Aux barricades! General Strike for cheap strawberries!

The hysteria and aggression in the GUardian has never been far from the surface, but now it surfaces, best of all in a piece by OwenJones, the boy radical. I'll spare the abuse and cut to the chase:

The British people must now take to the streets, and deploy the tactic used by their ancestors to secure the rights of women, of workers, of minorities, of LGBTQ people: peaceful civil disobedience. If parliament is to be shut down, MPs must refuse to leave it. It should be occupied by the citizens it exists to serve. Other acts of peaceful civil disobedience – including the occupation of government offices across the country – should follow. If a general strike is necessary to defend democracy, then so be it.

There is also predictable hysteria from P Toynbee:

A civil war state of mind now threatens our democracy 

I asked Bob Kerslake, former head of the civil service, where their duty lies in this unprecedented situation...“We are reaching the point where the civil service must consider putting its stewardship of the country ahead of service to the government of the day,” he said. That is a devastating verdict...Mark Sedwill, the current head, should, along with all other senior civil servants indeed consider the democratic validity of any instruction to facilitate a no-deal Brexit without parliamentary assent....Dominic Cummings, who runs Johnson as an iron puppet master...This aggressive provocation of parliament widens the great Brexit divide into a civil war state of mind. This is the battleground Johnson seeks – himself as roguish, freewheeling representative of the people’s will, defender of the referendum versus the Westminster establishment and the elite, as represented by MPs elected to parliament.

And there is this:

If Boris shuts down Parliament to carry out his No-Deal Brexit, I and other MPs will defend democracy.

The police will have to remove us from the chamber. We will call on people to take to the streets.

We will call an extraordinary session of Parliament. #PeoplesParliament

— Clive Lewis MP (@labourlewis) August 28, 2019

Thank goodness Gudinaristas still have a grasp of what is important:

'Surprisingly cruel': does Fleabag still work as a stage show?

Counter coup latest

El Guarndino announces a dastardly plan to suspend Parliament for 5 weeks to avoid blocking action, an example of Unrepentant's Law of Escalating Polarisation that accompanies aggressive virtue-signalling. We had all the latter yesterday when a coalition of minorities had a public meeting with a big pledge to sign, agreeing to do everything they could to stop no-deal, mostly by 'seizing control' of the order paper. I was reminded of an old argument in social science that aggregating 6 or 7 invalid methods does not produce one valid one.

Senior sources said a privy council of senior ministers was preparing to meet the Queen at Balmoral to set the prorogation in motion. A new session of parliament would then begin with a fresh Queen’s speech packed with manifesto-friendly measures on or around 14 October....Such a move would have to be approved by the privy council. It would give MPs little chance for parliamentary manoeuvring, but could just about allow time for a vote on any reworked deal Johnson manages to strike with the EU27, before the crucial European council meeting on 17 October.

Tory justification seems to be that this would be the normal pause to permit party conferences, and to allow new domestic legislation to be prepared but Remainers are predictably outraged.

The latest GRaun update says

Prime minister Boris Johnson has now confirmed that the Queen’s Speech will be delivered on 14th October....That means parliament will be suspended at some stage ahead of that date

Meanwhile, Graun high standards are maintained in the 'culture' section :

Totally appropriate: why there should be more male nudity in costume dramas

The Graunu explains that there is no clash between commercial and literary values. How fortunate!

Of course, the naked bottoms in Sanditon are there because ITV wants you to watch the show – but there is no reason to presume that Austen herself would have raised an eyebrow.

Now it's a counter coup offending the democrats

The Observer leads to day with a leaked story (!) about Johnson seeking legal advice about proroguing Parliament for 5 weeks. The advice apparently said it was possible unless the anti-Brexit lot sought legal action (just what they are doing -- subscribe now). The move has deeply offended 'Parliamentarians', of course:

[D Grieve said] “This memo, if correct, shows Boris Johnson’s contempt for the House of Commons. It may be possible to circumvent the clear intention of the House of Commons in this way but it shows total bad faith. Excluding the house from a national crisis that threatens the future of our country is entirely wrong.” And 'Keir Starmer, said: “Any plan to suspend parliament at this stage would be outrageous. MPs must take the earliest opportunity to thwart this plan and to stop a no-deal Brexit.”'... Any move to prorogue parliament would enrage the Commons Speaker, John Bercow, who said recently at the Edinburgh festival that parliament could stop a no-deal Brexit. The campaigner and businesswoman Gina Miller has said she will spearhead an immediate legal challenge

Without a whiff of hypocrisy at all:

Pro-remain MPs have spent the summer recess planning how to block a no-deal outcome and, if necessary, force an extension to the Brexit deadline beyond 31 October, when parliament returns on 3 September....Among the options being considered are taking control of Commons business for enough time to pass legislation that would mandate the prime minister to seek another extension.
An alternative backed by some remainers is to amend Brexit-related legislation to force an extension....EU leaders will be closely monitoring the clashes in parliament in September. Brussels sources say the bloc is reluctant to make fresh concessions before MPs have had an opportunity to tie Johnson’s hands by seeking to block no deal.

Meanwhile, Irish(?) ingenuity is deployed to gloss over the problem that an Irish border would be re-introduced by the EC not the UK - -which has finally dawned on lots of people :

The blame game is upon us...Johnson wrote: “This government will not put in place infrastructure, checks or controls at the border between Northern Ireland and Ireland.” Few outside the UK take such a claim seriously. If the UK were to follow such a course of action, it would be in breach not only of its World Trade Organization obligation to treat all its trade partners equally but of sundry other international obligations and agreements...[but N Ireland is legally part of the UK,not a trading partner, and, everyone argues, a 'special case', but never mind]

his political intention is clear: if a hard border reappears in Ireland this will be the fault of an unreasonable EU. This is an oft-repeated refrain among Brexiters and Ireland’s tiny band of Eurosceptics, anxious to find a reason to dislike the EU...The argument gets more traction than it deserves because of a confusion about borders.

Then a lovely bit of contorted argument:

border controls are entirely normal: it is their absence that is the aberration....The only region of the world where you will find sovereign states coexisting without border checks on the trade between them is the EU....The combination of the customs union and single market remains to this day the only way that border controls on trade between sovereign states have been eliminated. It was an astonishing political achievement. It has been so successful that many Europeans now take a borderless Europe for granted 

However:

[Brexiteers argue ]that the UK will never introduce a border with Ireland; that if UK decisions lead to borders, this will be because the EU “chooses” to “reintroduce” them; that the EU, not the UK, will be to blame....

Yet:

Such claims might be valid if we lived in a world where the absence of border controls was the normal state of affairs. Since we don’t live in such a world, they are a logical nonsense and will remain so until someone finds an alternative way of eliminating border controls on trade while preventing smuggling. The latter consideration is particularly important given that we also live in a world in which legitimate traders and governments will not accept losing business and tax revenue as a result of the illegal activities of organised criminals

SO:

there are probably others who are genuinely confused. And one reason for that is that they’ve so internalised the EU’s greatest success that they assume it is the natural state of affairs...Which is wrong and also a bit ironic.

Coup update

Having fouled up the GNU, because none of them want to support each other, the Parliamentary route to removing no deal is back on again. The 'rebels' are confident, says the Observer:

MPs plan to pass a law stating that the prime minister must request a delay to Brexit to avoid a no-deal outcome. However, their challenge has been to find a parliamentary device enabling them to do so. There are no guarantees of success, but tactics include amending a vote relating to the Northern Ireland executive, altering parliament’s standing orders, and using an emergency debate to seize control of the parliamentary timetable – which is not usually allowed under parliament’s current rulebook....rebels already believe they can act without any legislation being presented by the government. “They are planning on how to take away any hooks, but we don’t need hooks,” said one of those involved.

Other hopes include:

Johnson will return to the Commons at the 11th hour with one last chance to vote for a Brexit deal similar to that offered by Theresa May. They believe Labour MPs opposed to a second referendum, such as Lisa Nandy, could be convinced to back it. While most are convinced that Cummings is prepared to leave the EU without a deal, some also expect serving ministers to rebel should such an outcome look imminent....“I just think their inner Tory who cares about the economy will scream at ministers as it did for Theresa May,” said one former minister. “I think Cummings will be told ‘no’ and then sort of explode like a Dr Who dalek whose wires are fatally crossed, screaming ‘exterminate.’”

GUardian mission

The Editor of the GRaun links to the Peterloo bicentenary to restate her and her organ's values:

The first edition was published on 5 May 1821, devoted to enlightenment values, liberty, reform and justice....Scott turned the newspaper into “the dominant expression of radical thinking among educated men and women”...The first manifesto was]...a wholly uncynical and unsnobbish document. It is on people’s side....Scott introduced the famous phrase “comment is free, but facts are sacred”, and decreed that “the voice of opponents no less than that of friends has a right to be heard”. It was here that he laid out the values of the Guardian: honesty, cleanness, integrity, courage, fairness, a sense of duty to the reader and a sense of duty to the community.

The Graun varied in terms of how it saw it's values, unsurprisingly -- working ideology normally bridges the gap with policy. Viner reminds us -- 

the paper demanded that the Manchester cotton workers who starved in the streets because they refused to touch cotton picked by American slaves should be forced back into work...[influenced too much by advertisers apparently.  [However]...Scott campaigned for self-government in Ireland...The Guardian stood against [Boer War 2]  and ran a campaign for peace, while the brilliant Guardian reporter Emily Hobhouse exposed the concentration camps for the Boers run by the British....[Nevertheless]...the Manchester Guardian disparaged the foundation of Britain’s National Health Service. While supporting the changes as a “great step forward”, the Guardian feared that the state providing welfare “risks an increase in the proportion of the less gifted”.[The editor at the time] AP Wadsworth, loathed Nye Bevan

Viner is no CP Scott and goes with something woollier than a manifesto

After working at the Guardian for two decades, I feel I know instinctively why it exists. Most of our journalists and our readers do, too – it’s something to do with holding power to account, and upholding liberal values...journalists must work to earn the trust of those they aim to serve. And we must make ourselves more representative of the societies we aim to represent. Members of the media are increasingly drawn from the same, privileged sector of society: this problem has actually worsened in recent decades

championing the public interest – which has always been at the heart of the Guardian’s mission – has become an urgent necessity. [Naturally, public interest leads to about as close as the Graun can get to neutrality with this:]...the Brexit referendum...leaves Britain facing a deeply uncertain future

And it ends,eventually with this:

More than 800,000 readers now help fund the Guardian. Join them.


It's very long, and quite good really... Meanwhile the lofty standards to which it aspires in the public interests are demonstrated in the Weekend section:

Blind date: ‘We talked about our best vomit stories’

Gnus agenda -- latest hats in the ring

Supporters of GNU are struggling a bit. First C Lucas's plan to set up an all-woman Cabinet has been torpedoed by someone pointing out she had not invited any BME women. Even if she did, that would still leave out trans, differently-abled, specific difficulties womx: the Cabinet room would be too small? The other problem might be that some would be Leavers.

Next, Corbyn suggested that he lead a caretaker GNU to get Brexit extended and organise a new referendum. He has to be placated because only the Leader of the Opposition can table a no confidence vote in the first place. Today, other egos seem to want to block that:

Rebel Conservative MPs have agreed to meet Jeremy Corbyn to discuss how to stop Boris Johnson pursuing a no-deal Brexit, without committing to backing him as a caretaker leader....Jo Swinson, the Lib Dem leader...dismissed the idea of Corbyn leading a caretaker government as “nonsense” as she claimed the Labour leader would not be able to build even a temporary consensus...In contrast, SNP, Plaid Cymru and Green MPs said they were willing to talk to Corbyn...Anna Soubry, the leader of the Independent Group for Change (formerly Change UK), told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Thursday: “I would not support a government of national unity that is led by Jeremy Corbyn...Many Tory backbenchers and some independents are likely only to be willing to back a centrist candidate and not a current party leader... a “trusted figure” such as Ken Clarke or Hilary Benn would be better.

Meanwhile,luvvies are outraged that Johnson has said that Parliamentary opposition to no deal is a collaboration with the EU. 

His argument is that the EU will not offer any concessions if it believes parliament will stop a no-deal Brexit, and as such he claims that MPs opposed to no deal are actually making it more likely...“There’s a terrible collaboration, as it were, going on between people who think they can block Brexit in parliament and our European friends,” he said....“And our European friends are not moving in their willingness to compromise, they’re not compromising at all on the withdrawal agreement even though it’s been thrown out three times, they’re sticking to every letter, every comma of the withdrawal agreement – including the backstop – because they still think Brexit can be blocked in parliament.

Perfectly obvious to everyone now, surely -- Remainers do not even bother to hide their discussions with the EC. But that word is offensive, apparently, 74 years after World War 2, and that bossy woman on Newsnight ran with it for several minutes, asking people if it was right for the Prime Minister to call their colleagues 'collaborators'.  God knows what the young made of it. It did use to make the old guys smile when Government urged HEIs to collaborate, but still offensive? The subjunctive mode is not understood, reservations and conditionals ignored, and unspoken suspected implications only detectable by the woke are what counts of course. They also reserve the right to introduce new insults when needed.

It falls to K Balls to point out that this outraged virtue-signalling  might help Johnson :

With a parliamentary majority of one, No 10’s focus is a likely autumn election. Its aim is to win over the public, not MPs

Meanwhile,Graun news values are still to the fore, thank goodness, with this:

Skunk Anansie's Skin: I was irritated when Beyonce said she was the first

First black person to headline Glasto that is. Skin ('born Deborah Anne Dyer)' has a new album to promote and a career to revive.

Weasels not GNUs

Former Chancellor and Remainer P Hammond says 'Parliament' will stop no-deal. The arguments are splendid:

Any attempt to bypass parliament would provoke “a constitutional crisis”...“Pivoting to say the backstop has to go in its entirety, a huge chunk of the withdrawal agreement just scrapped, is effectively a wrecking tactic. The people behind this know that means there will be no deal.”

Hammond said he was certain parliament would find a legislative way to block the UK’s exit from the EU without a deal, even if Downing Street claimed that would be impossible. The former chancellor has met a number of leading figures opposed to no deal, including the shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer...“It’s very clear to me, and the Speaker of the House of Commons has also been very clear, that if a majority of MPs clearly want to go down a certain route, a means will be delivered to allow that to happen.”

However, he suggested he would not support moves to vote down the government and install a unity cabinet that would negotiate an extension with the EU...“I don’t agree with that at all, I don’t think that’s the answer. We have a Conservative government under Boris Johnson,” he said. “I want to see government be a success not just in delivering Brexit but across the whole spectrum of domestic and foreign policy. But I do want it to listen to what parliament is saying.”

The former chancellor also hit out at overnight briefings from Downing Street sources that he had blocked preparations for a no-deal exit and weakened the UK’s negotiating position...“We were already doing no-deal preparations and, although Downing Street repeatedly suggests that was not done, we spent £4.2bn. The Bank of England’s own analysis in June showed their estimate of damage to our economy had significantly reduced as a result of the no-deal preparation that we had carried out,” he said.

So shadowy deals with Remainers and the Speaker are needed to avoid a constitutional crisis. But a GNU is unacceptable and he wants the Conservative Government to be a success even though he is plotting to oppose one of its main strategies. Preparing for no deal was successful in limiting damage -- but more expenditure will not be?

Meanwhile, there have been a number of stories lately about shortages of medicines.These have nothing to do with Brexit, but are down to a combination of new regulations holding up production in new locations. And the search for superprofit of course:

The Scottish Medicines Consortium has recently decided the drugs Orkambi and Symkevi are not cost-effective, following on from the same decision made by the National Institute of Health and Care Excellence in England in 2016. These drugs, developed by the American pharmaceutical company Vertex, aim to prolong the lives of people with cystic fibrosis and have increased some patients’ lung function by up to 20%. They are transformative for those taking them. The core of the dispute lies in the price Vertex is asking of the NHS for these life-changing medications – £104,000 per patient, per year. It has been estimated that the company will make a profit of $21bn (£17bn) over the drugs’ lifetime.

Shouty headlines etc again

P Toynbee this time.Much of her article is taken up with the special pleading of a 'family-owned firm in Haddenham, Cambridgeshire, making specialist chocolate and fudge in two factories employing 50 people',facing complexities with new customs forms and facing, apparently, a 20% tariff. The headline:

Brexit has turned our government into an Orwellian Ministry of Truth 

Mostly because the Government has so far been pretty unhelpful to the chocolatier, and HMRC has delayed giving him information.  The experience is echoed by a spokesperson for the Food and Drink Federation:

“The industry can never be ready,” says Wright.[Oh dear --what an admission]  “With so many possible eventualities, it’s pinning jelly to the wall. There will be random shortages and unpredictable chaos. No commodity prices can be fixed. No one knows what haulage will cost, if queues or fear of visas make EU drivers refuse to come here. Some things will be fine, but some will be much worse than we think – the unknown unknowns.”

Isn't that what 'businessmen' claim to be dealing with when they reward themselves with 'profit'?  So the UK is not ready for Brexit then [and who is to blame for that?And will it be?].For Toynbee, the claims are therefore Orwellian?

She thinks:

The great “ready-for-Brexit” sham paraded in Downing Street with all this “task and finish” talk may be designed to convince EU negotiators that Boris Johnson is deadly serious about no deal. But Brussels knows it’s all bravado.

She ends with a typical flourish:

The Times yesterday revealed that Cabinet Office plans include invoking the Civil Contingencies Act, with its almost unlimited emergency powers if Brexit threatens “serious damage”. Meanwhile, the Treasury seems to have spare time from its preparations to include Sajid Javid’s bizarre intention to mint new 50p coins. They will be embossed with the words “friendship with all nations”, a Ministry of Truth upside-down inversion to commemorate a no-deal Brexit with a no-£39bn crash-out that breaks friendship with our neighbours for years to come.  

Breaking a trade agreement means breaking friendship. A rival prediction is a lie. THAT is Orwellian newspeak. There is doubtless unintended distortion too in the view, common among Remainers that: 'unsalable sheep will be slaughtered when the door to 90% of the UK market slams shut on 1 November.' 

Even the source cited explains that it is 95% of exports that might be threatened, not the whole 'UK market' (I assume she meant UK output?)

Remainer tribe --update*

More useful, unusually analytic and critical, information on what drives Remainers in the Graun's (usually too) long (to) read,by a freelance journalist D Cohen:

They hate Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn. They no longer trust the BBC. They love civil servants, legal experts and James O’Brien. And now, consumed by the battle against Brexit, hardcore remainers are no longer the moderates

Apparently,they cluster around a hashtag #FBPE (follow back pro-EU -- it was Dutch originally):

...they have grown increasingly despairing. The #FBPE brigade can appear locked in an arms race to out-remain each other. The descriptions that accompany their profiles are furnished with Brexiter slurs they’ve reappropriated (“remoaner”, “saboteur”), lists of the European countries they’ve lived in, and plainspoken declarations of devotion (“Remain – all the way through like a stick of rock”)...for this online tribe, #FBPE is more than a badge of solidarity – it has given them an identity....anything less than staying in Europe will devastate them. “It’s going to be like a bereavement for me,” says Helen Harris-Burland, a campaigner from the Chilterns.

Solidarity can be increased culturally:

 

remainists can read The New European, a pro-EU newspaper, and anti-Brexit novels by Ali Smith and Jonathan Coe. They can listen to podcasts like My Parents Voted Brexit and Remainiacs, and if they’re looking for some remain-themed music, they can put on a recent album by The Matthew Herbert Brexit Big Band, which includes samples of Gibraltarian monkeys, a swimmer crossing the Channel and a Ford Fiesta being scrapped.

There is victimhood:

remainists have found themselves out in the cold. “I just felt everything I believed in was stolen from me,”...Remainists feel embattled, ignored; they lament what their country has become. They feel that the politicians who are meant to be on their side, and the media organisations that are meant to present facts impartially, have betrayed them.... “Europeanism has always been more anti-Eurosceptic than pro-European,”[staggeringly]... “Unfortunately, the BBC is no longer a source of truth for what’s going on in the country.”...Twitter has filled that void.... a space for like-minded souls to furiously agree with each other and rage at the other side’s idiocy,...

And class -- upwards:

Adonis defines remainism as a revolt of the middle class – and that is why he believes that, in the end, Brexit won’t happen. “The English middle class, deeply alarmed, will be heard and will win,” he told me....Remainism is seen, not entirely unfairly, as an unusually middle-class protest movement, but remainists have attempted to flip that perception by branding Brexiters, or at least the politicians who speak on their behalf, as the true elite.

And downwards:

their Brexiter critics still accuse them of looking down on leave supporters. And it’s true that derision does sometimes rise to the surface...remainists wielded signs that mocked leavers while trumpeting their own superiority: “52% Pride and Prejudice 48% Sense and Sensibility,” read one.

Working together, these factors mean: 

these people, who once dismissed radicals as unreasonable, have themselves become radicalised. They used to pride themselves on their moderation; now, spurred on by rage, they divide the world into enemies and allies. What they are doing is loud, obsessive, tribal, confrontational – politics, in other words....“It was just so reminiscent of how radical-right voters would think,...for remainists, just like leavers, the argument is really about Britain: the country they thought they were living in, and the country they want it to be.

They go on protests. They have strong opinions about Guy Verhofstadt and Sabine Weyand. They worry about chlorinated chicken. They have acquired detailed knowledge of electoral law and can list the leave campaign’s violations. They light up at any mention of the 2012 Olympics. They wonder what Orwell would have made of all this. They hang the EU flag in their windows. (There is a group of remainists who call themselves EU Flag Mafia, and perform stunts such as hanging dozens of flags from poles in the sea off Southend, like a gang of centrist situationists.)...Wooferendum, even mobilises dogs against Brexit. [There are also] naffer edges of remainism, they include the kind of love songs or break-up ballads one might hear at an open-mic night, but addressed to the EU

The Irish journalist Fintan O’Toole has described Brexit as a masochistic project but, as leavers are fond of pointing out, remainists have a masochistic streak of their own. The most zealous remainists give the impression of relishing each morsel of bad news – growth slowing, a car plant closing – as if willing on the damage that confirms their worst fears. Like revolutionaries striving to heighten the contradictions, they believe that only then will leave voters see the error of their ways, and the politicians who deceived them get what they deserve.

There is the small c conservatism and Oedipal hangups:

Remainists tend to put their faith not in politicians, but in bureaucrats and civil servants....Remainists wish these kinds of “grownups” – seemingly responsible, competent people, capable of putting the national interest above ambition and petty rivalries – could clean up the mess...Remainists look enviously at Europe, longing for a leader of their own – a Merkel, a Macron, a Tusk – to deliver Britain from Brexit....Expertise matters to remainists. They don’t merely admire it – that admiration is an important part of how they define themselves...Behind this solemn reverence for experts lies the belief, or at least the forlorn hope, that if leavers were only forced to confront the facts on Brexit, they would be overwhelmed by the weight of evidence....remainists worship[James o'Brien of LBC]  for the way he shreds leavers’ arguments....figures from outside party politics filled the void. Most prominent was Gina Miller

Much as remainists claim to champion complexity, their own optimism is not so different from the kind currently coming out of No 10: it is as if the past three years could be magicked away, Brexit and its supporters bypassed, at little enduring cost.

 [Despite the dogma that] the young symbolise the future of the country...[there]  lies a more old-fashioned worldview. It’s leavers who are typically accused of indulging imperial nostalgia, by insisting that Brexit will revive Britain’s bygone greatness. But you can find that same nostalgia in remainists’ fear that leaving the EU will finish off whatever greatness remains....Some of this same nostalgia seems to inform the familiar lament about how far Britain has fallen, reducing itself to a laughing stock on the world stage.

Fancy the Graun printing this!  They need lots of reader contributions in the silly season?

Transitive hate diverted on to old target, but a womanly GNU will save us

The Graun leads (yes leads) its website with an 'Exclusive' [sic] story about a speech by N Farage which: 'attacks Harry and Meghan, [and] jokes about 'overweight' Queen Mother', and is none too kind about Prince Charles either. The theme of his remarks seem to be jeering at the 'woke'. I suspect about half the country at least do that, so the Graun could well have shot itself in its poor mangled foot again by publicising Farage's remarks. 

Elsewhere, the Graun admits that criticism of royals might be widely shared, but has its own account of the reasons, of course:

The outpouring of bile against the Duchess of Sussex has been impossible to miss in recent weeks, whether it is stories of her contributing to human rights abuses through eating avocados, or opinion pieces criticising her for guest editing Vogue or being ‘snobbish’. But many commentators have noted another tone to some of the criticism, one of misogyny and racism... [This despite the]... rich history of intense tabloid criticism that most members of the monarchy have been through in recent years. 

The Graun is amazingly flexible -- Unionism and now monarchism. They give space to C Lucas's latest scheme too:

I’m calling for a cabinet of women to stop a disastrous no-deal Brexit 

 She apparently has in mind recruiting:

Heidi Allen MP [Ind], Kirsty Blackman MP [SNP], Yvette Cooper MP, [Lab] Justine Greening MP [Con], Sylvia Hermon MP, [Independent Unionist] Liz Saville Roberts MP, [Plaid] Anna Soubry MP [Change], Nicola Sturgeon MSP, Jo Swinson MP [Lib] and Emily Thornberry MP [Lab]

With herself as PM? Sturgeon is not even an MP of course. The others over-represent various minorities to a considerable extent, and are all Remainers as well as all women [as far as it is politic to enquire].

Identifying Johnson's elevation as a right- wing coup enables her to reassure us that such a move:

is not an attempt to replace one coup with another...A government of national unity must do exactly that – unite parties. And I believe that a cross-party cabinet of women has the potential to do exactly that...Because I believe women have shown they can bring a different perspective to crises, are able to reach out to those they disagree with and cooperate to find solutions...We then need to press the pause button in order to organise a confirmatory vote...

After a GNU, a weasel:

It also means a commitment that, as politicians, we accept the outcome of that fair, transparent and informed vote, even if it delivers a result we do not agree with.

Presumably, we judge the fairness and transparency of the vote by its result, like we did with the 2016 Referendum, so no way can it ever deliver a result she does not agree with. She must know this is really an empty gesture that only el Guran would bother taking seriously.

GNU awakes

Good news from the Observer of an alliance between G Brown and S Khan, in the article at least. The article is lead news, summarising the articles Brown and Khan write in the Opinion section -- the news is that Remainers have views. It's hard to disentangle whether Brexit drives the whole thing for Broon, or is a subsidiary to the lofty aims of defeating nationalism [he was Chancellor during the very non-nationalistic Iraq War, of course] and keeping the Union intact:

only...as an outward-looking, tolerant, fair-minded and pragmatic people – can Britain recover its cohesion and common purpose. These precious ideals could not survive the divisiveness and chaos of a no-deal Brexit. To prevent the rise and rise of dysfunctional nationalism the first step is to stop no-deal in its tracks.”

Sadiq Khan, the London mayor, becomes the most senior Labour figure to call on his party to consider backing a national-unity government to stop no-deal Brexit. He suggests that, while the “starting point for any conversations” about a unity government should be that it is led by Jeremy Corbyn, other options should not be excluded.

The coup plotters still seem a bit disorganised:

The pleas from two of Labour’s biggest beasts come after a week in which anti no-deal MPs have been unable to agree who should head a temporary government if Johnson were to lose a vote of no confidence in September. [Far and away the most concerning issue for politicians, I suspect]  Rebels trying to stop no-deal now regard an attempt to change the law as the most likely first avenue explored to stop it going ahead.

Juncker helps things along:

Jean-Claude Juncker, the president of the European Commission, warned this weekend that Britain would be the “big losers” from a no-deal outcome. “If it comes to a hard Brexit, this is in no one’s interest, but the British would be the big losers,” he told the Austrian paper Tiroler Tageszeitung. “They pretend it’s not like that, but it will be … We have made it clear that we are unwilling to renegotiate the exit agreement.”

That's probably enough to convince the Observer that we should simply put the whole silly business behind us.

Meanwhile, a further lurch down the transitive hate road is provided by this:

Boris Johnson’s controversial enforcer, Dominic Cummings, an architect of Brexit and a fierce critic of Brussels, is co-owner of a farm that has received €250,000 (£235,000) in EU farming subsidies, the Observer can reveal.[That is the gross sum, it seems over ten years.I thought Remainers saw gross figures as 'lies'] ...The revelation opens Cummings up to charges of hypocrisy, as writing on his blog, he has attacked the use of agricultural subsidies “dreamed up in the 1950s and 1960s” because they “raise prices for the poor to subsidise rich farmers while damaging agriculture in Africa”.

In the other ideological direction W Hutton tries to raise morale, detecting the rise of Reason stirring from its slumber as the EU, a federal UK and stopping climate change all combine together in a unicorn-like:

European Sustainable Union....If we leave the EU, at the heart of the case for rejoining [already!] will be the need to make the greening of our continent a common cause.

The no-deal Brexiters do not have the force behind them, any more than does Trump. They are losers, on the wrong side of history. Better people will enter politics. [petit-bourgeois ones ideally]. Old parties will be rejuvenated: new ones take life. There will be a counter-revolution – it’s already in the making.

Brexit behind summer storms?

The GRuhn has a major story that nearly fails to link to Brexit --  power cuts:

left people stuck in trains for up to nine hours and cut electricity to almost 1 million people in England and Wales.[It] was caused by problems at Little Barford gas-fired power station in Bedfordshire and Hornsea offshore wind farm off the coast of Yorkshire, which both failed at around the same time.

We are nearly half way down the story before we get this:

Manuel Cortes, the general secretary of the Transport Salaried Staffs Association, said: “We urgently need answers over this fiasco...As we face the growing prospect of a no-deal Brexit it’s reasonable to wonder if this is a foretaste of things to come. Along with an economy sliding towards recession and expected food shortages, we now seem to be a country where blackouts happen without warning, travel grinds to a halt, traffic lights stop working and – terrifyingly – hospitals are left without power.”..He added: “Boris Johnson can’t remain silent over this – he must quickly provide answers and illumination.” [very apt in the circumstances]

Another story concerns the storms affecting events all over the UK. Guardina readers will be horrified to learn that :

Music festivals and smaller events have been cancelled because of the bad weather. Boardmasters, a surfing and music festival in Cornwall...A second music festival, Houghton, in Norfolk, was called off...Organisers of Bristol’s International Balloon Fiesta scaled back the event...Several weekend LGBT+ pride events, including those in Chester, Milton Keynes and Plymouth, were postponed over safety concerns....The first day of Blackpool Air Show, on Saturday, was cancelled...The nearby St Anne’s International Kite Festival was also cancelled....The London Wildlife Festival, scheduled on Saturday and Sunday at Walthamstow Wetlands, was cancelled...Nantwich Antiques Market in Cheshire was cancelled...At the National Eisteddfod of Wales, organisers of the week-long cultural festival closed part of the event early

God -- the misery goes on and on. But absolutely NO comment on the implications for and of a no-deal Brexit! Surely someone in the office could have seen this as a metaphor? Why is  Johnson not being urged to act? Where is old M 'chippy' Kettle when you need him?

ScotNat good, Brexit bad

Another weird piece from S Jenkins in the GRun. I can only assume he is being driven by revenge fantasies. The contradictions are clear:

If I were a Scot, I would vote for independence tomorrow. I would want nothing more to do with the shambles of today’s Westminster parliament, which goes on holiday for a month during the worst political crisis in a generation [NB the EC is also on holiday and has been a full partner in the 'worst political crisis', of course]

The supreme civil right is that to self-government, and the inferior tier of a federation is entitled to claim it, not the superior one to permit. [Unless the inferior tier is the UK in a Euro Federation?]

support for independence has topped 52%, the same percentage that voted for Brexit across the UK in 2016.[ But  only one majority ois 'good' of course]...Sauce for the Brexit goose is sauce for the tartan gander [bnutnot viceversa]

Then some fair comment -- but again with implications that could easily be reversed and applied to the EU:

With the exception of Tony Blair’s partial devolution, London has simply ignored the progressive disintegration of the “first British empire”, the one that has embraced the British Isles since the Norman conquest and was cohered as a supposed United Kingdom in 1801. While France, Germany and Italy (if not Spain) have steadily assimilated their disparate provinces over time [is this good?] , the United Kingdom has done the opposite....London now faces precisely the dilemma that faced Gladstone [with Ireland]: whether to negotiate “independence-lite”, or face a further breakup of the UK, as in 1922.

 Referendum voters asked to decide on their nation’s destiny rarely look to personal gain or commercial advantage. England’s Brexit voters were concentrated in parts of Britain with most to lose from Brexit....voters are more concerned with national identity, pride, self-reliance and local accountability. [yes -- so why is one set of voters noble and the other misguided and selfish?]

If Johnson really does stick to no deal – or its bastard sibling, hard Brexit – he will drive Scotland to separation. Like it or not, this means borders. To the absurdity of inspection posts in Fermanagh and Tyrone will be added posts in Berwick and Carlisle.  

There is one sneaky additional proposal in there, though, in that Jenkins is proposing a deal which would give everything to ScotNats --more English cultural cringe?:

one that withdraws Scots MPs from Westminster and sees Scotland rejoin the EU, but keeps travel, currency and citizenship ties in place.

Maybe Jenkins is trying to reduce Brexit to absurdity? If so, why stop there? Let's here it for Shetland independence! Home Rule for the Hebrides!

Transitive hate -- Brexit>Johnson>Cummings

The Graud shifts its fire downstream a bit. First (and note this is the news section)

Rebel MPs are working on a plan to thwart Boris Johnson pursuing a no-deal Brexit on 31 October that involves forcing parliament to sit through the autumn recess, amid growing outrage about the power and influence of his controversial aide, Dominic Cummings....[and]...mounting urgency because of the hardline tactics of Cummings, who one Conservative insider described as running a “reign of terror” in No 10 aimed at achieving Brexit on 31 October at any cost....The ultimate aim would be to pass a bill forcing the government to request an extension to article 50 from Brussels.

Experts said it was a plausible plan for cross-party rebels to seize control of the order paper via motions for recess, which are called “periodic adjournment motions”. They are not normally amendable, but John Bercow, the Speaker of the Commons, caused major controversy in January when he defied this convention and allowed Tory MP Dominic Grieve to amend a similar motion

Must be serious if they vote to miss their party conference jollies. Let's prepare the ground with this:

alarm is mounting within No 10, among some special advisers and Tory MPs about the scale of Cummings’ influence and willingness to defy parliament....One Conservative insider said that Cummings had in effect demanded control over Johnson’s operation as his price for entering government and proceeded to sideline more moderate advisers, such as ex-City Hall stalwart Sir Eddie Lister, while installing a team of “true believers” in hard Brexit largely from the former Vote Leave campaign...The source described Cummings’ grip over No 10 as a “reign of terror”, with advisers petrified about keeping their jobs and being told they are expected to be working flat out to deliver Brexit come what may by the 31 October deadline....A Tory special adviser told the Guardian that Cummings was “absolutely running the show” and was even more ruthless and difficult to work with than Theresa May’s former advisers Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill: “The level of terror is greater than Priti Patel would like to exert on the criminal classes....“Cummings is an unelected backroom adviser, and there’s a worry the PM is becoming just a front for his ideological plans.”

Of course, the Grun is an entirely balanced and objective newspaper that would never just treat the briefings of embittered Remainers as news, so it also has this:

Cummings does have some supporters, including one special adviser who worked under the last two administrations, who said: “Dom wants people who can do the job well, will actually deliver on the PM’s priorities and will give honest answers when there are problems. In the last government you could get fired simply because someone else was having a bad day.”

Elsewhere old boiling Kettle (who chips away rather than bangs on -- apologies to him) had a more nuanced (sic) piece:

Boris Johnson’s top adviser may be making all the headlines, but he’s not calling the shots on Brexit 

Right back to the original éminence grise in 17th century France, Père Joseph, and probably beyond, the mystique of the all-seeing adviser behind the throne has been a constant theme. But how well grounded is this in reality? What we do know is that those who work in the shadows are catnip to journalists who know less than they pretend about the workings of government....This sort of thing breeds resentment. Cummings already risks appearing – and being – the over-mighty subject of what is anyway a precarious and sectarian government.

Cummings does not control events. He is not Prospero, able to conjure up a tempest that delivers his enemies into his hands. He is having a good run, but he is helped by the most irresponsible parliamentary summer recess of modern times. Even now MPs should be aiming to get back to Westminster and hold the government to account before the planned return on 3 September. They should scrap this year’s party conferences too....The idea that he [Cummings]  pulls all the strings is lazy and wrong. The Brexit outcome depends on a tangled web of interests and influences beyond his control.

Then, remarkably for Kettle, the Owl of Minerva is allowed to circle above:

Think too about the economic and political pressures bearing in again on all the protagonists.  ...Britain will suffer most from no deal...[but]...A detailed survey in March by the Bertelsmann Foundation concluded that Ireland in particular will be very hard hit, as will northern France, Belgium and parts of the Netherlands....It is nevertheless possible that time-limiting the backstop in some way – five years is mentioned in some circles – and agreeing to negotiate the issues in the political declaration in good faith over an agreed timetable might, just might, make a difference.

This is very nearly an understanding of the confrontational strategy after all. Has Kettle stopped chipping at last?

Met worries about standards

The Graun's lead is a rehash of the Times article yesterday about whether 'Parliament' could stop no deal, pitting Grieve against Cummings. There are the usual textual shifters of course.

Grieve, a former attorney general... [Cummings quoted as saying] “I don’t think I am arrogant. I don’t know very much about very much. Mr Grieve … we’ll see what he’s right about.”

There is also an echo of an old Project Fear piece from a senior Met copper, 'Britain’s head of counter-terrorism', N. Basu:

Counter-terror chief raises ‘deep concerns’ as key crime-fighting tools will be lost

Basu thinks 'key crime-fighting tools would be lost and their replacements would not be as good.' That change from 'will' to 'would' implies that discussions are ongoing about replacement agreements, which Basu confirms, but he adds confidently "that any plausible change would be for the worse".

The three key measures are fast access to intelligence and data through the Schengen Information System II database, as well as passenger name records, and the ability to use European arrest warrants....[Astonishingly] there is no contingency planning for not being given passenger name records....“It would create an immediate risk that people could come to this country who were serious offenders, either wanted or still serial and serious offenders committing crimes in this country, and we would not know about it. It creates that risk....“With my police leadership hat on there would still be deep concern. There would be some damage to our safety. I can’t put a scale on that.”.

While he was there, Basu commented on Johnson. The Gudr puts it as :

Amid controversy about comments by Boris Johnson such as saying women who wore the burqa resembled “letterboxes” and using the racially offensive term “piccaninnies”, Basu said: “Every public figure who’s got a microphone and has got an opportunity to speak should take the opportunity to be bringing society together....“The most important thing everybody should be aiming for is a socially cohesive, inclusive society.”...Asked if he would allow someone to join the police if they had used such langage [sic], Basu said: “No, they wouldn’t be recruited into policing.”

Who introduced these 'comments' I wonder and why did a senior copper rise to the bait? Lovely to hear that the Met wants social inclusiveness though.That might help it overcome its own current PR problems with Operation Midland, where they believed a fantasist alleging widespread paedophilia and murder among senior Establishment figures, spent a lot of money on the investigations, and saw the case collapse with the fantasist jailed for 18 years for possessing indecent images and perverting (sic) the course of justice.

Guardian brings weekly good news of disruption and coups

There's a new weekly roundup of Brexit news frm the Gruna. Lovers of good news can even get it via email. Here's a bit of this week's:

Best of the rest

• Surge in EU citizens unfairly refused access to universal credit.
• Low-income Britons ‘more vulnerable to recession than in 2008’.
• Edinburgh festival performers refuse sterling payments due to Brexit.
• UK less able to cope with hard Brexit than it was in spring, say officials.
• UK manufacturing ‘suffocating’ as output slips to seven-year low.
• BMW boss urges Boris Johnson to abandon no-deal Brexit.
• Labour would be ‘off our rockers’ not to back remain in poll, says Thornberry.
• We’ll block trade deal if Brexit imperils open Irish border, say US politicians.
• Brexit causes UK car industry investment to crash to ‘pitiful’ £90m.
• No-deal Brexit would endanger rural life, says Welsh leader.

Meanwhile V Bogdanor offers some expert advice for coup organisers, with the cheerful headline:

MPs can still thwart Boris Johnson over no deal. Here’s how

 there are, in theory, five ways in which the Commons could act.

First, it could legislate to require the prime minister to seek a further extension. The EU27 would then have to decide by unanimity whether to grant it, and under what conditions. Second, it could legislate to prevent the government from leaving without a deal.But that would in effect repeal the act withdrawing Britain from the EU, since if the Commons were then to reject every deal put to it, the UK would remain in the EU ad infinitum.[I'd not realized that implication! It's not clear if he approves of that or not] ...Third, the Commons could legislate for a referendum before Brexit [Would there be time?] . Fourth, it could legislate to repeal the European Union (Notification of Withdrawal) Act and reinstate the European Communities Act, in which case the UK would remain in the EU....Finally, the Commons could vote no confidence in the government. There might then be either an alternative government prepared to delay or prevent Brexit or a general election.

It turns out that each alternative actually has real problems, insuperable in normal conditions.

Of the five, all but the last require the Commons to take control of the legislative process. That could be achieved by the Commons agreeing to suspend standing order 14, which gives priority to government business. In April the Cooper-Letwin bill, which passed third reading by one vote, did precisely that, requiring Theresa May to seek an extension to the Brexit date to avoid a no-deal Brexit....But any legislation designed to postpone or prevent Brexit has public spending implications. For were the UK to stay in the EU beyond 31 October it would have to make further budget contributions. [That would be very popular!] But standing order 48 requires any charge on public revenue to be recommended by the crown, which, for practical purposes, means a government minister responsible to parliament and through parliament to the people, not backbenchers. So that standing order too would have to be suspended....The practical difficulties would be enormous. Backbenchers would have to steer the relevant legislation through all of its stages in the Commons, and deal with a host of amendments in committee together with endless filibustering by enraged Brexiteers.

a no-confidence vote can only be moved by the leader of the opposition, Jeremy Corbyn...there is a 14-day window in which to find an alternative government capable of securing the confidence of the Commons. A Corbyn government would be unlikely to secure that confidence. Conservatives, the DUP and Liberal Democrats would vote against it. Another possibility, however, would be a government of national unity to forestall Brexit, led perhaps by someone such as Yvette Cooper or Keir Starmer...[but the Queen] ...would need a cast-iron guarantee in writing from a majority of MPs that they would support a government of national unity under a named prime minister. [And what on earth would the electorate think?]

The alternative is a general election, which would inevitably take on the character of a second referendum. The election would be called by the prime minister following the closure of the 14-day window. After dissolution there must be 25 working days before the election. So if a vote of no-confidence took place on 5 September it could be held on 17 October just in time for the new parliament to prevent a no-deal Brexit...The trouble is that dissolution need not follow immediately after the 14-day window closes. Under section 2 (7) of the Fixed-term Parliaments Act it is for the prime minister to recommend a suitable election date to the Queen. Only when he has done so is the date of dissolution determined. Were Johnson to delay the election date beyond 31 October he would be accused of acting unconstitutionally, but it would not be unlawful.

Then a damp squib to end:

The caretaker convention dictates that no alteration of policy should occur during the pre-election period. Suppose the Commons had clearly indicated that it was opposed to a no-deal Brexit. How should the convention then be interpreted? Constitutionally, there is no clear answer. The logic of democracy [!] suggests that the people should decide.

Very convenient that 'logic of democracy'. It permits backbenchers to take control of the order paper, even to impose a GNU which no-one has voted for, led by people who have not been elected even by a small group of party members.