ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
Pablo- Registered: 21 Mar 2018
- Posts: 614
Bloody paywall.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Secret diary from the Times
I am a Labour MP who voted Remain, representing a constituency that voted heavily to Leave. I’m torn in two. I want to be accountable, I want to be involved, but I sit uselessly and helplessly, trapped in a Commons that’s falling to pieces at a time of national crisis. This diary is my silent scream. I’m one of the 650. We’ll all get the blame when the ship sinks, but in truth you might as well have put a dead cat in there instead of me; it would have had as much of a role as I’ve had in the Brexit discussions. Want to know what that feels like? It’s embarrassing, humiliating and hugely, overwhelmingly frustrating. At a time of looming disaster, there’s this awful feeling of paralysis. The regional whip told me at the weekend that I’d need to be in Westminster all this week. We don’t know when the votes are coming, what the votes will be or what our position is, but we know we need you there. In other words, we know nothing. But for yet another week, all my constituency engagements have been cancelled.
We’re not alone. Most Tory MPs know nothing. Right now, it feels like most of the cabinet knows nothing. It’s all about one woman, the prime minister, and she’s in a bunker so deep that no one can reach her. I sought out some Tory mates last week. They’re very senior in the party. I wanted them to tell me that despite appearances to the contrary, Theresa May was actually a fantastic poker player, that great minds were being consulted and the country was in safe hands. Back came no reassurance whatsoever. Her master plan, it seems, is to survive until the next day. If that doesn’t fill you with terror, nothing will. Where’s Labour in all this? It has no voice and no seat at the table. If we were a strong opposition we’d be challenging a lot more effectively and we probably wouldn’t have tumbled into this black hole quite so quickly. We’d have seen it coming and done something about it. We’re not strong on this because we’re so divided. Jeremy Corbyn’s completely ambivalent. Len McCluskey is really, really against a second referendum but most of the shadow cabinet are Londoners and want a People’s Vote. Jeremy tries to appease both sides, so we’ve never really had a clear position, nor been open about what that is. Keir Starmer’s doing a fabulous job but he’s not in the party’s top tier of decision-making, so the door gets shut on him as much as it does on everyone else.
You end up with the absurdity of a government with the lowest approval rating for years that’s still neck and neck with Labour in the opinion polls. When you’re chatting with Tories they’ll say, “It’s amazing, we just do one f***-up after another. This government’s a total disaster and yet every time we screw up you lot save us by coming out and doing something worse.” It’s extraordinary, but it’s true. When I set off for the Commons today, it felt a bit like leaving for war or the funeral of a close relative. Friends texted to wish me luck. People at the station came up and said I should keep going, that this is survivable. I’m not so sure. I feel darkness and impotence and dread. It’s all so utterly exhausting, which is really weird because physically, obviously, you’re not doing anything, and intellectually you’re not doing anything because you’re not involved in any of the negotiations. It’s more a spiritual weariness and it comes from a sense of foreboding, guilt and helplessness.
ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
Sorry if that link hit a paywall. I know it's freely available because I don't subscribe. I've just googled "FT brexit" and it was the first item listed and freely readable. When I copied it, it became blocked.
Oh well.
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
Any remaining semblance of authority has left the PM but the certainty is that she won't go simply because she is Prime Minister so there!! Let's hope the MPs now try to bring some sort of order to the chaos of our Basil Fawlty Brexit.
Neil Moors- Registered: 3 Feb 2016
- Posts: 1,298
Prediction: this will now go full circle. Parliament will decide on something so close to what we already have, Brexiteers will campaign to remain as we are.
Karlos- Location: Dover
- Registered: 1 Oct 2012
- Posts: 2,496
MP's have shown themselves incapable of sorting out brexit so far, so I don't have high expectations.
Hopefully come the next election most decide on a new career path.
Jan Higgins
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,835
I am now of the opinion we need a successful Guy Fawkes character to blow the lot of them up.
We need a completely new group of MPs with a fresh outlook and attitude who realise that just because an area is 'safe' to a particular party does not mean they can ignore those who vote them in.
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Captain Haddock
- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
British holidaymakers in Europe could face five-hour delays at passport control thanks to additional security checks in event of a no-deal Brexit.
https://www.independent.co.uk/travel/news-and-advice/no-deal-brexit-british-holidaymakers-passports-europe-arrivals-a8797166.html
Remember this from Summer 2017? Long queues of Brits arriving at EU airports. Caused by introduction of full EU watchlist checks, subsequently abandoned due to public pressure.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2017/08/01/tourists-hit-airport-delays-longer-flights-amid-tougher-eu-border/amp/
Next .............................................
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
The sands seem to be shifting now that Rees-Mogg is coming round to accepting the deal on offer and is likely to take many of his group with him but the DUP have now dug their heels and said they would rather see an extension of a year to Article 50 rather than accept the deal. So many options it becomes difficult to keep up.
Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,835
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I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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Jan Higgins- Location: Dover
- Registered: 5 Jul 2010
- Posts: 13,835
I think our MPs regardless of party loyalties or hatred of Mrs May need to have another look at the referendum breakdown and actually represent what their constituents wanted.
Far to many are behaving as if they represented Gibraltar rather than the majority of the UK.
https://ig.ft.com/sites/elections/2016/uk/eu-referendum/-----------------------------------------------------------------------
I try to be neutral and polite but it is hard and getting even more difficult at times.
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ray hutstone- Registered: 1 Apr 2018
- Posts: 2,158
From the irrepressible and ever witty Marina Hyde. Very funny and very true.
On Sunday it was all looking so good for the Brexit ultras. Then came Monday, and that parliamentary vote.
Draw near, true believers, for these are dark days for the ERG Brexit ultras. The Fellowship of the Ringpieces finds itself divided on their next move, and may yet be bitterly sundered as they ponder the big question: could they honestly have played it worse?
Before we help them answer it, a quick update on which bit of Blunderland we’ve tumbled into now. Late on Monday night, the House of Commons voted to take control of the parliamentary agenda and attempt to break the Brexit deadlock via a series of indicative votes masterminded by former Tory minister Oliver Letwin. A clue, a clue! Our kingdom for a clue! Like all initiatives handled by Oliver Letwin since the 1980s, it promises to go spectacularly wrong in ways we haven’t even thought of yet, but let’s pretend otherwise before the shitstorm gets properly under way on Wednesday.
The Commons took this momentous decision after yet another of its Brexit endurance debates, all of which now resemble the grim Depression-era dance marathons of They Shoot Horses Don’t They? Lowlights included Kate Hoey insisting that no deal is simply “a different type of deal”, in that way that farmers will agree that no rainfall is simply a different type of rainfall. Or, indeed, that farmers will agree that no deal is simply a different type of deal, as they prepared to slaughter the estimated 10 million lambs they would not be able to export to the EU.
Reflecting on the Commons decision to take the prime minister into special measures, the No 10 spokesman said May was not happy with it: “She has said that tying the government’s hands in this way by seeking to commandeer the order paper would have far-reaching implications for the way that the UK is governed and the balance of powers and responsibilities in our democratic institutions.”
Mmm. You did that, babe. All you. By way of a reminder, Theresa May’s major intervention in the 2015 general election campaign – she was home secretary at the time – was to warn that a Labour government propped up by the SNP could be “the greatest constitutional crisis since the abdication”. Yes, well. Hold my sherry and all that. In fact, as many contemporary accounts show, almost everyone normal hugely enjoyed the abdication soap opera back in 1936, as is possible with the type of national drama that doesn’t end in the silence of 10 million lambs and economic holy war on the poor.
For some ERG crusaders, though, Monday’s vote all too belatedly appeared to put things in perspective. This morning, Jacob Rees-Mogg was suggesting he would now vote for May’s deal, which has infuriated many of those who have formed a personality cult around the personality of Jacob Rees-Mogg (surely the last people who should be risking medicine shortages).
Naturally, some are still fighting the mad idea that voting for Brexit might be the best way to get Brexit. Take the ERG vice-chair, Mark Francois, a sort of inflatable idiot who has spent the past few months bobbing around the broadcast studios like some remnant of the worst ever stag weekend. Can someone please deflate it? Otherwise we will continue to have situations like the one this morning, when Mark explained to Talkradio: “Europe is free because of us.” I mean … I don’t mean to come across as tolerably informed, but Mr Francois’ recent historical interjections have been of such staggering imbecility that they suggest not simply that he has failed to understand the contributions of the Soviet Union and the United States to the second world war – that is a given – but that the very existence of those powers would be news to him.
And all this after the week had started so well for the Brexiters, who were summoned to Chequers on Sunday in an episode we’ll call Shitheads Assemble. All the big hitters were there, as well as Steve Baker, with Iain Duncan Smith bombing down in his open-top Morgan like they were giving out free girlfriends. Jacob Rees-Mogg was accompanied by his son, which made sense, given that Rees-Mogg has previously spoken of being taken to Chequers himself as a child, where he says Ted Heath gave him Garibaldi biscuits. So rather than fussing about silly things like jobs or the economy, try to picture Brexit as a great dynastic continuation, and a reminder that the likes of the Rees-Moggs essentially believe this country should be grateful that they pass it down from claw to claw – slightly more broken each time, of course, but no less of an amusing second career for all that.
But what of Boris Johnson? By Sunday night, the erstwhile foreign secretary had unleashed another auto-parodic Daily Telegraph column quoting the God of Exodus, imploring: “Let my people go.” Oh dear. Even when he most needs to give the impression that he does, Boris Johnson is a man still unable to take himself seriously. That is his tragedy; unfortunately, he is ours.
Even as he seeks to present himself as the answer to the mess he landed us in, his eyes flicker with the half-amused, half-deranged smirk of the cornered villain. All photos of Boris Johnson now look like they were snatched through the windows of a security van taking a high profile offender from court to begin his sentence. And all his newspaper columns read like the letters that offender might write from prison to one of the 15 fiancees that tend to be acquired in these situations.
Inevitably, then, the Brexit ultras are turning on each other, with Arron Banks’s Leave.EU outfit furiously reminding Rees-Mogg that he recently said the deal made the UK a “slave state”. It does make you wonder whether Rees-Mogg really knows what a “slave state” historically is. Then again, perhaps he does, as the ERG were informally nicknaming themselves the Grand Wizards on Monday night. “I’m sorry, is this for real?” inquired George Osborne on Twitter. “No it’s not,” shot back Steve Baker.
And yet, isn’t it slightly? This afternoon the Brexiter Suella Braverman had opted to cast the Brexit fight as “a war against cultural Marxism”. Challenged on this term’s deep connection with the antisemitic far right, Braverman insisted it was still definitely the one she had meant to use. In the audience at the Bruges Group event at which she’d said it, two men overheard were overheard discussing the formation of a street movement called the blue shirts – Irish fascism klaxon! – to riot until Brexit is delivered.
So … that’s where we are on the eve of Indicative Votes Day, with Theresa May still resisting abdication and even a notional general election not promising to make anything remotely clearer. Has there ever been a taking back of control to rival this one? If so, leading historians of the ERG are invited to get in touch with the relevant parallels.
howard mcsweeney1 and Button like this
Button
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 22 Jul 2016
- Posts: 3,040
This Indicative Votes malarkey, it's obviously quite different from the Queen's preference for "coming together to seek out the common ground", isn't it?
I hope it goes well but, just to make the point that we do have a constitutional monarchy around here, it would be good to see parliament put Boris forward for some honour or other - doesn't matter which one particularly, just so long as it comes with a funny hat and tights and involves a lot of his time.
howard mcsweeney1 likes this
(Not my real name.)
Captain Haddock- Location: Marlinspike Hall
- Registered: 8 Oct 2012
- Posts: 8,000
The person who SHOULD have been enobled and put in the House of Lords was Farrage. Like it or not he has changed the face of politics more than anyone else over the past two decades and it was shameful the way that BOTH Labour and Conservatives threw everything but the kitchen sink into their campaigns to stop him getting elected (See South Thanet)
He certainly deserves a place upon the Lord's benches rather than Floella sodding Benjamin (nominated by the Liberal Democrats FFS!)
John Buckley and Paul Watkins like this
"We are living in very strange times, and they are likely to get a lot stranger before we bottom out"
Dr. Hunter S Thompson
Ross Miller
- Location: London Road, Dover
- Registered: 17 Sep 2008
- Posts: 3,701
Perhaps he has, perhaps he hasn't...
perhaps he does, perhaps he doesn't...
He already has places reserved in Malebolge (pouches 5, 6, 8 & 10) with a possibility of "elevation" to either Antenora or Judecca
"Dream as if you'll live forever. Live as if you'll die today." - James Dean
"Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength,
While loving someone deeply gives you courage" - Laozi
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
How will this voting work? MPs will have 8 ballot papers in front of them with simple yes/boxes but can they vote for more than one option or just one?
Reginald Barrington
- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,239
My understanding is there will be a seperate yes or no vote on each proposal.
Arte et Marte
howard mcsweeney1- Location: Dover
- Registered: 12 Mar 2008
- Posts: 62,352
I realise that Reg but does it mean for example they can vote in favour on 4 ballot papers and against in the others or if they mark 1 paper in favour then they have to vote against the others?
Reginald Barrington- Location: Dover
- Registered: 17 Dec 2014
- Posts: 3,239
I believe they can vote in favour or against any or all of them, the theory being those proposals that have the most in favour would be used for the new direction parliament tries to negotiate/direct brexit.
Arte et Marte
