At 11:09 p.m. last night, while the nation slept, 313 vs. 312 members of Parliament — including 14 so-called “Conservatives” — passed legislation that will likely render Britain a client state of the European Union for many years to come.
The “Cooper Bill,” named after its author — the feckless former Blair-era government minister Yvette Cooper — requires the British government to take a “no deal Brexit” off the table and once again extend the negotiating period with the European Union.
This is manifestly not what the public voted for in 2016, and Britain’s current parliament has done almost everything in its power to grin-fuck the electorate since that fateful day in June, three years ago.
But the smirks will surely soon fall from the faces of those traitorous MPs, many of whom — Cooper included — continue to renege on manifesto commitments and election pledges regarding Brexit.
A series of “no confidence” motions have already begun to hit the desks of Conservative Party MPs who either reneged on their pledges to deliver Brexit, or who failed to represent the views of their constituents over the past few months.
The former Attorney General Dominic Grieve, as well as the former Minister for Skills Nick Boles have both suffered this deserved indignity in recent months. More are surely on the way.
And while such votes are broadly symbolic (the MPs still basically get to cling onto their seats for now), they are a harbinger of what is to come at a next General Election.
The same applies for Fiona Onasanya, a former Labour MP who was forced to quit the party after she was caught perverting the course of justice. Now a convicted criminal, Onasanya cast the single deciding vote against Brexit last night, all the while wearing her prison-issued ankle-tag in the House of Commons: a disgraceful besmirching of our democracy and of our hallowed parliament.
If Britain seeks an extension to the Brexit process, logic would dictate we would want to keep MEPs in Brussels. But not so, according to our own government, who would rather save face in an election than have Britons democratically represented.
May knows what we all know, that Eurosceptic parties like The Brexit Party and the UK Independence Party would romp their way to Brussels, leaving the Conservative and Labour parties in their dust, and the public would have considered that vote a “second referendum” of sorts.
But if Britain doesn’t stand MEPs, the country will reach a 1776-esque, taxation-without-
The EU still wants Britain’s cash, and wants to make our rules. But they don’t want us to have a say in their sham of a parliament, and our political establishment agrees.
Why?
Because May and her Euro-boner conservatives think Britons will see what life is like after a soft-Brexit and decide to opt back into the European Union full pelt, in order to “have our say” in the EU’s institutions again. And they’re probably right.
No Brexit is actually better than the deal the British parliament seems keen on: the customs union, where the UK would have to apply the same tariffs on non-EU products as the rest of the union dictates, and could not set our own trade rules for what we trade inside the union. In other words, we wouldn’t have really “left the EU.”
This level of devastating betrayal hasn’t been seen before in my lifetime, or even in the lifetime of the generation before me. Everyone’s looking around for a hero to emerge from the shadows, with a plan for Brexit, and a plan to destroy the British government. But as of right now, there appears to be no such person in sight.
While Mr. Brexit Nigel Farage recently set up a new “Brexit Party,” it is still young, weak, and susceptible to attacks from Remain-oriented newspapers like the Guardian, which has killed off two of its founding members in the past few weeks alone.
To quote Carl Sagan, “In all this vastness, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us from ourselves.” I am not convinced, however, that help is going to come from within, either.
Raheem Kassam (@RaheemKassam) is the global editor in chief of Human Events and a fellow at the Claremont Institute and the Middle East Forum. He is the author of two bestselling books: “No Go Zones” and “Enoch Was Right.”
The views and opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author and do not reflect the official position of The Daily Caller.