I don’t claim to be in any way knowledgeable about exactly what’s going on and I don’t know anyone ‘who knows something’, but I am now fairly convinced that unless Boris blinks, we will leave on the 31st.
Boris has a deal that has been agreed with the EU. It is by no means a perfect deal, but there is no move on the chessboard, as it currently stands, from the current state to the ‘perfect’ state, in a single move. Thus, this is the deal on which we’ll leave, if we leave with a deal.
As per the current legislation on the Statute books, we leave on the 31st. There is certain legislation that can only be brought by the executive. Extending would require this. You’ll note Boris’ slight smile (was it a smirk ?) at the despatch box on Saturday when he stated that he cannot be compelled to extend and I think that this fact has been conveyed to the EU, which is how he got them to re-open the agreement and remove the backstop. He would have informed them that under no circumstances would any government led by him bring such legislation, and in the absence of him being removed from office, the alternative is ‘no deal’, which nobody wants.
The deal, which is a Treaty, that has been negotiated with the EU, has to be implemented in domestic legislation and the domestic legislation must mirror its effects. I’ve just watched Keir Starmer (son of a toolmaker) on Marr. This idiot seems to think that Parliament can change the domestic legislation and this will then be forced onto the EU. This is backwards. The EU already has a deal with which they’re satisfied. The Pannick amendment brought by the very misguided Letwin, was an attempt to change the deal, by implementing a different version of leave (ie remain in the Customs Union and all the other nonsense), which would then have to be taken back to the EU and negotiated again. It’s absolutely shocking that we have such unintelligent people in Parliament who think that they can usurp the duty to negotiate international Treaties from the executive. If they had wanted to be the executive then they should have removed Boris by holding a GE. Too late now.
If I were Boris I would just say to the EU, ‘Guys, please publicly signal no extension so that our deal is the only option facing Parliament other than no deal and HM government will get it through Parliament before 31st.’
Cue General Election and the anti-democratic Remoaners will be booted out of Parliament and we start functioning properly again as a country. I’m quite looking forward to Remoaner meltdown as a spectacle.
Another point worth making about the goalpost moving, by the ‘block no deal, block any deal’ crowd, is that they are still trying to negate the effect of the vote to leave. They want to remain close to EU legislation and they are dressing this up as maintaining workers’ rights and all the rest of it.
The world has changed. The old ‘pre-digital’ world has ended, probably about 20 years ago and we are now in a digital world. The way humans interact has been profoundly altered by the advent of immediate peer to peer communication. New emerging technology is fundamentally empowering to individuals. The EU, as designed, is not aligned with this reality and as a political structure is fundamentally unable to deliver on the requirements that this new digital future will bring. ‘Gilets Jaunes’ and Catalunya are manifestations of this. If anyone didn’t see Boris’ speech at the UN a few weeks back, search it on Youtube, but our guys (Dom ? – read his blog) are definitely all over this. The big question facing us is, do we allow anti democratic ‘state entities’ to use this technology to monitor and enslave, or do we exert our rightful control (individual sovereignty) over governments to ensure that they do not, thereby enabling it to be unleashed for the benefit of all. Our constitutional arrangements, developed painfully throughout our history, are founded on the recognition that sovereignty resides in the individual and is passed to government on a short term leasehold basis, solely by consent, while reserving summary termination rights. This is the model that will protect us in this new digital world and must be maintained. It needs hardly be said that it is utterly incompatible with membership of the EU, thus these people who want to remain close to the EU are misguided and myopic. We must leave. History will judge it to have been right decision. History will also learn from the attempts to damage our constitutional arrangements and draw the conclusion that this must never again be repeated. And look at what’s happening in Hong Kong… The spreading of these democratic principles throughout the world should inform British foreign policy in the ‘Global Britain’ post EU world… but that’s for another post.
https://bit.ly/33Txsxo