Not So Enhanced Interrogation Methods

Torture may or may not work but one crucial part of any interrogation is to actually ask the questions to which you want an answer.  If you don’t ask the question it doesn’t matter whether you waterboard them or treat them with kidgloves, kindness and respect…you won’t get an answer.

This morning we had Nick Robinson, one of the BBC’s most senior and experienced journalists, on one of the BBC’s most prestigious flagship current affairs programmes. [08:10]  He was interviewing John McDonnell in the wake of the Article 50 vote.

You may have, I certainly did, expected to have found out what Labour’s exact position is now on Brexit, you know, the detail, what ‘deal’ do they expect to get from the Brexit negotiations.  Yes they whipped the vote to trigger Article 50 but that is just democratic window-dressing for the public who voted leave [we respect democracy…no really…LOL]…it’s meaningless unless we know how Labour intends to try and fix the actual content of the deal.

Central to the Remainder’s campaign against Brexit is their demand that we remain a member of the Single Market.  Did we find out Labour’s position on that in this interview?  No.  I don’t think the Single Market was mentioned once.  Which is kind of remarkable given it is the crucial issue for Remain.  What we got from McDonnell was a lot of waffle about ‘what’s best for the economy’ and Labour doesn’t want May’s ‘bargain basement tax-haven’.  To that end Labour are seeking amendments to the white paper….what amendments and to what end?  We didn’t find out.

Robinson completely failed to ask the pivotal question, he failed to mention the Single market and he failed to nail down Labour’s actual position on Brexit.

McDonnell gives us the usual cant about ‘respecting democracy and the will of the people’ but if the deal he intends to force on May is membership of the Single Market then that is not Brexit, we will still essentially be in the EU with freedom of movement and the rest.

Robinson didn’t once raise that question, he didn’t once ask if Labour intends to thwart Brexit by the back door as it seems to want to do.  Voting to trigger Article 50 is not the same as voting to leave the EU…it is not Brexit in itself, not what the voters voted for which was to leave the EU….knowing full well it meant not being members of the Single Market.

So on the absolutely central, vital question of what Brexit means to Labour we are still in the dark.  Nick’s worth every penny I’m sure.

Still, at least Evan Davis has admitted that Brexit was about leaving the EU, an EU that can only succeed if it turns itself into a single unified super-state with taxes and politics decided in one place….something Davis admits Britain would never ever vote for.  We know Stiglitz thinks the Euro is a disaster because it can only work under the auspices of such a single super-state and now we have Guy Verhofstadt pushing such a policy…one we always knew was the real end game for the EU but which the BBC refused to discuss in the referendum run-up, preferring instead, as it still does, to concentrate on the economic ‘disasters’ that will follow Brexit.

Davis though still has ‘BBC Liberal’ running through his veins….the opening film clip was Verhofstadt attacking Farage, then Davis asked a leading, pointed question…‘Do you think Britain has any good choices outside the EU?’…in reference to Trump of course...’at a time when America is not a good model’ [for a united state] intimating slyly that of course we don’t…..and then he says the threat to the EU is people voting for Fascists or those flirting with Fascism….no prejudices there then….

Verhofstadt’s answer to people who think the EU and its lack of democratic accountability is the problem is more EU, a unified super-state…just as the BBC et al think the answer to Islamist terrorism is more Islam…let Muslims practice their religion ever-more freely and we must adapt our own lives to suit them.  In other words surrender to the terrorists.

Note that Verhofstadt wants to over-ride national governments…having to get their agreement is inconvenient, making the EU not fit for purpose…always to slow, too little too late….so the stamp of a single authority…so much for Britain having influence and a say in how things are run…even now we are just one in 28 with very little real say….the Remainder’s argument that we will lose all influence is a nonsense…we have little now and will have even less when the EU morphs into a single super-state…as it needs to to succeed at all.  Cameron’s marvellous ‘reform’ negotiations actually gave away our veto and granted the EU what it wanted…majority voting….thus we lose power over our own destiny completely.