Britain does not owe a single penny of the Brexit divorce bill

Thanks to the supine submission of Britain’s so-called government, the posture of the EU oligarchs has reached previously unimaginable levels of arrogance. Demands are being made and statements uttered for which there are no precedents in any previous negotiations between sovereign entities. Like all bullies, the Brussels hoods have had their appetites whetted by the cowed and deferential attitude of their victim. So far has this progressed that the bullies have lost all sense of proportion and even of self-awareness.

Consider a recent apocalyptic utterance from a Brussels apparatchik: “The no-deal issue is not just a problem for the UK or Brussels. It is also an existential threat to the UK itself. One can imagine that a no deal will have a big impact and cause concern in some of the regions. Speaking of Scotland, it could have consequences for them and others. We could end up with a situation in which the EU27 becomes more united and a United Kingdom less united.”

The author of this warning on national disintegration was Herman, Count Van Rompuy, former prime minister of Belgium, a non-nation that has never integrated in the first place and is so dysfunctional that it had no government for a year and seven months between 2010 and 2011. Van Rompuy abdicated the thankless task of presiding over the destinies of 6.5m Flemings and 4.5m Walloons fighting like stoats in a sack to become the first President of the European Council.

He was memorably welcomed to that post by Nigel Farage who saluted him as possessing “all the charisma of a damp rag and the appearance of a low-grade bank clerk”, though some people thought that was rather hyping the noble count’s credentials. Yet so far has any sense of reality departed from the counsels of the EU elites that this walking personification of national fragmentation is now lecturing the United Kingdom on the supposed prospects of its imminent disintegration – with no apparent realization of the irony of the situation.

“We could end up with a situation in which the EU27 becomes more united and a United Kingdom less united.” You reckon, Herman? We realize you no longer occupy your elevated office, but surely you read the newspapers or surf online? What “EU27”? Are you referring to the EU27-minus-6 (Brussels minus Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Austria and Italy)? Is the EU in question the EU of Merkel/Macron or the EU of Orbán/Salvini?

The fact that Van Rompuy and the other buffoons in Brussels can come out with so much drivel unchallenged is the fault of Britain for not responding robustly and ridiculing them off the face of the earth. The British government is also run by buffoons – equally anti-British in their stance. The May government is marginally less ridiculous when overtly crawling to the Brussels nomenklatura than when deciding to act tough. That is a truly embarrassing spectacle.

Recently Dominic Raab, the latest puppet Brexit Secretary, decided to take a hard line with Brussels. (Be very afraid, Barnier! You’ve really asked for it this time, Juncker!) Appearing before a specially convened House of Lords EU select committee meeting, Raab announced that, in the event of a no-deal Brexit: “It could not be safely assumed that the financial settlement that has been agreed as part of the withdrawal agreement would then just be paid in precisely the same shape, or speed or rate.”

So, according to tough-talking Dominic Rambo, after the EU, through its intransigence, hostility and bad faith had refused a Brexit deal, the government would still shell out £40bn (recently assessed upwards to £50bn) of taxpayers’ money to the Brussels kleptocracy that has set out viciously to inflict as much damage as possible on our economy. It would simply pay it in slower instalments.

Are our rulers sane? Obviously not. The May government appears to be afflicted with a peculiarly virulent strain of Stockholm Syndrome. Britain does not owe a single penny of the so-called Brexit divorce bill: the frenziedly Europhile House of Lords has confirmed that reality. Even if our former EU partners had been cheerfully cooperative and done everything possible to facilitate a clean break, it would have been outrageous to pay this Danegeld. In the acrimonious circumstances attending a WTO Brexit, paying a mammoth sum urgently needed to cushion the economy after our exit to our persecutors goes beyond the perverse, into the realm of insanity.

No wonder the Brussels oligarchs, despite the daily fragmentation of their crumbling empire, feel entitled to mock and despise Britain. A British negotiating team in Brussels looks like a tableau of the Burghers of Calais. The British people will pay a high price for the cowardice of their collaborationist government; but so will the Conservative Party which has presided over this national humiliation and will reap the whirlwind at the ballot box, unless and until Theresa May and her Europhile clique are removed from office and replaced by a leadership responsive to the national will.