Once again, I’m in the wilderness as I try to understand WTF is happening in the UK. Apparently, yesterday was some kind of historic day of shenanigans, with Boris Johnson losing “three key parliamentary votes in less than 24 hours.” I’m summarizing from CNN: BoJo lost control of parliamentary business when 21 Tories defected and joined with the opposition. Then he “failed to stop a bill blocking no-deal Brexit from going through.” Then he lost a vote on whether the UK would hold an early election. That’s the interesting one – if he won the vote to call for an election, it could have been as early as mid-October, and many UK pollsters believe that the Conservatives would have held their majority and that BoJo’s position would actually be strengthened. So… BoJo lost his chance (his immediate chance) to strengthen his position.
Meanwhile, the Tories actually did a “purge” of members who are not down with BoJo’s shenanigans and you know it’s bad whenever anything is described as a “purge.” Purges are never good, tbh. And the purge was so bad that BoJo’s brother, JoJo, has now quit his job:
Jo Johnson, the younger brother of Prime Minister Boris Johnson, is resigning as an MP and minister, saying he is “torn between family loyalty and the national interest”. The business minister and Tory MP for Orpington, south-east London, cited an “unresolvable tension” in his role. Mr Johnson voted Remain in the 2016 EU membership referendum, while his brother co-led the Leave campaign. He resigned as a minister last year in protest at Theresa May’s Brexit deal. But he re-entered government during the summer, after Conservative Party members elected his brother as leader.
BBC political editor Laura Kuenssberg said Mr Johnson’s resignation – following the removal of the Tory whip from 21 MPs this week for supporting moves to prevent a no-deal Brexit – showed “unbelievable timing”. She added that Mr Johnson was “understood to be upset about the purge of colleagues”. Former cabinet minister David Gauke, one of the MPs who lost the Conservative whip, tweeted: “Lots of MPs have had to wrestle with conflicting loyalties in recent weeks. None more so than Jo. This is a big loss to Parliament, the government and the Conservative Party.”
LOL. I have no idea about any of this but sure, it sounds bad, I guess. When a political party starts purging people, it’s time to head for the door no matter what.
And finally, Donald Trump and Mike Pence are sticking with BoJo. Pence has been doing a “week of diplomacy” in Europe and let’s just say he’s not helping. Neither is Trump, who told media outlets yesterday that BoJo “is a friend of mine, and he’s going at it, there’s no question about it. Boris knows how to win. Don’t worry about him.”
Photos courtesy of WENN.
BoJo is NOT winning, he is losing big time. Rumour is that Labour is going to stall on the General Election until January 2020 to cover any extension we may get from the EU and to make sure its gets signed off by TQ – effectively forcing him to go to the EU and get a deal. The House of Lords (that’s the US Senate) passed the no-deal law last night and its expected to be on the legislative books by next week as the gov was forced to drop its opposition. He and Scummings are being outplayed.
He’s being humiliated, much worse than May ever was and its glorious.
That photo of May smiling as things fell apart for Johnson is a thing of beauty. And I’m no fan of May.
The fact that some peers went to the HoL with duvets and pillows to have that bill passed no matter what made me slightly happy… maybe the tide is turning and not everything is lost.
Hope bojo thinks it worth all the stuff that he’s been doing to get to his current position. He’s undermined Theresa May every step of the way so he can swoop in and play ‘hero’ but it’s all going to tatters. I’m not even a fan of Theresa May & feel sorry for her, she should have purged bojo when he kept going against her back, really big of him to purge other members of the conservative party for doing what he was doing a few months ago. Hope karma’s a bitch to this blithering idiot.
BoJo out trumped Trump. Gets into office by making grandiose boasts about how easily he will implement his ridiculous agenda, gets predictably shot down, and then blames everyone but himself.
@Megan
He just needs to bark about a wall now.
@Stargreek: Yeah a wall at the Irish border paid for by the EU.
@Digital Unicorn
Hopefully Scummings is not reading our suggestions!
Scummings (love it!) will suggest a virtual wall, with technology that does not exist, and of course will own 51 percent of any tech company he selects to do the job.
I don’t really understand what’s going on but it sounds like their Senate bucked this hapless leader. This is something I wish our Congress would do. Screw party lines.
@Digital Unicorn … Thanks for explaining it so beautifully, especially the bit about The House of Lords being like our Senate. 🙂
And now his brother has quit the government, citing that it was hard the reconcile family loyalty and what s best for the country…
He is out of his depth
I think you mean his puppeteer Dominic Cummings is out of his depth – Cummings is like Stephen Miller (both have receding hairlines and faces you want to punch).
Oh yes @ digitalUnicorn Cummings is a mess wasn’t he drunk in Parliament on Tuesday night ? And heckling MPs?
Cummings thought he had it made
Alistair Burt was one of 21 Conservative Party members expelled for voting against the British government on plans to block a no-deal Brexit and this was what he had to say about Ireland and the Northern Irish border in this mess:
“Ireland treated by some here as some sort of irrelevance, a place where they have made up the border issue in order to prevent us leaving the EU. With our history in relation to Ireland, everything that happened there, they became our best friends in the European Union. And our choice to leave, our Brexit, has put them in the most catastrophic situation of any country – and we now expect them to accept another English demand that they should do something. Have we no understanding of what that relationship means?”
Compare that to BoJo (the clown) who asked about Taoiseach Leo Varadkar, “Why isn’t he called Murphy like all the rest of them” and BBC Today presenter John Humphrys saying “There has to be an argument, doesn’t there, that says instead of Dublin telling this country (the UK) that we have to stay in the single market etc within the customs union, why doesn’t the Republic of Ireland, leave the EU and throw in their lot with this country?” So that displays the sheer arrogance at play here, that a vote in the UK should mean that another nation, a republic, should follow suit to make life easier for the UK.
This entire thing is a mess and they are just gladly walking off the edge of a cliff and then asking why the cliff had the nerve to be there.
Unrestrained colonialist attitude towards the Republic of Ireland. I think there were a couple of Tory MPs who were interviewed a while back and said “let’s annex it and be done with it”.
If I was Irish I would be so furious that it’d be difficult not to show anti-English feelings.
The solutions I have seen suggested are astounding, from annex Northern Ireland, to Ireland just leaving the EU too for convenience because the Uk voted for it and the Republic just joining up with Northern Ireland for a united Ireland to suit the British government, it’s bonkers!
The idea that any other country would be encouraged to act on the election result of another nation just to not inconvenience that nation is absurd. Would the USA be happy to do what Mexico or Canada voted for. People are treating this like it is The X Factor or some reality show with no real life consequences.
I am Irish and it’s not so much an anti-English feeling (I lived there for a few years and I adore my English friends), it’s more of an anti-Tory feeling. I think Irish people can see that this is a Tory row about Europe that has gotten way out of hand. We get their news channels and papers here so we have a keen understanding of what’s going on.
That said, I can feel the anti-Irish sentiment building from certain UK politicians and press. They are trying to turn us into a scapegoat for being firm on the border and ruining their their chances of a post-Brexit utopia…
@Cerceau
You seem a very good and decent person, I hate to say this.. but many Leavers do not care about Ireland, if you guys are collateral damage is fair play to the Brexiteers and the latter are not all Tories.
So no, defining it an anti-Tory issue might be a mistake, it’s just that several English are stuck into good ole imperialist times. I still remember that poll stating that 77% of Leavers accepted Ireland spiralling into the troubles again if that meant getting the no deal Brexit they craved.
@StarGreek Firstly, thank you for your kind words! 🙂
Maybe I should elaborate that when I say anti-Tory I include UKIP, the Brexit party and Corbyn to some extent. But I can’t say I blame all Leave voters. I lived in the North of England in a firmly Leave area that is pretty impoverished, and I don’t resent the people there for voting the way they did. Their industry was gutted in the 80s, and now they are faced with generational unemployment, crap schools, food banks and basically no hope of things ever improving. It was my impression that these people voted Leave because they bought into the populist lies and nostalgia promoted by the Leave side, as well as the idea that their problems were all down to the EU and immigration (even though the EU was actually giving a lot of money to the area). I imagine it’s pretty easy to buy into populism when you are literally starving (I wish I was exaggerating).
Those people have been screwed over by the Tories for generations, just like Irish people were. They will probably be the first to suffer in the event of food and medicine shortages, which really, really worries me. I realise that they don’t care about Ireland, but I can’t get angry at people in that situation.
@Cerceau, the ironic thing is, the people who are responsible for gutting over the north of England were the Tories themselves. it was Margaret Thatcher’s policies that sent them into the spiral of endemic poverty and unemployment. And now they’re buying the lies peddled to them by the same party that is responsible for their current state.
I admire your sentiment, and I can’t say I disagree with you either. I don’t begrudge these people for feeling how they feel. But how long can we choose to allow people to believe these lies? At a certain point, the fact that these folks believe such disinformation is causing massive amounts of harm. How do we exercise our responsibility to educate and mitigate that harm?
@Cerceau
You are much more compassionate and unbiased than I could ever be, so kind words were well deserved.
I also live in a Leave area and lived through hell for one month after the referendum, as I was not naturalised back then and feared deportation. I had one of my neighbours not greeting me anymore and another one asking me when I was going home, well knowing my husband is a UK-born Briton. Got harassed and attacked in one week, leading to 6 weeks of me going out only accompanied by my husband. One of my local friends (now ex friend!) saying that my husband should have married a British girl as us ‘forin women’ pollute the gene pool.
A total nightmare of unrestrained xenophobia.
I resent many of these people because they refuse to be educated, not because they reacted to their impoverishment in the wrong way. Clearly there are many lovely people up here but the big percentage of those who are not have caused the Brexit mess.
OOOOOOF, do NOT get me started on how Ireland has been treated throughout this entire debacle. The thing that struck me the most, as an outside observer looking into the crisis, is just how absent any discussion of Ireland was in all of the yelling about Brexit. I mean, yes, some papers covered it, but I think the mistaken belief that Leave would not win meant that people didn’t want to consider the issue until it was too late. And even then, there is absolutely this attitude of, “Well it’s just Ireland, who gives a f-ck.”
Yep – “it’s Ireland, the Irish should get over it and do what we say”. It is infuriating.
We are living in Absurdistan.
The Bozolini is going to speak at 5 pm to the public (just tweet rubbish like Trump and be done with it!) and while the Tories are in election campaign mode without actually having an election, Jo Johnson, Boris’ brother, resigned from Parliament.
It feels like a soap opera
He’s determined to get a snap election before the deadline and there are ways he can do it. He can call for a vote of no confidence in his own gov and then tell his minsters to abstain.
@Digital Unicorn
I read about it this morning, basically hoisted on his own petard. But I was under the suspicion of a GE forced upon us yesterday, when we were talking about Fromage, he was already in campaign mode but why? The snake got a shout out from Johnson.
An unholy mess… I will have to canvass for Labour to offset the danger of Brexit party loonies making it in my seat. Arghhhhhhh
@DU If the Tory’s REALLY want their election, the obvious thing to do is get Bozo to resign….
@Digital Unicorn I’d be surprised if he called a vote of no confidence in himself, but then again, Johnson-Cummings have shown that there’s no depths to where they’d go.
@stargreek – Bojo is counting on Fishface doing well in a GE and he WILL get into bed with him as its obvious that Labour are going to take some big losses with many of their seats being taken by the Brexit Party and the Lib Dems. Labour are not as strong as they think they are. The Tories will get enough to form a coalition gov with whoever is stupid enough to sell out to Bojo/Scummings.
@Digital Unicorn
The mental image of BoJo with Fromage in bed made me puke a bit lol
Yes I agree with you but that seems a political arramgement only counting for southern counties. Up here we really only have Labour against the other 2.
I know they are not a pro-EU party but in the FPTP system the small percentage of votes given to anyone out of Tory/Labour/Brexit party is wasted. Just to give you an idea of the local backwardness, many here think they won’t need to recycle post Brexit as we only do it because UK is a EU member 😱 waiting with bated breath the arrival of Guy Fawkes bonfires where mountains of wheelie bins will be burnt.
Sorry but I am afraid some of the stereotypes… are true.
I’ve been saying that I have no clue of what is going on here but little did I know that I’d be even more clueless after a few months. I fear what is coming next?! Good news is that Trump-in-training Bojo has had a major loss.
Bojo beat the record of Prime-Minister loss… The first joy in many months for this Londoner here.
Trump almost has us miss Bush and Bojo almost has us miss May (emphasis on the almost; read bin them all).
I don’t like Theresa May but the fact the she was the one getting so much vitriol for brexit when Boris and Nigel were the ones responsible for this brexit mess makes these losses comical as hell. Boris and Nigel both quit when Theresa wasn’t able to come up with a deal if my memory serves me correctly. Now he understands how hard this is.
He just wanted to play saviour, he kept undermining Theresa May so he can wait in the wings and become pm. He’s a total fraud. A cockwamble of the highest order.
And Corbyn has take the role BoJo once had – Corbyn is now trying to position himself as saviour or ‘caretaker’ PM (which was pretty much slapped down by the other parties who he may have to form a coalition with). No matter how much Labour tries to spin this, the smack down BoJo got came from his own party not them.
The Lib Dems are impressing me, Jo Swinson is pretty much positioning herself as a potential PM candidate – support for the Lib Dems has pretty much increased drastically over the past few days. I think they will do well in another GE, better than anyone expects them to. There is a movement to break the 2 party hold on British politics. She’s already ruled out a coalition with Labour.
I think this is starting to become the way forward as a lot of people have lot their trust in the Tories and having corbyn as labour leader isn’t helping labour’s caused. So people are looking for alternatives. Our city council is labour here and they’ve been a shit show & keeps blaming the tories for every single one of their cock ups so I hope the labour voting people go back to the lib dems (Nick Clegg lost his seat for that coalition with the tories) but they may now give lib dems a chance again. What I am sure of is that the tories won’t win here.
@Digital Unicorn
The LibDems won’t ever make it up here. I like Swinson and I voted for LD or Greens when I could, well knowing it was a wasted vote. Now it cannot be wasted anymore.
In no way LibDem or Greens will ever make it in any borough from Manchester to the Scottish border, it is ‘southerner’ wishful thinking. People up here are ‘resistant to change’, which is why Brexit areas are all here, they cannot get used to change, they will fight it with all means. They hated EU because changes were needed to stay in it, whether it was accepting immigration or new regulation.
That is why an absurdity like the Brexit party had 35% of the vote with no manifesto. Farage just went around and told locals what they wanted to hear.
@Stargreek: Yeah I agree with the North of England, my brother lives in Lancaster and its pretty much Brexit heartland up there. I guess it depends on how the Welsh vote, they are like the Northerners in many ways (don’t like change etc..) but from what Welsh people I know have told me many regret voting leave and that might go in the Lib Dems favour as they want to stop Brexit. But who knows how people will vote in the end.
@Digital Unicorn
Lancaster? That’s a forward-thinking place 😂 I was out and about in rural Northumberland a few weeks ago and I was walking around with my hubby, chatting away. If I were naked I would have gotten less hostile stares.
ETA: I think Wales is turning Remain. Here’s hoping.
Boris didn’t care to bring about a deal. He wanted to sit around waffling about with his posh toff friends, until the clock ran out and it was October 31st and he could do what he’s spent his whole life campaigning to do, which is leave the EU with nothing, to hell with everyone else. He’s not interested in positioning himself as a saviour of anything. All he cares about is his own agenda.
Ok, but – if no-deal Brexit IS blocked, what is the “yes-deal”, then? The main problem is the Irish border, right? Have any alternatives been proposed by anyone?
Also, the last paragraph made me feel distinctly territorial. Get OFF my continent, Pence! Go away!
@Lily – no, no alternatives have been proposed. The Telegraph (a tory paper that’s supported Boris Johnson and has links to his cabinet) has reported that Cummings has said that it’s all a sham. Johnson’s aim is to run down the clock and crash out without a deal. So cancer patients, insulin patients… they’ll die. The government has factored in the rise of suicides and body bags to deal with the issue.
Right Wing governments man, the cruelty is the point.
Is it the Telegraph that Scumming’s wife is the editor for?
So, let me get this straight – no-deal literally means NO deal on any point? As if the UK is… I don’t know, I can’t even come up with a country that EU has no connections with right now… But I seriously thought at least some things had been negotiated when it comes to healthcare, certainly medications. Did I just take it for granted? But it has been three years! What were all those negotiations for?
This is giving me a headache.
I thought it was Gove’s wife at the Daily Mail?
@Lily
A withdrawal agreement was negotiated with the EU but it was never ratified in UK, it was rejected at Parliament stage.
Therefore no deal means no agreements of any kind. It is a void. It means planes and ships won’t be authorised to go anywhere. It also means that food and medical supplies will be interrupted. There is a reason why we have been told to stockpile in UK.
If instead you hear the term WTO for trade, good reminder would be that almost nobody trades on WTO terms… except North Korea and 1-2 other countries.
The Spectator. Mary Wakefield, daughter of Sir Humphry Wakefield, of the Wakefields of Chillingham Castle for 400+ years.
@ Lily
Don’t be sorry about wanting Pence to butt out. On the other hand, Pence is viewed as such a universal tool that him being over there will probably work AGAINST the conservatives. *Nobody* wants to be on the same side as Mr. Suck-up/ Mr. Robot. I’m glad that you guys at least have some conservatives who will stand up to Pence-Trump.
There is a deal that was negotiated by Theresa May, that was shot down by parliament like three times, but is the only deal that Jean-Claude Juncker has stated will be acceptable to the EU. There is a provision for the Irish border in that, at least a temporary one, I think. But Boris and his friends hate that deal for a lot of reasons I don’t care to get into right now.
Can we deport BozoJo and Orange Dotard, the GOP and the Tory snobs to a deserted island desert in the middle of nowhere?
So…let me see if I have this correct. The British parliament has voted that they will NOT leave the EU without a deal. But the deal that is on the table right now is one with the Irish backstop, which a number of people have refused to support for a variety of reasons, but which the EU has stated is the only one they’ll accept. And the deadline that has been set at the moment for Brexit (one which has been extended twice over the summer already) is October 31st, and the EU has stated that they will refuse to extend the deadline any further (which they might reconsider now after all of this sh-t). So as it stands right now, they CAN’T leave without a deal, but they WON’T leave with the only deal they have, but they MUST leave by October 31st.
On the chance that the EU comes back to the negotiating table, the UK will have two months or so to negotiate a brand new agreement, figure out what the Irish border situation will be like, debate this new agreement in parliament, and have it ratified by all of the EU member states, etc. But this likely won’t be enough time to do all of that, and that’s assuming that the EU will even come back to negotiate. They could extend the deadline, but they’ve already stated that they won’t.
What I think will happen most likely is that Boris will either be forced to accept the existing deal, which, LOLLLLLLLLLLLL, and go home to face the angry mob of Brexiteers who desperately wanted to stick it to the EU in lieu of a scapegoat. This is the only thing I can see happening within the time frame of October 31st. There is no way to call another election, or even ask for a redo on the referendum, which I frankly do not think that the Remain side would actually win. There is no time to renegotiate a deal amenable to Boris and his cronies. But now a no deal is not possible either. Good lord, what a f-cking sh-tshow.
It is a huge sh!tshow.
Johnson wants no deal at all costs. So my theory is that he is trying to break the law and thwarth the attempts of the rebels to get the Royal Assent on the no-no-deal bill or… going for a GE election causing a vote of no confidence in himself. At that point things will be stalled and UK might crash out of EU with no deal because all time has been wasted in election campaigns and not to renegotiate anything.
Oh, I didn’t think of that. Yes, he could still try and get his no-deal illegally, or by calling a snap election. But I do wonder if parliament is onto his plans by now that they could realistically thwart that type of thing.
Someone replied to Jo Johnson’s resignation Tweet:
“Is this the first time a politician has resigned to spend less time with their family?”
https://twitter.com/JoJohnsonUK/status/1169555292918571008
Sums him up nicely.
https://twitter.com/sarahksilverman/status/1169623587650592768?s=21
Conservatives are great at talking $hit but no so good at actually governing or solving problems.
according to twitter someone keeps sending him p45 forms too lmao
He needs to take another hundred losses to become human.
Boris is well out of his depth, and he is going to reach a point where he will be breaking the law if we leave without a deal. Faced with serious questioning, all he can do is bluster, and act like a child who cannot get what he wants. He’s also telling bare-faced lies when he says he is negotiating with the EU, as they say they are not.
Fortunately Corbyn, who is actually desperate for an election, has this time listened to advice and will vote against Boris’s plans.
What happens when the leaving date is reached is anyone’s guess, but one way for the PM to save face is to order a second referendum, saying he will abide by the result.