Westministenders: Parliament Perogies pushing Rats in the Corner

[RedToothBrush]

One Opposition MP has just talked in parliament about how little the public understand what Preroguation is and what it meant. She described how one constituent thought it was about perogies.

The Benn Bill is now law and compels Johnson to ask for an extension if we have no deal.

Something that he has said he will die in a ditch to avoid and has suggested he would break the law.

But his options are hugely limited - if he refuses to do so and we no deal accidentally now, he is potentially personally liable for loses. He has no majority and the defeats keep on coming as a result.

Everything coming out now is the behaviour of a man with his back to the wall. The only thing he can do is frame everything as a people v the establishment and hope he survived until a GE. This is a dangerous time - he is now a rat in the corner with nothing to lose.

After Rudd's resignation, not much has got better for Johnson. Several other Tory MPs have signalled they won't stand again. This might mean they decide to rebel as they have nothing to lose. Lord Wellington, who has Tory written through him like a stick of rock, has also resigned the party. Attorney General Buckland hasn't resigned but has made threatening noises if the rule of law is broken.

Proroguation now does stack pressure on Johnson. He has to be the one to make moves and that is going to be difficult for him. However it also gives him time to say and do something without the scrutiny of parliament who have been blowing his arguments and legal assertions to bits with such ease.

Today he has visited Dublin where he stood next to Leo Varadkar who was less than polite nor even particularly diplomatic. The discomfort on Johnson's face and in his body language was very obvious. Varadkar in no uncertain terms said: ""if there is no deal, it will cause disruption for British and Irish people alike", adding "there's no such thing as a clean break, or just getting it done" and that he'd recieved no workable plan.

Tonight are two emergency debates. The first has just concluded about the government's lack of willingness to release documents relating to proroguation and operation yellowhammer.

Its been reported that ministers and civil servants have used private communications to conduct government ministers and this has caused huge concerns and Grieve wants to compel the government to release them. The government have responded saying this is an invasion of privacy. This has raised the accusation that Dominic Cummings personally has rifled through the phone messages of the former treasury communications officer as he sacked her and number 10 were not particularly concerned about her privacy then.

At the same time as the debate the government were briefing the press that they would refuse to comply with demands to release information. Grieve then made the point this was leading to the complete breakdown in trust in government.

David Allen Green said that if the government were to do this we could well be headed into a full blown constitutional crisis. This is the first time he's said he thinks we are actually at this stage.

Grieve was supported by the house by 311 votes to 302 votes ordering the government to release the documents.

The second debate is about the Rule of Law and the government's obligation to obey the Rule of Law.

Yet to come tonight is another vote about an early General Election before parliament pergoies, possibly in the early hours.

In other news John Bercow has decided to stand down at the next election or on the 31st October, which ever is sooner. There are rumours he was about to be deselected by his local conservative association and against convention would have to fight an election to win back his seat. He therefore was merely taking action before he was pushed. This might also be an action to protect parliament from the election of a new speaker after another election, fearing that there might be a hard right takeover which could threaten parliamentary soverignity.

Also this:
Declan Lawn @DecLawn
ERG stalwart Andrew Bridgen on @BBCPM saying the only way he could see a NI only backstop being acceptable is if it was put to an NI-only referendum. Fascinating.

I'll look out for "The Big Hack". Ta for that.

Saw "Brexit: The Uncivil War" a few days ago (recorded). Very informative.

I know Cummings' type well: arts grad who's a groupie around scientists and likes to re-use their lingo without quite understanding what the words mean. Thinks rules don't apply to someone as clever as he believes himself to be. Doesn't understand that rudeness does not constitute cleverness... (Chris Woodhead type.)

A couple of threads back, someone linked to an interview with Cummings before the referendum which was more of the same. He attempted to dazzle the interviewer with lots of handwaving, and references to historical China he'd got off the back of a cereal packet.

I can't tell whether Cummings himself even believed his own words. He came across as embarrassingly ignorant, pretending to be "Considerably cleverer than yew!"

But the question remains. Even if a candidate turned up at the door with a Peaky Blinders boxset, crate of prosecco and a years exotic chocolate subscription, would it make anyone change their vote ?

Can't give you any cite but I remember being told, at a session about the value of canvassing and leafleting that it took 4(?) "contacts" to make a difference, whether that be leaflets or door knocks. The key message was that it was the consistent effort that makes the difference - so that the recipient thinks you're actually bothered and not just taking them for granted (sound familiar ).

Anecdote is not data but dh (then dp ) used to spoil his vote ("None of the above") until in 1997 we were doorstepped by Nicola. She spent 45 minutes on the close landing, not trying to persuade him to vote SNP per se but just to vote for someone. And up until then, I'd been a Labour voter (except in one of the places I'd lived in England where SDP shows how long ago it was was a better bet to get the Tory out). So it can work .

Didn’t the SM campaign concentrate on getting out people who didn’t usually vote rather than trying to change the vote of regular voters?

Yes. For those who haven't seen "Brexit: The Uncivil War", the Cummings' Leave campaign made a big thing of identifying non-voters. This article covers that and other Facebook ads. (Interesting to know if anyone here was targeted with any of these.)

Vote Leave's targeted Brexit ads released by Facebook
www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-44966969

Early on in the campaign, Vote Leave launched a giant data harvesting exercise through a competition to win £50m if you could correctly guess the result of all 51 games in the 2016 European football championship.
[...]
It was described by one Vote Leave insider at the time as a potential "game changer" because it would allow it to gather the contact details of thousands of potential voters, many of whom would not normally be interested in the referendum.
The campaign recruited former England cricketer Sir Ian Botham to promote the contest

Don't forget everyone who died and didn't live with things like this.
I do find the 'we survived the war' type comments really do minimise the horror and hardship and death involved.

Coming from me, you should know that this was not a 'We survived the war' type of post. This was me saying that people did live with this, they did have to dig in to protest, and that for us we start now or three years ago in my case. I and all of us would hope that it doesn't take 45 years, but it could, if we do nothing, because either a) we don't know what to do, which is to some extent excusable or b) are totally indifferent which is not. Having just read prettybird's post option a) is like spoiling your vote, so vote for someone, so the better answer here will be do what you can, not nothing.

I for one have been on all the Brexit protests bar the last one in June(?) which wasn't well publicised so I had other commitments at the time.
I also protested against apartheid, and it's gone. I protested against Cruise missiles and they have gone, and I will keep protesting about this. I also got tired of Nicola Blackwood's nonsense when she was an MP and got active in politics to get rid of her, which we did. (Although she then got elevated to the Lords! Hmm.)

Yes Basil - the 3m. After 3 years of this shitshow though, will they want to vote again? My friend from the other night certainly felt she had been pushed into now voting Tory, which was something she would never do and said she wouldn't vote again.

"Trump has sacked John Bolton."

HOORAY !
Fired by tweet, too

Bolton has alway scared me far more than Trump
Bolton wants to have more wars, really big wars and kill lots of Iranians and anyone else the US feels pissed of with

Interesting Robert peston article from his itv blog which I'm probably putting too much hope in!

Don’t laugh, but Boris Johnson would genuinely prefer a Brexit deal to no deal.
And that should make Northern Ireland’s DUP and the Brexiter purists in the Tories’ European Research Group very nervous indeed.
Because the EU has made it clear that it thinks a deal could be done if the backstop arrangements, designed to keep open the border in the island of Ireland, was remade as a Northern-Ireland only backstop rather than a hybrid of customs union for the whole UK...
To be clear, we are weeks away from what would be seen by Arlene Foster, Steve Baker and their allies as the great betrayal - if it ever comes.
But they know their leverage to stop it has vanished. Because the very worst they can threaten is to bring down the government and force a general election.
To which Boris Johnson would presumably respond with a Beano or Pericles version of “bring it on” and “make my day”.

But the question remains. Even if a candidate turned up at the door with a Peaky Blinders boxset, crate of prosecco and a years exotic chocolate subscription, would it make anyone change their vote ?
I'd certainly tell them they had my vote as long as they left the Prosecco and chocolates. Doubt I'd vote for them though unless I had already been planning on it!

Interesting. Only so many times you can keep pressing the same button before it breaks.

Don’t laugh, but Boris Johnson would genuinely prefer a Brexit deal to no deal.

I suspect he does, but he's too lazy to do the work himself, so he's being manipulated by Cummings, Gove, Rees-Mogg and a few others, who do not want a deal.

Exactly Basil and I think fb will be loosing even more consumers if it continues to push political news and ads. I rarely see pictures of my friends, just angry memes and news. It's too much anger. People are indeed logging off fb in droves and younger people don't use it much at all. It's a dying platform and will become a Leave bubble in BoZoCum isn't careful.

In the 2016 US election, there was also a VERY substantial effort to suppress the vote.

They tried to keep Clinton voters at home by microtargeted ads eg suggesting to African American voters that Clinton was racist and anti-black, and the converse to potentially racist white voters

I can't remember off the top of my head whether there were any proven instances of this in the Brexit referendum – but you can be darn sure they'll happen in future elections here.

When the Referendum happened, some people were complacent because they thought Remain would win, so didn't bother. At the same time though, there was severe flooding in the south east, which meant that some people had other things on their minds than voting, and Southern trains messed up big time, stopping people getting home to vote. This was partly due to the flooding and partly business as usual with them.

So when the next election is due, and you think you might not get home in time, get a postal vote organised. You can get that organised now.

If you are abroad, a proxy vote is better, because you can't always rely on other postal services to get things there and back in time.

I also think Johnson wants a deal, I just don't believe that the Kinnock amendment got through by accident. I do wonder if a deal was brought to the HOC how the opposition would vote or spin how they vote after saying they would do everything to stop no deal.

I get what you're saying, Peregrina: Resistance is not futile. And you're right; it's not.

That Robert Peston think-piece can be read in a number of ways. For example, it can be read as yet another, 'underneath all this, Johnson is a good chap. He'll come good in the end. He won't really sell us out to No Deal,' piece.

I'm afraid I no longer trust such pieces. And nor did 21 members of his Party.

He's not to be trusted.

I do wonder if a deal was brought to the HOC how the opposition would vote or spin how they vote after saying they would do everything to stop no deal.

I think this will be a subject for debate at the party Conferences, so I suspect for LDs and Labour, there will be an element of being guided by what the members vote for, so MPs will be able to say that they have had a mandate from Conference to change their minds.

I admit, it's a difficult one - if it's No Deal or May's Deal, then it would have to be May's deal. At least that gives the Transition, and buys some time.

Although I mention dh and me as examples of those who did change their minds as a result of doorstepping (it was a very high calibre doorstepper though ), in my view, the key value of canvassing is the hard work of identifying where the vote is, and making sure to get those that support you out to vote.

But it has the added advantage of changing a certain percentage of votes after a certain number of "contacts" (just can't remember the actual numbers/research to cite ).

Peregrina has described how hard work in her constituency got the Conservative out and the LibDem in in 2017 Needs lots of shoe leather and people on the ground - and belief . We mustn't assume that the "bad guys" will win. If we do that, then they do win

I know I for one will be pounding the streets and delivering leaflets in the coming months Even though we currently have an SNP MP, I'm not going to take him getting back in for granted.

We worked Bl**dy hard for that win. This time we have to watch that we don't become complacent.

Well done, Peregrina. 🙂

I think I'm in the same seat as you Pérégrina! ( sorry phone thinks you should be french!)

Layla has been very involved and at the right level of cautiousness(!) with local causes - green belt developments and the crazy housing jumpers etc so is much more visible than with Nicola hideinacave Blackwood or Evan Harris so I think a lot of people have an awareness of her doing good stuff against the largely Tory local councils wanting to build on everything.

Excellent recap Peregrina,Peking and Poulet and others So much I had forgotten about.

Good to remind ourselves what’s going to be happening in the coming weeks

Random cat picture because it's a bit gloomy.
Xxx

I think a lot of people have an awareness of her doing good stuff against the largely Tory local councils wanting to build on everything.

Which is why the Tories got an absolute thrashing in the District and Town Council elections back in May.