Let’s hope nation can see through Johnson’s trap as he tries to set up no-deal Brexit no-one wants

“WILL you walk into my parlour said the spider to the fly.”

Blustering Boris issues a clarion call for a December 12 election, partly as a smokescreen to his failed, die-in-theditch delivery of Brexit on October 31.

It’s also a trap, as during the fiveweek election campaign that would follow such an agreement, Parliament is suspended, but the Executive is not and such is the distrust of Johnson and his entourage that he would not in this period use Executive powers to pull off a no-deal that no sensible Opposition politician would fall for yet another piece of Johnson nonsense

The little fly’s response to the spider is salutary in refusing to go into the spider’s parlour: “For whoever goes up your stairs can ne’er come down again.” With his retirement now looming, European Commission president Jean Claude Junker, castigates Johnson for his lies during the referendum campaign.

So bankrupt of trust is this administration that it has painted itself into a corner of its own making, but Johnson seeks to lay the blame everywhere else other than at his own door and to promote the fallacy of a ‘Parliament versus him’ Brexit scenario.

Labour also struggles with the wider perception in the electorate of the character of Jeremy Corbyn, which has severely neutered its effectiveness against an administration in complete disarray and lacking a workable majority.

However, Corbyn has come from behind before — albeit against a lacklustre May election campaign.

We are also hearing rumblings of the Government ‘downing tools’ if an election on December 16 is thwarted; indeed, the November 6 Budget has been dropped, despite Sajid Javid’s assurances that he would be presenting it.

Again, it begs the question: who is running the country? Certainly not the ministers of state, it would appear.

One hopes the electorate is now seeing Johnson’s honeyed words for what they are. As the moral of the Spider and the Fly story tells us: “To idle, silly, flattering words I pray you ne’er give heed!”

OBSERVER

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