'Protectionist's Treaty'

During a coffee break I perused  my favourite online mag, ‘ConHome;’ and  found myself reading the fiction of Daniel Hannan – he was championing Global Britain; shouting it from the rooftops - apparently this week we on the cusp of world domination; of the premise a draft UK-US trade agreement has been launched simultaneously in the capital and Washington DC. Naturally, I scratched my scalp and grunted why didn’t I know about this?

Practically every knowledgeable institution was in the know including the ASI (Adam Smith Institute); Nero Bertrand has close links to Adam Smith for their foundation monikers have names from the past and are prestigious when it comes to thinking and conjuring up ideological platforms involving trade and new market access. According to Hannan, the ASI had fully embarked, engaged in, and worked on for at least several months the same project as myriad foundations to draft a UK / US Treaty. The Hannan article also informed me,’ I am typing these words in DC, having just spoken at the launch in the Senate.’  At first, I could only applaud him for boosting British enterprise and concurrently spending the time in penning this exciting news over to ‘ConHome.’  This grandiose Treaty had the fanfare opening it deserved and I only wished Adam Smith had called me and we could’ve tucked into the syrup pancakes and Twinkies while guzzling the hyperbole fizz that’s so good to do from time to time.

My mood changed somewhat when Hannan penned what Global Britain entailed, he announced: ‘it is a full treaty, not just a proposal for what a treaty should contain – would be the most comprehensive ever signed.’ Admittedly, I felt mildly deflated after the initial Global Britain effervescence, albeit, it was a done deal and you can’t monkey slap Hannan for going over the top, a smidgen, this is rousing times and this Treaty would be the most comprehensive ever signed. Naturally, I held back on my patriotic pride, fiction has a habitual characteristic of male cow excrement and Hannan is a farmer of political pancakes. Without being too scholarly I can’t envisage Hannan informing a high-brow readership about Treaty forming; by clarifying the palpable concept of mutual recognition and commercial gains – which begs the question: why does Hannan think he can get away with publishing follies, is the Tory supporter now progressively gullible?  Anyone can muster up Treaty compromises that discuss the service sector, goods and professional qualifications without unveiling the detail.

Hannan’s theoretic frailties and ‘Treaty hyperbole’ has no foundation either, for their dysfunctional from earlier published articles on the ConHome website: he’d publically dismissed the Adam Smith Institute as merely… eager, young people endeavouring on study for the sake of it, to follow through a premise for meagre incomes. They’re just saying what they’re paid to say. Weeks later Hannan wrote the total opposite; proof of cerebral dysfunction or has Hannan been paid to misinform the Tory credulous? Likely to be drunk on the hyperbole fizz of Treaty engagement, anticipation; and this is forgivable because the UK cradles a post-Brexit deal regardless of how financially insignificant it is to a G7 nation. Expect more political pancakes, for what Hannan represents is a tendency to metamorphose into any study, Treaty or Trade discourse so-long it doesn’t batter the white elephant in the room called Brexit.  I’d go along to the de facto his prejudices are succinct; he even describes comedy shows, TV dramas, and pop lyrics being Left-of-centre. Rarely have I adjudicated political nuance to Adele or Mock the Week; on grounds they’re recreational, guilty pleasures… let alone believe it makes Conservatives aware of the Left-wing thought process. If this was the case, the Tories would have a majority in government and the Social Movement’s lifespan was of a dragon fly.

I write this in the knowledge the Tories won’t see the irony whatsoever and attempt to rationalise Hannan’s overreaction of the non-Treaty; imagine if it got scrutinised? Food industry leaders may call into question regulation standards, at present the UK is protected under EU Standards, the Tories don’t want to replicate them, yet no-one relays the dangers of the black market. Hannan is too busy playing the victim, i.e. the heartless swine card.  I call it deflecting responsibility, duping the public and when it’s acknowledged, Hannan’s political alignment assumes it is things people happen not to like - revoking the underlining serious factor purely for political will. His quest for eradicating the US Food Standard question is admirable though; many of us do eat US burgers and the odd steak and survived while in the US. But that’s different to exporting across the pond; export certification has to be fielded under the FDA (Food and Drug Administration). A dog eat dog conundrum where monopolies eradicate healthy competition, of the onus their avarice relations are embedded with the FDA. For the record, the FDA is a rally call for deregulation, inevitably food standards could drop, leaving a bigger burden on the Health Service --- Hannan forgot that part.

There’s a derailment of logic when an author informs a readership how they’re feeling; this epitomises protectionism and they’ll pound the drum of neurotic protectionist idiocies, claiming people are sore about the referendum outcome for simply asking a question about living standards. Referencing perceived serious issue (s) due to economic change is neither an odd kind of petulance nor a quest to resist the majority, myriad people fear the unfamiliar. Prosperity is an unfamiliar perspective on the fundamental axis the governance has proceeded with austere policies for nearing a decade. No wonder there’s mistrust when a Conservative MEP pens prosperity amidst Brexit opportunism, a ‘free trade agreement’ generically has US tariffs beneath the surface, all part of American First protectionism, something Hannan can’t grasp and he creates a smoke screen by using the terminology of a so-called convergence, resting on the English language; alas, Hannan goes further, he innately leans towards Thomas Paine’s ‘Common Sense’ a pamphlet from 1776 that founded the United States.

Regretfully, here is the crunch. Unity has no place in the protectionist’s philosophy, and now‘ special relationships’ now embody a rhetorical stance; as specified by Anglo-American scholar Christopher Hitchens in ‘Blood, Class and Empire’ (1990) The state of play in accordance to prosperity incorrectly announces that ‘protectionist deal breaking’ or ‘protectionist treaties’ envelope a win, win scenario… there’s only losers in a preferential ideology. What tends to happen is this… economic growth concentrates at the top and results in misery at the bottom, under a capitalistic ideal which Hannan sponsors.  What’s the point in stating an ‘ill-tempered union based on coercion’ in relation to the EU? This is isolation talk, the total opposite of trade treaty mantra. Hannan writes… ‘It is a full treaty, not just a proposal for what a treaty should contain – would be the most comprehensive ever signed.’ So, what are they waiting for - that’s the question?