U.K. Prime Minster Boris Johnson has moved to temporarily suspend — or prorogue — parliament, the Westminster-based House of Commons in London, apparently to thwart meddling by pro-Remain, anti-Brexit lawmakers.
“The result will be that British lawmakers have significantly less time to debate the terms of Britain’s exit from the European Union,” the Washington Post explained.
Under current law, Brexit is scheduled to happen at long last on Halloween, October 31.
Parliamentary procedures and precedents are kind of confusing to many of us on this side of the Atlantic, but the prorogation has something to do with the timing of the traditional Queen’s speech. At least that’s Johnson’s story, and he’s sticking to it.
The Spectator‘s email newsletter provided this analysis on August 28:
“Today’s prorogation announcement makes an election more likely, because it will either force the anti-no-deal MPs into holding a vote of no confidence, or else Johnson will call one for after 31 October in order to implement the ‘bold and ambitious domestic legislative agenda for the renewal of our country after Brexit’ that he promised today. That domestic agenda is the cover being offered for today’s prorogation decision, but of course it has been widely interpreted as being about Johnson’s Brexit plan…Team Boris clearly wants MPs to choose between their Brexit strategy and making Jeremy Corbyn prime minister. They can also use the prorogation to amplify their domestic agenda, which will neatly feed into an election manifesto. How will anti-no-deal MPs respond? So far, the short answer is badly….”
“Under the British constitution, a Parliamentary session is ‘Prorogued’ — that is to say, suspended — at regular intervals to allow a new session to begin,” Breitbart London noted. Despite the tradition, several legal challenges are pending.
An article in CapX downplays the controversy and outlines four tactical dimensions in prorogation:
“Strictly speaking, the entire affair will lose about one week of parliamentary time, effectively padding out the conference recess. The Commons will, on the current timetable, still sit both in September and the latter half of October, as Brexit day approaches. This is therefore not a mechanism to brute-force a no-deal departure through. In fact, one possibility is that it is actually geared towards driving through a Withdrawal Bill…But it isn’t a coup, neither in the literal sense nor in the figurative sense used to describe the ‘full-fat’ prorogue-until-November idea we’ve been discussing over the summer. Nothing the Government has done today would prevent the House of Commons from dismissing this executive and forestalling Brexit if the Commons actually had the will to do that.”
Boris Derangement Syndrome
The manufactured outrage and virtue signaling by pro-EU Remainers and other assorted globalists who put the EU interests ahead of what’s best for their country revolved around accusations of a coup and so forth. That’s ironic because the cross-party Remainers, a.k.a. Remoaners or Remainiacs, have been obsessed with coup-like thwarting the will of the people by trying to sabotage Brexit since the voters approve the divorce from the EU on June 23, 2016.
Johnson ultimately endorsed Brexit, albeit nearly at the last minute, which was influential in helping the referendum pass by a vote of 52% to 48%.
During his campaign to become Conservative Party leader, and by default, prime minister, the avuncular, chatty Johnson, the former London mayor with the Three-Stooges haircut, engaged in a lot double talk about taking the prorogation step as well as being coy about a snap election. With a reputation for disorganization, behind the scenes he seems to be running a tight, aggressive ship. however, through his chief strategist Dominic Cummings, including planning for no deal as well as laying the groundwork for a national election in the near term.
He also promised, and continues to do so, that the U.K. will leave the EU on October 31 with or without a deal. A no-deal Brexit would trigger World Trade Organization rules and give the U.K. freedom to negotiate commerce arrangements country by country as most nations do. Opinion polls suggest that the British public is very receptive to a no-deal Brexit.
A Good Deal in Name Only?
Johnson has generated concern among Brexiteers, however, by his apparent willingness to go along with the flawed withdrawal agreement pushed by his predecessor Theresa May merely minus the so-called Irish backstop. This relates to the theoretical need for a border between Ireland (an EU-member country) and Northern Ireland, which will leave the EU when the rest of the U.K. does.
May’s deal was Brexit in Name Only, because it left the U.K. under the thumb of the single market, the customs union, and the European Court of Justice instead of reclaiming the country’s sovereignty over laws, trade, and immigration.
Despite her country’s strong economy, May and her cabal inexplicably gave up all the U.K.’s leverage and basically capitulated to every EU demand, putting the country under her plan shackled to the EU’s heavy handed rulebook and bloated, unaccountable bureaucracy.
The Remainer-dominated parliament voted down May’s deal three times even though it would seem that a softest of soft Brexit would give them what they want.
Ambitious/unhinged Remaniacs are now threatening to push a no-confidence motion in Johnson’s one-seat-majority premiership as a way to bring down the “government” and possibly trigger a snap election this fall. In the U.K., the government is the prime minister and his cabinet who simultaneously serve as MPs while overseeing executive branch agencies. Under the current legislative calendar, and absent an early election, the next U.K. election is scheduled for May 2022 under the 2011 Fixed Term Parliaments Act.
A Vacuum Cleaner Nozzle
BrexitCentral Deputy Editor David Scullion provides this assessment of the withdrawal agreement:
“The current Withdrawal Agreement is brimming with sovereignty-sapping poison, purposely designed to lock us into EU laws and keep the EU in charge. Even without the backstop, the surrender agreement is filled with booby traps, each clause subjugating the UK in a wide range of areas.. But simply adapting this failed document is missing the point. You can rip out the backstop and tinker with product standards but the Withdrawal Agreement was designed solely to keep the UK in the EU’s orbit. To put it bluntly: you can replace the nozzle of your vacuum cleaner but it still sucks.”
Johnson’s charisma and optimism has restored the Conservative Party’s market share, but if he goes for BRINO 2.0, the Conservative (or Tory) Party is finished because its grassroots Brexit supporters will abandon it.
In that scenario, Leave-supporting voters will move to the Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party droves, which also includes Labor Party voters who would never consider voting Tory. The Brexit Party could win big in Labor-Leave areas as well as in Conservative precincts.
In some Conservative or even marginal constituencies, however, the erosion of Tory support, and assuming the inability of the Brexit hopeful to win outright in some areas, could allow far-left Labor candidates to slip in pursuant to Britain’s multi-party, winner-take-all system. Voters would likely throw typical tactical voting out the window. And, as alluded to above, a Labor majority in the Commons would result in the ascension as prime minister of Marxist, anti-Semite Jeremy Corbyn.
According to Breitbart London‘s James Delingpole, “The Withdrawal Agreement is an embarrassment, a capitulation, a dog’s breakfast. Farage knows this, all the Brexit Party’s potential voters know this, so indeed does Boris know this: he once famously described it as a ‘polished turd.'”
Unfulfilled Promises
Theresa May insisted more than 100 times that Brexit would happen on March 29, 2019, before ultimately extending the deadline to October 31.
The fact that May dragged her feet until March 29, 2017 to submit a bill to invoke Article 50 of the Lisbon Treaty — that started the two-year divorce process — was a bad sign.
Despite all the subsequent backsliding, about 75 percent of Members of Parliament (MPs) voted for Article 50, however. As it stands now, Article 50 constitutes the law of the land and mandates that the U.K. leave with or without a deal. In the June 2017 snap election, both the Conservatives and Labor promised to deliver a “proper” Brexit.
As far as Brexit is concerned, the Conservatives (who often operate as Conservatives in Name Only) are divided, while Labor has morphed into a pro-Remain group. The much-smaller Liberal Democrats have always been Remainers.
In the next general election whenever it occurs, and it could be sooner rather than later, the Brexit Party plans to field candidates in all 650 parliamentary constituencies, and is close to naming them all.
A Clean-Break Brexit
Writing in the London Telegraph, Farage warned that Boris Johnson could sell out the country’s sovereignty by going along with BRINO 2.0, thereby setting up the Conservatives for a landslide loss when voters head to the ballot box:
“My having listened closely to [Jonson’s] various statements, it is apparent that he now wants to reheat the same European treaty which his predecessor, Theresa May, failed to get through the House of Commons three times. By doing so, I think he risks stepping into very dangerous territory. Despite all of his previous negative comments about Mrs May’s new EU treaty (remember his talk of the UK becoming a ‘vassal state’?) Johnson now seems to think that achieving the withdrawal agreement without the Irish backstop is acceptable…
“Yet without the backstop, this would be the worst so-called deal in British history. It would bind our nation to the customs union; maintain the jurisdiction of the EU’s courts over the UK’s; and would fail to return to the UK control over our own fishing waters. It would also rule out Britain’s ability to strike any new trade agreements outside of the EU and would cost taxpayers £39 billion.
“I know that I am not alone in finding Johnson’s stance deeply alarming. Perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised, though. It can never be said too many times: he is the man who voted for May’s aforementioned abysmal treaty at the third time of asking, back in March, despite having exerted considerable energy criticizing it. He can hardly be called consistent.
“If Johnson does choose to sell out his own people by consigning Britain to such a position of weakness, the Brexit Party would have no choice but to fight him in every seat at the next national poll. If, however, he is brave to do the right thing and go for a clean break Brexit we would put country before party and would help him. Indeed, the Brexit Party would be happy to make him a hero…[T]he Conservatives themselves have lost a considerable amount of public trust in recent years. It is clear the only way they could possibly win a general election outright is with external backing of some kind. In the current environment, they can only rely on the support of one other major party, namely the Brexit Party. .”
Farage has indicated that the Brexit Party would stand down if Boris Johnson delivers a real Brexit (rather than a rebooted or tweaked version of May’s dreadful deal) which likely means a no-deal Brexit. If the Remainiacs in parliament somehow block or extend Brexit again or try to remove Johnson on a no-confidence motion, thereby triggering an election, the Brexit Party candidate would step aside in constituencies where the Conservative candidate is a strong Brexiteer, Farage has suggested.
On a recent podcast, Farage said “If Boris Johnson decides that the right thing to do is go for a clean Brexit, then we would stand down…We will put country before party and support Boris Johnson, and Boris Johnson with our support would be unstoppable. Not only would he win a big majority, he’d be a hero,” the Daily Express reported.
The EU-Loving Establishment
It should come as no surprise that the London-centric, globalist media and its version of the Deep State love the EU and does all they can to promote doom-and-gloom, Y2K scenarios including make-believe food-and-medicine shortages. It’s similar to how the political and media establishment here opposes President Trump’s efforts to protect the American worker in his quest to reform unfair, one-sided trade deals with China and other countries into which previous administrations have entered.
Brexit architect Nigel Farage’s recent interview on Good Morning Britain shows how he can easily fend off the pro-EU media’s tired talking points. He also vowed, as he has done subsequently, to reach an accommodation with the Conservatives if a no-deal Brexit actually comes to pass on Brexit Day, October 31.
There are lots of developments in the Brexit saga. Check back for updates.
Update: The Remainers are intent on giving away the U.K.’s best bargaining chip for a good deal. The Spectator “Evening Blend” email newsletter provided this update on August 30:
“Boris Johnson seems pretty bright-eyed and bushy-tailed after this week, which suggests that anti-no-deal MPs have reacted in just the way he hoped to his decision to prorogue parliament. Giving an interview today, the Prime Minister turned on those opponents, arguing that their attempts to stop Britain leaving the European Union without a deal was actually making the scenario they dreaded more likely. He said: ‘I’m afraid that the more our friends and partners think, at the back of their minds, that Brexit could be stopped – that the UK could be kept in by parliament – the less likely they are to give us the deal we need.’ That hasn’t stopped all the anti-no-deal plotting that’s taking place ahead of next week, which promises to be one of the weirdest and most hectic in British politics for a very long time.”
