It’s the morning after and the morning before. Yesterday the Remainers again voted to take over the business of government with another Bill which will be debated and voted on later this afternoon, after Johnson’s first and possibly last PMQs.
Johnson told the HoC last evening, after the defeat inflicted by the Brexit Wreckers, that he would table a motion according to the FTPA to dissolve Parliament and call for a GE. More on that below. The headlines in our MSM, paywalled or not, will show you yesterday’s result.
I’ve watched the whole thing, from the start at 2.30pm, and it was illuminating.The various reports and ‘parliamentary sketches’ try to convey the atmosphere of what happened. However, what I now describe has not been reported in the MSM. It goes right to the Remainers’ general attitude, in side and outside the HoC.
The session started with reports by the Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab and his ministers, followed by the Education Minister Gavin Williamson. The opposition benches were nicely populated – Labour always appears like a bloc – and the questions addressed to Raab went from what he’s doing about that Amazon Rainforest to Kashmir and HongKong.
I was not disappointed to note that, again, the opposition ladies (it’s always those who screech loudest) were demanding money and more money to be sent to those worthy causes. These are the same ones who then scream about ‘Tory austerity’, blithely disregarding the £39bn we have to pay the EU and never mind the Billions we’re paying Brussels while we’re still ‘In’.
Next up was Johnson reporting on the G7 summit and his visits to the EU leaders. Suddenly the noise levels rose to ‘painful’. Johnson was screamed at, barracked, howled at and shouted at to such an extent that even the Speaker had to intervene – several times.
While BoJo was giving his speech, the Tory MP Mr Phillip Lee crossed the floor and sat with the LibDems. That means the Government now has no majority.
Mr Lee burbled to the MSM that he did this because of Mr Rees-Mogg’s acerbic remark about drug shortages and Operation Yellowhammer in that LBC phone-in on Monday. Those of us with a memory going back further than last week remember that he had announced his possible defection in July, after Johnson was elected as Leader of the Tory Party. Never mind that now: it was ‘smear Jacob Rees-Mogg’ day.
Corbyn then rose to reply to Johnson’s speech. Suddenly it became very quiet. As for his speech – well, he seemed drunk on his own socialist rhetoric. That speech was electioneering plain and simple – so why he doesn’t want a GE is his shameful secret.
One point he and the Remain MPs kept making was that we’ll all die in case of a No Deal Brexit, using the discredited ‘Yellowhammer’ paper. One would have expected that they would take the opportunity to ask Michael Gove about this. He is responsible for preparing the country for Brexit and rose next to give his report.
Instead, the benches emptied precipitously so Gove’s excellent speech went with hardly any interruptions and hardly any questions. No drama there, so the MSM overlooked it.
This shows clearly and irrefutably that Remainers and Remain MPs are not interested in facts. They are wedded to the Project Fear scenarios which Mr Hammond and the Remain MSM have been spewing forth for the last three years.
Here is another interesting bit of news which the MSM have gracefully overlooked. Mr Hammond let slip that he had gone to the EU and taken their advice on the legal aspects of the demands in that Letwin Brexit Wrecking Bill. Oh dear …!
Then Oliver Letwin rose to present ‘That Bill’. You can read the text again here. Corbyn, in full socialist flow (“Tory Brexit!!”) rose next to support it.
The Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, rose next to speak against. That speech has somehow managed not to get even an honourable mention in the MSM.
Those of us who watched it were unanimous: it was stellar and easily the best speech we’ve heard in the HoC for many a day. You can watch it again here: go to 19.17.00.
No, what the MSM found far more important were the howls of fabricated outrage from the Green MP Ms Lucas about Mr Rees-Mogg’s posture! He was indeed near horizontal, see e.g. here. However, we watchers of the proceedings in the Chamber have known for a long time that this is his usual posture.
So – the debate. The Speaker preferred calling supporters of the Bill on a near permanent basis – bias? What bias? – letting Mr Kenneth Clarke warble on incoherently for interminable minutes. Sir Bill Cash was the only speaker against who was given time to speak.
The Scottish Nationalist Mr Blackburn managed to allow interventions only from supporters of the Bill. Mr Grieve and that LibDem Mr Brake nearly foamed at the mouth, attacking Mr Rees-Mogg for his speech against the Bill. They cannot forgive him for pulling the constitutional rug out from under their feet.
Most unforgivable were JRM’s words that, if the HoC didn’t trust Johnson to get ‘a deal’ then they could ask for a VoNC and an ensuing GE. Oh no, that’s not what they want, as the uproar showed perfectly when Johnson, after the vote, said that he’d now table a motion to implement the FTPA.
Corbyn was incandescent and demanded that Johnson first pass that Letwin Bill which in effect makes it impossible for Johnson to negotiate:
“Jeremy Corbyn suggests he will not back Boris Johnson’s general election call until no-deal Brexit is off the table” (paywalled link)
Quentin Letts in The Times had this to say:
“Corbyn refused the water jump! The House was packed after last night’s vote, so full that the tellers had to clamber over bodies to report the result. The government had lost. A whoomph of huzzahs from the Remainers. Then Boris Johnson, perkier than he possibly had a right to be after such a result, said that he would be tabling a motion for a general election. And Jeremy Corbyn blinked. Blocked it. Oppositions usually howl for an election but Mr Corbyn was asking for it to be put back in the oven for another few months. Remarkable. Mr Johnson could not believe his luck. His face creased in amazement. The Conservative benches were suddenly plugged back into the mains supply. They roared “frit!” at an uncertain-looking Corbyn. What a long, rum, smelly day. The Commons was back and our national self-mutilation, from which we had a few weeks’ blissful reprieve, duly resumed.” (link, paywalled)
‘Self-mutilation’ is correct. For example, the MPs had been howling about a headline in Tuesday’s DT which insinuated that the Government had done nothing about Brexit, that their negotiations were ‘a sham’.
I didn’t write about that article because, coming from the resident Remainer in the DT, it was full of hearsay from ‘sources’ in Brussels. That the Remain MPs hadn’t even read it became painfully obvious, else they’d have thought about what they were actually voting for.
Just as Johnson had warned them, the EU will not give an inch because they rely on the Brexit Wreckers in the HoC to take No Deal off the table and make negotiations impossible:
“[…] One diplomat told the Telegraph, “Now he has lost his majority it seems futile to continue discussions. We can’t be sure that whatever were to come out of it will ever translate into reality”. (paywalled link)
The Brexit Wreckers are oblivious to the fact that No Deal is becoming a distinct possibility thanks to their shenanigans. They are oblivious to the fact that it is their insistence on getting extension after extension which is creating the climate of economic insecurity.
Moreover, they are oblivious of the mood in the country because all they see are the Remain demonstrators on Parliament Green, all they hear are the Remainers paraded through the revolving doors of the Remain TV studios.
It is beyond my comprehension that the Remainers still do not grasp that ‘No Deal’ is just a Johnson ploy to make the EU negotiate. Time and time again he said he wanted ‘a deal’. We all know what that ‘deal’ is: the May WA warmed up.
But that is not enough: the Brexit Wreckers want to keep us In, they aim to revoke Article 50, 17.4 million voters be damned. So here we are: a rogue HoC which doesn’t dare to go to the country!
It is coming to something when one of the chief Remainers in The Times, Daniel Finkelstein, concludes his comment on yesterday’s events thus:
“I could never make peace with no-deal or pretend that I think it’s a good idea. But when it comes to the crunch, I could never choose a Corbyn government. Never. For many others, when the time comes, the choice is going to prove very hard indeed.” (link, paywalled)
That’s what the Brexit Wreckers, the Remainers inside and outside Parliament and in the MSM have created. You and your colleagues own this mess, Mr Finkelstein!
I’ll be glued to the TV, watching the proceedings later today which start at 12noon in the HoC and shall report back to you. Meanwhile,
KBO!
i hope you are right. i have the feeling that a GE is the last thing anyone in the Torry, or Brexit camp wants right now. then again. I could just be projecting my concerns of the recent events in Italy here. Bottom line, the Banksters have to much at stake to just let Brexit happen, and therfor it won’t. And if it does…. Then Macraro will be sending you lot some Freedom Bombs via the EU Army.
Face it in the words of the poet “You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave”. -Joe Walsh
Tell me MWT, how can Boris leave the EU now? I wish he could but it is just not possible as far as I know.
The plan seems to be to filibuster the bill in the Lords till prorogation kicks in. If that fails then not advise the Queen to give her consent to it (if Bercow says it doesn’t need her consent then it can’t be a binding bill so Boris can ignore it.). That keeps No Deal on the table. JRM plus Cummings have more brain power than the entire Liebore front bench so have hopefully gamed every permutation.
It is the opposition that is seeking to revive May’s BRINO, not Boris. The wreckers who have taken ‘no deal’ off the table have sought to tweak that WA in various ways. They have not learned from May’s attempt to compromise between the EU’s agenda AND the Referendum result. There can be NO compromise simply because the EU is struggling to hold on to it’s Empire and us getting out will make that virtually impossible. Now our own Parliament has prevented us escaping.
Just in, from the High Court in Edinburgh:
“Lord Doherty ruled: ‘In my view, the advice given in relation to the prorogation decision is a matter involving high policy and political judgement,” Doherty told Scotland’s Court of Session.
‘This is political territory and decision-making which cannot be measured against legal standards and only by political judgements.’
(link)
I recommend watching this interchange between Letwin and Rees-Mogg yesterday evening.
Someone commented elsewhere that the HoC was meant to protect the people against the arrogance of the aristocrats in the HoL. It’s now The People who need to be protected from the arrogance of the HoC.
We appear to be whistling through Paul Goodman’s 15 possible outcomes.
GE anyone?
So pleased BJ expelled those treacherous Conservatives. We may now be seeing the destruction of the Conservative party.
I am struck by the similarities between the campaign to promote the abortion referendum in Ireland last year and the campaign to overturn the Brexit referendum. As we are familiar with “Project Fear” I will describe the similarities as “Projects” under A for abortion and B for Brexit:
Project Denial: A – Deny that the child in the womb is human. B – Deny that there is any reason why anyone should want to leave the EU.
Project Liar: A: Pro-life people were persistently accused of lying without any justification. B – Remainers even went to court to accuse Brexiteers of lying.
Project Fear: A – Women would die if they were denied abortions. B – The economic effects of Brexit will be catastrophic.
Project Hard Cases: A – Abortion should available for rape, incest, fatal foetal abnormality etc. B – essentials such as medicine would not be available, British pensioners living aboad etc.
Project Smear: A – Pro-life people were portrayed as backward Catholic fundamentalists who believed in fairy-tales and ruled by a discredited Catholic Church. B – Brexit voters are described as ignorant political and financial illiterates misled by people who want to use them for their own benefit.
Project Consensus: A – cross party, media, business, trade union support for abortion. B – ditto for overturning Brexit.
Project Old versus Young: A – University students were specially targeted as susceptible to slogans promoting abortion as a “human right”. B – It is no accident that young voters are in the forefront in the Remainer campaign.
However the age of truth has arrived.
Thanks for the summary. I think Boris has nothing to lose except his globalist principles by changing the exit day and leaving ASAP. The traitors won’t vote for an election as they know they will get caned.
This is tragic stuff really although I do think we’ll win in the end. Tragic because so many people would rather live in a fools utopia and just listen to and regurgitate endless soundbites rather than face reality, they’ll pay a heavy price for this if they’re not careful.
The world economy behind the scenes (en coulisse like) is going to hell in a handcart, despite what the mainstream media is telling us. My belief is that the bankers, elite or whatever else you’d like to call them, possibly bankers spelt with a W, didn’t plan on us winning the Brexit referendum or Donald Trump winning the Presidency.
The plan was to have trade deals like the TPPA, TTIP etc in place before the end of this economic cycle, they have though had to extend this economic cycle way past its sell by date while they try and get their plans on track. Anybody from Britain that remembers the Common Market will know exactly where these trade deals lead, they’re a Trojan Horse.
They’ll keep this economic illusion going for as long as they can while they try and get their plans back on track, the Remainers by keeping us tied to the EU will ensure that we Brits are on he hook for massive amounts of bailout money, it’ll be a disaster if we let them get away with it.
This probably won’t end well but I’m very sure we’re going to win in the end.