The Anglo-European Negotiations

After the Salzburg summit the Anglo-European negotiations have effectively collapsed. They always were a waste of time. Theresa May’s seriously flawed Chequers Plan looks to have gone the way of the Munich Agreement. It is now looking more likely than ever that the UK will leave the EU without a deal. Since any deal would be worse than no deal, this is good news for Britain!

The interesting thing is the possible role played by Russia, which obviously wants Britain to break free of the German orbit. There is no way the Commission, which sabotaged the Salzburg summit, would have done so without instructions from Germany. Although President Macron of France claimed the ‘credit’, he’s a German puppet, in the tradition of Marshal Pétain and Pierre Laval, no offense intended, and none taken, I am sure.

What would no deal mean?

As part of ‘Project Fear’ Remainers have trotted out a series of reports suggesting that UK GDP would suffer, unemployment would go up, the sky would fall in, there would be mass outbreaks of measles etc. etc. The reality is that the UK would continue to trade with the EU, in the same way that you guys do, not to mention the Chinese, the Aussies and the Kiwis.

Since the UK trades at a massive deficit with the EU27, mutual tariffs will benefit British industry. The car industry in particular will benefit. As French, German and Italian cars become more expensive more cars will be made here. None of the reports which I have seen mention import substitution.  There is almost nothing which the EU makes which we cannot make ourselves, champagne excepted, indeed champagne is our only essential import from the EU.

The level of exports to the EU27 has been inflated for political reasons. As opponents of EEC entry predicted British exports collapsed after 1973 and unemployment rose. It’s only really starting to come down with the impact of Brexit, as European workers start to go home.

All exports via the giant container ports of Antwerp and Rotterdam are counted as exports to Belgium and the Netherlands respectively, even if they’re going to China. Exports to the EU are also calculated differently to exports to the rest of the world, based on VAT returns. In practice these give a false high reading.

Leaving the EU should lead to a revival of British manufacturing and a steep fall in unemployment. EU workers will no longer enjoy unfettered access to the British jobs market. The likeliest outcome on immigration is that citizens of EU member states will no longer enjoy special privileges and will have to apply for work permits like everybody else.

There are panic stories in the media about British citizens needing visas to visit France for a vacation. The stories are nonsense of course – it’s highly unlikely that French citizens will be treated as visa nationals after withdrawal, that is to say they will not require a visitors’ visa for a short stay in the UK and vice versa.

Is a second referendum likely?

Both sides in the 2016 referendum promised to respect the result, as did the government. The Remain side were lying through their teeth however – they had no intention of abiding by a Leave result. So far as they are concerned referenda are only allowed to produce the result the EU wants. If a national electorate defies the European elite it has to vote again and again until it gets it right.

Their arrogance and contempt for democracy knows no bounds. Having tried to lie and murder their victory in 2016 they are now desperate to try and undermine the result. Their credibility is shot.

I am not saying and have never said that everybody in the Remain camp knew about the plan to murder pro-EU Labour MP Jo Cox and blame it on an allegedly right-wing patsy in the hope that the Leave side would be blamed. Some must have known about the plot, however, and more will have found out about it since. It’s unlikely to have been a coincidence that Theresa May referred to the Cox Assassination in her speech to the Tory Party Conference in Birmingham yesterday. (That’s Birmingham England, BTW, not Birmingham Alabama, which has fewer race relations problems.)

In any event there is probably isn’t enough time left to organise a referendum between now and March, thankfully. The government has ruled one out and Labour are lukewarm, so it’s unlikely to happen.

When is Theresa May going?

One Tory MP, with superb timing, publicly announced that he had sent a letter of no confidence to the Chief Whip shortly before Theresa May’s keynote speech. She hasn’t got long, but it looks as though the God-fearing Tory Right will delay their move until after Brexit. I think that’s a mistake, frankly, but the numbers don’t appear to be there for the time being.

Theresa May is still pushing the Chequers Plan – the one formulated in secret by the Cabinet Office and bounced on the Cabinet at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat. She has almost no chance of getting Chequers through Parliament, however.

Ditching May now would finally kill Chequers off. If ‘Appeaser Theresa’  stays Chequers can’t be eliminated as a possibility altogether, since it’s backed by the Cabinet Secretary, the notorious Sir Jeremy ‘von’ Heywood. ‘Oily’ Robbins, the UK’s sinister chief negotiator, reports to ‘von’ Heywood. ‘Oily’ is now more of a hate figure for the Tory Right than Mao Tse-Tung, understandably. ‘Von’ Heywood and May are likely to go as a package. May’s policy is to let Sir Jeremy run the country, i.e. she’s a house-trained idiot, no offense intended.

The Cabinet Office still hasn’t gotten over its failure to hand World War II to Germany, despite the best efforts of the traitorous Cabinet Secretary, Sir Edward Bridges. He’s the guy who helped the Japanese sink HMS Prince of Wales and HMS Repulse in the South China Sea in December 1941.

Set up by the Imperial German Secret Service in 1916, via their asset David Lloyd George, in order to control Whitehall, the Cabinet Office in practice is part of the German state bureaucracy, not the British. The Cabinet Office has always been the enemy of the Service departments, e.g., and tends to get in the way of every major project. Its mentality is that the Luftwaffe won the Battle of Britain – it views Britain as a German client state.

The idea behind the Chequers Plan is effectively for the EU to continue to decide Britain’s laws, without British participation, which was always a fig-leaf anyway. (I can’t think of a single directive that we have been able to water down or amend.)

The Tory Right now hate the Cabinet Office in the way that the Roundheads hated Charles 1, whose approach to running the country was pretty much on the same lines as Sir Jeremy Heywood’s, no offense intended. (Although the arguments are finely balanced, I am not actually suggesting that Sir Jeremy be subjected to the full panoply of a State Execution, even though the costs would more than be recovered through the sale of the television rights.) Taking the great Bomber Harris as their example the time has come for the Tory Right to rain paralysing hammer blows upon the Cabinet Office.

Judge Kavanaugh

I anticipate that the Senate will confirm Judge Kavanaugh tomorrow. Even though the FBI backed Hillary and are opposed to President Trump and his Administration, and have a sordid record of politicising criminal investigations, it seems unlikely that the Bureau has been able to stand up the allegations of sexual misconduct against the learned judge.

The law abhors delay. The starting point with stale accusations which are only raised when the alleged perp is running for office or about to be confirmed for the Supreme Court is that they are false. You don’t need 33 years to work out that you’ve been raped, frankly, whether you’re a man or a woman. It’s the sort of thing you tend to notice.

With respect, I was most unimpressed with Christine Blasey Ford’s histrionic performance before the Senate Judiciary Committee. Her connections to the CIA through her father damage her credibility even further, given the CIA’s heavy penetration by the CORREA/Correa Group and its bitter hostility to the Trump Administration.

I am not surprised that aspects of her testimony, such as her alleged fear of flying, are coming under scrutiny. If Dr Ford genuinely thought that Judge Kavanaugh was unfit for judicial office she should have come forward during his previous confirmation hearing. Remember that Judge Kavanaugh is already a federal appellate judge. The timing of Ford’s allegations is highly suspicious. The reality is that the judge’s diaries have demolished her accusation.

The underlying issue is Democrat and German concern about the possible reversal of Roe v. Wade (410 US 113 (1973)), the with respect junk law SCOTUS decision which legalized abortion and which continues to affect US birth rate and demographics. That was the case where the Supreme Court persuaded themselves that George Washington and Thomas Jefferson believed in baby-killing.

Judge Kavanaugh is a fine jurist, with respect. It’s unlikely that he finds the reasoning, if that is not too strong a word, in Roe v. Wade persuasive. It’s a legal, not a political, question. Roe v. Wade with respect was a political, not a legal, decision. It’s high time that it was reversed and constitutional legitimacy restored.

My case

I am sorry to say that I was disbarred on September 20^th, subject to appeal. (I hope readers will forgive the recent erratic timing of my columns – the hearing and preparing the appeal have absorbed a great deal of my time.) What happened was this.

Convicted barristers used to be able to challenge their convictions. Without widespread consultation or Parliamentary authority the Bar Standards Board (BSB) purported to change the rules and make criminal convictions conclusive for professional purposes. I challenged the legality or vires of this rule change.

On January 30 last year a Disciplinary Tribunal of the Council of Inns of Court, presided over by Her Honour Judge Suzanne Matthews QC, a good lawyer with respect, ruled in my favor that the rule barring a challenge to convictions had to be read subject to the Rules of Natural Justice, which were brought in by a separate rule. Directions were given for the service of evidence challenging my convictions should the Criminal Cases Review Commission (CCRC) decline to refer my convictions back to the Court of Appeal.

After the CCRC backed away in April I prepared and served my evidence, in accordance with the directions. In the end my bundle totaled nearly 750 pages. By June of this year the indecent images conviction had collapsed completely, thanks to fresh evidence from Dell, a change of heart by SanDisk, warranty evidence from those nice people the Western Digital Corporation and a series of forensic reports.

To recap, the memory stick containing the images turned out to have been manufactured several months after I was supposed to have acquired it, and the hard drive used to convict me turned out to have been an aftermarket item, probably purchased two months after the illegal police raid on my flat in Wendover, Buckinghamshire, in 2012.

The CCRC’s conclusions were so weak, with respect, that they managed to persuade themselves, without taking expert advice, that when you buy a Dell laptop you get a separate warranty for the hard drive! Their inquiry was a farce, no offense intended.

When the BSB saw my evidence they appear to have panicked. Having actually agreed with Judge Matthews last year they now decided to attack her ruling, not by appealing it, but by running the same failed arguments at the same level. Judge Matthews was replaced by a new judge, His Honour Judge Critchlow. He ruled that I could not challenge my convictions, which will of course be my first ground of appeal.

In the meantime my solicitors applied to the new Home Secretary for a recommendation to the Palace for two Royal Pardons. So far as I can tell the Cabinet Office are fighting a desperate rear guard action to prevent the Home Secretary from seeing the application. It went in in June but still has not been acknowledged! The Department of Justice, in contrast, were courteous enough to acknowledge receipt of the US Attorney-General’s copy within days.

I’ll keep you posted! The battle to clear my name could well last until 2020.

Michael Shrimpton

Michael Shrimpton was a barrister from his call to the Bar in London in 1983 until being disbarred in 2019 over a fraudulently obtained conviction. He is a specialist in National Security and Constitutional Law, Strategic Intelligence and Counter-terrorism. He is a former Adjunct Professor of Intelligence Studies at the American Military University.

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