681 thoughts on “Thursday 5 September: Nothing can be achieved by delaying Brexit again when the country is crying out for an election”

  1. First – at last! Good morning all. Have a happy day today. I shall be off shortly as I couldn’t sleep last night.

  3. Hello from sunny Poland. Watching the storms in Britain from a safe distance. May today bring NoTTLers some joy when through the early morning gloom annd over coming days BoJo’s poll ratings strengthen and threaten this sordid Remainer Plot.

  4. SIR – The vote in the Commons to introduce the Bill to take no-deal off the table was: Ayes 52 per cent; Noes 48 per cent. So using Remainer logic, the Government can keep no-deal on the table.

    Mark Dommett
    Devizes, Wiltshire

    Well done Devoizes. My kind of maffs.

  5. Boris predicted he would be forced to call for a general election if Parliament chose to withdraw his negotiating powers for a deal with the EU. Labour’s failure to support a general election before 31st October 2019 gave Boris the opportunity to blame them for not allowing a plebiscite for the terms of a revised mandate to leave the EU.

    Labour’s desertion of the House prior to the vote for a general election just underlined Boris’s quip that the Labour leader was a chlorinated chicken and also something else which he was seen mouthing on camera.

  6. Oh Gawd…more photo calls for Gina Miller outside the High Court later today…..the broadcast MSM will go beyond Warp3 if she wins.

  7. Good Morning Folks,

    The weather this morning reflects our Parliament, grey and gloomy and no prospect of any improvement.

  8. Corbyn is even worse than a chlorine washed chicken for running away from an election after he has been calling for one for years.

    1. Corbyn likens himself to Snow White who has been given a poisoned apple by the evil queen.
      No wonder there was a motion of no confidence in the opposition which was met with laughter in the House.

  9. Yesterday’s string of Lame Duck Government defeats is now forcing the public to make a decision.

    There is limited mileage to making Boris squirm out of malice – it is not a good image to send to the country when a general election is imminent and the only way to save the public reputation of Parliament or resolve the 2015 conflict due to the unrepresentative proportion of Remainers in parliament.

    If Labour wins, then the extension comes into effect. They will then go to Brussels proposing replacing the Backstop with permanent membership of the Customs Union, abandoning any attempts by the UK to be an independent trading unit, but satisfying Brussels and sort-of honouring the 2016 Referendum. They might well argue that it’s a cold place out there, unlike it was in the days of Empire or even the cosiness of the Commonwealth. The morality of Trump cosying up to Bolsonaro, and China happily not giving a damn about the rainforest as it feeds itself on the products of deforestation, is quite sickening. The only force strong enough to save the planet from a global extinction may well be coming from the EU. Ironic really, since they have been poisoning fields, banning plant varieties, grubbing hedgerows and orchards and scraping the sea bed devoid of life since the 1970s.

    The SNP will be pushing the case for revocation, but I cannot see this being adopted elsewhere. If Remainer Liberal Democrats make progress, it will be by acquiring Tory Remainer rebels, and they prefer a May style “Deal” than total revocation. If Corbyn does rely on Tory-diluted Lib Dems to get into office, he may well end up a prisoner to Davos within Downing Street, and unable to indulge his long-held passions in office.

    If Boris’s Tories win, then it’s full steam to a No Deal Brexit, as soon as he can unravel the order to extend the Article 50 deadline. There would be no need to comply with any of the EU regulations as we venture forth into the world with all the impressive dignity of a squeaking lion. Everything therefore hinges on the British people themselves rising to the challenge of taking on the world and winning, as they did in the past. English Common Law is our secret weapon – it offers freedom and flexibility denied to more prescriptive regimes, but how many today have the intelligence or the imagination to apply it?

  10. Certainly not Letts’ best but I’ve used up one of my two weekly ‘free access’ allocation so here it is….

    POLITICAL SKETCH
    september 5 2019, 12:01am, the times
    You big girl’s blouse! Tears and jeers in show of playground politics
    Quentin Letts

    Lebanon had sent a delegation of its parliamentarians to the Commons, to inspect our old democracy’s velvety procedures, its sacred connection to the voters. Oh dear.

    The visitors were subjected to a marathon of soul-dirtying malignancy, quivering insults, bad stratagems and bogus concerns. There was clapping (improper in the House) at moments of emotive hyperbole. We had histrionics, blubbing, an epidemic of self-pity. It was a bruising day for Boris Johnson but a pretty rotten one for our parliament, too.

    The Benn/Burt Bill aiming to delay Brexit was thrust down the House’s gullet, all stages in a single day — by MPs who professed to care about parliamentary propriety. Then, as darkness claimed us, MPs blocked a general election. It had been sought for political advantage. It was refused for political advantage. The main beneficiaries: Brussels.

    Boris Johnson’s first PMQs was riotous. Some of his language needed bleeping out. Fists were shaken at him, fore and aft. At one point it looked as if Labour MPs might start a scuffle with him across the Commons table. The House’s relationship with Boris was that of a mechanical rodeo bull to a Texan bar rider. It tried to throw him. He clung on for dear life.

    Slough’s Labour MP, Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi, went off on one about “racist” remarks in an old Johnson newspaper column. “Apologise!” cried the opposition benches, breaking into one of those rounds of look-at-me applause they use to assert moral superiority. Though Mr Dhesi’s line of attack was not new, it left a dent. John McDonnell, the shadow chancellor, was more inventive. After heckling from Mr Johnson, Mr McDonnell quipped: “Last time he shouted at someone, they had to call the police.” That was surely much sharper.

    Unlike his predecessor, this PM certainly invigorates a room.

    Electrifies some, electrocutes others. He pumped his fist and kept leaping to the dispatch box to take on his critics. When Jeremy Corbyn accused him of evading scrutiny, he said Corbyn was hiding from a snap general election and snorted: “You big girl’s blouse!” The Lebanese dignitaries in the gallery did a certain amount of blinking at this. It is not, perhaps, an idiom that translates easily into Arabic.

    The Speaker ticked off Tory MPs for breaking minor protocols, saying they must honour “very long-established procedures”. This earned rolled-eyes from Bercow’s critics, who feel he is too happy to shatter precious customs. The Speaker gave the floor to several of the de-whipped Tory Europhiles, among them Richard Harrington (Watford). Boris blithely continued to call him “my honourable friend” and may even have been unaware Mr Harrington was a rebel.

    Margot James (ex-Conservative, Stourbridge) kept nodding enthusiastically when Labour attacked Mr Johnson. She pinged in a snarly question about the Downing Street aide Dominic Cummings and the House went “ouch”. But the PM did not look remotely upset. “An excellent question,” he burbled. Ms James fumed. Boris’s failure to hate his opponents can be infuriating to them.

    Out on Parliament Square, the now-customary protesters were screaming “Boris out!” Caroline Lucas, of the Greens, told them that the Johnson government was embarked on “a complete seizure of power”. Eh? It had just lost its power over the parliamentary agenda. Ms Lucas later told MPs there was a need for “a revitalisation of democracy”. She voted against an election.

    Another of the punished Tory rebels, Sir Nicholas Soames (Mid Sussex), was clapped and fussed over after he made a tearful speech. “I’m truly very sad it should end in this way,” he sobbed. Soames, like Boris, has long been a vivid, politically incorrect figure. The Remainers insisting that he should be revered because he was Churchill’s grandson were the same people who in the past deplored him as some washed-up, sexist snob.

    Caroline Flint (Lab, Don Valley) said she would miss her encounters with Sir Nicholas in the Commons lifts. We’ll let that one go through to the wicketkeeper, I think.

      1. I might have been better if it had descended into fisticuffs.
        Then the British voter would have no excuse for not realising the sort of scum they have, for far too long, been in the habit of electing to represent them.

      2. I like this gif. Well not really “like”, but today I am showing off my new knowledge of “gif” and “meme”.

  12. SIR – The people want to leave the EU. The parliamentarians want to stay in. Which form of “democracy” will win?

    Dr Peter I Vardy
    Runcorn, Cheshire

    And………..

    SIR – Watching the Commons spectacle on Tuesday night I was sickened to see Theresa May giggling with her neighbour, Ken Clarke. It confirmed our suspicions – that she was always a Europhile Remainer. No wonder the last three years have been such a mess.

    Sue Milne
    Northampton

    …and will continue to be an undemocratic mess for quite a bit longer.

  13. SIR – As I write this my husband and I are listening to Bernard Haitink conducting probably his last concert in this country, at the Proms, before he retires at the age of 90. He gives a wonderful, wise interview in the interval – a summary of a fine and cosmopolitan career, as befits a great conductor. Our listening is tinged with sadness.

    We voted to Remain, mindful of a great European heritage. Now we both back Boris Johnson in his brave endeavours to carry out the democratic mandate, but with huge regret, in common with many other Remainers and I’m sure not a few Leavers. Perhaps it is the British fate always to be ambivalent in regard to Europe.

    Maybe one day we will return, if we do indeed leave, which we should.

    Marian Waters
    Pebworth, Warwickshire

    Oh dry up, Waters. We’re not leaving Europe, merely the throttling encumbrances of the floundering EU who want us as a life-jacket for their sinking economy, currency and finances. Musicians will still perform, even on the Beeb.

    1. You’ve missed out the main “throttling encumbrance”, Dolly.

      The EU is only the operative arm of the globalist “mafia”.

    2. We voted to Remain, mindful of a great European heritage.

      Now we both back Boris Johnson in his brave endeavours to carry out the democratic mandate,

      Maybe one day we will return, if we do indeed leave, which we should.

      Marian Waters is typical of the Remain mindset, she believes that Europe is synonymous with the Brussels cabal.
      It is imperative that the democratic mandate is upheld and what leads from that, our escape from a future controlled by Brussels: a future that will be bleak as the EU’s tentacles continue to entwine and choke the life and vibrancy out of the European nation states. After we escape there will be no return as we look at what the EU controlled area of Europe will have become. Our, and the Europeans’ best hope, is that after we have escaped the whole rotten and corrupt edifice collapses.

    4. “We voted to Remain, mindful of a great European heritage.”

      Therein lies part of the Brexit problem.

      We won’t all need new atlases with Europe removed from them and won’t need to find tons of soil to fill in the Channel Tunnel, etc., etc., etc.

  15. Morning all.
    Transpeak bus to Derby to pick the van up from the Vauxhall dealers after attention to the Diesel Particulate Filter that is costing me £550. Not a happy bunny.

    I see Yves Binoche is BTL spouting his usual bullshonet with Max Bonamy scoring palpable hits in return.
    A comment supporting one of Max’s:-

    Robert Spowart 5 Sep 2019 7:29AM
    @Max Bonamy @Yves Binoche

    “There is no suppression of democracy in the EU because no decision of the Commission can become law without the approval of the democratically elected Parliament of the EU.”

    It has long been obvious that the EU Parliament performs the same function for the EU Commission as the Soviet era Duma performed for the Politburo, the provision of a fig leaf of sham democratic accountability.

    “In time, I expect senior officials of the European Commission to be democratically elected too.”

    Not just delusional, but dangerous too. After the appointment of von der Leyen and the way it was forced through roughshod over established procedures, does anyone SERIOUSLY believe the EU Commission would ever subject its self to true democratic scrutiny?

  17. Morning, all. Going into hospital tomorrow at the crack of sparrow for a prostate op so will be missing for a couple of days. General health otherwise excellent.

    6. Good morning and good luck, Delboy. I wish you the joy of a good strong stream and the contented sigh of a job well done.

    13. You will be very much in our thoughts – especially those of us who have prostate concerns. The very best of luck to you, get well soon and tell us all about it when you get back.

  19. Morning all

    SIR – After three years of negotiations and three extensions, with an intransigent EU and a Parliament that will not accept the current deal with the backstop, what on earth did those MPs in charge of Commons business yesterday think would change between now and the end of January?

    The EU can just sit back and twiddle its thumbs, and Britain remains in limbo for months and years to come.

    The only solution is an election with a clear Conservative manifesto for leaving the EU, without relying on the Brexit Party.

    Brian Green
    Huddersfield, West Yorkshire

  20. SIR – Although disagreeing with the late Tony Benn on many things, I do find his five questions apposite, in view of MPs choosing to ignore the results of the referendum they called for and authorised.

    “What power have you got? Where did you get it from? In whose interests do you exercise it? To whom are you accountable? And how can we get rid of you?”

    David Booth
    Latheron, Caithness

  21. Morning again

    SIR – How can we trust the judgment of elected MPs on both sides of the chamber when, as we can see on television, most play on their mobiles during proceedings in the Commons?

    Diana Robertson
    Romsey, Hampshire

  24. Good morning, all. Cloudy – rain forecast. One says at 10 pm; another 11 am; yet a third, 5 pm.

    We’ll see. I refuse even to look at any news. let alone read it.

  25. Spectacular firework display last evening – to celebrate how yer French – single-handedly – liberated this part of France in 1944. Amazing, really. No help from anyone.

      1. An agreement between the two is the only way to get rid of Labour MPs in the north. Despite the bravado, thousands of people (sheep?) will not turn away from Labour towards the Conservatives. However, a lot of them would vote for the Brexit Party, and if those votes were added to those who would usually vote Conservative we might wipe the smiles from the faces of those complacent Labour MPs who believe they have a God given right to the votes of Northerners. If the Leave vote is split then it will be Labour or the Lib Dums who benefit.

          1. So the country will be destroyed for ever because of the personal spite of a weird oddball?

      2. I may have mentioned this once or twice myself on this site!

        (Many schoolmasters are criticised for repeating themselves repeatedly and banging on about things over and over again)

        (I wonder if Pretty Polly ever was a schoolmistress. She seems to have mentioned the palindromic Mr Soros once or twice)

        1. A schoolmistress?

          You jest, Richard. She hasn’t even gone to primary school yet; her potty training is way behind – she just can’t understand it

  28. Sir – How can we trust the judgment of elected MPS on both sides of the chamber when, as we can see on television, most play on their mobiles during proceedings in the Commons?

    Diana Robertson
    Romsey, Hampshire

    I posted this comment on a YouTube channel showing JRM’s excellent speech yesterday:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gOnMCAHpaYA&t=1s

    https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/94d2afe68e1b6b71b64ac78a967fcaac9bc94c50acdbd3833688c6064ff74269.png

    ”Who is that chav cow behind JRM in the olive green suit? She is more concerned about texting someone (in the House!) than partaking in the debate. Mobile phones should be banned from the chamber!”

        1. Teflon, he is. It rolls off. I think he says what people want to hear, without listening to them.

          1. Addendum. I have pointed out the horrors in the WA that are of particular relevance to this constituency. He voted for the WA anyway.

  29. Good morning all
    William Stanier posted this last night and I thought it worth repeating today. I know Alistair Heath doesn’t have a good track record on predictions but it’s a little ray of sunshine.

    Ignore the Remainer triumphalism – Boris is still on course for victory

    ALLISTER HEATH

    Despite tonight’s defeat, the PM will eventually get his election

    The Tory party is dead; long live the Tory party. The seismic realignment that was supposed to take place in 2016 is finally upon us, and a tougher, rougher, non-deferential conservatism is making its explosive debut.

    Ruthlessly focused on the public’s priorities, its ideology is complex. In some ways, it will be more pro-capitalist and pro-freedom: especially on tax, motoring and the nanny state. It will be more conservative on law and order, defence and immigration. In yet other areas, such as health and overall public spending, it will back a larger government, as we saw in a Spending Review that increased overall expenditure by 0.5 per cent of GDP over two years.

    But the biggest difference, of course, is that 31 years after Margaret Thatcher launched the modern Eurosceptic movement with her Bruges speech, her side has finally triumphed. Following the expulsion of the 21 most committed Remainers, Eurosceptics are in almost full control of the Tory party for the first time since the Fifties. If Boris Johnson’s massive, historic bet pays off – by no means certain – he will win the general election by scooping up a fresh demographic attracted by his domestic and European policies. He will then engineer a real Brexit, ensuring the period between 1973 and 2019 is remembered as a historical curiosity, an aberrant era during which the UK was conned into giving up its self-government.

    As such, Remainers’ triumphalism these past two days is misplaced. Their hatred of Boris Johnson and his adviser Dominic Cummings, their inability to look outside of the Westminster bubble and their obsession with the minutiae of process is blinding them to the true state of play. The Remainers may still win in the end, of course, but only if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister, laying waste to everything else many of them believe in.

    Right now, Johnson and Cummings are still on a path to success, even if they have had to recalibrate their journey several times as obstacles have emerged. The situation is tense, the PM is feeling the pressure and much of the Cabinet is in a state of shock. But Boris hasn’t been “humiliated”. He hasn’t been “wrong-footed”.

    The semi-prorogation didn’t “backfire”: it flushed out his hardcore opponents and allowed him to expel them. He knew he would have to do something drastic at some stage and there was no way that those committed to derailing his plans would ever have been allowed to stand under Tory colours at the election. His party was already split de facto, if not de jure; he was always leading a minority government in all but name. The sackings merely formalised this.

    Part of the misunderstanding is that Remainers still see themselves as members of the natural governing class, with the Brexiteers as insolent interlopers. Such ultra-Remainers are so blinded by credentialism, by their hero worship of the likes of Kenneth Clarke – who, as chancellor, helped John Major gift power to Tony Blair – that they cannot understand why their removal actually helps Johnson.

    They see the purge of their favourite Tories as a terrible loss of talent, a cataclysmic blow to the credibility of the party, its final death even; yet to Leave voters, losing anti-Brexit irreconcilables, especially overrated establishment figures, is a huge step in the right direction and proof of Boris’s seriousness.

    In any case, the Prime Minister needs a party with a single message: every candidate will have to sign up to his plans. This will be the only way that he can fight off the Brexit Party. If he wins, perhaps with a slender majority, Johnson will need to be able to count on every one of his MPs.

    In the first few hours after Johnson called for an election, when it became clear that MPs would seize control of Parliament, Remainers were elated: they thought they had crippled their enemy.

    But they are now realising, to their horror, that their victory may be ephemeral. The MPs’ vote may not really matter; the PM is ready for an election, and he has in fact guaranteed one by making it clear that he doesn’t have a technical majority any longer. Paradoxically, weakness is strength for Boris. He might have preferred to go to the polls after Brexit, but the present path comes with its own advantages.

    Hence Labour’s dithering, and the too-clever-by-half plan by some to try to outfox Johnson by delaying any vote until November or December. Combined with Parliament’s power grab, this could theoretically prevent Brexit on October 31, force Johnson to break his promise and ensure his destruction, with the help of a resurgent Brexit Party.

    It won’t work: Labour will be forced to blink first. Such scheming implies Corbyn believes Johnson would win on October 15 – not a good look, as they say on Twitter. Delaying the election for months will prolong the life of a useless, unworkable, anarchical Parliament. The Government would relentlessly tell voters that Labour and the Lib Dems are blocking any progress and have decided to pay MPs not to work, reinforcing the Boris vs the establishment narrative.

    Johnson may not get the blame for delaying Brexit either. Tory supporters and Leave voters increasingly hold his opponents responsible for the chaos, and that is even before he spends months repeating his mantra that Corbyn is a coward for refusing to face the electorate. The PM’s description of the Leader of the Opposition as a “chlorinated chicken” is a harbinger of things to come. Labour can’t go on refusing an election for much longer.

    Last but not least, engineering a delay in Brexit would simply encourage the Government to go for broke. If they were to back a no-deal Brexit, Nigel Farage would step aside and the Leave vote would unite. I am sure those in No 10 genuinely and rightly want a deal. But they may not have a choice if furious voters begin to turn to the Brexit Party again. Do the Remainers really want to goad Downing Street in this way?

    Johnson’s gamble was breathtaking in its ambition: he would take over a fatally divided Tory party with no majority, forcibly reform it in his image and gain a pro-Brexit majority. For all of the madness of the past few days, I’m still predicting that he will pull it off.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk…

  30. Yesterday midday there was a flock of about 50 crag martins screeching over the bay. Amazing sight and sound. Astonishing that they don’t collide given how fast they fly. They live in the cliffs which surround where we stay (where we lived 2009-2011).

    2. When I can summon the enthusiasm, I like to be down walking along the beach at 06:00 as I have it to myself at that hour, apart from the occasional other mad fool who is up that early. The waves rolling in, the fresh sea breeze, no sounds of modern life. It is a good start to the day.

      Last Autumn I was ambling along when I heard a honking behind me and I turned to see a V formation of Geese coming from a large duckpond and heading out to sea. There were 20 – 25 of them already lined up and I watched them coming towards me, passing overhead, then going out over the waves. You normally see them high in the sky, but these were only 30 feet up and they were close enough that I could see their eyes as they flew over. That was a beautiful sight. 🙂

      1. A skein of geese. Better than when they’re on the ground when they just gaggle along and shiit all over the place.

  31. Yesterday someone posted a piece on the Lords talking out the “No deal Bill.”
    It appears that the Government has droped its attempts to do that.
    Johnson will try again to get an election called next week.

    I find it ironic that our best hope now is that the EU will say on 31st October :
    “Good bye, you’re out without a deal, because the WA PD is never going to be changed and we’re not wasting any more time”

    1. Some hope – they’ll keep us on as a member who pays 100 fees per year and doesn’t use any of the facilities (actually it’s much worse than this).

      1. Indeed, but it only takes one member State to veto an extension.
        Johnson should be buttering up the Hungarians.

          1. I think he is stymied by the “no deal” treachery passed earlier this week.

            My undestanding is that Britain doesn’t get a say in whether there should be another extension, we are now supplicants.

          2. Why don’t we bribe (say) Slovakia (agree some Aid – or give their key people BIG backhanders).

          3. Yo LD

            (agree some Aid – or give their key people BIG backhanders

            They are of the incorrect hue of skin
            They do not have a Nuclear Programme
            They are not launching satellites
            Their citizens are legally(ish) allowed to stay here
            They do not eat at Ali’s Snack Bar
            A lot of them take up employment

            All anethmas to Korbynski & Co and the EUSSR

      1. This is Remain Control speaking; your Internet Service Providers have been taken over and switched OFF for crimes against free speech.

        They are currently being reprogrammed with Newspeak, please bear with us as we take you to a Brave New World in 1,984 minutes.

  33. Ignore the Remainer triumphalism – Boris is still on course for victory

    ALLISTER HEATH

    Despite tonight’s defeat, the PM will eventually get his election

    The Tory party is dead; long live the Tory party. The seismic realignment that was supposed to take place in 2016 is finally upon us, and a tougher, rougher, non-deferential conservatism is making its explosive debut.

    Ruthlessly focused on the public’s priorities, its ideology is complex. In some ways, it will be more pro-capitalist and pro-freedom: especially on tax, motoring and the nanny state. It will be more conservative on law and order, defence and immigration. In yet other areas, such as health and overall public spending, it will back a larger government, as we saw in a Spending Review that increased overall expenditure by 0.5 per cent of GDP over two years.

    But the biggest difference, of course, is that 31 years after Margaret Thatcher launched the modern Eurosceptic movement with her Bruges speech, her side has finally triumphed. Following the expulsion of the 21 most committed Remainers, Eurosceptics are in almost full control of the Tory party for the first time since the Fifties. If Boris Johnson’s massive, historic bet pays off – by no means certain – he will win the general election by scooping up a fresh demographic attracted by his domestic and European policies. He will then engineer a real Brexit, ensuring the period between 1973 and 2019 is remembered as a historical curiosity, an aberrant era during which the UK was conned into giving up its self-government.

    As such, Remainers’ triumphalism these past two days is misplaced. Their hatred of Boris Johnson and his adviser Dominic Cummings, their inability to look outside of the Westminster bubble and their obsession with the minutiae of process is blinding them to the true state of play. The Remainers may still win in the end, of course, but only if Jeremy Corbyn becomes prime minister, laying waste to everything else many of them believe in.

    Right now, Johnson and Cummings are still on a path to success, even if they have had to recalibrate their journey several times as obstacles have emerged. The situation is tense, the PM is feeling the pressure and much of the Cabinet is in a state of shock. But Boris hasn’t been “humiliated”. He hasn’t been “wrong-footed”.

    The semi-prorogation didn’t “backfire”: it flushed out his hardcore opponents and allowed him to expel them. He knew he would have to do something drastic at some stage and there was no way that those committed to derailing his plans would ever have been allowed to stand under Tory colours at the election. His party was already split de facto, if not de jure; he was always leading a minority government in all but name. The sackings merely formalised this.

    Part of the misunderstanding is that Remainers still see themselves as members of the natural governing class, with the Brexiteers as insolent interlopers. Such ultra-Remainers are so blinded by credentialism, by their hero worship of the likes of Kenneth Clarke – who, as chancellor, helped John Major gift power to Tony Blair – that they cannot understand why their removal actually helps Johnson.

    They see the purge of their favourite Tories as a terrible loss of talent, a cataclysmic blow to the credibility of the party, its final death even; yet to Leave voters, losing anti-Brexit irreconcilables, especially overrated establishment figures, is a huge step in the right direction and proof of Boris’s seriousness.

    In any case, the Prime Minister needs a party with a single message: every candidate will have to sign up to his plans. This will be the only way that he can fight off the Brexit Party. If he wins, perhaps with a slender majority, Johnson will need to be able to count on every one of his MPs.

    In the first few hours after Johnson called for an election, when it became clear that MPs would seize control of Parliament, Remainers were elated: they thought they had crippled their enemy.

    But they are now realising, to their horror, that their victory may be ephemeral. The MPs’ vote may not really matter; the PM is ready for an election, and he has in fact guaranteed one by making it clear that he doesn’t have a technical majority any longer. Paradoxically, weakness is strength for Boris. He might have preferred to go to the polls after Brexit, but the present path comes with its own advantages.

    Hence Labour’s dithering, and the too-clever-by-half plan by some to try to outfox Johnson by delaying any vote until November or December. Combined with Parliament’s power grab, this could theoretically prevent Brexit on October 31, force Johnson to break his promise and ensure his destruction, with the help of a resurgent Brexit Party.

    It won’t work: Labour will be forced to blink first. Such scheming implies Corbyn believes Johnson would win on October 15 – not a good look, as they say on Twitter. Delaying the election for months will prolong the life of a useless, unworkable, anarchical Parliament. The Government would relentlessly tell voters that Labour and the Lib Dems are blocking any progress and have decided to pay MPs not to work, reinforcing the Boris vs the establishment narrative.

    Johnson may not get the blame for delaying Brexit either. Tory supporters and Leave voters increasingly hold his opponents responsible for the chaos, and that is even before he spends months repeating his mantra that Corbyn is a coward for refusing to face the electorate. The PM’s description of the Leader of the Opposition as a “chlorinated chicken” is a harbinger of things to come. Labour can’t go on refusing an election for much longer.

    Last but not least, engineering a delay in Brexit would simply encourage the Government to go for broke. If they were to back a no-deal Brexit, Nigel Farage would step aside and the Leave vote would unite. I am sure those in No 10 genuinely and rightly want a deal. But they may not have a choice if furious voters begin to turn to the Brexit Party again. Do the Remainers really want to goad Downing Street in this way?

    Johnson’s gamble was breathtaking in its ambition: he would take over a fatally divided Tory party with no majority, forcibly reform it in his image and gain a pro-Brexit majority. For all of the madness of the past few days, I’m still predicting that he will pull it off.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/04/ignore-remainer-triumphalism-boris-still-course-victory/

    1. Thank you William. I took the liberty of copying and posting it an hour or so ago.
      Apologies for not waiting.

      2. I posted Sherelle Jacobs’s article late last night. Has anyone yet reposted it?

        She is the best DT commentator by far at the moment.

        2. A bit over the top with her adjectives, and having seen her on TV I am not certain that her articles reflect her personal beliefs. Nevertheless, she goes for the jugular.

    2. But what sort of brexit? Real Brexit or Brino? He is surrounded, as the events of the last few days have shown, by remainer MPs in his own party who will attempt to emasculate any real brexit.

  34. Phew – a tricky moment. Quite suddenly NoTTL “Cannot be reached”. Had to close down, restart and apply Manchester screwdriver approach.

    Anyone else had this?

  35. Today the Telegraph is referring to the “Benn Bill”; one could refer to it as the Bill o’ Benn, whilst shouting Flobadob. and Weeed!
    ‘

    1. The second Viscount Stansgate, aka Anthony Wedgwood Benn, aka Tony Benn must be turning in his grave.

      Whether or not you agree with Tony Benn’s politics he was clear about the EU which he despised and loathed. He was a real upholder of Parliament unlike his shameful, disgusting and disgraceful vandal son ‘Hilarity’ who is no joke – just a miserable but nasty damp squib.

      1. They also want to call it a No.2 Act.
        As it will be passed by a load of silly asses, that would be poetic justice.

  38. ‘Your parents are to blame’: Judge blasts family of a machete-wielding thug who chopped off a teenager’s hand for raising him in ‘squalor’ to become an ‘angry man’
    Che Ambe, 21, attacked 18-year-old Tyler Stevens after chasing him on a moped
    The victim, who saw his hand come off, staggered to a friend’s house for help
    Now a judge has blamed the parents of Che Ambe for raising him in ‘squalor’

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7429293/Judge-tells-machete-wielding-thug-chopped-teenagers-hand-parents-blame.html

      2. The truth is all around, in abundance. It does require seeing beyond the abject transparency of denigration ( conspiracy theorist, racist … etc. ) though.

  41. This is now to all intents and purposes a Common Purpose parliament, the
    remainers, aided by Bercow are using the ultimate CP ploy of ‘Leading
    without Authority.’

    2. The Critical Theory (Common Purpose) mob wheedled themselves into power whilst those on the Right whinged on social media, licked windows, pointed at dogs and chased cars.

      The Right only has itself to blame.

      1. The Right certainly wasn’t paying enough attention.
        It’s allowed itself to be infiltrated by the Left, and allowed them to control the narrative.
        Part of the problem is that the Left is good at nice-sounding catchphrases, and which takes too long to expose as double-speak a the opposite of what it means.

    3. Traffic wardens have authority without responsibility; doctors have responsibility but are often denied authority.

      Our politicians are worse than traffic wardens, who, in some rare circumstances, can do a useful job.

    1. I can accept “amount of sugar” but NOT “amount of people” …. these people need to be tortured with “number of sugar” repeatedly.

        1. No lumps until they learn about countables – and that applies to theirr “English” teachers as well.

      3. People who promulgate the use of any Americanism should be tortured.

        Starting an answer or statement with “So” or “I mean”.
        Using “Can” when they mean “May”.
        Using “Sat” when they mean “Sitting” (or “Stood” for “Standing”).
        Using “Bunch” for any collective.
        Using “Smart” when they mean “Intelligent”.

        And ten thousand other abominations against the English language that are now being routinely taken up by the neuron-deficient in the UK and elsewhere.

        2. Yo Grizz

          People who promulgate the use of any Americanism should be tutored, by Peddy

          I know it would be akin to pulling teeth, but they would learn to ‘ rite un speek propa’

          4. …and the Russians, and the other Allies.

            We have the number of Slammers, and related murders etc., in this country through being joined to America’s wars in the Middle East. So pipe down, Polly!

          5. Of course there were many allies in WW1 and WW2. That is not disputed.

            Who in the UK wanted the ME wars, and apparently the consequences ?

            Was it the individual who looks very much linked into the globalist set up ?

            As to ”piping down”…… lol !

    1. What further proof do people need to see that Nigel Farage sincerely believes in Brexit and puts it above his own personal ambition?

      If Boris Johnson is not prepared to form a pact with Nigel Farage then Boris Johnson, his party and the country are all finished. It is as simple as that.

    2. Nigel’s party should not stand against the dedicated Leavers such as Steve Baker etc. I suspect Nigel has already decided to do that.

          1. Afternoon R,
            The very same could be said of “nige”
            30,000 UKIP members would bear witness to that.
            In a trench situation make sure ” nige” is
            is in front of you.
            This is not, I repeat, not, an anti brexit group post.

  46. M6 gin crash: Motorway reopens after lorry collision

    The M6 has reopened after a lorry carrying 32,000 litres (7,039 gallons) of gin was involved in a crash and began leaking its cargo on to the carriageway.

    The motorway was shut in Cheshire between junction 19 at Knutsford and junction 20 at Lymm following a collision between two HGVs at about 17:30 BST on Wednesday.

    Emergency crews worked overnight to stop the spilt gin from igniting.

    It fully reopened at about 04:30 BST.

    https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-manchester-49590513?ns_source=facebook&ocid=socialflow_facebook&ns_mchannel=social&ns_campaign=bbcnews&fbclid=IwAR2AWsvsgX64UJXqSW2Ip0BCO4Y_2eT55OKKLfGt9qpJ6WR5AxSG6kmmmaw&fbclid=IwAR3s16QncEM0YtET8ysC4jXyKPfkA9ZxaJrbTqONzL94o4AM33pvP5isrvo

    3. Various drunk squirrels, deer, badgers and other fauna have been spotted in the area.

      Morning, Belle.

  48. SIR – When will we have a law passed to trigger a by-election as soon as an MP switches parties? Voters are being left disfranchised by disloyal representatives.

    John Gallagher
    Shrewsbury, Shropshire

    The answer should surely be ‘yes’. The more interesting conundrum is what should happen when a political party switches a manifesto pledge such “We will respect the outcome of the Referendum.”

    1. Please don’t show any more photos of this repulsive pair: they both make me want to be sick.

      2. Good afternoon rastus – the picture strengthens my resolve to see our Brexit through. The fight is not over yet. Bercow and the remainers have misused their parliamentary power and Boris should fight fire with fire. The gloves are off.

      3. Good afternoon rastus – the picture strengthens my resolve to see our Brexit through. The fight is not over yet. Bercow and the remainers have misused their parliamentary power and Boris should fight fire with fire. The gloves are off.

  50. Spiked

    “Phillips said she wanted to speak ‘plainly’. Okay, let’s speak plainly: Jess Phillips is far more elitist than Boris Johnson.

    Sure, he removed the whip from 21 Tory MPs – but if Phillips gets her

    way, the vote will be removed from thousands of her own constituents.

    Phillips is MP for Birmingham Yardley. Every single ward of Birmingham

    Yardley voted to leave the European Union. Acocks Green was 55 per cent

    Leave; Sheldon was 68 per cent; South Yardley was 55 per cent; and

    Stechford was 63 per cent.

    And yet Phillips has devoted a huge amount of her time lately to railing against Brexit

    and arguing for a second referendum – that is, for a do-over of the

    17.4million Leave votes cast in the 2016 referendum, including the

    thousands of votes from her own constituents. If that isn’t elitism,

    what is? Whether by dint of her education, her middle-class upbringing

    or simply her presumed ability to see things more clearly than others,

    Ms Phillips seems to think she knows better than her own constituents

    how the country should be governed, and so she has campaigned for their

    votes, and millions of other votes, effectively to be voided. Boris

    removed the whip from 21 Tory MPs? Get me a tiny violin. Phillips would

    remove one of the most important votes of their lives from her

    constituents. You want to talk about ‘abominations’? That’s the

    abomination.”

    Rest here

    https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/09/05/jess-phillips-is-far-more-elitist-than-boris-johnson/

  51. Corbyn just waiting now for HM’s signature.
    But shadow chancellor not sure what date Corbyn wants for a general election.
    PM’s broadcast to nation today.

  52. BBB Breaking news;
    “Jo Johnson, brother of UK PM, quits as Tory MP and minister saying he is “torn between family and national interest””

    3. Why is there this obsession with Politicians with the EU. There has to be something in it for them to be so fanatical about it

      WE actually only do 12% of our trade with the EU. WE have a huge balance of trade deficit with them. WE do 55% of our trade outside of the EU. The EU market is at best static whilst the res of the worlds market is growing . Average WTO tariffs are only a couple of percent

      1. Many of our MP’s wrongly see themselves as being “entitled” to better things for themselves, instead of doing what is best for the people of our country. In short, they want to keep us trapped in the EU so that when they are kicked out of our Parliament they can go there to get that 3rd gold-plated pension, extra overpaid salary, unlimited expense account, 24 hour chauffeur and all of the other benefits along with an inflated sense of self-worth.

        One look at the Kinnocks and you can see all of the reasons why these dregs of society posing as MP’s want to betray us.

        1. Patten and Mandelslime reveal the extremely low calibre of people who are commssioners in the EU.

        2. The inflated salaries and vast expenses granted to MEP’s are obviously designed to keep them onside!

        3. There was a scurrilous rumour at the time that Kinnock was so sure of winning the GE that he committed himself to a very large mortgage. When Major surprisingly won he took pity on the Kinnocks and proposed NK as an EU commissioner. The rest, as they say, is History.

    4. Torn between the demands of his green girlfriend and national interest, more like. I wonder how much subtle (or not so subtle) pressure she is putting on his…

      Morning fishface! :o)

      1. Following Mr Johnson’s resignation, former cabinet minister David Gauke, an MP who was removed from the Conservative Party after backing an anti-no-deal Brexit bill in Parliament this week, tweeted: “Lots of MPs have had to wrestle with conflicting loyalties in recent weeks. None more so than Jo. This is a big loss to Parliament, the government and the Conservative Party.”

        ….a big loss, says Gauke. It’s all relative, David.

    5. My jaw dropped when I read those words. A rare thing these days with all that is going on. I posted this comment on another site:

      “”Torn between family loyalty and national interest.”

      (!) What on Earth is he? A member of the Mafia? If you are even thinking along the lines of putting loyalty to family before national interests, then you have NO place as a public servant.

      Do these people even think about what they are saying? What a useless bunch of deluded muppets we have in office now.”

    6. The viper in the nest
      The smouldering fire in the bedding.
      The enemy within.

      And his tart of a sister is no better. I am not entirely certain than any members of this very peculiar family can be trusted.

  53. A cowardly charade by Remainer chickens

    TELEGRAPH VIEW

    Labour’s opposition to an election was a shameless act of cowardice and hypocrisy. No one is quite sure what Labour wants to do about Brexit, but Jeremy Corbyn has said he is ready for a national contest numerous times. When the Government put a Bill to the Commons to trigger an election last night, however, he ran away from the opportunity.

    Mr Corbyn is frit, as Margaret Thatcher once said; “a chlorinated chicken” as Boris Johnson joked. He’s not entirely in charge, either.

    We all know that deep down, Mr Corbyn hates Brussels. It’s a tenet of the Bennite faith that the EU is a capitalist club and Britain can’t build socialism until it’s out. But he leads a party dominated by metropolitan liberals who rather like the club (which is not so much capitalist as protectionist), and those Remainers fear that an election will give Boris Johnson a pro-Leave majority. Thus they’ve instructed Mr Corbyn to hold the line and buy them time. They have turned the most Left-wing Labour leader in recent history into a defender of the status quo.

    The longer this charade in parliament continues, the more morally compromised MPs become. The pitiful attempt, for example, to label the PM a racist for a column he wrote that actually defended wearers of the burka earned a round of applause from woke members of the House, but to the outside world this looks like what it is: political performance art. As were Left-wing tears at Sir Nicholas Soames’ speech announcing his retirement – tears from the same people who until recently regarded him as a dinosaur. What it all amounts to is the establishment digging in, trying to hold back an election until the moment it thinks most favourable – again, contrary to everything Remainers have said before.

    How can they look their constituents in the face? Haven’t they also insisted for the last few years that the Brexit issue should be put back to the people? “But not before a no-deal Brexit is taken off the table,” they say, fully in the knowledge that this might kill the Brexit negotiations and risks leading to a flawed withdrawal deal of the kind the Commons voted down three times already. In effect, the executive has been taken hostage by a Commons that no longer reflects popular opinion and is stacked against Brexit. The Prime Minister has to find some way of breaking free from its grasp.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/2019/09/05/cowardly-charade-remainer-chickens/

    1. The big downside of the FTPA – as far as the Remainers are concerned – is that a GE has to be held in 2022, so they only have to drag it out for another two years.

    2. The big downside of the FTPA – as far as the Remainers are concerned – is that a GE has to be held in 2022, so they only have to drag it out for another two years.

  54. How does one adequately describe the ingrained idiocy and stupidity of the Left?

    For example, the political philosophy known as Marxism was invented by a Jew: Karl Marx. Yet modern-day Marxists are, in the main, anti-semitic!

    They slavishly follow the creed of a Jew yet, at the same time, they hate Jews. How do you acquire that sort of mindset?

    2. Moses is mentioned in the Quran more than any other individual, and his life is narrated and recounted more than that of any other prophet.
      Yet the Muslims hate Jews !!

      1. Moses supposes his toeses are roses
        But Moses supposes erroneously
        And Moses, he knowses his toeses aren´t roses
        As Moses supposes his toeses to be
        Moses supposes his toeses are roses
        But Moses supposes erroneously
        A Rose is a rose
        A Nose is a nose
        A Toese is a toese

        (Just a load of old bullrushes)

  55. Yesterdays Vote Not Decisive

    Clearly yesterdays vote was nor valid as it was only a 1.3% majority. We need a second confirmatory vote

  56. Is there anyway Boris can fore all these defectors to other parties and Independents to face a recall.

  57. I’m posting this at the request of Rastas who posted it last night.

    The Establishment plot to shut down Brexit has entered its odious final phase
    SHERELLE JACOBS

    DAILY TELEGRAPH COLUMNIST

    The Opposition’s outrageous move to block Brexit is the logical culmination of its piteous and imperious 119-year history
    The bogus Labour party and Blairite forces are sabotaging British democracy
    A spectre is haunting Brexit and its name is Tony Blair. Not merely the man himself – though, my, how stirringly his anti-Brexit diatribes this week have embodied the desolate passion and antisceptic piety of the arch-Remainer cause. But also the cunning and ruthless Europhile Establishment that the former Labour leader bequeathed to Britain and has declared total war on No 10. Sadly, following tonight’s Government defeat in Parliament, Leave voters must now brace themselves for the most unscrupulous orchestrated attempt in modern British history to undermine a democratic vote.

    In a generation, Blairism – a globalist, post-modernist strain of authoritarianism, cleverly adapted to the pretences and exigencies of the modern Western world – has utterly colonised the minds of the British ruling class. The anti-intellectual dustbowl of an ideology – which stands for vaporous concepts like “compromise” and “the centre ground” – has bewitched the most bungalow-minded of today’s Tories, from those possessed by the dullard’s disdain for big ideas, like Philip Hammond, to vain mediocrities who would rather plunge the country into a Corbyn abyss than fade gracefully into oblivion, like John Bercow.

    But perhaps more astounding is how Blairite anti-Brexit forces have, in recent months, reclaimed Labour by stealth. The party’s centrist ruling caste, which comprises not only snob yobs like Emily Thornberry but also not-so-banished alumni like Alastair Campbell and Blair himself, have effectively neutralised the movement’s Eurosceptic Left. They have achieved this by preying partly on Mr Corbyn’s intellectual sluggishness but mainly on Marxism’s acute appetite for power at any cost.

    Tony Blair is openly coaching his successor; Labour’s move to block the PM’s vote for a general election tonight followed his suggestion. Corbyn is also strategising straight out of the New Labour rulebook. Absurd as it sounds, his overriding aim now is to depict Boris Johnson as Britain’s most dangerous extremist.

    By blocking a general election until no deal is off the table, the Opposition leader is trying to sabotage the Tories’ electoral message; Corbyn aims to peddle Labour as the only force that can stop legally-enshrined protection against a “disastrous” no deal from being ripped up by a fundamentalist Tory cult in an October election – or perhaps even deny the PM a national vote before Halloween altogether, in the hope it will drive him into a humiliating EU extension.

    Appalling as it is to see the so-called party of the people block not only the democratic vote for Brexit, but a general election to boot, it comes as little surprise. Labour is a bogus “party of the people”. In the early 20th century, it infiltrated and smothered the individualistic free-trade populism that was organically emerging across the country. Today, the party’s hard Left is a whingeing, despotic claque, gripped by bourgeois control-freakery and a vain messiah complex.

    Over the past century, its full-fat socialists and watery centrists have sought both to crush the concept of freedom within the bosom of socialist compassion, and to tranquillise the potential of the masses via soothing fairy-tales of victimhood.

    Moreover, its followers deeply resent democracy, which, after countless embarrassing election routs, it believes to be systemically incapable of delivering “the right result”. Labour’s outrageous move to block Brexit is thus merely the logical culmination of its piteous and imperious 119-year history. And, crucially, Blairism and Corbynism are two sides of the same coin. Both feed off the top-down impulses of urban intelligentsia. The Trotskyists are also willing to embrace synthetic Blairite soundbites, if it offer a path to power.

    Disturbingly, the metropolitan Establishment that dominates British big business and 24-hour media seems only too happy to help Labour in its quest to stop Brexit. Analysts at Citibank and Deutsche Bank have declared that a high-tax Corbyn government would cause less harm than no deal. Meanwhile, the BBC, brainwashed by the Blairite concept of a neutral and sensible political centre ground, now habitually depicts a World Trade Organization (WTO) exit as extreme.

    As we enter the Brexit endgame, Project Remain will put up a blistering fight. From triangulating narratives, to convoluted positioning which deliberately attempts to render the most deplorable anti-democratic tactics barely comprehensible, in the coming weeks the forces of the status quo will forensically draw on the techniques that have kept the political elite in power for decades.

    But for all its political skills, the Establishment – which now, hysterically, has a Marxist as its main mouthpiece – is vulnerable. The public is not fooled by the post-modernist information chaos spewed out by the political elite. Voters cannot be bullied into believing that wanting to leave the EU is a radical view.

    A moment of reckoning is coming, and when Britain finally goes to the polls, granted Labour will pick up support in leafy Remainia, but across its heartlands the counterfeit party will be permanently obliterated.

    1. It was posted by Grizzly earlier this morning, but worth repeating for latecomers who only read the newer posts on nottle.

    4. Any chance of affixing a limpet mine under the waterline of Cur Phil Slime-Green’s yacht?

      Preferably when he’s aboard.

      1. That fat barstard has had the nerve to return to Monaco, after keeping a very low profile in Portofino – with the transponder turned off.

  62. Shocking scale of illegal bird killing in Middle East revealed

    A new study released by BirdLife and the Ornithological Society of the Middle East (OSME) has for the first time revealed the shocking scale of illegal bird killing in the Arabian Peninsula, Iran and Iraq.

    Drawing on local sources from across the region as well as expert knowledge, researchers estimate that at least 1.7 million birds from at least 413 species are illegally killed or taken each year. Combined with BirdLife’s 2015 study on the Mediterranean, this means that a total of 17.5 million birds are illegally killed in the Middle East as a whole.

    Several species of global conservation concern were on the list, including the Critically Endangered Sociable Lapwing. The primary reason for this illegal killing is for sport, but some species are also hunted for food, especially those considered a delicacy.

    Worryingly, the figure is likely to be an underestimate, as data were unavailable for parts of the region. The highest figures were mean estimates of 1.7 million birds per year in part of Saudi Arabia and 800,000 birds in part of Iran, despite in both cases data only being available only for part of the country. Estimates of illegal killing and taking in Iraq and Yemen were also relatively high with 329,000 and 273,000 birds on average estimated to be illegally killed or taken each year.

      1. Illegal killing and taking poses a global threat to biodiversity and has attracted international attention. For example, in 2014 the Convention on the Conservation of Migratory Species of Wild Animals (CMS), to which most of the countries from this review are Parties, adopted a Resolution to prevent illegal killing, taking and trade of migratory birds in 2014 (UNEP/CMS 2014).

        Ominously, in this latest study, several species of global conservation concern were illegally killed or taken, including Marbled Duck, Common Pochard and European Turtle Dove – all are classified by BirdLife International as Vulnerable on the global IUCN Red List. Of greater concern, Sociable Lapwing was also reported to be known or likely to be killed illegally each year in relatively high numbers relative to its small population size.

        Illegal shooting and illegal trapping were the two most prevalent methods and birds were reported to be illegally killed or taken primarily for sport, but also for food, mainly as a delicacy. In several countries illegal killing and taking was widespread throughout the country, but for other countries particularly worse locations were identified.

        These included the Caspian Sea coast in Iran and the mountainous Kurdistan region of Iraq, with more than 100,000 birds a year estimated to be illegally killed or taken in each location and waterbirds particularly affected. Both Iran and Iraq provide important staging and wintering areas for migratory birds, especially waterbirds, and high levels of take may be a factor driving population declines of waterbirds in the Central Asian flyway.

          1. Combining the results of the current study with those for other countries of the Middle East from a previous Mediterranean focused review of the issue led by BirdLife in 2015 paints a concerning picture for the Middle East region as a whole. A mean of 17.5 million birds (8.0-27.1 million birds) is estimated to be killed annually across the combined region, of which 18 per cent is in the (partially assessed) Arabian Peninsula, Iran and Iraq.

            In five of the 17 Middle East countries assessed, no fewer than 1 million birds may be illegally killed on average each year. For the whole Middle East region (and neighbouring countries), the highest estimated numbers were in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia and Iran.

            The study also highlighted the paucity of data on illegal killing and taking of birds, and more generally on bird population sizes in the region; thus, the implementation of systematic monitoring of the numbers of birds illegally killed or taken there is a priority.

        2. The peoples of the ME seem to enjoy killing everything. Perhaps we could get a UN resolution to exterminate the ME for the safety of the rest of the world.

    2. Good morning Grizz. This is no surprise. The races of that area have no compassion for animal or birdlife. Nor for other races, either.

  63. Do Brexit or die? Boris needs to get on the phone to Nigel Farage before it’s too late. 5 SEPTEMBER 2019

    The die has been cast for ‘do-or-die’ Boris. Now the Remainers in Parliament have succeeded in taking no-deal off the table, and assuming they hold back from going for a General Election until after 31st October, his goose will have been well and truly cooked.

    Yes. Assuming of course that he really does want to Brexit!

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/05/do-brexit-die-boris-needs-get-phone-nigel-farage-late/

  64. I put this up on John Redwood’s Diary – A Useless Parliament this morning.
    There are several interesting comments on today’s topic, including a couple that continue to roll out the old trope that the people responsible for the UK not leaving are those that didn’t support May’s WA/PD. Yesterday I mentioned LBC’s Tom Swarbrick, a leaver who wanted a deal and last night he confirmed that he had no problem with May’s “deal”. He clearly spent too much time in No 10 when he worked for her. Perhaps it’s the dye in the wallpaper?

    RAF

    Posted September 5, 2019 at 8:12 am | Permalink

    Perhaps someone could explain why, if the Remain faction can seize control of the business of Parliament, they did not pass a law to force the PM to revoke Article 50?
    Is it not possible or are they frightened that such a move would confirm their desire to stop Brexit, despite their waffle to the contrary?
    Their posing as democrats is disingenuous, they are Brussels Eurocrats. Brussels, the city where democracy went to die.

    1. KtK,
      ” brussels, where democracy went to die”
      More like,
      “brussels, where democracy via the lab/lib/con coalition
      politico’s was taken to die”

        1. KtK,
          Inclusive of the electorate
          but that is taken as a given.
          The electorate are the
          lab/lib/con coalition parties oxygen.

      1. Ahh! brussels.

        I am sure Anne would advise you that BSs must be on a low boil from Easter
        onwards;
        there are those who enjoy them virtually raw:
        small, sweet, local sprouts boiled for six minutes and then well drained,
        add crispy cooked lardons, peeled and cooked chestnuts, drizzle [what
        a poncy word] with extracted bacon fat, and ‘yer usual seasonings.’

        Enjoy!!

        Superdooper!!

        1. Good afternoon, Flower.
          Those little sprouts are a sweet delight.

          I would do all that for a side dish with Christmas Lunch. (Stay back, Grizzly).

          For an ordinary meal i would steam them for 4 mins and then roll them in salted butter and white pepper.

          Corned beef hash tonight. The idiot recipe says to use wholegrain French mustard. Mon dieu !

  65. Two Russian spies behind Salisbury Novichok attack are ‘now living the high life after promotion to lucrative jobs in Moscow’s military elite’. % September 2019.

    Two Russian spies accused of carrying out the deadly Salisbury Novichok attack have ‘almost certainly’ been promoted and are living the high life in Moscow, an ex-intelligence officer says.

    Having carried out ‘Putin’s will’, Petrov and Boshirov have likely been protected, promoted, and ‘congratulated on a bold job’ by an emboldened Russian state, Colonel Richard Kemp told the Mirror.

    “Almost certainly”. even “likely”. Well it’s a done deal then! The Mail has pinched this story off yesterday’s Mirror and it’s gained nothing in the retelling. From the text it’s obvious that Colonel Kemp has no more idea what Petrov and Boshirov are doing than I do, though why he thinks two GRU operatives have been promoted for making Russia look a complete Dick would make interesting reading. This is just another keep the kettle boiling story though judging by the BTL comments they are wasting their time. No one with an ounce of sense believes one word of the UK official account.

    https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-7430449/Novichok-killers-living-high-life.html

          3. Here is Monty Pythonls Election Night Special where the Silly Party has thumping victories.

            (Sorry – my computer refuses to cooperate)

      2. A children’s construction toy that would give today’s Elf & Safety mob the screaming habdabs!

        1. My neighbours bought one from an antique dealer for their grandson.

          There’s a newish sticker on the box saying that the child must wear a Hi-Viz vest when using the set.

      1. Sadly, Bob, I would.

        That said, I think the worm is turning and people are sick to death of such humourless souls.

  68. Former Labour MP Luciana Berger joins the Liberal Democrats. Thu 5 Sep 2019.

    The former Labour politician Luciana Berger has joined the Liberal Democrats, becoming the second MP to join the party in a week.

    The MP for Liverpool Wavertree and remain campaigner said the party is the only one that has proven to be “unequivocal in wanting to stop Brexit”.

    If all the LibDems in Parliament actually joined the Liberal Democrat Party it would easily be the largest party there!

    https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/05/luciana-berger-joins-liberal-democrats-brexit-remain

    3. Please don’t give them ideas – they aren’t bright enough to work it out for themselves…..

  69. The battle for the soul of the Conservative Party continues! The left-liberals and Remainers are either de-selecting or being purged. I still haven’t got over the end of Phillip Hammond’s career as arch-Brexit wrecker! And now Jo-Jo has resigned:

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/05/brexit-latest-news-no-deal-vote-parliament-delay-bill-boris/

    Whisper it softly, but could we be seeing the emergence of an actual small-c conservative, pro-Brexit party? Or are we just being softened up for version 4 of the Awful Surrender Document and BRINO?

    Surely the end-game to this endless debacle must be in sight?

    2. There is no Government, and now Stephen Kinnock seems to have slipped in the May/Barnier Agreement in full being the default after 31st October, while his party blocks a General Election under the FTPA.

      It seems that Parliament’s gift to the nation is its permanent vassalage. Their successors can pick up the crumbs, for what they are worth. Those voted in after the election in 2022 will have all the power of district councillors, where all the political decisions are imposed over them as faits accomplis, and all we are allowed to judge them on is their capacity as PR presenters and their capacity to clarify the Rules. Our current parliamentarians will be sitting on nice little pensions. Do they care?

      Suckers, you plebs! Brits are stupid and ripe for milking. That’s what they think of their constituents!

    3. Surely the end-game to this endless debacle must be in sight?

      Afternoon Kuffar. Regardless of the eventual result the damage done to both main parties and Parliament itself will take decades to heal and this assumes that they all survive.

      1. Aftermoon Minty. I do think that we are seeing a shifting a re-alignment of the political tectonic plates. Remainers are either joining the Lib-Dems (where they belong), are standing down or being expelled. The battle lines are being drawn up, everyone needs to pick a side!

        1. I think Boris should just call an election. The Fixed term parliament act is silent on the situation we have and is seems crazy that it should apply to this situation. We currently have a Government that cannot Govern as it has lost its majority. Any legislation they try to pass can be simply voted down. In fact we are now in a position where the opposition can decide the date of the next election

          1. Indeed, but I’m not sure what he can do if there aren’t enough votes. They surely can’t physically force him to go to Brussell to seek an extension? If they refuse to allow an election, what happens then? If it was held in November, could Boris just rip up this No Deal legislation?

            We are totally in the uncharted waters now. If ever there was a time for Her Majest to step in and dissolve parliament it is now.

      2. Afternoon AS,
        As you say it will take decades to heal as it has taken decades to put in place, now who’s
        shoulders should the construction of our present
        odious mess rest upon ?
        Are lab/lib/con parties / politico’s self appointed ?

  70. On November 11, 1965, the prime minister of Southern Rhodesia (a British territory in southern Africa), Ian Smith, made a Universal Declaration of Independence (UDI) for his country, which henceforth regarded itself as an independent sovereign state.

    Why then can’t Boris Johnson declare a UDI for the United Kingdom in order to regain our sovereignty from a controlling entity that simply regards Great Britain as one of its territories?

      2. Sanctions against a third-world poverty-spot like Rhodesia is one thing.

        Who would place sanctions on the world’s fifth largest economy? Especially an economy that the rest of the world (including a denuded EU) is clamouring to trade with?

        1. Rhodesia in those days was the BREAD basket of Africa . White farmers, white Bishops, white schools, efficient organised railways and it was a wealthy country , and the Africans were happy , tribal factions were just starting to erupt .. Ignorant Wilson sought to disrupt it’s fabric.. Please read the history !

          My step mother was fifth generation white Rhodesian !

          1. I’ve read the history. If Rhodesia was such a ‘bread basket’, why did sanctions hurt it so much?

          2. Because Labour was ignorant , and there was always a fuel crisis in those days , fuel had to come in via Southern Africa Mozambique from the gulf.

          6. It was God’s own country. My family was very happy there until we left, worried by the collapse of the colonial government in the Congo and the thousands of European refugees fleeing the bloodshed of the Congo Crisis and the impending breakup of the Central African Federation due to rising black nationalism.

    3. I think Smith had the support of his parliament, Johnson is surrounded by a parliament subservient to a foreign power.

  71. Why is the Daily Telegraph still pushing an agenda for “climate change”, I thought it was on the side of common sense?

    Hurricane Dorian has left a path of destruction in its wake in the Bahamas – and climate change is likely to have made the devastation worse.

    While the links between extreme weather and global warming are complex, scientists say that storms are becoming stronger and more dangerous as temperatures and sea levels rise.

    The deadliest elements of a hurricane are associated with torrential rainfall and the storm surge, which was over 20ft in the Bahamas.

    Both have been made more severe by climate change. That’s because, as the world’s temperatures have risen, the air has become hotter. This warmer air is able to hold more moisture, which is then released in a torrent of rainfall.

  72. From ZH:

    “We will be forced to open the gates. We cannot be forced to handle the burden alone,” Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned on Thursday while demanding that European countries give political support to his controversial ‘safe zone’ plan in northern Syria.
    Ankara is currently in tense negotiations with the United States over Erdogan’s plan to militarily carve out a large swathe of territory along the Turkish-Syrian border which would serve as a buffer zone of sorts where US-backed Kurdish militias could not operate.
    Erdogan said one million refugees could settle in the new buffer territory, thus alleviating the crisis on Turkish soil, and ultimately for Europe as well”…

  73. The Headmaster of Brighton College has demanded that all his pupils hand in their mobile phones when they arrive at school in the morning. In French schools there is also be a blanket ban on mobile phones for pupils up to the age of 15.

    Is it not time that MPs had their mobile phones confiscated before entering the chamber – they can certainly be trusted far less than schoolchildren?

  74. Election Prediction

    Prediction based on opinion polls from 26 Jul 2019 to 31 Aug 2019, sampling 12,603 people.

    Con 350
    Lab 193
    Lib 34
    Brex 0
    Green 1
    SNP 51
    Plaid 3
    DUP 9
    SF 7
    Alliance 1
    NI Other 1

  75. Good afternoon, all.

    I’m filled with a sense of deep foreboding after the disgraceful shenanigans in Parliament that have cut the ground from under Boris in his attempts to extricate us from the dead hand of Brussels and since Parliament fears seeking the opinion of the British people in a General Election, I’ve been looking for holiday packages to Venezuela.

    https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Vacation_Packages-g294324-Venezuela-Vacations.html

    It seems a wise precaution to have a taste of life under a Marxist government, just in case Corbyn and McDonnell manage to grab power. Forewarned is forearmed.
    :¬(

      1. Hmmm, I hadn’t thought of that.

        Perhaps just a brief visit, taking a sufficient supply of Field Rations, would be the way to go ……..

          1. Haggis is a culinary delight, After the years of deprivation that los Venezolanos have suffered, I fear it might be too rich for their spic stomachs.
            ;¬)

          2. I used to go haggis hunting when time allowed on my trips North.
            Patten’s of Largs was a favourite as well as the butcher’s in Portobello.

    3. You must remember the Wilson and Callaghan governments? Back when Labour was controlled by the union leaders and other “fellow travelers”. Now it would be McDonnell and McCluskey. What could possibly go wrong?

  76. Johnson faces backlash over Corbyn jibe

    Gosh they get offended over nothing in my view

    Boris Johnson called Jeremy Corbyn a “great big girl’s blouse” in Parliament on Wednesday. In response, a reporter tried to present the Labour leader with a pink floral shirt outside his home on Thursday morning.
    But where does the phrase come from and do critics have a point in branding it a sexist slur?
    On the Urban Dictionary the definition of a “big girl’s blouse” is “a wimpy, emasculated and weak man” who complains too much.
    On Twitter, Mr Johnson has been called a “misogynistic womble” for using the “outdated” phrase – and has been accused of “diminishing political discourse with gendered bravado”.
    Some members of the LGBT community have said the phrase was “more homophobic than straight-up sexist”.

    2. Outdated phrase? How about misogynistic womble being outdated? When were the wombles evicted from their burrows on Wimbledon common?

    4. Moh uses that expression all the time ” great big girl’s blouse” when some bod disagrees with him or annoys him.

      I use the expression ..” All hoof and cucumber ” which may suit Boris very well!

    5. We will go for Hylda Baker, a good northern lass, who used it in her act.

      p.s. in those days, we did not know what homophobic meant.

      1. Looking at the Labour front bench, apart from the hippopotamuses who reside there, I’m certain that I also spied Hylda Baker, sitting beside Beryl Reid and Irene Handl.

        1. Well I am sure she will need a Big Girls Blouse. Boris could have accepted it and handed it to her I the commons as a gift

  77. A suggestion for BrexRef2

    The only people allowed to vote are Remainers, Brexiteers allowed to

    No further discussion allowed when result comes in and are counted {185% of voters say Remain (poll operated by Mr Rashid and Ms Abbotopotamus)}

    Our politicians would still make a pig’s ear of it

  78. It is in my view debatable as to whether the Fixed Term Parliament act applies. It was intended to stop a PM just choosing an election date but with Boris that is not the case he now has a – 46 seat minority government. There is no way you can govern like that. IT would be in my view crazy for a crippled government to continue just because it suits Corbyn and he only change his mind in the last 24 hours

    Corrected now -47

    1. From what I’ve heard, Boris could have tried triggering an election using a ‘notwithstanding’ motion which would have required a simple majority instead of the two thirds required by the Fixed Term Parliament.
      By choosing the latter he could be assured of losing the motion and hence blame Corbyn for being the big girl’s blouse and not rising to the challenge. Corbyn left the chamber before the vote so as not to be humiliated by being offered the poisoned apple by the evil queen.

      I look forward to the pantomime season.

  82. ow is the time to really start supporting the Brexit Party. They need to be ready to fight a General Election that could happen at any time. At present early next year looks to be when it might happen as Labour are fighting to keep an election off of the table until after the 31st October . Given the notice that has to be given that makes it next year as an election will not be called midwinter and in particular in the run up to Christmas

    Lets hope that Boris and Nigel are talking about what seats each party will fight as it will maximise the chances of a good win

    3. The woman sitting next to him with an expression that says has he taken off his shoes as I can smell something

    5. In olden days, a glimpse of stocking
      Was looked on as something shocking.
      But now, God knows,
      Anything goes.

      1. That nice Mr Bex Bissell. A player of the pink oboe.
        (You might need to explain that to Polly).

        2. “We have heard for example from a Mr Bex Bissell, a man who by his own admission is a liar, a humbug, a hypocrite, a vagabond, a loathsome spotted reptile and a self-confessed chicken-strangler. You may choose, if you wish, to believe the transparent tissue of odious lies which streamed on and on from his disgusting, reedy, slavering lips. That is entirely a matter for you …”

          Those were the days when humour had some flavour to it. 🙂 Instead of the insipid, non-offensive gruel that we have today.

    3. ” Rayner left secondary school aged 16 whilst pregnant. She later trained as a care worker

      , eventually becoming a Trades Union representative within Unison, during which time she joined the Labour Party ”

      Have you ever had a wild desire to cut someone’s throat, preferably after cutting their tongue out first ?

    4. If Jeremy gets into 10 Downing Street we will see more people like her on our screens in future. She is a motormouth and can’t stop talking nonsense.

    5. Thanks for posting, Bob. I can’t decide whether we now live in an “idiocracy” or a “hypocracy”. One thing is certain – it is no longer a democracy. :-((

    6. There is shit.
      There is vomit.
      There are dregs.
      There is scum.
      There is slime.
      There is poison.
      There is pus.

      And at the bottom, beneath all that.

      There are socialists!

    1. I have heard -lots of times – that yer Krauts have huge sheds full of Neu D-Marks. Just in case. Overnight swap. No probs.

      Signed. H Wessel

    2. Need to shoot down the constant daft claims we will run out of food and medicine and car parts etc. Half the car parts and aircraft parts come from outside the EU and strangely they have no supply chain delays with them. IT appears only the UK will be affected by delays, How strange

    3. Here is a heavily edited comment that I read yesterday (which was 6 full laptop screens long.) I don’t understand all of the economics behind it, but the collapse of the Euro looks very close now, if it is not imminent, when the next EU quarterly figures are revealed. It appears there is nothing the EU can do to stop it:

      “”Britain’s constitutional crisis has hit before the next great spasm of Europe’s intractable monetary crisis. But they are in close competition. The eurozone faces a category five economic storm. It is structurally defenceless as the world slides into recession. This will not be an ordinary downturn because central banks no longer have the instruments to fight it.

      If there is an October election in the UK. EU leaders will have to decide whether to risk adding the shock of a no-deal Brexit to all the other shocks hitting their industries.

      The US economy has been the last pillar holding up the global edifice. It is now crumbling too. The yield curve is deeply inverted. Consumer sentiment has dropped to a seven-year low. The ISM manufacturing index has tipped into contraction. Export orders are the lowest since April 2009.

      The recessionary door has already closed. Even if the Federal Reserve were to slash rates by 50 basis points this month, it would be too late. World trade is contracting. The eurozone has in turned stalled. It is paying the price for its chronic reliance on global demand to keep afloat.

      It is also the chief casualty of Donald Trump’s trade wars. Chinese goods that are shut out of the US market are being diverted into Europe. The more that Beijing devalues the yuan, the worse it gets. The European Central Bank cannot do much to counter the Chinese deflationary wave. The policy rate is still stuck at minus 0.4pc after decade of global expansion.

      There is much talk of an imminent ECB rescue package. But Frankfurt has already reached the ‘reversal’ threshold where further rate cuts turn contractionary. They hurt banks. They lead to a rise in ‘precautionary’ savings as household puts aside more money. In any case, inflation expectations are crashing faster than the ECB can possibly cut rates. The real cost of borrowing is rising. It is a pro-cyclical nightmare.

      Yields on five-year German Bunds have dropped to minus 0.93pc. The entire sovereign debt structure of Germany is trading at negative rates, with France close behind. Even if the ECB does relaunch QE next week there is no further yield compression for the taking.

      The central banks have been stealing prosperity from the future for the last quarter century. Eventually the future catches up with them. The world is starved of adequate demand. Businesses refuse to invest. Excess savings have nowhere to go – hence the monetary death spiral.

      The best book written on EMU woes is EuroTragedy: a Drama in Nine Acts by Princeton Professor Ashoka Mody, the International Monetary Fund’s former deputy director in Europe. In essence, he argues that Europe’s political elites have gone against the grain of economic anthropology, tried to conjure away the North-South chasm, imposed fiscal straitjacket that has no founding in economic science, and have driven their economies into a deflationquagmire from which there is no return. The denouement will be an Italian debt default and an ugly chain-reaction.

      A report three years ago by a group of eminent economists for the Delors Institute warned that the eurozone will remain unworkable
      unless it embraces some form of fiscal union and debt pooling. “At some point, Europe will be hit by a new economic crisis. We do not know whether this will be in six weeks, six months or six years. But in its current set-up the euro is unlikely to survive that coming crisis,” they said. Nothing was done.

      France’s finance minister, Bruno Lemaire, has repeated these warnings. “If there was a new financial and economic crisis tomorrow, the eurozone could not respond. Either we get a eurozone budget or there will eventually be no euro at all,” he said.

      “The German economy is sliding into crisis and the government is asleep at the wheel,” said Mario Ohoven, head of the Mittelstand federation. The Ifo Institute’s confidence indicators have crashed to 2009 levels. “There are ever more indications of a recession. Not a single ray of light is to be seen in any of Germany’s key industries,” it said.

      When the collapse happens, stressful times favour the nation state. Britain would have the institutional levers to defend itself quickly. It would let rip with fiscal stimulus. The eurozone would be hamstrung by the Stability Pact, the Fiscal Compact, and debt brakes imposed on everybody else by Germany.

      Automatic stabilizers would be the first line of defence. Budget stimulus would trickle out, too little, too late. European fiscal paralysis would match European monetary paralysis. The currency bloc would disintegrate.

      We might then be having a very different political discussion in the early 2020s.”

      1. Thank you for that. A good job that we are not in the Euro; leaving the EU looks even more a good idea.

  88. All Boris needs to say

    I will drop ‘No Deal Brexit’ when the EUSSR publish properly audited accounts fro the years 2013 to 2018

    Seems a reasonable enough demand to me

    The only proviso, is that Le Grande Theft Cash is not involved

    1. The accounts are properly audited.That’s not the problem. The accounts are heavily qualified, which is accountant-speak for you can’t trust them.

  90. Conservative Party Now Much More Aligned with its Electorate

    Now that the Conservative Party has cleared out its hardline Pro EU MP’s it is now much better aligned with its electorate

    2. It is probably better aligned with a smaller portion of the electorate than before but, in a GE any time soon, its chances of forming a government are greatly reduced.

  94. If Boris Johnson, who will never agree to begging Brussels for an extension to Article 50 even if directed to by an Act of Parliament, resigns as Prime Minister (but not as Leader of the Conservative Party), then who moves into No.10?

    I always thought it was the person the Queen decides to be most likely to command the confidence of the House and therefore can deliver the Civil List. However, I don’t think the Queen has any more of a clue than I do who this person is.

    Does anyone here?

    Under the Fixed Term Parliament Act, if Parliament persists in having confidence in the Government (palpably incapable of passing core legislation or setting the agenda), even without its PM, then we could carry on with this anarchy until 2022. More pressing, who goes to Brussels to ask the EU for an extension before the Article 50 deadline? Speaker Bercow, who becomes de facto PM?

    2. Boris should carry on refuse to send this bill for royal assent and force one way or another a general election. He should do a deal with Nigal now. We can then have The Brexit and Consevative party. That would set the cat amoung the pigeons.

      1. If he can work round the catastrophically bad Fixed Term Parliament Act, I’m sure he will. His constitutional advisers must be on it right now. A general election is already overdue.

        Nigel has no power for as long as the 2017 Parliament is in place. All he can do is to keep his powder dry, bide his time, and strike at the first opportunity – when there is at last an election.

    3. The convention is that the outgoing PM recommends to the Queen there replacement (For Recommend read tells her as the Queen has no choice)

    4. I would guess that the Conservative Party would restore the whip to the 21 and that nice Mr Ken Clarke will be asked to look after things until it all settles down again.

      1. Why bother? There is no power left in the Conservative Party as it now stands. The power has been taken by Parliament without a leader, but a determination to wreck all it surveys, and nothing positive to offer the nation.

        Clarke, as Father of the House, does not need a party label. His deputy is Dennis Skinner, a Brexiteer.

    5. I told you at the time that that nasty little inadequate pimple Clegg would be the root cause of all this trouble.

  95. From an article in Zero Hedge. It just about sums up what I’m thinking at the moment:-

    ‘Authored by Tom Luongo,

    Some men just want to watch the world burn.
    –The Dark Knight

    Brexit has destroyed British politics. That was the goal of the EU’s non-negotiating strategy. And it has succeeded brilliantly.
    Understand that the mindset of The Davos Crowd and their quislings across Europe is that the EU is inevitable. The EU is the future and nothing the people say or want will change that course.
    And they will do everything they can to implement it.
    While watching another two hours of pathetic virtue-signaling and strident desperation known as British Parliament I came to the only conclusion any rational person could come to.
    The Remain coalition in the U.K. parliament have become vandals.
    They would destroy everything about their government, traditions and what they know to be true outside the halls of Westminster to ensure the dreams of their paymasters are made real.
    The fact that they would put forward a bill that hands absolute control over future negotiations with the EU to the European Commission is treason. Period.
    That they would then hide from a General Election that they know would reverse their coup is an act of vandalism.
    It is the height of arrogance for people who first stood on party manifestos to implement Brexit and then demanded a ‘People’s Vote’ to stop it, to simper and use their last remaining bits of power to deny those very people the opportunity to change their representation out of fear of Brexit.
    This is where believer crosses the line to ideologue. That moment when you have to decide to subjugate millions of people because of your fears, your ideas, to your will because you know better.
    And that they do so claiming to be champions of democracy shows just how flexible the English language is.
    The people who crossed the whip and voted to stop Boris Johnson from implementing Brexit on October 31st, have been outed as the vandals they are. They are the people who sought originally to bind the U.K. into a Withdrawal Treaty worse than EU membership as punishment to the people who voted Brexit in 2016.
    These are people like Dominic Grieve, Michael Gove, Ken Clarke and Phillip Hammond. Regardless of what they say publicly they never believed in Brexit, do not want it and do not want to see it implemented.
    Now they will burn down parliament and what it was supposed to stand for if they can’t have their way.
    Because nothing Boris Johnson has done as Prime Minister warrants their betraying him like this unless their allegiance is to the EU first and Britain second.
    This is the very definition of a vandal. These people are full of envy and despite. They hate having lost the vote. They hate having to implement it. They hate the people for putting them in this position in the first place.
    And their threats are nothing more than statements of their allegiance to the EU first and everyone else second.
    Because if their allegiance was to the U.K. first they would back an election. They would trust the people to make the choice. But they won’t do that.
    These Tory rebels know that Boris Johnson and Nigel Farage will storm into Westminster after an election and shore up Brexit on British terms without a second thought.
    Labour knows they could fall so far out of power that they never recover.
    They know the people hate them now. They know they are the minority. They know power is slipping from their grasp.
    So the vandalism goes on. The ruthless power politics goes on. The people are ignored. But only for so long.
    Because vandalism begets vandalism. Violence begets violence. And make no mistake, these acts in Parliament to frustrate the will of the people are violence. What comes next if these people succeed in stopping Brexit will not be televised.
    This is what government is, at its core. It is force. Naked, unbridled force wielded like a cudgel without remorse on the people it’s supposed to serve.
    George Orwell, a guy who knew a thing or two about Britain’s capacity for tyranny, famously said…
    If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face … forever.
    Future? Sorry George, that future is the present and the present is prologue.’

    https://www.zerohedge.com/news/2019-09-04/brexit-has-devolved-random-acts-vandalism

    1. Voters can see through the pious pretences of this hypocritical Parliament
      TOBY YOUNG – SEPTEMBER 2019 • 2:57PM

      Welcome to the looking-glass world of the Remainers

      The politicians trying to stop Brexit held a rally outside Parliament last night. Calling themselves ‘the Remain Alliance’ and demanding a ‘People’s Vote’, they claimed to be standing up for ‘democracy’ against the ‘unelected Prime Minister’ whom they accused of carrying out a ‘coup’. They included Jo Swinson, Ian Blackford, Caroline Lucas, Emily Thornberry, Dominic Grieve, Jess Phillips, Phillip Lee, Liz Saville Roberts and Diane Abbott.

      Incredibly, nearly all of these MPs then trooped back into the House of Commons to vote against Boris’s call for a general election. Yes, you read that correctly. They passionately denounced Boris for being unelected and then, without pausing for breath, blocked his attempt to hold an election. They pleaded for a ballot in which the British public can once again say whether they want to leave or remain in the EU, and then stopped one from taking place.

      Welcome to the looking-glass world of the Remainers in which the Conservative leader seeking the consent of the British people before taking us out of the EU is a ‘tinpot dictator’ and the Labour leader who’s been demanding an election on a daily basis for the last two years, but who’s changed his mind at the last minute because he knows the British people don’t support his position on Brexit, is a courageous man of principle who’s defending democracy.

      Hypocrisy on this scaleis now a daily feature of British politics. Don’t forget, the ‘Remain Alliance’ in the House of Commons – which is more or less everyone apart from the 289 Conservative MPs who remain loyal to Boris – conspired to seize control of the order paper on Tuesday night and the following day voted for a bill to keep us in the EU beyond October 31.

      This, in spite of the fact that the vast majority of those MPs were elected on a platform of promising to respect the referendum result in 2017 and then voted to trigger Article 50 and then – the icing on the cake – to repeal the 1972 European Communities Act.

      These MPs claim to be standing up for ‘Parliamentary sovereignty’, but the bill they’re seeking to railroad through, in the teeth of constitutional convention and with the collusion of a partisan Speaker, would effectively hand over control of the Brexit timetable to the EU.

      It’s as if these doughty defenders of Parliamentary democracy are saying: “How dare the Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, the leader of the party that won the most votes at the last general election, try and impose his will on the House of Commons? We demand that unelected officials in Brussels be allowed to impose their will on us instead.”

      The Remainers’ rationale for postponing a general election until after they’ve forced Boris to ask for a Brexit extension shows just how much contempt they have for democracy. They know that if an election is held before then, the Prime Minister will almost certainly win the majority he needs to take us out on October 31, deal or no deal. That’s what the polls indicate.

      But they believe that if the supporters of Brexit witnesses him going back to the EU with his tail between his legs, he will be so tarnished in their eyes, so ‘humiliated’, that they will either sit on their hands on election day or, if they don’t, enough of them will cast their ballots for the Brexit Party to split the vote and hand a majority to the ‘Remain Alliance’.

      As a strategy, this is completely bonkers and repeats the Remainers’ mistake of underestimating the common sense of the British people. The man on the back of the Sunderland omnibus will be perfectly aware that Boris won’t be breaking his promise to take us out on October 31 by asking the EU for an extension. He’ll recognize the truth of the matter, which is that he’ll only be going through this ridiculous charade because the Remainers’ have succeeded in tying his hands. Far from deserting him in the subsequent election, the 52 per cent who voted Leave three years ago will recognize that unless Boris gets a majority in the next Parliament the referendum result will never be respected.

      On the face of it, the Prime Minister has had a bad week, capped by the resignation of his brother this morning. But in spite of their Parliamentary shenanigans, the ‘Remain Alliance’ MPs can only put off the inevitable for so long. Either there’s an election in mid-October, which I believe Boris will win, or it’s after October 31st, which he’ll also win. The democratic will of the British people cannot be frustrated for much longer.

        1. So I’ve seen from his profile.
          I guess our paths have not crossed.
          It was the avatar that I could not remember seeing.

          6. Sos, you and I have talked lots over the years. I’m Ifitfits, or Iffy, or Iffy the Prez. I decided that hiding behind a pseudonym was not for me anymore.

    3. …unless their allegiance is to the EU first and Britain second.

      Wrong. They have no allegiance to Britain. They are first, foremost and last, Eurocrats. In times past they would have suffered the supreme penalty and their families and supporters would have been shunned and mistrusted.

  96. Failing to deliver Brexit will inflict on Britain a national humiliation worthy of the Suez crisis

    ROBERT TAYLOR

    In the tumultuous 20th century, one defining moment eradicated Britain’s self-confidence and prestige, and blew apart the notion that it was a still great power. After all the sacrifices of two world wars, it was the Suez crisis of 1956 that finally revealed Britain’s humbled status in world affairs.

    We are now on the verge of our 21st century Suez moment. If anything, it’s even more significant than that. Yes, in 1956, after being humiliated by our closest ally, the United States, Britain could no longer pretend to its former global importance. But even that will pale into insignificance alongside our failure to leave the EU on October 31, having begged for yet another extension to Article 50, or, worse, revoked it altogether.

    Just imagine it. What would it say about Britain’s self-confidence, having lost our nerve on the cusp of an independent future? What would it say about our democracy, having given people the choice about the EU in the biggest vote this country has ever seen, then ignored their decision? What would it say about our economy, that we felt incapable of prospering on the global stage unless chained to other nations in a loveless union?

    And most importantly, what would it do to our faith in our elected politicians? We were assured that the 2016 referendum would be definitive. Vote out, and we’d be out, we were told. Both the Conservatives and Labour then promised in their 2017 manifestos to respect the referendum result. Yeah, right.

    The similarities with Suez are striking: then, the Prime Minister, Anthony Eden, lied to the British people when he declared in Parliament that there had been no collusion with France and Israel. If we were shocked in 1956 by our government’s deceit, we’d be appalled now by a governing class as a whole conspiring to undermine our democratic decision.

    That outcome is unthinkable, yet looks more and more likely as each day goes by, boosting the false and disgraceful notion of a “government of national unity”. The last time we had such a government was in 1940, with the specific purpose of confronting Adolf Hitler. And what would be the specific purpose of the national government of 2019? To frustrate the will of 17.4 million British voters.

    The leader of this government, it seems, could be a Marxist, Jeremy Corbyn. Or it could be lifelong Europhile, Ken Clarke, who is fast becoming the Tories’ version of Ramsay MacDonald, destined to go down in history as the man who betrayed his own party’s cause.

    And our future inside the EU, with Corbyn, Clarke, or indeed any Remainer, at the helm, would be bleak. Having made the threat to leave, then begged to remain, we would never be taken seriously again. We would then be helpless as the EU, empowered by the destruction of Brexit, escalated their efforts towards ever closer union – the very reason Britain voted to leave.

    If the British people found membership of the EU these past few decades too great a strain, with too many compromises to sovereignty, that strain and those compromises would be as naught compared with those we will be forced to make if we return to Brussels whimpering “I’m so sorry, we’ve changed our minds”.

    If Suez exposed the pretence of Britain’s great-power status, a cancelled, stolen Brexit would be worse still, making a sham of British independence.

    There is, however, one marked difference between Suez and Brexit. One saving grace. In the case of Suez, the USA played a huge part in our downfall. But, in the case of Brexit, it is still, even now, just, in our own hands. The only thing stopping us leaving the EU is the possibility of our own colossal failure of nerve in the face of a Remain establishment hellbent on ignoring democracy.

    It is up to us to hold our nerve, to defeat the Remain elite, to back Boris Johnson and believe in ourselves. If we do, we will avoid the dreaded fate of being sneered at by future historians, who will otherwise look back on the last hundred years and identify two staging posts in Britain’s interminable, national decline: 1956 and 2019.

    https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/05/failing-deliver-brexit-will-inflict-britain-national-humiliation/

    3. I don’t think there’s been a British government since the early 1990s………. just globalist local managers.

    1. Boris doesn’t have the charisma of Tony Blair, but he is the best Prime Minister that we have got.

      1. Tone is smarmy, I can’t bear him.

        Boris is funny, and I love his extravagant language and expressions.

      2. I loathed Blair from the first time I set eyes on him. My ‘gut feelings’ are uncannily accurate.

    1. Funnily enough this was why Auberon Waugh supported the EU – he could not imagine that EU politicians could actually compete with our home-bred slimeballs in terms of corruption, incompetence, treachery, mendacity and sheer nastiness.

  99. The scaremongering stories are still going like if we do a deal with the US the NHS could be sold. The NHS is not a stock market listed company so a takeover of it is simply not possible. The only way the NHS is can be sold is if the government sold it and no government is going to do that

    They are going on about the Leavers lying that Turkey was going to join the EU was a lie. That’s not true. Turkey is a Candidate country to join the EU. The EU would love to get Turkey into the EU but with the problems in Turkey it will not happen yet but as soon as things are right for it Turkey will be admitted to the EU and Turkey is not really even in Europe. A small tip of it can technically be claimed to be in Europe but countries are normally treated as a whole and when 90% of Turkey is not In Europe that make the whole country not in Europe

      1. Take comfort: “the head that once was crowned with thorns is crowned with glory now…” We will rise from thorns to glory.

        1. Singing fine old hymns in the school chapel was truly uplifting even for those who were not particularly religious. Evensong at Blundell’s in my day was splendid.

          The BBC has even buggered up Songs of Praise not only by cutting down on the fine old hymns and playing rubbosh instead but also by putting it in on in the afternoon rather than on Sunday evening as it always was. No healthy person wants to watch TV during the day time.

  102. Evening everyone. Nothing will be achieved by delaying Brexit except the destruction of democracy.

    1. Quite – we leave on World Trade terms. Then we negotiate a deal. What the heck is the mindset of MPs who want a “deal” (what kind of deal – a deal for us just to leave,never mind the future trading arrangements ?) before we go. No wonder May was gloating today.

      2. Interesting that the Remoaners haven’t said what ‘deal’ they want. Would a sheet of A4 with the words ‘The UK and the EU will complete the batch of 600+ Statutory Instruments already agreed and signed off to ensure Brexit goes smoothly’ and trade under GATT 24 rules until a full FTA is agreed’ suffice?

          2. Had to watch this several times before concluding she must have taken it through with her trunk.

  104. Hello NoTTLers,

    Sorry if this is a repeat, but

    FROM BEHIND THE PAYWALL – On Dominic Cummings.
    Posted by Vivian Evans | Sep 5, 2019 | Debate | 10 | From Independence Daily

    FROM BEHIND THE PAYWALL – On Dominic Cummings.
    In yesterday’s debate in the HoC Remain MPs – Tories as well as opposition ones – repeatedly showed their hatred for Johnson’s chief adviser, Dominic Cummings. This was expertly fuelled by MSM interviews of ‘concerned’ women politicians who kept telling us that Cummings had a female Special Adviser (SpAd) ‘frogmarched out of No 10’, even ‘with a gun at her head’.

    In these days of universal presence of smartphones, a photo of that poor thing, frogmarched with gun at her head, would surely have been splashed all over the the place by now. Can we therefore say “photo or it didn’t happen” in this way? In any case, both the DT and the Times went to town on Dominic Cummings, and as both articles are paywalled, we’ll take a closer look at both.

    The DT’s headline is a shocker: “Dominic Cummings personally sabotaged Tory rebels’ compromise plan in foul-mouthed phone call” (paywalled link). Oh dear! And what do we read? He used the now ubiquitous but nevertheless deplorable ‘f-word’! Excuse me, but nowadays, when this seems to be the most frequently used word in the English language, that surely cannot shock our hard-boiled reporters, never mind MPs? According to ‘sources’, which are, surprise surprise, disgruntled MPs, this is what happened:

    “Dominic Cummings personally sabotaged a compromise plan put forward by the Conservative MPs who went on to rebel against the Government, the Telegraph has learnt.

    The Prime Minister’s chief adviser launched a foul-mouth tirade against former business secretary Greg Clark after he proposed the government set aside a day after the October European summit for MPs to vote on a no-deal Brexit.

    The proposal would have meant MPs would have been able to see the shape of Boris Johnson’s negotiation plan before voting on whether a further extension to the negotiations was necessary.

    The Telegraph understands Mr Clark made the suggestion during the rebels’ meeting with Mr Johnson on Tuesday, and it was enthusiastically received by his colleagues.

    The Prime Minister told Mr Clark someone from his team would be in contact to discuss the idea further, and later that afternoon he received a call from Mr Cummings.

    According to a source in the rebel group, Mr Cummings said: “You Tory MPs need to get it through your f—ing heads that we are leaving the EU on Oct 31.” (paywalled link)

    Notice how these MPs are now trying to get their excuses in, to show that they are innocent, that they only wanted to help and surely, in order to prevent Brexit it’s fine to stab the government in the back? The chief whip had written a letter to all MPs telling them that voting on what is now called the Benn Bill would be a vote against explicit government policy and sanctioned with the withdrawal of the whip and all that entails. Apparently they regarded themselves as sacrosanct – one was, after all, the grandson of Churchill, and the other a former Chancellor of the Exchequer! There’s more, and it goes to the real reason this piece was written:

    “The Telegraph has been told by two sources in the rebel group that relations between Mr Johnson and Mr Cummings are becoming strained thanks to the behaviour of his chief adviser.

    One of the 21 rebels said they are hearing of “huge tensions in Downing street” following Tuesday’s defeat.“This was not supposed to be the way it worked,” the MP said. “He could well find himself in a situation where this bill has passed and he cannot get his election, so he is trapped.Frustration at the conduct of the Downing Street official, who acted as campaign chief for Vote Leave in the 2016 EU referendum, spilled onto the airwaves on Wednesday. The veteran Conservative MP for North Thanet, Sir Roger Gale, took to the television to dub him a “foul-mouthed oaf [who is] throwing his weight around”, (paywalled link)

    This article, with its veiled hints that Cummings ought to be sacked because he created this mess, was published at 8.13pm on Wednesday, the 4th of September. It provided the background for the article in the Times which was published at 12.01 am on the 5th of September, with the more innocuous itile: “Rein in right-hand man Dominic Cummings, Boris Johnson is told” (link, paywalled). The following txt gives the game away – the Brexit wreckers want him gone, or at least de-fanged and de-clawed:

    “The former campaign director of Vote Leave has been credited with being the architect of the prime minister’s decision to remove the whip from Tory rebels this week. It is only the latest accusation of heavy-handed tactics hurled at him.

    The prime minister was told yesterday to rein in his right-hand man, according to MPs present at a meeting of the 1922 Committee. Mr Cummings was accused of viewing parliamentarians as a problem rather than part of the solution in delivering Brexit. His name was also repeatedly invoked in the Commons, as MPs painted a picture of him as the puppet master inside No 10. Margot James, a former minister and one of the 21 parliamentarians who lost the whip on Tuesday night, recalled a remark made by Margaret Thatcher and said: “The Great Lady . . . once said ‘Advisers advise, ministers decide’. Can I ask the prime minister to bear that statement closely in mind in relation to his own chief adviser Dominic Cummings.” Her remark won applause, which is banned in the chamber under parliamentary rules.” (link, paywalled)

    Under the current Speaker, applause is now routine … and attacks on a chief adviser – well, it’s novel, isn’t it! Can anyone remember such attacks on Messrs Campbell and Mandelson during Mr Blair’s Premiership? Or on Ms May’s chief adviser, now in the HoL, Mr Barwell?

    The point is that they rightly regard Dominic Cummings as ‘the Enemy’, winning Brexit (with some help from others whom we won’t mention …) with the Leave campaign he ran – forget all the other Leave campaigners, they are not chief advisers. This next quote shows why he is deemed to be so sinister:

    “An avid student of military history and an admirer of the ancient Chinese general Sun Tzu, Mr Cummings is thought to take inspiration from war theory for his unorthodox approach to political strategy.” (link, paywalled)

    Oh dear! That’s bad, isn’t it! He reads books! I wonder if it has occurred to those MPs and reporters to go and read that book themselves? It’s not long. The next quote shows why this whole thing is being played up now, and never mind that it’s all based on the gossiping of a couple of disgruntled Tory MPs:

    “There is said to be a split in Downing Street, with Mr Cummings and his former Vote Leave colleagues on one side and on the other a City Hall faction led by Ed Lister, the chief of staff who worked with Mr Johnson when he was London mayor. One Tory MP told The Times: “The Vote Leave operation in Downing Street is way too aggressive. Whereas Ed Lister and his team are less brash and more professional, business-like. They’re also experienced in more than politics — business, culture, the arts. That was one of Boris’s strengths in City Hall — he kept a very diverse group around him.” Friends of Mr Cummings said he was sanguine about the media attention, believing that stories about him have little impact outside Westminster.” (link, paywalled)

    There it is – the aim of the Brexit wreckers working en coulisse: get rid of Cummings and we can stop Brexit. Looking into my crystal ball, I can see their next target: Jacob Rees-Mogg … and then surely Johnson will fall, and with him, Brexit.

    [Doesn’t parliament just stink?}

    1. “Mr Cummings was accused of viewing parliamentarians as a problem rather than part of the solution in delivering Brexit.” And so say all of us!

    2. “One of the 21 rebels said they are hearing of “huge tensions in Downing street” following Tuesday’s defeat.“This was not supposed to be the way it worked,” the MP said.”

      They would say that, wouldn’t they? It’s astonishing how many “facts” are attributed to “sources/insiders” etc and we seem to accept this without question.

  106. Quite liked this BTL comment on Guido:

    −
    Avatar
    Kojii Naz Lunar Tick • a day ago

    “Cumming’s Brexit disinfectant”
    DomCum Domestos – kills 99% of all pretend-Leavers.

    9
    •Share ›

  107. Comment on Order Order:-

    ‘springmellon • 4 hours ago

    Boris Johnson has it within his power to finally implement Brexit by simply advising Her Majesty to refuse Royal Assent to the bill that is passing through Parliament.

    Those proposing and supporting the Bill have no mandate for their actions, and refuse a general election because the Country might elect a government that could reverse the laws they have no right to make. That is obscene.

    The Bill is tainted by the most abject corruption. In plain sight the Speaker has conspired with MPs to overturn, ignore and abuse our constitution in the most grotesque way.

    A disgusting, corrupt bill and MPs who refuse to let the British people decide if they support their actions by holding a general election gives Johnson every justification he could have for advising against Royal Assent.

    Brexit and the end of the Europhiles’ bill is entirely in Johnson’s power by advising against Royal Assent. If he refuses to exercise his power in the face of the betrayal of our country he is beneath contempt’

  110. Question Time is back at 10.35 BBC1…

    New series. Fiona Bruce hosts the return of the political debate from Westminster. The panellists are Brexit minister Kwasi Kwarteng, Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry, Lib Dem Digital, Culture, Media and Sport spokesperson Layla Moran, Leader of the SNP at Westminster Ian Blackford, Brexit Party chairman Richard Tice and radio host Iain Dale.

    4. My Sunday Times TV guide schedules ‘The Truth About Stress’ on BBC1 at 10.35;

      La même chose ?

      1. 🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐓🐉🐉🐉🐉👚🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉👰🐉🐉🐉🐉🍎🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉🐉

        Can you spot the chlorinated chicken, a big girl’s blouse, Snow White and a poisoned apple?

        1. I’m struggling with Snow White. She had a black bob (and I don’t mean the border collie sheepdog in The Dandy).

    2. A bit late replying, Angie – I fell asleep counting.

      I was reminded of a lad at school – a whizz at maths – who, to get to sleep would count sheep’s legs and divide by four.

      1. Later this week – Morning Eddy.

        He was just pulling the wool!
        🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾🐾
        Paws for thought.🤔

  113. MP’s are tonight having a vote to decide whether the electorate should have their vote removed and the MP’ well give a proxy vote for them. The vote is expected to pass as it cuts out the problem of the electorate voting the wrong way

  114. Ponder this as you await Mr Sandman:

    “The genius of our ruling class is that it has kept a majority of the people from ever questioning the inequity of a system where most people drudge along paying heavy taxes for which they get nothing in return.”

    Gore Vidal

  116. Just imagine:

    There is another referendum on independence in Scotland.

    This time the Scottish vote to leave the UK

    And Parliament and all the Scottish establishment – backed by the English establishment – tell the stupid Scottish people that they cannot leave and that they will have to have a backstop on the English border which will effectively rob them of their independence with punitive costs and duties.

    The English voted for independence but they weren’t allowed to have it. Why, in the name of William McGonagall, Robbie Burns, Mary Queen of the Scots and Bonny Prince Charlie – should you?

    Imagine how Nicola Sturgeon would react! I think she might be a wee bit miffed.

    1. I love the Hypocritical Nicola. All worried about a hard border I Ireland but wanting a hard border between England and Scotland. Just imagine the trains. WE are now entering Scotland please have you passports ready to check. You will be able to change your Pounds to Euros at the current desk. Please change you watches to Scottish standard time

    2. Of course another referendum on Brexit without Scottish votes involved would lead to an even greater majority for Leave.

      Come on Boris, think creatively.

      How about offering Ms Sturgeon and her SNP another referendum on Scottish independence on the condition that:

      SNP makes a pact with the Conservatives to form a coalition government with the Conservatives which will be dissolved as soon as the Scots have voted to leave the UK. This will lead to another general election without the Scots ionvolved in what remains of the UK with the Conservatives committed to an alliance with TBP and a WTO Brexit. Ergo end of Lib/Dem/Lab

      Many a true word is spoken in jest as the old cliche goes!

  119. The working class can kiss my arse – I’ve got an MP’s job at last.

    Corbyn is completely heinous
    He’s got his head stuck up his anus!

  123. There once was a good fellow named Mogg.
    That sprawled out over the front benches agog.
    They thought he was rude,
    By this relaxed body language mood,
    But his genius mind was planning the prorogue

      1. Obviously her QC husband didn’t want any stimulating conversation when he came home from work…

        Go’morgen, Peddy

    2. Remember the contempt she showed towards the family with Union Flags on their house and a white van parked outside it?

      She is the very worst sort of Labour politician – a snob who despises those she considers to be her social inferiors.

      A pox upon her!

      2. Even worse – if I recall correctly, it was the St. George Flag… England (or as she would say disparagingly “Engerla-and”).

  127. “the most unkindest cut of all …”

    Jo Johnson – brother of Borris – wot a little sh!t is he ?

    1. Et tu Brute

      Cain and Abel – Genesis

      Kane and Abel – Jeffery Archer

      (One of the Dorset peasants in Far From The Madding Crowd was called Cain, the fratricidal brother, by mistake because his mother got the Bible story mixed up when naming her son)

        1. Yes they are.

          They were introduced to Australia as a natural predator to combat bugs. One would think they had learned their lesson from rabbits and camels, but oh no.

          They are now breeding in the hundreds of millions and are wiping out indigenous species of birds and mammals in large numbers.

    1. Not really propaganda at all. Simple reporting of the truth.

      Boris has been spectacularly unspectacular so far as a PM. His first PMQ was awful. His plan for a snap election would never succeed. He’s a total buffoon. Christ knows what the Tory grass roots see in him, he’s always been far better on the telly than as a politician, and he very definitely isn’t front bench material.

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