So much has been happening in relation to Brexit over the last few weeks it's been difficult to keep on top of it all, especially given the incredibly sketchy mainstream media coverage.
Party Political chaos
Understandably a lot of coverage has been given to the fact that the Lib-Dem leader and his predecessor Tim Farron didn't even bother to turn up for a crucial knife-edge Brexit vote, despite having misleadingly championed themselves as anti-Brexit saviours for the last two years. Tim Farron's reason for missing the crucial vote was that he was too busy giving a gay-bashing speech about how he's such a victim because his outdated views on gay sex are pretty damned unpopular these days!
Also a lot of attention has fallen on a number of Tory grandstanders like Anna Soubry and Justine Greening who made passionate interventions to criticise the hard-right ERG Tory Brextremists who dictate Theresa May's every move, and to call for a second referendum. But for some reason very much less media attention has been given to the fact that they caved in to Theresa May's threats of another Tory meltdown of a General Election, and actually voted to support the ERG Brextremists that they pretend to oppose just to save their own skins from the threat of another General Election.
Then there's the four Labour cranks who repeatedly cast decisive votes alongside the hard-right ERG Brextremists too. Right-wing Blairite MPs have been implacably opposed the concept of reselection for MPs (a democratic safeguard against political squatters that is used by the SNP and is absolutely commonplace in other countries), but the treacherous scheming of Kate Hoey, John Mann, Graham Stringer, and Frank Field to prop up Theresa May's shambolic government and facilitate the ruinous "no deal" catastrophe the ERG Brextremists are plotting is surely grounds for the introduction of reselection so local people can get rid of these Tory collaborators.
The NC3 trade deal amendment
Beneath all of the party political chaos at least one MP was actually getting on with their job. Caroline Lucas of the Green Party tabled an amendment to the Tory governments' Trade Bill, which sought to ensure that "all post-Brexit free trade deals are subject to parliamentary scrutiny and approval, with a guaranteed vote for MPs".
One would have thought that Brexiteers who spent the entire EU Referendum campaign banging on about the importance of "democracy" and "parliamentary sovereignty" might have actually appreciated an amendment to ensure that parliament is sovereign, and that the government of the day can't just draw up trade deals with foreign powers behind closed doors, and then enact them without any parliamentary oversight or approval.
But if you expected any kind of consistency or integrity from the Brexiteers, you'd be wrong.
What they actually did was vote down the amendment by 314-284 in order to essentially kill parliamentary sovereignty when it comes to future post-Brexit trade deals.
Amendment 58
In light of this Tory vote to scrap parliamentary sovereignty when it comes to post-Brexit trade deals it's important to think back to the way they also scrapped the cross-party Amendment 58 to the EU Withdrawal Bill in November 2017.
This amendment sought to prevent the Tory government from using Brexit as a Trojan Horse to attack our workers' rights, weaken our environmental laws, water down our consumer protections, undermine our food standards, or scrap our equal rights rules.
By stripping out this amendment the Tories clearly indicated their intention to use Brexit as an excuse to attack these aspects of British life. Just think about it. If they had no intention of attacking these things, why on earth would they vote to scrap an amendment to prevent them from scrapping these things?
A Trump-Tory trade deal
Donald Trump's administration have already made it absolutely clear that if Britain seeks a trade deal with the United States, the UK government will be expected to trash workers' rights, open up the NHS for even more privatisation, and trash our food standards to allow the import of cheap, low quality, heavily-subsidised US produce like chlorinated chicken, hormone-riddled beef, and unlabled GM produce.
What the Tories have done is to wreck cross-party efforts to prevent them from using Brexit as an excuse to lower British standards first, and now they've voted to ensure that parliament has no ability to stop them from drawing up horrific trade deals behind closed doors and enacting them without any parliamentary oversight or approval whatever!
Hard-right Brexit
It should be blindingly obvious by now to anyone who has actually followed the details of the Brexit votes that we're heading for a hard-right, anti-democratic, economically ruinous Tory Brexit.
It should be obvious that the left-wing Lexit voters were absolute dupes. Useful idiots who voted for Brexit for left-wing reasons only to enable an unprecedented hard-right power grab by the Tory establishment.
It should be obvious that the Brexiteers were absolutely lying through their teeth when they talked about grand themes like "democracy" and "parliamentary sovereignty" during the referendum debate. Everything they've done since betrays their absolute contempt for democracy, and their intention to over-ride parliamentary sovereignty in order to centralise as much power as possible in the hands of the executive.
It should be obvious that the hard-right ERG Brextremists who control Theresa May's puppet strings are intent on inflicting the most economically damaging Breixt possible in order to make fortunes by picking £billions worth of distressed british assets out of the ashes of their Brexit bonfire.
It should be obvious. But unfortunately, to millions of people who don't pay attention to the details, and just base their decisions on sentiments and feelings, none of this is obvious, none of the details matter, and "we should just get on with it".
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