THE CITY GRUMP

Slowly but surely, as the details of the Windsor Framework are examined it is clear, as Hugh Bennett writes in Conservative Home, that as we “peer behind the press releases and it quickly becomes apparent that the Framework is much less a new car than the same old model with a fresh lick of paint on it and a new tyre or two”.

Bennett goes onto explain:

“The fundamental asymmetry of the Protocol – that significant parts of life in Northern Ireland are governed under the direct effect of EU law – which the EU can, and has, changed at the stroke of a pen, but which its own Government in the UK is powerless to alter – has not changed.

Northern Ireland is still bound into the EU’s state aid regime.

Moreover, the EU can still choose to sue the UK in the European Court of Justice over most of the Protocol; the political commitment to seek to resolve issues through dialogue rather than formal disputes lasts only as long as the politics on either side suits it. Legally, to coin a phrase, it has no more weight than a copy of the Beano”.

In other words the Windsor Framework, despite the cynical attempt to link it to our new, inexperienced King, permanently cedes Sovereignty of Northern Ireland to the EU.

Gerald Warner, writing in Reaction Life doesn’t beat about the bush as to what this means for the “United” Kingdom:

“It was left to Ursula von der Leyen, the genial victor in this unequal contest between EU apparatchiks and globalist Tory surrender monkeys, to spell out the chill reality – just once, before resuming her Universal Aunt persona. At the press conference to proclaim the agreement, a reporter from RTE blurted out the question that is never raised in polite circles (“Don’t mention the War!”): the question of the continuing jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice (ECJ).
First, the Prime Minister treated him to a torrent of evasion. Then came a cold douche of reality from Ursula von der Leyen: the European Court is “the sole and ultimate arbiter of EU law”. That is the harsh reality behind the cosmetic concessions of the Windsor Framework. Northern Ireland, as integral a part of the United Kingdom as Wiltshire, is under the jurisdiction of EU law.
This issue is not about sausages or pet travel, or even VAT and excise. The material improvements introduced by the Framework can be compared to the difference between occupied France and Vichy: both had lost sovereignty. This betrayal is about sovereignty – the precious prize the British people reclaimed in 2016. That is exactly how the EU sees it too”.

The definition of Treason here has been around since the 13th century. It essentially says Treason takes place when you betray your Country and Sovereign by taking up arms against your Sovereign. But I would submit you don’t necessarily have to take up arms against your Country to betray it. Indeed last December a German intelligence officer was arrested for treason in relation to spying for Russia. A much lesser offence than betraying Sovereignty of part of your Country by giving it away to a foreign power you would think but clearly Germany takes treason very seriously indeed. As Yuan Yi Zhu in an article for The Critic points out, there is in the UK currently a legal aversion to national betrayal being treasonable. Zhu observes:

 “Many reject the idea of treason reform because they fundamentally view the notion of political loyalty, whether to king or to country, as essentially obsolete in the modern world, and therefore incapable of justifying a special set of crimes designed to maintain it”.

Such sentiment does not stand up to examination as Zhu, correctly, maintains “but every coherent political community is based around the notion of reciprocity, whereby its members enjoy its protection in exchange for certain duties” and inevitably and most importantly “as an attack on the very continued existence of the polity, treason is not a crime against individuals, but the betrayal of the whole community”.

What, if not surrendering the King’s Sovereignty over Northern Ireland, is an act of betrayal of the whole community and therefore an act of treason? Rishi Sunak has enacted precisely this. Why should he not now be tried for Treason in an English court of law?

The City Grump has spent some 40 years in the City of London. He started as a stockbroker’s analyst but after some years he decided he was too grumpy to continue with the sell side of things so he moved to the buy side and became a fund manager for the next 20 years, selling his own business in the 1990s. Post the millennium, he found himself in turn chairing a stockbroker, a financial PR company, and an Exchange. He still keeps his hand in, chairing a brace of VCTs and investing personally in startups. The City Grump’s publications are available here.