We have refrained from commenting overmuch on Boris Johnson’s accession to the role of PM in the UK in this and other fora for the same reason that one does not comment on car crashes, especially when they are completely predictable. It’s just bad form to mock the afflicted.
But be under no misapprehension, Dear Reader – for all that his acolytes pretend he is some kind of wayward genius, Boris Johnson has now shown himself up as a blustering incompetent.
The proroguing of Parliament – denied by Number 10 for a month despite the planning for it now being revealed – is and was an anti-democratic coup designed to stifle Parliamentary oversight of one of the most crucial periods in British history since the second world war, irregardless of waffle from Rees-Mogg and others.
The British people know it, which is why they have roused themselves from their somnambular walk towards a No Deal Brexit and taken to the streets in their hundreds of thousands.
If Johnson wanted to unite the anti-Brexit forces he can hardly have done a better job than shutting down Parliament to stifle inconvenient debate.
Remember: as many have noted in the Twitterverse and elsewhere, the British cut the head off the last person to do that. For all that nothing excites British passion as much as a good game of football or the perennial battle for the cricket Ashes, they are rather partial to their Parliament being allowed to do its thing.
And withdrawing the whip from some of the best Tory MPs in the House who dared to exercise critical thought in the vote yesterday in London simply reveals him as both a strategic idiot for making the threat, and an even bigger fool for following through on it. The sheer hypocrisy of the move when this sanction was never applied to row after row of Brexiteers in vote after vote in the House reveals the total vacuity of the Government’s position – a fact which will now be pointed out repeatedly by the commentariat.
What we think will happen now is that the Opposition and the Tory Rebels will resist any calls for a General Election until after they have taken No Deal off the table, which act will then leave Johnson as ham-strung in negotiations with the EU as poor old Theresa May was for three years.
And even if he could subsequently successfully call a General Election – by no means certain, as the House will have to give him a 2/3rds majority to do so – there is no guarantee he will win it, as he will be effectively saying “OK, I messed up my Brexit attempt despite telling you I’d fix it … now we’re back where we were three years ago, but please give the Conservatives another chance because I’m a better Prime Minister than Theresa May was.”
Hardly a convincing call, when he’s just shown himself to be anything but competent.
The British headlines tell an unmissable story. “Brexit bomshell: Boris loses control” (The Mirror), “Humiliation for Johnson” (Guardian), “Johnson loses control” (i), “PM loses historic vote” (The Times), “Johnson strategy in ruins” (Financial Times). Overseas comment is hardly kinder: “Boris Johnson’s populist playbook implodes” said the Washington Post.
A Labour/Lib Dem/Nationalist Coalition government is at least as likely as a Tory win, especially when you consider that Brexit is much less popular in Wales and Scotland, and that the Brexit Party waits in the wings ready to snap at the Tories’ heels, splitting the pro-Brexit vote, should October 31st be revealed as the day Britain actually did not, yet again, leave the EU.
Let’s put this in perspective. Johnson just got thrashed on the floor of the House in his SECOND DAY actually in the Parliament. No amount of hairy chest-beating in the Tory leadership election or since makes up for that simple fact. Nor that he has managed to outlaw two previous Chancellors of the Exchequer, the grandson of his political idol Nicholas Soames – a harmless old fuddy duddy at the best of times – and one of the contenders for the Tory Leadership – Rory Stewart – who proved himself very popular with the public. (And who may yet replace Johnson.)
Credit where credit is due. Let’s never forget who foisted this chaos on the British people, and the world, in a staggering failure of political strategy and leadership.
Perhaps the Parliament should pass a law banning Old Etonians from being PM? Remember this chaos was begun by the equally politically incompetent David Cameron.
As we have always said, if Brexit ever does succeed, it will be a wishy-washy cobbled-together Brexit which achieves none of the goals of the Leave campaign – a Brexit in name only – except to remove Britain from the discussions at the heart of Europe of which it should, of course, be a part.
Our prediction is that Boris Johnson will one day be seen as an irrelevant blip on the road to that outcome.
We think a Labour-LibDem-Nationalist majority in the House whenever the next election occurs will offer the people a second referendum based on some compromise deal of which the facts are actually known, as well as the option to stay in the EU, and that this time the “stay in the EU” option will actually be in the majority.
And then, at long last, the British Parliament can get back to actually governing.
Under those circumstances, we also think it is highly likely that the British Conservative Party will break into two parties – one pro EU and one against – and they will condemn themselves to a generation of irrelevance by keeping on talking about Europe when no one else ever wants to hear about it again.
#Brexit #BrexitShambles #BorisJohnson
It is too early to write their political obituary, although it would be equally foolish not to acknowledge that as a force, British Liberalism, that great and honourable political philosophy of Gladstone, Asquith, Lloyd George, Jo Grimond, David Steel and others, is currently looking pretty sickly on life support.
And just as an aside, Dear Reader, the Washington Post has just christened Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott as the most unpopular leader in the free world, after a swingeing “austerity budget” delivered a week ago, which is sitting somewhat uncomfortably on the shoulders of the population of the richest country in the Western world which is not at all sure it needs an austerity budget at all, thank you very much.
Well, This Is What I Think 