So if the EU don't agree or don't reply the Uk slips out the back door - just as well Corbyn took no deal off the table.
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So if the EU don't agree or don't reply the Uk slips out the back door - just as well Corbyn took no deal off the table.
Why do you get the feeling that Cummings strategy is working? Nobody expected Boris to get a deal, even try for one, but all seemingly convinced the Benn Act will stop a 'no deal', when in reality it only stops the 'no deal' on the 31st Oct. not at the end of any extension that may or may not be granted, or may or may not be accepted.
In the event, Boris did however, despite all predictions manage to land an agreement over a new (or nearly new) WDA with the EU. In the process though he throws the DUP under a bus, in the sure and certain knowledge that they will kick up a fuss and even more than that, they will to punish him. Punish him they do by voting against him twice, helping to delay the Bill, hoping he will re-think things... well maybe!
The EU, not surprisingly are getting sick to the back teeth of the 'Grand Old Duke of York' act and whilst they will want to go the extra mile to avoid a 'no deal' they will want to see, in granting any extension, an actual end to it all. The problem is what is a further extension for?
A second referendum gets us nowhere unless millions of people change their mind (either way) which now seems completely unlikely and the opposition unite completely, which they have so far not been able to do. Even a GE, may solve nothing, if it is a hung parliament, or even more likely an unholy alliance between Tories and the Brexit party, might occur, to take up the deal; if the their numbers are big enough, they could take the 'No deal' option after all. In the extreme, a massive shift in the Lib-Dem vote might enable them to move towards a revoke solution, but its highly unlikely, since they would still face, Tory/Brexit Party and disillusioned Labour MPs and have no guarantee of uniting what's left of the opposition.
So you can understand why Macron is reputedly saying "enough is enough" (or the equivalent in French), advise the EU takes the hit, knowing or at least believing in will be worse for the UK and get on with the rest of the EU pressing business.
In the event, Boris did however, despite all predictions manage to land an agreement over a new (or nearly new) WDA with the EU. In the process though he throws the DUP under a bus, in the sure and certain knowledge that they will kick up a fuss and even more than that, they will to punish him. Punish him they do by voting against him twice, helping to delay the Bill, hoping he will re-think things... well maybe!
The EU, not surprisingly are getting sick to the back teeth of the 'Grand Old Duke of York' act and whilst they will want to go the extra mile to avoid a 'no deal' they will want to see, in granting any extension, an actual end to it all. The problem is what is a further extension for?
A second referendum gets us nowhere unless millions of people change their mind (either way) which now seems completely unlikely and the opposition unite completely, which they have so far not been able to do. Even a GE, may solve nothing, if it is a hung parliament, or even more likely an unholy alliance between Tories and the Brexit party, might occur, to take up the deal; if the their numbers are big enough, they could take the 'No deal' option after all. In the extreme, a massive shift in the Lib-Dem vote might enable them to move towards a revoke solution, but its highly unlikely, since they would still face, Tory/Brexit Party and disillusioned Labour MPs and have no guarantee of uniting what's left of the opposition.
So you can understand why Macron is reputedly saying "enough is enough" (or the equivalent in French), advise the EU takes the hit, knowing or at least believing in will be worse for the UK and get on with the rest of the EU pressing business.
Topcat9 from guardian comments:
Brexit is the dodgy surgeon who promises you a penis that’ll touch the ground, and delivers this by ... chopping of your legs.
Brexit is the dodgy surgeon who promises you a penis that’ll touch the ground, and delivers this by ... chopping of your legs.
How interesting that the Tories were goading Labour to call an election. Chicken was the rediculous description of G Cox.
And now that it is the other way round and Mr Bumble wants an election because parliament voted down the timescale for approval of his deal, they are sitting on their hands.
Who is chicken now...
And now that it is the other way round and Mr Bumble wants an election because parliament voted down the timescale for approval of his deal, they are sitting on their hands.
Who is chicken now...
So remainers are clearly going to support Labour.
Yup... Can see the libs getting more votes than them in the next election.
There is no way many leave voters want a corbyn type deal that would be even closer ties than Johnson's
And I think today they just shredded their last pretence at credibility with remainers
They can fish in the small pool of people who actually bother to vote and don't see brexit as the major political issue at the moment
Allow me to introduce Dominic Slack-Oxley. Never heard of him, I hear you cry. Oh but you have. You hear from him every time you pick up a newspaper or turn on the TV news. Slack-Oxley is everywhere. More than Facebook or Vladimir Putin, he is the most reliable source of fake news in Britain.
When you read about ‘Downing Street sources’ saying with absolute authority that Boris Johnson would never send a letter to Brussels to extend the Article 50 deadline, only for him to do just that, Slack-Oxley is to blame. When political correspondents boast of their exclusive access to ‘Number 10 sources,’ ‘Government sources’ and the ‘Prime Minister’s official spokesman,’ they mean Dominic Slack-Oxley is using them to push out the latest propaganda line.
Like many fantastical fictions, Dominic Slack-Oxley is not one man but many. A part of him is Robert Oxley, Boris Johnson’s press secretary, and a former spin-doctor for Vote Leave. Here is how he operates. On 24 August, the Observer revealed that Johnson was considering closing Parliament to avoid scrutiny of his Brexit plans. Oxley told political correspondents attending the G7 summit the story could not be more wrong. They dutifully reported a ‘government spokesman’ as saying the ‘claim that the government is considering proroguing Parliament in September in order to stop MPs debating Brexit is entirely false.’
I phoned those correspondents up and they told me that Oxley was the ‘government spokesman’ in question. I passed the information on to Observer readers, and it was not denied.
A few days later Jacob Rees-Mogg persuaded the Queen to suspend Parliament on Johnson’s behalf.
When you hear ‘the Prime Minister’s official spokesman’ promise that X will happen, only for Y to happen within hours of his announcement, you are usually hearing the voice of the unimprovably-named James Slack. Any sensible Conservative politician would run a mile from him. While he was working at the Daily Mail, he wrote the copy for its ‘Enemies of the People’ attack on the judiciary of November 2016, before being appointed as the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesperson by Theresa May. Nothing did more to radicalise liberal opinion and turn moderate conservatives against the Brexit right. As a result, most people on my side of the argument believe Brexit is no longer just a fight about membership of the European Union but a defence of the British constitution against its enemies. But then Johnson has to appeal to the portion of the electorate lost in raging conspiracy theories about the ‘Remainer elite’ and I suppose it isn’t a surprise that he didn’t sack Slack or cut out the Slack, but kept him in the job instead.
Behind them both lies Dominic Cummings. The Downing Street press operation fears him as a loose cannon but dares not contradict him. I suppose it is to the credit of Westminster journalists that they actually acknowledge Cummings exists. And for this chink of transparency – this one glimmer of light amid the murk – their readers and viewers are doubtlessly grateful. I doubt, however, if one reader or viewer in a 100,000 knows the names of Oxley or Slack.
And that’s just the way Dominic Slack-Oxley likes it. By extending the protections afforded to whistleblowers (whose jobs would be at risk if they were identified) to official government spokesmen who take no risks and whose actual job, paid for by the taxpayer, is to speak out for their employer, journalists create a propagandist’s paradise.
Paragraph 14 of the Special Advisers Code of Conduct says: ‘Special advisers must not take public part in political controversy… They must observe discretion’ and ‘express comment with moderation’. It accepts that special advisers charged with dealing with the press are allowed ‘a degree of political commitment’. However, ‘briefing on purely party political matters must be handled by the Party machine’.
It forgets to note that, as long as journalists are the eager conduits for unattributed spin, the code is unenforceable.
Here are two newspaper stories that make the point for me. The first appeared in the Mail on Sunday at the end of September. Number 10 ‘sources’ claimed Remain MPs were engaged in ‘foreign collusion’ with the French government and the EU in a ‘plot to allow John Bercow to send a “surrender letter” to Brussels asking for a delay to Brexit’. The second story should have appeared but didn’t. It reported that Oxley, Slack or Cummings or a Dominic Slack-Oxley combination of the above ‘claimed’ that a plot was afoot.
Between the two stories lies the difference between a free press and a courtier press. Openness allows politicians and their sidekicks to be held to account when the story is revealed to be ‘party political’ garbage. It was always likely that it would in this case. The Mail on Sunday piece even admitted that ‘No 10 declined to discuss what evidence they had’. And as a point of fact, Johnson forgot his promise to ‘die in a ditch’ rather than ask for an extension and sent the ‘surrender letter’ himself.
Reform should begin at the editorial level. Reporters would not dare stand up to Downing Street on their own, so editors, particularly editors at the TV stations, must take two steps. They must insist that when the Prime Minister’s official spokesman (or his counterparts in the opposition parties) gives a briefing he must be named – as he is in virtually every other modern democracy. Editors would then have to decide whether to blow the whistle when a ‘Downing Street source’ consistently fed them fake news, or quietly ban their reporters from speaking to him or her again.
You may retort that the pack of Lobby correspondents contains some of the best journalists in the country – and you would be right. You could say that Westminster journalism has always offered the protection of anonymity to ‘sources’ who don’t need it. And you would be right again. The trouble with the Johnson administration is that it has taken existing conventions and pushed them to the point where political correspondents are complicit in disinformation campaigns. In the end, their viewers and readers will lose trust in them. Indeed, many already are. As Robert Harris said recently ‘the quality of Brexit coverage would be vastly improved if Dominic Cummings was named as the source each time he briefs a journalist. In 40 years I’ve never seen so much hyperbolic garbage treated as serious news.’
The Lobby has allowed Dominic Slack-Oxley to become Westminster’s equivalent of Macavity the Mystery Cat, who can never be caught or held to account for his crimes. If T.S. Eliot were covering the Brexit debacle, he could update Cats and write:
‘Slack-Oxley, Slack-Oxley, there’s no one like Slack-Oxley
There never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place – SLACK-OXLEY
WASN’T THERE!’
When you read about ‘Downing Street sources’ saying with absolute authority that Boris Johnson would never send a letter to Brussels to extend the Article 50 deadline, only for him to do just that, Slack-Oxley is to blame. When political correspondents boast of their exclusive access to ‘Number 10 sources,’ ‘Government sources’ and the ‘Prime Minister’s official spokesman,’ they mean Dominic Slack-Oxley is using them to push out the latest propaganda line.
Like many fantastical fictions, Dominic Slack-Oxley is not one man but many. A part of him is Robert Oxley, Boris Johnson’s press secretary, and a former spin-doctor for Vote Leave. Here is how he operates. On 24 August, the Observer revealed that Johnson was considering closing Parliament to avoid scrutiny of his Brexit plans. Oxley told political correspondents attending the G7 summit the story could not be more wrong. They dutifully reported a ‘government spokesman’ as saying the ‘claim that the government is considering proroguing Parliament in September in order to stop MPs debating Brexit is entirely false.’
I phoned those correspondents up and they told me that Oxley was the ‘government spokesman’ in question. I passed the information on to Observer readers, and it was not denied.
A few days later Jacob Rees-Mogg persuaded the Queen to suspend Parliament on Johnson’s behalf.
When you hear ‘the Prime Minister’s official spokesman’ promise that X will happen, only for Y to happen within hours of his announcement, you are usually hearing the voice of the unimprovably-named James Slack. Any sensible Conservative politician would run a mile from him. While he was working at the Daily Mail, he wrote the copy for its ‘Enemies of the People’ attack on the judiciary of November 2016, before being appointed as the Prime Minister’s Official Spokesperson by Theresa May. Nothing did more to radicalise liberal opinion and turn moderate conservatives against the Brexit right. As a result, most people on my side of the argument believe Brexit is no longer just a fight about membership of the European Union but a defence of the British constitution against its enemies. But then Johnson has to appeal to the portion of the electorate lost in raging conspiracy theories about the ‘Remainer elite’ and I suppose it isn’t a surprise that he didn’t sack Slack or cut out the Slack, but kept him in the job instead.
Behind them both lies Dominic Cummings. The Downing Street press operation fears him as a loose cannon but dares not contradict him. I suppose it is to the credit of Westminster journalists that they actually acknowledge Cummings exists. And for this chink of transparency – this one glimmer of light amid the murk – their readers and viewers are doubtlessly grateful. I doubt, however, if one reader or viewer in a 100,000 knows the names of Oxley or Slack.
And that’s just the way Dominic Slack-Oxley likes it. By extending the protections afforded to whistleblowers (whose jobs would be at risk if they were identified) to official government spokesmen who take no risks and whose actual job, paid for by the taxpayer, is to speak out for their employer, journalists create a propagandist’s paradise.
Paragraph 14 of the Special Advisers Code of Conduct says: ‘Special advisers must not take public part in political controversy… They must observe discretion’ and ‘express comment with moderation’. It accepts that special advisers charged with dealing with the press are allowed ‘a degree of political commitment’. However, ‘briefing on purely party political matters must be handled by the Party machine’.
It forgets to note that, as long as journalists are the eager conduits for unattributed spin, the code is unenforceable.
Here are two newspaper stories that make the point for me. The first appeared in the Mail on Sunday at the end of September. Number 10 ‘sources’ claimed Remain MPs were engaged in ‘foreign collusion’ with the French government and the EU in a ‘plot to allow John Bercow to send a “surrender letter” to Brussels asking for a delay to Brexit’. The second story should have appeared but didn’t. It reported that Oxley, Slack or Cummings or a Dominic Slack-Oxley combination of the above ‘claimed’ that a plot was afoot.
Between the two stories lies the difference between a free press and a courtier press. Openness allows politicians and their sidekicks to be held to account when the story is revealed to be ‘party political’ garbage. It was always likely that it would in this case. The Mail on Sunday piece even admitted that ‘No 10 declined to discuss what evidence they had’. And as a point of fact, Johnson forgot his promise to ‘die in a ditch’ rather than ask for an extension and sent the ‘surrender letter’ himself.
Reform should begin at the editorial level. Reporters would not dare stand up to Downing Street on their own, so editors, particularly editors at the TV stations, must take two steps. They must insist that when the Prime Minister’s official spokesman (or his counterparts in the opposition parties) gives a briefing he must be named – as he is in virtually every other modern democracy. Editors would then have to decide whether to blow the whistle when a ‘Downing Street source’ consistently fed them fake news, or quietly ban their reporters from speaking to him or her again.
You may retort that the pack of Lobby correspondents contains some of the best journalists in the country – and you would be right. You could say that Westminster journalism has always offered the protection of anonymity to ‘sources’ who don’t need it. And you would be right again. The trouble with the Johnson administration is that it has taken existing conventions and pushed them to the point where political correspondents are complicit in disinformation campaigns. In the end, their viewers and readers will lose trust in them. Indeed, many already are. As Robert Harris said recently ‘the quality of Brexit coverage would be vastly improved if Dominic Cummings was named as the source each time he briefs a journalist. In 40 years I’ve never seen so much hyperbolic garbage treated as serious news.’
The Lobby has allowed Dominic Slack-Oxley to become Westminster’s equivalent of Macavity the Mystery Cat, who can never be caught or held to account for his crimes. If T.S. Eliot were covering the Brexit debacle, he could update Cats and write:
‘Slack-Oxley, Slack-Oxley, there’s no one like Slack-Oxley
There never was a cat of such deceitfulness and suavity.
He always has an alibi, and one or two to spare:
At whatever time the deed took place – SLACK-OXLEY
WASN’T THERE!’
I don't treaty many polls with much significance/credibility in the present atmosphere but this does at least suggest that Johnson's humiliating failure with his 'do or die' pledge to secure Brexit by the end of the month is going to harm him come an election.
And this is why the Lib Dem’s are back.
Most voters believe violence against MPs 'is price worth paying' over Brexit
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-against-mps-is-price-worth-paying-for-brexit
https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news...-against-mps-is-price-worth-paying-for-brexit
Our favourite, Katya with a flextension thread.....
Not sure I'd trust that, the swing from CON to LAB seems a bit overboard.
I don’t buy that. As long as he gets a date not long after, they’ll quickly forget about the Oct 31st do or die nonsense. Just like they did with March 29th.
Is it not more of a defection from Con to Brex? If so the question is where will those voters go after Brexit.
Straight back to Con probably. In every sense of the term.
That poll is also a week out of date now... And as the saying goes a week is a long time in politics
https://d25d2506sfb94s.cloudfront.n.../mh2qgto87a/TheTimes_191021_VI_Trackers_w.pdf
That has conservatives on 37 and labour on 22 with Brexit on 11...
I think Things can move a lot between now and December 12 (or another date) ... If the brexit party stand everywhere or not will.perhaps play a big part in the outcome ... And I still wouldn't be shocked to see a non aggression pact between brexit and conservatives (provided Boris promices nigel.a cushy number when his EU gravy train runs dry)
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Ah, so it's a bit old. Fair point, but seemed like Lab had clawed a few points back from Lib.
As it stands the UK will have left the EU in less than 7 days. Possibility that the EU may not give a decision until after parliament have voted on whether to have an election.
That's my guess too.
Idiocracy is doing well everywhere these days.
Anyone who uses this movie for reference should be sentence to 10 years of hard labour.
labour is at around 25 in most polls so not big swing. more like con -> bxp.
Won't volutility in some seats were Brexit is a big deal one way or another be where this election is won and lost - tactical voting could be very important.
It would be a travesty if an election was fought on a party's Brexit stance only.
We shouldn't be having an election anyway, we have to respect the will of the 2017 voters. It's an OWTRAJE!!!
Since brexit is all anyone has been talking about recently, completely dominates political thinking, and is behind a visible once in a generation realignment, you’d be lucky if the election is about anything else.
Labor will try but BoJo and his merry band of Brexiteers won't let them.
If Labour had formed an honest policy on Brexit sometime over the last three and half years it wouldn't be a problem for them. Much as I don't like the Tories they would be stupid not to take electoral advantage of it.
The fact there is anything to take advantage of makes me think my country of birth is doomed.
I agree with Baldrick.
The fact the government are out today saying to the media that they won't put anything to parliament including what was in the queen speech unless Labour agree to a GE because his deal MIGHT get amendments is pathetic.
They're essentially saying if we can't just pass everything we want then we won't bother governing. I mean why bother with parliament
Government on strike. I have never heard anything like that in my life.
See Brain of Britain Corbyn is insisting on ruling out no deal - if the EU don't reply, you're out mate.
It's a bold strategy. I'm not sure how a Tory government going on strike is going to play with their union hating base to be honest.
It's not a given. Theresa May tried to have a Brexit election but she got railroaded because people's lives don't revolve around Brexit.
It disgusts me that everywhere I go, even at my kids nursery there's a collection for the local foodbank. I just can't see how this country can vote Tory!
Good bloody grief.
Good bloody grief.
Blimey that's bad. I want Lib Dems to run a good campaign as they need those southern seats but i can only see them ballsing it all up.
I mean that's not going to happen is it?