Readers of this blog know I regularly look at stories that appear in The Telegraph. I do it because it often seems a bellwether for Brexit. Two years ago it was triumphant and I could hardly bear to read it. Now I eagerly look out for Brexit articles appearing in it. Recently there has been few signs of triumph. It is more like preparations for a wake. Here are a selection of items that have appeared in the last two days to warm your heart. Note you won't be able to read more than the first paragraphs of each story but the headlines will tell you all you need to know. Brexit is slipping away and they know it.
On Tuesday, Tom Harris explained how Geoffrey Cox had driven what he said was the final nail in the coffin for Mrs May's deal (HERE). Little did he know there are still a few more nails to come before the coffin is finally lowered into the grave. Grim faced undertakers are still hard at it and will be so for another few days.
Later the same day, the swivel-eyed MP for Morley and Outwood, Andrea Jenkiyns explained (HERE) why she wouldn't vote for deal on Tuesday night - which she didn't. The deal is 'deeply flawed' so let us hope she is a woman of her word and votes it down again next week - and the week after - and the week after.
The deal the PM brought back was duly and decisively rejected for a second time. Immediately after the vote Michael Fabricant MP, the one with a head of hair that looks like a stick of dynamite has exploded in a bowl of custard, told us (HERE) why he had took 'the tough decision' to reject the PM's deal. You wouldn't know it but both Fabricant and Jenkyns are Tory MPs.
The deal the PM brought back was duly and decisively rejected for a second time. Immediately after the vote Michael Fabricant MP, the one with a head of hair that looks like a stick of dynamite has exploded in a bowl of custard, told us (HERE) why he had took 'the tough decision' to reject the PM's deal. You wouldn't know it but both Fabricant and Jenkyns are Tory MPs.
Wednesday evening came and after the smoke cleared following the vote to permanently block a no deal Brexit Nigel Farage was raging that it was the 'betrayal' of Brexit and one of the most shameful chapters in our history (HERE). In Farage world it is all betrayal isn't it? I wonder what UKIP members think about his new Brexit party? Within an hour Farage had been joined by Nick Timothy, May's former aide, who wrote that it was all Theresa's fault for losing control of Brexit (HERE). When even your closest friends turn on you the end cannot be far away.
Camilla Tominey and Stephen Swinford, hacks on the political wing of the paper, combined to ridicule the PM and claim her deal was in tatters (HERE). They say having vowed to 'take back control' she finally lost it altogether. They could not have known that little elves would be hard at work overnight to repair her deal and make it fit for another outing next week where it will be torn to shreds again.
Even Micheal Deacon, the paper's parliamentary sketch writer, joined in, admitting that he wasn't completely sure he could even explain what happened on Wednesday night to himself - saying "Tonight, the Government whipped against itself – and lost". Amazingly, this is exactly what happened! He congratulated the PM on the most farcical moment yet (HERE) in a very high quality contest. It was Monty Python meeting One flew over the cuckoo's nest.
Then Tominey and Swinford set out how Corbyn is instigating cross-party talks to find a way to get through the impasse (HERE). It's a bit like Venezuela where the incumbent leader is being bypassed. May is sitting dazed in Downing Street while her opponents organise to get us out of the quagmire she has led us into - a sort of stop-gap quasi government of the kind that ran Berlin after May 1945.
To make matters worse, Allister Heath, who normally confines himself to economic matters strays into political territory by claiming: "Britain’s Remainer elites have declared war on democracy itself" (HERE). Note none of the chaos has anything to do with Brexit or Brexiteers like him. It is all down to remainers. We are to blame for it all.
Adding to the average Telegraph reader's anxiety over Brexit, raising nagging doubts that the nation will not be destroyed as they hoped and planned for years, James Crisp, the Telegraph's Brussels correspondent (HERE) thinks the EU will tell Mrs May to ask for a lengthy extension rather than just a couple of months. To the demented leavers who buy the rag, like justice, Brexit delayed is Brexit denied.
Finally, up pops David Davis like a bad penny (HERE) to tell us he fears parliament will now find a way of stopping Brexit altogether.
We can only hope.
