We learned two things from last night's TV debate. Firstly, what cabinet meetings must be like. A bunch of people in a cacophonous rabble arguing over something they know next to nothing about. It was excruciating. Badly organised and badly chaired. If anyone overseas was watching they must wonder at our future prospects as a nation. They cannot have been impressed.
Secondly, that the Tory party is still chasing fantasy solutions
to Brexit and nothing is going to persuade them otherwise. In fact, so enamored of fantasies have they become that Johnson's pledge to cut taxes by
£21 billion for the rich while increasing spending is not seen as being in the least outlandish. Before we can escape the nightmare, these fantasies
must be broken up into tiny pieces so that they can never be used again.
Earlier, Dominic Raab had become the latest to drop out, mustering just 30 votes. BoJo increased his lead but not by very much, he's now on 126. Stewart jumped into fourth place and had momentum which only lasted for a few hours. The debate was not his finest moment. Everyone talked over him.
Among the other candidates, Johnson looked exactly what he is. A fool in the corner chuntering away to himself. I don't think he made a single sensible point, backtracked on or watered down every commitment he has ever made to anyone and appeared to be semi if not fully detached from reality. The tax cut had become just an 'ambition'. The 31st October deadline was only 'eminently feasible'. The reason his campaign has kept him hidden away was all too clear. He hasn't the foggiest idea about anything.
BoJo even talked about GATT Article 24 being used to allow trade to continue uninterrupted after a no deal Brexit as a sort of surrogate transition period. This is an idea that has been beaten to death umpteen times by every trade expert in the Western world but it keeps coming back.
He looked a little less secure as front runner last night.
BoJo even talked about GATT Article 24 being used to allow trade to continue uninterrupted after a no deal Brexit as a sort of surrogate transition period. This is an idea that has been beaten to death umpteen times by every trade expert in the Western world but it keeps coming back.
He looked a little less secure as front runner last night.
Ordinary Tory party members have over many years been sold an impossible dream by Eurosceptics and last night's free-for-all between the five remaining candidates showed they are not willing to give up on it - yet. Hence the four who
promised to keep the impossible dreams going for a bit longer did best
with the membership. Rory Stewart stumbled. The format didn't suit him
and his call to stop dreaming and wake up to the facts
was the last thing Tories want to hear.
Michael Gove, the man who led the leave campaign, said he had a 'detailed
plan' of how we should leave the EU. Really? One man in a Conservative
association somewhere, when interviewed afterwards, actually switched to supporting Gove on the strength of this one claim!
Nobody asked to see the plan, asked about the details or why he had waited for three years
before telling us he had one.
It was coincidental that an article appeared in the right wing magazine The Spectator yesterday by Sir Ivan Rogers (HERE) or (HERE No £). It's a longish (7000 words) edited transcript of a speech he had given somewhere recently and typically well argued. Sir Ivan thinks no-deal is now the most likely outcome - I don't agree and I hope he's wrong.
The piece is well worth reading. It starts:
"We all know this is a great country. Sadly, it’s one currently very poorly led by a political elite, some masquerading as non-elite, which has great difficulties discerning and telling the truth".
It was coincidental that an article appeared in the right wing magazine The Spectator yesterday by Sir Ivan Rogers (HERE) or (HERE No £). It's a longish (7000 words) edited transcript of a speech he had given somewhere recently and typically well argued. Sir Ivan thinks no-deal is now the most likely outcome - I don't agree and I hope he's wrong.
The piece is well worth reading. It starts:
"We all know this is a great country. Sadly, it’s one currently very poorly led by a political elite, some masquerading as non-elite, which has great difficulties discerning and telling the truth".
Note this was written before last night's debate. He says Mrs May's October 2016 conference and Lancaster House speeches were the most ill-advised by any prime minster since the Second World War. They cemented the unity of the EU27 against a cake-and-eat-it fantasy and signed her own political death warrant.
But, and this is key, he argues the next PM (assuming it's not Stewart) is going to do EXACTLY THE SAME THING.
He believes the EU will not shift on the backstop and that although they might be willing to rewrite the political declaration...
".... others are now increasingly reconciled to the probability that this will not suffice, given the history of the last year. And if it does not, they [the EU] are inexorably trending towards the view that it might just be better for the UK to experience the reality of ‘no deal’ for a while. And that maybe the only route to a Free Trade Agreement without endless tedious fantasies now goes via our experiencing the absence of ANY preferential arrangements for a while. Some think the upheaval brings the UK back to the negotiating table within weeks, prepared to sign on the dotted line on the lot to get a negotiation – which, as I say, requires the unanimous agreement of all Member States and the European Parliament under Article 218 – underway.
"That is just a hugely naïve view, in my opinion. The politics and distrust on both sides militate against any breakdown being short or amicable. It would be lengthy and rough. Which ought in itself surely to give people on all sides pause about where we might be heading".
A period outside the single market would be 'lengthy and rough' - rough that is for many ordinary families but not for the four madmen sat around the TV debate last night. Their comfortable well-heeled lives will continue as they are now.
Do they understand? Do they believe Sir Ivan's warnings? Will they be willing to take us out with no deal and let the nation bear the consequences?
In the end, I don't think they will.
Incidentally, Rogers' words should strike more powerfully because he is not a remainer. He thinks although leaving the EU is inimical to our interests we have to do it, but in the most orderly and least damaging way.
