JACK SWAN PLAYS JEREMY PAXMAN: THE BREXIT PARTY

Many people see the Brexit Party as the one the most likely to unseat sitting Labour MPS at this election. South Wales is a key battle ground for Nigel Farage and his colleagues, I met up with the Gower candidate for the Brexit Party Rob Ross who remains hopeful that he is the main rival to the current Labour MP.

Tell us a bit about yourself?

I was brought up and went to school in Swansea, at Bishop Gore. I then joined the army and obviously went away but Swansea has always been my home. I live in Wiltshire now, that is where my wife is from and we look after her mother who still lives there but for me Swansea is and has always been my home. I loved my time in the army but wales and Swansea is my home.

What is Brexit?

For me the important thing is leaving the institution of the EU. The debate has become so confused with ‘will we get a trade deal’, ‘will we have to trade with US etc’.. but for me the real question is the accountability of the people who make the decisions on our laws. That really worries me, I’ve seen over the last fifteen years that our democratic rights have been eroded away to the extent where our Westminster government have lost their political relevance as it is all moving to Brussels. Brussels doesn’t like nations, doesn’t like politicians holding them to account. The MEP’s have a chance to scrutinise the legislation that they put forward before they are put into laws but they simply approve or disapprove things and even if they object to something then it usually comes back in a different form. If you or I disagree with those rules, which become law to whom do we turn? Nobody is accountable. 

Can you give an example of a law or regulation which you disagree with?

The simple one is the tampax tax which we have tried to overturn. Here you see something which the entire UK disagree with, but we cannot overturn. Its not so much the individual problem but the process, the problems may be trivial at the moment but when they become bigger, what can we do? It goes back to Tony Bens 5 points, what power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interest do you use it? To whom are you accountable and how do we get rid of you? And if you say that to the EU they don’t get power legitimately and they generally use it for the power of the big corporations.

You say that but a lot of people will argue that the EU have given higher fines to the likes of Google and Facebook than anyone else and certainly what the UK could alone?

There is a big issue about what you do with the multinationals and they are a problem because they put their profits offshore. I’m not sure the EU has the right answer for that, the simple solution is a transaction tax, a simple penny a go for any transaction and then you don’t get into the situation where there is expensive lawyers etc.. just a simple 1p a transaction.

What is wrong with BOJO’s Brexit?

You may ask what is wrong with Bojo? but I don’t want to get involved in personality attacks. I think actually he did a good job in renegotiating a terrible deal under Theresa may, I think she was probably the worst politician, the worst Prime Minister we have had ever. BOJO moving more into a trade deal as against one under the customs union was a good thing. The bad thing is whether I really think that he is going to be able to stick to that direction of travel and that is where the Brexit party comes in as I think that we should be keeping to that direction and the Brexit party will keep them to that.

So just to be clear, you are happy with the deal but you aren’t confident it will be kept to?

I don’t think he will carry it through unless people like me are there.

He’ll argue that he’s got 650 odd candidates all signed up to this very deal. If he gets a majority then the deal will surely go through?

If he gets a majority and he’s got some Brexit party MPs to keep him honest and we can get out by January 2020, that is what I’d like to see. Boris is a big fan of Winston Churchill and Churchill said that there are 2 skills a good politician needs, the first is to absolutely predict what happens in the future and the second is to be able to explain why it didn’t happen. I think that is what Boris will do, he will find some reason to backtrack. He promised to die in a ditch with something that he knew that he wouldn’t be able to do, he’s very happy to say, ‘sorry I missed my appointment with a ditch’. We need people in parliament to keep him accountable, we can’t hold the EU accountable.

I’m sure that people from Northern Ireland will say that keeping him accountable isn’t easy, ask the DUP. Why do you think he’d treat a few Brexit MPs any better?

I can’t predict how it is likely to fall out, I can say that if I was to sit in parliament, I would argue for my constituency. I don’t hear anyone saying that for wales, let alone for Swansea or for Gower. It was very obvious with the TV debates that asides from Nigel Farage, nobody spoke about Wales and what it means. There have been some terrible decisions for Wales, and nobody talks the area up.

You were in the army, did you work in Northern Ireland?

I did. All my operational work was in Northern Ireland.

Are you concerned about this deal for the troubles there?

It revolves around their concept of sovereignty. I can understand their concerns and if you have ever been to Northern Ireland then you will understand the tensions there. There are some very strong feelings among the Unionists, you can understand why they are anxious about their identity. On the other side, the Republicans have equally a strong view.

Every party in Northern Ireland are unanimous that they hate this deal

I don’t understand why they necessarily do. Because when you look at it, especially from the unionist point of view, they have the best of both worlds. They sit within the EU trading relationship and it is only the trading relationship which we are talking about. The unionist population doesn’t want to be separated from the rest of the Union. I think they shouldn’t become too anxious about that, they could be quite secure with their legal arrangements with the rest of the UK in the one hand and then they could sit within the UK and the EU and so they have the best of both worlds. For the cost of doing a bit of paperwork, I’m sure that there are other parts which would like that deal, Scotland for example.

Would you like that relationship for Wales?

I think looking ahead, one could think that you could go for that kind of deal as I believe in devolved powers. So much is so centralised around Westminster, we have the most centralised system and its too based around London. I believe that there are regions of England which have done very badly because of how things work, Cornwall, Yorkshire for example. More devolved powers would be a good thing. More entities within the country, making decision which make them economically powerful.

I’m just checking, you support Northern Ireland remaining in the customs Union. Potentially Wales, Scotland and parts of England retuning?

Its not remaining. Let’s be clear about this. Right now, for Northern Ireland they are not remaining in the customs union but will become aligned. Even when I was standing on the border posts, we never did any customs checks but security checks and you just recorded car numbers. Anything dealing with cross border trade was done from where they started their journeys from. I think that where we are now; that will work. The question is where Britain will go in the future and we need a constitution to look for the future of Britain.

This vote is for the next 5 years, asides from Brexit why should anyone vote Brexit party?

We have a range of policies, a change in the way we do politics and I don’t think that message is getting through the media noise. We want parliament to work properly, the house of lords must go, we need some kind of second chamber but not that one. And Proportional representation. The first past the posts system works very well for Labour and the Conservatives. What we see now is that these parties do their alliances within their party first. But there is another way where you have some sort of proportional representation, I actually think the one we have in Wales is quite good, the one in Scotland is quite good too. There are all sorts of ways of doing it but what you do then is end up forming your government after the election based on how people voted which I think is a fairer way of doing it. We need to manage ourselves better than this. We cannot stick to what we are doing now and the Brexit party gives an option to do something better.

Is any Brexit better than any remain?

Yes is the straight answer to that. If you are asking whether a clean Brexit or a soft Brexit then you have to accept that there would be mess from a clean break because there is a lot to do at the same time. Sadly, if Theresa May had done what I suggested which was a constitution for Britain three years ago then we wouldn’t be in this position now. Staying in the EU would be in the longer run would be a disaster, it is a federalising project, they are going to bring colonisation of taxes and we would have no control over our VAT etc…

If you were an MP 3 months ago, would you have happily seen a no-deal Brexit on 31st October?

Yes. Given what I just said, if we had to. Taking it off the table was a really bad move in terms of negotiations.

But some people will say that by threatening and saying ‘unless you do this then we will do this’ then it gets peoples backs up.  Approaching the negotiations in a more friendly ‘lets make this work for both of us long term’ way doesn’t seem to be as barmy as some suggest?

If Theresa may had taken that approach 3 years ago then there is a good chance that it would have worked. Even Michael Gove was saying ‘make a declaration that EU national could stay here’ but she didn’t. Nothing Theresa May said made sense to me, she was just parroting things people said to her in Number Ten, I don’t think she had an original idea in her head. I think that if we had of had somebody competent there then we could have got something done.

But you would prefer a no deal Brexit to remain?

Yes. I think that in the long term it would be better for Britain. Because if we stay in Europe, it is declining.

You say that but the UK GDP is growing far slower than the EU at present?

Yeah but you might say despite Brexit. There are a lot of businesses who are not investing in the UK because they don’t know what is going on.

A big part of that has been that there has been this no-deal scenario and the uncertainties that goes with it?

Yeah you are absolutely right, but it depends on how you look at it. Most of them say that they just want certainly. Then they would know what the situation was.

But what sort of certainty would a no-deal Brexit give? We would surely seek to negotiate a deal if we did crash out. A No-Deal Brexit would surely just add more delay to a negotiation?

What do you think would happen if we did seriously have no-deal? The following day we would have to do a trade deal with Europe and Europe would have to do a trade deal with us so what we are saying is that you have to have the big stick of a no-deal on the table.

But if you are France and the UK crashes out of the EU with a no-deal then they have suddenly lost one of their 27 trading partners. The UK has lost all of theirs?

That’s because we outsourced it to Europe. My point is that principle if we have self government then we can make our own decisions on that, whilst we are in the EU then we cannot make our own decisions on that. We have to ask people; do you really want to remain within the EU which is heading down this federal part where we will simply become a component of this federal state where we cannot make the people accountable for their decisions?