Sunday, October 20, 2019
Schoolboy tactics drag the UK's reputation further into the mud
Goodness knows what history will make of yesterday's so-called 'super-Saturday' - the extraordinary session of the House of Commons that was meant to resolve Brexit once-and-for-all, albeit with a humiliating, union-breaking U-turn on the part of the Brexit-liar-in-chief
As is par for the course, MPs made the decision not to make a decision and booted the whole thing into the long grass again, with idea that they could perhaps force through a people's vote on Boris Johnson's s deal.
My fear is that everybody is so fed up with the whole thing that given the chance to decide themselves they will endorse the 'deal', without fully understanding the decade of economic misery, job losses, and further political angst and wrangling that it will precipitate.
By far the most humiliating moment in a day of passion, obfuscation and government-produced bullshit, had to be the three letters that the Prime Minister sent at the last possible minute. Instead of being, as the Irish say, 'the big man', and accepting that he now had to comply with the law, Johnson instead tried to finesse the Benn Act.
The prime minister sent a total of three letters: an unsigned photocopy of the request he was obliged to send under the Benn Act, an explanatory letter from the UK’s ambassador to the EU and a personal letter explaining why Downing Street did not want an extension.
Presumably, Johnson thinks he is presiding over the Bullingdon Club rather than a permanent member of the UN security council. These schoolboy tactics only demean his office and the country he serves. Furthermore they are irrelevant. In law the unsigned letter has the same effect as a signed one. Johnson has been hoisted by his own petard.
As is par for the course, MPs made the decision not to make a decision and booted the whole thing into the long grass again, with idea that they could perhaps force through a people's vote on Boris Johnson's s deal.
My fear is that everybody is so fed up with the whole thing that given the chance to decide themselves they will endorse the 'deal', without fully understanding the decade of economic misery, job losses, and further political angst and wrangling that it will precipitate.
By far the most humiliating moment in a day of passion, obfuscation and government-produced bullshit, had to be the three letters that the Prime Minister sent at the last possible minute. Instead of being, as the Irish say, 'the big man', and accepting that he now had to comply with the law, Johnson instead tried to finesse the Benn Act.
The prime minister sent a total of three letters: an unsigned photocopy of the request he was obliged to send under the Benn Act, an explanatory letter from the UK’s ambassador to the EU and a personal letter explaining why Downing Street did not want an extension.
Presumably, Johnson thinks he is presiding over the Bullingdon Club rather than a permanent member of the UN security council. These schoolboy tactics only demean his office and the country he serves. Furthermore they are irrelevant. In law the unsigned letter has the same effect as a signed one. Johnson has been hoisted by his own petard.
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How much better if he had just sent the letter with dignified resignation and accepted that where he is, is the sum of his mistakes since becoming PM
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