Jeremey Corbyn is in the news this morning, which is a surprise - for him. He has written to Sir Mark Sedwll, the cabinet secretary, asking him to block Johnson from calling an election for a date shortly after we are supposed to have left the EU, which would, of course, mean going over the cliff edge with no government in place. This is just another bit of Johnsonism out of his period as The Telegraph's Brussels correspondent.
“[I] was sort of chucking these rocks over the garden wall and I listened to this amazing crash from the greenhouse next door over in England as everything I wrote from Brussels was having this amazing, explosive effect on the Tory party – and it really gave me this, I suppose, rather weird sense of power,”
It is the metaphorical chucking of a rock and listening to this "amazing crash" as the press and opposition take him seriously. It's probably one of the reasons he appointed the psychopath Cummings to Downing Street, to make this stuff seem almost plausible and real.
Johnson won't do any such thing. It would be adding stupidity to recklessness. Shoving the nation into utter chaos and then abandoning the means of control would be the height of insanity and I really don't think anyone who harboured the slightest ambition of winning an ensuing election would do it.
And to show we are now fully into Wonderland alongside Alice, Vernon Bogdanor, professor at King’s College London and the foremost constitutional law expert in Britain, writing in The Times, says:
".... were an anti no-deal majority or Remain majority returned in November, a sovereign parliament could legislate retrospectively, with the agreement of the EU, so as to extend the Brexit date and deem Britain not to have left the EU on October 31. Parliament has legislated retrospectively in the past, most notably in the War Crimes Act 1991".
In other words, if we crash out on October 31st with no deal, we could simply turn back the legislative clock as if nothing had happened! A bit like Jean-Luc Picard in Star Trek.
I assume the EU would have to agree but this would not be insurmountable although we would turn ourselves from international laughing stock to basket case and the notion that we were a serious country would be forever dispelled.
Mark Littlewood of the Institute of Economic Affairs (IEA) the shadowy and fanatically pro-Brexit think tank (an oxymoron there I think) based at 55 Tufton Street just round the corner from Westminster, was on Radio 4 this morning (about 6:52 HERE). Mr Littlewood is famous for being caught on camera suggesting the IEA can produce original research 'shaped' by the person commissioning it.
Asked what his 'dream scenario' for Brexit was, he said it was important we get out of the EU 'in short order' and 'secure a global open trading position with the rest of the world' - whatever that means. He added that Brexit might be 'rocky for a year' but '5-10 years hence could be bright sunlit uplands'.
Apart from the extraordinary 5-10 year period he forecasts, note the use of the word 'could' which simply indicates one possibility. This was his 'dream scenario'. We didn't hear his nightmare scenario. The probability is that we actually have decades of weak growth, falling prosperity and general misery, but he forgot to mention that.
Coming from Mr Littlewood this shows how the Brexiteers are probably going to play it. Like the old Soviet regime, the carrot of the 'sunlit uplands' will be kept dangling ahead, sometimes seeming to get closer, sometimes more distant. We may be surprised how long you can keep this sort of stuff going among the faithful. They say even today you can find elderly Russians, ardent communists, who think the brutal Stalinist times of food shortages and endless queuing for basic essentials was perfectly acceptable and even desirable!
And the governments policy of blaming the EU for a no-deal Brexit is starting to crystallise.
Dominic Raab, the new Foreign Secretary, has been in North America, trying to drum up trade deals, but while in Mexico City he spoke about the withdrawal negotiations with the EU:
“If the position from the EU is that the withdrawal agreement can’t be changed - whether it’s add-ons or subtractions - full stop, which is their position today, then let’s face it, they will be taking the decision to see the UK leave on no-deal terms, and that’s a responsibility they will have to bear,”
We voted to leave but the narrative now is that they're throwing us out. Reuters do not say if he stamped his feet, threw a tantrum or made himself sick. If he did it could not have been more humiliating. Raab is behaving like a hormonal adolescent showing what I think is known as 'challenging behaviour' after an adult has finally set some firm boundaries, things that he has never previously experienced.
Of course, no-deal isn't so much self harm for Raab as harm to everybody else. This is one of those you're-going-force-me-to-hurt-somebody and if I do, IT WILL ALL BE YOUR FAULT, moments.
Dominic Raab is 14 years old.
Of course, no-deal isn't so much self harm for Raab as harm to everybody else. This is one of those you're-going-force-me-to-hurt-somebody and if I do, IT WILL ALL BE YOUR FAULT, moments.
Dominic Raab is 14 years old.
Johnson was on TV last night with his own mantra about leaving on October 31st being necessary to 'restore people's faith in democracy'. This of course assumes leavers in our democracy knew what they were voting for. If Brexit delivers a lot of nasty surprises, as I suspect it will, I don't think people will feel their faith in democracy has been restored.
Rather they will lose completely what little faith they ever had in politicians like Johnson. In fact after a no-deal Brexit he might not be able to walk the streets unmolested.
He is still sitting tight and hoping the EU blink, but his difficulty is that they can afford to wait until October 31st when the Brexit Charabanc is just a few meters from the cliff edge, nobody at the wheel, no brakes anyway and all the helpless passengers screaming hysterically at the top of their lungs.
We can't.
