Labour and Tory rebel Remainer MPs ganged up against the government with legislation to extend Brexit beyond the promised 31 October and specifically to block a No-Deal Brexit.
LONDON: People thinking that Boris Johnson is having a bad week can think again. Everything is going according to Dominic Cummings’ master plan. As this reporter has previously said, Cummings is a genie and a genius; a genie makes things happen and a genius make sense of the numbers involved in the current political chicanery. Most of the events this week were predicted. Labour and Tory rebel Remainer MPs ganged up against the government with legislation to extend Brexit beyond the promised 31 October and specifically to block a No-Deal Brexit, a bill that Johnson called “Corbyn’s Surrender Bill”. Johnson made his first call for a general election, but it failed in Parliament. The Surrender Bill was passed in the Commons when 21 MPs voted against the government and after No. 10 decided there was no point in the Lords filibustering it, No. 10 let the amendments be erased and the Lords passed the bill. The important point here is that No. 10 wants to make sure “ownership” of the Surrender Bill lies with the House of Commons, with Labour MPs and Tory Remainers. The 21 MPs who “surrendered” had the whip immediately removed and will not be allowed to stand for re-election in their constituencies; these include former Chancellor Philip Hammond and Rory Stewart, GQ’s “Politician of the Year”.
There is one technical hitch in Corbyn’s Surrender Bill, called the Kinnock amendment. This obliges Parliament to hold a vote on Theresa May’s final Withdrawal Agreement (WA4), which emerged from cross-party talks earlier this year, but was never put to Parliament as May resigned. This apparently slipped by as the government made no tellers available to record the “noes”—folks are wondering if this was intentional or unintentional. To bring this WA4 back to Parliament, with Labour’s compromises included, would be toxic to Conservatives.
Unpredicted, the government lost its majority in the House of Commons when one Tory MP rudely crossed the floor to join the Liberal Democrats, while the Prime Minister was talking about trade at the despatch box. Johnson also lost his brother’s support. Jo Johnson was Universities Minister.
The Speaker, John Bercow, was hideously outspoken to Michael Gove, Minister for No-Deal Preparations, revealing Gove’s children’s school unnecessarily in his reply. Bercow is making it possible for Remainer voices to be heard loud and clear, to be sure his remit is to ensure all voices are heard, but he has thrown impartiality to the wind to such an extent that parties are considering breaking with tradition and standing a candidate against him at the next election.
The Conservatives’ ongoing plan is to position themselves as the party who will get Brexit done on 31 October; to accomplish this, No-Deal has to be an option. The Conservatives hold by trying to prevent Brexit with legislation against
No-Deal and refusing to have a general election the factions of opposition are opposing the people. The opposition have fallen into the trap. The Conservative Party under Boris Johnson’s leadership takes the people’s side against a Parliament of Labour and SNP anti-democratic opportunists.
The EU Council meets on 17 October. The million-dollar question is who do t
he British people trust to negotiate with Brussels, Johnson or Jeremy Corbyn? A new motion for an early general election is
scheduled for Monday.