Normal service resumed: The EU Commission Building 

The trawl through the MSM yesterday and this morning has turned up some interesting little gems and some astonishing interpretations ‘after the event’. We also find the old attitudes towards Brexit being resurrected both here and in Brussels while the MSM slyly push names for Johnson’s new cabinet, in the hope to get rid of some irksome Brexiteers.

Let’s look at some rather interesting observations about the stunning Labour defeat. They demonstrate nicely what we peasants out here have been saying since the EU referendum: ‘likes’ on social media do not translate into votes:

“Labour gained tens of millions more views for its videos on Facebook and Twitter than the Tories. This was underpinned by Labour’s spending of £1.25 million on Facebook advertisements compared with the Tories’ £780,000, according to latest figures, which exclude spending on Thursday. Analysts said that the Tory landslide highlighted how misleading measures such as views and likes on social media can be. Matt Walsh, a social media lecturer at Cardiff University, said: “Labour’s digital campaign was so successful it appeared that it was engaging with millions of people, which may have led party leaders to ignore the message coming back from canvassers.” (link, paywalled)

Another analysis of us voters, after the event, comes from The Times which had set up focus groups to show what ordinary people thought. They reported on these findings incessantly and this conclusion shows why that exercise was as futile as Labour’s social media campaigns:

“But in the end, the picture of Britain it revealed was stark, clear and two dimensional, with two essential features and two elemental demands: get Brexit done and get Corbyn out. For much of the election the strength of feeling behind those twin elements was obscured. A thumpingly one-sided contest looked unpredictable, right to the end, because the electorate was oddly shy about revealing just how urgently it demanded resolution on Brexit, and just how emphatically it rejected Jeremy Corbyn. But voters were not shy when they got to the ballot box, delivering the biggest Tory landslide since the days of Margaret Thatcher, the worst Labour result since 1935, the crushing of the Lib Dems,”(link, paywalled) 

Oh those shy (or should that be sly?) voters! Who was it who ‘obscured’ this ‘strength of feeling’? Not the voters! Hindsight, as always, is a wonderful thing, but just as the EU I doubt the MSM will learn from their experience of getting the GE so wrong.

While Corbyn has blamed the MSM for his defeat rather than us voters, I wonder if the hordes he enthused on social media will allow him and Labour the breathing space they need to sort out their self-created mess. Given the reports that his hordes were rioting against Johnson last night (e.g. here, paywalled here) I doubt it. These riots, the tweets from disappointed and angry lefties, hyperbolic and tearful, indicate that Corbyn’s followers are indeed a metropolitan, self-appointed ‘elite’ which has nothing in common with Labour voters in the rest of the country.

Johnson is meanwhile going to select his new cabinet this weekend which will be installed on Monday. The new HoC will meet on Tuesday and an abbreviated Queen’s Speech is apparently planned for Thursday when the new Speaker will also have to be elected – or re-elected. One definite bonus is that it won’t be John Bercow, but sadly we’re still going to have to listen to the ‘freedom for Sco’land’ cries from the SNP contingent.

And so to our beloved MSM, playing their beloved ‘who’s in and who’s out’ game (e.g. here, paywalled here), are trying to insinuate that JRM is ‘out’ because of that ‘Grenfell gaffe’ and because ‘he wasn’t seen much’ during the GE campaign. Well, neither were a lot of other Tory candidates … Personally, I’d regret not seeing him as Leader of the HoC at the despatch box.

And so to our friends in the EU … The MSM have of course come up with ‘the meaning of this’, i.e. that there should be a soft Brexit (whatever that is), and that the ERG hardcore rebels surely must now be squashed. They expect that the dreadful BRINO Treaty will be signed on January 31st. The Times, still RemainCentral, are doubling down on their EUrophilia:

“His attention will then quickly turn to securing an ambitious deal with the EU that preserves as much as possible of Britain’s trade and security relationships with the Continent. […] As EU leaders reiterated yesterday, a deal will hinge on the British government’s willingness to accept a high degree of regulatory alignment. That will not be popular with hardline Brexiteers in the Tory party who want a much looser relationship with the EU.” (link, paywalled)

Oh dear. Nice equivalence there between ‘EU’ and ‘the continent’, but never mind: the ancient, europhiliac Remain is back, aiding and abetting the Masters in Brussels while bashing ‘hardcore’ Brexiteers.

Yesterday, the EU met at their summit under new ‘ownership’, Ursula vd Leyen at its helm. After congratulating Johnson to his victory, it was back to EU business as usual. The EU has learned nothing, just as our metro lefties, rioting against the democratic verdict of us, the people. M Macron made abundantly clear what the EU expects:

“President Macron of France said that the EU was ready to fight to prevent Britain becoming an “unfair competitor” after Brexit by undercutting European standards and regulations […]: “I wish the UK to remain an ally, a friend, an extremely close partner,” Mr Macron said. “The condition is we manage to define the rules of a fair relationship and that we manage to agree about all the points of regulatory convergence. what we describe as the level playing field.” He said that “in the absence of regulatory convergence we will not be able to conclude an ambitious trade deal” because it would mean the EU “accepting dumping . . . on its borders”. (link, paywalled)

The EU ‘defines’ the rules – and we are supposed to accept them: how novel is that! There are red lines galore already before Johnson has even selected his new Brexit negotiator. If anyone believes that these red Macron lines are just for decoration, see the next quotes, illustrating the EU hardcore mindset:

“If the UK wants to be present on EU grounds, it has to follow EU rules. Nothing has changed in our position,” Xavier Bettel, the prime minister of Luxembourg, said. […] “We are ready to defend the European interest,” warned Charles Michel, the president of the European Council. […] Ursula von der Leyen, the president of the European Commission,  said the EU had three aims for the trade negotiations, “Zero tariffs, zero quotas and zero dumping.” (paywalled link)

Nothing has changed as far as the EU is concerned. We already know that M Barnier is absolutely certain that this timetable won’t work and that we’ll be stuck inside the EU, with no say but subject to EU Laws and of course still paying the EU our “Danegeld”.

The EU, just like Corbyn and his core lefty Labour, just hasn’t grasped what has happened. Perhaps they ought to reflect on these sentences by Ambrose Evans-Pritchard:

“Britain is suddenly the only big country in western Europe with a fully functional government able to take radical measures and sweep aside resistance. France, Germany, Italy and Spain are all in political turmoil or have a paralysed executive. The centre is crumbling everywhere – but not in Britain. A one-nation Tory […] has pulled off the feat of uniting a blue collar north and an affluent south. The world press and left-academia got that narrative badly wrong.” (paywalled link)

Of course the world press got it wrong – after all, they just copy what our Remain MSM publish. I liked this next paragraph:

“This political asymmetry between a unified, confident, well-armed British government and a demoralised, splintered Continent matters enormously. Brussels can no longer play the divide and rule game in Westminster, or indeed with the Tory party itself. Everything has changed. The Grieves, Gaukes, and Soubrys of the rump Parliament have been liquidated. To evoke a loose historical parallel, it is the moment Europeans discern the iron fist of Cromwell and discover that the chaotic English revolution is more formidable than they had bargained for. They have heard the roar of Yorkshire, Lancashire, and Northumberland.” (paywalled link)

While I doubt the EU has heard that Northern roar yet, they surely must have learned about Oliver Cromwell in their history lessons! But alas, I believe they are as resistant to learning as the lefty Remain ‘metro-elite’. I leave you with some quotes RemainCentral picked up from their ‘devil in No10’, Dominic Cummings, pointing out why the EU, the world press and our Remainers got it so wrong:

“After the shock of the referendum, MPs and journalists should have taken a breath and had a lot of self-reflection [on] why they misunderstood what was going on in the country,” he said. “Instead a lot of people just doubled down on their own ideas and f***ed it up even more. That’s why something like this happens against expectations.” […] “MPs [and] the media need to realise that the conversations they have in London are a million miles away from reality.” (link, paywalled)

I respectfully suggest that the conversations they have in Brussels, never mind in the capitals of the EU member states, are even more than just a million miles away from reality, our reality.

Yes, Johnson must now deliver on Brexit. It will depend on Johnson’s new negotiating team if this’ll be more difficult in the face of the old and tired EU intransigence. Let’s hope that at least the civil servants now going to negotiate will have heard the roar of the electorate and will realise, just as Johnson surely will, that we expect to be Out, as promised – and that we can take back the mandate we have given him.

Three-and-a-half years of our, the people’s decision to Leave, reaffirmed in two elections, should concentrate his mind, if not that of Brussels. Meanwhile, until Brexit, we’ll 

KBO!