Nightmare in Brexitland: The Crown returns! But here's the scene you won't see

Take your seats for the new series of The Crown. But here's the scene you won't be seeing. Its contents were exclusively revealed in this blog on 13 September 2020. Now read on:

Boris Johnson's 115th Dream
Boris and Carrie are sitting watching television. 

 ‘Oh great! The Crown!’

‘Oh yes. World-beating! But wait a minute, Carrie. That caption says May 3, 2021. None of this has happened yet. How can they know about it?’

‘Shh. I’m trying to watch the programme.’

‘Oh God! I don’t look like that. Surely they could have found somebody better looking! And he’s nearly bald!  Where’s the phone. I’m going to get on to that new head honcho we put in – Davey Somebody – and make him take this off.’

 ‘Boris! It’s not the BBC, it’s Netflix. Now shut up and listen.’

‘Oh. I was expecting to see the Queen.’

A hint of a mirthless smile flickers beneath an impressive moustache. ‘I’m afraid Her Majesty is otherwise engaged. She asked me to see you on her behalf.’

‘Hold on!  I recognise you. You’re Tommy Lascelles. You were in the last series or the one before. You can’t meet me, because you’re dead.’

Unlike his interlocutor, the urbane functionary is not in the least nonplussed. ‘Don’t believe everything you read on Wikipedia, Mr Johnson. It sometimes…….exaggerates.’

‘You mean “prime minister”’

‘Mr Johnson.’ The mirthless smile was back.

‘Well, the point is that once parliament has passed this ‘Unilateral Cancellation of EU Trade Agreement Bill’, I’ll need HMQ to give the Royal Assent pronto, so we can implement the populi voluntatem without delay and all that.’

‘And, of course, if you ask Her Majesty to take that action, she will have to comply.’

‘Exactly.’

‘Which is precisely why you will not do it.’

‘What do you mean, Lascelles? You can’t obstruct the will of the people.’

‘I have here a few papers for your perusal.’ (The phrase: ‘Restricted. Top Secret. Not for Fatman’s eyes’ is fleetingly visible on one.)

‘Oh. I’ll take them back to number 10. Dom reads that kind of stuff for me.’

‘The papers will not be leaving this room, and, Mr Cummings is (Lascelles consults his watch) as of now, ‘a guest of Her Majesty’, as I think they say in the films. Apparently something about his time in Russia?’

‘There’s no point trying to frighten me about leaking stuff to the press. The ephemerides are all in my pocket and the BBC daren’t sneeze without my say so.’

The immaculately turned out royal servant produces a newspaper and eases it across the table. ‘If the papers I showed you a moment ago are too voluminous, perhaps you might cast your eye over this?’

“‘Bang Up Boris’ call. Gove poised for No 10.” What’s this?

‘The front page of tomorrow morning’s (Lascelles raises his eyebrows and utters the next word as though wiping something nasty off the sole of his Berluti Oxford) Sun. I managed to persuade them to tone it down from ‘string up’ to ‘bang up’.’

‘That bastard Gove! It’s a fake, Rupert would never do this to me.’

‘If you examine the papers I suggested you should read, you will see that some (the pause is followed by the same tone of voice used for ‘Sun’) gentlemen who had hoped to profit from certain actions of yours felt they had not received the degree of forewarning you promised, and so have not profited as much as they had anticipated.’

‘Can I get my mobile?’

‘As you know, these audiences are strictly mobile-free.’

‘Then I need to get back to Number 10 right now.’

‘I’m afraid that won’t be possible. Some kind of security alert. The police say there’s a suspected criminal in the building. However (it’s that mirthless smile again) should you wish to avail yourself of a generous offer from President Putin, you may leave now and take asylum in Krasnoyarsk.’

‘What the hell is that?’

‘A place in Siberia. The president has provided special transport from here to the airport, and your flight leaves in a couple of hours. Aeroflot. I’m afraid he couldn’t get business class.’

‘You can’t do this. I’m the prime minister! I’m the prime minister!’

‘Oh Boris, do shut up! That’s the third time this week. Anyway it’s eleven o’ clock. Time for even you to get up. What are these dreams you keep having? Is it always the same one?

Brexitwatch: The Level Playing Field Mystery

'Watson. As you know, at the root of the art of detection is observation.'

'Of course, Holmes.'

'So why did I not observe it? Did I not follow the Brexit referendum campaign as closely as any man?'

'You did, Holmes.'

'So why did I not see the Level Playing Field, which we are now being told is the reason we cannot reach agreement with the European Union?'

'Perhaps because it was never there? Perhaps because "We need to leave the EU so we can hand out shedloads of hard-earned taxpayers' cash to 'businesses' run by mates of Dominic Cummings" might not have been an effective slogan?'

'And particularly not on the side of a bus! Capital, Watson!'

'But Holmes do you think the Conservatives had to conceal the fact that they wanted to use your money and mine, and the admirable Mrs Hudson's, to prop up unviable businesses because they have always said that lame ducks must go to the wall, that you can't buck the market. Indeed, wasn't Johnson saying the other day that the private sector always knows better than the state?'

'Though Cummings thinks he knows better than everyone. Watson, you excel yourself.  But there is another hypothesis, or indeed several.' The great detective paused to take a deep draught from his pipe. 'Suppose Johnson knew nothing of any of this during the referendum campaign? Suppose Cummings concealed it from him? Or suppose Cummings himself did not know about it, and that the idea came to him only after he watched 'Dragon's Den', saw the dragons, and thought:"I'd like to do that." Or suppose Cummings could see there was a danger of the EU and the UK reaching a sensible agreement, and decided that must be stopped at all costs, and that the Level Playing Field was just a useful pretext?'

'So what's the answer, Holmes?'

'That, Watson, is the mystery, but I wager the solution will bring no man any good.'

Brexitwatch: Boris Johnson - deal or no deal?

Sam Goldwyn warned: 'Never make predictions, especially about the future', and making predictions about Boris Johnson is especially hazardous because you can't believe a word he says (see my post of 5 January).

According to the crankish game theories of Johnson, or perhaps more important - Cummings, the UK will get a good deal only if the EU believes it is serious about 'walking away' from negotiations and settling for 'no deal'. (Though the consequences of no deal are now so widely recognised to be disastrous that Johnson-Cummings have had to try to rebadge it as an 'Australia-type' deal.)

There is no evidence that the EU are in the slightest degree impressed by this nonsense, but plenty that it keeps the more fanatically anti-EU element among Johnson-Cummings' supporters happy.

Nye Bevan asked: 'Why look in the crystal ball, when you can read the book?' And we have already seen Johnson-Cummings with their backs against the wall during the negotiations. They also threatened to walk away during the Withdrawal Agreement talks, but in the end they signed up to whatever the EU demanded, including things like a border in the Irish Sea that Theresa May had rejected. They and their nodding dogs then claimed this was a great victory.

Johnson-Cummings' attempt to renege on that agreement may mean that an even more humiliating climbdown will be required to get a deal on the future relationship, as the EU is probably unlikely to take much on trust from now on. But with a mendacious right-wing press still highly compliant on Brexit, if not on Covid, Johnson may still be calculating that he can repeat his earlier trick: surrender, then claim victory, while his media accomplices play along.

So, if I was forced to predict an outcome, it would be this one, though I wouldn't bet much on it. I'll be examining other possibilities over the coming weeks.

Brexitwatch: this wasn't meant to happen! Part 2

 

Meanwhile at Leave headquarters:

Ever wondered why Boris Johnson looked as though he was going to a funeral when he announced Leave’s victory in the referendum? This transcript of a conversation from shortly before the vote explains: 

‘I say, Dom. Some jumped-up jackass has just asked me whether Brexit will mean less immigration. What’s our policy?’

‘Did they want less immigration?’

‘Er. I think so.’

‘So our policy is less immigration. If they want more immigration, our policy is more immigration. If they want no immigration, our policy is no immigration. Simple enough for you?’

‘But Dom, how will we reconcile all those contradictory promises?’

‘We won’t have to, because Remain will win.’

‘Yes, of course. Er, er, Dom I’m also a bit worried about these undertakings we’ve given about leaving the EU but keeping all the advantages of remaining.’

‘You just don’t get it, do you? We LOSE. So we won’t have to keep any promises. So we can promise anything. Then after Remain wins, we wait for the fury of the Tory head-bangers who’ve been denied their beloved Brexit, to force Cameron out. Look I’ve already written your campaign speech when you go for the leadership:

“My friends, no one campaigned harder for Brexit than me, but that fight is over, and now we must all accept the democratic result that we remain in the EU. Our task now is to bring together our party and our country – Leavers and Remainers – to take us forward to the next phase of our world-beating history.” Then throw in a bit of Latin or something if you must.’

‘Fine, Dom, yes. Er, one other thing. How should I vote?’

‘For Remain like me, what do you think? But don’t tell anybody.’

Brexitwatch: MPs - you're out of excuses. Time to resume your jobs

It is the duty of MPs to act in the interests of the UK. Many, perhaps most, regarded this duty as suspended after the Brexit referendum. Though the vast majority knew leaving the EU would damage the UK, they decided to obey the result of the referendum, even though it was explicitly advisory and non-binding, and even though it was set up and conducted in a thoroughly undemocratic way.

Readers of this blog will know I disagreed profoundly with this analysis. But if you agreed with it, the referendum result committed the government to one thing only: that we should ‘leave the EU’. That was the only thing we voted on. That duty has been discharged. We left on January 31, and MPs, therefore, no longer have any excuse for ignoring the national interest.

Any version of Brexit makes us poorer than we would have been if we had stayed in the EU, but the most damaging way to leave is ‘no deal’ – without any agreement. (No doubt worried that people were beginning to realise this, Johnson and Cummings have rebadged ‘no deal’ as an ‘Australia-style deal’. Australia has no trade deal with the EU.) 

A no-deal Brexit, according to the government’s own figures, will cost us around £30bn a year. That’s equivalent to about three-quarters of what we spend on schools. How disappointing then that our MPs have shown so little interest in the Conservative government’s dilatory non-negotiations with the EU, characterised by shouting slogans designed to appeal to the worst instincts of the most extreme Brexiters.

Come on MPs! This is not good enough. You can’t go on hiding behind the referendum result. It is your duty to your country to prevent a no-deal exit and to ensure the damage from Brexit is minimised as much as it can be.

Cummingsgate: will it be Johnson's Black Wednesday?

A recently elected Conservative party leader won a surprise victory against considerable odds in a general election, and, as a result, appeared to be in a strong position with considerable authority. But just a few months later came a crisis.

The prime minister and his government did not handle it well. They made promises they were unable to keep, and though they stayed in office for the best part of five more years, the prime minister's credibility never recovered, and his government was torn apart by internecine warfare over Europe. When the next general election came along, the Tories were comprehensively defeated.

That is the story of John Major, prime minister from 1992-7, but the first three and a half sentences at least could also have been written about Boris Johnson. The crisis that found Major wanting, was 'Black Wednesday'. The government promised to keep the UK in Europe's Exchange Rate Mechanism at all costs. But even raising interest rates 4 per cent in a day and spending billions of pounds was not enough to fight off the currency dealers who believed Major was trying to keep the pound at a higher level than the economy justified, and the UK crashed out.

Johnson's crisis has been an odder one: his insistence on hanging on to an unelected adviser who had flouted coronavirus lockdown rules. It is coalescing, of course, with a general feeling that the crisis has been handled badly: locking down too late, abandoning testing, failing to supply protective equipment to frontline workers, failing to protect care homes, etc, but the decision to protect Dominic Cummings generated a huge wave of anger, even among Conservatives.

Will the story end the same? Sam Goldwyn said: 'beware of making predictions especially about the future,' and a lot can happen in what could be four years or more before the next election. Johnson also has a much bigger parliamentary majority than Major, but it is possible that when the history of his government is written, the day he decided to defend Cummings instead of firing him may be seen as his 'Black Wednesday'.

Cummingsgate: Why isn't Cummings going?

It is clear now that come hell, high water or Preston Guild, as they used to say when I was a lad, Boris Johnson is not going to sack lockdown buster Dominic Cummings, so unless Conservative MPs suddenly find the guts to remove Johnson, the 'adviser' is not going anywhere. But with 100 Tory MPs voicing their dissatisfaction publicly, and, we're told, many more privately, Johnson has had to spend political capital like it was going out of style to hang on to Cummings. So why?

1. Loyalty? This is the easiest explanation to dismiss. Johnson has betrayed wives, children, David Cameron, Theresa May, the ERG, the DUP, the new Tory voters in Red Wall seats, etc., etc. The only person to whom Johnson has ever exhibited loyalty is himself.

2. Cummings is so brilliant, he's indispensable? Not on the evidence of the last few weeks, surely? The government's response to coronavirus has been an error-strewn disaster. Plainly Johnson isn't much enamoured of work, and needs someone to do it on his behalf, but it's hard to believe Cummings is the only man known to the government capable of this.

3. Brexit? Do all roads lead here? Brexit has always been a house of cards. Even four years after the referendum (and decades after some to them started plotting), the Brexiters are still incapable of coming up with any credible alternative to EU membership. Brexit has always been a house of cards, and the Cummings card is right at the base. Does Johnson fear that removing it will bring the whole rotten edifice crashing down. (This might also explain why Cummings hasn't apologised. Maybe he and Johnson judged that any admission of fallibility, however small, could threaten Brexit.)

4. Does Cummings know too much? The question so courageously put to a Conservative MP by BBC interviewer Simon McCoy. Certainly if Johnson got on the wrong side of his 'adviser', there would be great danger that beans would be spilt - on Brexit, political funding, Russia (what was Cummings doing there for three years exactly?) or other things we as yet know nothing of. And it may not be only Johnson he knows too much about. What about all those other Tories who tumbled over each other in their haste to defend Cummings? 

My own bet is answer is 3 or 4, or possibly both. 

Cummingsgate: a letter to the Durham Police and Crime Commissioner

As ever with the Dominic Cummings affair, every new statement from the authorities raises more questions than it answers. Durham Police now say Mr Cummings 'may' have committed a 'minor' breach of the lockdown with his notorious 'eye-test' journey to Barnard Castle.

This has prompted me to email Steve White, Durham's (elected) Acting Police and Crime Commissioner. (general.enquiries@durham.pcc.pnn.gov.uk). 

Dear Commissioner,

We all have an interest in trying to halt the spread of coronavirus, and so I have followed the matter of Dominic Cummings' journey to Durham closely. It prompts a number of questions.

1. Just before Mr Cummings' press conference, Durham Police changed their account of the contact they had had with him when he first appeared in Durham, revising it to say that when police officers saw him, they had discussed only matters of security. So, a family appears in Durham, where there is very little coronavirus, from another part of the country where there is a lot. Some of the family are ill (it is hard to know how many because the accounts from Mr Cummings and his wife are inconsistent). And the police officers don't ask any questions about what they're doing there? Or investigate whether they are in breach of lockdown rules? Is this properly discharging their duty to the people of Durham?

2. Over the last few days, while everyone knew there was a live police investigation into Mr Cummings, numerous cabinet ministers and Conservative MPs made prejudicial comments, asserting that Mr Cummings was innocent. By accident or design, this plainly puts pressure on Durham Police. Is prejudicial comment of this kind consistent with ministerial and/or MPs' codes of conduct?

3. Durham Police's statement refers to a 'minor' breach of the lockdown rules. There is surely no such thing, it is a breach or it isn't. Are you concerned that the police have been drawn into 'spinning' material for political reasons rather than objectively stating what they see as the truth?

I look forward to hearing from you.

Yours sincerely,

John Withington

Cummingsgate: Cummings' tactics

We used to get days like yesterday and Sunday every 3 or 4 years. Since Brexit and coronavirus, we seem to get them every three or four days.

It was interesting to watch Cummings' tactics. He turned up for the press conference 30 minutes late. Was this just keeping the opposing team sweating in the sun, while you relax in the cool of the changing room? No. It now seems it was to clear time to arm-twist Durham Police into changing their story. 15-love to Cummings.

Then he went for a long, detailed, and, to me anyway, in parts quite boring story. Listening is hard work, and taking in a whole lot of facts unseen is tough. So the journos, particularly the first couple to serve, didn't do very well at the q and a. Game to Cummings.

But the downside of Cummings' tactics is that although it helps you through the immediate hazards of the q and a, it provides an awful lot of material to be poured over and examined in the hours and days to come. 

The 'I had to break the lock-down to drive my wife to a local beauty spot on her birthday in order to test my eyes' was the stand-out weak line, and was being ridiculed in seconds. 'If this is the best he can do when he's had six weeks to think about it, how can he be an A-list spin doctor?' must have passed through quite a few minds. 

But now a number of other details are being examined, e.g. if he was doing nothing wrong being in Durham, why did he weave such an elaborate web of deception to pretend he was in London. Cummings says he was being 'targeted' and feared for his safety. Did he report such fears to the police? And if he did, did they say: 'Sorry. Can't help you, old boy.'?

Cummings also claimed he wrote a prophetic article about coronavirus in 2019, but this appears not to be true, though an attempt has been made to doctor records to make it look as though he had. This is particularly interesting, because if it is a lie, it is a completely gratuitous one. It is in no way necessary, or germane to Cummings' case. Not now so clear that Cummings is going to win the match.

There may be more as the fine tooth comb goes through his words.

My overall assessment is that the view of most people watching is that Cummings will continue to be seen as a rich toff with a country house who believed he personally was above the rules he was helping to impose on everyone else. He may have spotted some loophole in the very small print that said: 'If you fear you may at some point become ill, and you have a child, you can drive anywhere you like,' but none of the rest of us understood the rules that way, and it was certainly not what the government that Mr Cummings runs, sorry 'advises', was telling us.

Those continuing to back Mr Cummings are doing it at their political peril.