Reflecting on the USMCA Regional Free Trade Agreement’s Deadlock (I)

by Laura Lai/Comment

The process of developing regionalized based institutional cooperation dates back to the 1920s (the trade agreement between Australia and New Zealand), got differently shaped in the late 1950s and during the 1960s (the European Economic Communities in Europe, the Latin American Free Trade Association in South America, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in Asia (ASEAN), etc.) and got a boost in the 1990s: the North American Free Trade Association (NAFTA) in North America, the South American Common Market (MERCOSUR). They all have in common the regional economic integration, but they all differ in comparison to the European Union (EU) in some regards: the degree of institutionalization (the EU developed supra-national institutions, a permanent supra-national court, etc.), the degree of sovereignty (the loss of national sovereignty is evident in the case of EU). I will focus on the NAFTA’s most recent reform developments, on the reasons of the American delay in ratifying the new trade deal, and on any possible way to have avoided the ratification deadlock.

NAFTA is a regional agreement that came into effect in January 1994 and it gradually eliminated most commercial tariffs and barriers between the three countries of the North American continent: Canada, Mexico and the United States of America. It actually relies on a previous bi-lateral trade agreement from 1988 between Canada and the United States, which got extended, in order to include Mexico, too.

            From an institutional point of view, NAFTA is run at the level of national ministries and through three relatively small secretariats in each of the three countries’ capital cities. The eventual economic and commercial disputes are settled through arbitration panels rather than by a permanent court of justice, as in the case of the EU – but that’s because all continental regional agreements remained at the level of free trade cooperation, the EU being the only one having passed to political integration and basically developing towards a supra-national genuine new state.

But NAFTA is outdated. Its shortcomings were evident. And the need of a new free trade agreement to address the current issues of economic development dynamics was imperative. In November 2018, the U.S. President Donald Trump joined the Canadian Prime Minister and the Mexican President, in signing a new trade deal: the USMCA Agreement. Mexico was the first country to have overwhelmingly ratified it in June 2019, followed by the Canadians that are about to ratify it. Despite the Canadian Prime Minister’s visit to the US, in order to urge the Congress to ratify this mutually beneficial trade deal, the United States still did not ratify it.

            The USMCA is considered mutually beneficial for agriculture and industry, farmers and workers, for businesses; it protects intellectual property, addresses the bio-technology issue, which was not the case when NAFTA was signed and ratified. In the car industry, for example, the new deal eliminates the possibility to buy auto parts from somewhere else (ex. China, EU, etc.), assemble it in Mexico and sell the car duty free in the US. With the USMCA there are precise requirements that at least 75 percent of a car to be built with auto parts made in North America and at least 40 percent of it to be made by workers earning at least $16 per hour. (to be continued)

Reflecting on the USMCA Regional Free Trade Agreement’s Deadlock (II)

by Laura Lai/Comment

On the one hand, the Democrats have some reservations on the USMCA new trade deal. For example, Richard Neal (D-MA) was explaining in November 2018 that he needed to analyze whether or not the deal will really create jobs, particularly in areas with a job loss in the last two decades and a half, or whether or not the new deal addresses the workers’ rights and environmental protection. Furthermore, another Democrat, Ron Kind (D-Wis), had himself ‘serious questions' for the Trump Administration about the USMCA agreement.

On the other hand, there are Republicans bringing concrete examples of the way their states would benefit from the USMCA. For example the State of Indiana, whose two main trade deals are with Canada and Mexico and more than 17,000 jobs depend on this trade, let alone the fact that Indiana is second largest automobile manufacturer in the U.S and home to several car brands (to read more click here).  The State of Minnesota undertaking more than 70,000 farming operations exports mainly to Canada and Mexico (to read more, click here). The State of Colorado, which is quite in the middle of the United States, not necessarily in the vicinity of either Canada or Mexico, did a $2,7 billion trade with Canada and Mexico in 2017, mainly in processed food and machinery (to read more, click here). And the examples can go on with Missouri, Pennsylvania, Alaska and others.

Although the U.S. President Donald Trump and the Republicans hoped to have this deal ratified by the Congress before the Thanksgiving one week recess, the chances are quite small to have it ratified until the end of the year, due to the time and energy consuming impeachment procedure on which the Democrats concentrate mostly.

I can agree with the Representative Democrats need and will to assess the impact of a regional trade agreement on the Americans’ jobs, workers’ rights, environment protection. But this was last November. It’s already one year later and such an assessment should have had provided some results. Furthermore, with all due respect, I consider the assessment of jobs in those areas with a job loss in the last 25 years exaggerated and unfair towards both the citizens and Trump Administration. Generally speaking more than 12 million jobs depend on trade with Canada and Mexico, and more jobs can be added by the USMCA. It’s very much possible that not all newly created jobs to be in areas with a severe job loss in the last 25 years, but to my understanding this a U.S. deal with Canada and Mexico impacting the whole country, not necessarily an area or two, or mostly those areas with severe job loss. Furthermore, those areas with a severe job loss in the last 25 years can themselves develop businesses that can benefit precisely from this USMCA agreement and tariffs and barriers free commerce with Canada and Mexico. Besides, the Trump Administration is not responsible for the job loss in the last 25 years: In the last quarter of a century there were also U.S. Presidents coming from the Democrat-side. Let us remember that NAFTA – as imperfect as it looks now, and outdated as it still is – was signed into force by President Bill Clinton.

However, looking at the latest employment statistics released by the U.S. Department of Labor, I nurture this conviction that if Donald Trump could, through the USMCA, work out the unemployment also in those specific areas with a job loss in the last 25 years, he would. In my opinion, Donald is a person of a tremendous strong character and Donald Trump is the president, who delivers on his electoral promises under all circumstances: severe criticism, negative presscoverage of his Administration’s achievements, stigmatized by some, impeached by the others, and unpaid.

On July 15^th, 2019 the U.S. President Donald Trump proclaimed the ‘Made in America’ Day. This initiative is based on a simple work philosophy: whatever can be manufactured in the U.S. to be built and grown in the United States, such as: Zippo lighters made in Pennsylvania, Airstream trailers made in Ohio, Buck Knives made in Idaho, etc. (to be continued)

Reflecting on the USMCA Regional Free Trade Agreement’s Deadlock (III)

For a maximized image, please click on the cartoon.

by Laura Lai/Comment

One of the promises made by Donald Trump during his presidential electoral campaign was to replace NAFTA with a new deal more beneficial to the American citizens. And such a promise made perfectly sense for a campaign on ‘Make America Great Again’ that is very much based on the improvement of the economy, because almost 50 percent of the U.S. global trade is made with only three countries: Canada, Mexico and China (to read an October White House tweet on trade with China, click here).

            The difficulties to ratify the USMCA are constitutional based and Democrat-related. Under the U.S. Constitution (Art. 2) the U.S. President representing the executive power can sign international treaties with the agreement of the Senate – considering that the two-thirds of the Senate is present. In order to have a treaty coming into effect a two-thirds majority approval is necessary. Mathematically speaking, the USMCA deal cannot enter into force without the Democrats. It’s part of the so-called ‘balanced relationship’ on which the American political system is based. The Republicans argue that the Democrats put politics ahead the citizens, that their refusal is more because they prefer to deny the U.S. President a win, or because for the Democrats to compromise means to ‘sell out’. However, there are also Democrat voices in support of the USMCA: the Governor of Kansas, Laura Kelly, was the first of all Democrat governors to position herself in favor of the USMCA.

I can somehow understand the Democrats’ focus on exploring ways to impeach the U.S. President. And my understanding is derived from my understanding of the American political system: The Democrats – which embody the legislative power – make some sort of an opposition not to the executive power that the President represents, because this wouldn’t make any sense (they are separate powers), but to the head of government that the U.S. President also embodies. But I cannot fully understand this massive time and effort invested in the impeachment procedure that there is no more time and energy left for the ratification of the USMCA trade deal on which depend millions of jobs, because in case this president is impeached, according to the U.S. Constitution, it’s the U.S. Vice-President that takes his place, who is also a Republican and I suppose a good friend of the current U.S. President. So what is then all this impeachment procedure about? A personal matter between the Democrats and the Republican current U.S. President, in order to replace him with the Republican Vice-President?! Anyway, it’s the free choice of the Democratic Party to focus more on one matter than on the other.

I disagree with the ranking of political priorities by the Democratic Party. Basically nobody can prevent the Democratic Party from investing time, energy and public money on something that they consider to be a priority: the impeachment procedure of the U.S. President. This procedure will stop by itself when there will be no more evidence or when the evidences will prove to be inconclusive. The electorate will judge whether or not the Democrats made good use of their mandate and of the citizens’ money focusing on this ranking of prioritization, in which impeachment comes first and USMCA – that is the focus of this paper – comes second. The electorate of the Democrats sent its representatives to the Congress with a political mandate to work in the advantage of the Americans. To my mind, the impeachment procedure – that the Democrats are so fond of – is not more in the advantage of the citizens than the ratification of the USMCA trade agreement already ratified by Mexico and Canada. Furthermore, having had the ranking of priorities done right, the USMCA ratification would have also costed time and energy, but it wouldn’t have involved the spending of any public money. On the contrary, the ratification of this regional trade deal generates money and jobs. The Democrats consider a priority to spent time, energy and money on a second impeachment procedure, postponing the ratification of a deal on which depend at least 12 million jobs, and focus on a procedure that has no guarantee of success, without too much interest for the electorate and no economic evident advantages for the citizens.

All in all, NAFTA did not include any provision for the representatives of the three signatories’ states to periodically meet and update the treaty. Such a provision is mentioned in the ‘Closer Economic Relationship’ (CER) between Australia and New Zealand.

            The first CER agreement was signed in 1922 and it was a trade agreement. In 1933 it evolved towards a regional agreement between the two neighboring countries giving each other preferential commercial tariffs and some special rates of duty. In 1966, their agreement became NAFTA: New Zealand Australia Free Trade Agreement.  The Australian-New Zealand 1966 NAFTA agreed on removal of tariffs and quantitative restrictions on 80 percent of their trade until the 1970s.  They agreed to review their regional free trade agreement in 1988, in 1992 and in 1995. And with every step they made the economic cooperation was added new elements, but it stayed and it stays an economic integration process with no political integration aim as in the case of the EU.

            The North American NAFTA was also a regional trade agreement. And so is the USMCA. It does not include any provisions of political integration and on USMCA to become a supra-national genuine new state. Following the example of the New Zealand-Australia NAFTA of having stipulated to periodically review their trade agreement, I was wondering if the North American NAFTA would still have faced this deadlock. I think yes, because having mentioned to periodically review the agreement does not necessarily means that the Democrats would have hurried to ratify it, if this is not such a priority for them as the impeachment procedure is.

            In the meantime, the American farmers thought of a very original way to urge the Congress to put them before any party politics: They come up with a sensational musical parody to the old famous song ‘YMCA’ that they called ‘USMCA’ (to listen, click here):

            ‘We need to pass the USMCA

            We can grow everything here

            Trump man

            Trade would give us a hand

            Nancy

            We know you’re the woman

            who can get this deal through Congress

            Farmers…’ (the end)

Creative Writing Exercise # 12: Playing with Antonyms. Previously and Currently on ‘The Nigel Farage Show’ on LBC

by Laura Lai/Uncategorized

No, I’m not sad. But I’m not over the moon either: It’s almost three weeks without ‘The Nigel Farage Show’ on LBC. Three weeks. Already?!

Before the unreasonable will jump to unrealistic conclusions about a reasonable person like me and my realistic reasons why I followed this show live or registered, I should say that this 1-hour show was relevant to me, because it was most often on Brexit and with lot of different callers from distinct areas having less similar points of view.

           

Previously on the show:

            ‘How much are you willing to compromise to get a deal?’

‘How much am I willing to compromise what to get a deal? Because I’m unwilling to sacrifice anything. And so is the counterpart.’

‘Has John Bercow helped or hindered the Brexit debate?’

‘Colored it!’ I would have answered.

‘Ha! Ha! What do you mean?’

‘I think he colored it with his ties.’

‘You like ties, right?’

‘That’s not right! I don’t like ties, connections, networks; for the incorruptible, it sounds like corruption – also an ugly type and hard to eradicate corruption of somebody who knows somebody who knows somebody, and later we notice that we don’t know anybody, not even the person next to us or with whom we spent years.  But those ties that Bercow was wearing were too beautiful to pass unnoticed.’

‘Right! Next caller is from…’

I can understand the possible reasons why is impossible to have this show on the radio. The show was part of my research on Brexit for a drama I’m writing. I was feeling connected to my writing, constantly reflecting on it. It was also interesting to hear so many opinions expressing themselves freely on radio in this show. I was not feeling disconnected from democracy. I can’t understand bans and censorships; I find them really uninteresting.

            More on ‘Previously on ‘The Nigel Farage Show’ on LBC:

‘How do you feel about Boris Johnson breaking his promise on us leave on October 31^st?’

‘I think this Brexit trick is survivable, in order to enjoy the British Brexit treat.’

‘Does he owe us an apology for postponing Brexit?’

‘I’m not included in the collective ‘us’: I’m an outsider. And in order not to be an insider of the EU anymore, one only needs to relocate: “New place, new luck.’ An individual can leave without a deal and without negotiations. But Boris Johnson apologized. It’s unluckily for many politicians to do so. I took it as a sign of strength, not of weakness; of being a human politician, not an inhuman one, a humble British politician, not an arrogant European one, etc.’

The timing was good. This show stopped, when I was quite ready with my drama writing, but the addiction to listen to the LBC’s debates is unstoppable, and I downloaded the app on my smart phone. ‘The Nigel Farage Show’ on LBC sounded a joyful political discussion on a less joyful political topic – as most political topics are. What’s that? Listen…

             

Currently on ‘The Nigel Farage Show’:

‘With 30 days to go until the 31^st of January, do you think that we’re leaving with a deal, without a deal or we are not leaving at all?’

I thought that Britain and Brexit are already released from ‘House arrest’… .

Radio Drama Review: ‘A Slight Ache’ by Harold Pinter

by Laura Lai/Review

The play ‘A Slight Ache’ written by the Nobel Laureate for Literature (2005) Harold Pinter was broadcasted by BBC Radio 4 in 2001 (first broadcasted by BBC 3 in 1959) on the occasion of Pinter’s 70s birthday. [Fortunately, this British dramatist was alive when appreciated by peers and the public. My point is that sometimes and some people have a … ‘funny’ way of appreciating the works of somebody: they despise him/her badly while alive and they love him/her dearly and his/her work post-mortem.]

The upload of this play on You Tube gathered different opinions. If the play is the way I understood it, in my view is brilliant. Really brilliant! In fact, the play ‘A Slight Ache’, directed by Ned Chaillet, describes a day in the married couple of Flora (Jill Johnson) and Edward (Harold Pinter) - in the longest day of the year starting with 9.30 am – when Edward is annoyed by a match seller sitting outside their back gate that they succeed in inviting in. I’m not surprised that at the end of it, some of those who listened the play on You Tube (as I did) have asked themselves: ‘What was this all about?’

My view is that this play is about marriage and is brilliantly organized around the match seller (Who is he? How is he? Why is he sitting there? Since when, for how long, etc.) and on the dichotomy male-female approach on different issues (meaning complimentarily or opposition).

            For example, Edward thinks that he got himself a partner when he married Flora – that was beautiful and compassionate.  By the way he treats her though, he got himself a servant: ‘do that!’, ‘bring me that!’ etc. At its turn, Flora accepts to be treated like a servant:

            ‘Would you like to have lunch in the garden?’

The dichotomy starts the moment of the killing of a wasp in the very beginning of the play: for her is an ‘awful experience’, while for him it’s a ‘wonderful day’. The actual inviting of the match seller – that for Edward is ‘an impostor’ and ‘there is something fake about him’, while for her he is ‘a harmless old man’ who may barely sees and hears – is a linguistic treat for those speaking English as a foreign language, as in my case, to hear some original British English:

            ‘Would you care for a cup of tea?’ Or

            ‘Would you care for goose? We have goose for lunch.’

Flora was sent by her husband to bring the match seller in and this was her approach. To me, at this stage the dichotomy is very evident: not only that Flora tells her husband ‘a woman will often succeed, but a man will invariable fail’, but also in the questions that a man, Edward, addresses to the match seller and those that a woman, Flora, addresses to the same match seller. He wants to offer a drink, he praises himself with his work, his essays, his collections, his maps, but Flora is more into sex ‘as a vital experience’ discovering with fascination ‘the solid old boy’, not the ‘jelly’ as her husband thought. The ‘solid old boy’ who’s now ‘ugly and smell’ who needs a ‘bath and a scrub’ – How sick does it sound?!

            Edward is also into the match seller's boyhood: ‘Have you ever kicked the ball?’, he asks. This question made me laugh. I’m a passionate football watcher, but I never kicked the ball. Never been interested to. Instead, I loved playing a ball game, which I played yearlong – that all people of my generation played – in which I loved to be a ‘goose’ (my favorite position in the field J). I’m personally very happy and very amused by the fact that Pinter’s play reminded me of this game called ‘The Hunters and the Geese’ for which you need … of course two teams. All children wanting to play this game put one hand on the ball, one above the other. The child holding the ball starts removing the hands saying ‘hunter’, ‘goose’, ‘hunter’, ‘goose’ until the last hand. In this way are the two teams decided. The ‘hunters’ divide themselves into two teams that sit on the two sides of a play field that we decide how big to be. In the middle sit the ‘geese’. The hunters pass the ball to each other trying to hit with the ball a ‘goose’. I was always the last of the ‘geese’: I loved to turn, to jump over the ball, to bend, etc. in order not to be hit and not to be out. Indeed, I used to be a hard-to-hit ‘goose’... a talented ‘goose’! J. Sometimes some ‘hunters’ (girls and boys alike, like the geese) ‘adapted’ the rules and they were setting at the beginning of the game that if your skirt was touched or the larger blouse, than it’s considered that the ‘goose’ is hit and is out. As I don’t like to argue on people’s rules adaptations, I played in trousers. Well, I wish I could say ‘Thank you, Harold, for reminding me of this game!’

These above mentioned points are not the only reasons I believe the play is brilliant. I wonder – as I’m not British and I only shortly lived in Britain – how customary is it for a salesman to sell matches in front of a gate in Britain’s countryside? Or Pinter intentionally chose a match salesman to point on two men comparing each other and to point on a man and a woman matching more or less in a marriage? A match makes also a flame. That’s the way some marriages start and then some marriages become – as Flora and Edward’s marriage – ‘A Slight Ache’, meaning a slight dull and steady pain.

Remember that a dramatist is first thinking of all these things, all these elements that he wants to express and then he finds a form – a drama from – to wrap in words what was first in his mind. It’s complex, it’s difficult and it requires lots of craft. The way I understood the play, I find it brilliant. What do you think?

Enjoy it!

Old Movies’ Review: ‘The Gold Rush’ (1925)

by Laura Lai/Review

The movie ‘The Gold Rush’ (1925) written and directed by Charlie Chaplin is a silent movie that left me speechless from several points of view, but I will focus on the human psychology and film making technology. The story is a dramatic comedy inspired by a historical real fact: the Gold Rush to Alaska.

Charlie Chaplin – the writer of this movie – proved to be an extraordinary observer of human psychology and people’s behavior in relationship to other people. Therefore, to me this movie is an artistic definition of life as a journey that people do – despite the hardships – for gold (meaning ‘money’), food, fun and for finding love. It is in this way that this movie symbolically unfolds. And within each of these themes, Chaplin analyzed and marvelously illustrated human psychology. It is the story from poverty to richness and from singlehood to marriage of a tramp (Charlie Chaplin).

            The tramp goes to Alaska in search for gold. A storm comes that ‘rages’ for days. He is stuck in a house with another man, the Big Jim (Mark Swain) – who has already found some gold. Being stuck for so many days, they start to be hungry and Big Jim has hallucinations imagining the tramp as a big chicken. The tramp understands what was going on in Big Jim’s mind and he hides the knife and the rifle. For Thanksgiving dinner they boil a shoe (with the shoe laces). It reminded me of war stories, when shoes were boiled and eaten because they were made of leather and the shoe laces were somehow wrapped and improvised as cigarettes. Chaplin might have been inspired by these historical facts, especially that in this movie he mentions the Chilkoot Pass in Alaska – ‘a test of men’s endurance’ – a historical fact in the Gold Rush to Alaska. War time was a period of such endurance and such of a tremendous great sacrifice that any candle we light or any flower we bring is too little.

            After the storm each of them continues their search for gold. The tramp reaches the city that has a dance floor, where people have fun and where he meets a woman called Georgia. For him, it was love at first sight and he was sleeping with her picture under his pillow. The man back and now: The same passionate lover of pictures with women! Chaplin fairly noticed that the probability for a single man to sleep with a picture of a female under his pillow is greater than that of a woman sleeping with a picture of a man under her pillow. When Georgia discovers her picture and learns the innocent true feelings that the tramp has for her, she takes such a decision that points again Chaplin’s great spirit of observation of human behavior. Usually, when two people like each other, somehow the people around them feel the need and have the impulse to tease them both, most of the times embarrassing them. [Don’t ask me why people like to do that, because I have never done this to anybody; it simply has never been my business!] But Chaplin goes further than that: Georgia and her close friends decide to mock tramp’s innocent feelings by inviting themselves to the New Year’s Eve dinner. For this dinner the tramp borrowed, begged and shoveled the snow, in order to be a great host for those girls that never showed up, as they were having fun enjoying New Year party at the dance hall.

            Another sensational scene from the point of view of human psychology and people’s behavior is a scene in which Georgia writes to her boyfriend, Jack, a very short note apologizing. She was apologizing for a scene in which Jack was asking for kisses and love, and the nervous Georgia slapped him. But men find kisses and love somewhere else. And the viewers see Jack at the table with several other women. In his arrogance, Jack shows the letter to the other people at his table, who learn that Georgia asked forgiveness from him. He passes his note to the tramp, who really believes that it came from Georgia apologizing for the dinner farce. He looks for Georgia, as the Big Jim looks for him to take him back to the house where they were previously stuck, and make him a multi-millionaire. But the tramp looks for Georgia and avoids Big Jim. In the end, he goes with Big Jim and they both become very rich due to gold.

            The multi-millionaire tramp wears now two fur coats on him, as clothing might have been an indicator of wealth in Chaplin’s time, too. [Nowadays it’s quite a tricky indicator: one may have lots of bank loans and debts, in order to show off with cloths and cars. Then, to me, is also the issue of the kind of business the person is in for that amount of wealth. I personally don’t like either loans or debts. And people’s evaluation of what I have doesn’t interest me at all. I truly believe that all people should mind their own problems and if they don’t have enough problems of their own and have free time, to enjoy it, rather than to occupy it with things that aren’t their business.] Although the tramp wears two fur coats, when he sees a cigarette butt, he picks it up. To me, it was a marvelous way of the director to illustrate in a silent movie – which I think is more challenging – that ‘old habits die hard’.

‘The Gold Rush’ is also a picture of the American society of those times, and particularly of the emancipated women, who smoke, who invite men to dance and who invite themselves to a man’s dinner. The New Year’s fireworks are actually some gun shots – that was very funny. I wished, though, that the director not only to brilliantly indicate that the time period of the movie is from Thanksgiving to New Year, but also to let us know – those who will enjoy his movie 94 years later – which year was that New Year party. To me, this is an important detail, because although the movie is done in 1925, it is about the Gold Rush that was at the end of the 1800s.

            This movie impressed me technically, too. It simply made me even more curious about discovering the technical details of those times’ film-making. I was wondering what were those shoe and shoe laces made of in 1925 that looked like a shoe, but the actors could bite from. In the scene with the hallucination of the tramp being a chicken – just enjoying playing with words - the chicken is well done! How could they make that scene of the house balancing over an edge? What about so many scenes with snow? I don’t believe there was any artificial snow used in movies at that time! And there are also two scenes with a real bear.

The fact that Charlie Chaplin is one of the greatest symbols of the silent movie is a fact. In ‘The Gold Rush’ it was great to discover Charlie Chaplin’s fine qualities as observer of people’s psychology and behavior. And writing is usually based on these fine observations about the way people are, think and behave. I personally believe that a person is enough to be given power, in order for the others to see his real evil or divine nature. The former will use the power to show its superiority in all ways and to enjoy destroying lives and destinies playing God following some ill scenarios unfolding in his mind. The later will use power to help, to improve, to build, to bring healthiness and happiness, and usually without expecting anything in return.

Enjoy the movie!

Creative Writing Exercise # 11: On the Edge of a Ditch

by Laura Lai/Uncategorized

ON THE EDGE OF A DITCH[i]

(Scene: In front of Downing Street No.10, Jeremy Corbyn digging a ditch, Boris Johnson coming on bike, and Larry – the cat)

Boris Johnson (parking his bike). Good morning, Jeremy!

Jeremy Corbyn (digging). Good morning to you, too, Boris!

B.J. (on the edge of the ditch). What’s the digging for?! Trying new skills?

J.C. (keeps digging). I’m digging a ditch.

B.J. I can see that. Is it for me?

J.C. (keeps digging).

B.J. Not too deep though. Only until January.

J. C. (digs no more). Indeed, it’s deep enough.

B.J. Unless… up to here (he points at random in the ditch) was the ditch until June, then until October, then… (bending) until January. It’s deep! You’re digging a ditch for all Tories, aren’t you?

J.C. Why would I dig a ditch for all Tories? Some of them are on my side!

B.J. Auch! That hurts!

J.C. Sorry! But you know how things stand.

B.J. And you dig such a deep ditch only for me? Come on, Jeremy! I didn’t mean it literally. We are both politicians and you know that I can’t say that I’ll try, but we need to be firm.

J.C. I don’t dig this deep ditch either for you or for the Tories, but for Brexit!

B.J. (relieved). Excellent! I actually agree with you!

J.C. (surprised). You do?!

B.J. (firm). I believe that the referendum on Brexit was a seed of democracy in the European Union. Burry it! And it will germinate, it will grow higher and it will blossom even more beautifully than before!

J.C. (putting his shovel away). I’ll see you in the House, Mr. Prime Minister. (He exits)

B.J. (loud). I’ll join you soon! (alone) Kitty-kitty! Larry! Kitty-kitty! Come here!

LARRY (comes).

B. J. Here you are! Come on in! There is breakfast for you: Steak of meat imported from Germany with British eggs.

LARRY. Miau! Miau! (it makes few steps away)

B.J. Kitty-kitty! What’s this protest for? Did you become vegetarian over night? All right, I’m sure we can find some British fish sticks imported from the European Union with some seeds on top.

(Boris Johnson and Larry enter Downing Street No. 10)

---

[i] If any of the characters feel offended, I would like to apologize in advance (including to Larry – the cat!).