Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[The Larch]

However the mainstream media have been banging that drum for decades and made little headway. When it comes down to it not that many people read the Daily Fail et al and watch Question Time.

Oh, sure, the Daily Heil is only your country's 2nd most circulated newspaper. 

And yeah, EUphobia had such little headway amongst the British people until the digital age.... give me a break.

The data backs me up.
The top newspaper in the UK, The Scum, has a circulation of 1.4 million. Then you've 1.2 mil for the Fail, 0.3 for the express and so on. This is only a small amount of the population.

Yougov have been conducting polls on what issues people care about for a long time. The EU has rarely cracked beyond the mid teens, and then only for brief spikes up to 30% or so when it was in the news, that is until the referendum.

Away from the data you can see it in the Tory's years in the wildnerness vs. Blair. They fought on a very Euroskeptic platform. They failed miserably.

Labour had withdrawal from the EU as part of their official platform until the early 80s, British media has had an overwhelming Euphobe attitude (specially the tabloids) since the early 90s at the very least, Boris himself served a healthy dose of bullcrap for the Telegraph when he was Brussels correspondant from 89 to 94, grocers who refused to comply with British regulations that made it mandatory to label in metric units were turned into martyrs for the public by the media in the early 00s, UKIP (active since the 90s) has been a major player since the mid-00s, to the point of overtaking Labour in 2009 and being the most voted party in 2014, Cameron ordered to take the Conservatives out of the EPP as soon as he took control of the party in 2005. And you still want to say that it was only Facebook that took the issue to the forefront?

[Zanza]

According to Trump, any post-Brexit trade deal with the UK will involve opening the NHS to private US companies.

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/06/opinion/health-care-nhs-trump.html

So while those sheep farmers will lose business, at least they'll also go deeply in debt for treatment of any health issues.

I keep hearing all of this talk about opening up the NHS to US companies...but how would that work?  Surely there is no talk about actually dismantling the NHS or making Brits pay out of pocket for what is now covered?  The news stories, including the one linked, never seem to have any actual details, just empty rhetoric.

Moving from a tax financed system to an insurance based system would be the biggest possible change, which could open a big market for foreign insurance companies. Selling of the health service providers like hospitals and changing the way the NHS sets low standard prices for medication could be big changes too, that open up parts of the health market in Britain.

[Josquius]

However the mainstream media have been banging that drum for decades and made little headway. When it comes down to it not that many people read the Daily Fail et al and watch Question Time.

Oh, sure, the Daily Heil is only your country's 2nd most circulated newspaper. 

And yeah, EUphobia had such little headway amongst the British people until the digital age.... give me a break.

The data backs me up.
The top newspaper in the UK, The Scum, has a circulation of 1.4 million. Then you've 1.2 mil for the Fail, 0.3 for the express and so on. This is only a small amount of the population.

Yougov have been conducting polls on what issues people care about for a long time. The EU has rarely cracked beyond the mid teens, and then only for brief spikes up to 30% or so when it was in the news, that is until the referendum.

Away from the data you can see it in the Tory's years in the wildnerness vs. Blair. They fought on a very Euroskeptic platform. They failed miserably.

Labour had withdrawal from the EU as part of their official platform until the early 80s, British media has had an overwhelming Euphobe attitude (specially the tabloids) since the early 90s at the very least, Boris himself served a healthy dose of bullcrap for the Telegraph when he was Brussels correspondant from 89 to 94, grocers who refused to comply with British regulations that made it mandatory to label in metric units were turned into martyrs for the public by the media in the early 00s, UKIP (active since the 90s) has been a major player since the mid-00s, to the point of overtaking Labour in 2009 and being the most voted party in 2014, Cameron ordered to take the Conservatives out of the EPP as soon as he took control of the party in 2005. And you still want to say that it was only Facebook that took the issue to the forefront?

Nobody will deny the media bas been pushing europhobic bollocks for years.
Yet people just did not care about Europe until this stupid referendum and the lies shoved right in our face.
It's not just something I'm thinking. There's over a decade of polling that shows this.

I had to check what you meant about ukip as that doesn't match up to what we've seen. It seems you're talking about European elections. Ukip do so well there because turnout is so low. And as the referendum shows when presented with a vote on something you will come up with an opinion. That doesn't mean you normally think much of it.

[Tamas]

There was a very procedural cross-party motion today in the Commons that was supposed to give a last chance to the MPs to prevent the government pushing through a no deal ending to this mess. I am not even sure of the details of how it was supposed to do that, but it doesn't really matter either: it has been voted down by a majority of 11.

It seems MPs think that now the only way to prevent No Deal (if the next PM wishes to enact it) is to bring down the government before that happens.

Dominic Grieve, one of the few remaining sane Conservatives, had this to say about it (before the Nay vote happened):

If we get to a point where a prime minister is intent on doing this [taking the UK out of the EU without a deal], the only way of stopping that prime minister would be to bring down that prime minister's government.

And I simply have to say here and now I will not hesitate to do that if that is what is attempted, even if it means my resigning the whip and leaving the party. I will not allow this country to be taken out of the EU on a no-deal Brexit without the approval of this house, in my view going back to the country and asking them if that is what they want.

So me, desiring the best for my party, as a loyal member of it, as far as I'm concerned, this is probably the last opportunity to have a sensible way of influencing the outcome ...

I was elected as member of parliament for Beaconsfield to represent my constituents' interests. No-deal is not in their interests, and nor is there the smallest shred of evidence that there is some majority for this appalling and chaotic proposal. Yet I have to face up to the fact that there are some people who wish to lead my party who appear to believe that it is a viable option, and indeed that they can't become leaders of my party without it being an option that they are prepared to put forward - all part of process, I'm afraid, of further deceit which is slowly swallowing up the democracy of this country and the reputation of this house.

So, I simply say this; I shall support the motion. I disagree on most things with [Jeremy Corbyn], I disagree fundamentally with every tenet of his philosophical outlook. But I have to say it is the only opportunity we've got. And I'm not going to spend my time talking to children or grandchildren later on saying, 'When it came to it, I just decided to give up.' I won't do that.

[mongers]

I'm beginning to think this process won't go as swimmingly as I at first thought. 

[Richard Hakluyt]

I'm beginning to think this process won't go as swimmingly as I at first thought. 

I'm hoping, in about ten years time, to have Amazon deliver a book to me called The Strange Death of Conservative England 

Every cloud and all that.

[Syt]

[Tamas]

Still, it is happening.

[Tamas]

https://politics.co.uk/comment-analysis/2019/06/14/week-in-review-something-terrible-is-about-to-happen-and-we

For years the idea, like the man himself, was a hilarious joke. Boris Johnson, the knowingly bumbling TV magnet with the focus-grouped scarecrow hair and the carefully lovable bursts of Latin, ascending to lead one of the world's largest economies! It was a satirist's dream of Britain, a dystopian feudal theme park injected into your brain by PG Wodehouse. Johnson's Britain would be a country which had lost any ideals or seriousness and given itself up to the anaesthesia of full-technicolour political entertainment. Ha ha! Could never happen.

Well, as the saying goes, the joke's on us. The unimaginable horror now seems almost inevitable. An ego attached to flesh is about to get exactly what it wants and none of what it deserves. Everything about our sense of natural justice tells us this must be wrong. We may not like Jeremy Hunt or Sajid Javid but they have demonstrated a degree of competence and maturity and we can oppose them in a fair fight. But there is nothing reasonable, trustworthy or dependable about Johnson. He is not capable of telling a simple truth or delivering a basic promise. He has demonstrated over many years his manifest unfitness for any kind of high office, and the fact we are having to repeat that now in itself feels remarkable. And yet here we are. We are today living that bad dream in which your unconscious tantalises you with the rush of impending disaster while you remain frozen to the spot. Boris Johnson is coming, there's nothing you can do, and you're already awake.

It seems hard to remember now, but Johnson was thought to be down and out just a few months ago. His call to 'fuck business' had infuriated even some of his allies, while moderates were appalled by his open courting of Steve Bannon and Nigel Farage. His notorious ridiculing of the burka last year, and almost inconceivably offensive remark in March that money to investigate historic child abuse was 'spaffed up the wall', further alienated him from the party's centre. But then the Tories remembered what they were put on earth to do: win.

Why do they want to win? Nobody knows or cares. It's just good, that's all. And you want to know what Johnson would do with the win? Why? It doesn't matter. It's not the point.

...

[garbon]

[Iormlund]

Interesting if rather long.

Jeremy Vine on Boris

With four minutes to go, Boris Johnson ran in. I was already concerned – maybe more concerned than Boris. It was an awards ceremony at the Hilton, Park Lane. The room was packed with financial people in bow ties. It was a couple of years before Johnson became Mayor of London. At this point he was a backbench Conservative MP and newspaper columnist. Right now he was due to make a funny speech.

In four minutes.

There I was, at 9.26pm, sitting with a table-load of London bankers, trying to answer their questions. 'Will Boris actually arrive?' 'Is he normally this late?' 'Has he got lost?'

I answered them all as best I could:

(a) I'm sorry (b) I don't know (c) I don't see Boris Johnson that often

You see, I explained, I am only here to hand out the awards for... (I consulted the sign at the back of the stage)... 'for International Securitisation,' and Boris is making the after-dinner speech. So we have not coordinated at all. I don't know where he is. Yes, I'm a little worried too.

To be perfectly frank, I had not the first idea what securitisation was either. The event was named something grand like The International Securitisation Awards 2006 and I really did not want to ask what exactly the prizes were being handed out for, since I was the one handing them out.

Suddenly – BOOM. A rush of wind from an opened door, a golden mop, a heave of body and dinner jacket onto the chair next to mine, and the breathless question, at 9.28pm:

'JEREMY. Where exactly AM I?'

I actually had that stress feeling – a kind of sunburn, creeping across my arms and back. So he was late and he had not prepared a speech. And he was due onstage in ninety seconds.

I said, 'It is the Securitisation Awards, Boris.'

He said, 'Right-o. And who is speaking?'

'You are.'

'Good God,' he cried. 'When?'

I looked at my watch. 'Um – pretty much now.'

Eyes widened around me. I speak at quite a few dinners and always feel most comfortable if I do some research a couple of weeks before – what's the occasion (that helps), who is attending, etc. – then write the speech longhand in advance. It is not that I am the school swat. It is just that underpreparedness, that dream where you are sitting final exams in a subject you didn't know you were supposed to revise, scares the pants off me. Later we will talk about public speaking and what I've learnt about it. But right now, this was an emergency.

I noticed we now had the attention of the whole table.

Boris said: 'Okay, first up. What IS securitisation?'

Nervous laughter. A man from one of the big Far East banks, who had the luxurious rich-person's coiffe you see on magazine covers, explained quietly in a mid-Atlantic purr. 'It is where we take your debt, your mortgage, say'

Boris is staring at him.

'...and we split it into tiny pieces, combine each of them with other similar slivers of debt, and sell them around the world so the risk effectively disappears.'

Everyone nodded.

The words would echo back to me two years later, when all those invisible slivers of debt would suddenly return to sender, flooding back at us in one huge avalanche of manure that kept flowing until it buried banks, businesses and homes across the western world and almost stopped the cashpoints working.

For now, this guy was the expert and we were listening.

Boris asked for a sheet of paper. Someone produced a piece of A4, the reverse side of our menu for the night. He laid it on his thigh, below the tablecloth.

'Anyone got a pen?' he said. 'Quick!'

A biro slid across the table. Very quickly, taking it, the future Mayor of London and Foreign Secretary began to write what looked like a plan for a speech. It was now past nine-thirty. One of the organisers was staring at us imploringly from the other side of the room, as if thinking: 'How much longer can we give him?' I felt that pricking of the skin again. If I could sense the stress on his behalf, what on earth was Boris feeling? This was going to be a catastrophe. He was going onstage in a minute or two with barely-legible notes written on the back of a menu and no idea even of which event he was attending. An after-dinner speaker normally talks for twenty to thirty minutes. How much material did Boris have? Looking at the scrap of paper I could make out very little of what his scrawl said. There seemed to be about ten words. There was one at the very top that I could make out:

SHEEP

and then, a few inches below that, another in capitals:

SHARK

but I could not read the rest of the scrawl. Boris harrumphed and groaned, as if straining at an idea. Then his arm was tugged and I heard the announcement: 'Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome MP and journalist, Boris Johnson, to the stage.'

Applause.

I pressed my palms into my trouser legs, ready for the catastrophe. And then I noticed: he had accidentally left his page of notes on the table. Could I run up with them? It would be too obvious. He was already at the podium.

'Ladies and gentlemen... errrrrrrrr,' he began.

This could be even worse than I imagined. They might have to cut out of it early and go straight to the awards. I had a five-minute speech myself, followed by the eighteen securitisation awards. The script was in my hand. I would need to be ready.

Boris had the look of a man who had been dragged out of a well by his ankles. His blond hair seemed to spring vertically from his head as he embarked on some opening remarks, where the occasional word, not always the obvious one, was shouted at double-volume.

'...errrrr, Welcome to THE International. Errrrr...'

The catastrophe had happened. He did not know, could not remember, what event he was at. This is one of the biggest fears any speaker has, forgetting where they are.

Johnson then did a crazy thing. To find out where he was, he very obviously turned around and looked at the large logo projected at the back of the stage.

'...to the International SECURITISATION Awards! YES!' he cried triumphantly, and to my amazement it brought the house down. There was a huge cheer. Everyone realised this was not going to be a normal speech. The chaos had descended on us, we were in it, and we were going to enjoy it.

'SHEEP,' he began. He started a story about his uncle's farm and how OUTRAGEOUS it was that they couldn't bury animals that had JUST died, as they used to do back in the sixties, seventies and eighties. No, he said, EU regulations meant an abattoir had to be involved. 'One died today. A SHEEP. And my uncle had to RING a fellow at an abattoir fifty MILES away. His name was Mick – no, it was Jim – no, sorry, MARGARET, that was it, MARGARET..."

People were now, not just roaring with laughter, but listening. He continued.

'Which is why my political hero is the Mayor from JAWS.'

Laughter.

'Yes. Because he KEPT THE BEACHES OPEN.'

More guffawing around me. He spoke as if every sentence had only just occurred to him, and each new thought came as a surprise.

'Yes, he REPUDIATED, he FORESWORE and he ABROGATED all these silly regulations on health and safety and declared that the people should SWIM! SWIM!'

More uproar.

'Now, I accept,' he went on in an uncertain tone, 'that as a result some small children were eaten by a shark. But how much more pleasure did the MAJORITY get from those beaches as a result of the boldness of the Mayor in Jaws?'

Brilliant. The whole room is hooting and cheering. It no longer matters that Boris has no script, no plan, no idea of what event he is attending, and that he seems to be taking the whole thing off the top of his head.

I realise that I am in the presence of genius.

The speech is now about halfway through. Perhaps gaining in confidence after the disaster with the timings and his forgotten notes, Boris embarks on a story about a former Foreign Secretary, George Brown.

As soon as he starts, I know what to expect. The 'George Brown in Peru' story is so well-known that most people have stopped telling it. The tale is probably untrue. George Brown was a high-ranking Labour politician in the sixties and seventies who took to drinking as a result of the pressures of high office (he famously said, 'A lot of politicians drink and womanise – I've never womanised'). He was said to have been at an official reception in South America when he saw a beautiful Peruvian in front of him and asked for the honour of waltzing with her.

The reply came in three parts.

'I cannot dance with you, Foreign Secretary, sir, firstly because you are drunk. Secondly, sir, because the band is not playing a waltz, as you imagine, but the Peruvian national anthem. And thirdly, I cannot dance with you because I am the Archbishop of Lima.'

So the story goes. Boris ploughs into it with gusto. 'And the reply came back, from this vision in red, NO, I cannot DANCE with you, firstly because you are drunk."

He paused.

'SECONDLY because this is not a WALTZ but our national ANTHEM.' Again, a pause. 'And – and thirdly because...'

Now Boris had stopped.

He looked around.

There was silence.

He looked behind him at the logo on the screen, as if International Securitisation Awards was going to help.

A lone person at the back burst out laughing as we waited.

Finally, from the stage: 'I am terribly sorry, everyone, I have forgotten the third reason. Very sorry about that.'

It brought the house down. He had spent five minutes starting the story about George Brown and forgotten the punchline. I had never seen anything like it before.

Something about the chaos of it – the reality, I suppose – was utterly joyful. The idea that this was the opposite of a politician, that suddenly we had an MP in front of us who was utterly real, who had come without a script or an agenda and then forgotten, not just the name of the event but his whole speech and the punchline to his funniest story. I watched in awe.

Finally he said, 'Right-o. Jeremy VINE is out here and he will be presenting the...' (looks behind him again) '...International Securitisation Awards..." (cheering because he has said the name a second time) '...and I ACTUALLY have some of those very trophies here.' He starts handling one of the glass awards. 'I suppose you could call this, not really an award, but a sort of elongated lozenge.'

Laughter. A wave. Cheering. Applause.

I did something I have never done before. Ditched all the funny things I had planned to say as a warm-up to the awards, because I realised what I was saying could not be even faintly amusing after that. I had been completely blown off the stage.

Later I sent Boris a postcard: 'Boris. Brilliant. Inspired. Funniest speech I have ever seen. In the presence of the master. Jaws!'

He responded a week later in the scrawl I remembered from the back of the menu:

'Jeremy. You were INCREDIBLE.'

I thought about that night for a long time. During the Blair years, we got used to a way of presenting information that was so mechanically smooth, so professional, that in the end we stopped believing any of it. This mastery of the message eventually backfired completely and came to be known as spin. When Gordon Brown took over as Prime Minister, his first public performance was praised because his head was blocked by a pillar, meaning that the main camera was unable to get a proper shot of his face. Was Boris, with his total lack of varnish, part of the new wave?

Eighteen months after the marvellous securitisation night, I arrived at an awards ceremony for a totally different industry. I cannot recall whether it was concrete or chiropractors, but once again I had dutifully done my research and brought my script. However, the organisers had asked for only five minutes of opening remarks.

'Is someone else speaking?' I asked.

'Boris Johnson,' the organiser said, a frown appearing on her brow. 'Do you know where he is?'

And here we were again. He was due to speak at nine-thirty. He arrived seven or eight minutes before the actual moment, heaving and laughing himself into the chair beside me.

'Jeremy,' he said, 'what is this?'

I told him. Others at the table helped. Did they have a pen, paper? Both were produced. A better ballpoint this time, and the back of the menu again. I watched, fascinated, as Boris pulled the paper tight across his thigh and wrote a few words – yes, SHEEP was definitely one – in a barely-legible scrawl.

Then he was on.

'It is wonderful, and a privilege, to be here at – oh goodness.'

Laughter.

He turns, reads if off the screen.

Shocked expression, as if that has honestly never happened before, my God, I am so sorry, how embarrassing to forget which awards I am at.

Louder laughter. The hair everywhere.

Into the tirade about the uncle who is not allowed to dispose of a dead sheep on his farm and had to call the man at the abattoir. 'I can't remember his name. Mick – no, Jim. No. Hang on. It was MARGARET...'

Then to the Mayor from Jaws, who kept the beaches open.

A moment's pause. 'I do accept that some small children were eaten by a shark as a result...'

The hair really is all over the place now, as if rising to meet the level of the audience's appreciation, the script left on the table beside me again, people at the tables lapping it up.

On we go to the George Brown story. This time he will remember the first, second and third reason, won't he? He can't forget the punchline to this story again, can he?

'SECONDLY because this is not a WALTZ but our national ANTHEM. And, and thirdly because...'

I sit forward in my seat. I can't believe what I am watching.

'This is very embarrassing. I am awfully sorry, I have forgotten the third reason. Very sorry, let's move on, forget about it.'

Brings the house down.

Now he is about to introduce me and I think I know what will happen, and it does.

'I actually have some of the – er, well, I suppose you could call them AWARDS here. A sort of trophy. Well, really this looks like a kind of elongated LOZENGE...'

As he said that phrase for the second time – elongated lozenge – I had the Hercule Poirot moment. Having read all sixty-six of Agatha Christie's detective stories as a teenager, I came to realise the vital moment was actually not the scene where everyone assembles in the living room to hear Poirot explain how the murder happened and who did it. No, the key instant in each book comes just before the denouement as the solution suddenly falls into place in the brain of the great man. At that point the crime-busting Belgian touches the delicate ends of his moustache, winks at the air and utters the key phrase:

'Now, mon ami, now I understand everything.'

Watching Boris at that second event, in the middle of a crowd of dinner-jacketed businesspeople all laughing and hooting, I was momentarily apart from the proceedings. I would have touched the ends of my moustache if I had one. People who speak after dinner don't usually get to observe each other because no one books us in pairs. So when we do accidentally come together, we watch with close fascination. Now, I thought, now I understand everything.

Since then we have all seen Boris's progression: MP, then a twice-elected Mayor, then Cabinet Minister. Now on the brink of being Prime Minister.

And watching him from a distance I have often remembered those two speeches and wondered.

Johnson became Foreign Secretary after leading the argument for Brexit. He has had his ups and downs – before deciding that everything he does is part of a brilliant act, we should probably call as evidence his shambolic run at 10 Downing Street in the summer of 2016. His leadership campaign was kyboshed at the very press conference he had booked to launch it. MPs who turned up to support him sat with their jaws slack as he told the world he would not be able to do the job. Surely that was a real accident? People who fake car crashes tend not to get hurt in them.

And yet.

I realised that those two Boris speeches had made me pose the fundamental question, the one that concerns you most when you listen to a politician:

Is this guy for real?

[mongers]

Britain is about to 'elect' its very own Trump.   

[Admiral Yi]

Boris, for all his abundant flaws, is not in the same league as Donald.  Donald's retardation, egotism, pettiness, and disrespect for the law run circles around Boris.

[mongers]

Boris, for all his abundant flaws, is not in the same league as Donald.  Donald's retardation, egotism, pettiness, and disrespect for the law run circles around Boris.

I'll wager he'll make a bigger fist of it here, than Trump will end up doing in the US.

[mongers]

Hang on, sections of the Tory press are attacking Rory Stewart for having possibly lied years ago about being an SIS agent. 


I thought spies were supposed to, you know, lie about being a spy?