Thursday 31 October 2019

PM Johnson "frustrated" Brexit is not happening on Oct. 31

Prime Minister Boris Johnson said on Thursday he was frustrated that Brexit was not happening, as he had repeatedly promised, on Oct. 31 but that if the electorate voted for him then the divorce would be done by January.

31 OCT 2019
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaks at the House of Commons in London, Britain, October 30, 2019, in this screen grab taken from video. Parliament TV via REUTERS
“I am, of course, incredibly frustrated that we are not able to get Brexit done today,” Johnson said. “But let’s be in doubt what has happened, we had a fantastic deal on the table, the House of Commons voted it through but then they voted again for delay.”
“This parliament is just not going to vote Brexit through, there are too many people who are basically opposed to Brexit, who want to frustrate it,” he said. “We have an oven ready deal, put it in the microwave as soon as we get back after the election on Friday 12th Dec and get it done.”
“If you for vote for us and we get our programme through because, we will, because as I say it is oven ready it is there to go, then we can be out by out at the absolute latest by January next year,” Johnson said.
https://uk.reuters.com/article/uk-britain-eu-johnson-brexit/pm-johnson-frustrated-brexit-is-not-happening-on-oct-31
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John Bercow: defending parliament against the people

The departing speaker was no warrior for democracy.

TOM SLATER
DEPUTY EDITOR
31st October 2019

John Bercow: defending parliament against the people

So it’s goodbye to John Bercow. The longest-serving speaker of the House of Commons since the war, the small man with the big thesaurus, has finally stepped down.

His last Prime Minister’s Questions (PMQs) yesterday proved a fitting send-off. This weekly session, intended to be just 30 minutes, has during Bercow’s tenure become ever-longer – in part, at least, due to his own verbosity; his habit, as the author Ben Schott has put it, ‘of using 10 words when two would suffice’.

The session stretched to well over an hour yesterday, groaning under the weight of both sincere and tongue-in-cheek well-wishes from Commons leaders. Prime minister Boris Johnson, unsurprisingly, opted for the latter.

Though Bercow began life as a Conservative – and a pretty hard-right one at that – he has long been considered by Tories as a turncoat, increasingly in line with Labour. But more importantly, in the Brexit saga his decisions have at key points allowed this Remainer Parliament to land blows against the Leave majority.

Johnson yesterday praised Bercow’s ‘10 tumultuous years in your high chair’, before taking some sly swipes at his activism, which in many MPs’ eyes has destroyed the impartiality of his office. ‘You have been a player in your own right, peppering every part of the chamber with your thoughts and opinions’, Johnson said, pointing to Bercow’s various ‘legislative innovations’.

Perhaps Bercow’s most controversial innovation was in January, when he ignored his clerks’ advice and allowed an amendment to a government motion to be laid by Remoaner MP Dominic Grieve ultimately aimed at stymying a No Deal exit. In the words of the BBC’s parliamentary anorak Mark D’Arcy, it ‘drove a coach and horses through accepted normal practice’.

‘If such a precedent can be made to stick, it would be a huge blow against any government’s accustomed control over the business of the Commons’, D’Arcy added. And so it was to be. Bercow would later allow backbench MPs to take control of the order paper in order, among other things, to pass the Surrender Act to legislate against No Deal – closing off the path to a clean-break Brexit.

Amid the uproar in the Commons that followed the passing of the Grieve amendment, Bercow told the house, ‘I am not in the business of invoking precedent, nor am I under any obligation to do so… If we were guided only by precedent, nothing would ever change.’ Then, two months later, he had suddenly became a traditionalist, invoking a 1604 convention to stop Theresa May holding another vote on her Brexit deal.

Bercow has styled himself as a defender of the backbenches against the overreach of the executive. He expanded urgent questions and emergency debates to keep government and ministers more on their toes. All good things in themselves. All true democrats should want a parliament that keeps the executive in check.

But during the Brexit process, Bercow’s role has also been to empower parliament at the expense of the electorate, giving them all manner of unusual, unprecedented means to overturn the vote for Brexit.

He has been quite open about his pro-Remain views, and the fact that he thinks it is the right of MPs to defy the wishes of their own constituents. In 2017, after a press and public backlash against 12 anti-Brexit Tories, he effectively stood up for MPs’ right to thwart Brexit. ‘In voting as you think fit’, he reassured MPs, ‘you are never enemies of the people. You are dedicated, hard-working, committed public servants, doing what you believe to be right for this country.’

Yesterday Jeremy Corbyn lauded Bercow as a democratic champion ‘in the tradition of the great Speaker Lenthall’ – the man who stood up to King Charles I in 1642 when the king turned up in parliament, flanked by hundreds of soldiers, demanding to know the whereabouts of five MPs he accused of treason.

But where Lenthall’s stand against autocratic government sparked the Civil War and the revolutionary overthrow of the monarchy, Bercow’s multisyllabic interventions have only worked to enable the counter-revolutionary overthrow of the popular vote for Brexit.

Bercow hasn’t so much stood up for parliament’s traditions as he has bent and broke them as he sees fit to the end of crushing the biggest public mandate in our history. Whatever you want to call that, it isn’t democratic.

When parliament voted this week on a one-line bill to hold a General Election, opposition parties put down amendments seeking to fiddle the franchise to include 16- and 17-year-olds and EU citizens. (Two groups who are generally pro-Remain and anti-Tory.)

The government breathed a sigh of relief when deputy speaker Sir Lindsay Hoyle, filling in for Bercow that day, refused to select the amendments.

Hoyle was right to do it, of course. Such a profound change in how we do politics, and in what citizenship means in this country, should not be done so hastily by a bunch of MPs trying to rig an upcoming election in their favour.

But though it is perhaps unfair to suggest that Bercow might have done otherwise, that observers even thought such a change might have been possible tells us something about the Bercow era. He has, if nothing else, wrecked the presumption that the speaker is an honest broker, following the rules impartially.

Whether or not Bercow’s exploits in recent years were the product of his belief in parliamentary scrutiny, his loathing of this current government or his loathing of Brexit is very much up for debate. What is clear, though, is that his lasting legacy will be as an enthusiastic enabler of the Remainer Parliament, the most openly anti-democratic in recent memory.

As one government source told Buzzfeed’s Alex Wickham last month, just after Bercow announced his retirement, ‘Bercow thinks he’ll walk away as a hero, when most people in the country don’t know who he is and those that do think he’s a nauseating wanker. The man has been central to stopping Brexit – the nation won’t thank him.’

Harsh but true. Speaker Bercow didn’t so much defend parliament against the executive as parliament against the people.

Tom Slater is deputy editor at spiked. Follow him on Twitter: @Tom_Slater_

Picture by: Getty

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The Brexit Party’s dilemma

With parties gearing up to release their candidate lists and slogans (the Lib Dems’ release theirs today, whoopee) election fever has dipped somewhat.

THE BREXIT PARTY’S DILEMMA

 31 October 2019
However, some big moves look to be incoming following the FT’s scoop last night that the Brexit Party are considering pulling their candidates the best possible chance of securing a majority.
Brexit Party candidates received the following message yesterday morning: “Important. Please all go DARK on social media. DO NOT respond to any questions about where we [are] standing, what the strategy or plan is from now on. Things will be made clear . . . very soon.”
The date being mooted is November the 12th, exactly a month before polling day.
“I’ve said nothing about it to anybody and frankly there’s no rush,” Nigel Farage told the Telegraph “I’m working it through at the moment and will announce it in good time.”
Good strategy, Farage is in a tricky situation. Everything could go badly wrong if the Tories don’t take Leave-voting Labour marginals to make up for losses to the Lib Dems and the SNP in Scotland and the collapse in relations with the DUP
This is going to be a topsy-turvy election. Labour reached 50% or more of the vote share in seats that voted 65% or more in favour of Brexit. Those voters have been completely sold out. Surely there’s plundering to be done for a common-sense party that aren’t the Conservatives.
“The reality on the ground is that for Boris Johnson to obtain a working majority he must not only gain Conservative seats, but also see the party closest to him suffer a reduction in number,” writes Leave.EU’s former head of press, Brian Monteith, now a Brexit Party MEP for Brexit Central.  
“I know there are many, many Labour voters who will never vote Conservative,” he adds. They are not backwards at coming forward to tell me this. They will, however, consider however voting for the Brexit Party and in May they turned out in huge numbers to do so.
He goes onto map out the Labour heartlands, which extend far and wide, where Nigel can land punishing blows. The scope is much greater than the twenty or so seats being mooted by commentators.
But overturning those majorities isn’t out of the question. Leave voters are faced with Jeremy Corbyn who has been found out over Brexit. Furthermore, Boris is coming in with a far more left-friendly agenda. The Tory manifesto will not be one of sweeping tax cuts and pledges to balance the books (not that we’re against such a thing) instead public services, particularly the NHS and the Police will be prioritised.
Downing Street will therefore be thrilled to learn that Boris is more trusted over the NHS than Corbyn. This is a hammer blow for Corbyn, who is planning to weaponise the NHS issue. The Mirror has also gone AWOL with their front page headline claiming Boris and Trump are plotting to sell-off the NHS. The public are sick and tired of these scare-stories, and simply aren’t going to believe them.
Labour are preparing for a general election. Jeremy Corbyn has said “This election is a once-in-a-generation chance to transform our country, take on the vested interests holding people back and ensure that no community is left behind.” Early signs are Labour plan to focus on every issue except Brexit, seemingly no nearer to having a clear policy. Corbyn’s message is not grounded in reality. His bizarre attacks on rich individuals will not resonate with large swathes of the general public, who are focused on ensuring the Brexit they voted for it delivered.
In other news, at long last, today is John Bercow’s last day in the position of Speaker.
The little man’s ten-year reign has been marred by grandstanding of absolutely epic proportions culminating in his personal crusade to disrupt Britain’s withdrawal from the EU. Such has been wholly negative impact of his tenure, the position of Speaker may never return to its neutral position of old.
Boris yesterday delivered a speech to Bercow, gently mocking him for “the longest retirement since Frank Sinatra” following the Speaker’s painfully long speech at his last PMQ’s as Chair. Brexiteers can only hope the next Speaker doesn’t have such an obvious agenda.   

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https://leave.eu/the-brexit-partys-dilemma/

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Another Brexit Day comes and goes

The Remoaner elites laughing about the fact that we are still in the EU have no idea how nasty they sound.

BRENDAN O'NEILL
EDITOR, spiked’
31st October 2019

Another Brexit Day comes and goes

Another Brexit Day has come and gone. Boris Johnson said we would leave the EU today, ‘do or die’, and yet here we are, still in the EU. And according to Remainers it is all so hilarious. They’re ripping the piss out of the UK’s failure – its third one so far – to leave the EU on a set date. Let’s be clear about what these people are really laughing at, what they are really taking pleasure in. They are revelling in the third stark betrayal of a democratic vote; in the silencing of millions of people; in the disenfranchisement, essentially, of voters they disagree with. Their joy at the uneventful passing of another Brexit Day is really joy that the largest collection of voters in British history is still being defied and demeaned by the powers-that-be.

There is something very strange in the Remoaner chortling at the UK’s ongoing failure to enact the democratic will. Many people of a pro-EU persuasion are using today as an opportunity to have another go at the PM. They’re saying: ‘Boris said we’d be out today. He said he would rather die in a ditch than still be in the EU after 31 October. And yet we haven’t left. What a liar.’ This is mad. The reason today has become No Brexit Yet Again Day is not because Boris lied, but because the Remain establishment continually prevented him from enacting even his super-soft Brexit, or Brexit In Name Only, as many of us prefer to call it. MPs passed laws and campaigners used all manner of dirty legal tricks to ensure that Boris’s deal did not get through parliament and to force him to go back to Brussels and beg for another extension to the Article 50 process (and to our membership of the EU).

So the very same people who tied Boris’s hands, or cheered the tying of Boris’s hands, and who have devoted themselves to ensuring we never leave the EU, are now saying: ‘We haven’t left the EU. How many more Tory lies will people put up with?’ It takes industrial levels of brass neck for the plotters and blockers who spend their every tragic waking hour thwarting Brexit to turn around and say to Boris: ‘You said we’d be out “do or die”!’ It is testament to their profound disconnection from ordinary people that they think we will nod along with their Boris-bashing on Boris’s failed Brexit Day, when of course a great many voters are thinking: ‘Yes, we know we’re not out of the EU. You anti-democrats made damn sure of that.’

Unsurprisingly, the most vocal of the anti-democrats who are opposed to enacting the people’s will – Labour MP David Lammy – is using Non-Brexit Day to gloat about the failure of Brexit more broadly. He says, in reference to earlier dates when the establishment failed to uphold their promise to leave the EU, ‘They told us we would leave on 29 March. We didn’t. They told us we would leave on 12 April. We didn’t. Then they told us we would leave on 31 October. We won’t. Now they say we will leave on 31 January. But our message is clear: Brexit must not happen without a #PeoplesVote.’

Strip away all the pseudo anti-establishment blather in statements like this, and you will see that what Lammy and others are really laughing about is the blocking of a democratic vote, the failure and unwillingness of the political elite to obey the instruction that was clearly, fairly and democratically delivered to it by the people.

So have your fun. Go wild with your hashtags. Make your lame jokes about the lack of riots or protests today. But be aware of this: millions and millions of people look at you and see not clever, funny activists bemoaning Boris’s failure to deliver Brexit on 31 October, but an increasingly distant and harsh elite that is taking pleasure in the destruction of 17.4million votes. If you’re celebrating the non-appearance of Brexit on Brexit Day, then you’re celebrating the silencing of millions of voices who just wanted change and progress in British politics; you’re celebrating the most flagrant denial of democracy in the history of the franchise in this country.

https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/10/31/another-brexit-day-comes-and-goes/
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REUTERS BREXIT HEADLINES - 01 Oct - 09 Oct 2019


BREXIT HEADLINES


No impasse in Brexit talks, but gaps remain - Coveney

Ireland's foreign minister said on Tuesday there was still hope for a deal with Britain to smooth its exit from the European Union but more work needed to be done on customs arrangements to avoid a hard border on the island of Ireland.

Ireland prepares for the worst with no-deal Brexit budget

Ireland presented a no-deal Brexit budget for 2020 on Tuesday, pledging a 1.2 billion-euro package to keep companies afloat by allowing the state's finances to return to deficit if Britain leaves the European Union without a transition period.
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