Yesterday Ms May did as she was told and presented her “Plan B” to the House. Remainer MPs then tabled their amendments, all to be debated next Tuesday.
Briefly, the May ‘Plan B’ is to talk to opposition MPs and at the same time negotiate about That Backstop with the EU. She kept warning the House that it was her WA, adjusted, or the “No Deal” – which is the legal alternative, voted for by Parliament in 2017 – and that she would not ask for an Extension of Article 50 or for a 2nd referendum.
The amendments, one from Mr Corbyn, demand in essence exactly this: an Extension and a 2nd referendum.
It has escaped the whole House that we the people voted for the “No Deal”, for Brexit on WTO rule! It has escaped the whole House that the majority of us, the people, want this clean Brexit, as the latest polls show. No matter – the House is gripped by doing it ‘their way’, thwarting our, the people’s, explicit will in the process.
It seems to me that the EU way of ‘doing things’ with utter disregard to the people has so infested the House so that even our centuries-old Parliamentary customs are now being thrashed.
The aim of the Remain House is to keep us in the EU, with more or less veiled “deals” and with the usual blatant threats by Remain ministers and the now customary ‘latest’ Project Fear wailing. If you want to check out what Corbyn & Co propose, please read the reports and sketches in The Express and the Daily Mail – neither of them are paywalled.
In an interesting aside, Ms May declared yesterday that no, she never talked or thought about an amendment to the Good Friday agreement as reported in the MSM yesterday and therefore by me in my column yesterday. “Fake News” for which all our MSM, ‘Remain’ and ‘Leave’, fell, and which had even agitated Brussels? A bit unlikely, I’d have thought! But ‘Government by Leaks’ is another indicator for a failing Government …
So allow me to muddy those particular waters a bit further, by quoting from a paywalled report in the DT. According to that report, Ms May’s Chief Negotiator – not the DEUexit Minister, no, but Mr Olly Robbins himself – had listened in on that conference call. I’m sure the participants were delighted to learn that their utterances, presumably made in confidence, were heard by Mr Robbins, but never mind that. Olly R is alleged to have texted Phil Hammond during the call. Read and be amazed, I’m quoting extensively:
“Theresa May’s chief Brexit negotiator privately cast doubt on her ability to renegotiate the Irish backstop as part of her Brexit “plan B”, The Telegraph has been told. A source said Mr Robbins texted Philip Hammond, the Chancellor, during a Cabinet conference call raising concerns about the prospect of re-opening the EU withdrawal agreement.The Telegraph has been told that Mr Robbins, who was listening in on the call, sent the message to Mr Hammond as Mrs May was outlining plans to secure changes in a bid to win over Tory Eurosceptics and the DUP.” (my bold)
I’m tempted to call this ‘coaching from the sidelines’ … More:
“A Government source confirmed that Mr Robbins had sent the text to Mr Hammond during the call but claimed that what he said had been “misrepresented”.
The usual weaselling out when a fact cannot be disputed: it’s misrepresented or ‘taken out of context’. So far so blatant, but it gets even more interesting:
“Most ministers who were on the call were unaware that Mr Robbins was listening in. One source said that Mr Robbins speaks on a regular basis to Mr Hammond and Mr Clark but added: “His door is open to anyone that wants to speak to him. It’s just not that everyone does.” Another source said that the text from Mr Robbins had made clear that renegotiating the backstop was “for the birds”.” (my bold)
Doesn’t this give the impression that Mr Robbins is not supporting the PM but Mr Hammond and the rest of the arch remainers in her Cabinet? And here I thought, being somewhat naive, that civil servants are supposed to work for the PM, not her opponents, even those in her own government!
Who now can be certain that such ‘explanations’ by our remain civil serpents are not also given to the Opposition? After all, haven’t we learned during these months of ‘negotiating with the EU’ that Whitehall is actually Remain Central …
While the MSM write about a ‘shock plot’ to ‘wrest control’ from the PM (e.g. here), while the latest Project Fear harks on about ‘disaster’ for cross-channel traffic (here), with the ‘orrible prediction that the “No Deal” might cause ‘a six-month slump’ – six months? Blimey! How can we possibly survive! – here’s another interesting bit picked up by The Times (paywalled):
“MPs backing a soft Norway-style deal with the European Union have put aside their differences with supporters of a second referendum in a joint effort to wrest control of Brexit from Theresa May. The leaders of two rival amendments designed to give MPs the power to delay and direct the process have been working behind the scenes to co-ordinate tactics before a crunch vote next week. Representatives of both groups met Hilary Benn, chairman of the Commons Brexit committee, in private yesterday. They are understood also to have shared drafts of their amendments to ensure that they are compatible and therefore attract the greatest possible support across the Commons.” (my bold)
This is how far the Remainers are now willing to go in their effort to thwart Brexit: they are cooperating to make the PM do as they say, regardless of their Party affiliation and totally disregarding us for whom they work. Allegedly.
They are so stuck in their own bubble that they are content to damage the PM and her standing in world affairs. With their machinations they are doing untold damage to our proud, centuries-old system of parliamentary democracy, but what do they care about all that!
So why not adopt this proposal by Michael Fabricant who asks in the DT “If Remainers are happy to tear up the rule book, why shouldn’t Mrs May?”, concluding:
“So I urge the Prime Minister: in the event that Parliament tries to take control, she should take a leaf out of Speaker Bercow’s book. Defy convention, ignore any resolutions by this Remainer Parliament and turn a blind eye to unwritten rules. The PM should take her instruction from the British people, who were clear in 2016, […] The European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 is on the statute book and unless changed by further legislation, the UK will leave the EU on March 29, with or without a deal.” (my bold)
Exactly! We did know what we were voting for! We have not forgotten – unlike the Remain MPs who are showing us with their shenanigans that they have forgotten what they voted for, that unlike us they have obviously not understood what they voted for, and that they are too thick, unlike us, to understand the consequences of their voting.
They do not see how the contempt they have for us is creating and increasing the far deeper contempt we have for them. The consequences of that contempt might well be a “People’s Project Fear” …
The truth is that at the referendum, the people voted to Leave the EU. We didn’t vote on any deal, or any notion that if a stalemate was reached, we should be asked again.
The government were asked what to do, we told them we wanted to Leave the EU. We then (foolishly) trusted our government to deliver on this. It was then up to our government to work out the finer details on what to do next, you know, things like trying to work out a favourable withdrawal agreement, to which we trusted our government.
Our government is clearly incapable of working out a tidy withdrawal agreement that works for the UK, or accepting that if one cannot be reached, an exit on WTO terms is inevitable, and preparations should be made accordingly.
But it is not so much as “incapable” as “unwilling”.
For all Labours bleating about second referendums or Peoples Votes, what IS their Brexit negotiation strategy? What is their alternative plan to Theresa May’s? They simply don’t have one, because they DON’T CARE, they are only interested in getting into power, so they can just carry on and do whatever the hell they want.
I feel that I have strayed between the covers of a Harry Potter novel!!! The Arch Remainers are ‘Death Eaters’. The EU is Voldemort, Treason May is Nagini – Voldemort’s snake – and the Order of the Phoenix -once a thriving UKIP entity – has been decimated! Meanwhile the rest of the wizarding world is looking on aghast while they and the unfortunate muggles are progressively picked off and consigned to the flames of Voldemort’s scorched earth policy. But where. I ask myself is Harry Potter?
Perhaps I am just lapsing into total and utter hysteria and disbelief. Disbelief that our once proud democratic Britain has been so hijacked by ‘hostile’ forces (who are preparing to deliver us into the clutches of the Evil Empire) that it now bears absolutely no resemblance to what I would recognise as the wonderful country of my birth!
There was another interesting comment in today’s Telegraph, referring to Farage’s interest in the new Brexit Party which is hearing up for the May European Parliament elections, aka gravy train.
I thought the revelations about Mr Olly Robbins prompting Hammond while listening in on that conference call was worthy of an extra article, as was the one about the Remainer MPs, Labour and Tory, not just collaborating but scheming to get the biggest bang for their bucks.
It seems thought from the interest on here as shown by the number of comments people are indeed fed up and ‘bored by Brexit’. That’s a pity, because without info such as provided ehre how are we going to defend Brexit, e.g. on social media?
IF BREXIT BE THE FOOD OF DISTRACTION, CARRY ON, GIVE THEM EXCESS OF IT, THAT SURFEITING, THEIR INTEREST MAY SICKEN
AND SO DIE
With apologies to William Shakespeare – Twelfth Night
Or, put another way: “The great enemy of the truth is very often not the lie – deliberate, contrived, and dishonest – but the myth – persistent, persuasive, and unrealistic. Too often we hold fast to the clichés of our forebears. We subject all facts to a prefabricated set of interpretations. We enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought.”
– John F. Kennedy | 35th president of the United States | 1917 – 1963