It’s official: our political establishment is delusional. All of them – not just the PM and her Remainers but the ‘loyal opposition’, a.k.a. Labour and their top dogs, as well as the LibDems. The evidence is spread right across the MSM.
The dust has somewhat settled on the local elections and while the LibDems fondly believe that their success means the whole country now wants to Remain, the PM and Lab believe the 39,000 spoiled ballot papers screaming ‘Brexit!’ and ‘Brexit Now’ means that voters clamour for the PMs WA or for Corbyn’s Remain in the Customs Union.
The DT still has the best ‘sources’ and published an important article yesterday night which the other MSM picked up and copied (here, here and paywalled here). Some select Tories then made the expected noises. Here are the relevant bits:
“Theresa May has held secret discussions over a three-way second referendum ahead of a crunch meeting with Labour this week to agree a cross-party Brexit deal. The Prime Minister has carried out “scenario planning” with aides and ministers in case the Government cannot prevent a Parliamentary vote on a second referendum.” (paywalled link)
Excuse me, but in my naivety I always thought that the government proposes legislation and Parliament scrutinises and amends it before voting on it. But the PM is now so divorced from reality that she is clutching at HoC demands (remember the Letwin/Cooper Bill?) to let MPs of all stripes tell her what to do – provided it’s Remain:
“Mrs May and her advisers are understood to have ‘war gamed’ the possibility of giving voters a choice of her deal, no deal and remain, though Government sources insisted it would only become relevant if talks with Labour collapse and Parliament forces a vote on a second referendum. That could happen either through a series of “indicative votes”, which are Mrs May’s plan B if the Labour talks fail, or through an amendment to Brexit legislation. The Prime Minister believes that if MPs insist on a public vote that would include Remain as one of the options, the public would also have to be given the choice of a no deal Brexit and a Brexit with a deal. Downing Street sources denied there had been a meeting to discuss a second referendum.(paywalled link)
Before Thursday’s local elections we heard Tory grandees claim that a 2nd Referendum is not on the cards, no way, of course not … but it is now!
Do pay attention to the last sentence in the quote above: of course Drowning Street would deny that there was a meeting on a 2nd Referendum! They’re right: the meeting, as reported, was mainly about ‘war gaming’ on what to offer Corbyn – and we do know, do we not, that half of Labour wants a 2nd Referendum, as do the LibDems and SNPGreenPlaid.
As Tory MPs were robustly told to ‘suck it up’, let’s see what they are expected to swallow:
“Mrs May is understood to be on the brink of offering Labour a temporary but comprehensive “customs arrangement” which would last until the next general election – allowing the winner of that election to decide on more permanent arrangements. The Prime Minister is also ready to offer Labour permanent alignment of workers’ rights with EU rules, and closer regulatory alignment with the EU.” (paywalled link)
If a GE is somehow ‘on offer’, then where is the bit to make this deal “Bobo proof”? And didn’t some Labour MP talk about making this WA deal last for 30 years?
It is remarkable how one point – a rather important one – is not mentioned in these reports on the PM’s ‘war games’. Not one thought has been spent, apparently, on TBP.
It surely cannot be beyond the mental capacities of the PM, Labour, and all their advisers, to imagine the result of a 2nd Referendum! If they really believe that scrapping the EP Elections to ‘kill the Farage fox’ would make him and TBP go away and leave the battleground to Remain which would then, finally, win that 2nd Referendum, then ‘delusional’ is a very mild description for their state of mind.
Again we see that inside their happy bubble, playing war games, they totally overlook and discard the opinion of the voters outside the M25. Only Bernard Jenkin MP has grasped it:
“Unless Brussels can be persuaded to replace the backstop, a WTO Brexit is the only realistic way to achieve Brexit. It will be difficult for many MPs to come to terms with this, but we have no choice, or the Farage bandwagon will roll.” (paywalled link)
Just so – but other Tory MPs are still fixated on finagling something along the lines of that Brady amendment, i.e. getting rid of the Backstop, and not caving in to Labour. Why they still think that the PM’s WA sans Backstop is Brexit must remain their secret.
The inevitable Sir John Redwood has a whole clutch of questions for the Government in his Diary today, concluding:
“It is because the negotiations have been so poor from the UK side that we now must just leave without signing the Withdrawal Treaty. The public understood only too clearly how the UK had to argue its corner and dig in over what we thought was fair.”
He gets it … do read the whole thing!
Meanwhile there’s still one obstacle to the PM’s war-gamed plans: Mr Williamson and the Huawei scandal. Yesterday we saw unprecedented briefings against Mr Williamson in The Times but we also found a delicious piece of leakage:
“Gavin Williamson has accused the senior mandarin who orchestrated his downfall of usurping the role of ministers after it emerged that Sir Mark Sedwill is to launch his own visit to meet China’s leaders this week.” In what has been dubbed the “Mandarin mission for mandarins” the cabinet secretary is leading a delegation of 15 permanent secretaries — the top civil servants in Whitehall — to Beijing.They will seek to forge new links with the Chinese ruling class and boost business connections, but the trip is seen by ministers as a vainglorious attempt by Sedwill, who is accused of behaving like “an emperor” in Whitehall. “This is a massive showboating exercise for a massive ego,” said one cabinet source.” (link, paywalled)
What a lovely coincidence …! Later that day the DM (here) reported that Sir Mark Sedwill is now under pressure not to go. Read the whole piece, it’s not paywalled.
If Mr Williamson is indeed going to give his speech to the HoC then Ms May might well have to ‘wargame’ on a second front. Perhaps our supine MSM journalists might even find the courage to open the can-of-worms that is the Sedwill-Robbins-Selmayr ‘Agreement’ to keep us in the EU. This intervention shows how serious the Huawei scandal is:
“Mrs May should defend her senior mandarins who have been attacked over the government’s positions on Huawei and Brexit, according to the Institute for Government (IFG). Tim Durrant, a senior researcher at the IFG, said yesterday: “The insinuation that Sedwill and team are working to their own agenda as opposed to serving the government, is bonkers and undermines how our democracy works. Ministers, particularly the PM, need to come out and say what they are and aren’t allowing officials to do, rather than leaving them to face this kind of criticism undefended — their silence just allows rumours to grow.” (link, paywalled)
Yes please – do ‘come out’, so we can have proof that and how the top mandarins are governing our country! Document how and that the clowns in the HoC are simply there to take our attention away from the fact that our representatives, from the PM down, have supinely let them ride roughshod over our decision.
That, and not the Huawei leak or the PM’s cave-in to Labour is the real scandal.
KBO!
“Integration” Nigel’s new word, for the working class up north, interview Sky on Sunday.
The Farage bandwagon, may well be going to Bolton, Lancashire, with Sky’s Sophy who was eager,
“yes I’ll go with you” she said .
Nigel seemed to believe that this lack of integration in Bolton had only to do with their skin colour,
“Blacks on one side of the street and Whites on the other.”
I do hope the good people of Bolton, take Nigel’s Integration rhetoric, on board, when voting.
“… Sir Mark Sedwill is to launch his own visit to meet China’s leaders this week.” In what has been dubbed the “Mandarin mission for mandarins” the cabinet secretary is leading a delegation of 15 permanent secretaries — the top civil servants in Whitehall — to Beijing. They will seek to forge new links with the Chinese ruling class …”
“Mrs May should defend her senior mandarins who have been attacked over the government’s positions on Huawei and Brexit, …”
I had to rub my eyes and read this again. Does this mean that Comrade May and her associates are now coming out of the commie closet? Surely, those openly comporting themselves with a hostile foreign communist power like China are trying to tell us something by so doing? And here I was worried because I thought the EU was perhaps a cleverly disguised front for a rejuvenated, much expanded German Democratic Republic.
Normally when one turns on the kitchen lights late at night the cockroaches run for cover. Their behaviour has changed. Not good.
I do hope I’m wrong about this.
Deviating from topic Gerrard Batten is standing down as UKIP leader on 2nd June. Such is life!
Can you provide a link to that please ?
Elsewhere I read he is considering doing so, not that he has taken the decision as such.
I believe that time-wise, Mrs May has only until the end of this week to get “anything” through parliament,
and so avoid the EU MEP elections.
Gerard Batten has said:
“Even if Mrs May can get Labour to accept her withdrawal agreement [and then get it ] through parliament,
it still has to be voted on in the Euro parl.
It does not meet again until July, under Art 50 the [EU] parl has the power to accept or reject it “.
You never know – the Europarl might be so fed up with the UK pfaffing about they might reject it! That’d put the cat among the pigeons.
Common Purpose, need I say more?
http://stopcp.com
Common Purpose infests our NHS, police force, Civil Service, local authority, and other goverment and non-govermental organisations and ‘big charities’. Their ‘change agent’ graduates have no loyalty to the government, this country or its people, only to their agenda-pushing paymasters hiding in the shadows.
Until we call out and identify this organisation as the chief cause of all that is wrong in this country, nothing is going to change for the better.
This is all to do with the New World Order/ Bilderbergs and the UN Agenda 21; where sovereign States will be subsumed into a beaurocratic set up.
Mrs May first.
Then WTO.
Then Common purpose.
You with me?
All the way Rob.
I agree, but the problem is that we are tackling things in the wrong order.
We’re not going to achieve any kind of real Brexit, until we tackle the nest of vipers that is Common Purpose infesting our Civil Service and other government/non-government organisations as well as the media.
You can spray all the weedkiller you like on invasive plants in your garden, but until you get your hands dirty and dig those plants up from their roots they will keep coming back for more and you’ll never be rid of them.
This is a complete farce. By ruling out No Deal the MP’s deliberately created a corner which they then successfully boxed themselves into, thus creating an impasse. This enabled them to go around in circles and come up with all sorts of so-called deals, second referendums, etc, etc none of which are Brexit. If they can’t agree, the simple answer is to truly respect the referendum result, leave on WTO, and sort it from there.
Spot on.! The Queen ( and the people ) really has got to get a grip of her Civil Servants , and their place.
But then I suppose we have to get a grip of our MP s
Then I suppose someone has to get a grip on MPs. And their deliberate corruption of our Democratic process ..From elections to appointments and the rules of both houses.
And please do not mess with the Royal Prerogative. From representation to Lords appoinyments. Otherwise we’ll be ruled by our MPs.as minor aristocrats. ( Perfect Socialism.)
It takes someone different ( Not better ) to give up power.
Our politicians are delusional all right. It’s frightening just how much effort is being put into thwarting the will of the people, this just isn’t democracy in any sense. Theresa May and her cohorts must be delusional if they have no understanding as to just how much they are despised, yet still they carry on desperately trying to imprison us within the EU against our wishes.
If Theresa May succeeds in her betrayal and gets her Withdrawal Agreement through does she really believe that the government will be able to keep a lid on the backlash forever? Perhaps this is why we already have ten thousand EU troops on our soil and I’m sure many more are already being planned for.
It’s a sobering thought that even Adolf Hitler didn’t manage to get ten thousand soldiers onto our soil, so I suppose you could say that Merkel and co have already been more successful than Adolf Hitler; let’s hope that there is a bunker waiting for them.
What’s your evidence for the ten thousand EU troops on UK soil claim please?
https://www.gov.uk/government/news/10000-troops-from-13-countries-arrive-in-the-uk-for-major-exercise
If you did not know there have been NATO/EU wargames being played out all over the UK for the past 5/6 weeks. Funny that once again the Media have clammed up on that !
See Sponplague – satisfied John Bickley? And if there is anything else you don’t know, please ask.
Flyer, you’re an intelligent chap – will you please tell me how any backlash is going to stop Con MPs getting back into the Commons come the next GE?
Hint: it doesn’t involve longstanding tribal Con voters not voting Tory. All that does is let Labour in, and everyone knows that.
Democracy and politics has become a bit of a farce in our country and if you ask me democracy just isn’t high on the political agenda, as for strong leadership: dream on.
What I think we’ll end up with is a power vacuum caused by weak leadership which will be exploited by the EU until our government is just a quint and merely symbolic relic of times past (as if it isn’t already).
That is if we let these things happen, you can’t keep people repressed forever unless you’re prepared to use draconian force, we have ten thousand foreign troops on our soil already and I’m sure more to come. We could be about to live in interesting times.
RP,
Via metamorphosis, the process is in its latter stages as we type, the ersatz tory party will
morph into the brexit party, allowing farage to become PM, thereby continuing a long line of completely treacherous PMs.
Met some friends over the weekend all ‘blue’ for many years, they and their friends anger had to be seen, All saying, for them May had been the final straw and for them the conservative party including the locals are finished! Maybe if people like this have suddenly woken up there is hope.
Let’s hope so, start by getting rid of her!
Yes, indeed Norman. It is they who have been giving succour to the Tory betrayal (as have Labour Party Brexiteers) and if they are beginning to see that their respective parties seek nothing less to overturn Brexit and that they will throw in their membership cards then all well and good. Anything less and they are complicit in the betrayal of Brexit.