Tag Archives: BoJo

A short reign

It rather looks like it’s 1649 again at the Palace of Westminster, and a blonde head is about to roll in a few days or weeks time. The parallels with that time are rather interesting. In seeking to try Charles I, parliament declared itself being able to legislate alone, as has just happened. The charge against the King was that of treason against the good of the country by ac ting to further his own personal interests, which has also been the mantra of the 21 rebels and others.

And so, the events of January 30th 1649 seem about to unfold again, albeit metaphorically. Thoughts of those days were triggered by Grumpy wondering who will be taking the role of Oliver Cromwell in this story. [ As an aside, the painting by Paul Delaroche (most known in the UK perhaps for the evocative depiction of the “Execution and Lady Jane Grey” in the National Gallery) entitled “Cromwell and the corpse of Charles I”, 1831, shows Cromwell as having to Grumpy’s eye an uncanny likeness to one John Bercow.]

It will not, of course, be the revered speaker. However, having spent the last few days castigating BoJo for setting aside the constitution and tradition, the various players will seek to do just that in selecting his predecessor. The convention for appointing a PM when the incumbent has lost a majority is that the role is taken by the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition; but the ‘no Brexit full stop’ rebels, having used the Labour Party as usefull idiots to remove Boris cannot now countenance letting loose Corbyn/Macdonnell to wreck the country even more comprehensively than the worse of their Project fear Brexit projections.

Interesting times.

BoJo strikes !

Well, BoJo has played his hand to defeat the forces seeking to revoke Article 50. The final outcome is now very uncertain, but voices screaming ‘undemocratic’ and ‘unprecedented’ seem to have lost their memory of key events over the history of the sorry Brexit saga.

Reminder: BoJo is PM because due process was followed in replacing Theresa May, and he was elected via a majority of Conservative MP’s and a majority of Party members. This is exactly the same process which brought May, Blair, Brown etc into office. That many of those who put him into office are now whinging seems odd.

Further, none of those MP’s or party members can suggest that they did not know what BoJo was about. From the outset of his PM campaign he made it clear that ‘do or die’ he would leave on 31st October ‘with or without a deal’; that’s pretty clear. Compare and contrast this clear message with the vacillation, U turns, opaqueness and duplicity of those opposed to Brexit.

Jo Swinson (see http://grumpy.eastover.org.uk/jo-swinson-is-a-confused-hypocritical-flip-flop/ ) as one of the prime drivers behind ‘stop Boris’ has always been clear about her goal – to stop Brexit at all at any cost and revoke Article 50. Given that totally undemocratic goal in face of the referendum, it is particularly hypocritical that she should be leading the shouts of ‘foul’ given her own (and that of her aligned partners) duplicity in seeking to frustrate the real democratic mandate to leave.

Clearly, there are hugely influential voices opposed to this, such as Grieve and Hammond; but they are surrounded by has-beens such as Anna Soubry, who having made a wrong call on her future, is now deservedly inconsequential. She however still seeks to deny the process that put BoJo in power was legitimate, but her most irritating line is the ‘people didn’t vote for’ no deal in the referendum. It’s the sheer mind-numbing arrogance of her claim to know what the populace – all 17+m of them – voted for which sets her out as an unthinking intellectual pygmy. Hammond, despite his probably superior knowledge of the likely after effects of no deal, nevertheless sat in his seat in a cabinet in which his boss had set her stall out by repeatedly saying ‘no deal is better than a bad deal’ and took the tax payers shilling and kept the ministerial car.

Well, MP”s – including most of the (re)moaners voted down (with an historic majority) the only possible deal the EU would countenance as being the very definition of a bad deal. Bojo is merely fulfilling May’s strategy and implementing ‘no deal’. Time to do it.

Confused Coveneny

Simon Coveney has reacted to BoJo’s pronouncement on the backstop, but the
former’s brain seems locked in some endless Euro-loop. The Guardian reported him as saying “I think from a Brexit negotiating perspective, it was a very bad day yesterday” and that Johnson’s approach “is not the basis for an
agreement” .

But wait, the EU have consistently said that there will be NO negotiating ; the Withdrawal Agreement is the only one on offer – so what negotiation is he possibly referring to ? He also said that Johnson’s approach to Brexit talks as putting the UK “on a collision course with the EU” .

The position is simple. The EU has said that the Withdrawal Agreement is not
for negotiation and they will not open it. OK, that’s clear. Coveney (and the rest of the |EU) are also aware that the Withdrawal Agreement will not get through the House of Commons, having failed 3 times to be passed. That’s also clear.

Coveney also said that BoJo had set a collision course and “I think only he can answer the question as to why he is doing that”. The reality is nothing of the sort, and Coveney knows this. Simon Coveney can answer this if he thinks for 10 seconds rather than playing PR games. The impasse has nothing to do with Boris.

There is something about the EU which fries the brains of its politicians from grasping simple logic. Someone should explain slowly to him (a) the EU has said the Withdrawal Agreement will not be re-opened to negotiation (b) it cannot pass in the House of Commons. Ergo, the collision course was set long before BoJo got into Number 10. There is no solution if both of these things are true, period. How hard is this to grasp ??

BoJo is simply recognising a reality that May refused to acknowledge. The backstop is the primary reason for the failure to pass the Withdrawal Agreement and Bojo is merely stating what is obvious to all except seemingly 649 people in Westminster (the 650th being Boris). This is what frustrates the general populace so.

The impasse can only be broken by altering one or both of these constraints, which is unlikely to happen, so outwith some unforeseen shift in attitudes by both parties, the law of the UK applies and on 1st November 2019 we are an independent country.