Tag: UK

So much for Remainer Tory threats that No Deal Brexit meant Jeremy Corbyn becoming Prime Minister. The first-past-the-post system might actually demolish the Conservative Party to the benefit of Niles Farage and the Brexit Party. And it’s likely that the polls actually underestimate the growing support for Farage. As I’ve often noted in the U.S. context, the so-called “pragmatism” of the moderate Right is often the exact opposite of pragmatic and only assures defeat.

I won’t be terribly surprised if the Republican Party eventually suffers a similar fate if the pro-immigration establishment retains control of the party. I think it is reasonably safe to assume that the national vote share of the Conservative Party in the UK in general elections is going to go the way of its vote share in the European elections if it does not learn that the voters eventually lose their faith in a party which fails to deliver on its most important promises.

Daniel Hannan gets it, but after listening to the Conservative MP who is currently the Defence Minister speak last night, it is obvious that many in the Conservative establishment don’t. They are still declaring No Deal out of bounds even as the people are beating them into extinction due to their refusal to take Britain out of the EU without a terrible deal imposed on them by the EU leaders. The fact that the Tories must listen to the British electorate doesn’t mean they will do so, any more than Republicans appear willing to listen to the US electorate about its complete lack of interest in fighting wars on behalf of Israel.

The Conservative Party in the UK is melting down due to its faithlessness and refusal to deliver the Brexit for which the people voted. They’ll be punished tomorrow in the European elections that should never have taken place, and hopefully to a similar extent in the next general election.

This Sussex Sparkles thing has turned out to be more interesting than Suits ever was:

torontopaper @torontopaper1
Darling, actions speak louder than words. A more united family than ever is exposing your lies. Your house of cards is collapsing. You will get the Tower instead of the paycheck!

torontopaper @torontopaper1
Darling, very telling that you are using your old US cellphone number again lately. By the way the 9 months are over already. Are you expecting an elephant or still looking for a way out where no way out is?

torontopaper @torontopaper1
9 months are over! Your husband is on his family’s side! No paycheck! Your threats are making them laugh! They have more against you and you are alone! And now? Game over! Checkmate!

torontopaper @torontopaper1
Darling, so you are sitting there alone and humiliated in your house of glass with cracks everywhere. People have seen that the rumours became true. Lord Watchdog has shut you down!

Translation: Megan Markles is a complete trainwreck who faked her pregnancy by using a surrogate, but is trying to extort the British Royal Family into some sort of financial settlement before the whole scheme comes crashing down.

I have absolutely no idea what may or may not be true, but I am still astonished that the Queen permitted Prince Harry to marry the woman in the first place. My theory is that they were first married in secret in the United States and then presented the Queen with a fait accompli.

If any of this is true, it strikes me as a very, very bad idea and the very, very wrong people with whom to play this kind of game. One would tend to expect a tragic death in childbirth after delivering a stillborn child.

Seriously, though, where is the baby? And why is Prince Harry off to the Netherlands?

Nationalists across Europe are learning that the ideological gap is smaller and easier to bridge than the globalist gap, as the British follow the Italian lead:

As a left-wing campaigner for 35 years, I’ve been arrested on picket lines, led anti-imperialist demonstrations and spoken at anti-deportation protests outside police stations. I’ve made speeches at street rallies, in prisons and universities and at pubs.

Yet yesterday, in an unexpected twist of events, I found myself sitting next to Nigel Farage, announcing my intention to stand as a candidate for his Brexit Party in the European elections on May 23….

Be in no doubt, this is a watershed moment for democracy. It’s been almost three years since 17.4 million people voted to Leave the EU – the largest popular mandate in British political history. But today, thanks to an ineffective Government and a cabal of staunchly Remain-supporting MPs, we remain shackled to Brussels. It is almost as if a referendum was never held.

Now, with countless MPs and members of the unelected House of Lords lining up to try to overturn the decision of the British people, democratic principles matter more than old party allegiances.

That hero of the Labour movement, Tony Benn, whose criticisms of the Brussels machine would make Jeremy Corbyn’s Islington Set shriek with disgust, once said ‘democracy is the most revolutionary thing in the world’.

How right he was. Without democracy, we are voiceless subjects. But with it, we are citizens armed with the power to change our destinies.

With every political party on the brink of bottling Brexit, now is the time to decide whether we want to be subjects or citizens; whether we want to defy the millions of British voters who opted for Brexit or show solidarity with the ordinary people who look on aghast at the cavalier way in which their voices are being expunged.

I’ll be damned if the Establishment should get away with this act of vote-vandalism.

The Brexit Party can win, not only in the European elections, but in the next national elections. This is a strategic replay of the left-right nationalist alliance between La Lega and Movimento Cinque Stelle that took power in Italy.

The American nationalist Right should follow a similar strategy.

A British Monarch watcher believes Prince William is now the power behind the throne:

Harry’s announcement of a glitzy TV series with Oprah Winfrey and Apple appears to have been enough to spur his brother William into action.

The heir to the throne seems to have spent a lifetime patching things up for his younger brother, but has finally run out of patience. (The role of Harry’s PR Sara Latham in spreading rumors about William’s marriage was probably a factor as well.)

It was William’s decision to send Harry and Meghan away, the Times of London story made clear, even though the person who probably should have been taking charge of the situation was his father, Prince Charles.

Charles has supposedly been running daily operations since his father Philip’s formal retirement in 2017, Philip having long been the power behind the throne for the Queen. But Charles has been making a hash of things, before, during, and after Harry and Meghan’s wedding. His mother doesn’t respect him, and neither do his sons. Charles seems to be a likeable old goat who is fun at a party, but he doesn’t have the spine or the occasional cruelty required for the big job.

If this Africa banishment is remembered a few decades from now, like the Duke and Duchess of Windsor’s exile to the Bahamas, it will probably be remembered as the time when William came into his own.

William appears to be a bit of a Shakespearean figure at the moment: he never wanted the job of King, having seen the pressures of royalty contribute to the death of his mother. Yet now he’s been forced to take it on to avoid further damage to the monarchy, pushing aside his father and sending his once-beloved brother away.

It’s a good start. Now do Brexit!

The British Parliament illustrates the complete failure of representative democracy:

A first attempt by MPs to find a consensus route forward for Brexit has ended in deadlock and confusion after the Commons rejected every option put forward, albeit with a near-even split on the idea of joining a customs union.

Oliver Letwin, the veteran Conservative MP who led the process which allowed backbenchers to seize control of the order paper to hold a series of indicative votes, said the results were “disappointing” but he hoped a new round of votes would be held on Monday.

Brexit: all eight indicative vote options defeated by MPs – live news
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The Speaker, John Bercow, said he would allow this to take place, prompting shouts of protests from many MPs.

The Brexit secretary, Stephen Barclay, said the results strengthened the government’s view that Theresa May’s Brexit deal was the best and only way forward.

On the lack of a majority for any of the eight alternatives put to the vote on Wednesday, he said: “It demonstrates that there is not easy option here, that there is no easy way forward.”

How fortunate that direct democracy has already settled the matter: leave with no deal.

From the Brexit Insider:

Reports in this morning’s press are that there are several Brexiteer ministers on their way to Downing Street to tell Theresa May to get out. There was already suggestions a couple of days ago that Brexiteer MPs were prepared to abstain in a ‘no confidence’ vote in the House of Commons in order to bring down what is at least theoretically their own party’s government.

Under the Fixed Term Parliaments Act 2011, if the ‘no confidence’ vote was lost by the government, there would then be 2 weeks for the parties to attempt to form a government before a general election was mandated. In this time frame, they would defenestrate Theresa May and select a new leader.

The significant problems with this plan are:

1) No guarantee that Theresa May would not Cling-on like a limpet on Noah’s Ark to seek the survival of her Globalist ideology.

2) There wouldn’t be time for the Conservative Party to go through the process of consulting the members around the country on the leadership choice, and the parliamentary party are majority Remainers anyway, so the result could be another Remainer Prime Minister to continue the circus.

It looks to me as if No Deal is going to take place by default on March 29th, the various shenanigans by the EU, Her Majesty’s Government, and the British Parliament notwithstanding.

UPDATE: No Deal announced tonight?

The British political journalists that were on their way to Brussels on the Eurostar for tomorrow’s EU council meeting are apparently scrambling to get back to London for an announcement in Downing Street at 8pm GMT. Others are being told to cancel their dinner plans.

Note that this will be after the 1922 committee meeting of Conservative Party backbenchers that she has been politely invited (read: ordered) to attend. That probably starts at about 6pm, although last time it started at 5pm.

There are reports that Macron has refused any extension, although Juncker is prepared to allow up to 22 May, the day before the Euro parliament elections. The Elysée has however stated that, “No decision will be taken by France before the European council”. Hopefully French intransigence can save Britain from Theresa May’s dithering, and we can have a rousing chorus of La Marseillaise.

UPDATE: It looks like a General Election is going to be announced. The bookies have suspended betting on one.

An update on the latest from our Brexit insider:

UK Attorney General Geoffrey Cox has issued his latest legal guidance on the documents that Theresa May brought back from Strasbourg last night. The legal risk remains unchanged. As expected, Theresa May simply continued her ‘failure theatre’.

There is no method for Britain to exit from the terms of the Withdrawal Agreement unilaterally if there are simply “intractable differences” between Britain and the EU. Since the reason that we are leaving the EU in the first place is due to “intractable differences”, of course those differences are not going to be resolved in the matter of the Irish Border. The Attorney general said the “legal risk remains unchanged” and the “fundamental circumstances remained the same”

Theresa May was attempting to obtain something that would allow Geoffrey Cox to change his advice and recommend the approval of the Withdrawal Agreement, using some sort of codicil, which was given the name ‘Cox’s Codpiece’. The Attorney General was adamant that everything within his codpiece should be in good working order.

Britain can still use the 1970 Treaty of Vienna to cancel any international agreement, regardless of whether that agreement includes a exit clause. Remember that the most fundamental principle of English constitutional law is that no parliament may bind a future parliament.

The Labour Party’s finance spokesman, effectively the #2 guy in the party, said yesterday that the priority is to defeat the government. The Northern Ireland Democratic Unionist Party, upon whom Theresa May depends for the existence of her government, said just now that they will vote against the Withdrawal Agreement. The European Research Group of Conservative Party Brexit supporters, led by Jacob Rees-Mogg will also vote against the Withdrawal Agreement.

So, my prediction is that this evening, Theresa May will be defeated by a similarly huge margin to her defeat in January.

The Labour Party could then legitimately call another ‘no confidence’ motion to dissolve the government, but that would not be successful. No one wants a general election. There is also no mechanism to involuntarily remove Theresa May prior to December 2019. She would have to be persuaded to step down, and there is no indication that she would agree. Fortunately, complete paralysis is a good situation at the moment because the legal default position is ‘no deal’.

During the vote Withdrawal Agreement in the House of Commons tonight, Brexit supporters will move an amendment to rule out a second referendum. This is calling the bluff of the ‘People’s Vote’ campaign, who decided not to move an amendment to have a second referendum. They decided this because there simply isn’t the support in the Commons for another vote. It is likely that Theresa May will support the ruling out of a second referendum because that has always been her position.

This is a clear indication that the Remain supporters know that their position is weakening. National opinion polling has ‘no deal’ at 44{e08cad746da4649304cc119361c7d8e2ee7ced73b617f6c7db2262986ac851da} and ‘remain’ at 30{e08cad746da4649304cc119361c7d8e2ee7ced73b617f6c7db2262986ac851da}, with presumably a large slice of ‘don’t know’ in the middle. Almost no one wants Theresa May’s deal.

Although Theresa May cancelled the votes on ‘no deal’ and ‘delay’ scheduled for Wednesday and Thursday respectively, I suspect these votes will nevertheless happen. The House of Commons will reject the concept of ‘no deal’ and ask for a delay. The EU will then refuse an extension because the UK doesn’t have a plan to achieve agreement to the Withdrawal Agreement, and therefore we will have ‘no deal’. The House of Commons just doesn’t want to be the ones that actually choose ‘no deal’.

UPDATE: 14 MPs have switched sides to support Brexit in our time!

Sky News: 14 MPs have switched sides and will vote for Theresa May’s deal. She now just needs to persuade another 102 MPs to change their opinion to get her deal approved. i.e. She still needs a miracle. The atmosphere in the chamber is being described as “funereal”. The last rites of the Conservative Party.

Our British Brexit expert is now less certain that a no-deal Brexit will take place as scheduled on March 29.