Theresa May is Seeking Elves on Unicorns to Solve Brexit Chaos
Plans have emerged to evacuate Queen Elizabeth and relocate her and other royals to safe houses in the event of rioting in London, triggered by a destabilising no-deal Brexit.
Food and medicine shortages, travel problems and instability in the financial markets are recognised dangers of a no-deal cliff-edge exit, and the army is on standby to deal with unrest and other problems caused by a hard Brexit.
A no-deal Brexit is set to happen at 11pm on March 29th unless Theresa May finds some magical solution to the Irish border problem and this is accepted by the other 27 European Union countries, her own fractured party and the UK parliament.
A source from the UK government’s Cabinet Office told the Sunday Times: “These emergency evacuation plans have been in existence since the cold war but have now been repurposed in the event of civil disorder following a no-deal Brexit.”
The report goes on to say that Whitehall fears that rioting could break out, endangering the 92-year-old Queen, 97-year-old Prince Philip, and other senior royals. Therefore, the plans, which were originally intended to be implemented in the event of a nuclear strike from the Soviet Union, are in place to rescue the royals and take them to a secret location.
The image of her majesty being rescued by the security services is reminiscent of the 2012 Olympics spectacular, in which the Queen was airlifted from Buckingham Palace by James Bond.
After years of negotiations, Theresa May and the EU managed to strike a deal that protects peace in the north of Ireland by ensuring that the Good Friday Agreement (which was designed to secure peace after decades of bloody conflict) is not breached. The GFA covers civil and cultural rights, decommissioning of weapons, demilitarisation, justice, and policing.
However, much of May’s own party rejected her deal with the EU — and Mrs May herself rejected her own deal by favouring an amendment to send her back to Brussels, like an ageing female Oliver Twist, begging for more.
The bizarre thing about this is that, apart from it being her own deal she has undermined, Theresa May has previously said on numerous occasions that her deal is the only one available and the only other options are no Brexit or a damaging no-deal flounce.
May’s sudden enthusiasm to open the Irish backstop aspect of her deal is driven by a loud minority of Brextremists in her parliamentary party complaining about it and claiming it will leave the UK in a permanent customs union with the EU.
The reason there needs to be some kind of customs union, which enables frictionless movement of goods across borders, until a final deal on the UK’s relationship with the EU is made, is Ireland is primarily an EU island, with a small area of UK territory at the very north. There can be no physical border between the EU Republic of Ireland and Northern Ireland without breaching the Good Friday Agreement. However, due to EU regulations (which the UK helped develop), there must be a customs union for the free movement of goods to happen.
Under the backstop, the entire UK would enter a ‘single customs territory’ with the EU. This would mean there would be no tariffs on trade in goods between the UK and the EU.
Those on the right of the Tory Party have been in meltdown over the situation for a while and seem to resent Ireland and the EU for the existence of this reality, which could stand in the way of a hard Brexit. However, it should be said that the push for a referendum and Brexit was a hard-right Tory initiative, and they made no discernible effort to think through the Irish border issue in the run-up to the 2016 referendum. Instead, they spent a LOT of time talking about how easy Brexit would be.
In the past few months, the hard Brexit ERG mob within the Tory Party has been whining so incessantly about the backstop that Theresa May has been forced to explore solutions that have already been rejected as “magical thinking” by those in the EU who have been working on this for years.
The claim by hard-right Tories is that if only May could get the backstop (customs union insurance policy to prevent a hard border and conflict) removed, then in the next year or so magical new technology will be invented to enable there to be a magical invisible border that allows free movement of goods (while not appearing to exist). What I and many others would call a ‘unicorn solution’.
And, as unicorns are not known for their predictability, Theresa May would need to enlist elves to ride them to a magical solution. As things stand, elves riding unicorns to help a fractured Tory Party seems more unlikely than a second referendum or general election.
