Westminstenders: From Uxbridge to...?

[RedToothBrush]

Speaker Bercow is gone.

Speculation that Johnson is parachuting into Rutland.

Rumours that the Brexit Party won't contest the election.

A new speaker to be elected on Monday.

Parliament to dissolve next week.

Brexit? Oh we've forgotten that until Friday 13th...

Polls : What question is asked
as I give different answers to my intention depending on the question
and in yougov I am 0.1% of the sample ....

QueenThere were reports a few weeks ago that ERG members were boasting that BJ promised them this
and that they had won

It was one of the reliable political commentators - might have been Goodall - but I can't remember now

re annoying the EU:

there isn't a big difference between No Deal on 31 Dec 2020 and the type of absolute minimal deal that is all the Uk could obtain from the EU without the Level Playing Field terms

• a big reason why I don't support this WA, although I supported May's-

I'm sure the EU ran out of eye rolls many months ago
They've handed over the future negotiations to Barnier, since they know he'll keep it out of their hair
An agreement would be welcome, but is not something the EU leaders are betting on.

Whatever did Barnier do in a past life to deserve this continued purgatory?

Sunday Times:

A new poll suggests Labour has enjoyed a bounce in support since the general election campaign began
and Remain parties have finalised an electoral pact to thwart BJ.

Indie:

Former LDem leader Vince Cable says voters should abandon "tribal loyalties" and cast their ballots tactically to block Brexit,

Observer:

No 10 has taken emergency action to head off winter pressures in the NHS amid Tory fears that a healthcare crisis could derail the party's GE campaign.

pretty He has a sense of duty to see it through, reportedly,
especially to safeguard Ireland, as he used to lead the EU's reconciliation / development projects there

I have a massive respect for Barnier. I think he's done a brilliant job in extremely trying and exasperating circumstances

I don't know how he remains so patient and apparently serene - only very occasionally showing what hard work it has been . He is a true negotiator - of a calibre that is sorely missing within the UK

The ORB International survey for the newspaper puts the Tories on 36 per cent, with 28 for Labour, 14 per cent for the Liberal Democrats and 12 per cent for Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party.
Undertaken on Wednesday and Thursday, the new poll is likely to spark concern within the Conservative campaign.

The Tories had a 10 point increase from the previous ORB poll, Labour dropped a point.

I know we're sceptical about polls but I did wonder if we'd see a Corbyn bounce and Boris flattening out....

🤔

But isn't that saying their last poll was 6 months ago? The Tories haven't been as low as 26% in a long time, and the Lib Dems have been much higher than 8% since the EU elections.

In other polls they're higher than 36%, but you can't compare different polls with each other as methodology is different for each polling company.

It's late so I'm not going to go and look for the data tables: but the key question we ask on these threads is: what is the percentage of "Don't knows" and "Won't Say"? (and secondary question: the demographics of the respondents? Are those that have stated their voting intentions disproportionately male? And the corollary, are the "Don't knows" disproportionately female?

Tom Harper
@TomJHarper
·
1h
Breaking - Dominic Cummings, the prime minister’s most senior adviser, is facing questions over his past activities in Russia after a whistleblower came forward to raise “serious concerns” about the 3 years Cummings spent there after graduating from Oxford. See the Sunday Times

More here
twitter.com/TomJHarper/status/1190756919427915777?s=20

Margot James standing down. Another female non-headbanger leaving the Tories.

Tom Newton Dunn@tnewtondunn

Tory strategists have warned Johnson to avoid a pact with Farage at all costs,
as it would hammer their vote in 30 seats threatened by Lib Dems and SNP

This refers to the official report into Russian interference in The Brexit ref and the 2017 GE,
which No 10 appears to be delaying until the GE is over:

Rob Powell@robpowellnews

NEW:
Former Tory Chair of Intelligence Committee Sir Malcolm Rifkind says there has been "no reason" given by Downing Street for why the Russia report should take more than a few days to be published

MORE:
Sir Malcolm also says what is particularly "disturbing" is that if the report is not published before the December election
then it may not be released for months as the Committee needs to be re-formed and its members security checked.

Did you hear the one about Steve Bannon being interested in buying the Telegraph as the Barclays have had enough and are selling up?

Yep, you read that right. The Mail would start looking positively socialist by comparison.

Moving the Torygraph to the loony right hasn't prevented its value sinking from 665 million in 2004 to 100 million.

I suppose a hard right populist consortium of US white supremacists won't care about bleeding money though, if it gains them a colony

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/nov/02/boris-johnson-vote-leave-overspend-eu-referendum-labour-mp-ian-lucas

Boris Johnson knew of Vote Leave’s overspendd^ during the 2016 EU referendum, but appears to have failed to tell the authorities, according to explosive new claims from a senior MP.

The payment was subsequently ruled to be illegal.

Ian Lucas revealed that he has seen correspondence obtained during the parliamentary inquiry into disinformation and democracy
which showed that Johnson’s most senior aide, Dominic Cummings, told the Electoral Commission that the prime minister, and his cabinet colleague Michael Gove, knew of the overspend by the pro-Brexit organisation.

The Electoral Commission last year judged that Vote Leave had broken electoral law by overspending during the EU referendum,
after the campaign funnelled £675,000 through another pro-Brexit group, BeLeave, to avoid spending limits.

Nick Cohen: The more Nigel Farage plays Brexiters for fools, the more they seem to like it

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/nov/02/more-nigel-farage-plays-brexiters-for-fools-more-they-seem-to-like-it

Even while being lied to, core supporters have an unshakeable faith in their leader
.....
cynics who doubt everything trust Nigel Farage, even though he takes them for absolute idiots.

It was an education to watch him make his offer of a Leave alliance to Boris Johnson on Friday. Farage’s warm-up acts played all the old tunes.

Richard Tice, a property investor who has the well-cut suits and fading good looks of the type of charmer who cons widows out of their savings,
said the Tories lived in the “stinking rotten borough of Westminster”.

Claire Fox, who, satisfyingly, looks as malicious in the flesh as you would expect a member of the Revolutionary Communist party who ended up on the hard right via a spell denying the massacre of Bosnia’s Muslims to look, followed up.

The Farage Company:

"Then there is the revealing game Farage has played with Brexit party members, which shows how little he thinks of them.

He persuaded at least 3,000 to apply to become parliamentary candidates and charged them £100 apiece for the privilegege^.*^^

Yet when the candidates were announced,
there were many of the same faces from Farage’s Ukip days or Fox’s Revolutionary Communist turned Reactionary Chauvinist party.

Otto English of the Byline Times, who covered the story,,^ received private emails from working-class hopefuls who said they were told to campaign in byelections to “increase your chances of being selected”.
When they got there, no one took their names.

Straight afterwards, they received a “you have not been selected” mass email."

Individuals have walked away from Farage.
But his core stayed loyal, as the core of populist movements always does.

For if there is any meaning in the vapid word, “populism” can be defined as the willingness of voters to be lied to.

The louder they scream “all politicians are liars”,
the harder they fall for the big lie from their chosen demagogue.

Political scientistss^ define devoted supporters of Farage, Trump and Corbyn as “low-trust” voters, who believe nothing they hear on the news.

And yet they turn as trusting as children when their great leaders lead them on.

"the majority of leavers are in favour of it as well as moderate remain voters who want the ref result to be honoured."

Has anyone got a clue about what a majority of Leavers want? Where are the 6 million signing petitions to say get it done, or demonstrations of a million on more? What happened on Thursday night, Friday morning? I did see crowds of people on the street in Oxford, but they were Halloween Revellers, by the way they were dressed; they didn't look as though they were protesting in support of Leave.

Tory strategists have warned Johnson to avoid a pact with Farage at all costs, as it would hammer their vote in 30 seats threatened by Lib Dems and SNP

Either way, it should hammer the Tory vote - ally with Farage, Tories are BlueBrexit/BlueKIP. Don't ally, split the vote.

Has anyone got a clue about what a majority of Leavers want?

Only a few months ago, we were being fervently assured by many MN Leavers (and indeed reflected in the polls for what they're worth) that their everlasting heart's desire exactly as they voted for in 2016 was No Deal Crash Out and that nothing less (e.g. "Treason" May's deal) could be The True Brexit.

I believe Farage could be Remain's salvation, in a perverse way. Reading Chris Grey's Brexit blogspot, he says this of the Brexit party (written before Farage announced that he is going to have candidates in every seat):

Johnson’s Achilles Heel is that repeated, high-profile, central pledge to have left the EU come what may on 31 October. If Farage runs a full-on campaign against the Tories for having ‘betrayed Brexit’ then he is going to hurt the Tories, and hurt them badly, losing them seats without gaining many, if any, himself. That will be good for remain, so logic would suggest that Farage does not do so (but logic may play little part, especially given Farage’s egotistical character and the fanatical nature of his supporters).

He's flown in the face of logic, and if I recall correctly, he announced in his campaign speech that leaflets would be delivered to every household in the country pointing out what is wrong with Johnson's deal. I feel he's very likely to take votes from the Tories, and that can only benefit the other parties. If they can get their sh*t together enough to run a coordinated campaign then that's our best hope of not letting the Tories back in again.

chrisgreybrexitblog.blogspot.com/2019/10/the-coming-election.html

I had thought.

What if....

Johnson doesn't want to win?

What if his demented performances since he became PM are to ensure a GE he will lose at a time of year which could hurt tory turnout?

Give the shitfest that is brexit to another party to sort out, spit venom and bluster and lies from the opposition benches and then - churchill like - swoop in and "save" us??