Westminstenders: What hangs in the balance?

[RedToothBrush]

Yellow Hammer (and Black Swan if it exists) and other documents the government itself has produced are our truths and our evidence.

I look to Thomas Jefferson quotes in trying to defend liberal democracy.

His most famous of quotes is

Thomas Jefferson was the principal author of the Declaration of Independence. The Declaration states, “We hold these Truths to be self-evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness….”

Self evident truths. These are the bedrock of democracy.

There are many more quotes from Jefferson which talk about the shining beacon of truth and the threats to liberty from falsehoods and those who tell them.

He argued that when the power of the state is used to avoid scrutiny we should be worried and afraid. As a leader he should never be afraid of the truth, because the truth always exists and you can only merely hide it before it makes itself apparent anyway.

“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”

Today I feel the need to dust off old Jefferson for my own sanity and to remind myself of what matters. Jefferson helps me focus on dangers and how you fight back. It always comes back to exposure to the truth - how do you work to expose this (and the role of journalism in this)

Seek the truth. Talk the truth. Even if that means being self critical and humble in admitting your mistakes and errors.

It is not your identity as Leaver, Remainer, Tory, Labour, LDer, SNPer, woman, man, English, Northern Irish, Scottish, Welsh or European right now.

These identities are harming us, by making us look at the wrong thing rather than see the real danger facing us. They divide us whilst they conquer us.

What you should be focusing on NOW is your commitment to democracy in the face of someone in power actively and explicity saying the rule of law does not matter and the courts are wrong. That is advocating mob rule.

Johnson stood and said threats to MPs were humbug. And refused to moderate his language despite so many (mainly female) MPs saying the threats they received were extremely serious (remembering we've even had a prosecution for a plot to kill Rosie Cooper as well as other successful prosecutions for threats to MPs)

This is where we are at.

Focus on it.

No Deal Brexit and the future of liberal democracy in this country are indivisible and inseparable. They are entwined by the rule of law.

Brexit is NOT in of itself a threat to liberal democracy. It is HOW we leave that is.

I wish this was being said and emphasised concisely and cleanly.

Peter Foster @pmdfoster
If there was any shred of doubt on the EU side about what @BorisJohnson tactics are here ahead of #euco it seems to have evaporated after last night.

www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2019/09/26/despairing-eu-officials-braced-showdown-boris-johnson-combative/

Not seen EU sources so animated for a while... despair on several levels 1/thread

First despair at the whole Boris 'Trumpson' routine and what it says about sincerity of any attempts to strike a deal which Parliament will back with help of Labour MPs.

"A new low" as one official put it. /2

I wondered if BJ's rage led to him coming out more into the open than was wise for him ?
It seemed very indulgent, in between the set phrases

If you are going to disobey the law etc, it's probably unwise to taunt & threaten the Opposition so blatanantly,
better to let your own supporters, MPs and voters, be able to keep telling themselves what a nice respectabl chap you are, who could be trusted to do the right thing in the end

Easier for them to close their eyes and excuse you
Some will do so whatever you say,
but at least some Tory MPs looked very uncomfortable
They might join in a vote for a moderate PM - some of the rebels would be talking to their old chums

BJ could be intending to whip up the public so much that the courts can't touch him
However, 19 Ocober is far too early in the process for that to work

So it looks like he is running a populist campaign for the next GE, whether that is before or after Brexit
With Corbyn still the bogeyman, even BJ's performance yesterday still leaves him favourite to win
Many repelled by him will still vote Tory, because of the bogeyman.

He may resign as PM on 19 October and gamble on the rebels being unable to agree a new PM in time
Even if they do and gain an extension for a GE, his plan is to win with enough MPs to support an immediate No Deal

Then the real plans for the future will start
With democratic institutions fully in his sights

• I expect his govt would e.g. replace the judges on the Supreme Court with his own choices
• then sidestep the Boundary Commission and gerrymander the seat boundaries i.e. the GOP tactics

Then get down to removing rights for workers, women, the disabled, consumers, defendants in court and of course the environmental regs
i.e. the program that the backers of Brexit have planned all along

Another long-term lurker grateful for the breadth and depth of knowledge shared here. I have emailed my MP (again...) but hold out little hope given that he's in one of the safest Tory seats in the country and is currently standing to be Chair of the Treasury Select Committee; he did vote remain and has noted that he would campaign for remain again but is in a very Leave constituency.

I did suggest that a revocation of Article 50 as an interim measure to look for a more unified way forward to take out the heat from the debate and stop the lurching with endless deadlines. Whether or not that has traction, who knows but unlikely in the current cesspit that is Westminster.

Boris has no interest in uniting the nation and parliament behind a deal. His main goal is to stoke up anger and divisions and win over the Brexit party voters. His sickening performance last night was straight from the Trump/ Farage playbook. This is all about winning a GE.

Completely this. He was threatened by the Brexit Party, so his response is to be more Brexit Party than them.

While it will further alienate him from moderate Tories (and of course the other parties), it will play nicely to the swivel-eyed-loon element.

Having said that, a) I had already thought a GE would just lead to another hung parliament, ultimate outcome of which beyond my ken and b) those polls are faintly heartening.

==> Any Lexiters ?

What about that group of about 30 Labour Leave MPs, all except 2 or 3 being pretty traditional sane Labour ?

Could they ever vote alongside BJ again ?

LBC@LBC

"Brexit has broken everything.

Today, having fallen four years ago for some harmless guff about blue passports and sovereignty,
Brexiters are defending a PM who insulted the grieving friends of a murdered MP in a parliament that he shut down unlawfully."

Re Nazi and Fascist, whilst making a conscious decision to use the word authoritarian because its less mired in the political tribalism problems of the moment, it is worth pointing this out.

Ed Caesar @edcaesar
Recently reported on actual British Nazis who wanted a female MP dead. Can confirm: they pick up on the language used in political debate. Language matters.

www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/05/27/the-undercover-fascist
The Undercover Fascist
A young Englishman got mixed up in a white-supremacist movement. Then he learned of a plot to kill a politician.

Nearly every Saturday afternoon in 2016, Robbie Mullen, a twenty-four-year-old warehouse worker, met with a group of neo-Nazis at the Friar Penketh, a lively pub in Warrington, in the North of England. The men belonged to an extremist group named National Action. Seated at a round table upstairs, they discussed until closing time their dark, shared politics: a hatred of Jews and of ethnic minorities; an expectation that a race war would soon engulf Britain. Mullen, who has a meaty build and a pallid complexion, was not much of a drinker. He nursed pints of Pepsi while the others, emboldened by lager, grew more voluble.

In December, 2016, the U.K. government designated National Action a terrorist group, and banned it. Under British law, being a proven member of a terrorist organization carries a prison sentence of up to ten years. The group’s demonstrations and membership drives stopped, and its Web site shut down. But many of its hundred or so adherents kept up their communications, through encrypted apps. And, even though meetings like the one at the Friar Penketh were risky, they secretly continued.

This of course is the Rosie Cooper case.

The Tory rebels must be glad they left the party before that performance

However, Rory:
The PM is not "tiptoeing"; he is smashing his steel-tipped boots against our Parliamentary democracy


Rory Stewart@RoryStewartUK

The PM is tiptoeing onto a dangerous path - pitting Remain against Brexit, the people against Parliament.

We need to speak w/ moderation, w/ truth, w/ respect for our constitution, for our opponents, and w/ dignity if we're to win back the trust of every citizen of this gt nation

Ok. Proper delurk now. Jeremy Corbyn has unfailingly been polite and courteous, with the exception of one mild muttered expression of impatience in the teeth of an onslaught of abuse. When Mr Corbyn became leader of the Opposition, he was roundly mocked and disrespected by Mr Cameron for his clothing.Imo , the person shamed by that was MrCameron who looked every inch the entitled and elitist old Etonian.
I hoped for better from Mrs May, a vicars daughter, I still had some faith then in Christian values, but no, she also mocked and jeered at Mr Corbyn and refused to answer his reasonable questions. When she lost her majority, it seemed obvious to me that to achieve a good for UK Brexit would take cross party cooperation and consensus, but Mrs May doubled down on blaming the Labour Party and remainers for her difficulties, and continued to toady to the ERG, even as they openly plotted against her.
It has saddened me so much to see hyperbole and spin replace debate and honesty.
Redtoothbrush is right, this is not about Brexit, it is about the death of democracy, and it is not the Labour Party who are driving that.

The tories havent been liberal conservatives for a while now.
Not when TM started her attacks on immigrants.
Not when so many 'moderate' MPs were praising Marine LePen and the FN, an extree right populist party whilst trying to say they were liberal conservatives and very respectful.
Nit when they were happy to pass many laws that were infriging humans rights etc....

But the UK is a frog in a pan of water slwoly getting warm and hot/boiling.
It has moved on so slowly that few people actually realised what was going on.....

One of the (many) issues I have with BJ tone and words yesterday is thatbhe is putting himsel in a position where he has no choices at all.
He cant ask for an extension, he can't revoke, he cant have a WA and he cant go for No Deal.

I suspect he will chose what will sem to be least damaging poition FOR HIM. and that will be NO DEAL, not the lest because he can then blame everyone else when it fails (plus it will allow him to do things even more radical to assert his power - Martial law anyone?)

Rachel Johnson is calling out her brother’s behaviour yesterday.

Some thoughts from the underground - (quoting in whole here as CBA to use MNs editor)

QUOTE
Memory needs to get things put into it and its done by making you process non sense because then your brain tries to work it out and that working out is essentially doing a better job than normal at lodging that stuff in your brain. You think you're solving and understanding problems and too some degree you are but you're also filling your brain with non sense that will later becomes ideas you use that you've built up to make this manipulated non sense make any sense.

Its funny how "both" sides are manipulated by the idea that one side is stupid for thinking what they think, as nobody likes to be stupid and people like to know what stupid is, so they can feel like they're doing something right. Just as you can see very clearly with "conspiracy theories", people are prompted with a ridiculous version of an idea that actually has some truth to it and infact informs of some potential future plan, you're faced with either thinking its stupid or you're stupid, like oh the government are spying on your every move, oh no thats literally bollocks mate, you're nuts then jump to now and you're literally being told your "data is being kept safe" by telling you, that your data is literally being used and sold and has been for ages and theres laws that actually command it. So who's stupid now???

People are concentrating on defeating "stupid" people and thinking thats doing something when realistically its distracting you from the real problem and the real enemy, as its easy to defeat a stupid idea, it just goes round and round in circles until people realise its going nowhere and get bored and people are reading it from the enemy, the news is literally fully manipulating and thats what people are retaliating too mostly.

Think about the kind of people politicians are or most journalists for that matter, think about how sad they are and unskilled generally and then think that MILLIONS of people are absorbing their way of thinking into their mind, soaking in these people like thats the point of life.

When you zoom out and make things "simple", when you go i'm just a person with a brain on a planet with billions of other people and each one of those people has on average 80 billion neurons in their head with 10'000 connections each making trillions of potentials and each person has around an average of 7'000000000000000000000000000 atoms, moving around in there body and theres 7 billion of us and thats just the people, on the earth which is one of many possible trillions of planets that exist and theres BILLIONS of galaxies and we're trying to talk about controlling all that with these people that literally nobody respects because they're liars and then the people are supposed to feel bad about that???? What the fuck, wake up.

We're the most sentient things that we've ever discovered and this is how we behave, we're purposefully making ourselves stupid with our methods and if it isn't absolutely obviously clear to anyone who is over 18, then what are you supposed to do to convince them??? You can literally show people how the government always lies, how many terrible things it allows to occur and the history of humans generally being bad when you allow people power because of a title or something that requires people to have respect they otherwise wouldn't, it doesn't work, the brain cannot be controlled like that, it is controlled by what it wants not by what it doesn't want, eventually it gets sick of running away.

All energy towards the enemy. direct the firepower and nothing can stand up to that. Everything that will work is counter intuitive at this point, its all about your precious attention because without that, how would you know who or what to give it too? If people lose attention in these things, thats where you see big events to gather the attention back. Without peoples efforts, all the power diminishes because the power is infact people and their will to live and want to have a good life and if you squeeze that constantly, people will do things and try things to make it stop.

The whole method of pitting either you thinking whatever it is, is stupid or you must be stupid is about getting people to pre-emptivly say something is stupid because when they're wrong later, they will be embarrassed about calling the thing stupid and this will make them want to ignore what they've called stupid because they'd then have to admit that they're stupid and were wrong and will have to apologise to these people.

Its about how the original memory structure is formed, thats why you don't hear about all the people coming out and saying sorry and being like whoa, all the people who they said were stupid or nutters were actually right, they just sneak off quietly, repressing their thoughts, which works even better for manipulating because then the next round of manipulation, they're more uncertain about whats going on due to how they misjudged the prior situation.

So you made the people who were originally right lose faith by having the people who they're attempting to inform and help shove it back in their faces for ages and being ridiculed for their perception and then once they're ridiculous, the truth eventually seeps through after the ridiculing shield has died down and now the people who thought they were right now realise they were not, so now both parties have flipped position and now having those who were looked down upon "on top", makes another round of people saying "i told you so!"

ENDQUOTE

PMK

Sorry, lost some of my post. Mr Johnson has taken his predecessor s lead and produced almost a caricature of adversarial politics. I honestly believe he put peoples lives at risk last night.
I am happy to leave the EU if that is the will of the people, and they have been fully informed of the Governments own predictions of the consequences, and that includes the information that leaving with no deal will lead to short term chaos and long term interminable negotiations. I would be happier still if someone intelligent and sensible like Sir Keir Starmer was negotiating on our behalf.

Do you think BJ is trying to be a massive dick to goad the opposition benches into granting him his election?

Alternatively, maybe it just comes naturally...

Rachel Johnson is calling out her brother’s behaviour yesterday.

Chatting with an American friend yesterday (they offered to keep Boris, but we'd have to take Trump in exchange) they just said ...

Hardly the fucking Kennedys are they ?

How it looks to me:

By his form down the years, BJ never has a plan, he just blusters and demands that someone bring him something that gives him what he wants.

Cummings has a plan. He is not a Tory and is essentially a revolutionary anarchist who wants to break the country in the belief that there are folk out there who can remake it better for people like him.

DC must have something up his sleeve he thinks will evade the Benn Bill and force No Deal. They clearly want a dissolution to do away with parliament entirely, and then perhaps if there is trouble on the streets, State of Emergency.

Just delurking to thank you all. I have been reading these threads with increasing fascination and horror for the past year at least. Just emailed my MP too.

He cant ask for an extension, he can't revoke, he cant have a WA and he cant go for No Deal.

This isn't true.

If he is prepared to break the law and take a high stakes risk he can pass the blame elsewhere he can no deal, if he so chooses.

Question 1
It is therefore not whether he is able to no deal but what type of man is Boris Johnson?

Is he a man who recklessly takes risks?

Does he value the key things in this Jefferson quote:
“The care of human life and happiness, and not their destruction, is the first and only object of good government.”

Does he take responsibility for his actions?

How does he protect himself again the law coming after him?

The Hospital Encounter was the most revealing of moments because his natural and most spontaneous response was to lie when everyone could see he was lying. Everyone knew he was lying but he remained untouchable.

Question 2
What deal? He has no deal on his terms.

Every time someone says 'oh well its against the law to no deal, ask where the deal is.

Question 3
The Extension Question.

How are the EU feeling watching this? Will we even get an extension?

I really wish people would stop saying he can't no deal. No, anyone who respects the rules can't no deal. That's not applicable to Johnson.

Alex Wickham@alexwickham
NEW from @elashton

Addressing journalists in Westminster, a senior government source has warned that abuse of MPs will get worse if they pursue a second referendum

"What do they think is going to happen?"

www.buzzfeed.com/amphtml/alexwickham/boris-johnsons-allies-are-unrepentant-about-his-language

MPs vote not to have the recess 289 to 306 !

Not surprised given the outrageous behaviour yesterday. The ex Conservative revels were apparently going to abstain-but BJ's behaviour stiffened their rebellion resolve.

Addressing journalists in Westminster, a senior government source has warned that abuse of MPs will get worse if they pursue a second referendum

If it looks like a threat, sounds like a threat ...

I agree with Red.

Johnson is showing no sign of wanting a deal. Johnson has ruled out asking for an extension. Plus no deal is still the legal default. There is nothing that makes no deal against the law.

It would be against the law for the Prime Minister not to ask for an extension, which is rather different.

I hope that Johnson's vile goading will galvanise the opposition (not just the official opposition) to come together and form a GNU. I don't know what else to hope for.

No conference recess. Shame.