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.

Angela Rayner 🌈
@AngelaRayner
·
21s
We must not let him anywhere near building or proposing building bridges, he’s a disaster with them aka his London Bridge fiasco, a £53 million flop. He seems to be obsessed with wanting to build bridges, get him a Lego kit it’s cheaper and will keep him amused!

Everyone seems to know about the unexploded munitions except for BJ-Cummings . He was told this the first time he came up with the ludicrous suggestion but what do experts know?

If I was a dissident group intent on causing a lot of destruction, then a bridge between NI and Scotland would make one hell of a target.

I said don't talk about the dead cat!!!

I want someone to ask him in a 'Meet the PM' setting what party they should vote for if they are a Conservative but they definitely don't want No Deal - and that's the most important thing to them.

Maybe build it up in a few questions.

It's a bit like 'the game', I think, Red.

OK, how do we keep the pressure up on Operation Yellowhammer disclosure? When should they be released and by whom?

Alas, poor Larry...

Wow.
This looks to be quite Dark Arts.

Poor Larry?

I'm starting to think he's the problem not the Prime Ministers or their advisors.

He's the only one who has survived the last 3 years at No10.

The previous iteration of the criminal justice Bill fell when May called her election. The moj is in the middle of a major (£billion) change programme where savings from things like the online processes are significant portions of the budget - losing this again costs a lot more than just the bill passage time.

I'm not overly worried about wider trawling of ".gov.uk" remember we are talking about government IT :)
Many of the services fronted by ".gov.uk" are back ended by manual processes - where systems are actually linked to the front end, many are 20-30 year old monoliths where the underlying structure has long been forgotten and the front ending was seen as the only viable way of delivering the 'digital' mandate. Collating information across these systems is a pipe dream. (obscene amounts of money are being paid to vendors to keep obsolete systems in support just to run some of these!)

I have a spidey feeling that DUP may have been offered a few billion quid and a suspension of the Cash for Ash report to agree to a border in the Irish Sea.

I am half joking here. But there is far too much publicity doing the rounds now for me to take it seriously, but you would never know.

Scotland will be appalled I reckon (if it happens), and who knows what kind of backlash from slumbering Loyalist terrorists might ensue. But maybe they might enjoy a prosperous NI and get on with it.

Watch Scotland if NI only backstop happens. But that's only temporary anyway, right?

Oh.
I had that all wrong.
It's more crazy Labour stuff. ☹️

Honestly. I despair. I really do.

So Labour keep getting rightly called out on semitism. Where’s the Conservative investigation into islamophobia. He did promise Sajid Javid on live television. I hope Baroness Warsi is all over this.

Come on journalists do your job.

Something I can't quite get my head round.

The biggest difficulty in leaving the EU is managing the land border between the EU and UK on the island of Ireland.

And the potential Scottish response to this is... create an even longer land border between rUK and Scotland (still in EU or not).

I completely get that rUK's fuck-up means Scotland may be keener for independence. But... another land border.

How?

I was thinking today about how the demographics have changed.
A whole load of youngsters who were 15 when the referendum happened and can now vote.

My DD had just turned 15 at the time of the ref. She's now 18, living in Paris and has already voted in one election (Europeans). More than anything else, it makes you realise just how long ago it was.

Will she be voting in this election?

www.gov.uk/voting-when-abroad

It seems you can vote in UK elections even if you live abroad.

Perking,

The issue is the terms of the GFA.

But if you see my previous post, Scotland will not be impressed if a sea border results. But I don't think they proposed it either as in the Scottish Parliament.

Anecdotal tale here but an interesting one.

I have discovered why Nigel is love bombing me on You Tube. DS has to do a presentation where they all had to represent as a political party do a mini election campaign.

DS chose to be BXP !!!!

But didn’t want to tell me

His reasoning was it was dead easy to only present one manifesto issue. (Lazy)

Forget to mention in sons class nobody wanted to be a Tory (coz they is all fascists apparently)

basil just hope it stays quiet for your son.
when at school we had a project to follow a political topic in the newspaper for a term and then make a presentation.
classmate chose eastern germany 'cause nothing ever happens' - well, that term the wall came down...

Made me laugh.

red