Category Archives: boris

IS BORIS SERIOUSLY FOCUSED ON DELIVERING BREXIT?

 

IS BORIS SERIOUSLY FOCUSED ON DELIVERING BREXIT?

For those of us that want to see Brexit delivered and, in particular, are hopeful of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit, Boris Johnson has made various remarks that his friend and campaign advisor, Sir Lynton Crosby would call ‘Dog Whistles’, that is remarks which call us back to heel like well-trained dogs! 
Of course these remarks might be genuine expressions of Boris’ personal determination and ideological commitment to Brexit “Do or die!” 
Alternatively these remarks might well be being said by Boris Johnson purely for reasons of expediency.  It would therefore be worth reminding ourselves of Boris’ history.
The first thing I should say is that I do personally like Boris’ style.  He is clearly an absolute star and a magnetic personality and performer with tremendous charisma.  He has genuine leadership ability which makes a fantastic change from the dispiriting lack of it of Theresa May and her inner circle.  That said let’s consider his position.
Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson was born in the United States and when he attended Oxford University his former tutor at Balliol confirmed that he did so as an American citizen.
More recently as MP for Henley and Editor of the Spectator and then as Mayor of London, Boris had seemed enthusiastically Europhile. 
I remember in a TV programme which he did enthusing on the topic that the EU was the new Roman Empire.  He suggested that what we now needed was a new Caesar Augustus! 
He also at one stage enthusiastically endorsed the idea of Turkey, the land of his Great Grandfather, Ali Kamal (one of the last Sultan’s ministers), joining the EU. 
We then have the occasion when he decided to come out as supporting Leave once David Cameron had called the EU referendum in 2016.  During that campaign he made all sorts of remarks which pleased us Leave supporters. 
However it should be borne in mind that he had done two draft speeches.  One supporting Remain and David Cameron, the other coming out for Leave.  David Cameron has also apparently confirmed that he thought Boris did not believe in Brexit.
I would therefore say it is not clear that Boris coming out for Leave was about commitment and principle, rather than about career and opportunity.
There is also Boris’ family background which is very Europhile, globalist, multi-racial, multi-cultural and metropolitan elitist.  Perhaps not the typical seed bed of patriotism and nationalism!
Now we turn to what is going on at the moment.  Boris has obviously got the leadership of the Conservative Party, partly on the basis of his personality but also partly on the basis of promising to deliver Brexit “Do or die”.  Brexit has therefore been very useful to his career ambitions.
When Boris became Prime Minister, Stephen Barclay became the New Secretary of State for Exiting the European Union.  The two of them still could have agreed by Consent that our case “Defend Brexit” would win and agreed that there be a Declaration that we were out on the 29th.  
Indeed, we could have agreed some other date where we would be out if the Government thought there was any reason for having a different date. 
Instead of doing this, despite the fact that Boris, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Stephen Barclay and many Conservative MPs had been lobbied about it, the Government’s lawyers wrote to me and to the Court of Appeal saying that they had received instructions to reiterate the Government’s pleaded Defence.  Although I have asked for confirmation of who ordered it but I think it highly unlikely that that would have been written if the new Prime Minister and Secretary of State had not ordered it. 
A lot of the noise and froth which we read in the media or hear from Boris’ supporters is that he is being almost martyred for the issue of Brexit by the parliamentary Remainers, it is nevertheless worth pausing and considering that Boris had several opportunities to prevent the then Bill becoming law.  The Conservative Peers had lined up many amendments which would have filibustered the Bill so that it could not pass through the House of Lords before Parliament was prorogued and would therefore have been lost.  It has been reported that Boris personally stood the Conservative Peers down and enabled the Bill to pass without objection. 
He also could have refused or delayed Royal Assent to the Bill. There would then have been a further row about whether that was proper to do, but the time would have ticked away and we would have been closer to achieving Brexit with ‘No Deal’. 
He has now signalled that he would consider a ‘No Deal’ Brexit to be a failure. It is also  worth remembering that on the third occasion he did actually vote for Theresa May’s Withdrawal Deal, which, of course, is really more of an abject and almost unconditional surrender document.  From this we can draw the certain conclusion that Boris is not ideologically committed to opposing Theresa May’s deal.  The question of the deal is purely a matter of expediency for him.
We will see over the coming weeks whether he does take any decisions which advance the chances of a ‘No Deal’ Brexit, or whether he in fact prevents that from happening behind a cloak of ‘Dog Whistle’ remarks to Leavers. 
So you might ask me what I think Boris is actually trying to achieve if it is not a clean break Brexit? 
My answer would be that I think what he is trying to achieve is a General Election with him having a good chance of using the Brexit issue to enable him to destroy the Brexit Party and to get a large majority as a result of the election. 
If that election takes place before the 31stOctober I wouldn’t then be at all surprised if Boris quickly signs us up to what to all intent and purposes is Theresa May’s deal. 
The amusing commentator Rod Liddall suggested that what Boris would sign us up to was “Theresa May’s pig of a deal which Boris had put lipstick and rouge on”!
What do you think?

BRECON & RADNORSHIRE BY-ELECTION – COCK-UP OR STITCH-UP?

BRECON & RADNORSHIRE BY-ELECTION – COCK-UP OR STITCH-UP?

Last week on the 1st August there was a Parliamentary by-election, the reports of which had been very overshadowed by the national political events, like the formation of the new Boris Johnson Premiership and Cabinet.  Then almost out of the blue, as it were, we learnt that the Conservatives have lost the seat. 
There were suggestions in the Remainer Main Stream Media that Boris has already lost his bounce. A more obvious point on the facts would be one that they are not so keen to report, given their pro-Labour bias, that in fact the Labour candidate had almost lost his deposit in a Welsh constituency which had once been part of Labour’s Welsh permanent fiefdom!  The seat was Labour for many years until 1979.
A bit more enquiry reveals that the Conservative Party’s candidate had previously been the MP, but the by-election was called as a result of a Recall Petition because he had been convicted of creating fraudulent invoices and claiming fraudulently on his parliamentary expenses. 
So what on earth induced the Conservative Party to put him up again as a parliamentary candidate?  Was it incredible arrogance?  Incredible stupidity? Or some sort of devious plot?
Of course in human affairs generally it is often a mistake to discount the role of sheer mistaken stupidity.  That maybe what has happened here; perhaps coupled here with a sense of obstinate entitlement. 
There is however an alternative idea to consider. 
Let’s first look at the timeline here:-
The previous MP and recent Conservative candidate, Christopher Davies, pleaded guilty of putting in false expenses in March 2019 and in April he was sentenced.  
The Speaker launched the legal petition on the 24th April and the petition was opened on the 9th May and remained open for signatures until the 20th June.  It only needed to get 5,303 signatures but in fact got 10,005 signatures.  10,005 petitioners who signed to remove him amounted to 19% of the 53,032 electors in Brecon and Radnorshire. 
 
Mr Davies was re-selected as the Conservative candidate (the re-selection process now requires not only the local party to support the candidate, but more importantly requires the National Nominating Officer of the Conservative Party to sign the candidate’s Nomination Certificate.  The National Nominating Officer of the Conservative Party is Victoria Carslake, who was of course an appointment by Theresa May). 
The close of nominations in this by-election took place on 5th July and, as I mentioned, the election took place last week on the 1st August. 
This timeline alone shows that this by-election can really have absolutely nothing to do with Boris Johnson.  The fact that the recently convicted fraudster Conservative candidate still managed to do so well might really show that Boris Johnson, if he had any effect on it at all, very nearly got him re-elected however unsuitable he might be as an MP!
So I return to the question of why would the Conservatives put up a candidate who has not only been recently convicted of fraud on his parliamentary expenses, but also to strong feeling locally about this, triggered this by-election? 
Another possibility, other than Conservative stupidity, might be another devious plot by Theresa May and her inner circle. 
We now know that Theresa May never sought to negotiate any form of proper Brexit.  She never suggested to the EU negotiators that we might leave with ‘No Deal’ and she never attempted to get the United Kingdom a good deal.  Her whole effort was to try and tie us up as close to the European Union as possible, which is why she went on, not only lying about what she was doing, but also signing us up to yet further EU commitments, such as the new EU Army. 
She also called her General Election not because she wanted to guarantee Brexit, but rather because she wanted to be independent of the Brexiteers and to impose her Agreement on the country. 
So I suggest that a possible scenario is that this totally unsuitable Conservative candidate was re-selected in order to lose that seat and so give Remain supporters in the House of Commons yet more clout. 
All this was going on whilst Theresa May was trying to and partly succeeding in getting huge further spending commitments which would bind the hands of her successor, which was already most likely to be Boris. 
If this is what was actually happening, then this by-election is nothing to do with Boris except in the sense that it was always set up as a trap. 
The most laughable suggestion is that this is all the fault of the Brexit Party splitting the vote.  This is of course a variant of the old line of the most cynical Establishment vote manipulators that you cannot vote for anybody else other than the Conservatives otherwise you get Labour (or vice or versa if you are a former Labour supporter). 
Whilst it is true that the Brexit Party got more than the difference between the Conservative and Liberal Democrat, it does not follow that people who voted Brexit Party would have voted for the Tory convicted fraudster.
Of course all this undemocratic nonsense relies upon the most appallingly undemocratic electoral system, the “First Past the Post” which regularly cheats large numbers of voters out of their preferred outcome. 

BORIS, THE RESCUER OF BREXIT? (OR JUST THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY?)

 

BORIS, THE RESCUER OF BREXIT? (OR JUST THE CONSERVATIVE PARTY?)

We now live in a country where if you rely on the mainstream media for your information then you will be misinformed!
A good example of this was all the hype about Boris’ Government being dominated by hard-lined Leavers.  The longstanding Eurosceptic MP for Wokingham, Sir John Redwood, put us straight on that with this tweet:-
“There has been much misleading comment masquerading as analysis about the nature of the new Cabinet.
There are just two members who voted against the Withdrawal Agreement on all three occasions it came forward, and three who voted against it on two of the three occasions.
There are fourteen who voted Remain plus the Chief Whip.
The big majority of the Cabinet supported Mrs May’s Withdrawal Agreement, and some  were particularly vocal in urging others to do so.”
Boris of course has been a breath of fresh air in whacking Labour all over the court in the parliamentary tennis match.  Boris does also talk a good line in positivity and also of getting us out of the EU by the 31st October “do or die”.  He is also claiming that he is not going to call a General Election before the delivery of Brexit.
Despite this assurance Boris’ behaviour is sounding rather like preparations for a General Election.  The new Leader of the House, Jacob Rees-Mogg, dared Remainers to pass an Act of Parliament revoking the Article 50 Notice.  This may well be part of a strategy to trigger a General Election on the ticket of trying to get Brexit “over the touch line”. 
If so, it should be remembered that all the Tory Remainer rebels, the Gaukes, the Stewarts the Letwins, the Grieves, etc., will get re-elected if the Conservatives do well because there will not have been time to purge them from standing.  An early General Election, whilst good for getting Conservative candidates re-elected, may not help in the slightest with the parliamentary difficulties over Brexit. 
I do think one of the litmus tests of whether or not Boris’ Government genuinely is willing to allow a ‘no deal’ Brexit, is whether or not they show an interest in supporting our “Defend Brexit” case. 
To my knowledge Jacob Rees-Mogg has been spoken to about the Brexit case by at least three people, as well as, of course, being general knowledge amongst Conservative MPs because of the House of Commons Library’s briefing.  It wasn’t therefore a surprise to see in this video clip that Jacob Rees-Mogg knew about the case >>> 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T2tJSpncXmE&feature=share&fbclid=IwAR05UCTJJIwej1VXkIFFKGe8dFhyBQfM8OAIn30E-4fhRmNltXMRnNNOW3k
What was interesting, however, was to see somebody who is not a lawyer trying to make out that he had some information about the case’s chances of success!
Jacob Rees-Mogg’s comments were particularly disingenuous when you consider that he was very happy to talk about his colleague, Bill Cash’s case, which has never actually been a case at all, let alone had any merit, since no proceedings have actually even been issued and it would now be too late to do so. 
So his answer isn’t in fact about whether our case has any merits, his answer is instead indicative of what the Conservative Government under him and Boris are thinking of doing with the case. 
If the real intention of Boris’ Government was to get the UK Out of the EU with ‘no deal’, then not defending our case would be the easiest way to achieve that for them.  It would not then be possible for Parliament to block either the case or thus Brexit.  It would also not be possible for Parliament to legislate to prevent it.  It would simply be declared as the law by the court, at which point there would be nothing that any of the Remainer Establishment figures could do about it.  If that outcome does not suit Boris’ Government that must be because they have some other agenda. 
My suspicion is that their agenda is simply to bolster the Conservative Party’s position in a General Election to be announced.  This could be perhaps in October to take place in November when the clocks have gone back.  It is then dark when people return from work. This will dramatically reduce Labour’s advantage in having an estimated a quarter of a million canvassers. 
I may be proved wrong, but if so, I would expect the case to be given a fair wind by Government. 
Let us see what happens!