Thursday 26 September 2019

Should Boris quit?

On the one hand...


- He has been found to have acted unlawfully in advising the Queen, in normal circumstances definitely a resigning issue.
- He has a majority of -43 and so does not lead a working Government.
- He has been asked to go to Brussels to ask for an extension, which he will refuse to do, further breaking the law potentially.
- His performance yesterday was over the mark, as rude as the opposition were being, he just played into their hands with his over the top rhetoric.


On the other hand...


- He took advice from the Attorney General that what he was doing was legal, really the AG should resign not the PM. There is no evidence he willingly misled the Queen, but was following protocol that the Supreme Court has retrospectively changed.
- Parliament has refused to hold a vote of no confidence, therefore he has the confidence of the House to continue as Prime Minister.
- As long as he is in No 10 he has some power to try and resist the Remain coup, out of No 10 we may find revoke or a long extension (say 2 years) being agreed by whatever Quisling they put into place as PM.


Quite a hard one to call, I think after yesterday he should quit as it stands a good chance of forcing an election which we desperately need.

45 comments:

Lord Blagger said...

The EU is demanding money from the UK for an extension.
Nothing in the Benn bill says that Boris can't do the same. Demand money from the EU for any extension. Say 50 bn a month.
Will the EU agree?

Lord Blagger said...

14th October is their last date. They have two weeks to get a new PM in, and then Boris can insist on a second vote 14 days later. Too late.

The VONC has been refused.

Boris can offer them a GE, but that's 25 working days later. Last possible date for the antidemocrats is Friday.

What's also clear, is that the electorate is going to sack remainers, and put in place a government that doesn't even bother with A50 again, its just going to walk away by the simple expedient of passing a law that wipes out all their decisions. A repeal act in one hit. I would suggest that act includes a law that explicitly prevents any court involvement

Sackerson said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Sackerson said...

No, of course not. I'm told Justice Neuberger predicted that the SC would overstep its remit, before the Court was ever set up. Scrutiny? Parliament has put the "screw" in "scrutiny." 3+ years of this nonsense. If it carries on, Parliament will lose its moral right to represent and govern the country.

E-K said...

The reality of public opinion on the EU - despite claims from Remain that its support is growing - is that only 15% of the electorate bothered to vote for an MEP at the last EU election.

Why is no-one shouting about this ?

It says two things:

- People already know that MEPs are unimportant (despite Remainers telling us how democratic the EU is.)

and/or

- People don't really care about the EU nearly as much as our Remain Parliament tells us.

And there's the problem. A fervently Remain Parliament and a clearly Leave (or at best unenthusiastic) public.

This is not even a 50/50 split in opinion. Not anywhere near it. TBP won the EU elections and only 15% even bothered to vote for an MEP.

So Parliament have stopped the prorogation and stopped No Deal and have no alternative on offer yet refuse a general election.

Boris knows the feeling in the country - and so does the rest of Parliament, which is why they won't allow a general election.

Boris was right to smoke 'em out with prorogation because he had nothing to lose. My reservation isn't that he in blunder mode but that he's going for WA lite in reality (for another post perhaps.)

The court might create new law and apply it retrospectively in favour of a Remain Parliament and though they haven't said the PM mislead the Queen others are saying it "If it had nothing to do with Brexit then why the uproar from you, Boris ?" but now we have a good idea where the Queen stands on Brexit too. The court knows where she stands and they have usurped her.

We darn well know where the public stands as well which is why we are not having a general election and why a Remain Parliament supported by a court that could have kept out of it is keeping us in purgatory.

Two things I've heard that bothers me:

- A Remain MP saying "I am doing what I'm doing because I care about my constituents' jobs more than my own" Everyone cares about constituents' jobs. It's the same as people who tell us they are standing up for our children - as thought the rest of us aren't.

- Gary Lineker being allowed to say "I'm on the right side of the debate and have a right to say so" You're the face of BBC Sport, mate. Give up the day job if you want to be so vocal on this most incendiary of issues.

E-K said...

The cynic in me might think that the Court didn't accuse Boris of misleading the Queen as they didn't want to create a martyr nor challenge the Queen openly.

That's probably what the inordinate length of deliberation was about. I did wonder why they needed a long weekend to do it.

decnine said...

If Boris resigns it's odds on that we will get a Corbyn government which will not offer an election until 2022. Boris should stay, making it clear that the only way the opposition will get rid of him is by voting No Confidence. The more they make life difficult for Boris, the better it will play for him with the electorate - and the opposition is really scared of us...

Anonymous said...

One of the key issues when designing a question is not to induce bias. "Quisling" is a term known to those in their nappies but not the younger generation.

The question is a tad biased.

Now what about the result of a GE for example the 2017 one which ensured that whoever was in power had to seek consensus to get anything done. Appointing people without those skills can be put squarely in the lap of the Conservative Party, most of whose current membership will know the term "Quisling"

Perhaps we can use a more modern term now. I'm sure the readers will come up with one.

Anonymous said...

No - the high court found for the government - and they had precedent in Major's actions.

The PM may want to consider his own appeal to the high court in relation to the actions of the speaker - should the Benn bill have gone through?

Al

E-K said...

Anyone who can't be bothered to google quisling should be turned into Soylent green and fed to vegans.

david morris said...

Sackers

"Parliament has lost its moral right to represent and govern the country"

There FIFY

Anonymous said...

We now have a rotten Parliament, a bent Speaker, and a corrupt Supreme Court. (Which isn't "supreme" as it is subordinate to the European Court of Justice.)
This situation has arisen as a direct result of our membership of the European Union.

All of the above elements are behaving in this manner in order to keep us in the European Union.

There would seem to be a connection here.

Timbo614 said...

He can't quit because if he does all chances of getting a new conservative govt. go with him. Further he shouldn't quit anyway despite the rankling and goading I have never witnessed such disrespect and hassling of a new PM. He knew it was going to be tough but I suspect even he did not realise the depths the surrenderers would stoop to.

Don't forget that none of this constitutional wrangling would have come about but for a private citizen's lobbying and court action. Gina Miller and her supporters have an awful lot to answer for and tyhere must be an awful, awful lot of money behind her (not just here own).

I say fight on Boris push them to the limit and beyond if necessary, Brexit must be settled one way or the other and soon!

andrew said...

I dont see a ge resolving anything.

The parliament is split much like the country.
Our leaders are happy to dissemble and lie and break the unwritten constitution and then are unable to understand why so many refuse to fall in line.

Listening to gove defend the govt on prorogueation was genuinely chilling.
The man could ably defend a policy of burning dogs on the basis it cleans the streets. And that would be for fun.

Should bj resign
absolutely.

If for no other reason other than he has no hope of doing what he said he would


Anonymous said...

I can see men in white coats visiting No. 10 soon though.

Apparently Cummings is going to suggest to Boris that because of the threat of civil riots, Parliament will need to be prorogued under the Civil Contingencies Act.

Broadly similar to the wheeze Trump uses to get funding for the wall.

The only wall Boris/Cummings will be seeing, will be a padded one.

andrew said...

Listening to r4 today on how the govt will use powers to dodge the benn act.

Makes me wonder what happens if the govt resigned en mass on the 17th

Who sends the letter?

Anonymous said...

CU/ND/BQ - I remember in the year after the vote you were all pretty convinced that a deal would get done, the grown-ups would take charge etc etc.

Having seen what happened to Greece and witnessed the fury (no other word - one person I know was turning down dinner invitations if the people voted Leave - like Munich days or the Civil War prelude) of otherwise intelligent people desperate to stop Brexit at all costs and sod the vote, I wasn't so sanguine.

How do you feel about that forecast now?

Brexit and Trump were two huge, unexpected shocks to our elites, and partly came about by adroit use of social media - social media monopolists have been spending the last few years deplatforming like crazy to try and ensure nothing like that ever happens again.

President Trump is pretty neutered compared with Candidate Trump - no Wall, more troops than ever in Syria, where Obama pledged "no boots on the ground", tax cuts for the rich - on the plus side he's not Illary, so no war in Iran or Ukraine - yet he has a senior CIA guy, not some idealistic low-level grunt like that GCHQ girl, leaking his talks with foreign leaders to try and discredit him! It's their job to stop people doing things like that, not to do it themselves!

Yet I'm told the idea of a Deep State is a paranoid conspiracy theory. Hmm.

Anonymous said...

PS - I watched half an hour of the BBC programme on "Vaxxers", in which inter alia some sociologist types explained

a) how (at large scale population level) suspicion of the safety of vaccines was correlated with 'populism' - you know, the wrong sort of democracy.

b) how social media companies were trying to stop the spread of "false ideas".

Now if you have a growing number of people who don't trust 'the authorities', is using social media companies to suppress "false ideas" more or less likely to increase that number?

I've got no MMR axe to grind, all our kids were done (though I'd have preferred 3 seperate jabs, synergy is a thing). But it;s hard to read what happened to the late Oliver Venables, son of one of my climbinbg heroes (Kangshung Face of Everest, no oxygen) and say it's just a coincidence, it would have happened anyway.

##################################
The first night after the jab, Ollie ran a temperature and had nightmares.
For a fortnight he remained intermittently ill and the night terrors continued. He also began to develop a slight tremor in his right hand. Over the next few months his medical notes recorded a worrying ‘malaise’ and he suffered from a succession of viral infections.
We still cannot be sure whether the MMR vaccine did lasting damage. But, at the time, all Rosie knew was that Ollie was not the same healthy child he had been before. At first, he was fine most of the time. He was a bright, alert, laughing personality who filled our lives with pleasure. He was learn­ing to talk and count and was full of curiosity. But in the summer of 1993, when he was two, his intellectual development began to regress.
When we holidayed with friends he appeared disconnected, either not comprehending what we were all up to, or wilfully going his own way. Rosie became alarmed by his increasing bouts of trembling and thirst. She noticed that his speech diminished during these episodes and wondered whether he was diabetic, but a urine test proved negative.

By New Year, 1994, Ollie’s bubbling eagerness was being stifled by an unsettling rigidity. He arranged his toy cars meticulously on the arm of the sofa, head sideways, sighting out of the corner of his eye. His pronunciation became distorted - ‘duck’ became ‘dawk’, ‘darling’ became ‘dorning’ -and his vocabulary dwindled. We watched helplessly as learning and language evaporated, like files vanishing from the screen of a corrupted computer.
He was enslaved by distressing phobias, the vacuum cleaner reducing him to screaming terror. While his younger brother Edmond flourished, Ollie was drifting away into a parallel, inaccessible world.
In April, Rosie took Ollie to see a paediatrician. He came swiftly to the point: as far as he could tell, Ollie was autistic. We walked out into the bright blossom-scented afternoon, strapped our unique, precious, clever, beautiful son into his child seat and drove slowly home to start our new life in a foreign country called Autism.
#####################################################################

Lord Blagger said...

Just for your info anon. I've had all the jabs. So have my kids, bar one.
I got TB from the vaccination, because the doctor cocked up. You don't give a second BCG and if someone comes back positive on a mantoux test, you don't give a second jab. The result was at 13 I ended up on TB drugs for a year.

So you can get problems.

The kids can have the BCG, but not at school, and only after a mantoux test has been done.

Lord Blagger said...

PS. Today plus 25 working days, the minimum in law needed to have a general election is the 1st of November.

It's too late for a GE remainers.

The clock has run out on that option

CityUnslicker said...

Anon,

Of course we thought a deal would be done. It was so unlikely that both remainers and leavers would both vote against a deal from where people were at the time.

We were wrong, along with most people.

Which is one of the reasons you see little in the way of predictions from me. I have only said this year that i think the Remainers will seize Parliament and revoke at an opportune moment and I do still think that is a signficiant chance in October.

I also want this over, one way or 'tother as it is a miracel the economy has broadly gone on under this weight of uncertainty.

Lord Blagger said...

So, the question then, is what happens when remainers do that? They have a two year window. I suspect they will sign deals that say the UK isn't allowed to leave what is agreed. We are locked in.

Then in 2 years, they have a problem. In that 2 years, I suspect DB or Commerz go under. Then the UK is bailed in, via the ESF, and the estimates I've seen are 441 bn Euros just for DB. If DB goes, others go too. Lots of them.

So now you have a general election where remainers have conceivably lost many years of NHS funding. The public reaction will be vicious. A complete wipeout.

You now have a government that passes laws and will abolish any court that gets in the way. They can for example, remove the tax perk of judges, retrospectively, and the judges now have millions to pay each, or be bankrupted. There will be revenge.

Then what's the EU going to do?

Heck they could even pass a law that says remainers have to pay for the mess, and leavers don't.

Nick Drew said...

Anon, one of my earlier comments in that year (following the ref) was that surely the big majority of Remain MPs would form a whipped, single-issue voting block and kill the whole thing. I assumed this would happen after the 2016 Summer Recess.

But in hindsight ("it's obvious") all those MPs actually thought: best keep the powder dry, see what happens

The big thing I didn't really foresee (and should have) is that Hammond would be actively sabotaging any viable strategy - at very least, by refusing any £££ for realistic preparation (£1bn, flamboyantly spent before Xmas 2016, would have gone a very long way indeed); and possibly even by assuring the EC that's what he was doing (/not doing)

Like CU I have pretty much given up predicting, I am just one of tens of millions of spectators. Sometimes I think I spot something tactical going on: but it's a brave person who thinks they can see in detail how the big concrete issues will fall

one thing really is clear: the "British settlement", which for years governed how the many polar positions held so strongly, just somehow rubbed along, is well and truly over

Lord Blagger said...

The big thing I didn't really foresee (and should have) is that Hammond would be actively sabotaging any viable strategy - at very least, by refusing any £££ for realistic preparation
========
That means the Chancelor controls the cash. Correct.

How are remainers going to force the government to come up with a tax and spend bill to pay the EU?

Nick Drew said...

I think you may be underestimating the cunning, determination and shamelessness of Bercow et al

Raedwald said...

Forgive me in advance for mixing Tolstoy with Stalin's SU, but I reckon Brexit is Stalingrad; it's not the place that's important, but the battle. Brexit is the battleground over which an epochal struggle for power is being waged between those who, in the words of Betz and Smith for the Bruges Group have 'captured' the State and those who are determined to wrest power from them. Once Brexit is decided, other dominoes fall. Or not.

For the insurgents, it is an existential battle worth flinging in every last reserve. And unlike military battles, the defenders don't enjoy a ratio advantage, even though they also have the better weapons and most influential supporters and backers. The insurgents have something that Tolstoy described as close to righteous virtue, a moral advantage - and as the battle grows fiercer, the moral bankruptcy of the defenders, fighting not for an ideal but for incumbent power, privilege and advantage, becomes more pronounced.

Brexit won't be the end of it - the road to Berlin is long and will be heavily defended - but it will mark a turning of the tide.

Lord Blagger said...

After 3 years of it, I don't

But I know they underestimate what the electorate think of them, and will vote accordingly.

So do you think they will demand parliament extends the current term?

Nick Drew said...

Lord B, the Remainer lawyers have pulled out so many tricks from the bag, who knows what they can do or will do (esp. with the Speaker actively colluding and perhaps the SC onside)

Think of it: passing laws telling the executive what to do, in detail, but not allowing a GE to resolve the thing

at this point the "Parliamentary Remain Party" is both Parliament and Executive

as I see it right now, one of the few things that could unblock this is for Corbyn to be toppled by (say) Starmer / Thornberry in a way that Swinson could support: because just as there is a de facto Remain majority in Parliament, there is an anti-Corbyn majority too (and probably equally resolute)

Lord Blagger said...

A Lib/Lab/SNP pact means Boris has to get into bed with Nigel.

52% beats 48% in FPTP.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Results_of_the_2016_United_Kingdom_European_Union_membership_referendum#Results_by_constituency

This is the telling part. 406 constituencies voted to leave. 242 to remain. Remain lose the GE.

On top there is complete revulsion that is now spilling over about remain. They have, as you know, insulted and worse leavers. Leavers have by and large been civil and kept their mouths shut. Until now.

Remain MPs are in for a massive shock when they leave the bubble and ask the stupid, ill educated xenophobic racists they have been attacking, for their support.

Hovis said...

Should Boris resign? Not for trying to get something done. He should however resign for being crap.

The SC decision whilst bonkers was made far far easier by an absolutely shit defense put up by the Goverenment, not even referending the Bill of Rights and allowing the SC to misinterprtation the actual meaning of the 1611 judgement the SC judges used to cover their embarrasing nonsense.

So... failing to even try and filibuster the Benn bill, failing to put coherent defence together at the SC - I see patern emerging from the Johnson Govt.

Btw listen (a little out of date by a few weeks) the fabulous podcast with David Starkey and Brendan O'Neil.

Bill Quango MP said...

Yep. I fully expected a deal. Even more, I suspected an offer from the EU of, “ wait..don’t go...we thought you didn’t mean it. How about if you we sort immigration, across all the Eu?”
Some kind of immediate attempt to overturn the worst of the referendum and give us a hefty contribution to
At, but let us off much of the mad federal stuff. A deal that would cost us enough, that only other top five world e onomies could afford it. So no chance of Malta trying the same trick.

In the end, as we know, they offered nothing,
And then, once the remainers began colluding with the Eu, they were convinced the UK wasn’t serious about no deal, and a long deal game could be played.

Rather than Stalingrad, this was more the battle of the Atlantic.

Admiral Doenutz May was sending her obsolescent uboats on patrol. Whilst The Eu was receiving top secret Ultra reports from Hammond and co, at the same rate as May’s people were writing them.
And a Hammond wasn’t allowing those new MK XX1 type boats to go into production either. Or sorting out the faulty torpedoes. Herman Soames wasn’t going to allow the Luftwaffe to fly patrols for the leave navy either.

Lord Blagger said...

They have repeatedly shown they can't be trusted.

Lets start off with a no bail in to any EU banking failure. With DB on the brink, and the bank run in full swing, we need to make sure no 441 bn Euro bail in just for DB comes to the UK.

If that does, then you really will have violence.

Anonymous said...

If that does, then you really will have violence.

You'll need to talk to Ms Patel on that subject. She apparently is in charge of making you fear the law - or that is what she and Boris say.

It may be that the application of the law is subjective to the whims of the clique in power. It's what they use when an unelected PM wants to protect themselves from the law of the land.

So far Law 1 - Unelected PM 0

E-K said...

Well let Boris have his election then !

Lord Blagger said...

1:1

It went to the appeal court first.

Now for the decision to leave.

Courts, leave wins
Parliament, leave won
Lords leave won
The public, leave won.

Get over it, you were drubbed.

E-K said...

And only 15% bothered voting for MEPs in the EU elections and most of those for TBP.

The People aren't exactly enthusiastic about the EU.

E-K said...

Correction... 15% voted pro EU.

Elby the Beserk said...

May's "deal" was simply Articles of Surrender. Had we started from - No Deal. leaving in N months, what have you got EU we'd have been in the driving seat from Day One.

Instead the ghastly May crawled on her hands and knees to Brussels, and here we are today.

Couple of interesting articles in the Speccie on recent event

https://www.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/the-rule-of-law-has-become-the-rule-of-lawyers/

https://blogs.spectator.co.uk/2019/09/has-the-supreme-court-handed-boris-johnson-a-brexit-escape-route/

Me? I rather think Mr. Cumming's insouciance suggests they have something up their sleeves. Please God.

We're hoarding for Halloween. Hoarding booze. I have never rioted in my life, but that may well change if the Benn Surrender Monkey act does what they want it to do.

8 iterations of Captcha. Those grainy shots I cannot make out at all. Then Captcha went down.

10 minutes later? ....

Lord Blagger said...

Elby,

Look at it this way. The EU is demanding two things for an extension.

1. The UK pays the EU
2. The UK obeys EU law.

So clearly both of those are legal. One party in the negotiation can demand the other pays it, and it obeys its own laws.

The UK should get Brussels in.

1. Demand 100 bn a year for the duration of any extension from the EU. Sauce for the goose.

After all on the 1st, EU law no longer applies, and Labour etc, cannot force the government to spend any money since that requires a finance bill. Point out that even the EU playing games with remainers, if they force it, it will be a spending cuts bill AND remainers have to choose what gets cut.

That's a good political move, since remainers get blamed for austerity, if they are nuts to even try to say what gets cut.

2. Barclay has signed the consent order. On the 1st November no EU laws apply to the UK. He hasn't signed the consent order adopting EU law into UK law.

Simply put, we won't obey any of your rules and there's nothing you can do about it.

The EU then has a massive problem. It won't agree.

Then you get an early GE.

What does the EU do? Blockade the UK? That is the proverbial bucket of cold sick when it comes to the electorate. So perhaps he comes over, we want you back. Problem there is project fear has failed, and it will be repeated ad nauseum during the GE. It has no options that work.

English Catholic said...

A few thoughts:

The anti-Brexit forces in Parliament want to kick Johnson out of office, but don't want a GE. So they have to walk quite a careful tightrope: they want more than 50%, but less than 67%, of the HoC to vote against him in a VOC.

If a VOC is called, Johnson could presumably say 'make my day, I've been wanting an election for weeks', and order all 288 Tory MPs to vote against the government. Most will comply. At that point, the anti-government forces need to make sure at least 34, but no more than 143, opposition MPs, vote against Johnson. (I'm counting the DUP as opposition to get these numbers, but the point remains the same if they are counted as government.)

Now how is the Remainer Alliance going to arrange that? Corbyn would have a hard enough time manipulating just his own party to bring that about. He'd look an idiot telling some MPs to vote for the government, and others against it. Many Labour MPs don't really want him to be PM. And this is without taking the small parties and newly-minted independents into account.

Johnson wins if the vote for no confidence is less than 50%, or more than 67%. And he can manipulate a relatively united parliamentary party more easily, based on what he and Cummings think the opposition is doing. Heck, he could even tell nobody his plans, and send them a text ten minutes before the vote, telling them what to do. So the window for a VOC achieving the remainers' purpose is very narrow.

Nick Drew said...

Lord B, English C - fine reasoning, both: but I've become very cautious about knock-down arguments

you can reason cogently until you are blue in the face - and then something comes along you just didn't even know was a possibility

When we left the gold standard in 1934 a Labour MP (- some say it was Margaret Bondfield, a great-great aunt of mine), reportedly said: "They never told us we could do this"

E-K said...

Double braided was the hairstyle of the female Hitler youth. This was changed on the quiet by the Thunbergists recently.

Lord Blagger said...

Agreed. Munchetty has her socialist, BBC glasses on, where you only see what you want to see, and hear.

They distort, generalise and delete what they don't want to hear. They then don't let alternative views to be expressed. They suffer from group think.

Same with MPs. Group think.

However, this time its different. Things have changed.

Nick Drew said...

what price Thunberg for a Nobel Peace gong?

I'd say it's a nailed-on cert

Lord Blagger said...

I think this time its different. Leavers have been calm for 4 years. I now see a change. They aren't going to accept it any more.

They have been repeatedly called racists, ill-educated, chavs. They have been insulted in and out, by remainers I've lost count of the number of times I've been insulted on the Guardian, the BBC, face to face.

Now its changed, leavers have decided that what a large number of MPs are trying to do is fascist, traitorous, and they are letting remainers know that.

Remainer MPs are now in a fight for their own existence. The current plan is to stitch up the electorate. A remain remain ref where they fiddle with those able to vote is one. Long extensions another. Then they plan binding treaties so that can never be changed.

I can't see however, how they get this past 2 years.

Lets take one scenarion, Deutsche Bank going under. The UK is forced to pay 441 bn Euros [current estimate] into the ESF just for DB. Add other banks on top.

How are remainers going to present that to the public? You have to lose 3 years funding of the entire NHS, because of the EU.

They will be wiped out, and I can't see Brussels being able to do what they did to Italy in the UK.

It would be so bad, those remainer MPs will be claiming asylum