Has Boris been outmanoeuvred?

[CommanderShepard]

From a guardian comment:

If Boris Johnson looked downbeat yesterday, that is because he realises that he has lost.

Perhaps many Brexiters do not realise it yet, but they have actually lost, and it is all down to one man: David Cameron.

With one fell swoop yesterday at 9:15 am, Cameron effectively annulled the referendum result, and simultaneously destroyed the political careers of Boris Johnson, Michael Gove and leading Brexiters who cost him so much anguish, not to mention his premiership.

How?

Throughout the campaign, Cameron had repeatedly said that a vote for leave would lead to triggering Article 50 straight away. Whether implicitly or explicitly, the image was clear: he would be giving that notice under Article 50 the morning after a vote to leave. Whether that was scaremongering or not is a bit moot now but, in the midst of the sentimental nautical references of his speech yesterday, he quietly abandoned that position and handed the responsibility over to his successor.

And as the day wore on, the enormity of that step started to sink in: the markets, Sterling, Scotland, the Irish border, the Gibraltar border, the frontier at Calais, the need to continue compliance with all EU regulations for a free market, re-issuing passports, Brits abroad, EU citizens in Britain, the mountain of legistlation to be torn up and rewritten ... the list grew and grew.

The referendum result is not binding. It is advisory. Parliament is not bound to commit itself in that same direction.

The Conservative party election that Cameron triggered will now have one question looming over it: will you, if elected as party leader, trigger the notice under Article 50?

Who will want to have the responsibility of all those ramifications and consequences on his/her head and shoulders?

Boris Johnson knew this yesterday, when he emerged subdued from his home and was even more subdued at the press conference. He has been out-maneouvered and check-mated.

If he runs for leadership of the party, and then fails to follow through on triggering Article 50, then he is finished. If he does not run and effectively abandons the field, then he is finished. If he runs, wins and pulls the UK out of the EU, then it will all be over - Scotland will break away, there will be upheaval in Ireland, a recession ... broken trade agreements. Then he is also finished. Boris Johnson knows all of this. When he acts like the dumb blond it is just that: an act.

The Brexit leaders now have a result that they cannot use. For them, leadership of the Tory party has become a poison chalice.

When Boris Johnson said there was no need to trigger Article 50 straight away, what he really meant to say was "never". When Michael Gove went on and on about "informal negotiations" ... why? why not the formal ones straight away? ... he also meant not triggering the formal departure. They both know what a formal demarche would mean: an irreversible step that neither of them is prepared to take.

All that remains is for someone to have the guts to stand up and say that Brexit is unachievable in reality without an enormous amount of pain and destruction, that cannot be borne. And David Cameron has put the onus of making that statement on the heads of the people who led the Brexit campaign.

He won't address it. That would legitimise the fact that there is a problem with the size of the majority who voted for leave.

He has done a deal to stay. He had to. He could have done a David Cameron. He hasn't.

The fact that the petition is under investigation for fraud has undermined it severely anyway. Does parliament discuss whether or not to debate it today? I assume they'll either schedule a date/time to debate it or they'll refuse to debate it citing they can't retrospectively change legislation or overturn a valid democratic vote. I hope this part of it is put to bed quickly so the country can move on from this.

Move onto what?

Move on to A50 and starting negotiations.

Can I ask...in light of 3 more shadow cabinet members resigning (according to BBC) what happens of JC can't form a cabinet?
Would he then have to go?
Is that are trying to do?
Even the left wingers are leaving now...not a good sign.

I suspect Osborne's speech this morning was his first shot across the bow as Mr Decent Hard Working Conservative, in his bid for leadership. Note he was very careful to state he was not enacting an emergency budget at this time, and would not commit to making any specific cuts. He's trying to raise his status in the public eye, making comments about his very important job and how he is very focused on it.

I'm sorry, I missed the bit about having consensus about what the UK actually wanted. Johnson sounds like he's made something of a dictatorial decision about that. I think I've missed the public debate on the subject. Whilst we do need leadership now, we also need a public consultation too. The referendum was not that.

I don't see how we can activate article 50. Who actually has the authority to do that? And is willing to? In theory only David Cameron, right now. If someone else makes that move, is it actually binding and legal under British law? And even if its not, would the EU accept it regardless, just to get shot of us? I wonder.

Besides which we can't start negotiations until there is agreement about what we are negotiating for. At the moment, we have a wishy washy bollocky waffle written for the Telegraph back of a beer mat plan, which is still mainly in Johnson's head.

Johnson, can pretend about this as much as he likes, unless its something agreeable to the rest of the country, then as soon as it gets presented back to the Commons then they could go, 'fuck that'.

If there is a 'fuck that' revolt we are into a general election. Which some people may actually want.

Meanwhile the country is falling down around our ears, and whilst this will put pressure on everyone to agree on something, this isn't really to our advantage as its an agree to anything as quickly as possible scenario.

Johnson does run the real risk of having to use a dictatorial style to force things though. The Churchill front, has more to it than simply being patriotic. Its ok to behave like a dictator if you can present yourself as a hero trying to save the country. The thing is though, we are not at war, and this whole crisis was sparked by him in the first place. He still has to deal with the inconvenience of democracy.

The choice is to accept everything Johnson decides or have more crap. We have to choose between the suspension of democracy whilst being held to ransom with the gun to our heads of the country falling to bits or to otherwise challenge it. Far from being a workers revolt, I wonder what type of take over has really happened and I think that others will question it all in the same way.

Moving on, is therefore not that straight forward in my eyes.

We are in limbo for the foreseeable future and no amount of hot air from Johnson, can actually change that because this is a democratic country and we now have a massive vacuum of power due to the lack of a clear plan/consensus prior to the referendum which needed to come from Leave not Remain.

Cameron has not helped matters at all, but the fact is, that even if he had a strategy for leaving, this still would not have been debated and agreed upon either. We still effectively would have a similar situation.

I totally agree with the premise of this thread. I genuinely don't think this was what Boris wanted or expected. He's a total megalomaniac narcissist who has winged and charmed his way to where he is. He won't be able to cope with being the bad guy- he's a popularist who's used to being stopped for his autograph, not to being booed.
He was a useless Mayor, he just seemed to get bored with it halfway through. Even most Tories would concede that Ken Livingstone did a better job as he actually gave a shit. He hasn't even worked out how to use contraception.
If he wants to take a Churchillian tone, he would be more accurate writing something along the lines of,
'Never in the field of British politics have things been completely fucked up for so many by so few'.

What have they left? Just their office within the Labour party or the party itself? Where does it leave their constituents? DD has just seen her MP has resigned.

If the Commons says "fuck that" and a GE occurs, the Tories and Labour are well aware that they will be handing a LOT of power over to UKIP and Farage. I'm not sure that the Tories want to go that route.

If the Commons says "fuck that" and a GE occurs, the Tories and Labour are well aware that they will be handing a LOT of power over to UKIP and Farage. I'm not sure that the Tories want to go that route.

I know. In which case, we have a dictatorship situation now.

It needs to be seen for what it is though.

disheartening as it is, I think that Boris as PM may be the least damaging outcome.

the most important thing, in my view, is to keep Britain in the Single Market, ideally in the EEA. This needs to be done by a Brexit politician to give it legitimacy, otherwise there will be huge recriminations. This is why I don't want Teresa May, any concessions she gives to EU immigration (which will have to happen for the single market) can be portrayed as a betrayal of the Leave vote and used against her politically.

I think that Boris, as a very soft (cough fake cough) Brexiter, and as someone fully able to brazen it out, is the only one who has both the legitimacy and the inclination to take the Single Market route.

He may not want it anymore, but he's going to have to man up and eat the shit sandwich he so lovingly prepared.

Chalala I have to agree regarding Boris as PM. Much prefer him to Teresa May as I don't trust her negotiating skills at all. How many times has she publicly stuck her foot in it, then had to change course or back down? Many many times. I think Boris, with his easygoing public persona (regardless that I believe he is much more clever than he presents), would be a much better negotiator in the long run. I get the impression he's just soft pedaling right now - he doesn't want to appear too eager or pushy, and I think he's waiting for the initial uproar to die down.

Thanks boris -

www.theguardian.com/politics/2016/jun/26/racist-incidents-feared-to-be-linked-to-brexit-result-reported-in-england-and-wales

This is what happens when you harness the Morlock vote for your own ends. Now imagine how it's going to be when it starts to sink into their Neanderthal minds that nobody is going home after all.

Someone with an "easygoing public persona" who is regarded with contempt in Europe as not being a serious person (see the Liberation cover), is the best you can think of to negotiate with the very serious politicians, the hard hitters of the EU?
Really?

Red, could you explain why you think it looks like a dictatorship situation?

I was wondering this yesterday, chatting with my partner we were wondering if maybe Britain was complacent because they haven't had a dictatorship before and weren't able to see it coming. True there is worrying extremism of politics in mainland Europe with rise of far left and far right populism, but there is also a very strong fear of allowing dictatorship situations to rise again and while there is a lot of overt casual racism, there isn't such strong xenophobia, which imo is much, much more dangerous.

Great thread, thank you to everyone who is contributing.

born that's my opinion. Realistically speaking, the EU will regard anyone from the UK with contempt in negotiations as they are angry with us for shaking up their status. They certainly didn't respect Cameron (not that he really put up much in negotiations, but still.. )

A dictatorship? Now? No, I don't think so, but you would be taking a big step towards that by ignoring the results of the referendum or having another referendum because the desired result wasn't achieved.

Why on earth is this the first time that the cabinet have met to discuss the referendum result? They must have had Very Important weekend plans .

Doctor nova one reason why we might see a dictatorship situation emerging is that the trade union act, pushed through by none other than nick boles who came out this morning on the Today programme as a boris backer in it, has provisions in it designed to wipe £7 million from Labour Party funding. By contrast, there is no counterbalancing provision to limit funding from 'big business'.

Many eg grayling spoke openly before brexit about promising that business leaders would have a direct hand in drafting new laws under a brexit. Several of us spoke up to point out how this leans towards fascist corporatism, but nobody listened.

No trade union leaders will be allowed anywhere near the planning process.

If you look at some of the constituency boundary changes and changes to the electoral role (effectively removing people most likely to move a lot - the young and those in social housing), these were all designed to shore up the Tory vote. The late surge in registrations before the referendum will have added back some these, but if they are largely young graduates, boris would have been unlikely to win their vote anyway.

Then most worrying of all has been the progressive disintegration of the opposition. Many of us have been saying for ages that the root of this whole debacle has been the absence of an electable opposition. It gave boris the freedom to dare to tear the Tory party apart.

It's similar in a way, to the collapse of the Soviet Union but on a smaller scale (at least so far). When the ussr collapsed, many eg Frances Fukayama celebrated - famously declaring 'the end of history' because history had shown that there was no better alternative than liberal democratic free market capitalism - and we all know what that led to.

Naive posters who have been banging on about 'democracy' and 'control' should have stopped and thought a bit harder about what these concepts actually mean. Their failure to do so enabled them to be co-opted into boris's bandwagon. Well done.

I imagine it gave them time to research various options, rather than meeting and to each option saying "we'll look into that." Gives them preparation time, allows them those few days to see the global reaction, including the markets. They need to take all that into consideration I suppose.

I think there'll be a Farage statement today to whip up discontent that things aren't moving quickly enough. That the 'decent' people of Britain have spoken and the nasty metropolitan elite (BJ, Gove, Osborne etc) are ignoring them.

That's another problem Boris has. He let Farage say whatever he wanted in the campaign; he didn't call him on any of the vile crap about immigration that Boris says wasn't a factor in the referendum! Now he's stuck with him shouting from the sidelines.

Politicians and diplomats don't regard other such people with contempt if they disagree with them/frustrate their plans/actively oppose them, if they recognise them as principled, serious and committed. There is no evidence to show that DC was treated with contempt; rather, other EU leaders went as far as they could to accommodate him within the rules. But no one (apart from increasingly fewer people here) sees Boris as serious, principled or committed, hence the contempt.

Space Boris was cricketing with his family and Earl Spencer...

Can't let the Earl down, can we old chap.

Faisal Islam is doing a cracking job of shouting slightly irreverent questions as the members of the cabinet arrive (Sky News).