Yesterday the HoC voted to pass the Johnson Brexit Bill: Ayes 330 – Noes 231. You can watch the announcement here. That made hardly any waves in our Remain MSM. They must be grateful to that former royal couple’s bombshell announcement as they now can and do fill their spaces with interminable reports on that. They can also thank President Trump for providing material for ‘Foreign News’. The EU and Brexit, as far as they are concerned, have sunk below the radar.
The two papers not shilling for Remain – the DT and The Express – reported n yesterday’s proceedings in the HoC while RemainCentral had the one parliamentary sketch by Quentin Letts. The DM this morning really should be renamed “Megxit Central”!
It’s as if Brexit is now really done, as if what happens next is negligible. It’s as if the MSM followed the PM’s request not to use the “B”-word. It’s as if we peasants, having given Johnson his ‘stonking majority’, should now slink back into our hovels and let him and his minions proceed to do EU deals without much scrutiny – not the scrutiny by the Remain Opposition whose performances yesterday was pitiful in their usual peacocking way (see e.g. here), but the scrutiny by us suspicious Brexit watchers. Here is the report in the DT:
“MPs on Thursday night voted in favour of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill at its third reading by 330 votes to 231, a majority of 99. It came after three years of Parliamentary wrangling over Brexit, which is now set to happen on Jan 31. The Brexit Bill has now passed to the House of Lords, where peers will debate it next week. A source in the Lords said the Bill is likely to become law on Jan 22. The Prime Minister’s spokesman said the vote was a “significant positive step” to Brexit, adding: “The country did deliver a very clear message that they want Brexit to be resolved.” Sir Bernard Jenkin, the Brexiteer Tory MP, said soon after the Commons vote: “Now we can stop banging on about Europe!” (paywalled link)
That, I think, is a pious wish because the EU won’t stop trying to put numerous spokes into the Brexit wheels. But that’s what the Johnson Government hopes to achieve: let the EU talks take place behind those closed doors, with sell-outs pre-programmed. It’s not as if the EU is going to slink back into obscurity, not with M Barnier at the helm, not when you see this:
“Brussels is said to be refusing to open up trade talks with Boris Johnson until the UK surrenders its fishing waters.” (link)
Yes, that’s conjecture at the moment – but it’s not as if we haven’t experienced the EU’s negotiating tactics before, it’s not as if we have already forgotten who will lead these trade talks: M Barnier who has repeatedly said that nothing can be achieved by the end of this year. So we’ll have to watch, Johnson’s and the Tory MP’s glee about yesterday’s vote notwithstanding.
As to the actual debate – it was as dire as those on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was calm, not shouty, and, well, boring. Here’s what the DT picked up from yesterday’s proceedings:
“The teeth-grinding war of parliamentary attrition is over, with Conservative MPs easily dealing with amendments tabled by their opponents this week: some of which aimed to tie the UK’s hands in negotiating its post-Brexit future, while others amounted to little more than legislative virtue-signalling.” (paywalled link)
The author of that report, Asa Bennett, adds the following acerbic observations:
“Opposition MPs have tried to push a variety of other amendments […] that have shown their desire to tie the Government’s hands remains strong. Proposals that would have put Parliament in the driving seat of the UK’s negotiations over its post-Brexit future, rather than the Government, were all thrown out. MPs tried to guarantee themselves a vote (on an amendable motion of course) on the negotiators’ objectives and whatever they agree as a future relationship, and they sought to order ministers to directly break their promise of a clean break with Brussels in favour of “close alignment with the EU single market”. But their efforts proved to be in vain.” (paywalled link)
Just so – and that’s precisely why we out here have to keep watching: Remain has not nor will give up. Let me also disabuse you of the notion that the Remain Opposition was keen on scrutinising that Bill. There were more MPs attending the business statement of the Leader of the House – still Jacob Rees-Mogg – than the following Brexit debate. The benches only filled up as it came to the final vote. Asa Bennett concludes his report:
“While Tory MPs get Brexit done, their opponents are on the backfoot. Rather than rely on the power of their arguments, they are resorting to their beloved weapons: pointless posturing and virtue-signalling. If that is the best Mr Johnson’s critics can do, they are not going to give him much to worry about post-Brexit.” (paywalled link)
That is sadly true, and underlines what I wrote above: that it’s up to us outsiders to watch the forthcoming trade talks.
The Bill will now go to the HoL which is, as we all know, Remain to the core. As several speakers in the HoC pointed out yesterday – the current and last minister of the DExEU, Steve Barclay being one of them – ‘the other place’, in HoC parlance, can work quickly if they so desire. We’ve seen that when they rushed through the various Surrender amendments last year. That ‘other place’ must be aware of Johnsons’ musings about reforming the HoL, so the following observation makes much sense:
“The House of Lords will almost certainly try to throw its weight around, not least because Mr Johnson’s enemies do not have to worry about the election tilting the balance of power decisively in that chamber. But there is only so much peers can realistically do, as any awkward amendment the Government does not like would be swiftly unpicked by MPs and sent back to the Lords. Peers cannot try anything that directly contradicts the Tories’ manifesto unless they wanted to risk the chamber’s future, or to give ministers perfect justification to pack the Lords with Brexiteers.” (paywalled link)
Johnson also plans to reshuffle his cabinet next month, with the DExEU department being reabsorbed in the other ministries. That means that Steve Barclay, minister of DExEU, will be out of his job. He did refer to this in his winding-up speech before last evening’s vote. The Times’ Quentin Letts picked it up and I cannot resist to quote his delicious prose:
“DExEU used to be Westminster’s big fixture — and Whitehall’s Golgotha, devouring ministers and officials. Soon it will be nothing more than a few blobs of Blu-tack on a wall where sniper portraits of Gina Miller and Lady Hale hung. Mr Benn [Lab] piped and whistled a question: which departments would henceforth handle Brexit? The end of DExEU means curtains for the select committee that quizzed it. Mr Benn chaired it and bent conventions out of shape. A chunk of parliamentary botheration is sliding into the English Channel. Mr Barclay dodged Mr Benn’s question but was assiduously courteous to him and Sir Keir Starmer, the shadow Brexit secretary whose frontbench job also disappears. Maybe Sir Keir will find other things to do.” (link, paywalled)
Ah – does Mr Letts perchance refer to the ongoing Labour Leadership campaign? While that is going to drag on, I’ll keep my beady eyes on the proceedings in the HoL and shall watch for other, EU shenanigans.
Finally: today is the anniversary of this column! I certainly hadn’t planned to be ‘at it’ for so long. If you want to go down memory lane, here’s the link. What difference that one year made! But that experience strengthens my suspicions: I don’t trust That Lot, I will keep watching them and I won’t stop writing until we’re really Out on the 31st of December 2020.
KBO!
Ooh, yes please Viv you carry on doing what you do so well. And carry on calling it Brexit betrayal don’t confuse me with name changes please. Did you know that Brexit Central has said it is disappearing end this month?
We definitely need close monitoring of the trade negs and I’m not sure how it can be done so relying on you to ferret that out.
I read John Ward’s “The Slog” daily, which you can subscribe to for free, he keeps readers up to date with various problems at least once most days including a lot about Brexit. He has just started putting videos on youtube, which I can’t find on youtube but which has been posted in a comment on his The Slog today, the video points out a lot of the WA facts and problems never mentioned in the msm:
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/tag/brexit/
https://hat4uk.wordpress.com/2020/01/10/the-special-relationship-meghan-harry-nato-islamism-and-other-stories/#comments
Thanks Jane. I might subscribe to that.
“Brussels is said to be refusing to open up trade talks with Boris Johnson until the UK surrenders its fishing waters.”
Well if that is their stance Boris must quietly tell them that fishing will only be discussed AFTER we have the trade deal and if they will not agree to that sequencing then the talks are now at an end, and, the UK will be leaving on WTO terms on 31 January and no more payments to the EU will be made. Let us see what the EU reaction to that will be.
Better tell them that fishing is not up for discussion and we will enforce our legitimate border.
Precisely Jack. We are taking back what they stole from us in 1973, lock stock and barrel.
The EU have a very strange mindset. They do not seem to realise even now that Britain CAN and WILL walk away because we are better off without them. It is THEM now that has to crawl to us and beg and plead for any trade, on our terms.
I can only suppose their continuing threats are due to their being so used to their own undemocratic institutions that they have forgotten what National Sovereignty entails.
George ‘Brussels’ is throwing out threats, trying bullying tactics but reading between the lines they are not even talking with one voice at the moment.
See Facts4EU. org – re the £39 billion that we’re going to bung that lot.
”Why has everyone forgotten the EU’s £39 billion Divorce Bill demand? And why are we still going to sign the EU’s open-ended invoice?”
Well worth a read.
Viv’s Daily Brexit Betrayals have been superb. They should be bound into a book, or an ebook (i’m offering) and promoted.
Thank you very much, Stout Yeoman!
I have, in sleepless nights, pondered about turning this column into an e-book.It’s certainly a good contemporaneous resource – but it would require judicious editing and a hard pruning because, as it stands, it’s about 500,000 words minimum … and who’d want to read three fat volumes on Brexit …! But: it could be done … lemme think …
Of course. Johnson is arranging a behind doors sellout with the help of the utterly dishonest MSM cheerleading the process. The public are being railroaded to believe we leave on January 31. The chorus is so strong that people say nothing for fear of being shouted down. Good old Boris whatya talking about spoiling our celebration. Farage seems to have become part of it with his ‘party’ outside Parliament.
What do you mean Mike? The country being run by a committee (unelected, so junta), whose members we are not allowed to know, whose discussions we are not allowed to know, the ECJ to decide in the event of a tie. What’s not to like?
Well maybe the small point that IF we have left the EU this month as most seem to be saying, we will have willingly handed our country over to a secret, unaccountable foreign entity over which we have no control, much worse than being defeated in war. I doesn’t much matter to me for how long, I suspect far longer than we are being told but why? Why do we need such a provision in a treaty that has no unilateral escape clause. Who, if they were serious in leaving would agree to this when they now have a “stonking” majority enabling them to do otherwise.
Give this secret unaccountable foreign entity a name please . Until it has a name it will not seen to exist. Give it a name please.then we can do something about it. Give it a name , Number. Initials Swear word Unless we have a name we have no description, nothing to fight, nothing to exist
I wonder how long it will take the Tory voting masses to wake up to the fact that what has been ‘voted for’ is mostly the May treaty with some minor changes and what many of us consider to be BRINO. But as Johnson has said we must move on and the media certainly has, along with much of the public it seems, The ‘Mega winter storm ‘ is about to strike, if not that then ‘World War 3’ and if that’s not enough ‘Megxit’ as ‘Megs’ has now flown off to Canada it seems leaving in her wake thousands of comments in tabloids and elsewhere, a distraction course par excellence, why, it’s even reported that Johnson is considering a Canada type deal with the e.u. if that is the case perhaps a meaningful independent role will be found for Hals and Megs some sort of envoy perhaps! ‘Trust our political elite the main stream media in general along with the establishment at your peril. KBO indeed.
You’re right, Norman (except for calling them ”elite”) – it seems people are so desperate for optimism and good news that they’ll happily forget that this WA is, to all intents and purposes, May’s deal with a few tweaks. The one they voted against three times recently.
The one that BJ (and others) PLEDGED would be ”abandoned” as ”dead” on the site: standup4brexit.com.
Perhaps they don’t know the meaning of the word ”pledge”.
Thanks L.J. I missed the ‘sarc’ button when I used the term elite, as for ‘pledge’ the Tory ones are as good as the pledge cards handed out and trumpeted by the msm prior to the first Blair election win, they to proved as meaningless as the latest BJ ones will do,
I wonder if anyone else has been fighting for Brexit and the general election so long that the actual terms that HMG has just passed into law have become lost behind the arguments.
Are we really going to be free in less than a year?
JF
No, I don’t think so either.