The Daily Signal - #549: Will Brexit Ever Happen?

Episode Date: September 19, 2019

Four years after the famous Brexit vote, Britain remains part of the European Union. The U.K. is scheduled for an exit next month, but powerful members of Parliament are doing all they can to stop it. Today, Daniel speaks with Conservative Member of Parliament Liam Fox about Brexit, the future of the U.K., and the U.K.’s role in dealing with Iran. Plus: NBC News is hearing confessions online—but only confessions relating to climate change. We discuss. We also cover these stories: -President Trump revokes waiver that let California set higher emissions standards -Secretary of State Mike Pompeo calls attacks on Saudi Arabia "act of war" -Abortion rate drops to lowest level since Roe v. Wade The Daily Signal podcast is available on Ricochet,iTunes, SoundCloud, Google Play, or Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at [e-mail]. Enjoy the show! Release date: 16 September 2019 Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Daily Signal podcast for Thursday, September 19. I'm Kate Trinko. And I'm Daniel Davis. Four years after the famous Brexit vote, the United Kingdom remains part of the European Union. The UK is scheduled for an exit next month, but powerful members of Parliament are doing all they can to stop it. Today, I'll speak with Conservative Member of Parliament, Liam Fox, about Brexit, the future of the UK, and the UK's role in dealing with Iran. Plus, NBC News is hearing confessions online, but only if they're about climate change. We'll discuss. And if you're enjoying this podcast, please be sure to leave a review or a five-star rating on iTunes and please encourage others to subscribe.

Now on to our top news. President Trump tweeted Wednesday, quote, The Trump administration is revoking California's federal waiver on emissions in order to produce far less expensive cars for the consumer, while at the same time making the cars substantially safer, end quote. Right now, California has stricter standards than the federal ones due to a waiver granted to the state. President Trump added, many more cars will be produced under the new and uniform standard, meaning significantly more jobs, jobs, jobs.

End quote. California Attorney General Xavier Bacera addressed the matter Wednesday. Via ABC News, here's what he said. Our message to those who claim to support state's rights don't trample on ours. Doing so would be an attempt to undo the progress we've made over the past decades. We can't afford that here in California. We cannot afford to backslide in our battle against climate change. California plans to now sue and fight this in court.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo accused Iran Wednesday of carrying out an act of war by attacking Saudi oil facilities. Those are the strongest words yet issued against Iran from a U.S. leader since last weekend's attacks, which temporarily cut Saudi oil production in half. Iran-backed Houthi rebels in Yemen have claimed responsibility for the attack, while Iran has denied responsibility. But U.S. and Saudi officials say the Houthis lack the sophistication and weaponry needed to carry out the attack, per the New York Times. The spokesman for the Saudi Defense Ministry, Colonel Turkey al-Maliki, said this attack was launched from the north, and was unquestionably sponsored by Iran. President Trump announced his new national security advisor on Wednesday. It's Robert C. O'Brien, who currently works as the lead on hostage negotiations in the State Department.

Trump spoke to reporters about the pick on the runway via CBS News. Mr. O'Brien is highly respected. He was highly respected by so many people that I didn't even know really knew him. He did a tremendous job on hostage negotiations. really tremendous, like unparalleled. We've had tremendous success in that regard. Brought home many people. And through hostage negotiation, I got to know him very well myself.

But also, a lot of people that I respect rated him as their absolute number one choice. And via CNN, here's what O'Brien said. We look forward to another year and a half of pester's strength. We've had tremendous foreign policy successes under presidential. Trump's leadership. I expect those to continue. Well, Congresswoman Ilhan Omar has said some controversial things, but the latest delegation, not exactly correct. On Wednesday, President Trump retweeted a tweet from comedian Terence Williams that purported to show a video of Omar dancing on 9-11. Williams says, you were seriously partying on the anniversary of 9-11. The president

then called her the new face of the Democratic Party and said she would help him in Minnesota. But Omar soon pointed out that the video was not from 9-11, but instead an event from the previous weekend with the Congressional Black Caucus. She then accused the president of spreading lies that put her life at risk. The abortion rate in the United States is at a historical low since Roe v. Wade, according to a new report from the pro-abortion Gutmocker Institute. It found that there were 862,320 abortions in 2017, a 7% decline from 2014. The record low rate was 13.5 abortions per 1,000 women in the 15 to 44 age range. New Mexico residents may soon find out what free college looks like. The state's Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, announced a plan Wednesday to make public colleges tuition free for in-state students. The plan would cost an estimated. $25 to $35 million a year and would apply to students graduating high school with a 2.5 GPA or higher.

It remains to be seen if the bill will pass through the Democratic Control Legislature. Well, if you're a grammar fan, get disappointed. Miriam Webster has updated its dictionary to allow the word they to be used as a singular. The new definition for they states it's a word, quote, used to refer to a single person whose gender identity is non-binary, end quote. Among its examples is this sentence. They had adopted their gender neutral name a few years ago when they began to consciously identify as non-binary. That is, neither male nor female.

Up next, I'll speak to a conservative member of parliament, Liam Fox, about Brexit. Tired of high taxes, fewer health care choices, and bigger government. government, become a part of the Heritage Foundation. We're fighting the rising tide of homegrown socialism while developing conservative solutions that make families more free and more prosperous. Find out more at heritage.org. I'm joined now by Liam Fox, a conservative member of British Parliament. He served for the last three years as the UK's Secretary of State for International Trade and before that also served as Secretary of State for Defense. Mr. Fox, appreciate your time today. It's a pleasure. Thank you.

So it's been over four years since Britain held its national referendum that resulted in a vote for Brexit. According to the original plan, the UK should be out of the European Union by now, but that's not the case. Briefly, if you can, why is Britain still in the European Union? Well, we have an extraordinary and historic tussle going on in our political system. Parliament decided that it couldn't or wouldn't make a decision on the European question. question and that it would allow the British public directly to make that decision. And then Parliament said it would implement that decision once the people had made it. Now, we're in a position where the public voted to leave, but we have a parliament that would prefer to remain. And we've got now

competing legitimacy. We have a representative democracy, so it is quite correct that legally Parliament can legitimately pass any laws it wants. Against that, you have what I would regard as the moral legitimacy of the public's decision. And so we now have a position where those who want to remain and effectively ignore and reject the decision of the British people to leave the European Union are trying to find more and more legalistic mechanisms to try to block that. those like myself who voted and campaigned to leave take the view that whatever parliamentarians want

it is their democratic duty and they are honour bound to implement the will of the people as they said they would notwithstanding that they technically do have the legal legitimacy to pass whatever legislation they see fit so I think it's now it's a question of of honour it's whether politicians

are willing to do what they promised and carry out what they told the voters in good faith would happen after the referendum. And I fear that if we have what would be effectively the greatest democratic heist in modern history with the referendum being stolen from the British voters, I really do dread what the political consequences of that would be. Well, a lot of Remainers are talking about the, the prospects of a no-deal Brexit and how disastrous that would be for the British economy. Is that the case? Would things be as bad for the British economy as some say if the UK just left the EU without a deal? So let's be very clear. There are three outcomes. To leave the

European Union with a deal, to leave the European Union without a deal, or not to leave the European Union. And a lot of those who say that they are against a no-deal Brexit are in fact against Brexit. There is more than a little bit of disingenuousness about the whole debate. There is no agreement that they would ever vote for because they don't want to go. And they will use any means they can, parliamentary or legalistic, to try to ensure that Britain doesn't leave the European Union. I would prefer to leave with a deal because I believe there are some elements of a no-deal Brexit,

including economic disruption, but potentially also strains on the union inside the UK itself, which would make a deal preferable. But let me be 100% clear. I would absolutely prefer a no-deal Brexit to no-Brexit. A no-deal Brexit may have its problems that we would have to deal with, but I think that no Brexit would be politically seismic in a way that very few people in Britain currently understand.

Are you still holding out hope for some kind of deal or is a no deal pretty much what most Brexiteers are looking at? No, I hope that we do get a deal. I mean, I voted for Theresa May's deal, much as there were elements of it I didn't like. Because when you're a minority government pushing a referendum result with a parliament that doesn't want it, your room for maneuver is relatively limited. And I think the current Prime Minister, Boris Johnson, wants her to be a deal with the European Union where we can disaggregate 46 years of economic, political and legal framework in an efficient way. But if we have to leave without a deal, so be it, because we have to leave. Well, the current Brexit date is set for October 31st. That's already an extension.

Is it possible that gets extended further, or is this really the cliff? Well, it is legally possible that it could be extended. I think that the British public simply wouldn't understand. Another delay, their view is, you know, it's more than three years since we gave you an instruction. You didn't ask us for a consultation about our position in Europe. Parliament asked us for an instruction and said it would honor it. We gave it. Why has it not happened? And I think the public appetite for delay will be, is diminishing all the time. I was out in my own district on Saturday, last Saturday, and I found a level of hostility towards the current

parliament that I might have found difficult to conceive of in the past. Well, you mentioned potential tensions within the UK, if there were a no-deal Brexit. Are you alluding to Scotland potentially holding another referendum to leave the UK? What kind of fragility would you see? Well, there are always those nationalists who will use any economic or political difficulties to try to introduce the divisions. And remember, when it comes to the Scottish nationalist,

they don't want Britain to have a successful Brexit because they don't want there to be a successful Britain. Their life's work is to break up the country. I have a lot of trouble with the concept of nationalists Patriots I have no trouble with building their views on their pride in their country, nationalists who tend to often base what they think on their dislike of others. That's a problem for me. Well, I want to shift to another subject that you've spoken on quite a bit and worked on,

and that's Iran. A lot of news coming out of Iran lately, of course, the Saudi oil attack. The United States pulled out of the Iran deal last year, but the UK remains part of that deal, along with other European Union countries. But you've been opposed to the deal from the start. Why is that? Well, I never thought the JCPOA, the Iran deal, would work. There were a number of problems. First of all, it gave Iran a lot of money up front without Iran having to make any changes.

Secondly, I thought it was over-optimistic, if not naive, to believe that the Khamani regime in Iran would change its behavior. in terms of destabilization of its neighbors and its linked to terrorist groups. And thirdly, even if Iran had wanted it to happen, even if Iran had been able to deliver on the nuclear side, there was never any real way to deliver on the trade aspirations because of two reasons. One, companies that had U.S. dealings would worry about involvement of the U.S. legal system and how they might be trapped in that.

And secondly, the opacity of the Iranian system means that it's very difficult for businesses to know whether their end customer is in fact a member of the IRGC and therefore in breach of sanctions. So there were real issues about funding and also real risks, which I think we're always going to diminish the appetite of Western businesses to trade with Iran unless there had been a substantial trade internally

that made the risk of dealing with the IRGC, much less. I never thought that that would happen. And the deal is dead. The JCPOA is dead. Anyone that pretends otherwise is not being realistic. I support President Trump's maximal pressure initiative. I think it's necessary for Iran to feel the economic pressure that comes from being alienated.

I think their actions from Hezbollah to their involvement in the global drugs trade to their encouragement of the Houthis in the Yemeni civil war to what looks like a potential attack on Saudi's oil infrastructure all point to the fact that this is not a regime with whom you can do normal business. Where do you see the United Kingdom lining up on this post-Brexit? Well, of course, the entire political bandwidth of the UK

is taken up with the old Brexit issue at the moment. My worry is that that is actually stopping us from focusing some of these big international issues that really do matter to ourselves and our allies. the Iranian issue, for example, where we need to have interference with freedom of navigation of the Strait of Hormuz, could easily become a global economic problem because you've got about 45% of Chinese oil passing through that straight. You're a large proportion of Japanese, the next biggest economy, also transiting there. So I think that we're going to have to, at a minimum, ensure that there's an international coal.

that guarantees safe passage. We've already had one British ship taken by the Iranians on the most spurious and, as it turns out, utterly untrue excuses. So that is an issue where there is a global interest and I think we need to ensure that there's a global answer to that particular security problem. All right, Mr. Foxwell, I appreciate your time today. Thanks for coming in. It's a real pleasure. Thank you. So have you ever flipped on the TV and her talking heads dropping terms like gross G-G-G? or nuclear deterrence or single-payer health care, and your head is totally in a muddle. I'm there quite often, which is why I listen to Heritage Explains.

It's a weekly podcast that explains all the policy issues we hear about in the news at a 101 level. The two hosts, Michelle and Tim, unpack the big policy issues in a conversation, and they bring in Heritage Policy experts for insight. They ask questions like, what's going on in Ukraine? Why do we need a Space Force? will we actually get those social security benefits that we're all signed up for? Heritage Explains offers 10 to 15 minute explainers that bring you up to speed with the biggest policy debates and gives you laughs along the way. You can find Heritage Explains on Apple Podcasts, Google Play, Spotify, or anywhere else you get your daily listens.

And we put the full episodes on YouTube so you can stream on your computer. So go and check out Heritage Explains and get on top of the issues. NBC News has a new feature on its website. website dubbed climate confessions. The feature invites people to share their environmental sins, stating, quote, even those who care deeply about the planet's future can slip up now and then. Tell us, where do you fall short in preventing climate change? End quote. Among the quote unquote sins contributed by anonymous folks include, I fly to see my son on the west coast. I live on the east.

And I love plastic straws and I cannot lie, as many as I can get before I die. One person wrote, I go to Starbucks several times a week and I don't bring a reusable cup. And another wrote, I admit to using far too many plastic grocery bags while my reusable one sit in the trunk of my car. So Daniel, are you going to be confessing? No, I will not be confessing it. but if I do, it will be by myself alone in my room, because that's how I confess. I don't know how you confess.

You do, actually. Yeah, okay, okay. So here's the thing. Like, man, this just makes me think secular morality is the worst because it's simultaneously superficial and also super burdensome because there's like an infinite, there's no like divine revelation of here are the things that you should do to make sure that you're okay with the environment,

that you know that you're respecting the environment. It's basically just there are an infinite amount of things that you could be doing to contribute to the environment to protect the environment. And if you're not doing those things, then you're a horrible person. So it's like superficial but also burdensome. And also the worst part is there's no atonement for these sins.

Like there is no. And there's no forgiveness. There's no forgiveness. There's no atonement. There's no propitiation. To use a fun theological word. Like there is, it's just very hopeless.

I did not want to live in this. moral universe. But I think it's also striking, and I'm not the first person to make this point, but I can't recall who, where I read it. But just sort of like, it's almost like there's a need for rules. Like the amount of environmental rules they've made up. And, you know, I will say like I recycle. I mean, I'm originally from California. But I do think, you know, there's certain things that we should do that are responsible toward the environment. I'm vaguely intending to use fewer water bottles, although I haven't really managed it yet. But like how rigorous so many of these are. It just, it almost feels like they want rules and they want structure. I'm not really convinced at all. Like, we know that plastic straws are not the threat that the left portrays them as, for example. And I wonder, I'm certainly not an expert on this, but how many of these examples are actually hurting the climate in a real way and how many are just things that are fashionable to avoid right now? Yeah, your straw example reminded me last week. I actually went to the Chick-fil-A over just a few blocks away and got an actual plastic straw for,

For our listeners who don't aren't aware, D.C. outwad plastic straws. Okay, now you're going to get chick-fil-a thrown in jail. So, I know. I was like, it's like contraband in D.C. You know, it's like plastic straw. But, yeah, I would actually like to see that put to a local vote. I think people are really frustrated by the paper straws you have to use now. They're so gross.

They like melt in your drink. Yeah, and I've heard instances. In fact, our colleague Kelsey Bowler might be among the people of people who carry plastic straws in purses, like just so you have. one available. You don't have to put up with this. See, this is what bothers me. Like, feel free to, you know, confess your environmental sins to NBC. But when you start passing laws that make me, you know, conform to your environmental anti-straw morality, that is what gets my goat. Yeah. And I wonder, I mean, obviously some of the responses to NBC appear to be tongue in cheek

or joking. If the one about flying to see your family was actually true, it makes me extremely sad. I mean, maybe before we start saying that family members who live far apart can't see each other, we could have celebrities stop taking private jets everywhere. That's right. That's kind of the bigger problem here, not, you know. Or stop having giant mansions. Right. I don't think it's a flight full of, you know, several hundred people in coach that's the main problem when it comes to air travel right now. I don't know. But I, yeah, it just, it makes me sad. And I also just think there's so many real ways that people could improve in everyday life and seeing this, you know, attempt to be vegan and attempt to, you know, never use plastic bags, even though reusable bags, by the way,

they carry all sorts of germs. There's other issues. It's not clear, I believe, that they're actually better for the environment because it depends on how much people use them. I mean, there's so much of this that is really more about emotions than science and seeing real remorse over this. I mean, I certainly think, you know, there's a time and place. I think Christianity encourages us to be good stewards, which doesn't mean like dumping toxins in the ocean for no reason.

But this level seems absurd. Yeah. Isn't that so interesting that almost regardless of the facts, people just want to feel like they're doing something good or making moral progress? Like I've heard some kinds of recycling are actually, they do more harm than good for the environment, which is. crazy to think about. And I think for some folks that would kind of devastate their lifestyle because they want to believe they're helping the environment. I mean, we all should want to. But yeah, I don't know. There's just something about us that wants to make sure that we're in line with the moral universe. And I think that is a pretty big sign that we're made to be moral creatures.

Yeah. And I think it's interesting because you so often hear people say, well, you know, traditional religion has so many rules and it's so burdensome. And sometimes it feels that being on the left has as many rules when you think about between the vocabulary you're allowed to use the thoughts you're allowed to have, the jokes you're allowed to make. And it's constantly changing and growing. Right. And it's like a federal agency's growing list of regulations that no one can ever keep up with.

Yeah. But it's just, is it really? I mean, maybe it's, maybe it's still easier to conform. to then say Orthodox Judaism, which has a lot of individual rules. But overall, it's just I wonder if you guys have encountered traditional religion and how many rules there actually are. You might find it a little different than you're expecting. All right.

Well, leave it there for today. Thanks for listening to The Daily Signal podcast brought to you from the Robert H. Bruce Radio Studio at the Heritage Foundation. Please be sure to subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud. And please do us a review or rating on iTunes, but not a confession. to give us any feedback. We'll see you again tomorrow. The Daily Signal podcast is executive produced by Kate Trinko and Daniel Davis. Sound design by Lauren Evans and Thalia Ramprasad.

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