Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin - The Brexit Election

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May 4, 2017 - Sargon of Akkad - Carl Benjamin

38:10

The Brexit Election

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	British Prime Minister Theresa May has called a general election on the 8th of June, which is three years earlier than scheduled.
	The official reason given for this is that Theresa May is looking to strengthen her hand in the upcoming Brexit negotiations.
	She's concerned about the other parties attempting to sabotage the Brexit negotiations for their own short-term gain at the expense of the long-term interests of the country.
	And she's right, they absolutely will do this, and it makes perfect sense for her to call a general election to give herself legitimacy.
	May inherited the position of Prime Minister after David Cameron resigned, after he had called the Brexit referendum, on which he and the other remain campaigners had lost.
	The combination of the Brexit referendum and the call for a UK general election has practically destroyed the UK Independence Party, and the former MP that they had, Douglas Carswell, is planning to step down in Clacton and vote for the Conservatives.
	This leaves the Labour Party as the only other major alternative to the Conservative Party, and as you can see by this Guardian article, they are the underdog in this situation because they are significantly trailing in the polls.
	Nobody in their right mind thinks Jeremy Corbyn is going to win, which makes this article on the Independent all the more amusing.
	If you don't think Jeremy Corbyn can win this election, then you're a Tory.
	So says Max Benwell, unwittingly lumping in anyone with an ounce of common sense with Conservatives.
	Here's how he begins his witch hunt.
	Now Theresa May has called a snap general election, we on the left have a fantastic opportunity ahead of us.
	To go forward, united as one, and finally expose who has been a secret Tory this whole time.
	For there should be no doubt, if you're unsure about Jeremy Corbyn, you are a Tory.
	You can say you still support Labour all you want, but if you don't think he can beat Theresa May in June, the writing's on the wall, and it says, you were a paid-up member of the Conservative Party.
	So come forward, Red Tories, and show yourselves.
	Prepare to be justly trolled, for it is time to be re-educated on why you're wrong, and why Corbyn will triumph in June.
	For the traitors among you who don't support him, feel free to disagree.
	It's a free country after all, unless you get your way, you blairites scum.
	Inquisitor Benwell does appear to be clinically insane and completely caught in the cult of personality surrounding Jeremy Corbyn.
	But there is a kind of misrepresentative method to his madness.
	Now before we go on, I just want to stress that I am not a Conservative voter.
	I have never voted for the Conservative Party in my life, and before the Brexit referendum, the general election that's following, I had no plans to ever vote for the Conservatives.
	In fact, I'll leave a link in the description to a 45-minute video I did outlining my problems with the Conservative Party.
	And to be honest with you, they haven't really changed because the Conservatives haven't really changed.
	So recently the Labour Party has seen an increase in their average polling data, which has been promoted very widely across left-leaning media, as some sort of comeback for the Labour Party.
	Labour has gained in at least three polls just weeks before the general election, slashing the Tories' lead by as much as 10 points.
	Jeremy Corbyn's party is up 4 points in the last week to 30% support, found opinion, while a separate YouGov poll between the 27th and 28th April found that Labour was up two points to 31%, both figures contributing to a smaller gap between the Tories and the opposition.
	This article was written three days before I recorded this video, and if we look at the data from the YouGov poll since then, the situation has changed.
	The Labour Party has enjoyed a small increase, which appears to have come as a deficit to the Green Party, but the Conservatives have enjoyed an increase of more than double that, which appears to have come directly from the UK Independence Party.
	The red line is the date on which Theresa May called the general election, and as you can see, voters' intentions have changed accordingly.
	I've added this black line to just emphasise how badly the Labour Party are doing in comparison to their own prior success.
	They are still nowhere near their own ratings from a year ago.
	Jeremy Corbyn's supporters will usually chalk this up to the media, as in the media is in universal condemnation of Jeremy Corbyn or near enough so that that's practically the only message people hear.
	Parody news site The Daily Mash even wrote an amusing article about this.
	Paranoid terrorist-loving dickhead lunatic imagines media is against him.
	The thing is, this parody article is basically correct.
	The media doesn't have a particular love for Jeremy Corbyn, but you can hardly blame them for that.
	Both Jeremy Corbyn and his shadow chancellor John McDonnell have had close IRA links for decades.
	And a video surfaced in 2009 in which Jeremy Corbyn calls Hamas and Hezbollah friends.
	Corbyn said, It will be my pleasure and honour to host an event in Parliament where our friends from Hezbollah will be speaking.
	I've also invited our friends from Hamas to come and speak as well.
	On Monday, he said, I regret using those words, of course.
	Well, I'm sure you would regret it once everyone can see it.
	And when asked, he refused to denounce both Hamas and Hezbollah.
	And when brutal Cuban dictator Fidel Castro finally died, Jeremy Corbyn praised him as a champion of social justice.
	This is a statement so hilarious you might think it was a joke.
	In 2006, Forbes magazine assessed that the socialist dictator had more than $900 million in wealth in a country where the average monthly wage was $20 and where food reportedly often remains scarce.
	Castro lived a life of luxury.
	One of Castro's bodyguards wrote a book in 2014 detailing the leader's cozy existence.
	He pegged Castro's worth at $168 million while revealing the leader's favourite luxuries, such as a private island, lavish spearfishing expeditions, and trips on an 85-foot yacht.
	This is Jeremy Corbyn's champion of social justice.
	The new statesman wrote an article about what everybody already knows.
	Jeremy Corbyn has attracted socialism fans, not Labour voters.
	And they conclude with this.
	This is the sum total of the Corbynite project.
	The installation at the head of the Labour Party of a socialist, i.e., a person upon whom Marxist-Leninists can pin their hopes, and who makes statements aligning himself or herself against right-wing policies such as austerity and with the working class and the poor.
	What do actual working class or poor people think of this?
	They certainly aren't very keen to vote for it.
	And they are absolutely not, which explains Jeremy Corbyn's consistent drop in the polls to the point where the Labour Party is looking as if it may well just disappear.
	But with Jeremy Corbyn has come a particular kind of cult following, and his followers have been accused of bullying, threatening, and intimidating other Labour MPs who step out of line and do not think that socialism is marketable to the British public.
	Corbyn's leadership of the Labour Party has been so turbulent and catastrophic that even a long-time Labour donor, one of the biggest Labour donors, is prepared to stand against Corbyn in the general election.
	Michael Foster says traditional Labour voters are switching to the Conservatives because of Corbyn's incoherence, weakness and lack of leadership, and says they pray every day he will stand down before the general election.
	Despite the growing chorus of voices against Jeremy Corbyn, and some of them being his own personal friends, Corbyn has said that speculation about his future as Labour leader is absurd.
	Regardless of what his friends, enemies and the general public are saying to Corbyn, he refuses to step down.
	The Labour Party have in fact entered into a kind of back-scratching arrangement with the Green Party, with MPs and supporters hoping to pull out of two seats where they have no realistic hope of winning to ensure that the Greens continue to return the favour in the future.
	Here's what you'd be getting if you voted for the Green Party.
	Our Prime Minister has said that Parliament will have a say on the final deal.
	We think it should go back to the people.
	It was the people who started this process.
	They should have the final say.
	If they like what they see, that's fine, and we come out of the EU on the terms that Theresa May has negotiated.
	But if, after another 18 months or so, the deal on the table looks like it's one that's going to be enormously damaging, then I think it's right that people have the say to be able to stay in the EU if, on balance, after that extra experience and knowledge, they decide that that's the better option.
	They are still agitating for ways to keep the United Kingdom inside the European Union.
	Tom Watson, the deputy leader of the Labour Party, had to come out and say, forget who would make the best Prime Minister and vote Labour, saying that it was a vote against the Conservative Party having a blank check to do whatever they damn well like.
	The landslide victory May demands will see the Tory Party off to the races.
	The brakes will be off and the country will be out of control.
	And of course, the Communist Party had previously told its voters to back Jeremy Corbyn as it fielded no candidates.
	For the first time in the history of the Communist Party, this should really come as no surprise, as Labour's shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, as in the man who will have control of Britain's economic policies, named Lenin and Trotsky as his biggest influences, and has said that he's been waiting his whole life for the banking crisis and describes himself as a Marxist.
	It should also come as no surprise that McDonnell decided to speak at a May the 1st communist rally in London, where he decided to tweet out a picture of it, but managed to crop out the communist flags from his tweet.
	Here's a clip from the end of his speech.
	So we need your support these coming weeks.
	This is our opportunity, brothers and sisters.
	Some of us have worked for this for all our lives.
	So the message is this.
	Yes, carpe diem.
	Seize the moment.
	This is our chance.
	Take it, brothers and sisters.
	Solidarity.
	Did we hear what we want to hear?
	So let's turn our attention to Diane Abbott, the shadow home secretary of the Labour Party, and the woman who would be in charge of domestic policy in the United Kingdom.
	She was recently on a radio show where she was apparently confused about the cost of hiring 10,000 extra police officers.
	She claimed that the cost of hiring these police officers would be about £300,000, meaning that the police officers would have been paid about £30 a year.
	She revised that figure to about £80 million, but in reality the real figure is around £300 million.
	But this silly gaffe should be the least of your concerns regarding Diane Abbott.
	For example, she seems to fit in perfectly with the current composition of the Labour Party.
	Absolutely bizarre.
	I mean, if when a royal prince dressed in an SS uniform, he was absolutely, you know, condemned.
	Had he worn a Mao outfit, nobody would have blinked.
	Why is there?
	Why is it right to wear a Maoist t-shirt?
	But obviously wrong, as it is, to wear a Hitler t-shirt.
	I suppose some people will judge that on balance.
	Mao did more good than harm.
	We can't say that about the words.
	What was the remind me of the money?
	Well, it's funny, I just had this debate with myself.
	I wish this were in private.
	Well, I just had this debate with myself.
	I don't like all these lefty dictators.
	Mao killed tens of millions of people.
	Just tell me what was the good that he did that made up for the 60 million people he murdered.
	He led his country from feudalism.
	He helped to defeat the Japanese.
	And he left his country on the verge.
	The Trump could have beaten the Japanese too.
	No, well, and he left his country on the verge of the, you know, the great economic success they're having now.
	I think Michael Portillo's face really sums up my reaction to this statement.
	But I actually find her communist sympathies the least of my concerns.
	I'm more concerned with her open racism against white people.
	Abbott has had a long career as a politician and therefore many opportunities to express racist sentiments, which she apparently has taken.
	In 1987, Abbott was a representative of Hackney, which was struggling with a chronic staff shortage in the hospital.
	So the managers brought in a batch of nurses from Finland.
	Instead of showing gratitude to those incomers for helping to raise standards for this demoralised hospital, Abbott turned on them.
	She said, These blonde, blue-eyed nurses were not wanted in Hackney.
	They would never have met a black person before, let alone touch them.
	The young Finnish nurses were understandably upset by the inhospitable comments of someone in a position of power and responsibility.
	What Diane Abbott said is racist against us.
	It really is stereotyping people.
	What does it matter if you have blonde or black hair?
	I'm trained to treat patients, not black or white people.
	Another one was incensed.
	I was furious.
	That is a ridiculous thing to say.
	I cannot find the words to express how angry I was.
	But the worst statements came in 2012 when she tweeted out that, white people love playing divide and rule.
	She said, ethnic communities that show more public solidarity and unity than black people do much better.
	Hashtag, don't wash dirty linen in public.
	And then, white people love playing divide and rule.
	We should not play their game.
	Hashtag tactic as old as colonialism.
	And naturally, when the Brexit referendum came around and it passed, she decided to infer that Brexit voters were in fact racists.
	And if you were wondering, she does have influence over Jeremy Corbyn.
	For example, he changed his immigration speech after she called him up and basically told him to do it.
	In his speech, he was going to say that the party was not wedded to free movement as a point of principle, understanding where the weather vein was pointing and it wasn't pointing in favour of mass immigration.
	But by the time he delivered his speech, he said, Labour is not wedded to the freedom of movement for EU citizens as a point of principle, but I don't want that to be misinterpreted, nor do we rule it out.
	She appears to be in favour of mass immigration.
	And then there is the old spectre of anti-Semitism that has haunted the Labour Party for years, to the point where in 2016 they held three separate inquiries into anti-Semitism in the Labour Party.
	The former London mayor was suspended for bringing the party into disrepute after MPs accused him of anti-Semitism and making offensive comments about Hitler supporting Zionism.
	And the Labour Party was linked to an increase in anti-Semitic incidents, according to a charity report.
	The Community Security Trust warned that anti-Semitism increased to unprecedented levels between 2014 and 2016 following a string of high-profile problems in Jeremy Corbyn's party.
	As you can imagine, this is not going down brilliantly with the voters, a third of whom say that they probably won't vote for Labour because of the alleged anti-Semitism.
	I could go on, but I don't need to.
	The Labour Party is filled with communists, racists, anti-Semites, and ideologues of all stripes.
	very few of whom are even slightly concerned about the concept of freedom, and in many ways actively work against it.
	...I'm taking part in Reclaim the Internet.
	With party members like that, who needs enemies?
	So we've seen how Labour are doing overall in the polls, but when you get down to the specifics, things don't look good either.
	Most people seem to think that Theresa May is running a good campaign, whereas most people seem to think, by almost exactly the same proportions, that Jeremy Corbyn is running a bad campaign.
	Only 13% of people think that Jeremy Corbyn has been an effective leader of the opposition, whereas 69% think he has been ineffective.
	By comparison, 46% of people think Theresa May has been an effective Prime Minister, with only 34% thinking she is ineffective.
	And 49% of people think there should not be a referendum to accept or reject the terms of Brexit.
	And interestingly, 46% of people think that no deal is better than a bad deal.
	Jean-Claude Juncker, the head of the European Commission, had a meeting with Theresa May, and after the meeting, he came away saying he was 10 times more sceptical on Brexit.
	I leave Downing Street 10 times as sceptical as I was before, Juncker told Theresa May after a fraught Brexit discussion over dinner.
	The next morning he called Angela Merkel to complain that the Prime Minister was living in another galaxy over Brexit.
	Juncker said that Mrs. May was deluding herself over negotiation demands, and the difficult dinner also included Michael Barnier, the EU's lead Brexit negotiator.
	May had apparently astonished her guests by suggesting that reciprocal rights for EU nationals living in the UK and Britain's and you living in the rest of the EU could be sorted at the EU Council meeting at the end of June.
	Juncker was said to have objected to the timetable as too optimistic, given the complexities of any agreement, including on healthcare rights a major sticking point.
	May projected an upbeat image, telling her European guests, let's make Brexit a success.
	Whereas Juncker responded by pointing to Britain's withdrawal from the Customs Union, as well as the single market, and saying, Brexit cannot be a success.
	This is a very telling statement.
	Britain will leave the customs union as well as the single market.
	There will not be free movement between Britain and the continent.
	These are non-negotiable issues that Juncker and co have demanded from day one.
	So Theresa May simply reissued her threat to walk away without a deal.
	And when questioned about this by Andrew Maher and BBC One, she said, yes, I do think that is important, and I will show you why she thinks that's important.
	The car manufacturing industry is one of the pillars of the German economy, and German car makers fear that they will bear the brunt of any post-Brexit tariffs on trade with the United Kingdom.
	An unnamed senior executive at a German luxury car maker, who did not want to be identified because of the subject's sensitivity, said that Merkel may force us to walk away from UK profits for the sake of preventing further EU fragmentation.
	He also said that it was increasingly likely to be a disaster for trade and for German manufacturers.
	While May was arguing for the greatest possible market access, Merkel responded that London should not get an attractive Brexit deal that might encourage other departures from the EU.
	Put simply, Merkel is worried that if Britain gets a good deal out of Europe and makes a success out of Brexit, they think that other people will follow suit and leave the EU as well.
	Theresa May can also afford to play hardball here as well, because think tank Civitas estimates that if Britain leaves the EU without a trade deal, German automotive exporters would pay 1.8 billion in tariffs, nearly half of the total 3.9 billion faced by EU firms.
	But UK-built vehicles and parts would be hit by tariffs of only 1.3 billion.
	Theresa May holds all the cards, and there is no attractive option for the Germans.
	If Britain retains its access to the single market, then trade carries on as usual, but other European states, who are Eurosceptic, are likely to think, well, we can leave as well.
	This will potentially end up causing the breakup of the European Union through secessions.
	If not, the German economy will be more hard hit than the British economy, simply because they sell more cars to us than the British car industry sells to them.
	And German car bosses are unwilling to undermine Merkel's position.
	The Chancellor recently reiterated that EU governments would not negotiate Brexit terms until London had triggered the irreversible Article 50 leaving process, before adding that business leaders should show similar restraint.
	The sentiment was quickly echoed by Matthias Wissman, head of Germany's influential auto industry lobby.
	Everything must be done to allow the unfettered flow of goods and services, but there is one clear priority.
	We must stand together among the 27 EU member states.
	They know that the future of the European Union hangs in the balance.
	And they know that if they give Britain a good deal, this will probably cause the end of the European Union.
	And they know that they actually cannot punish Britain as much as Britain can punish the EU.
	And the EU is not a solid, firm, stable entity that can endure punishment.
	An example of this would be the migrant crisis, that came to the fore in 2014-2015 and carried on through 2016 until the Germans were forced to begin to repatriate migrants.
	In 2016, Turkey threatens to open the gates and send refugees to Europe.
	There could come a point at which Turkey says goodbye to migrants.
	Erdogan warns the EU.
	Turkey is prepared to open the gates and allow hundreds of thousands of refugees on its soil into Europe, the country's president threatened on Thursday, as he denounced the West's shameful contribution to the crisis.
	Erdogan goaded EU leaders, saying they had not delivered the 3 billion euros that the EU had promised to the Turkish government in exchange for halting the tide of refugees.
	And in response to this demand, the European Union capitulated and gave him the 3 billion euros that he wanted.
	By November of 2016, we had yet another example that appeasement doesn't work, and Erdogan yet again threatens to let 3 million refugees into Europe.
	This time in response to the European Parliament's calling for a pause in Turkey's accession talks to protest at Ankara's repressive and disproportionate response to the violent coup attempt earlier in the year.
	And I just want to say, I think that they should be protesting the fact that Erdogan is holding them to ransom with these migrants.
	And what does the European Union plan to do with all these migrants?
	Well, they plan to forcibly redistribute them amongst the countries in the EU.
	All countries in the EU should be forced to accept refugees, suggests the Swedish EU parliamentarian Cecilia Wilkstrom in her report on the future refugee situation now being negotiated within the EU.
	It is impossible when there are three, four, five countries in the EU that take responsibility, and the other 24 do nothing at all or very little.
	The European Commission has also proposed that countries that refuse to accept refugees will be punished with a fine of 250,000 euros per applicant.
	But Cecilia refused this.
	She didn't appreciate this, saying that it was deeply unethical to put a price tag on each individual.
	There are few countries in Europe that relish the idea of receiving hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of migrants from the Middle East, especially as this was based on a unilateral decision made by Angela Merkel.
	None less than the Polish, who have refused to take any at all.
	Which is why Macron said that he would seek sanctions on Poland because of this.
	He told several regional newspapers in an interview that he would pursue a tougher line with Poland and other countries which he believed to be infringing on EU principles, because Poland came under fire for refusing to host refugees under an EU-wide plan to alleviate the pressure on countries like Greece and Italy who have borne the brunt of the arrivals.
	This is a massively destabilising force within Europe, and it is causing divisions between the poorer, more nationalistic Eastern European countries and the wealthier and more globalised Western European ones.
	This is directly indicative of the foundational weaknesses of the EU.
	And Macron also said that he would renegotiate the border treaty with Britain that prevents us from taking our share of these migrants.
	But there are also plans to remove the border checks between the countries inside the Schengen area.
	However, they know that this will increase the amount of jihadis that travel from one country to another and the number of immigrants who simply become lost in the system.
	And so they think that the answer is to increase the police presence in these communities in response, turning them into, I suppose, a facsimile of Paris.
	What we propose today is to gradually phase out temporary internal border controls, whilst at the same time strengthening the use of proportionate police checks across the territory of the member states, and especially close to the internal borders areas.
	In their quest to find places for these new Europeans to go, it seems that they are unwittingly creating a police state.
	Theresa May's response to the leaked report about her and Juncker's dinner was to brand it as Brussels gossip, because it effectively is, and others have said that the UK will not enter into a briefing war with the European Commission, with Home Secretary Amber Rudd saying the reports were tittle-tattle, and that this was not the right way of negotiating, but the UK was committed to negotiating in good faith.
	Normally, I would say that this was a stock political response from a stock politician, but in this case, this is what the leaked report bears.
	Theresa May approached it saying that she wanted Brexit to be a success, and Britain holds the power in this negotiation, and Juncker knows it.
	This is why I suspect that Juncker himself would have leaked this report as a way of attacking Theresa May, and that's certainly how Theresa May saw it.
	And I suspect that Theresa May's formidable grasp of power politics and negotiating expertise is the reason that Juncker told her that she can't lead the Brexit talks.
	Theresa May will be barred from negotiating the terms of Brexit with her fellow European Union leaders.
	In a sign of an increasingly hardline approach, the Prime Minister will be prevented from joining discussions at future EU head of state meetings, she has been told.
	The only person with whom she can sit down for talks is the Commission's chief negotiator, Michael Barnier.
	The EU leader's position contradicts May's insistence during a campaign speech last week that she would personally negotiate Brexit with Prime Ministers, Presidents, and Chancellors of Europe.
	This is an act of desperation because Juncker and Co. know what the British public know.
	Theresa May is good at this.
	It would be entirely to the advantage of the European Union not to have her there at all.
	She went further in pressing home her plan to play a role in negotiations, pledging to be a bloody difficult woman.
	It was an echo of Ken Clark's grudging off-air compliment about May in July.
	She said, There's only going to be one of two people sitting around that table, the 27 other EU countries on one side of the table, and who is going to be there standing up for the UK?
	It's going to be me or Jeremy Corbyn.
	Naturally, the European Union would prefer it to be Jeremy Corbyn, but also they would prefer it to be almost anyone else.
	An EU source told The Times that during the meeting, May suggested that she intended to take the lead in the final stage of negotiations.
	Juncker told her it is not going to work like that.
	It is not going to be a negotiation around the table between heads of state and government.
	It was very awkward.
	We thought David Davis was in charge.
	Honestly, I don't know how Juncker feels he has the authority to dictate who represents Britain at these negotiations, but his fear of having May there is another sign of weakness.
	And of course, the remaining 27 states of Europe would not be present at any of the talks.
	They will be run entirely by Barnier.
	When asked if there'd be any direct negotiation between May and other member states, the spokesman said no, the Commission is the union negotiator, and Michael Barnier is the person who will negotiate on behalf of the EU.
	We are very clear about that.
	The final interesting point is the 50 billion Brexit divorce bill that the European Union has levied at the United Kingdom.
	The European Commission chief Brexit negotiator is working on the basis that Britain will have to pay a £50 billion settlement for outstanding liabilities.
	A bill worth tens of billions of euros would be one of the first things coming up in the Brexit negotiation after Theresa May triggers Article 50.
	The calculation is believed to include the obligation for the UK to pay into the EU budget until the end of 2020, having signed up to the multi-annual financial framework already, as well as the UK's share of outstanding pensions, liabilities, and other payments associated with loan guarantees.
	Philip Hammond, the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, does not recognise EU demands for a £50 billion Brexit divorce bill, and does not have any intention of paying it.
	He says that the cap to any Brexit bill, in his opinion, is a maximum of £3 billion.
	And he has been told by his ministers that they are categorically against paying in a big lump sum to cover Britain's liabilities once it quits the EU.
	In response to this, the EU has said that they are planning to sue Britain if they do not pay the £50 billion bill.
	Dutch magazine De Volkskrant says that it has obtained an EU's draft of the Brexit negotiating mandate, which was delivered by the EU President Donald Tusk this week after the UK Prime Minister set a date to begin Brexit.
	They say that the EU are starting from a position of cooperation in good faith, a phrase that concludes the document.
	However, the publication says this is apparently not considered to be a matter of course, as negotiators are worried about the street fighter reputation of the Brexit minister David Davis.
	As a result, EU negotiators are preparing to fight if they need to, and have drawn up plans to take Britain to the international court in The Hague.
	This court is not an EU institution, and was set up by the United Nations, and so is seen as a neutral venue in which Britain should recognise the authority.
	The question is, though, what happens if we simply don't?
	Again, the evident weakness of the European Union's position is displayed, as they are quite willing to fight dirty in these negotiations, and will do everything they can to come out on top.
	Which apparently includes simply doubling the Brexit bill up to 100 billion euros.
	Following direct requests from several member states, EU negotiators have revised their initial calculation to maximise the liabilities Britain is asked to cover, including post-Brexit farm payments and EU administration fees in 2019 and 2020.
	According to the Financial Times' calculations, this brings the upfront gross settlement demand to approximately 91 billion to 113 billion euros, depending on how Britain's share is calculated.
	Over a period of a decade or more, that would be reduced in net terms to roughly 55 billion to 75 billion euros as Britain received its share of EU spending and repaid EU loans.
	The Commission has never published its preferred methodology, but in early discussions with member states it took a more conservative view of UK liabilities.
	The Financial Times previously calculated the figure to be 40 billion to 60 billion in net terms, a number that corresponds with Mr Barnier's informal estimates shared with member states.
	This is actually quite a bizarre angle of attack for the EU to approach these negotiations with.
	They must have known from the off that Britain would flat refuse to pay 50 billion euros, and then doubling that to 100 billion euros with the threat of suing Britain if they refused must have been something they knew Britain would refuse, and so that would trap them in a long, lengthy, and really punitive looking court case in The Hague.
	But worse than that, it looks like this might backfire in their faces.
	If Britain refuses to pay the Brexit divorce bill, it would harm the EU's credit rating.
	Standard and Pause said the European Union's AA credit rating could come under pressure if the UK refuses to meet its financial obligations.
	I don't know whether the leaders of the European Union are becoming massively overconfident or whether they are just simply trapped within their own arrogance to ask Britain for a third of the national debt of Greece as payment for leaving the EU.
	But it's not going to happen.
	And it might actually hurt the EU if they were to even ask for it.
	All this is making the European Union come off as insecure and tyrannical.
	This is the opinion of former Greek finance minister Yanis Varoufakis on what's going on.
	I don't know, these are not evil people who want to put suffering around.
	That's not your case.
	It's like a Shakespearean tragedy where everybody is trying to do their best.
	It's like watching King Lear and you wonder how can these smart people be so deluded, the characters in the tragedy.
	You've got to understand that Juncker and Merkel and the powers that be in Brussels, their greatest nightmare is a mutually advantageous agreement with Britain.
	Because this, in their mind, would encourage others to be appeti, to demand stuff and possibly to get out of the EU.
	On the other hand, Theresa May's locked in this inanity of putting the end of freedom of movement above everything else, above the interests of British industry, of British agriculture, British universities.
	So this is a political coordination failure of an immense degree.
	Right.
	Politics these days.
	Where are you on the Liberal establishment?
	Because the Liberal Establishment is the most persecuted group at the moment.
	It's not had a great couple of years.
	Because in many respects, you're talking about the Liberal establishment and the deep establishment are the same thing, aren't they?
	They're what they are.
	They are to a very large extent.
	Look, they resemble these days the person who's killed his parents and he is pleading for leniency at the court on the grounds that he's an orphan.
	They have been extremely authoritarian, the way they've dealt with us, the way that they're now dealing with Theresa May.
	They've been extremely authoritarian.
	They have been imposing loony economics.
	The idea that you take the largest loan in human history and give it to the most bankrupt state in Europe is loony economics.
	So they've been doing all this and then now, now that they are in retreat, they are complaining about the alternative facts, the distortions, the leaks, and the loony economics of the national institutions.
	It's hard to imagine Juncker actually operating from a position of good intentions, though.
	He's characterised the British as deserters who will face consequences after the Brexit referendum went through.
	He said, I'm sure the deserters will not be welcomed with open arms.
	He said, the United Kingdom will have to accept being regarded as a third country, which won't be handled with kid gloves.
	If the British leave Europe, people will have to face the consequences.
	We will have to do just as they will.
	It's not a threat, but our relations will no longer be what they are today.
	This is, of course, in direct contradiction to what other members of the European Union have said, such as the President of the European Parliament, who said the UK would be welcomed back if voters overturned Brexit.
	He says, if the UK after the election wishes to withdraw under Article 50, then the procedure is very clear.
	If the UK wanted to stay, everybody would be in favour.
	I would be very happy.
	And I'm sure they all would be very happy, because they would have every reason to be.
	I don't think Theresa May is going to lose the election.
	I think she's going to win it.
	I think Labour are going to lose the election catastrophically, which will end up ending Jeremy Corbyn's tenure as Labour leader.
	This general election is a single-issue election.
	It's who is going to lead the country out of the European Union.
	I personally will actually for the first time in my life be voting for the Conservatives because I do not trust any of the other parties to do this correctly,

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