Guest post by Janice Atkinson, EU MEP from the UK
There are two battles going on at the heart of the Conservative party in Great Britain which will determine what type of Brexit we will get and who will be our next prime minister.
Time is short for getting a Brexit deal that the Europeans desperately need for their economies, while still shoring up the four pillars of their constitution that they insist a deal must be based upon.
I remind you,the UK voters rejected the four pillars.
We voted to leave the EU, not to be some offshore island dangling suckling on a teet that extracts £billions and dictates all our laws and standards.
That is Mrs May’s version of Brexit, because she is and remains an arch-Remainer.
She wants the UK to remain in the EU even if the people voted against it.
Her ‘Chequers Plan’ is not Brexit at all. It is an excuse to Remain camouflaged in wolves clothing. It is a plan that is rejected by the people, most of her own party and even by the EU itself.
Then there are the Brexit visions of Boris Johnson and Jacob Rees-Mogg and their possible leadership challenges.
Personally, I favour a free trade deal, as offered by the EU, which would suit our US friends and our Commonwealth allies. As over 90% of world trade will be outside of the EU in just a few years, it’s a no-brainer.
Or WTO terms would suffice.
Even the EU has offered a free trade deal. As with everything that the EU touches, they negotiate to the last minute and then produce a partial solution.
At the moment, the EU is on black ops because they are desperate to prop up Mrs May as prime minister in ‘Operation Save Theresa’ because they know that only she will sign the £39bn ‘divorce bill’ that the EU desperately needs to balance its books.
If a leadership challenge crowns Jacob Rees-Mogg or Boris Johnson then they know that the British will back their promise not to pay British taxpayers’ money over to Brussels that we do not owe.
The EU also knows that keeping Britain in some sort of Brexit limbo: open borders, open migration, £s still coming in, allied to the European Court of Justice and their standards for goods, will stop us becoming a global trader and competitive in taxation.
What they fear most is for the UK to thrive outside the sclerotic bloc, as this will encourage contagion in other EU states.
And make no mistake other countries want to leave!
A leadership challenge is inevitable in the UK Conservative Party sometime this fall.
Mrs May could not sell her ‘Chequers’ deal to the Conservative grassroots. She is the most disliked prime minister in history, seen as a ditherer, someone with no real values, no vision and no faith in the UK as a global leader.
She has to go and sooner the better.
Boris Johnson has been attacked this weekend for remarks that he made in a newspaper (Daily Mail) likening Theresa May’s version of Brexit as a ‘suicide vest’.
He’s quite right.
His enemies, the faux social democrats, wearing the blue badge of Conservatism see him as a threat to their liberal leftist ideology that has reigned since PM David Cameron. This is not true conservatism.
Boris is a libertarian conservative in social values but a fiscal conservative.
He is charismatic, people like him. That is why he is such a threat to the Remainers.
He’s the only Conservative to have won the London Mayoralty twice, a city that votes socialist at elections most of the time.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is a fiscal and social conservative. A Catholic family man, he is a successful businessman, clever, witty and quite statesmanlike. He should have a political future in a real Conservative party.
In the US and Europe, we are seeing voters rejecting the middle of the road mediocre. Britain should do so too.
There are many in the UK, not only Conservatives, who are crying out for a leader with vision and a plan for a better, freer future.
It’s Boris and Rees Mogg’s turn now to set out their visions to Make Britain Great Again.
Janice Ann Atkinson is an independent Member of the European Parliament for the South East England region, formerly representing the UK Independence Party (UKIP). She was elected in 2014.
