Westminstenders: Drain The Swamp

[RedToothBrush]

Johnson lost his first vote by 27.

The Commons take control again, and Johnson is now, with his majority gone, is seeking an election.

Whilst the feeling might be one of victory there is a definite sting in the tail.

Johnson has purged the party of 'trouble makers', meaning any replacements after an election are hard liners. And they will be in safe seats. Possibly many of which will be careerists parachuted in.

The party has split. The civil war is over.

Parliament has just lost some of its very best minds in the process. That bodes ill for us all in the long term. The polarisation has just jacked up a level. The centre has fallen even more.

There are no more moderates.

Polling suggests that Johnson won't be blamed for any of this and that's significant.

Take note of this tweet

Douglas Carswell @Douglascarswell
Boris Vs the political Parasites. Guess who wins across suburban Britain?

The optics are not about what you or I are seeing. Nor about what any of the politicial pundits are seeing.

The Democrats and the Media failed to see Trump coming... And this is what now concerns me. His optics are not bad with his core and targets.

Will Johnson be able to have his election?

If yes, I fear the polls look good for Johnson. People want 'Brexit over with' and don't want another extension. They may or may not understand the ramifications of that.

If no, then what? Johnson can do anything with his numbers. Does that mean potentially two governments and the Queen stuck in the middle? Or does he limp on, with no intention of doing anything but take us over the cliff by counting down the clock?

Or something else?

The Brexit Party and Conservatives now seem to have formally united one way or another. They have aligned with current politics alike the divided Opposition parties.

Tonight the penny might have dropped with a few Labour MPs too. They want May's deal to return. Its the only deal there is, in the absence of a Johnson plan and a Labour / Opposition plan. Too little too late...

This isn't going away as an issue either. Stoking up anger against the rebel alliance is a long term project for the fascist right.

Is tonight’s result a victory? Yes, but my fear is its potential to be a Pyrrhic Victory.

The battle today may have been won, but Johnson still looks set to win...

The WA might have a majority now
It never did then, it absolutely doesn't now. Times have changed. This shitty little island sure has. I fucking hate it. How difficult is it to be deported, I wonder?
There may be a queue.

@louise As our "Leaver representative" (!) would you accept a PV on WA vs Remain ?

It would be good to get the moderate Leaver viewpoint

Pmk, not caught up on what has happened yet as it is the back to school rush.

There are 20-30 Lexiters who would vote against anything with a PV

Well if it's the lower end of the scale then they can still afford it. And if they're lexiters as in labour than a P.V is their party policy - so even in the event of a GE and a Corbyn win they would just have to suck it up.

You can understand why referendums are banned in Germany

Running out of cat pictures, so trawled back 3 years to find one of our old favourite in a really peculiar place: one in which he decided to sit regularly, 2 weeks before he was knocked down by a speeding bastard outside a nursery, which unbeknownst to us, he had been visiting regularly to be fussed over by the kids

Woman I get it that you wouldn't vote for the WA

but MPs might
because the buggers certainly won't vote for Revoke

and a GE just looks like endorsing No Deal, with the catastrophe that would bring

The PV was reportedly raised when Starmer & co were nailing down how many votes for each of the various possibilities
Those 20-30 Lexiters would rather have No Deal than a PV

woman I'll bring snacks for the queue and journey

pretzels Even 14 Lexiters voting the other way tonight would have meant the vote was lost

woman I'll bring snacks for the queue and journey grin
Let's do this!

Even 14 Lexiters voting the other way tonight would have meant the vote was lost

So the whips just need to nobble 14 of them. that's the point of whips. Meanwhile Hammond and Rory et al can try and lure some more moderate tories over to the dark side.

The W.A has been historically defeated three times. I don;t see why anyone would think that should be be brought back to try and pass again but that Cooper-Boles would definitely fail.

They might both fail.

But in that case, why try for a straight W.A and not the Cooper -Boles? If 14 is the magic number then it would also only take the lib dems to vote against the W.A and it would fail. Because no one who voted with the govt tonight will vote for it - they're committed no dealers.

I can't see the WA passing.
Not yet, anyway.

I do wonder how this will all play out, particularly in a GE.

For example, I can't see a Jonson-Loyalist winning in Justine Greening's old seat.

I also realise I just don't have a clue any more. I live in London & in an area of London that is very pro-Remain (And has many immigrants, from many places, king-settled & recent).

I have never felt less able to gauge what sentiment is like in other parts of the country. 🤷‍♀️

woman Leavers are certainly not all nazis or racists; only a minority are

We need to distinguish between an orderly Brexit, staying as close to the EU as possible - a legal and respectable although imo mistaken aim, which some moderate socialists share
vs
No Deal - a free ticket for the hard right authoritarians to destroy and loot the country.

My priority is to avoid No Deal.

Brexit itself is a legal aspiration, under international law
That's why if BJ wins a majority in a GE and his MPs vote for it, No Deal would be legal

So, I hung around in Parliament Square & then College Green after the vote. I ended up talking to some of the many, many homeless people that are now a feature of city life again. A thing I never hoped to see again after the end of the Thatcher years.

And I just cannot understand why people would vote Conservative.

You see? I'm completely out of touch because people - lots of them - will.

PMK

I find myself intrigued by the BDSM atmosphere of Parliament. Where having the whip removed is the worst thing that can happen to you. Not being whipped any more. Abandoned by your dom.

Hunting metaphor obvs but also reflects public school culture like so much else in the Establishment.

And it's worth pointing out that the Conservatives have now shown that, in any combination, any permutation, they can't govern.

'Vote Conservative - & watch us fuck about until the next crisis' is probably not the slogan that they will be running with.

But it's the truth.

I think Cummings is not going to find it so easy to replace experienced MPs - & then get them past the electorates.

In some areas, yes. But there are some interesting issues with the pool he'll be choosing from.

So, it really might not all be plain sailing.

If the victory had been by 50-60 votes, PV would have a decent chance
As it is, the numbers for PV aren't there

Adding it to the bill tomorrow would make the bill fail
That chance to stop No Deal would be squandered

Wanting things to be otherwise doesn't make it so

We've seen Tories rebel against the party line;
Lexiters would do so too
In their constituencies during a GE campaign, those 20-30 are expected to state they will oppose a PV, despite the manifesto

We have a choice of No Deal, WA, or place all our bets that Corbyn will win a GE

• AND with enough of a majority to cancel out those 20-30 Lexiters who would likely still rebel against a PV vote

I don't like those odds

pmk

Thanks BigChoc, kinda nice to feel that I’m viewed as a moderate enough leaver to be asked good questions from others on here. Sadly, I’m going to disappoint many on here in answering, I feel and double sorry coz this might be long!

My basic position as I have outlined many times on these threads is that the result of June 2016 must be enacted. For clarity, to me that doesn’t just mean triggering A50 as has been done, it means leaving the EU. So a PV on WA versus Remain is an absolute No from me

I do think there is merit in the argument that June 16 did not decide what form Leave should take. That was left to the Government to negotiate and for Parliament to approve once negotiations concluded.

Parliament have so far shown themselves unwilling to support the WA deal, and unwilling to express even indicative support for any other form of Brexit. Just voting to prevent a “No Deal” gets us no closer to understanding what sort of Brexit deal Parliament would approve.

IMO, the decision to Leave has already been taken. If another vote is to be held, then for me it needs to be between a negotiated settlement reached between the UK Govt and the EU and approved by Parliament and a “No Deal”. In that scenario, “Deal vs No Deal” I am pretty confident still that “Deal” would win.

This form of confirmatory vote would have the advantage that it obviously isn’t a rerun of 2016 and also assuming “Deal” did win, “No Deal” would have been tested in a public vote and defeated.

Thanks, Louise
It's pretty much what I expected, going by other Leavers with whom one can have sensible conversations
and also those Lexiter MPs - mostly a moderate bunch - who cautiously voted Aye last night

Honestly.

Quite how the Conservatives who haven't rebelled can justify their utter lack of integrity in dumbly following this 'leadership' is beyond me.

However, I'd say that if Corbyn did win a GE on the manifesto to hold a PV,
then that is a new mandate which would over-ride the referendum vote

As mentioned though, I very much doubt he would

However, a hung Parliament is quite possible
and I can't decide what that says about a mandate !

The pass business is so spiteful, but like a child would be spiteful
So stupid

Yes. It's horrible, BigChoc. And they are the government.

As for GE & WA, Revoke, Mo Deal, PV: we're in a right old mess, and no mistake. 😳