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.

Feel so so sorry for Jess Phillips, i've always liked her, shes always been so ballsy..

Gina Miller is on Question Time tonight, another lady with guts i admire!

I won't watch QT any more - it's not good for my blood pressure not, potentially, the TV

Watching the BBC tonight I was struck by the hypocrisy. They make a reportage from a town asking about the reaction to the strong wording of yesterday....and they bang on and on about how much the town voted for leave and who is a leader and what’s his opinion....come on, BBC, you can’t say language is divisive when you’re first doing the round of places and pin labels onto them!!

cherin it will most likely be the same on QT.

I needed a laugh after inhaling the stale and oppressive air in the brexit arms. There's two or three posters (from here) making intelligent contributions or asking questions or suggesting compromise but otherwise it's the upward slope of the bell curve and no one has made it to the summit. Hell, not even a ski lift could get them up there.

funniest thing I've read on here today.

I popped into the Brexit Arms too. Mind boggling really!

James Clumsy v Gina Millar

There is only ever going to be one winner.

I tell you what the Government are getting their pound of flesh from Cleverly today. He has been pimped round every tv and radio station and is on QT from Cardiff. I wonder if they couldn’t get any other cabinet member to defend Johnson.

Cleverly is not doing well on QT.

Interesting...

RobinFransman
@RF_HFC
This was on the radio just now.
Rachel Johnson: My brother is under a great deal of pressure by investors who have short positions in pound sterling.

mobile.twitter.com/RF_HFC/status/1177283072078864390

He scared women MPs ... but he may have scared his own hand-picked Brexiter cabinet even more

Tom Newton Dunn@tnewtondunn

Excl: Boris Johnson facing Cabinet revolt to lower his Brexit demands and cut a compromise deal with the EU

https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/10014429/boris-johnson-cabinet-revolt-deal/amp/?twitterr_impression=true

I have spoken to three different Cabinet ministers, who are all preparing to confront PM after Tory conference next week.
They will insist he accepts an 11th hour compromise offer instead that they expect EU to make. 2/

< no sign the EU will offer anything more than cosmetic changes to the WA >

They will also demand he abandons Dominic Cummings’ “aggressive” strategy to bluff out the EU with the threat of No Deal.

One of the Cabinet ministers: “The PM has to take what he can get now.
The Cummings plan has clearly failed.**
We can’t fight battles on so many fronts”. 3/

Another Cabinet minister will propose MV4 if no deal agreed by end of EU Council on October 18: ^

“I will tell Boris to put Theresa’s deal back to the Commons if I have to. The numbers are there for it now, everyone is desperate to end this”. 4/

I was tempted to wilfully misunderstand the opening post in the Brexit Arms that chants “Go BoJo” and agree that indeed he should...

Rachel may be onto something

https://bylinetimes.com/2019/09/11/brexit-disaster-capitalism-8-billion-bet-on-no-deal-crash-out-by-boris-johnsons-leave-backers/

Boris Johnson’s leadership campaign backers in the City stand to make billions of pounds from his ‘do or die’ pledge to take Britain out the of the EU by the end of October**
....
According to the records of both the elections watchdog, the Electoral Commission and the Register of Financial Interests, between 10 May and 23 July,
Johnson received £655,500 in donations.^
Of these, two thirds – £432,500 (65%) – came from hedge funds, City traders or the very wealthy.^

^Now we can understand why he'd "die in a ditch" to get Brexit on 31 October

With so many billions at stake, hedge-funders would see him in that ditch, if he let them down !^

Cui bono!

BCF so basically you are saying that BJ's life is more important than the 60 odd million poor sods who had the misfortune to live in a UK with him as PM.

As always - follow the money.

To him I mean - and yes I agree

Rory Stewart@RoryStewartUK

I am horrified that when I asked the Attorney-General to confirm the principle of the sovereignty of parliament
that he appears to have replied - over the shouts of the house - that
“this parliament is a disgrace.”

Our democracy can only be and must remain founded in parliament.

random I'm sure BJ believes his navel fluff is more important than the lives of the 65 million people he governs

Pulling up a pew.

am actually wondering if Mr Johnson was quite himself, yesterday, it was certainly a turbocharged performance.

Hmm. Previous coke use was partly the undoing of Gove but I'd be astonished if none of the white stuff had ever disappeared up BJ's conk. Do MPs have to be drug tested like police officers do?

What I'd like is to puncture the pious hypocrisy that saying humbug makes you the new Hitler, whereas the cuddly Left can say whatever the fuck they like because, well, they're the left and the left is automatically good.
CendrillionSings

Arron Banks @ arron_banks
Ridiculous, they deliberately invoked the dead for political gain. The only ones that should be apologising are the ghastly female labour MPs who scream and shout abuse & then invoke victimhood and Jo Cox ...

You and Aaron Banks are singing from the same songsheet there, CendrillionSings.

...if you look at the Labour conference, they've moved wholesale into confiscation on an unprecedented scale. Once private property rights disappear, then the real underpinnings of democracy disappear with them...

...You have no idea what's coming if Corbyn and McDonnell get their hands on real power.
CendrillionSings

LOL.
Hysterical much?

Still trying the Red Scare, and even equating private property with democracy? You won't know what hit you when American hedge funds take over the NHS and the railways and farmers get kicked off their land, and it will all fall into the hands of American investors. Private property indeed.

Do you want to know what the greatest threat to British democracy is?
It's any threat to the primacy of Parliament.
It's MPs and a Prime Minister who thumb their noses at the courts.

There is no written constitution. Therefore Parliament is all you have, along with meaningful and complete respect for the rule of law.

What you are currently facing is a PM who sees prorogation as an acceptable means to his ends and along with his despicable colleagues harangues the courts and threatens to play fast and loose with what Parliament directed him to do (the Benn Act). Meanwhile, the Leader of the House and Lord President of the Privy Council lolls on a bench in the House of Commons, and smirks about threats to life.

Never mind any of that, do I hear you say.

"Look over there! A squirrel!"
"That wicked Jeremy Corbyn boils bunnies!"

To coin a phrase, BigChoc, when all you have in your mental toolbox is a hammer, everything looks like a Nazi. Corbynism is a much greater threat to the country than a (grossly!) opportunistic man whose entire career has been as a liberal conservative.
CendrillionSings

And maybe when all you have in your mental toolbox is a set of stock phrases handed out by Leave HQ, the Red Scare is all you can throw at Jeremy Corbyn.

'Corbynism' - listen to yourself...
Is that word something Leave HQ dreamed up to equate Jeremy Corbyn's platform with Stalinism, Five Year Plans, the Gulag, etc?

The last GE results must have really spooked the Brexiteer/hedge funders.

There is no room in British political life for an opportunists of Boris Johnson's ilk. Lacking a written constitution, the entire edifice of Parliament's role and the rule of law relies on a basic, fundamental respect for the institutions that guarantee liberty, all of which should be above sectional interest and personal interest.

None of that basic, fundamental respect is apparent in the current Conservative Party, which has set itself the task of re-enacting the most brutal phases of the French Revolution and dragging the country along with it for the ride.