Yvette Couper and Oliver Let(Remain)win triumph!

Strange days indeed for Parliament as a bill to instruct the Government to seek a delay rather than no deal passes the Commons in one day and by one vote. The Guadina has

Letwin [no adjectives for him] said the government’s plan to seek an extension was an “enormously welcome development” and he did not have doubts that they would seek to avoid a no-deal Brexit, but there was still a need to pass legislation.[And, for balance] The veteran Brexiter [so ignore him] Bill Cash called the bill “reprehensible” and said it would set a terrible precedent for the government to rush through legislation in a single day. “This is something profoundly undemocratic,” he said.

The Times has the best bit though from Y Cooper:

The Labour MP Yvette Cooper said it was vital to ensure that a no-deal Brexit could not happen by the present Article 50 deadline of April 12. “I know that there are members across this House and there are people across the country who say they would like to see no-deal happen and they would like to see it happen as soon as possible,” she said. “I would just simply say, it will hit other people’s lives and it’s not fair.”...She said the bill was still needed because there was “no clear process of how those decisions will be taken”.

Scot Nats supported the bill. Can't wait for them to find out that a lengthy extension is required before any decision is taken on granting Scottish independence even after a successful referendum which will hit other people’s lives and it’s not fair. 

Back to the Times and J Russell, apparently, May has  been warned by an awful report from O Sedwill (Cabinet Secretary) of chaos and catastrophe that will follow no deal -- in the UK that is, since the EU seem well-prepared, of course:

Sir Mark Sedwill predicts devastation for the economy and “significant disruption”. Food prices would rise 10 per cent, fresh produce by more. Our recession would be worse than in 2008...We would be much more vulnerable to terrorism and crime; losing information-sharing with EU forces would “enormously increase” the pressure on our security services. No-deal in Northern Ireland, with all the tension over imposing border controls, would leave it so unstable that Whitehall would have to reintroduce direct rule from London, an arrangement with a bitter history.

I'd love to see the assumptions behind these forecasts. That it is a perfect market and we have not invented State intervention yet ? That these are value-free forecasts uninfluenced by the clear political preferences of the Civil Service?


Russell also notes that:

...warnings like these are shrugged off by much of the electorate as invented, exaggerated or short-term, because many now think no-deal is just fine. A YouGov poll shows that if there’s no agreement next week, no-deal is the most popular outcome. People would rather crash out than remain, at 44 to 42 per cent. Even if an extension is granted, 40 per cent want no-deal and only 36 per cent to stay in...This is dumbfounding. This is a country sanguine about declaring sanctions on itself, putting itself out of work, making crime easier, forcing its own lives to become meaner and harder. Only a third of voters believe the warnings about disruption; 45 per cent think them mostly nonsense.

Why this wilful ignorance? Is it a resurgence of the dark arts? A lingering effect of the slogan on the bus? Racism? No -- there is a new key factor:

This remarkable and dangerous transformation of public opinion [really?] is principally Theresa May’s achievement. She unintentionally turned a slogan with some short-term usefulness into one of the most convincing, concise and memorable political messages of recent years. She turns out to be one of the most brilliant, if destructive, marketeers in politics. “No deal is better than a bad deal”

So 44% of the sample have been persuaded by a single one of May's slogans, and unimpressed by torrents of Remainer and Project Fear stuff about chaos and catastrophe? It is a slogan and not anything like the experience of seeing the bullying, smug and bureaucratic EU or a self-serving Parliament operate that has turned us?

My own view, to repeat it, is that all the partisan banging on and on by liberals merely discredited themselves. Did they really think no-one could see through the disingenuous slogans about democracy and the national interest? Can we really not detect strategic communication when we see and hear so much of it?