BORIS: I WON’T SURRENDER NO DEAL THREAT
Defiant PM tells MPs to control their tempers but insists he will keep talking tough
BORIS Johnson is insisting he will not be silenced over Brexit.
Labelling a rebel law blocking a no-deal scenario “the surrender act”,
the Prime Minister vowed to continue his tough-talking stance.
Remainer MPs have accused him of inflaming divisions after he savaged them for “surrendering” to Brussels.
And ministers yesterday criticised the scenes of anger in the Commons this week.
But Mr Johnson refused to apologise, though he did call for tempers to “come down”.
He said: “I think it’s fair enough to call the surrender act what it is.
“I think it is absolutely reasonable. But we do need to bring people together, and get this thing done.
“Tempers need to come down, and people need to come together. Because it’s only by getting Brexit done that you’ll lance the boil, as it were, of the current anxiety and we will be able to get on with the domestic agenda.”
Tory chairman James Cleverly warned MPs the “deeply uncomfortable” atmosphere will not lift until Brexit had been delivered.
He said: “I don’t feel that Opposition parties are genuine about trying to resolve this issue.”
In a private meeting, Mr Johnson told the Conservative’s backbench 1922 Committee he would not water down his attack on Brexitblocking legislation.
Paul Scully, the party’s deputy chairman, said the atmosphere at the meeting had been “positive”.
He added: “At the end of the day, the surrender act is literally a backbench MP who has written a letter to give to the UK Prime Minister, which gives the EU permission to tell us when we can leave the EU. By any dictionary definition this surrenders power to the EU.”
Mr Johnson also faced criticism after telling MPs on Wednesday they should honour the memory of murdered parliamentarian Jo Cox by delivering Brexit.
Defence minister Johnny Mercer said the PM should have been “more sensitive” when speaking about Mrs Cox, who campaigned for Remain.
He also labelled this week’s ugly Commons scenes as “unnecessary”, adding: “The problem is that the selective outrage mob want it exclusively their way. Honestly? It’s all unnecessary, and I wish it wasn’t a feature of politics.
“But the reality is many MPs have stoked this fire for years, and cry wolf when it becomes a two-way street. To be completely clear, my kids, wife and I are threatened regularly. BJ should have been more sensitive on Jo.
“But that aside, the outrage is in my view confected from a political class totally devoid of the communities they claim to represent. Dark times. But we will get through.”
Tory MP Bob Seely added he has been the victim of threats but does not “become a diva about it”.
Former Conservative leader Iain Duncan Smith yesterday said Mr Johnson’s critics were trying to “stir this up”.
He added: “I don’t think that what the Prime Minister said about the bill – and termed it a surrender bill – is in any way an incitement.
“It is a statement of fact because it
would surrender rights to the European Union.
“We didn’t want it, he doesn’t want it, but he is entitled to call it what he likes. It doesn’t incite anything else except debate.
“I think that those who want to try to stir this up are people who don’t want to have that debate.”
Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage said: “When Boris Johnson uses words like surrender and betrayal, he is right.”
Speaker John Bercow described the furious Commons clashes when Parliament resumed on Wednesday as the worst he had seen and claimed the culture had become “toxic”.
He granted an urgent question on the Prime Minister’s use of language to Labour MP Jess Phillips, who called for Mr Johnson to apologise.
But she was immediately condemned by former Cabinet minister Maria Miller for “screaming the loudest” when the Premier addressed MPs onWednesday.
Tory MP Sir Bernard Jenkin said MPs should not use the murder of Jo Cox to “try and make political points”. He said: “There is already a danger in these exchanges of it turning into a holier-thanthou competition.”
Cabinet Office minister Kevin Foster insisted the Government was working to create a safe environment for those in public life.
And he stressed that “no one is a traitor for saying what they believe”.
Meanwhile, Mr Johnson last night confirmed his plan to go ahead with a full Tory conference next week, in spite of the lack of a Parliamentary break.
The PM had suffered another defeat yesterday when MPs rejected his call for a Commons break during the Tory conference.
The Tories had requested a threeday recess to ensure their gathering in Manchester could go ahead without ministers and other MPs facing the possibility of having to return to Westminster for crucial debates.
Mr Johnson now plans to deliver his speech in the traditional slot at the end of the conference on Wednesday instead of attending PMQs. A senior Conservative source said “Parliament’s decision to break with convention and deny a three-day recess would not interfere with the Conservative Party conference next week”.
The source added: “Cabinet agreed that conference should address the public’s biggest concern of getting Brexit done to allow Government to deliver on people’s domestic priorities.”
THE Supreme Court judgment on Tuesday was supposed to be a triumph for democracy, getting MPs back to work to debate Brexit and other burning issues of the day. Instead, having seen the spectacle of the House of Commons in action, many people will ask why couldn’t the politicians have done us all a favour and stayed away?
The House of Commons has always been rowdy. But what we witnessed on Wednesday evening wasn’t a healthy democracy in action. It was two tribes tearing into each other.
Genuine debate revolves around arguments and counterarguments.What MPs are doing is simple point-scoring.They are just trying to embarrass, humiliate and shame each other. It is a pathetic sight. It is as if the perpetually angry individuals who spend every waking hour raging against each other on Twitter have taken over Parliament. So much for the “kinder and gentler politics” which they keep promising to introduce.
What a contrast it was watching the Commons and the children who went on last Friday’s “climate strike”.
I don’t agree with the extreme agenda which is being advanced by the climate strike movement. Much of it is impractical and would greatly harm the economy. But I have to concede that their behaviour was considerably better, and more mature, than that of our MPs.
IAM struggling to discern what were the substantive issues debated in the Commons. Maybe there were some, but they have been drowned out by the row over the Prime Minister’s claim that the best way to honour Jo Cox, the Labour MP murdered by a far-Right extremist in 2016, was “to get Brexit done”.
Boris Johnson was extremely silly to rise to the bait of the backbench Labour MP who brought up the subject. Jo Cox campaigned for the Remain side of the argument. It is highly unlikely she would welcome any kind of Brexit now.
But Labour’s claim to occupy the moral high ground when it comes to Parliamentary debate is absurd. Its Remain-backing MPs accuse the Prime Minister of using “inflammatory” language by referring to the law requiring him to ask for a further extension of Article 50 as the “surrender bill”. Yet they have spent months trying to whip up fear about a no-deal Brexit.
Just two weeks ago TUC secretary Frances O’Grady accused Boris Johnson of “surrendering to the Brexit Party”. I don’t remember the Left being too upset about that. Yet when the Prime Minister uses the very same word he is accused of using “inflammatory” language and by doing so whipping up hatred against Remain MPs.
If you really want inflammatory language, the worst offender is Labour’s shadow chancellor John McDonnell, who in 2014 spoke of trade unionists organising a “sack Esther McVey” day, asking: “Why are we sacking her? Why aren’t we lynching the bitch?” You don’t have to watch the House of Commons for very long to appreciate that, with its current make-up of MPs, it is never going to succeed in resolving Brexit. The Commons won’t tolerate no deal, but then neither would it support Theresa May’s deal either.
Back in March, with the aid of Speaker John Bercow, MPs seized control of Commons business from the Government. They then held votes on a series of eight options, from rescinding Article 50 to entering a customs union, and rejected every single one of them.
As the Prime Minister observed on Wednesday, we now have a zombie Parliament, unable to put into effect the instructions of the UK population in the 2016 referendum and which cannot decide on much else either. It doesn’t just need proroguing for five weeks – it needs dismissing for good.
WE desperately need a general election and a new set of MPs who can make some kind of progress. Yet perversely, opposition MPs are thwarting this – in spite of having spent the past few months continuously demanding an election.
It must be the first time in modern political history that opposition parties have turned down the chance for an election. Most would have revelled in the chance to put their message out to the nation.
It is bizarre – though perhaps it isn’t hard to understand why they are so shy of putting themselves before the electors. They know in what low esteem they are now held by the public.
I don’t want a “kinder and gentler” politics. I want robust debate. But what I do want is MPs who make arguments backed by logic and facts – rather than hurling insults.
Sadly, I have come to the conclusion that we are not going to get it from this bunch of MPs.
We need Parliament dissolved and a new one elected.