
A spokesman for Corbyn said, stop the whispering, stop the corridor coups.
Stop trying to pressure an elected leader of the Labour Party to stand down without any vote or democracy.
And I love this.
The shadow business secretary Angela Eagle wrote, too many of our supporters were taken in by right-wing arguments.
Not wrong arguments, just right-wing arguments.
And I believe this happened in part because under your leadership, the case to remain in the EU was made with half-hearted ambivalence rather than full-throated clarity.
Maybe that's because Corbyn actually cares about the working class.
I mean, he seems to be the last of a generation of Labour who actually care about this.
And who aren't just talking about themselves, Miss Phillips.
He actually notices that, oh, I don't know, the Mediterranean is having a massive employment crisis because of the Euro and it's mainly affecting young poor people.
But none of you people care.
It doesn't matter to you.
You wanted him to push this line, this agenda, even though it goes contrary to his own values.
And personally, I'm glad that Corbyn isn't backing down, because he is going to completely demolish the Labour Party.
For example, this is fucking personal.
Labour rebel Jess Phillips screams at Corbyn's right-hand man, Siumus Milne, after left-winger threatened to take a blowtorch to her neck.
This headline just screams a confluence between power and ideology.
It does not scream a rational actor, or two rational actors, dealing with one another.
It screams at people who are deeply ideological and are afraid they are going to lose everything.
Jess accosted Seamus in a Westminster canteen of Mr. Corbyn's dogs of war, who are targeting MPs opposed to the Labour leader.
Milne is said to have dismissed her worries claiming he received similar threats and told her not to take it personally, but then she said it is fucking personal before calling him a cock.
How wonderfully mature of you, Jess.
I've got no doubt that your constituents are so pleased that you are their elected MP.
But this is the point.
This is a full-fledged revolt in the Labour Party, and they have delivered a vote of no confidence to Jeremy Corbyn.
Corbyn lost this vote very, very badly, with 172 of his own MPs opposing his leadership and only 40 supporting him.
He issued this statement which was very mature and very dull.
But it also said a great deal about the state of the Labour Party and the MPs who are flipping the fuck out over Corbyn.
They don't understand that he has Donald Trump to them.
He has come in with popular mandate and fuck them.
And they are not going to get what they want.
They are all going to have to leave the Labour Party.
They are all going to have to resign and leave the Labour Party because hundreds of thousands of people who are not MPs, who are not part of the political class, have voted for him.
He has a mandate, regardless of whether the MPs don't like it or not.
He'll get new ones.
They'll have to leave.
This is probably the end of the Labour Party as we know it.
After getting trounced by the Tories in the last general election, I would be amazed if the Labour Party was ever a viable political force again.
But the measured tone of Corbyn's response and the hysterical tone of the MPs who are opposing him should show you everything you need to know about who is in control here.
Corbyn is now the Labour Party.
His hundreds of thousands of regular people who joined the party to support him are the Labour Party.
The Westminster Labour Party have lost.
They are not going to be the political force they thought they once were, and that's why they are losing their shit.
And I just want to point out that in many ways, this is a very good thing.
The Labour Party has been drifting away from the interests of actual people, the actual Labour they claim to represent, for many years.
They've becoming incredibly more corporate, I guess is a way you could put it.
And these are the people who are now losing out.
So let's now turn our attention to Scotland, where Nicola Sturgeon has said that MSPs at Holyrood could refuse Brexit consent.
This is where the devolved Scottish Parliament and Scottish MPs could attempt to try and block the referendum result on the grounds that they voted against it.
The overall vote was 52% to 48% to leave Europe.
However, in Scotland the picture was different, with 62% backing remain and 38% wanting to go.
So I just want to address something before I move on.
Scotland is not an independent country.
It is a nation, a nation of people, but it is not a sovereign state.
When people in Scotland voted in the EU referendum, they did so as British citizens, not as Scots.
It doesn't matter whether Scotland as a region voted in the opposite direction as the majority of the rest of the country.
So when Sturgeon says that, of course, she would ask MSPs to refuse to give their legislative consent, you've got to wonder whether she understands that she's overplaying her hand.
And the leader of the Scottish Conservatives has insisted that the Edinburgh Parliament did not have the required authority to block Brexit.
And that is the really important case here.
It doesn't.
When the government invokes Article 50, it will apply to Scotland regardless of whether the Scottish Parliament consents or not.
The issue was decided at the referendum, not at the invoking of the Article 50 clause.
If this triggers Scotland having a referendum to leave the United Kingdom, then fine.
I am completely on board with that.
I think they should have the democratic right to choose once again after 2014's referendum on the subject.
And if they choose to leave, Grey's.
Good for them.
I want the Scots to have self-determination.
I don't want them to be shackled to England if that's not what they want.
In the same way, I don't want England to be shackled to Europe if that's not what the English want.
But Sturgeon's suggesting that she's going to try and get Scottish MPs to block the will of the people of Britain outside of Scotland.
Well, that's a bit undemocratic, isn't it, Sturgeon?
Don't most SNP MPs complain that the English make decisions for Scotland without the consent of the Scots, and then you are quite happy to go and do the same thing to the English?
I mean, do you not see any hypocrisy there, Nicola?
But as we were saying, it doesn't matter what Holyrood wants at the end of the day, because Westminster would have the final say.
We don't need the consent of the devolved Scottish Parliament for the British Parliament to make decisions for Britain.
And it's a damn good thing too, because I don't get to vote for people in the Scottish Parliament.
And if you're making decisions that are affecting the entire country, that's the same position with the EU.
It's not democratic.
But thankfully, you don't.
Scots can vote for Scottish MPs, and they can also vote for British MPs at Westminster.
I can only vote for British MPs.
So I'm glad they are the ones with the final say on this matter.
you can see that there are already people who are literally willing to do anything to stop this from happening.
I mean, this isn't a rational cause anymore.
This is an ideological cause.
This is them believing.
I mean, nobody knows what's going to happen, really.
we've seen the markets recover and we've seen the political classes across Europe accept this on the face of it but the people in Britain who are pro-EU are just honestly they seem like fanatics.
I can't imagine how deeply I would have to be into this position before I started suggesting that if I didn't get my way through public referendum, then we should simply overturn the idea of a constitution in Britain because we don't have a formal one written down on paper.
Imagine petitioning the Conservative government, which I'm sure this author did not vote for, to simply do what the hell it pleases.
Ignore the democratic will of the people.
And I do love how hard they're pushing for a second referendum.
What makes you think you're going to win that?
You thought you were going to win the first one by a landslide and you lost it.
Have you considered re-evaluating your position?
There are about eight paragraphs of absolute pointless waffle to this article before we get to the actual reasons the author wrote it.
He says, Alright, call me a sore loser.
True, I, like so many of you, am sore to the point of screaming excruciation.
Dismiss me as a deranged fantasist.
So before we've done anything here, the author has established that they are arguing from a position of emotion.
They are a sore loser.
Literally, they're upset that they lost and they just want to do something because they felt as if they deserved the victory.
Well, I'm sorry, but you didn't.
But the question is whether it would be more or less hideous than accepting the horror of Brexit if by then some two-thirds of the populace wanted to avoid it and have a second referendum.
Uh, no.
Two-thirds of the populace don't want to avoid it.
In fact, the majority want it.
Get used to it.
Realign your ideas to understand you are in the minority.
And then this moron starts getting desperate.
In Britain, there are no rules.
There is nothing written down that makes this referendum result definitive.
Legally, it is non-binding advice which Parliament may, at the exceedingly grave peril outlined above, choose to override.
Those who care above all about reclaiming sovereignty would wish to remind you that the will of Parliament is in fact sovereign.
Yes, it is.
Which is why we vote for the MPs who propose legislation.
Let's try and keep it that way, you fucking fifth columnist.
So apparently we need a quick reminder as to what the British Constitution actually is, and why we actually do have rules that are written down, you moron.
So it's usually said that Britain has an unwritten constitution, which means it doesn't have a codified constitution, but an unwritten one formed of Acts of Parliament, court judgments, and conventions.
When they say unwritten, there are others who prefer to describe it as uncodified, on the basis that many of our laws of constitutional nature are in fact written down as acts of parliament or law reports of court judgments.
The aspects of the British Constitution, its unwritten nature, is most distinguishing characteristic.
So we are talking about documents that are built up over a thousand years of the development of English common law, such as the Magna Carta in 1215, the 1689 Bill of Rights, and the 1998 Human Rights Act.
These are the rules, and they are written down, and I find it very amusing that this is the first place that you went to when you lost a vote.
If you'd won this vote, and I was on the side saying, well, nothing's written down, we can overthrow this anytime, you'd be pitching a fucking fit.
You'd be screaming at me how I was anti-democratic, and how was this, and how was that, and how I just wasn't happy, I didn't get my way.
Well, look who's not happy, they didn't get their way now.
But the petulant temper tantrum from people who consider themselves to be the elites is only just beginning.
It's time for the elites to rise up against the ignorant masses.
The Brexit has laid bare the political schism of our time.
It's not about the left versus the right.
It's about the sane versus the mindlessly angry.
Yes, but the same people all voted leave, because they care about democracy, and they think of their fellow humans as equals, and the angry appear to be the political elites who are pitching a fucking fit in public.
Honestly, I'm expecting some of these so-called elites to simply fall down to the floor and start screaming and gnashing and hammering on the ground.
Meh, I'm not listening, I'm not listening.
Overthrow the masses!
Democracy's terrible!
Stop being a fucking baby!
The issue at the bottom is globalization.
Brexit, Trump, the National Front, and so on show that the political elites have misjudged the depth of anger at global forces and thus demand that someone somehow restore the status quo ante.
It may seem strange that reaction has come today rather than immediately after the economic crisis of 2008, but the ebbing of the crisis has led to a new sense of stagnation.
With prospects of flat growth in Europe and minimal income growth in the United States, voters are rebelling against their dismal long-term prospects, which is why the Remain campaign never made the argument for how great it was going to be when we stayed in Europe.
Because they know it's not.
And globalization means cultural as well as economics.
All the people whose familiar world is vanishing beneath a welter of foreign tongues and multicultural celebrations are waving their fists at cosmopolitan elites.
I was recently in Poland where a far-right party is appealing to nationalism and tradition has gained power despite years of undeniable prosperity under a centrist regime.
Supporters use the same words again to explain their vote.
Values and tradition.
They voted for Polishness against the modernity of Western Europe.
No, against the emptiness of Western Europe.
That's what they're voting against.
You are not offering them anything.
You are in fact offering them nothing but the destruction of their way of life.
Are you surprised when they decide to exercise their democratic vote against you?
And should I be surprised when you then decide democracy is the problem?
Did I say ignorant?
Yes, I did.
It is necessary to say that people are deluded and that the task of leadership is to undelude them.
Yeah, okay, that's easy to say, but when your leadership are openly ideologically driven, regardless of the will of the people, regardless of their own democratic rights, they just have a mission and they're desperate to fulfill it.
They don't even know what good or bad is in this situation.
They don't care.
Is that elitist?
Maybe it is.
Well, of course it is.
Maybe we have become so inclined to celebrate the authenticity of all personal conviction that it is now elitist to believe in reason, expertise, and the lessons of history.
Okay, just fucking stop, mate.
A, you're not arguing for reason.
B, and you might be arguing for expertise.
You guys are very good at what you're doing.
But see, the lessons of history?
Are you fucking insane?
You want an autocratic superstate that is not accountable to the people it rules over.
And you want to talk about the lessons of history?
If so, the party accepting reality must be prepared to take on the party of denying reality.
Well, the party denying reality are the remain voters.
They're the ones denying reality.
What now?
But this is my point.
These people genuinely believe themselves to be some kind of aristocracy.
They genuinely think they are better than the average person.
Which is why these Muppets are spouting out rhetoric like this.
If you believe the lesser evil is stumbling tearfully into the abyss, knowing it to be a fatal error that a large majority no longer want to make, so be it.
If, on the other hand, you think this is an act of self-destructive insanity, for God's sake, make your voice heard.
Well, they did.
They voted.
The only power that renders a second referendum unthinkable is not enough of us are prepared to think it out loud.
No, it's because you wouldn't have accepted it if you'd fucking won.
Okay?
You know the future in the EU is going to be bad.
You know that it's impoverishment.
We can see it, okay?
Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, what do you fucking need as better example than this?
But you're saying, well, the abyss, the unknown.
Look, dude, I will take an uncertainty over a bad certainty any day of the week.
If something bad is certain to happen, choose the uncertainty.
That's the good thing.
It might not be bad.
That's the option you've got.
We've got a bad choice or a choice that might not be bad.
How the fuck can you think not choosing the bad one is the bad idea?
Is a wrong thing, is a wrong-headed thing to do.
What a fucking lunatic you must be.
How brainwashed you must be to be afraid, to be fearful the EU will protect you, come into the loving arms of the EU, except, I mean, you're going to be really poor, there are going to be less opportunities, you're not going to have a vote to make any laws, you know, your vote's going to make less and less a difference.
In fact, these people are actually openly anti-democracy, which I'll cover in the next video I'm going to do after this one.
Because I am just amazed at the Stockholm syndrome demonstrated by you people.
It's like you're an abused partner.
They've told you you can't survive without the EU, so God, you better do everything to stay with us.
Otherwise, you're going to have to deal with it.
Well, you know what?
We are going to have to deal with it, and that's okay.
We can deal with it, you fucking pussies.
Listen to this.
We are at war with ourselves.
Our future is at stake.
This is no time to play by non-existent rules.
This is the guy who was saying we don't have a constitution.
By fear of looking like bad sports to that minority, and it is the minority, how disproportionately loud its voice.
Except, the vote has demonstrated it's not a minority, you fuck.
Of the racist, narrow-minded, retrograde, and terminally insular.
We too want our country back.
Do we have the guts to fight for it?
I don't care.
This is how we have these battles.
We vote.
You lost.
You are a minority.
You now have to deal with the fact you don't get your way.
It is not becoming clear.
The League campaign are becoming the most petulant children about this issue.
One of my favourites, and I've seen my own friends doing this all over Facebook constantly since this has happened.
Guilt by association.
The Brexit campaign has given encouragement to the nastiest, most extreme racists.
Well, let me stop you there.
They are people, they are British citizens, and they get a vote, whether you like it or not.
We have laws against hate crimes.
If someone commits one, let's just apply those laws.
I'm not committing one.
I wouldn't encourage anyone to commit one.
I am anti-racist.
But I don't think that you should be saying things like, people who voted and campaigned for leave are responsible for the rise of racism.
You know what's really responsible for all of this?
The fundamental crux of the issue is that these people have had negative experiences due to mass immigration and you won't even hear them out.
That's why they're playing up now.
That's why they finally feel unleashed.
You have made this happen.
And if you think you can take other people to take the blame for what the racists are doing, you are wrong.
It's not going to happen and you are childish for suggesting it.
This is you being emotionally driven by your fucking feelings because, like I said, you have been fucking conditioned to think you cannot survive outside of the EU.
We can stop it.
And I'm really not trying to be just a massive dick to remain campaigners.
I'm really not.
But you have to understand, the things that your people are doing are just unacceptable.
For example, there are literally tens of thousands of them protesting against democracy itself.
Protesters chant down with Boris in anti-Brexit rally outside parliament.
What the fuck is an anti-Brexit rally?
You're protesting against a referendum result.
You can't protest that.
It doesn't do anything.
There's no one to affect when you do this.
Normally you protest an institution like a government or a corporation or something.
So when they see massed public pressure against them, they try and change their mind.
But this wasn't a decision on part of the government or some giant institution.
This was the British public that you are now protesting, who in the majority think that we should leave.
This is retarded.
This is so stupid.
There is nothing to protest.
The protest you were meant to be having was the vote itself.
That's the decision.
Now you can complain, but you're just saying, well, I don't like people voted against me.
Well, I'm sorry, pumpkin.
I'm so sorry, sweetheart.
Should we have a second referendum because you didn't get the referendum result you wanted?
No, obviously not, because you wouldn't want that if you had won.
All you're doing is look make yourselves look like fucking fools.
And the king fools are the Independence for London Brigade.
Yes, people think that Britain's capital city should secede from the rest of Britain.
I mean, it's an ironic joke when people say that the rest of the UK should secede from London.
But these morons are actually advocating for this.
And unsurprisingly, they're incredibly young.
They've lived under nothing but the EU, unlike the people who voted to leave who have seen what it's like before and after the EU and have decided accordingly.
So let's finally come back to the response from the Leave campaign, how they've handled themselves.
How exactly have they been treating the losers?
It's one thing that Nigel Farage goes to the European Parliament and says, But what I would like to see is a grown-up and sensible attitude to how we negotiate a different relationship.
Now, now I know, I know that virtually none of you have ever done a proper job in your lives.
Or worked.
Or worked in business.
Or worked in trade.
Or indeed ever created a job.
I don't blame him for giving them a complete roasting, especially as they booed the idea of being grown-ups about this political divorce.
But Farage and the MEPs aside, the Leave campaign seem to be far more mature about this.
For example, Boris Johnson, time to build bridges with Remain voters.
He says, we who are part of this narrow majority must do everything we can to reassure Remainers.
We must reach out, we must heal, we must build bridges, because it is clear that some have feelings of dismay and of loss and of confusion.
They say that Johnson's kept a low profile since the result was announced, and he's looked surprisingly dismal because of it, and you would think that he would be quite chirpy in his hour of victory.
Well, I think I can explain why he looks so dismal.
And yes, you're going to have to struggle to contain your disbelief, but in fact there are Remain campaigners who are acting like fucking babies.
Yes, that's hundreds of people who turned up at Boris Johnson's house so he needed a police escort to get out because they wanted to boo him like a bunch of petulant children.
I've got no doubt that there will be many, many people who voted Remain who would be happy to denounce this kind of childishness and just total entitlement.
As if you were entitled to go and boo someone en masse like this, intimidate someone just because he votes against you.
Just the idea that you people have this, you deserve this, is what pisses me off the most.
You fucking lost.
Get over it.
And of course the question is, well, what's your plan?
And Sky News journalist says pro-Brexit MP told him Leave campaign didn't have a plan.
I've actually been really enjoying this kind of clusterfuck.
Sky News political editor Faisal Islam has been left speechless after claiming a conservative pro-Brexit MP told him the Leave campaign didn't have a plan for Brexit and number 10 should have had one.
You expecting the government to have a plan?
Well wait, of course you are.
They're the ones in charge.
They're the ones with the power.
I mean just because Cameron and Osborne and every other notable figure in the government was campaigning to remain doesn't mean they had the luxury of deciding that they simply wouldn't plan for the eventuality that they might lose that vote.
That's them having opinions as people, but as the government they are still here to serve the country.
And I just want to remind anyone who's going, no no no the Leave should have had a plan.
No, they aren't the government.
I mean what does Boris Johnson even have a political position at the moment?
Daniel Hannan is an MEP.
Nigel Farage is an MEP.
Of course they're not supposed to have the plan.
They can't implement one, even if they did have one.
But do you know who does have a plan?
Oh right, the government and the Bank of England.
I mean I've already in a previous video gone through the statement of the Bank of England where they've said no well look we have contingency plans for this, we have liquidity, it will be okay and unsurprisingly the market pressure has eased after the Brexit rout.
George Osborne who had also been keeping a low profile had said we are in a prolonged period of economic adjustment in the UK and we are adjusting to life outside the EU and it will not be as economically rosy as life inside the EU.
However, he added I think we can provide a clear plan.
We are absolutely going to have to provide fiscal security to people.
We are going to have to show the country and the world that the government can live within its means.
What does he mean by this?
Well, he is just going to parrot the same line that he has parroted in his entire time as Chancellor.
When asked if there would be tax rises and spending cuts, he says, yes, absolutely.
Echoing the decade or so he's been in power already as Chancellor of the Exchequer with absolutely no change whatsoever.
The plan, dear Remainers, is this.
Lift your hands up to your face, go past your neck, over your chin, find your top lip, you'll find it wobbling, you stiffen it, you purse your lips, you firm yourself,