Party’s over for me and slippery Boris
WERE the BBC licence fee still collected by government and Ministers had taken away the right of the over-75s to free viewing, the BBC would be howling with outrage and the presenters of the Today programme would be having a field day.
Now that it is the other way around, the BBC suddenly becomes costconscious.
Next time a Minister is attacked for refusing to spend money on something the BBC thinks he or she should, there will be a ready-made answer.
SEVERAL times a day I am asked when I am going to rejoin the Conservative Party. The answer is not for a long time. While the trade negotiations are in full swing the Brexit Party is urgently needed to hold slippery Boris Johnson to account. Why do I call Boris slippery? Let me give just two examples.The first was the answer to two parliamentary questions tabled by a senior MP last week. He wanted to ascertain what Boris would do if the EU parliament were to reject the Boris deal: leave anyway or get yet another extension? So he asked in what circumstances the PM would be prepared to leave the EU without a deal or in what circumstances ask for an extension, hoping the answer to the second would be “none” and to the first that it would happen if the EU Parliament failed to endorse the withdrawal agreement.
Here is the answer: “Once our Brexit deal has been approved by parliamentarians the UK will leave the EU on the 31st of January.”
You couldn’t make it up.
THE second example is more serious because the government does not want you to know what it is doing: we are becoming more deeply embroiled in the European Defence Union, despite the withdrawal agreement not obliging us to. Boris uses such expressions as “unwavering” support for the security of Europe. Indeed, but Europe is bigger than the EU and it is Nato which keeps the peace.
Another question, this time tabled in the House of Lords and designed to find out exactly what relationship government was contemplating with the EU Defence Union, was similarly evaded.
This of course is the same Boris, who, despite knowing full well that he had no chance of leaving the EU on October 31, continued to insist that he would. So when he promises that the transition will end on December 31 of this year, I react with hope rather than faith.
And that is why I won’t be re-joining the Conservative Party any time soon.
BIG
Ben won’t bong for Brexit. The government first whined it was too expensive and then, faced with some pretty determined crowd-funding, whimpered pathetically that it could not persuade the House of Commons officials. So who runs the country? The government or Commons officials? Answers on a postcard to Boris at Number 10.
OF COURSE Meghan Markle wasn’t driven out of this country by racism. It is a ludicrous claim and symptomatic of how ridiculous the must-be-offended-at-allcosts brigade has become.
On the contrary, it was widely said that the arrival of Meghan proved the Royal family knew how to adapt to modern times and an enormous fuss was made of her quiet, dignified mother, Doria.
Meghan hasn’t been driven out by anything except boredom and the indulgence of her own wish for wealth and a celebrity lifestyle without dull duty attached. She is spoiled and celebrity-obsessed.
What Meghan wants, Meghan gets. I can only hope that Harry will not find it as difficult to adapt to her lifestyle as she did to his.
BASIL Brush’s “boom-boom!” may be a bit choked this week with the announcement of the death of Mr. Derek. I remember the hours of innocent fun and helpless laughter the pair gave me in the 1970s – and I was in my 20s at the time!