Sky’s Adam Boulton nails Tory complacency over Brexit border impact

With Boris Johnson’s proposals for the border in Ireland receiving at best a lukewarm response, various minions have been despatched to the news studios to try and talk them up.

Who wins?

James Gray is the Conservative MP for North Wiltshire. He appeared on Sky News’s All Out Politics, and host Adam Boulton asked him who would benefit from the new proposals:

Surely the whole point of Brexit is we’re going to be better off. And if you’re in Northern Ireland, you’re not going to be better off. You’re going to face two borders in trade of one kind or another.

Gray’s response rather flew in the face of pre-Brexit reality. He said: “Well you face borders if you do trade around the world wherever that might be”. Boulton reminded him: “Well you don’t at the moment between north and south”. Gray ploughed on:

We’ll be much better off because if we get the deal, we’d have left. And that’s the important thing. We’ll have achieved Brexit. We’ll have achieved what 17.4 million people asked us to do. The United Kingdom will then be free.

No really, who wins?

Boulton again made the point that people living in the north of Ireland would have two borders to deal with. Gray deflected this by saying that the north would have the opportunity to review the arrangements every four years. But then he made a rather extraordinary statement:

No deal in this world happens without some pain for some people.

Boulton let him go on for a bit as Gray gushed about Johnson pulling “a very significant iron out of the fire”. But then the presenter hit his guest with a stark summary of what he’d said:

So Northern Ireland is collateral damage in this?

Gray denied he’d said anything of the sort, but the point was made.

Adam Boulton speaking truth on #alloutpolitics.

James Gray MP: Pass the deal and we’ll be free.

Boulton: Not the people of NI, as they’re going to have two borders.

G: No deal in this world happens without some pain for some people.

B: So NI is collateral damage in this? pic.twitter.com/iJzNIQBTdp

— Dr. Jennifer Cassidy (@OxfordDiplomat) October 3, 2019

People living in the north of Ireland made their views known:

https://twitter.com/fm01de/status/1179680276634624002

I'm from NI, my family voted leave, they are unionists. Its ironic that they & many others at home helped the tories get their pet project over the line and will now be sold down the river. I think unionists at home are finally realising that the tories only cared when it suited

— Matt (@Mattradamus) October 3, 2019

Another respondent took issue with Gray’s central claim about ‘freedom’:

God I am bored with being told how *free* we will be when Utopian Brexit happens; at present we live in one of the most liberal of communities in the world, we ARE free, and being part of Europe helped that

— Anna Williamson💙🇪🇺🇺🇦 (@irisesgirl) October 3, 2019

Gray’s comments suggest a mindset so fixated on ‘getting Brexit done’ that causing “some pain for some people” is perfectly acceptable. It really is, as Boulton described, “collateral damage”.

It’s clear that the Tories have lost the plot and need to be stopped.

Featured image via Twitter – Dr. Jennifer Cassidy

Tags: Brexit

Comments 1

Shaolin12 says:

7 years ago

Let’s not forget that the DUP had to bought with £1 Billion of taxpayers money to support the plans of the Tories, nor the fact that they deliberately divided the nation and wasted even more public money, and have continually lied to all of us for the express purpose of forcing us all into the son-of-the-TTIP with the USA, and that they are the party who introduced Austerity to the UK for the purpose of making America, not The U.K. ‘Great’ again.

Nor let us forget that the Brown government (Torified Labour) bailed out banks which should have been allowed to fail under the rules of Capitalism, to the tune of £500 Billion+, again money which is coming out of the taxpayers’ pockets to bail out the corporate/political criminals who keep putting us all in the context of ‘Collateral Damage’.

I also note that the Tory – Liberal Democrat Government didn’t fight for us to get our money back, but instead handed over another £50 Billion+ ‘bailout’, surely proving that we are all considered as expendable collateral damage.

In a very real sense, we have had nothing but Tory, and Tory-style Government since the days of Margaret Thatcher in 1979. That’s 40 years of privatisation, and increasingly disaster-capitalist ideology.

In 1946, It was Clement Atlee’s Labour Party that introduced Nationalisation of essential services, and The Welfare state, of which the NHS was the ‘Crown Jewel’.

I also note that whilst Tory politicians talk about protecting and improving the NHS (and other previously public entities), their actions have consistently undermined and weakened the NHS (among others) so they can then say ‘it doesn’t work’, and ‘privatisation is the only solution’ (which is a fallacy bearing in mind that we get shafted every time ‘the bottom line’ must win, which is always).

In short, The Conservative Party puts financial profits before people, and has no qualms at all regarding collateral damage, indeed the collateral damage is part of the profit equation. If it looks like a Tory politician is worried about collateral damage, you can be sure it’s really because they are working out ways to personally benefit from it.