Brexitwatch: how the BBC should be interviewing Brexit-ers

I have just sent this complaint, which also includes helpful suggestions, to the BBC:

"It is immensely frustrating to hear Brexit apologists run rings around BBC interviewers day after day with lies, evasions and obfuscations. It is the duty of your interviewers to take a far tougher line.

So if a Brexit-er tells you that Yellowhammer is out of date, a Remainer plot, that everything is now sorted, that the government is preparing for no-deal, etc, etc, the next question should be:
‘So do you guarantee that Brexit will not cause any shortage of medicines, foods or fuel or a hard border in Ireland?’ If the Brexit-er equivocates, they need to be pressed hard: ‘So what might there be shortages of? How long could these shortages last?' etc

If they say: ‘well I can’t tell you exactly’, the next question should be: ‘shouldn’t you know exactly how serious the shortages are going to be before you inflict them on our country?’

If the Brexit-er re-iterates that no-deal is nothing to fear and that everything will be fine, the next question should be: ‘so do you guarantee that you will resign if there are shortages of medicines, food or fuel or a hard border in Ireland?’

BBC interviewing on Brexit so far has let the country down. The UK is now facing its worst crisis since World War Two. If the BBC lets us down again, its reputation will never recover."

Brexitwatch: should your MP be on holiday?

Just over 10 weeks until we get medicine, food and fuel shortages that go on for months, plus a hard border in Northern Ireland, and where are our MPs? On holiday. 

To their credit, 100 realise that this is inexcusable, and have signed a letter demanding the immediate recall of parliament.

Is your MP among them? If not, shouldn't they be? My MP is Labour's Brexit spokesman, Sir Keir Starmer, and, astonishingly, his name is not here. Equally astonishingly, Jeremy Corbyn's is also absent.

This is what I have written to Keir Starmer:

Dear Sir Keir,

1. I was very disappointed to see that your name does not appear to be on the list of those demanding the immediate recall of parliament. I trust you will be signing without further delay. Future generations may find it very hard to understand why some MPs thought their holidays were a bigger priority than doing all they could to save the country.

2. I welcome Jeremy Corbyn's offer to lead a government of national unity to prevent the disaster/catastrophe of a no-deal Brexit. It now seems plain that no such government is achievable with Mr Corbyn as prime minister. Surely it is vital now for Labour to propose a government under a Labour MP who would be able to command the support of MPs from other parties. Those who fail to do everything in their power to prevent no deal will not be forgiven.

Yours sincerely,

John Withington

Brexitwatch: no deal. Beware. Are we being played?

'No deal is better than a bad deal' is one of those vacuous slogans that Theresa May and the Brexiters love to trot out again and again until you want to scream. Well, this week the PM gave us some flesh on the bones of what 'no deal' might mean.

Actually, there probably wouldn't be much flesh. The government is planning (a novelty in itself) emergency measures to try to make sure not too many people starve to death or die because they can't get the medicines they need. Makes you wonder just how bad a bad deal would have to be, to be worse than this.

Unless Theresa May has never read a briefing paper, she has known for a long time that this is what 'no deal' would mean. So why has she gone all 'must announce a proper plan' now? To try to intimidate and/or isolate the most demented of the anti-EU headbangers, who have actually been gagging for 'no deal'?

Or is all this actually aimed at those fighting AGAINST Brexit? Here is what I blogged on 9 October 2016:

"Mrs May is engaged in a softening up exercise, conjuring up the most disastrous picture of Brexit imaginable, so that when she comes up with something that damages the country a bit less, Remainers will be pathetically grateful and go along with it, instead of continuing to argue that the referendum was (as indeed is the case) advisory and not binding, unfair, won on the basis of a pack of lies, indecisive etc"

Beware! Every Brexit is a bad Brexit. The only good Brexit is no Brexit.