€39 billion pounds – who ******* cares?

One of Boris Johnson’s ‘strongest’ assets in his forthcoming battle to beat down Brussels in the Brexit conflict is that Britain will ‘establish its credentials’ as a country that reneges on its debts – in other words, show itself up as a cheat – by refusing to pay the European Union the £39 (€43, $48, whatever) billion it owes the EU if it chooses to leave it with ‘no deal’ at the end of October – three months from now.

Good start, Boris. But could we perhaps remember what the EU’s 2019 budget actually amounts to? It’s nearly €170 billion a year. That’s over four times what it would have to let Britain get away with just once – surely a fair price to pay for getting rid of its most troublesome member state, once and for all. And Britain would then be labelled once and forever as a totally unreliable trading partner. The only country that might be prepared to make a trading deal with it is the United States – which, under its present ‘America first’ administration, is clearly prepared to subject Britain to far worse restrictions than Brexiteers have always claimed to have ‘suffered’ under the EU: chlorinated chicken (!), genetically modified crops (!), unsafe medicines (!) and other shit that the EU has so far protected it from, and that the US clearly has no intention of doing, and will make any trade agreements dependent upon.

Whatever Boris may like to claim, he must realise he is about to deliver his country into slavery to just one undemocratic country rather a democratic set of 27 countries. But, of course, this was the man who as a boy decided he wanted to be ‘king of the world’.

Scary shit – and now he’s in power. We have been fairly warned.