His time as mayor of London shows that. He’s not a buffoon, he just plays one for the camera. He’s not a patch on, say, Merkel, but I wasn’t comparing him to her.
To Godwinise my own thread, Hitler was a talented politician and capable leader. It’s not necessarily a good thing. But underestimating Johnson could be disasterous.
Also, this meme about Johnson being childish is just going to play into his hands. People inclined to vote for him will see it as “Remoaners” trying to tie his hands then insulting him. Whether that’s true or not is pretty much irrelevant.
Oh, I know. But he’s also the guy who bikes away or offers tea instead of answering questions about his ideas. That doesn’t scream leadership to me. Besides, there’s not really a meaningful difference between a buffoon and a smart person who pretends to be a buffoon at all times.
According to people who worked with him while he was mayor of London, he left practically all the details of actually running the city to his subordinates, and just signed off on everything without bothering about the details.
… except for his string of failed vanity projects, where he ignored all expert advice for the sake of personal publicity, and wasted nearly £1 billion of taxpayers’ money.
Garden bridge
Orbit tower
Boris buses
Boris bikes
Cable car
Water cannon
Thames estuary airport
Olympic stadium
If his time as mayor is an example of success, I wonder what failure would look like? Actually, perhaps it would look like his time as Foreign Secretary. But that in turn is capped by his time as prime minister.
The ‘brains’, if you want to call it that, behind Johnson as PM is Dominic Cummings.
Failure will look like the opposition squabbling so much, and underestimating Johnson so much, that we leave the EU with a shit deal or, more likely, no deal, and Johnson winning an election with an actual majority on the back of it. Something that is still more likely than not.
You can call Johnson a failure all you like, or childish all you like. The first is premature at best, the latter is pointless and probably counterproductive. But he’s still Prime Minister despite not having a majority, and he’s still looking like getting his agenda through despite losing so many votes. I’d say those are clear indications of success.
Hopefully I’m wrong, and he will fail. But I simply don’t believe that Corbyn has the abillity or Swinson the experience to make that happen.
He doesn’t pretend to be a buffoon all the time, though. There’s plenty of reports about how he is in private that say otherwise - whether it’s the surprise that he’s actually a skilled negotiator, or the reports that he’s an angry bully at times.
His skill at negotiation sure helped Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe out! A Foreign Secretary with a scrap of honour would have resigned for that.
On twitter:
“There we be no second vote on the deal.”
That statement is misleading: while there not be another “Meaningful Vote” there will be a vote on the Withdrawal Agreement Bill–and the latter is how virtually all other legislation is considered to have passed.
Yes, sorry, I meant no specific vote on the motion withdrawn on Saturday. I have to wonder if there will end up being a vote on the actual Bill if the opposition ammend it too much, as I rather doubt the EU will accept that.
And there we be!
Well, that depends on the amendments, obviously.
But in the first instance it’s not for the EU to have a view about the effect of the amendments, but for the UK government and parliament. If an amendment is made to the Bill which (if the amended Bill were then to be enacted as law) would preclude the implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement as negotiated, then the UK can’t approve the Withdrawal Agreement (because implementing it would be forbidden by UK law, and you can’t approve a treaty which you have already decided not to implement). The UK institutions would then have to work out between them (a) whether to allow a no-deal Brexit to unfold; (b) whether to revoke their notice of withdrawal from the EU, and call an end to the whole Brexit project or (c) whether to attempt to negotiate a revised withdrawal agreement with the EU which was consistent with the UK legislation.
The EU would not be thrilled at option (c), but if the revisions the UK wanted were towards a softer brexit, a closer ongoing relationship between the UK and the EU, it’s not impossible that the EU would be prepared to accommodate that.
I was thinking, and I may well be wrong here, that if the bill is ammended then it is no longer the same agreement that was negotiated with the EU. What happens in that scenario?
The Bill is not the Withdrawal Agreement.
For Brexit-with-a-deal to happen, two separate things have to happen:
An international agreement, between the EU and the UK, setting out the terms on which the UK leaves the EU and addressing the consequences of the UK’s departure. This agreement has to be (a) agreed between the UK government and the European Council, which has happened, and (b) approved by the UK parliament and the European Parliament, which has not yet happened.
UK domestic law must be amended as necessary to give effect to the agreement (and for other purposes related to Brexit). This is to be done by the Withdrawal Agreement Bill.
The UK government wanted the UK parliament to approve the Withdrawal Agreement on Saturday, before making the changes to UK law that are needed to implement the agreement. Parliament has instead voted to make approval of the agreement conditional on enacting the necessary changes to UK law. In Parliament’s view, item 1 above should not happen before item 2. (And you can see the logic; the UK shouldn’t approve an international agreement that it’s not going to implement, and if it declines to make the changes to its own laws that are needed to implement it, then it’s obviously not going to implement it.)
Not every change that might be made to the Withdrawal Agreement Bill will necessarily prevent implementation of the Withdrawal Agreement. So an amendment to the Bill is not necessarily inconsistent with eventual approval of the Withdrawal Agreement as negotiated and agreed. E.g. parliament could add a clause to the Bill sayign that the Withdrawal Agreement is to be submitted to the people in a referendum, and that it is not to be approved or implemented unless endorsed by a majority in that referendum. That would delay approval/implementation of the WA but need not, depending on the referendum result, prevent it.
On the other hand, the Bill could be amended in a way which is inconsistent with implementing the WA as negotiated and agreed. In that event the options would be (a) HMG goes back to the EU and tries to negotiate an amended WA, consistent with the Bill, which is then submitted to Parliament for approval (EUO might not agree, of course); (b) UK exits the EU without any withdrawal agreement, to general dismay and distress; or (c) UK revokes its Brexit notice, remains a member of the EU and resolves never to speak of this again.
There is a further wrinkle, in that the Withdrawal Agreement is the legally justiciable treaty governing the winding-up of our membership commitments and related legacy issues; but it is also accompanied by a “political declaration” setting the framework for discussions on the continuing future relationship - this latter is not legally binding in the same way.
AIUI, the difficulty and deadlock is over this declaration, to which the amendments to the Bill that are currently being mentioned relate- remaining in a customs union, tying down commitment to protection of workers’ rights and environmental standards, and above all a second referendum on the deal. What the outcome on these may be seems to be too close to call.
The Conservatives tweet a message calling to “get Brexit done”. It’s written in Comic Sans.
Presumably a response to all the bullshit claims that Johnson is being childish.
Parliament votes for Johnson’s deal… but Johnson decides that he doesn’t want get Brexit done after all. You couldn’t make up shit like this.
Johnson would rather send the bill to limbo than let Parliament look closely at the fine print. It seems that the devil is in the details, so the UK has to stay in purgatory.
None of those things are actually true. Parliament has voted not to pass the billby the deadline so, once again, we are set to leave with no deal.
As has been said many times today, Brexit has been debated for over 3 years, and this further delay serves no purpose except to try to humiliate Johnson. Parliament need to either accept that we’re leaving and that this deal is the best option, or revoke article 50.
I really don’t understand Labour’s endgame here, unless Corbyn really is stupid enough to think he can a) get elected and b) negotiate a better deal.