Amazon declined to confirm whether Gurr had made the remarks, reported in the Times, but admitted it was planning for a wide range of outcomes.
Amazon will now sell cheap machine guns and security equipment?
Another panic was possibly averted, however, with the new UK Brexit negotator accusing the EU of irresponsibility in 'flagging up the risks to EU nationals living in Britain from a no-deal Brexit' as “obviously an attempt to try and ramp up the pressure”.. Normally, el Grun would just have reported this 'flagging up' as news, of course, so we must be grateful for small mercies.
NB The actual text from the EU publication reads:
Citizens.There would be no specific arrangement in place for EU citiziens in the United Kingdom or for UK citizens in the European Union
Perhaps there is some additional material in this otherwise rather tedious document that I missed, but it all seems threatening only if you practice the hermeneutics of suspicion at all times (maybe you should). The rest of the document similarly seems to imply mostly bureaucratic changes of transferring certification and licensing details from UK to EU bodies, which might indeed seem tedious and time-consuming, but hardly the stuff of civil unrest.
The Graun turns to another issue to maintain the atmosphere of possible riots in the streets when Martha Gill, a 'freelance political journalist and former lobby correspondent' [the website has a wrong link] warns of the dangers of new right-wing political groups emerging. A new party has been one of the optionsbeing debated by liberals, with one or two suggestions that all Remainers from both parties might form one, as a kind of GNU. The leaders of the Liberals was accused of being in talks about one.
M Gill is worried though:
according to a You Gov/Times poll, the appetite in this country is not for a Lib Dem-friendly, centrist party, but a hard-right party of Brexit – something that appealed to 38% of those asked. Even more striking, perhaps, was the 24% who would like to see a far-right, explicitly anti-immigrant and anti-Islam party....There are more signs for those who have been watching. Reports that Arron Banks and Nigel Farage are planning a new rightwing movement, and then reports that former Trump strategist Steve Bannon is involved in a similar-sounding venture in Europe, for which he may be planning to raise millions. Last weekend, a rally in Whitehall summoned a vast crowd of rightwingers from a hodgepodge of groups – online provocateurs, British Trump supporters and Free Tommy Robinson activists – all converging under a single ideology.
The signs are only there for those experts [a freelance journalist!] who have been watching, of course. 'Reports' are uncited. The demo in Whitehall was hardly a 'vast crowd', it seemed from C4's coverage, and nor did there seem to be much of a 'single ideology' . Gill wants mostly to rubbish UKIP, it seems [support is growing rapidly again] and she warns 'A smart successor would be in the sleek European mould'.
N Farage is then quoted:
“If the trust the people put in the democratic process … is betrayed then prepare for the backlash.” “If Brexit is seen to be betrayed”, he said on his LBC show on Sunday, “there will be a backlash the likes of which the political classes in this country simply can not understand.”
Gill fears 'It is likely to work. All indications suggest that whatever kind of Brexit we get, it won’t make life better for those who voted for it.'
Here she seems to converge with the chaps who run the Full Brexit that right-wing movements will grow in the UK as they have in other European countries -- but they argue that years of uncritical compliance with the EU has been the ground on which this danger has grown. Liberals have said too little and too late and their 'moderation' and 'objectivity' have been sacrificed by their partisan stands.
The liberal consensus will almsost certainly focus around the one Remainer hope -- a new referendum. Bringing down May's premiership will not lead to us Remaining, and a new General Election is too risky, with Labour also split. New parties now seem risky too. Only a new referendum will deliver a 'democratic' result, as it did in Ireland and Denmark, but of course only if the result is to Remain, and only if the earlier hostility towards referenda as somehow usurping the role of goverment is forgotten A tricky ideological project!
There must also be hope that some enormous event will occur to provide for exceptional circumstances. More enormous than expensive strawberries.
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