Johnson threatens Brexit rebels with party expulsion
Sayeth that bastion of anti-Brexit sentiment Reuters. But what I find more interesting is this:
House of Commons Leader Jacob Rees-Mogg said any wise party would prepare for an election and that the rebel legislation would be considered a matter of confidence in the government. “It is important for the government to establish the confidence of the House of Commons and this is essentially a confidence matter: Who should control the legislative agenda, Jeremy Corbyn or Boris Johnson?” Rees-Mogg said.
As I have said before, the way to get Nigel Farage (not Jeremy Corbyn, that is a canard) in No.10 is for enough of the Château-bottled shit who make up much of the ‘Conservative’ Party to prevent Boris from delivering a clean Brexit. That is the magic ingredient which transforms Farage from a remarkable political outlier into a political kaiju who will flatten London (well, Westminster specifically). The Brexit Party exists almost exclusively to rip the two main parties apart (but particularly the Tories) if we end up with No Brexit or Brexit-in-name-only. There are enough adults in the Tory Party to have figured out that out too, meaning they understand that certain ‘Big Beasts’ like Ken Clarke and several dozen others need to be purged from the party utterly, completely, unambiguously and unapologetically, or the entire Parliamentary Tory party will be able to drive to the House in three or four black cabs after the next General Election.
They have it within their power to make the Brexit Party pretty much just go away, and they would have to be cretins not to see how to do that. Sadly, if we have learned anything in the last three years, Parliament is awash with cretins. I always used to think it was a mistake to assume my enemies were idiots, but… well, we will see.
On every level, threatening expulsion to the likes of Hammond, Grieve et al is the right thing to do at this point. They are becoming an essentially existential threat to the Tory party itself and the Tory party is not adverse to a bit of ritual murder from time-to-time, which is why it has outlived just about every other political party in the world (since 1678 as I recall).
Political treason is easy, but that doesn’t mean it is without cost. Hammond, Grieve et al need to pay the butchers bill.
I dunno. I can’t see me overcoming my disgust factor and voting Tory again.
They let Grieve and Hammond and their little friends in to positions of power they could just as easily do so again. New Labour had a longish run in power, bu the real damage has been allowing those policies to continue with a blue rosette on top. If you stack up all the freedoms, liberties and money they have frittered away, the Tory Party and the Labour Shambles should both just cease to exist….
It is a difficult situation, because we should never forget that hard-core Brexiteers — the kind who will get off the couch long enough to mail in a postal ballot on a pointless EU election — constitute about 1 person out of 8 in the UK. My contacts in the UK seem to suggest that most people just want the whole Brexit mess to be over — they are tired of it. But that does not mean they are enthusiastic about Brexit, or that they have thought about what follows.
So if BJ kicks out some Tory Party members, they won’t disappear; they become martyrs to some greater cause, and probably form their own party in opposition to BJ.
At the next election, there would then be these self-identified “True Tories” splitting the vote with BJ’s Conservatives and Farage’s Brexit Party. Add in Lib & Lab, and who knows what kind of strange result would come from the First Past The Post system, which can become a form of Russian Roulette when there are more than 2 significant candidates. Especially in a post-separation world in which there has been effectively zero preparation of the electorate on what is to follow Brexit.
Scylla and Charybdis come to mind.
Thinking about historical precedents — Will Boris Johnson’s reward for leading the British people to victory in Brexit be the same one that Winston Churchill got for leading the British people to victory in World War II?
People who know more about British electoral history than I do may identify some lessons for Mr. Johnson and the Conservatives there.
The failure of the Conservatives to win the 1945 election was caused by a number of factors which had nothing to do with Churchill. There hadn’t been an election since 1935, despite the Labour Party leading in the polls since about 1942.
The main figures in the Labour leadership were involved in the government throughout the war period and they had been able to demonstrate competence in office.
The Labour party manifesto promised significant investment in post-war reconstruction, healthcare and jobs. But the idea that the country could operate well with a command economy (as was shown during the war), rather than the laissez-faire capitalism of the Conservatives (which was blamed for the high unemployment of the 1930’s) was also a factor. To cap it all off, the Tories 1945 manifesto was pretty vague on detail and uninspiring against the explicit commitments of the Labour Party.
http://www.conservativemanifesto.com/1945/1945-conservative-manifesto.shtml
John G — One interpretation of that historical message from 1945 is that it will not be enough for Boris & the Tories to rest on their laurels and crow about having achieved Brexit — if they want to win an election, they will have to lay out a convincing plan for what they plan to do next, post-separation.
To Mr. Galt’s points, with which I agree, much output from the wartime Ministry of Information, many “public information ” films lauded the idea of a planned economy, which doubtless swayed people somewhat. Then there were issues with lost service votes- which given the number overseas at the election might have had a significant effect.
I also suspect the biggest part was that Labour had never really been given the chance to govern in its own right (so ignoring the brief minority government of 1923 which only happened because of Liberal support). There was a general feeling that Labour should be given a chance and since they didn’t have the track record of failure that modern Labour have they were swept into power on a 10% swing to Labour in the 1945 election.
Nowadays we only have to look back to the turgid Blair years and his illegal wars or the failures of the Wilson and Callaghan years of the 1970’s to fundamentally reject Labour promises in their entirety. Quite simply, the country is not in a position to risk even a brief period of administration under these thinly veiled Marxists.
Once having got into Number 10 it might be surprisingly hard to get the bugger out again (as the Blairite faction of his own party have found already trying to oust him from the role of Supreme Leader).
It’s not even Grandpa Death that worries me so much, it’s the coterie of the hard left that surrounds him, especially Len McCluskey, John McDonnell and
Seumas Milne. Grandpa Death is an old man in a hurry and if he gets the keys to number 10 to act as a sock puppet for others, I think he will have no problem with that.