Lurking in the corner as Boris enters No 10, the 'evil genius' behind Brexit who'll spread fear across Whitehall: GUY ADAMS examines Dominic Cummings's reputation as a ruthless svengali
Remain-supporting MPs were outraged to learn that he is joining No. 10 in a ‘chief executive’ role, charged with getting Brexit over the line and running Mr Johnson’s domestic policy. Former Tory MP Sarah Wollaston called it an ‘appalling error of judgment’. But it also led to rumblings of discontent from hardline Tory Brexiteers who fell out with Mr Cummings during the Brexit referendum — and whom he has since described as a ‘cancer’ on British politics.
Friends defended the appointment, saying Mr Cummings was ‘amazingly talented’ and would ‘drive’ Mr Johnson’s agenda. ‘The chances of Brexit happening just went up, sharply,’ one added. Whatever the truth, Cummings is one of Westminster’s great eccentrics.
Balding and scruffy, with a personality that has been variously described as ‘mad professor’ and ‘evil genius’, he’s feared across Whitehall for his combustible nature, abrasive manner — and contempt for officialdom. Appointed to run the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum, he earned wider notoriety as the data-mining arch-Brexiteer played by Cumberbatch, whose controversial — and, many opponents insist, legally wonky — dark arts delivered a narrow victory for Brexit.
It was Cummings who coined the ingenious winning slogan ‘Take Back Control’, inspired by polling which suggested that a silent majority of Britons felt left behind by political elites. It was also Cummings who presided over the highly contentious decision to stick disputed figures about EU funding and the NHS (Brexit would mean ‘£350m more a week’) on the side of a bus. Cummings has been upsetting the Westminster establishment for years. In 2014, the usually mild-mannered David Cameron branded him a ‘career psychopath’
That particular remark, in a speech, came after Cummings had given an outrageously frank newspaper interview about a three-year stint he’d just spent as an adviser at the Department for Education. With a candour some regarded as refreshing — and others thought foolhardy — he dubbed the ministry a ‘madhouse’ and a ‘basket case’, and blamed much of its ills on an incompetent Conservative Prime Minister who ‘bumbles from one shambles to another without the slightest sense of purpose’.
Cummings was even ruder about Cameron’s top aides, calling chief spin doctor Craig Oliver ‘just clueless’ and saying that Old Etonian chief-of-staff Ed Llewellyn was ‘a classic third-rate suck-up-kick-down sycophant presiding over a shambolic court’. In blog posts, he then described Nick Clegg, then Deputy Prime Minister in Cameron’s coalition, as ‘a revolting character’. (Clegg responded that Cummings was ‘some loopy individual’.) Cummings certainly isn’t a man who suffers fools gladly and his elevation will terrify the Whitehall machine.
Take David Davis, former Brexit Secretary and a supposed party grandee. Cummings once called him ‘thick as mince, lazy as a toad and vain as Narcissus’. Take also the ERG faction of hardline anti-EU Tories, whose members include the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Sir Bill Cash. In a blog, Cummings recently dubbed them as ‘narcissist delusionals’ and ‘useful idiots’ whose ongoing intransigence ‘has helped only Remain’
After graduating, Cummings spent three years in Russia, where he attempted to set up an airline, before being appointed director of Business for Sterling, a group which campaigned successfully to keep Britain out of the Euro. After three years there, he moved to become Director of Strategy for the (then) Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, but that lasted just eight months before he quit in frustration over his boss’s ‘incompetent’ leadership. Cummings then led the successful 2004 campaign against the establishment of a North-East regional assembly, a pet project of John Prescott (his side won, with 78 per cent of the vote). He followed that by taking two years off, spending much of his time reading philosophy books in a ‘bunker’ on his father’s farm. In 2007, he came back to work for Michael Gove, an old ally who gave the speech at his wedding to Mary Wakefield, a journalist recruited by Boris to join The Spectator when he was editor (she’s now the magazine’s commissioning editor), and mother of their young son, Alexander.
Gove and Cummings’s stint at the Department for Education brought a host of innovations, including academy chains, free schools, performance-related pay and endless changes to the curriculums. Largely popular with voters and parents, they nonetheless outraged teaching unions, part of an establishment Cummings branded ‘the blob’, thanks to their resistance to change. ‘Dom got stuff done, which is no mean feat, and for all the controversy, there were plenty of people, including some civil servants, who really enjoyed working with him,’ one former colleague recalls. ‘He can be a very funny guy, and there were people at [the Department of] Education, and again at Vote Leave, who would walk through walls for him. ‘He’s also a brilliant strategic thinker who can see several moves ahead, and unlike most of the political class he has a track record of actually delivering things.’ Whether that track record continues in Downing Street remains to be seen. But succeed or fail, Cummings’s past form suggests he’s guaranteed to make waves.
Priti Patel's record on human rights prompts 'extreme concern'
Priti Patel’s appointment as home secretary has been met with an outpouring of “extreme concern” over her hard-right record on key issues covered by her new brief. Patel – who was forced to resign from government two years ago after it emerged that she had held secret, unofficial meetings with Israeli ministers, businesspeople and a senior lobbyist – will be responsible for immigration, crime and policing, counter-terrorism and drugs policy. The Essex MP, whose Gujarati Indian parents migrated to the UK in the 1960s from Uganda just ahead of Idi Amin’s decision to deport all Asians, has voted for a stricter asylum system, stronger enforcement of immigration rules, and against banning the detention of pregnant women in immigration jails.
She backed the key components of Theresa May’s hostile environment policies, presented in the immigration bills of 2014 and 2016, such as rent, work and bank account checks, all of which led to members of the Windrush generation being wrongfully told they had no lawful right to live and work in the UK. Her views on asylum will be watched closely by campaigners and charities that work closely with asylum seekers and refugees, many of whom have been calling for the government to relax rules on asylum seekers’ ability to work in the UK, extend the time refugees are given to find work and a home before they are cut off for government support, and to expand pledges to resettle displaced persons. Clare Collier, advocacy director at the human rights group Liberty, said: “Priti Patel is a politician with a consistent record of voting against basic human rights protections. For her to be put in charge of the Home Office is extremely concerning.
“Priti Patel’s record doesn’t inspire confidence, but we urge her to prove us wrong by committing to end the universally unpopular hostile environment, to reject the politics of scapegoating and demonising migrants and to rebuild trust by creating a Home Office that welcomes and supports those who move here.” Alluding to the reasons for Patel’s resignation two years ago, Tory peer Sayeeda Warsi said Patel’s was a “disturbing appointment at a critical time for the Middle East”.
Not long after she was elected to the House of Commons, she appeared on Question Time and revealed her support for the reintroduction of capital punishment in the UK, a position she later said she no longer held.
Jacob Rees-Mogg is on a collision course with John Bercow – the only thing missing from this duel is the tricorn hats
As a result, relations between Bercow and his predecessor Andrea Leadsom were often tetchy, or worse. On the whole, Bercow had the best of their exchanges. This may not be so with JRM. It will be a duel, like something out of Poldark. Only the tricorn hats will be missing. A duel fought with elaborate and only partly sincere courtesies. A duel fought with the ammunition provided by the parliamentary manual, Erskine May. Precedents dating back to 1265 will be cited and counter-cited. Humble addresses may be deployed; amendments to bills too; adjournment debates, points of order terms and much more flummery. Skirmishes will be conducted in Latin and Norman French.
No one except these two men and the clerks of the Commons will even understand the rules of the game, but the stakes could scarcely be higher. It will have echoes of the fight for parliamentary power against the crown in the 17th century – the last time the power to prorogue power was seriously abused it gave England a civil war. It is a tussle between direct democracy (the 2016 referendum) and representative democracy (the commons and the British constitution). The “will of the people" is continually and aggressively invoked by Boris Johnson, though Rees-Mogg prefers to stress the supremacy of parliament and that “we only speak our view by legislation”.
Both men, as Rees-Mogg says, share a “somewhat romantic view of the House of Commons”, but their confrontations will be anything but.
Tory right’s anger over Dominic Cummings’ job as senior aide to Johnson Brexiteer MP rejects ‘powerless’ job in first big row
Boris Johnson’s attempts to lock in the support of hardline Tory Eurosceptics suffered a serious blow last night after one of the most senior Brexiteer MPs angrily turned down a ministerial role. In the first rift between the new prime minister and the faction that backed him for the leadership, Steve Baker told Mr Johnson that a job in the Brexit department would have left him “powerless”. Tory Eurosceptics accused Mr Johnson of “binning off” the European Research Group of Brexiteers now that he was in power. They blamed Dominic Cummings, the former head of Vote Leave, who has been appointed the most senior adviser in Downing Street. Mr Cummings has made little secret of his disdain for some members of the ERG, describing them…
Two stories dominate the front pages - Boris Johnson's first Commons statement as prime minister and the record-breaking weather. A number of papers bring the two stories together. Yesterday's temperature - 100F - is displayed above the Mail's headline - "Boiling point". It says that as Britons basked on the hottest July day ever, Mr Johnson and Brussels went to war over no deal and there is now a tense stand-off over the Irish backstop. The Financial Times says the EU's criticism of Mr Johnson's terms for talks on a new deal sets the scene for bruising clashes between Brussels and the new prime minister. Other papers also suggest trouble ahead. "Johnson turns up the heat on Europe," the Telegraph headline declares. For the Express, it's: "Boris on warpath with EU". As the i puts it, the new prime minister is spoiling for a fight with the EU. The Spectator website says it's hard not to see a general election campaign taking shape, even on Mr Johnson's first day in the job.
According to the Times' main story, Mr Johnson's attempts to lock in the support of hardline Tory Eurosceptics have suffered a serious blow after one of them angrily turned down a ministerial role. It says Steve Baker - one of the most senior Brexiteer MPs - told the prime minister that a job in the Brexit department would have left him "powerless". The paper reports that Mr Baker had hoped for a significant role in shaping Brexit, but Mr Johnson has stripped the Brexit department of the no-deal preparations and handed them to Michael Gove in the Cabinet Office.
The radically changed cabinet comes under close scrutiny - with a picture from its first meeting on Thursday. The Telegraph says it showed a relatively youthful, multicultural set of ministers. The Mail says that although Mr Johnson's allies described the diverse team as a cabinet for modern Britain, some traditions still endure. It points out that 15 of the 34 ministers attended either Oxford or Cambridge University, and four are Old Etonians too. The i agrees that it is a diverse cabinet, but says there are questions about a string of appointments of ministers with unprogressive views and voting records
Priti Patel paid £1,000 an hour as adviser to firm supplying MoD New home secretary has been working for communications firm Viasat as strategic adviser
The new home secretary, Priti Patel, holds a £1,000-an hour contract with a global communications firm that supplies products and services to the UK government, the Guardian can reveal. Patel, who was appointed on Wednesday by the new prime minister, Boris Johnson, as a part of a wholesale gutting of the cabinet, has been working for Viasat for the past three months as a strategic adviser on a salary of £5,000 a month for five hours’ work a month.
Boris Johnson's father makes bizarre gaffe in interview with Iranian state TV I'm a Celeb star Stanley Johnson told Iran's state TV network Press TV his son could resolve the tanker dispute "easy peasy". Today his son attacked Jeremy Corbyn for appearing on the network
Boris Johnson's father told Iranian state broadcaster Press TV his son "loves Iran" and could sort out the tanker dispute "easy peasy". Meanwhile, Boris Johnson attacked Jeremy Corbyn for appearing on Press TV today, just two days after his father's interview.
Mr Johnson Sr spoke to Press TV following his son's successful election as Prime Minister on Tuesday. But he's been accused of making a "diplomatic gaffe" and "making policy on the spot." He told the network his son "loves Iran," adding: "I'm very much looking forward to him building bridges with Iran." And he said Boris had a "great sense of history" and was attracted to the region's classical past.
"Iran to him will mean Darius, Xerxes - you know, Iran means so much to him," he said. "So the chance to have longstanding relationships with a country with such a fantastic history."
Prominent figures from Boris Johnson's new cabinet have been out and about spreading the word about his plans. Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab tells The Times that Britain will step up trade negotiations with the US and others before the October Brexit deadline. He says the new government wants to capitalise on President Trump's "warmth" towards the UK, and pave the way for a deal. The Daily Telegraph features an interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new Leader of the Commons. He says the only way for his Remainer colleagues to stop Brexit is to revoke Article 50 - and he says they are not "bold" or "daring" enough to try that. The paper says it's thought that Mr Rees-Mogg was appointed to ward off attempts to take no deal off the table, and that he is now facing down Conservative rebels
The Guardian says it has analysed the latest crime figures and found that just 1.5% of rape cases last year resulted in a suspect being summonsed or charged - compared with 14% three years ago. It says the figures highlight an "alarming decline" in rape prosecutions in England and Wales, following rows about the disclosure of evidence. The Guardian editorial says the criminal justice system is failing rape victims, and that they deserve better.
The front page of the Sun reports that neighbours of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in Windsor have been told not to instigate conversation with the couple - or stroke their dogs. It says a list of "astonishing commandments" was circulated at a residents' meeting. Allegedly banned activities include posting anything through the letterbox and asking to see baby Archie. Buckingham Palace said the royal couple had nothing to do with the briefing, and that it had been a well-intentioned effort to help welcome two new residents. One local said the briefing would be funny if "it wasn't so over the top" while another added: "Even the Queen doesn't demand this."
The morning papers are dominated by Boris Johnson's first few days in office. The Sunday Times feels a Tory government that was dying on its feet has been re-energised. It acknowledges it is early days and that every new prime minister enjoys a bounce in support - but notes Mr Johnson leads a government with exactly the same parliamentary arithmetic as before. The Sunday Telegraph strikes an optimistic tone. At last, it concludes, Britain has a prime minister who is willing and able to make the case for Brexit. The Mail on Sunday feels Mr Johnson is flawed in many ways, both personal and political - but it believes he still provides the country with the best chance of climbing out of the mess and frustration of the past three years. The Sunday Mirror is not impressed by what it dismisses as a whirlwind of promises.
He has certainly hit the ground running but, says the paper, as people who have seen him in action will testify, it does not take long to see through him. The Observer thinks his opening performances as prime minister were not encouraging - but says it would be a mistake to underestimate him. Several of the papers feature opinion polls which suggest support for the Conservatives has risen since he replaced Theresa May - with the party having a lead of between 2% and 10% over Labour. The Mail on Sunday says Mr Johnson's move into Downing Street has led to a surge in support - or what it calls a "Boris bounce". The Sunday Express leads with a ComRes poll which indicates nearly three quarters of voters believe he should be given a "proper chance" to take the UK out of the EU without parliamentary interference.
In his first three days, argues the Sun on Sunday, Mr Johnson has left Jeremy Corbyn looking flatter than a steam-rollered pancake. It thinks the prime minister's pledge to turbo-charge the UK's regions and support a high-speed rail link between Manchester and Leeds will appeal to disillusioned Labour voters as well as Tories supporting One Nation Conservatism. The Mail on Sunday interprets his decision to head north so soon as a deliberate effort to defuse the sense the Brexit referendum has deepened the north-south divide. The Sunday People says little of Mr Johnson's speech was new - and it accuses him of empty rhetoric and hollow promises.
Many of the papers focus on the work being done to prepare for a no-deal Brexit. The Daily Express tells how Boris Johnson has put the government on full alert, ordering daily emergency planning summits. The Daily Telegraph says there will be three new committees to accelerate preparations. And the Times reports Mr Johnson briefed cabinet yesterday on a stripped-down Whitehall structure under which Michael Gove would take day-to-day control. The HuffPost UK website says the prime minister is understood to want to improve on the way previous committees operated, because he believed they did not move fast enough. Mr Johnson is set to give European leaders the cold shoulder, according to the Daily Mail, as he ramps up preparations. A senior government source tells the paper he has no plans to visit European capitals in the hope of reopening talks
How much of what is happening is a concerted attempt to get the country ready for leaving without a deal or merely posturing to show Brussels that the UK is serious about doing this remains to be seen, suggests the i. The Guardian focuses on a report from a think-tank, the Institute for Government, which predicts Mr Johnson's domestic agenda will be crushed by the pressing needs of the emergency that would follow a no-deal Brexit. The i highlights another aspect of the report - that a disorderly Brexit would place unprecedented pressure on the Union.
As Mr Johnson prepares to visit Scotland, several papers look at what the PoliticsHome website calls the tense relationship between him and the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson. The Scotsman suggests the visit threatens to be overshadowed by a major clash, after she said she could not back leaving the EU without a deal. The Times thinks Mr Johnson's encounter with Ms Davidson is likely to be bruising. But, the paper adds, the prime minister's team have offered to take soundings on policies which will "push Scotland". And the Scottish Daily Mail predicts Mr Johnson will fly into a political storm, saying they will meet this afternoon to "clear the air".
The prime minister's creation of the first government office to care for veterans of the armed forces is a step in the right direction, the Sun says. Mr Johnson has appointed the former Army officer, Johnny Mercer, as Veterans' Minister.
Sterling's slump is the main story for several of Tuesday's newspapers. The Times, the Guardian and the Financial Times say markets are becoming ever more worried by the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a deal in three months. The Times says Monday's sell-off was prompted by Downing Street ruling out new Brexit talks until the EU accepted its demands to change the withdrawal agreement. The story doesn't feature on the Daily Telegraph front page, which carries a photograph of Boris Johnson in Faslane, posing in a personalised coat with a "prime minister" label. The accompanying report looks ahead to his visit to south Wales where it says he will promise a better deal for farmers after Brexit. The Daily Express carries the same photo of Mr Johnson in his special coat. In its view, his refusal to meet EU leaders has "turned up the pressure" on Brussels. The Guardian describes the prime minister's visit to Scotland on Monday as a "day of chaos" as he directly contradicted his own spokeswoman and the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove, who said the government was working on the assumption that there would be a no-deal Brexit. Meanwhile, writing in the Daily Telegraph, the former Foreign Secretary William Hague says Boris Johnson's mission must be to leave the EU without breaking up the UK Mr Hague describes the dangerous combination of a rupture with Europe and a fragile Union as "the greatest of all challenges". He urges Boris Johnson to heed the advice of the Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, who is opposed to leaving without a deal.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail describes as a "bombshell" Sir Richard Henriques' comments on the Metropolitan Police investigation into false child sexual abuse claims made against public figures. In his article for the Mail, Sir Richard writes that his 2016 review of Operation Midland found that search warrants were obtained unlawfully - a conclusion that hasn't been publicly disclosed before. The former High Court judge says that the course of justice was perverted with "shocking consequences", and calls for a criminal investigation. Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that the accountancy firm, Grant Thornton, has told regulators it intends to quit as Sports Direct's auditor. It says the company made the decision after the retailer disclosed a multi-million pound tax bill just hours before the annual accounts were due to be signed off.
The Guardian reveals that Tony Blair's former director of communications, Alastair Campbell, is leaving the Labour Party in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's leadership. Mr Campbell had planned to fight his expulsion for voting Liberal Democrat in the last European Parliament elections. But in an open letter to Mr Corbyn, he says the Labour leader is poised to lose the next general election and destroy the party "as a political force capable of winning power". According to an investigation by the Sun, Amazon staff eavesdrop - via the company's Alexa smart speakers - on customers arguing, discussing private matters or having sex. The speakers make recordings when users talk to them, but can be triggered by other noises. The Sun has discovered an Amazon team based in Romania which listens to thousands of recordings to monitor the system. Amazon says staff cannot identify the customers and it takes privacy seriously. "Alexa! Stop being a perv" is the Sun's headline.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror leads with the revelation that the prime minister's new spin doctor, Lee Cain, was the Mirror reporter who dressed up in a chicken costume to taunt senior Conservatives during the general election in 2010. A former colleague hails him as "a great Mirror Chicken" who attacked the role with "real zeal and great passion". The paper says Mr Cain's subsequent work on the Vote Leave campaign and at the Foreign Office has seen him "rise up the pecking order", and he now "squawks the corridors of power"
According to the Financial Times, Boris Johnson is preparing to spend billions of pounds more on health and social care including new hospitals in areas seen as being "left behind". The paper says insiders expect announcements within days - but there are likely to be questions about how the proposals would be funded. The Times says the measures are part of an effort by the prime minister and his new senior special adviser, Dominic Cummings, to take on Jeremy Corbyn over health spending
Mr Cummings, the former Vote Leave campaign director, is also the subject of two different stories. The Guardian says it has unearthed comments from two years ago in which he claimed Conservative MPs did not care about poorer people or the NHS - and that the public had cottoned onto this. And the Times reports that Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage, has told the prime minister that he would not enter into an electoral pact with the Tories while Mr Cummings was in post. Mr Farage apparently said the adviser was not a true believer in leaving the EU and that he had huge personal enmity towards those who were. Meanwhile, the Telegraph believes Mr Johnson may have given some clues as to what a Brexit deal struck by his government could look like. He suggested yesterday the UK could stay in the customs union and single market for another two years, the paper says. The Telegraph points out this would involve the UK managing to reach an agreement before the end of October, allowing Britain to enter a transition period before concluding a final trade deal.
The declining value of the pound because of fears of a no-deal Brexit is the subject of several editorials. The Sun believes sterling will rise again once Britain secures a better agreement with the EU. But the Times says no-deal will lead to a further slide and cautions Mr Johnson, as he tours the country, that he should beware the verdict of markets. The Mail accuses him of engaging in megaphone diplomacy and says "every sinew must be strained to reach a deal".
Brexit Party bus abandoned after 'losing control' while out and about on campaign trail Many found the vehicle's misfortune hilarious, and branded it an analogy for the deadlock facing the UK
1. Do you think any one race is more important than any other?
2. On the assumption that your answer to 1 above is "no", can you please explain why any one race should have a definition in relation to racism that is different to any other race?
I think anti-semitism should be judged by the same yardstick as every other race, and i will always question anyone who thinks otherwise.
If the Labour Party wished to stop their members wearing green trousers, they would say just that. They would then spend the next 3 years arguing with members whether or not the definition of green included mint, turquoise, asparagus, chartreuse, emerald, etc., and get nowhere. Whereas a better leader might send a letter/email out to all members saying that all shades of green trousers were banned, listing in detail all the banned shades, and clearly stating that continuing to wear these trousers would result in immediate expulsion. This would result in the immediate rooting out of green trouser wearers, and make it clear that there was nowhere to hide. Also, this clarity would convince those that were adamant about continuing to wear the offending trousers that they might as well leave the party, before they were expelled.
Progress would be immediate, and before very long all green trouser wearers would be eliminated from the party.
The problem I have with their difficulties is that antisemitism is illegal.
People go to court, and get jailed for it, without it taking years.
It should be a very easy problem to solve.
Just like Brexit.
Do you see any irony in saying the Labour Party should just accept something and implement it in a 273 page diatribe refusing to accept that Democracy (rightly or wrongly) has given a decision you do not agree with?
I watched Corbyn on Sophie Ridge on Sunday. He was appearing to clearly define Labours Brexit position, and put an end to their "constructive ambiguity".
He stated that they would oppose no deal, seek a second referendum on a Tory Brexit deal, and support remain.
However if Labour won a general election, they would wish to honour the referendum result, and negotiate a deal to leave the EU.
Assuming they wish to win an election, it is hard to see how this may help.
If we assume that the country was just about equally split between leave and remain, at the time of the referendum, and for the sake of this argument that hasn't changed.
Few MPs are in favour of a general election prior to the end of October. The majority of Tories obviously think that leaving the EU prior to an election would kill off the Brexit Party, and obviously enhance their chances of winning.
However they may be forced into one prior to leaving. Their majority is very slim, and will be reduced to just one, assuming they lose in Brecon on Thursday.
So going back to Labour and their "clear" position.
If the Tories were forced into an election by one of their MPs resigning or losing the whip, joining another party, or a vote of no confidence, who would vote Labour?
If you were a Brexit supporter would you be more likely to vote for The Brexit Party, or Boris Johnsons do or die, leaving the EU Tories?
If you were on the remain side wouldn't you be more likely to vote for a remain party?
If you voted Labour, what you got would depend on whether they won or lost.
I realise that they would retain their died in the wool Labour voters from both sides, but surely this position makes it impossible for them to win an election that took place before we left.
So to recap their position, in opposition they are in favour of a second referendum, and support remaining in the EU, but on winning an election they would favour leaving with a deal.
I can hear people groaning while thinking that a Labour win could leave us back to square one, and we could be sitting here in 3 years time in exactly the same boat while Labour negotiate a new deal.
If all political parties should prioritise what is best for the country, how can one party support both sides of the argument?
Labour say that they are our most democratic political party.
It is very difficult to back this up when you consider the stance they have taken on Brexit, both during the referendum campaign and the last 3 years, when 70% of their voters, a majority of their MPs, support remaining in the EU. While 78% of their members voted in favour of a second referendum at last years conference.
Sounds a bit like yet another 'Project Fear' assumption to me,perpetrated by the type of people who believed that the 'Millennium Bug' would cause worldwide doom.Do you remember those predictions and the actual effect it had on the world. Do you honestly think that the country is gonna grind to a halt on November 1st? I'll leave you to plan for survival in the future dystopian world ruled by the likes of Trump,Johnson,Farage et al.
I DO believe that we will start facing major problems from November 1st.
This will be blamed on Brexit. That will be a factor, of course. But the major reason will be the total failure to prepare for the inevitable changes that Brexit will bring.
Let's start with the obvious-Customs. All other Western european countries have already recruited and trained additional specialist Customs staff to deal with this. As an example, Belgium have recruited 350 people. Just for UK trade.
We are a lot bigger than Belgium. And, of course, our trade with the EU is massively bigger than Belgium-Uk. How many extra staff will we need? It is a secret that this Government refuses to divulge. The TUC say 5,000 staff, David Davis (when Brexit Secretary) said 3-5,000. But now it is a secret.
How many extra staff have been employed/trained in the UK? None known. Again (unlike all other countries) this Government is refusing to say what the plans are. However, it is known that HMRC are in the process of making redundancies and closing all its smaller regional centres. So (for example) there will be no offices North of Edinburgh/Glasgow, and only Bristol serving the West.
When the Head of the Road Haulage Association dared to express concern recently, he was warned that the RHA could be removed from future planning. Really? People also need to recognise that we are becoming dependant on France agreeing to relax border controls voluntarily (and permanently)-good luck with that. We are swapping being members of a (dodgy) club for being increasingly reliant on other nations. For the first time in nearly 50 years, we will be reliant on other nations' Customs staff.
People need to realise and accept that there is a price to be paid for leaving the EU (and particularly the Customs Union). The problem this country currently has is it seems to believe that you can make an omelette without breaking eggs.
We seem to be going around in circles on cake and eating it, and cherry picking, rather than making omelettes, or cracking eggs.
Comments
Remain-supporting MPs were outraged to learn that he is joining No. 10 in a ‘chief executive’ role, charged with getting Brexit over the line and running Mr Johnson’s domestic policy.
Former Tory MP Sarah Wollaston called it an ‘appalling error of judgment’.
But it also led to rumblings of discontent from hardline Tory Brexiteers who fell out with Mr Cummings during the Brexit referendum — and whom he has since described as a ‘cancer’ on British politics.
Friends defended the appointment, saying Mr Cummings was ‘amazingly talented’ and would ‘drive’ Mr Johnson’s agenda.
‘The chances of Brexit happening just went up, sharply,’ one added. Whatever the truth, Cummings is one of Westminster’s great eccentrics.
Balding and scruffy, with a personality that has been variously described as ‘mad professor’ and ‘evil genius’, he’s feared across Whitehall for his combustible nature, abrasive manner — and contempt for officialdom.
Appointed to run the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 referendum, he earned wider notoriety as the data-mining arch-Brexiteer played by Cumberbatch, whose controversial — and, many opponents insist, legally wonky — dark arts delivered a narrow victory for Brexit.
It was Cummings who coined the ingenious winning slogan ‘Take Back Control’, inspired by polling which suggested that a silent majority of Britons felt left behind by political elites. It was also Cummings who presided over the highly contentious decision to stick disputed figures about EU funding and the NHS (Brexit would mean ‘£350m more a week’) on the side of a bus.
Cummings has been upsetting the Westminster establishment for years. In 2014, the usually mild-mannered David Cameron branded him a ‘career psychopath’
That particular remark, in a speech, came after Cummings had given an outrageously frank newspaper interview about a three-year stint he’d just spent as an adviser at the Department for Education.
With a candour some regarded as refreshing — and others thought foolhardy — he dubbed the ministry a ‘madhouse’ and a ‘basket case’, and blamed much of its ills on an incompetent Conservative Prime Minister who ‘bumbles from one shambles to another without the slightest sense of purpose’.
Cummings was even ruder about Cameron’s top aides, calling chief spin doctor Craig Oliver ‘just clueless’ and saying that Old Etonian chief-of-staff Ed Llewellyn was ‘a classic third-rate suck-up-kick-down sycophant presiding over a shambolic court’. In blog posts, he then described Nick Clegg, then Deputy Prime Minister in Cameron’s coalition, as ‘a revolting character’. (Clegg responded that Cummings was ‘some loopy individual’.)
Cummings certainly isn’t a man who suffers fools gladly and his elevation will terrify the Whitehall machine.
Take David Davis, former Brexit Secretary and a supposed party grandee. Cummings once called him ‘thick as mince, lazy as a toad and vain as Narcissus’.
Take also the ERG faction of hardline anti-EU Tories, whose members include the likes of Jacob Rees-Mogg and Sir Bill Cash. In a blog, Cummings recently dubbed them as ‘narcissist delusionals’ and ‘useful idiots’ whose ongoing intransigence ‘has helped only Remain’
After graduating, Cummings spent three years in Russia, where he attempted to set up an airline, before being appointed director of Business for Sterling, a group which campaigned successfully to keep Britain out of the Euro.
After three years there, he moved to become Director of Strategy for the (then) Tory leader Iain Duncan Smith, but that lasted just eight months before he quit in frustration over his boss’s ‘incompetent’ leadership.
Cummings then led the successful 2004 campaign against the establishment of a North-East regional assembly, a pet project of John Prescott (his side won, with 78 per cent of the vote).
He followed that by taking two years off, spending much of his time reading philosophy books in a ‘bunker’ on his father’s farm.
In 2007, he came back to work for Michael Gove, an old ally who gave the speech at his wedding to Mary Wakefield, a journalist recruited by Boris to join The Spectator when he was editor (she’s now the magazine’s commissioning editor), and mother of their young son, Alexander.
Gove and Cummings’s stint at the Department for Education brought a host of innovations, including academy chains, free schools, performance-related pay and endless changes to the curriculums.
Largely popular with voters and parents, they nonetheless outraged teaching unions, part of an establishment Cummings branded ‘the blob’, thanks to their resistance to change.
‘Dom got stuff done, which is no mean feat, and for all the controversy, there were plenty of people, including some civil servants, who really enjoyed working with him,’ one former colleague recalls.
‘He can be a very funny guy, and there were people at [the Department of] Education, and again at Vote Leave, who would walk through walls for him.
‘He’s also a brilliant strategic thinker who can see several moves ahead, and unlike most of the political class he has a track record of actually delivering things.’
Whether that track record continues in Downing Street remains to be seen. But succeed or fail, Cummings’s past form suggests he’s guaranteed to make waves.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/brexit/lurking-in-the-corner-as-boris-enters-no-10-the-evil-genius-behind-brexit-wholl-spread-fear-across-whitehall-guy-adams-examines-dominic-cummingss-reputation-as-a-ruthless-svengali/ar-AAEPSDM?ocid=spartandhp
Priti Patel’s appointment as home secretary has been met with an outpouring of “extreme concern” over her hard-right record on key issues covered by her new brief.
Patel – who was forced to resign from government two years ago after it emerged that she had held secret, unofficial meetings with Israeli ministers, businesspeople and a senior lobbyist – will be responsible for immigration, crime and policing, counter-terrorism and drugs policy.
The Essex MP, whose Gujarati Indian parents migrated to the UK in the 1960s from Uganda just ahead of Idi Amin’s decision to deport all Asians, has voted for a stricter asylum system, stronger enforcement of immigration rules, and against banning the detention of pregnant women in immigration jails.
She backed the key components of Theresa May’s hostile environment policies, presented in the immigration bills of 2014 and 2016, such as rent, work and bank account checks, all of which led to members of the Windrush generation being wrongfully told they had no lawful right to live and work in the UK.
Her views on asylum will be watched closely by campaigners and charities that work closely with asylum seekers and refugees, many of whom have been calling for the government to relax rules on asylum seekers’ ability to work in the UK, extend the time refugees are given to find work and a home before they are cut off for government support, and to expand pledges to resettle displaced persons.
Clare Collier, advocacy director at the human rights group Liberty, said: “Priti Patel is a politician with a consistent record of voting against basic human rights protections. For her to be put in charge of the Home Office is extremely concerning.
“Priti Patel’s record doesn’t inspire confidence, but we urge her to prove us wrong by committing to end the universally unpopular hostile environment, to reject the politics of scapegoating and demonising migrants and to rebuild trust by creating a Home Office that welcomes and supports those who move here.”
Alluding to the reasons for Patel’s resignation two years ago, Tory peer Sayeeda Warsi said Patel’s was a “disturbing appointment at a critical time for the Middle East”.
Not long after she was elected to the House of Commons, she appeared on Question Time and revealed her support for the reintroduction of capital punishment in the UK, a position she later said she no longer held.
https://www.msn.com/en-gb/news/uknews/priti-patels-record-on-human-rights-prompts-extreme-concern/ar-AAEPMQf?ocid=spartanntp
As a result, relations between Bercow and his predecessor Andrea Leadsom were often tetchy, or worse. On the whole, Bercow had the best of their exchanges.
This may not be so with JRM. It will be a duel, like something out of Poldark. Only the tricorn hats will be missing. A duel fought with elaborate and only partly sincere courtesies. A duel fought with the ammunition provided by the parliamentary manual, Erskine May. Precedents dating back to 1265 will be cited and counter-cited. Humble addresses may be deployed; amendments to bills too; adjournment debates, points of order terms and much more flummery. Skirmishes will be conducted in Latin and Norman French.
No one except these two men and the clerks of the Commons will even understand the rules of the game, but the stakes could scarcely be higher. It will have echoes of the fight for parliamentary power against the crown in the 17th century – the last time the power to prorogue power was seriously abused it gave England a civil war.
It is a tussle between direct democracy (the 2016 referendum) and representative democracy (the commons and the British constitution). The “will of the people" is continually and aggressively invoked by Boris Johnson, though Rees-Mogg prefers to stress the supremacy of parliament and that “we only speak our view by legislation”.
Both men, as Rees-Mogg says, share a “somewhat romantic view of the House of Commons”, but their confrontations will be anything but.
https://uk.yahoo.com/news/jacob-rees-mogg-collision-course-105300762.html
Brexiteer MP rejects ‘powerless’ job in first big row
Boris Johnson’s attempts to lock in the support of hardline Tory Eurosceptics suffered a serious blow last night after one of the most senior Brexiteer MPs angrily turned down a ministerial role.
In the first rift between the new prime minister and the faction that backed him for the leadership, Steve Baker told Mr Johnson that a job in the Brexit department would have left him “powerless”.
Tory Eurosceptics accused Mr Johnson of “binning off” the European Research Group of Brexiteers now that he was in power. They blamed Dominic Cummings, the former head of Vote Leave, who has been appointed the most senior adviser in Downing Street.
Mr Cummings has made little secret of his disdain for some members of the ERG, describing them…
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/news/tory-right-s-anger-over-dominic-cummings-job-as-senior-aide-to-johnson-75k5m69n9
Two stories dominate the front pages - Boris Johnson's first Commons statement as prime minister and the record-breaking weather.
A number of papers bring the two stories together. Yesterday's temperature - 100F - is displayed above the Mail's headline - "Boiling point".
It says that as Britons basked on the hottest July day ever, Mr Johnson and Brussels went to war over no deal and there is now a tense stand-off over the Irish backstop.
The Financial Times says the EU's criticism of Mr Johnson's terms for talks on a new deal sets the scene for bruising clashes between Brussels and the new prime minister.
Other papers also suggest trouble ahead. "Johnson turns up the heat on Europe," the Telegraph headline declares.
For the Express, it's: "Boris on warpath with EU". As the i puts it, the new prime minister is spoiling for a fight with the EU.
The Spectator website says it's hard not to see a general election campaign taking shape, even on Mr Johnson's first day in the job.
According to the Times' main story, Mr Johnson's attempts to lock in the support of hardline Tory Eurosceptics have suffered a serious blow after one of them angrily turned down a ministerial role.
It says Steve Baker - one of the most senior Brexiteer MPs - told the prime minister that a job in the Brexit department would have left him "powerless".
The paper reports that Mr Baker had hoped for a significant role in shaping Brexit, but Mr Johnson has stripped the Brexit department of the no-deal preparations and handed them to Michael Gove in the Cabinet Office.
The radically changed cabinet comes under close scrutiny - with a picture from its first meeting on Thursday.
The Telegraph says it showed a relatively youthful, multicultural set of ministers.
The Mail says that although Mr Johnson's allies described the diverse team as a cabinet for modern Britain, some traditions still endure.
It points out that 15 of the 34 ministers attended either Oxford or Cambridge University, and four are Old Etonians too.
The i agrees that it is a diverse cabinet, but says there are questions about a string of appointments of ministers with unprogressive views and voting records
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-49121877
New home secretary has been working for communications firm Viasat as strategic adviser
The new home secretary, Priti Patel, holds a £1,000-an hour contract with a global communications firm that supplies products and services to the UK government, the Guardian can reveal.
Patel, who was appointed on Wednesday by the new prime minister, Boris Johnson, as a part of a wholesale gutting of the cabinet, has been working for Viasat for the past three months as a strategic adviser on a salary of £5,000 a month for five hours’ work a month.
https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/jul/25/priti-patel-earning-1000-an-hour-as-adviser-to-firm-supplying-mod
I'm a Celeb star Stanley Johnson told Iran's state TV network Press TV his son could resolve the tanker dispute "easy peasy". Today his son attacked Jeremy Corbyn for appearing on the network
Boris Johnson's father told Iranian state broadcaster Press TV his son "loves Iran" and could sort out the tanker dispute "easy peasy".
Meanwhile, Boris Johnson attacked Jeremy Corbyn for appearing on Press TV today, just two days after his father's interview.
Mr Johnson Sr spoke to Press TV following his son's successful election as Prime Minister on Tuesday.
But he's been accused of making a "diplomatic gaffe" and "making policy on the spot."
He told the network his son "loves Iran," adding: "I'm very much looking forward to him building bridges with Iran."
And he said Boris had a "great sense of history" and was attracted to the region's classical past.
"Iran to him will mean Darius, Xerxes - you know, Iran means so much to him," he said. "So the chance to have longstanding relationships with a country with such a fantastic history."
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/boris-johnsons-father-makes-bizarre-18777108
Prominent figures from Boris Johnson's new cabinet have been out and about spreading the word about his plans.
Foreign Secretary Dominic Raab tells The Times that Britain will step up trade negotiations with the US and others before the October Brexit deadline.
He says the new government wants to capitalise on President Trump's "warmth" towards the UK, and pave the way for a deal.
The Daily Telegraph features an interview with Jacob Rees-Mogg, the new Leader of the Commons.
He says the only way for his Remainer colleagues to stop Brexit is to revoke Article 50 - and he says they are not "bold" or "daring" enough to try that.
The paper says it's thought that Mr Rees-Mogg was appointed to ward off attempts to take no deal off the table, and that he is now facing down Conservative rebels
The Guardian says it has analysed the latest crime figures and found that just 1.5% of rape cases last year resulted in a suspect being summonsed or charged - compared with 14% three years ago.
It says the figures highlight an "alarming decline" in rape prosecutions in England and Wales, following rows about the disclosure of evidence. The Guardian editorial says the criminal justice system is failing rape victims, and that they deserve better.
The front page of the Sun reports that neighbours of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex in Windsor have been told not to instigate conversation with the couple - or stroke their dogs.
It says a list of "astonishing commandments" was circulated at a residents' meeting.
Allegedly banned activities include posting anything through the letterbox and asking to see baby Archie.
Buckingham Palace said the royal couple had nothing to do with the briefing, and that it had been a well-intentioned effort to help welcome two new residents.
One local said the briefing would be funny if "it wasn't so over the top" while another added: "Even the Queen doesn't demand this."
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-49134805
The morning papers are dominated by Boris Johnson's first few days in office.
The Sunday Times feels a Tory government that was dying on its feet has been re-energised.
It acknowledges it is early days and that every new prime minister enjoys a bounce in support - but notes Mr Johnson leads a government with exactly the same parliamentary arithmetic as before.
The Sunday Telegraph strikes an optimistic tone.
At last, it concludes, Britain has a prime minister who is willing and able to make the case for Brexit.
The Mail on Sunday feels Mr Johnson is flawed in many ways, both personal and political - but it believes he still provides the country with the best chance of climbing out of the mess and frustration of the past three years.
The Sunday Mirror is not impressed by what it dismisses as a whirlwind of promises.
He has certainly hit the ground running but, says the paper, as people who have seen him in action will testify, it does not take long to see through him.
The Observer thinks his opening performances as prime minister were not encouraging - but says it would be a mistake to underestimate him.
Several of the papers feature opinion polls which suggest support for the Conservatives has risen since he replaced Theresa May - with the party having a lead of between 2% and 10% over Labour.
The Mail on Sunday says Mr Johnson's move into Downing Street has led to a surge in support - or what it calls a "Boris bounce".
The Sunday Express leads with a ComRes poll which indicates nearly three quarters of voters believe he should be given a "proper chance" to take the UK out of the EU without parliamentary interference.
In his first three days, argues the Sun on Sunday, Mr Johnson has left Jeremy Corbyn looking flatter than a steam-rollered pancake.
It thinks the prime minister's pledge to turbo-charge the UK's regions and support a high-speed rail link between Manchester and Leeds will appeal to disillusioned Labour voters as well as Tories supporting One Nation Conservatism.
The Mail on Sunday interprets his decision to head north so soon as a deliberate effort to defuse the sense the Brexit referendum has deepened the north-south divide.
The Sunday People says little of Mr Johnson's speech was new - and it accuses him of empty rhetoric and hollow promises.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-49141371
Many of the papers focus on the work being done to prepare for a no-deal Brexit.
The Daily Express tells how Boris Johnson has put the government on full alert, ordering daily emergency planning summits. The Daily Telegraph says there will be three new committees to accelerate preparations.
And the Times reports Mr Johnson briefed cabinet yesterday on a stripped-down Whitehall structure under which Michael Gove would take day-to-day control.
The HuffPost UK website says the prime minister is understood to want to improve on the way previous committees operated, because he believed they did not move fast enough.
Mr Johnson is set to give European leaders the cold shoulder, according to the Daily Mail, as he ramps up preparations.
A senior government source tells the paper he has no plans to visit European capitals in the hope of reopening talks
How much of what is happening is a concerted attempt to get the country ready for leaving without a deal or merely posturing to show Brussels that the UK is serious about doing this remains to be seen, suggests the i.
The Guardian focuses on a report from a think-tank, the Institute for Government, which predicts Mr Johnson's domestic agenda will be crushed by the pressing needs of the emergency that would follow a no-deal Brexit.
The i highlights another aspect of the report - that a disorderly Brexit would place unprecedented pressure on the Union.
As Mr Johnson prepares to visit Scotland, several papers look at what the PoliticsHome website calls the tense relationship between him and the leader of the Scottish Conservatives, Ruth Davidson.
The Scotsman suggests the visit threatens to be overshadowed by a major clash, after she said she could not back leaving the EU without a deal.
The Times thinks Mr Johnson's encounter with Ms Davidson is likely to be bruising. But, the paper adds, the prime minister's team have offered to take soundings on policies which will "push Scotland".
And the Scottish Daily Mail predicts Mr Johnson will fly into a political storm, saying they will meet this afternoon to "clear the air".
The prime minister's creation of the first government office to care for veterans of the armed forces is a step in the right direction, the Sun says.
Mr Johnson has appointed the former Army officer, Johnny Mercer, as Veterans' Minister.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-49147353
Sterling's slump is the main story for several of Tuesday's newspapers.
The Times, the Guardian and the Financial Times say markets are becoming ever more worried by the possibility of the UK leaving the EU without a deal in three months.
The Times says Monday's sell-off was prompted by Downing Street ruling out new Brexit talks until the EU accepted its demands to change the withdrawal agreement.
The story doesn't feature on the Daily Telegraph front page, which carries a photograph of Boris Johnson in Faslane, posing in a personalised coat with a "prime minister" label.
The accompanying report looks ahead to his visit to south Wales where it says he will promise a better deal for farmers after Brexit.
The Daily Express carries the same photo of Mr Johnson in his special coat. In its view, his refusal to meet EU leaders has "turned up the pressure" on Brussels.
The Guardian describes the prime minister's visit to Scotland on Monday as a "day of chaos" as he directly contradicted his own spokeswoman and the Cabinet Office minister, Michael Gove, who said the government was working on the assumption that there would be a no-deal Brexit.
Meanwhile, writing in the Daily Telegraph, the former Foreign Secretary William Hague says Boris Johnson's mission must be to leave the EU without breaking up the UK
Mr Hague describes the dangerous combination of a rupture with Europe and a fragile Union as "the greatest of all challenges".
He urges Boris Johnson to heed the advice of the Scottish Conservative leader, Ruth Davidson, who is opposed to leaving without a deal.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mail describes as a "bombshell" Sir Richard Henriques' comments on the Metropolitan Police investigation into false child sexual abuse claims made against public figures.
In his article for the Mail, Sir Richard writes that his 2016 review of Operation Midland found that search warrants were obtained unlawfully - a conclusion that hasn't been publicly disclosed before.
The former High Court judge says that the course of justice was perverted with "shocking consequences", and calls for a criminal investigation.
Meanwhile, the Financial Times reports that the accountancy firm, Grant Thornton, has told regulators it intends to quit as Sports Direct's auditor.
It says the company made the decision after the retailer disclosed a multi-million pound tax bill just hours before the annual accounts were due to be signed off.
The Guardian reveals that Tony Blair's former director of communications, Alastair Campbell, is leaving the Labour Party in protest at Jeremy Corbyn's leadership.
Mr Campbell had planned to fight his expulsion for voting Liberal Democrat in the last European Parliament elections.
But in an open letter to Mr Corbyn, he says the Labour leader is poised to lose the next general election and destroy the party "as a political force capable of winning power".
According to an investigation by the Sun, Amazon staff eavesdrop - via the company's Alexa smart speakers - on customers arguing, discussing private matters or having sex.
The speakers make recordings when users talk to them, but can be triggered by other noises.
The Sun has discovered an Amazon team based in Romania which listens to thousands of recordings to monitor the system. Amazon says staff cannot identify the customers and it takes privacy seriously.
"Alexa! Stop being a perv" is the Sun's headline.
Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror leads with the revelation that the prime minister's new spin doctor, Lee Cain, was the Mirror reporter who dressed up in a chicken costume to taunt senior Conservatives during the general election in 2010.
A former colleague hails him as "a great Mirror Chicken" who attacked the role with "real zeal and great passion".
The paper says Mr Cain's subsequent work on the Vote Leave campaign and at the Foreign Office has seen him "rise up the pecking order", and he now "squawks the corridors of power"
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-49159450
According to the Financial Times, Boris Johnson is preparing to spend billions of pounds more on health and social care including new hospitals in areas seen as being "left behind".
The paper says insiders expect announcements within days - but there are likely to be questions about how the proposals would be funded.
The Times says the measures are part of an effort by the prime minister and his new senior special adviser, Dominic Cummings, to take on Jeremy Corbyn over health spending
Mr Cummings, the former Vote Leave campaign director, is also the subject of two different stories.
The Guardian says it has unearthed comments from two years ago in which he claimed Conservative MPs did not care about poorer people or the NHS - and that the public had cottoned onto this.
And the Times reports that Brexit Party leader, Nigel Farage, has told the prime minister that he would not enter into an electoral pact with the Tories while Mr Cummings was in post.
Mr Farage apparently said the adviser was not a true believer in leaving the EU and that he had huge personal enmity towards those who were.
Meanwhile, the Telegraph believes Mr Johnson may have given some clues as to what a Brexit deal struck by his government could look like.
He suggested yesterday the UK could stay in the customs union and single market for another two years, the paper says.
The Telegraph points out this would involve the UK managing to reach an agreement before the end of October, allowing Britain to enter a transition period before concluding a final trade deal.
The declining value of the pound because of fears of a no-deal Brexit is the subject of several editorials.
The Sun believes sterling will rise again once Britain secures a better agreement with the EU.
But the Times says no-deal will lead to a further slide and cautions Mr Johnson, as he tours the country, that he should beware the verdict of markets.
The Mail accuses him of engaging in megaphone diplomacy and says "every sinew must be strained to reach a deal".
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/blogs-the-papers-49173243
Many found the vehicle's misfortune hilarious, and branded it an analogy for the deadlock facing the UK
https://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/brexit-party-bus-loses-control-18791272
1. Do you think any one race is more important than any other?
2. On the assumption that your answer to 1 above is "no", can you please explain why any one race should have a definition in relation to racism that is different to any other race?
I think anti-semitism should be judged by the same yardstick as every other race, and i will always question anyone who thinks otherwise.
If the Labour Party wished to stop their members wearing green trousers, they would say just that.
They would then spend the next 3 years arguing with members whether or not the definition of green included mint, turquoise, asparagus, chartreuse, emerald, etc., and get nowhere.
Whereas a better leader might send a letter/email out to all members saying that all shades of green trousers were banned, listing in detail all the banned shades, and clearly stating that continuing to wear these trousers would result in immediate expulsion.
This would result in the immediate rooting out of green trouser wearers, and make it clear that there was nowhere to hide.
Also, this clarity would convince those that were adamant about continuing to wear the offending trousers that they might as well leave the party, before they were expelled.
Progress would be immediate, and before very long all green trouser wearers would be eliminated from the party.
The problem I have with their difficulties is that antisemitism is illegal.
People go to court, and get jailed for it, without it taking years.
It should be a very easy problem to solve.
Just like Brexit.
Do you see any irony in saying the Labour Party should just accept something and implement it in a 273 page diatribe refusing to accept that Democracy (rightly or wrongly) has given a decision you do not agree with?
I watched Corbyn on Sophie Ridge on Sunday. He was appearing to clearly define Labours Brexit position, and put an end to their "constructive ambiguity".
He stated that they would oppose no deal, seek a second referendum on a Tory Brexit deal, and support remain.
However if Labour won a general election, they would wish to honour the referendum result, and negotiate a deal to leave the EU.
Assuming they wish to win an election, it is hard to see how this may help.
If we assume that the country was just about equally split between leave and remain, at the time of the referendum, and for the sake of this argument that hasn't changed.
Few MPs are in favour of a general election prior to the end of October. The majority of Tories obviously think that leaving the EU prior to an election would kill off the Brexit Party, and obviously enhance their chances of winning.
However they may be forced into one prior to leaving. Their majority is very slim, and will be reduced to just one, assuming they lose in Brecon on Thursday.
So going back to Labour and their "clear" position.
If the Tories were forced into an election by one of their MPs resigning or losing the whip, joining another party, or a vote of no confidence, who would vote Labour?
If you were a Brexit supporter would you be more likely to vote for The Brexit Party, or Boris Johnsons do or die, leaving the EU Tories?
If you were on the remain side wouldn't you be more likely to vote for a remain party?
If you voted Labour, what you got would depend on whether they won or lost.
I realise that they would retain their died in the wool Labour voters from both sides, but surely this position makes it impossible for them to win an election that took place before we left.
So to recap their position, in opposition they are in favour of a second referendum, and support remaining in the EU, but on winning an election they would favour leaving with a deal.
I can hear people groaning while thinking that a Labour win could leave us back to square one, and we could be sitting here in 3 years time in exactly the same boat while Labour negotiate a new deal.
If all political parties should prioritise what is best for the country, how can one party support both sides of the argument?
Labour say that they are our most democratic political party.
It is very difficult to back this up when you consider the stance they have taken on Brexit, both during the referendum campaign and the last 3 years, when 70% of their voters, a majority of their MPs, support remaining in the EU. While 78% of their members voted in favour of a second referendum at last years conference.