Depending on what the legislation says, Michael Gove today revealed that the UK Government may find a way to work around it. Next week will be the greatest showdown…
Keir Starmer dropped strong hints on Marr this morning that after three years of asking for a General Election, Labour would refuse to allow one until legislation to block No Deal is in place. They’d rather keep this unstable Parliament in place than face the electorate. What was that about a coup..?
Labour will lose a Brexit election, they know it. Boris would crush Corbyn. A November Fifth Guy Fawkes election would clear out parliament of Brexit blockers better than gunpowder…
MPs will make the unprecedented move of asking the Speaker to allow them to wrestle control of the Order Paper from the Government in order to pass anti-Brexit legislation. Unlike in March this will be entirely down to the Remain voting speaker to decide, and not as a result of amending primary legislation. The biased referee is expected to grant them their request and the Government to lose control of Parliamentary timetable on Wednesday…
The new PM hasn’t even been announced and Irish Deputy PM Simon Coveney is already trying to pass the buck on no deal, sticking to his line that the backstop is the only game in town so it’ll be the fault of the Brits if a deal doesn’t go through because of it. Never mind the fact that his government has already published plans for checks away from the border if there’s no deal…
News that will surprise precisely no-one…
Rudd now says she accepts No Deal has to be part of the leverage for negotiation. Which is the de minimis requirement for being in a Boris Cabinet. She still thinks it would be bad. Which doesn’t make much sense. Sounds like she is bluffing. She should do that from the back benches…
Shadow Foreign Secretary Emily Thornberry says: “We’re going to ask for a public vote, we’re going to ask for Remain to be on the ballot paper and we’re going to campaign to Remain.” Labour abandons Northern Leave voting seats…
Not that anyone’s really expecting him to be in it anyway after his recent antics, but David Gauke has clarified that he would “resign in advance” from a potential Boris Cabinet if he was required to sign up to leaving the EU on October 31st deal or no deal.
Funny how he didn’t feel the need to make the same clarification about a Jeremy Hunt Cabinet, despite Hunt also backing no deal just with more woolliness around the date. Or that he never felt the need to resign from a May Government that had “no deal is better than a bad deal” as its official policy for well over two years…
After Barry Gardiner went on Ridge to attack Labour staffers who blew the whistle on Labour anti-Semitism, McDonnell naturally followed-up on Marr, insisting that Labour’s decision to send threatning legal letters was “just to remind them” of their confidentiality agreements. Nothing a short spell in the gulag won’t sort out…
Marr declares that entrepreneurs “will lose their companies” if no deal happens, before literally spluttering with incredulity as Hunt gives him a measured and thoughtful answer to his question. Not even pretending to be impartial…
Len McCluskey taking the LOTO lines on Marr, he isn’t even unequivocal over whether he’d back Remain over No Deal. Corbyn’s inner circle just want Brexit to go through, without having to take responsibility themselves…
The question is how many of her fellow Labour MPs agree. And how many Tory rebels feel so strongly the other way they’d rather bring down their own government…
The former Foreign Secretary warns that the current Foreign Secretary “cannot afford to be completely absent” from the world stage as the Iran crisis deepens. It’s not just Hunt, the ongoing Brexit/Tory psychodrama has completely distracted the whole UK media/political class from the increasingly serious events unfolding abroad…
Remainer MPs can stamp their feet as much as they like, no deal is still the legal default and there’s nothing they can unilaterally do to prevent it…
Rory Stewart’s Macron/Messiah complex grew this morning in an extraordinary interview on Marr. In the course of ten minutes, Rory…
- Declared he is the only candidate who can get the UK out of the EU.
- Announced that every single MP would join him in an impromptu parallel legislature in Methodist Central Hall if a future PM did an Attlee and prorogued Parliament.
- Flip flopped to say he would refuse to serve in a Boris cabinet, despite maintaining he wants to reach out to Nigel Farage and “bring him in.”
- Said that if Parliament doesn’t pass May’s deal on a fourth attempt, he will bypass democracy to set up a scientifically determined and appointed ‘Citizens Assembly’ of 50,000 people phoned up to join televised sessions to make the decision for them. We have a democratically selected citizens assembly, it is called the House of Commons.
- Binned his ‘clean campaign pledge’ to not indulge in personal attacks, to launch personal attacks, claiming that “there are too many people trying to be polite.”
Rory complains that Brexiteers are threatening to bypass parliament if the EU refuses to negotiate a better deal, yet his core big idea is to bypass parliament with his phoned in Citizens Assembly.
He’s in danger of joining the Brexit-driven descent into derangement travelled by the Adonises and Chapmans of this world…
UPDATE: This follows yesterday’s live stream from a cafe. What Guido most enjoyed about his live stream from a cafe is the staff and customers, in a very English way, ignoring the man talking to himself in the corner:
The waitress in the background just carried on wiping down tables. Guido imagined her telling the cook behind the counter
“He says he wants to be the bloody Prime Minister, looks like he could do with a feed if you ask me. Only ordered a cup of tea. Seems harmless enough.”
You just know that the kid is thinking “Don’t make eye contact, must not make eye contact…”.
Guido feels Rory isn’t getting much critical scrutiny. People have heard things like he was in Afghanistan – as a civil servant. That he tutored the Royal princes – for 2 weeks and admits he had to be extracted from a secure safe room at Highgrove by axe-wielding security officers after he locked himself in one night. He did PPE at Oxford – and didn’t get a first. His name is not really Rory – it is Roderick. Someone who knows him well described his defining talent as the Old Etonian ability to “sound convincing without expertise”. He is not even doing that with his flip-flopping and frankly eccentrically bonkers campaign…
Jeremy Corbyn’s personal anti-Semitism storm is thickening with Corbyn now being sued by Richard Millett over comments he made on the Andrew Marr Show. The programme contained the following allegedly defamatory words spoken by Corbyn in his 2013 speech to the Palestinian Return Centre:
[…] Read the restThe other evening we had a meeting in Parliament in which Manuel made an incredibly powerful and passionate and effective speech about the history of Palestine, the rights of the Palestinian people.
