Boris blasts plotters
He warns rebels’ bid to block No Deal will make it MORE likely – and risks destroying voters’ trust for ever
BORIS Johnson last night told MPs they risk causing ‘catastrophic damage’ to British democracy if they try to delay Brexit again next week.
The Prime Minister said attempts to keep us in the EU beyond October 31 would undermine negotiations with Brussels and make the chances of a deal ‘less likely’.
And he warned that the current generation of MPs ‘won’t be forgiven’ if they fail to deliver on the referendum result.
His intervention came as proRemain MPs intensified their discussions about how to thwart Mr Johnson’s ‘do or die’ pledge to take Britain out of the EU on time when Parliament returns next week.
Former Cabinet minister Sir Oliver Letwin, a key figure in the cross-party plot, refused to deny that Commons Speaker John Bercow had even interrupted his holiday in Turkey this week to advise rebel MPs on the best way to defeat the Government.
The loose alliance of plotters has been in operation for months, with Sir Oliver and former attorney general Dominic Grieve leading a handful of Tory rebels in helping the opposition frustrate the Government’s plans.
They have been working closely with a number of key opposition figures, including shadow Brexit secretary Sir Keir Starmer, former Labour Cabinet ministers Yvette Cooper and Hilary Benn, and former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Vince Cable. Many of the key meetings have been held in Mr Benn’s Commons office.
In recent weeks their numbers have been bolstered by a string of former ministers sacked by Mr Johnson, including the former chancellor Philip Hammond, the former justice secretary David Gauke, the former business secretary Greg Clark and the former international development secretary Rory Stewart.
Mr Gauke is the convenor of the so-called ‘hairshirt club’ of former ministers which helped prevent Theresa May taking the UK out of the EU without a deal.
The plotters discuss their plans over WhatsApp, in a group featuring a unicorn as its logo. Mr Gauke reportedly said as justice secretary that a so-called ‘managed No Deal’ Brexit was ‘a unicorn that needs to be slaughtered’.
The group comprises more than a dozen former ministers including Richard Harrington, Margot James, Steve Brine, Anne Milton and Alistair Burt.
Work and Pensions Secretary Amber Rudd, who helped found the group, has been kicked out of its discussions after agreeing to sign up to Mr Johnson’s strategy.
The plotters have been aided by Mr Bercow, who has torn up Commons conventions to allow backbenchers to seize control of the Commons timetable to force through legislation that would normally be the preserve of the Government.
The Speaker is meant to remain neutral in all debates. But he has previously boasted of voting Remain in and reacted with fury this week when Mr Johnson announced a short suspension of Parliament to hold a Queen’s Speech in mid-October.
Mr Bercow interrupted his holiday to issue a statement in which he condemned the action – signed off by the Queen – as a ‘constitutional outrage’.
Pro-Remain sources said they expected Mr Bercow to intervene on their side again next week by allowing an emergency debate that would enable rebel MPs to seize control of the agenda the following day to pass legislation requiring Mr Johnson to seek another Brexit delay if he cannot get a deal.
Sir Oliver acknowledged he had been in talks with Mr Bercow in recent days about how to accelerate the plans following Mr Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament in the week beginning September 9.
He told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme: ‘I know that there are a number of my colleagues who feel as I do, that a disorderly No Deal exit is a very bad idea, and they have in the past been willing to come and support efforts to prevent that happening and I very much hope that will happen again.’
On the Labour side, shadow attorney general Baroness Chakrabarti said Mr Johnson’s decision to prorogue Parliament had ‘probably
‘Public school dirty tricks’
strengthened our numbers’ with people ‘more focused, especially on the Conservative side’.
She said there were ways of preventing ‘any sort of public school dirty tricks’ aimed at blocking legislation when it reaches the Lords. However, Tory Chief Whip Mark Spencer stressed that attempts to tie Mr Johnson’s hands would make No Deal more likely.
‘It’s time to get behind the PM… and strengthen his hand at the table,’ he said. Mr Johnson reinforced the message in a series of interviews in which he said there was ‘movement under the keel’.
The PM, who this week ordered officials to step up talks with the EU, said the Government’s hard deadline for exit ‘greatly strength
ened our position’. He added: ‘I’m afraid that the more our friends and partners think, at the back of their mind, that Brexit could be stopped, that the UK could be kept in by Parliament, the less likely they are to give us the deal that we need.’ He also warned there would be a backlash if votes in the 2016 referendum were not respected.
‘ If we frustrate that mandate… it will do lasting damage to people’s trust in politics. It will do lasting and catastrophic damage to the major parties in this country and I think this political generation won’t be forgiven for failing to honour that promise.’
THREE days on and prorogation hysteria continues to seethe away inside the Westminster bubble.
Listening to Baroness Chakrabarti yesterday, you’d think Boris Johnson had abolished Parliament, rather than given MPs a few extra days off after the rigours of party conference season.
It was, she railed, a constitutional outrage. A malign bid to subvert democracy. A ‘public school dirty tricks’ campaign.
As the woman who connived so brazenly to brush Labour anti-Semitism under the carpet, it’s a bit rich for Lady Chakrabarti to impugn the integrity of others.
And if she’s so censorious about public school behaviour, why did she send her son to a top £18,000-a-year private college?
But she was not alone in her hysterical condemnation. The Guardian could scarcely contain its rage.
Its editorial described the Johnson premiership as ‘an unelective dictatorship’ with ‘no public mandate’. As justification for this risible notion, the paper points out he was chosen by the Tory membership, rather than the wider electorate.
Did they level the same charge at Gordon Brown, when he succeeded Tony Blair without an election, or Jim Callaghan when he took over from Harold Wilson? Not liking – even despising – the prime minister is not the same as living under a dictatorship.
Yet Labour calls it a ‘Right-wing coup’ and the Momentum mob strains at the leash to ‘protest, occupy and blockade’.
In Parliament, there are backstage plots to overturn the Government ‘by any means necessary’, as the whole of London SW1 is gripped by collective paranoia.
Meanwhile, conventional legal attempts to block prorogation suffered an early setback yesterday, when the Scottish courts sensibly declined to rule that Mr Johnson was acting illegally.
There will be further bids next week but the reality is that no laws are being broken. Indeed, Speaker John Bercow – in conspiring with various plotters during the painful martyrdom of Theresa May – flouted parliamentary rules far more blatantly.
Yes, there is an element of sharp practice in forcing the Remain alliance to come up with a coherent plan. But they will have ample time to have their say.
And it’s easy to understand Mr Johnson’s impatience. For three years Parliament has done nothing but thwart any attempt to take Britain out of the EU.
According to our poll today, large swathes of the country share his frustration. The Tories now enjoy a seven point lead over Labour (compared with a six point deficit early last month).
Mr Johnson trounces Mr Corbyn on every measure from intelligence to statesmanship, and while there is some unease at prorogation, only 28 per cent believe it’s serious enough to merit civil disobedience.
While the Westminster blob dithers and delays, it’s abundantly clear the people desperately want to get this job done. Just more evidence of how our political class has lost touch with those who pay their wages.
The Prime Minister has promised to ‘step up the tempo’ of talks, instructing his negotiators to meet their EU counterparts twice a week in the run-up to the key European Council summit on October 17.
As he himself put it: ‘We are in the last stages of negotiating with our friends. The best way to succeed in that negotiation is for everybody to be united in the objective.’
Everything else has been tried. It may be high-risk stuff, but it may now represent our only chance of securing a deal.
What we need from MPs now is constructive dialogue, not these puerile histrionics.
For all Lady Chakrabarti’s witterings about prorogation, wilfully betraying the referendum result would be the real constitutional outrage.