[Ed:there is no photo of the new PM as of yet, so Larry, the cat at 10 Downing Street, is graciously standing in for him.]
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Although we are a while away from knowing who our next Prime Minister is going to be, this month I have decided to do something a bit different and write an inaugural speech for whoever will be Mrs May’s successor. How close these words will be to what he actually says remains to be seen, but something along these lines is definitely what we ought to be hearing:
“I would like to thank my colleagues in the Conservative Party – both my fellow MPs and the loyal party members – for giving me this chance to serve my country as Prime Minister. I am taking office at a crucial time in our nation’s history as we prepare to leave the European Union and I would like to say at the outset that my first priority after taking office will be to ensure that this mandate, given to us three years ago by the British people, will indeed be fulfilled without any further hold up.
The strength of the vote for the Brexit Party at the European Parliamentary elections – along with our own dismal performance – was a wake-up call for us. We, the Conservatives, have to become the real Brexit Party. We have to ensure that there are no more delays to our departure from the European Union and I have no intention of asking for a further extension. Come hell or high water, with or without an agreement, we will be leaving the EU on 31st October this year.
We have no alternative. Our party faces its biggest challenge since the repeal of the corn laws in 1846. Another delay to Brexit and I fear for its future and indeed for the future of our country as a whole. We need to rebuild the trust of those millions of voters who deserted us in the two elections in May and this will only be possible if we do not further renege on our manifesto promise.
Of course, I do not want to leave the EU without some sort of arrangement for trade in place, but it has to be an arrangement which does not turn us into a vassal state. As you know, I was a consistent opponent of the withdrawal agreement negotiated with the European Union by my predecessor because I did not believe it to be in our nation’s interests. After all, we all know that around Europe, it was described as a capitulation and that Martin Selmayr, chief of staff to the President of the European Commission Jean-Claude Juncker, told a group of EU officials last November that “the power is with us” and that he wanted the withdrawal agreement to show that Brexit doesn’t work.
Well, I believe it can work and it will work under an alternative exit arrangement. We can make a success of Brexit and I fully intend to do so. I believe in Brexit with all my heart. My track record is sufficient evidence of this and I intend to sell Brexit both to those of my colleagues in Parliament and also to the general public who are yet to be convinced.
And this, I believe, brings me to the consideration of why we have reached the state we are in. Where has the enthusiasm gone? Why have we heard so little from the government over the last three years about the many positive benefits of leaving the European Union? Our fishermen can be free from the shackles of the Common Fisheries Policy which has decimated their industry. We can become a champion for free trade at a time when protectionism is raising its ugly head. We can more easily form trade links with the dynamic, growing economies of Asia and Latin America from outside the European Union.
Our armed forces will no longer be involved in the EU’s empire building and will return to being under national control. We can review all those laws put onto our statute books by the EU and if they are not in our national interest and did not originate with a global body to which we will still belong, we can rewrite or discard them. UK citizens will no longer be subject to the vagaries of the Napoleonic-inquisitorial justice systems on the continent as a result of a European Arrest Warrant being served on them.
Our young people, who have been the least enthusiastic supporters of leaving the EU but are struggling to get onto the housing ladder, will benefit from the reduction in immigration that will result from the end of free movement of people. There will be less pressure on our housing market as a result, while at the same time, their desire to travel, work and study abroad are unlikely greatly to be affected.
Above all, the whole country will benefit by being governed by people who are accountable to them, with unelected bureaucrats in Brussels no longer having more influence over our day-to-day lives than our local MPs.
In summary, we have a great future ahead of us as the leaders of Free Europe, an example for other countries who may not feel that the EU is for them.
However, we have yet to arrive at this point and I am under no illusions about the challenges we face in the coming months. I am very aware that the margin of victory for the leave campaign in 2016 was not that huge and the delays in our departure has polarised public opinion. I want to address this by reaching out to those who supported remaining in the EU.
For example, in choosing my cabinet and other ministerial positions, I will not make it a sine qua non that every ministerial position must be filled by a long-standing Brexiteer. Some of my colleagues who campaigned to stay in the EU now believe that we can prosper as an independent country. Some are still personally not enthusiastic about leaving, but have shown by their words and actions their genuine commitment to honour the result of the 2016 referendum.
Whichever way anyone voted three years ago, my main concern is where they stand now. If they share my determination to deliver what we promised to deliver, I will be very happy to consider them for ministerial office, but what I – and indeed the country as a whole – cannot accept is a government in a state of paralysis because of the lack of consensus at cabinet level.
I will also be looking for civil servants who are committed to delivering Brexit. Anyone with their own agenda will have no place in my team. And while I’m at it, I will be setting up a team to trawl through all our statute books since the Middle Ages as I’m sure that lurking somewhere in acts of Parliament since 1377 is a procedure that will enable me to remove that horrid little oik who currently occupies the Speaker’s chair and has disgraced it for far too long.
[To be continued in tomorrow’s INDEPENDENCE Daily]
from PMB I’ll vote for Larry. Apart from anything else surely cats are not fazed by hallowe’en. How about Larry for Speaker?
Lovely cat. If he was made PM instead of most of the so -called humans in the Tory and other parties, Britain would be saved ! I’d rather have him as my MP than the one I’ve got !
“As you know, I was a consistent opponent of the withdrawal agreement negotiated with the European Union by my predecessor”.
This is not true at all for Hunt and even for Boris it is incorrect, as he voted for May’s surrender treaty the third time she put it to the vote.
Yes, nicely put Mr W, however I would respectfully like to present readers of this article with my own idea of what I dream the next PM to say:-
“It is an honour to be in the position of being able to get our beloved country back its freedoms. We have wasted the last three years being lied to by a Prime Minister who tried desperately to pretend to get us out whilst knowing she was keeping us in. She calmed the doubters out in the shires with soothing lies such as ‘No Deal is Better than a Bad Deal’. She was naive enough on the European stage to think that a binary choice of In the EU or Out could magically be compromised to please everybody. She succeeded in one thing which was to please Nobody. People who voted for Leave didn’t vote for Out but it had to have a deal attached. They just wanted OUT.
Much as I would like to leave the European Union immediately, I know this would entail votes in Parliament and these would encourage amendments to legislation by Remainers aimed at stopping this action. The EU has made it crystal clear they will not be negotiating on Brexit any more, and to attempt to do so will just further make us look a laughing stock in the eyes of the world. And so the government will be introducing no new legislation for the remainder of this parliament, and will be taking the Default option of No Deal on its legal triggering at the end of October.
I sincerely hope my honourable, individual colleagues in the House will consider which side their bread is buttered and not try to impede this course of action. To do so, will render our entire political class as totally despised and seen for what it is.
And above all, Democracy itself will be considered DEAD by our bosses, THE BRITISH PEOPLE!”
– Couldn’t hurt, could it? For every political snowflake collapsing with the vapours after such a speech, there will be two others looking at the new Prime Minister saying: “Yeah! Ma Man!”
The frailty of Boris is patently obvious – but the self-claimed great ‘entrepreneur’ Jeremy Hunt needs to be exposed.
Start with Wikipedia and you will find just how ‘trustworthy’ (his words!) Hunt actually is. Together with the fact that (and I have nothing against his wife!) the very close Chinese connection to a British Prime Minister MUST pose some kind of a threat, if not now – in the future.
We are now faced with almost exactly the dilemma they had in the USA – which is they and we were and are faced with choosing the lesser of two ‘evils’.
President Trump is less than ideal perhaps as a ‘ man of the people’ – but the alternative was?…..Yes……….a Clinton/Obama/Clinton Triumvirate.
Unlikely as it would be – Farage makes these two Conservative prospective ‘leaders’ look like schoolboys.
The next six months are going to be VERY interesting.
LEADERSHIP is strange, as it is not necessarily universal through all time. ….. Think Winston Churchill through the war years, and you have the best in the world bar none. – Then again, think of this same great Gentleman who took over from Labour’s Clem Attlee, and he was at the very least, lack-luster, almost certainly due to age !
There is a parallel between then and now. Someone who has been lack-luster, just might within the circumstances given from the EU, be able to pick up the reigns of UK/GB and drive our Nation to independent success. I mention no name as I’m sure you are able to fill in that void, and I hope we all get it right !
The substitution of a picture of ‘Larry the Cat’ for a picture of the future prime minister was probably meant as a joke, but in fact I am of the increasing belief that Larry would in fact probably make the better leader of the Conservative Party, over and above what is presently on offer. He certainly couldn’t do any worse. The fact that a conservative MP has won his vote of no confidence against de-selection sums it up for me. The Conservatives cannot be trusted to deliver Brexit by 31st October 2019 or any other time for that matter. We need a true leader at the helm of this country, and that leader is Nigel Farage. He needs to get himself into parliamment as quickly as possible to mastermind the success of the Brexit Party at a future general election.
I am sick to death of people saying the the vote to Leave margin was very small – over 1.4 million votes is a significant and decisive margin – and when you compare this with a recent parliamentary vote to keep no deal off the table, which was won by ONE, yes, I repeat ONE vote in which a convicted criminal who broke a curfew was allowed to vote – not one person said this was a SMALL margin.
Leaving the EU on WTO terms is not NO deal but T H E deal, so can we stop talking about NO DEAL!
As for David Gauke surviving a vote of no confidence, I would like to assure him that his days are numbered!
many mp’s get voted in with less than a score of votes
Nigel Farage denounced the UKIP members who voted for Anne Marie Waters to be leader as ‘racists’. I might trust him to deliver Brexit but nothing else, having been betrayed by him once already.
Keith : I wouldn’t trust him to deliver Brexit either. He supported the last extension of art 50, presumably to get his and his friends’ snouts in the MEP piggy trough. Not the action of a true Brexiteer I wouldn’t say. Stuart Agnew is I believe the source re this. I honestly think he is part of a cruel cynical Establishment charade keeping people’s hopes up, only for them to be dashed.
I agree he has made a lot of enemies of people who put their trust and faith in him and have been badly let down. I still believe UKIP have a roll to play when the Brexit organisation falls apart.
LisaB………….UKIP are dead in the water. They have had their day and spectacularly blew it. I was an activist, election candidate and branch officer with UKIP for seven years, but now there is absolutely no way back for them, no matter who leads the party in the future. Like it or not, there is a new kid on the block in the form of the Brexit Party, which is far far more professional in its outlook and presentation than UKIP could ever dream about.The calibre of its elected representatives far exceeds what UKIP was able to produce in its entire history. Its a sad fact but true. The Brexit Party now represents our best chance of leaving the European Union. Note that I have not mentioned the Conservative Party here. The reason being that they too are dead in the water, and past their sell by date I have just returned from the spectacular Brexit Party rally held in Birmingham today. There were in excess of 5000 attendees present. Super super presentation. I cannot think of a time when UKIP were able to stage such an event as this and in such a grand style, and with the financial backing the Brexit Party obviously enjoy.