Five nations in contact with Johnson’s team as Irish deputy PM says: ‘Let’s avert catastrophe’The same article also carries news of a plethora of Remainer coups being planned:
Up to six Tory MPs are in talks with the Liberal Democrats about defecting and leaving Johnson with no majority... Senior Tories are also discussing creating a government of national unity under Labour’s Sir Keir Starmer or Philip Hammond, the outgoing chancellor...
They are likely to be fuelled by this:
Whitehall sources say the presumptive prime minister was left “visibly shaken” after being briefed by civil servants to expect civil unrest if he goes through with his threat...A senior government source revealed that importing fresh food through Dover would be only the third highest priority in the event of no-deal, with clean water only fifth. [maybe because there are no predicted shortages?] Top of the list are life-saving drugs, followed by medical devices and fresh food. Nuclear power plant parts are then given priority over the import of chemicals to purify drinking water [sounds very sensible] ...Contingency planning provides for 8,500 troops to be deployed to deal with transport blockages and possible [downgraded here] civil unrest and the Ministry of Defence is training staff to deploy to ports to deal with traffic jams.
This is scary stuff! Much worse than the usual liberal bleats? And it hasn't even got on to cheap local strawberries!
The Observer/Guardian prefers just the old bovine favourite and older scare stories:
Cross-party move to foil ‘disastrous exit’ comes as economic forecasts pile pressure on next PM
At the moment this seems to be a move to enlist Tory rebels into some Labour-led effort but there is a clue in that the key mover appears to be Sir K Starmer. He is suggested as the new PM of a GNU by the Sunday Times. Funny how he and D Grieve, both former Attorneys General, seem so keen on Parliamentary coups
“On Tuesday morning some ministers will sit around the cabinet table for the last time,” Starmer says. “They know very well the dangers of no deal. They will have been briefed about what it would mean for jobs, the economy, our public services and the union. They will have seen the advice and read the evidence....Last week the government’s independent forecasting body, the Office for Budget Responsibility, said a no-deal Brexit would plunge Britain into a recession that would shrink the economy by 2%, push unemployment above 5%, and send house prices tumbling by around 10%. It said the result would be a year-long downturn that would increase borrowing by £30bn a year.
The dangers, always the dangers. I haven't read the OBR's material, but it is interesting to see the implications for borrowing seem to the fore as a cost. These are dangers if we accept the neo-lib 'balancing the books' stuff of the Tories for the last 15 years, itself a response to having to bail out the banks with Government loans that had to look firmly based on proper housekeeping. EC policy too, of course. Why liberals should worry about increasing public borrowing is less clear. Both Johnson and Hunt have said they would increase it -- in their cases to engineer a pre-election mini-boom, of course
There is a unwitting suggestion already about how that £30bn could be 'saved':
Johnson will also come under intense pressure over whether or not to press ahead with the proposed HS2 rail project after it was reported that the costs could surpass the current budget of £56bn by almost £30bn....Johnson has said during Tory leadership hustings that he wants a review of the costs of the project.
For some reason, Labour supports HS2 -- so does the Observer, it seems.
Starmer is given more space to spell out his views elsewhere in the Observer, with confident (or cynical) appeals to the 'national interest' (GNU dog whistling?):
There is no such thing as a “managed” no deal. There will be chaos and legal uncertainty. It won’t be Johnson paying the price of a no deal; it will be working people, their families, and communities across the county. Manufacturing and farming will be hard hit, crucial medicines will be unavailable [they are freely available now, of course] and EU citizens living in the UK will be left in limbo [so that's his constituency?].
The government’s own economic watchdog has warned that crashing out of the EU would tip the economy into recession...[businesses he has talked to] have warned me about the dangers of rupturing our trading relationship with the EU overnight...The consequences for Northern Ireland are unthinkable, too.
Loud wildebeest calling with this:
Parliament must be put on a war footing to stop a no-deal Brexit...Every tool in our armoury must be deployed: amending legislation, forcing emergency debates and triggering no-confidence votes. The majority in parliament must act – and that will involve coordinated work across all political parties... I will want to work with all those former ministers who, like me, want to ensure that parliament can stop a disastrous and chaotic exit from the EU....The national interest will lie in stopping no deal, not defending a reckless and irresponsible prime minister. The majority in parliament share a common goal: to block a disastrous no-deal scenario. I urge that majority to work together – and together we can take a stand that could change the fate of our country.
Rather redundantly,the Observer editorial weighs in with the same old same old:
It’s hard to think of a senior Conservative MP less qualified to assume the premiership in such times.
There is a link with the current problems in the Gulf:
The clash with Iran highlights the wider dilemma Britain will face after Brexit. Isolated from our European allies, the danger is that we simply become a lesser satellite of American foreign policy, buffeted by global events and too weak to resist the pressure to do the bidding of Donald Trump.[ a developing theme that we have been tricked by Trump into sabre-rattling]...And Johnson has a dreadful record as foreign secretary. He is best known for jeopardising the case of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe,
[There is] a long line of occasions [charted just above -- same old stuff] where Johnson has played fast and loose with the truth....Johnson has form when it comes to wilfully misleading the public. His 2016 claim that leaving the EU would free up £350m a week for the NHS led to the head of Britain’s statistics watchdog chastising him for “a clear misuse of official statistics” [the only politician ever so criticised? Still hurts then?]... Last month, he erroneously claimed that if Britain crashed out of the EU without a deal, we could avoid paying any tariffs on European imports. Rather than correct himself, he has doubled down – despite the fact that the independent Office for Budget Responsibility last week published its forecast that a no-deal Brexit would shrink the economy by 2% in 2020. [so OBR forecasts are just 'facts']
The only remaining hope lies with parliament. [suitbaly modified Parliament of course]. We can take heart in the fact that the small number of remaining Tory moderates voted with the opposition last week to take action that would prevent a future prime minister proroguing parliament in the run-up to 31 October. Even if the only route to preventing no deal in the autumn is a no-confidence vote that triggers a general election, they must seize it. Otherwise the process of appeasement of the militant Tory Eurosceptics, which started with David Cameron and continued under Theresa May, will end up not only destroying the Conservative party, but taking the country down with it too.How liberals do love a bit of armchair aggression.
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