The plan is to pass a bill which requires the PM to ask for an extension rather than crash out with No Deal. I can see BoJo ignoring it and letting the crash out happen anyway.
The Bill against no deal has passed in the Commons.
It was amended to say that the purpose of asking the EU for an extension would be to pass Theresa May’s Deal.
Even stranger, the amendment passed because the government forgot (perhaps on purpose) to assign Tellers to the ‘No’ lobby.
If that had happened to something of major consequence there would be eruptions. Was Boris testing the waters ? Trying to set a precedent for future shenanigans?
But obviously the right decision. Attempting to evade the Letwin Amendment by holding the vote a couple of days later is not and should not be acceptable.
From my point of view a hung Parliament with strong representation for Labour and the Remain parties is best. Getting Boris’s deal through is not the end of the pain of Brexit, just the end of the beginning.
There’s still the effects of Brexit and the attempts to sort out a trade deal to come. As well as Boris being Boris. Ugggh!
It’s the consequences of Brexit, of course, You have to put a border between Britain and the EU somewhere. And following the land border would be a bit of a nightmare, as well as endangering the Good Friday Agreement.
But putting the border in the Irish Sea upsets the Unionists who see it as a step towards a United Ireland. So their paramilitaries are causing trouble.
We all knew it was coming. It’s been talked about for weeks.
It will be put off while they sort out COVID and get life back to something approximating normal.
But when moves start to implement it, things will get interesting. The only good side of it for Boris is that his job looks less of a prize with that business looming on the horizon.
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If the clown hadn't turned out to also be a pathological liar maybe things would have worked out better...
I doubt it. Staying in the Single Market was out - because staying in makes Brexit a bit daft. So we get a load of trading problems and trouble in Northern Ireland, no matter which pro-Brexit type is in charge. Boris’s incompetence added a shit topping to the shit sandwich, but it was always going to be shit.
But simply put she planned massive tax cuts funded by borrowing without bothering to look at the forecasts. The market didn’t like it, so the cost of Government borrowing shot up. The Bank of England had to intervene to protect pension plans, and the pound fell steeply.
There was a lot of mismanagement of the situation after that, but that’s more politics than economics.
Apart from badly upsetting the markets, causing significant economic damage to the country, forcing interest rate rises - at a time of serious difficulties and rising inflation.
Then grudgingly making a u-turn and sacking her Chancellor, and appointing a replacement who seems to be running the show.
Then, yesterday, losing her Home Secretary (who she may have forced out) making a complete pigs ear of a vote in the Commons and badly upsetting a lot of her own party’s MPs.
And let’s not forget that despite the bounce effect of replacing BoJo The Clown she managed to tank the Conservative Party’s popularity so badly that they run the risk of being annihilated in the next General Election. If the popularity figures turned into votes (they won’t) the Tories presence in Parliament would be reduced to single figures.
So, Sunak got in, unopposed. Which means that the ordinary party members don’t have a chance to make things worse (they chose Truss over him, last time).
BoJo claimed to have the support, but stood down anyway (it seems unlikely that he had that many willing to nominate him, but maybe he had enough equivocal expressions of support to make the claim without outright lying - or maybe not). Mordaunt couldn’t get enough nominations. The 1922 Committee must be very happy about raising the number of nominations required.
I’m not greatly impressed by Sunak, but he’s not the worst option.
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