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So old posts are as good as new! And lots of useful links!

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Saturday, September 7, 2019

Johnson's Real Game?

Blogposts zap into cyberspace and rarely get a response.
Boffy’s Blog is one of blogs I recommend on my blogroll and is run by someone who clearly sleeps with one eye open!
I feel privileged that he has taken the trouble to correct/update my last post with no fewer than two comments which I am happy to bring to my readers’ attention in a proper manner – with the relevant hyperlinks thrown in as a bonus…….  

You have missed Johnson’s real nuclear option – to which I drew attention in my post of 3 September – and that is to wait until October 17th, having spent five weeks attacking (those who deny Brexit and) the cowardice of the opposition who refuse to fight an election…….then simply resign rather than ask for an extension.
He knows the opposition is comprised of an unprincipled rabble with no concept of strategy, and wholly consumed by concern for immediate parliamentary tactics - what Lenin called “parliamentary cretinism” - and their own party interests. The Liberals have said again they will not vote to make Corby Prime Minister as head of the rabble alliance. Labour cannot possibly support anyone other than Corbyn without destroying itself.

When the rabble alliance collapses, unable to form an alternative government, this results automatically in the General Election that Johnson wants, because they only have 14 days after he resigns to do so.

He goes into the election looking principled and able to restore order, they go into it looking like the unprincipled, disorganised, squabbling rabble they actually are.

Labour's Brexit position always shaky has disintegrated again on contact with the battlefield. It now appears to be that a Labour Government would negotiate its own fantasy Brexit deal, then it would put it, along with remain to a new referendum, and in that referendum, it would then argue for a Remain vote, against its own deal that it had just wasted time negotiating.

You really could not make this nonsense up, and that indicates that the rabble alliance really do not have a clue, which is why, unfortunately, Johnson is likely to win.

This is indeed highly plausible….My thanks to Boffy for taking the trouble of drawing it to everyone’s attention. That, so far, no one else has taken up that idea is indeed a sad reflection on the British commentariat!

Update; Despite appearances, Johnson is no fool…and has revealed a ruthlessness in the past week which few had expected. In removing the whip from 21 Conservative MPs (and effectively removing the chances of their surviving as MPs in any future election), he has cleared the decks of dissenting voices and warned the remaining Tory MPs to be in no doubt of the consequences of any disloyalty to his line….

And, in the latest explosive news, a senior Minister of his has just resigned with a massive attack on his leadership for “political vandalism”.

The same story also confirms that Johnson is also this weekend considering placing a simple motion of “No Confidence” before the House and whipping Conservative MPs to support it. 
Of course, he doesn’t seem to have the votes for it any more – and the Speaker may well rule it out of order (on the basis presumably that it repeats last week’s failed motion) 

But if that is the way he goes in the next 36 hours, then it would clearly demonstrate that Boffy is right....and that his first act on October 17th will be to resign. 
My hunch is that he will not want to show his hand too soon.....and that he will not therefore seek a "No Confidence" vote on Monday

Update; The Constitution Unit blog had this post a couple of weeks ago https://constitution-unit.com/2019/08/23/might-boris-johnson-try-to-call-an-election-sooner-than-people-think/#more-8307

2 comments:

  1. Ron,

    Actually, about a week after I had first been pointing this strategy out on my blog, Andrew Neill did, actually, put it forward as a possibility on the BBC's Politics Live. He asked Jo Swinson, what the Liberals would do, if Johnson did indeed, just resign, saying you would then have to back Jeremy Corbyn wouldn't you?

    She replied "No, he can't command a majority in parliament."!

    So, you can see why I note that they are just an unprincipled disorganised rabble, who are consumed by their own narrow interests, and in the case of the Liberals dozen or so members, extremely narrow interests.

    A number of other commentators have elided to it, but only to then simply pass over it, as though they do not want to even consider such a possibility occurring, which says to me that the potential for it occurring clashes with their own liberal sensibilities, and thoughts that they had stitched Johnson up in parliament, whereas in fact, they had simply played right into his and Cummings hands.

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  2. Incidentally, if my feeling, first elaborated in 2012, in relation to Boris Johnson, and the gradual slide of Britain into Bonapartism is correct, everyone in Britain will need to learn to sleep with one eye and one ear open, waiting for the three o'clock knock.

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