Boris knows the people need to get back power
IT’S the conventional thinking that Boris Johnson has made life far more difficult – perhaps even impossible – for himself in recent weeks by taking a hard-nosed approach to Brexit.
But watching him deliver his set-piece conference speech in Manchester, it didn’t seem that simple.
Here was a bullish Prime Minister delivering a clear message to an audience which the polls suggest is sizeable and has potential to grow further.
He didn’t sound like a man who was disappearing beneath the waves of mass, unified opposition.
It’s certainly true, however, that he hasn’t got everything right. For example, his confidence that Labour would actually vote for an election, after endlessly demanding one, has thus far proved unfounded.
He should have gambled on Jeremy Corbyn and co being even more shameless than he imagined.
But much of the critique of Johnson’s approach is wishful thinking. The Prime Minister did not create the roadblocks to Brexit which pepper the Westminster landscape. They were already there, immovable; he simply exposed them.
THERE is no alternative universe in which the 21 Conservative MPS who lost the whip are willing to vote in line with their 2017 manifesto pledge for Brexit, deal or no-deal – even if they haven’t, like Rory Stewart, quit the party altogether. Just look at their willingness to do anything – even stripping their own party of power – to prevent no-deal and undermine the chances of an agreement.
Removing the whip did not reduce the Government’s majority, it simply corrected the official number to match the reality.
Similarly, consider the Liberal Democrats. Their switch from wanting a second referendum to simply demanding Brexit be cancelled outright without even the fig leaf of a re-run was accompanied by lorry-loads of excuses.
Apparently they were compelled to adopt an antidemocratic policy because the Government are fascists who keep trying to do what voters want. It seems the people should be ignored by politicians in order to prevent a “coup”. Or something like that.
This is claptrap. The reason the Liberal Democrats now want to ignore the referendum result, and remain in the EU regardless of the financial or democratic cost, is that this is what they have always wanted.
That was their desire back when they pretended they backed a second referendum not in order to Remain, oh no, just to settle the type of Brexit we should pursue.
The only change is that nowadays they say their true wish out loud and in public.
Then there’s Labour. A party led by Corbyn, a lifelong Eurosceptic, who is willing to disregard his beliefs in order to gain power.
LABOUR’S grassroots and MPS have made progress in their internal campaign for Remain, but they are more consumed with infighting than anything else. Corbyn himself would take or leave Brexit so long as he is still able to say “Tories bad” afterwards.what’s really new?
And finally we have Parliament – signified, heaven help it, by the Speaker. Having effectively invented a new constitutional principle earlier in the year, John Bercow continues to discredit the institution he is meant to defend.
Every so often, backbench and opposition MPS appoint themselves as a temporary executive in order to disrupt the programme of the actual government, egged on by a Speaker whose attachment to consistency is decidedly less strong than his attachment to the sound of his own voice.
This all amounts to an undeniably difficult situation for the Prime Minister but that is not new: his position has been tough since the day he won it.
Most of the above was true when Theresa May was in office. But while she sullenly went along with the insistence of her opponents, Johnson rails against them. He recognises that they mostly cannot be appeased, and appeals instead to the popular desire to get Brexit done as promised.
Ironically, the behaviour of the pro-eu great and good bolsters his case.
There is their willingness to disregard democracy just to get their way. Their easy setting aside of supposedly fundamental differences to parrot Brussels’s lines in unison. Their eagerness to believe the best of the EU and the worst of the UK at every turn.
Add to these their attempt to force the Government to perform the pantomime of sending a letter begging for another extension that it does not want.
And now the laughably misnamed idea of a “Government of National Unity” – composed, of course, only of hardcore Remainers, and supposedly led by Bercow (I’m not making this up).
Their every action starkly illustrates Johnson’s message that this is a clear choice for voters: all of the rest, arrayed in an arrogant We-know-best coalition, or him. The politicians, or the people.
Remain, and with it the vast cost and endless intrusion of ever closer union, or Leave.
Many MPS dislike the prospect of voters taking such a decision.
Indeed, they may keep trying to postpone it for a time; but they cannot avoid it for ever.
‘Rebels will even strip their party of power to prevent a no-deal’