Brexitwatch: nail the 'over the line' myth

It’s surely one of the most mendacious of all the Brexit clichés. We keep being told that we have to get Brexit ‘over the line’.

You ‘get over the line’ when you finish a race, and once you’re over the line, the race is over. But with Brexit, it’s completely different. Leaving the EU, if we are foolish enough to do it, won’t be the end of anything. It will be the start.

Whether we leave with no deal, or with May’s deal rebranded as Johnson’s deal, leaving the EU will kick off years, possibly decades of uncertainty as we try to negotiate a future arrangement with them. And, just as they have over the last three years, the EU will hold nearly all of the cards. And as the Brexiters still haven’t decided what they want, it will be a depressing and demeaning experience.

So getting Brexit ‘over the line’ doesn’t stop the nightmare. The only way you can achieve that is by stopping Brexit.

Brexitwatch: should we be downhearted?

It looks pretty bleak, doesn't it? The great Brexit lie deliverer, Boris Johnson, is prime minister. The great Brexit lie inventor, Dominic Cummings, is his right-hand man. The cabinet is packed with incompetents like disgraced former International Development Secretary Priti Patel, and Dominic 'I'm not up to the Brexit job' Raab, and the only qualification for membership appears to be having sworn that: 'I will never question anything Boris Johnson says or does.'

But....this surely represents the last throw of the dice for the Brexit-ers. If the UK does not leave the EU on October 31 as Johnson has now repeatedly promised, then surely the Brexit game is up, and we won't be leaving at all, or at the very least, we will be having a People's Vote.

The moment of truth should have come in 2016, and would have done

probably, if Johnson hadn't chickened out of the leadership race. Well now it's here. So are we downhearted? No. 

Let's not leave the field to the gloomsters of the Brexit faction: who think Britain isn't up to the challenge of competing with other European countries and that we have to hide behind barriers, who think the contintentals are cleverer than us and will always outmanouevre us if we stay as EU members. That we have to accept being poorer and less influential in the world. Let's fight, fight and fight again to save the UK!

Brexitwatch: the speech he never made

It is almost three years since the Brexit referendum. The man who called it, then Prime Minister David Cameron, promised that whatever the result, he would stay on as PM, but he broke that promise, resigning within hours. Just imagine if he had kept it. How much heartache and division, how many job losses he could have spared us from, and how much money he could have saved us.

All he needed to do was make this speech:

'Good morning. I am surprised and disappointed at the result of the referendum, but I promised that whatever the result I would stay on as your prime minister, and I will keep that promise.

I congratulate the Leave Campaign on their victory. Those who campaigned for the UK to leave the EU must clearly have had a credible plan for how this could be achieved without damaging our country, because without such a plan, no responsible politician could have advocated such a course of action.

So I am convening all those MPs who campaigned for Leave into a grand committee to come to an agreement on what they suggest as the way forward. Their plan will then be put to parliament as a whole.

In the meantime, there are many other tasks that our country requires its prime minister to perform in many other fields of policy, and I am now going back into 10 Downing Street to carry on with that work. Thank you.'

Would that really have been so hard?

Brexitwatch: does the Tory Party face richly deserved extinction?

Is the Tory Party heading for richly deserved extinction? At the Peterborough by-election the Tories saw their share of the vote fall by 25 percentage points. At the European elections, they won just 9 per cent of the vote. At the local elections they lost more than 1,300 seats. Donations to the party have fallen by half.

And the latest Private Eye reveals the picture is even worse. Although the party appears to own a lot of property, such as Conservative clubs and buy-to-let properties, very little is owned by the party centrally.

Almost all of it is in the hands of local associations and trusts, and those local associations are starting to abandon the parliamentary party, with shedloads of local officeholders backing the Brexit Party at the European elections. Now the fear is that local branches will start giving up on the party, affiliating with Nigel Farage’s lot instead, and taking the property with them.

Is this one of the reasons why we are getting unadulterated pandering to the party’s worst, most reactionary instincts from those trying to replace Theresa May.

Brexitwatch: could Theresa May finally do the right thing?

At the very last gasp, could Theresa May finally do the right thing? The charge sheet against her is a long one. Just about every major decision she faced - red lines, triggering Article 50, telling the truth about Brexit - she got wrong. Above all, she always put the interests of the Tory Party before the interests of the country.

Now she has stepped down as Tory leader, but she is still prime minister, and, in a little-noticed development, she has said she will not resign from that position until she is convinced her successor has the confidence of parliament https://www.express.co.uk/news/politics/1137172/Theresa-may-resign-brexit-deal-news-conservative-leadership-contest

Could this be significant? At the moment, the overwhelmingly reactionary membership of her party seem determined to pass over the merely deluded candidates and go for the totally mad or bad - say Dominic Raab, who fancies himself as a dictator and wants to shut down parliament, or Boris Johnson. Whereas May always put party before country, we can be sure Johnson will put Johnson before either. It is hard to see any of the no-deal headbangers commanding a majority among MPs. So might May try to stay on or might she leave the UK a parting gift?

In her closing days, she did seem to discover a bit of backbone and a determination to stop a catastrophic 'no deal' departure from the EU. At the moment, she is on course to go down in history as our worst ever prime minister, but could she at the last gasp go from zero to hero by revoking Article 50 and saving her country? (My post of March 22 explains how this would work.)

Brexitwatch: the 'will of the people' is to be found in parliament not the Brexit referendum result

Regular readers of this blog will know I reject the ‘will of the people’ argument for Brexit (see for example my post of 15 December 2016), that the result of a crooked referendum that promised a deal that could never be delivered is a reason for leaving the EU.

But let’s go with it for a moment. So the ‘will of the people’ in June 2016 was that we leave the EU. But then who elected our current parliament in 2017? ‘The people’.

Under our system, no parliament can bind its successor so the ‘will of the people’ expressed by the general election supersedes the ‘will of the people’ of the referendum, and the squeals of ‘betrayal’ from the Brexit fanatics are the usual hypocritical bunkum.

MPs are under absolutely no obligation to implement a Brexit they consider damaging to our country. Indeed, it is their duty to reject it.

Brexitwatch: BBC fails to address my complaint

In my post for April 19, I put up the letter I sent to the BBC complaining about its failure to challenge the constant lies trotted out by pro-Brexit speakers. I particulary wanted to know why BBC interviewers never ask:

1. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum that was won by lying, cheating and criminality?

2. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum in which voters were promised a Brexit that is not being and cannot be delivered?

3. Why are we pretending we have to obey the result of a referendum that was explicitly non-binding and advisory?

I received a reply which did not address any of these points: 

Dear Mr Withington

Thank you for contacting the BBC.

I understand you feel BBC News has shown a consistent bias in favour of Brexit and failed to properly question the assertions of those who are in favour of Brexit.

Naturally we regret when any member of our audience is unhappy with any aspect of what we do. We have received a wide range of feedback about our coverage of this story across our news programmes and bulletins. Keeping in mind pressures on licence fee resources, this response seeks to address the key points raised. That said, we apologise in advance if your complaint has not been specifically addressed here.

We aim to cover the ongoing Brexit negotiations with due impartiality. This means we carry a wide range of views about the European Union from across the political spectrum on our output.

We approach the story with the required level of impartiality, with input from various commentators and experts. 'Feedback' on BBC Radio 4 has addressed the issue of complaints about how we cover the story. Our Chief Political Adviser and the controller of the BBC's daily news programming joined Today presenter Nick Robinson, to discuss the common complaints from all sides. You may be interested in the sections at 3mins and 13mins especially:

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09z688x

As with any story we cover, BBC News does not have an opinion on the European Union, or on the UK’s position within it. Instead we try to explain the different and sometimes complex issues affecting our audience during Brexit. Our aim is to give them the information they need in order to follow the process clearly.

We appreciate your concerns and hope this helps to explain how we approach our reporting of this subject. Nonetheless, I understand this is something you feel strongly about and I’ve included your points on our audience feedback report that is sent to senior management and programme makers each morning and ensures that your complaint has been seen by the right people quickly. This helps inform their decisions about current and future output.

We appreciate you taking the time to register your views on this matter as it is greatly helpful in informing future decisions at the BBC.

Thanks again for getting in touch.

Kind regards

John Hamill

BBC Complaints Team

I have now complained about this response as follows:

I made a very specific complaint about how interviews with Brexit supporters are conducted on BBC programmes, and about how interviewers appear to constantly suppress crucial facts. I asked you whether this was because they were ignorant or because they were instructed not to raise certain issues inconvenient for the Brexit case. I also asked you if there was an instruction, from whom did it come.

You did not address any of these points, and instead delivered a standard, generic response claiming: 'we try to be fair'. The key points are below. I would be grateful if this time you address them.

Day after day, Brexit supporters are allowed to spout that the UK has to leave the EU because 'people voted for it'. (Most of them have by now given up any pretence that Brexit has any benefits.)

I used to work for the BBC as well as other broadcasting organisations, and I would have been asking these interviewees:

1. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum that was won by lying, cheating and criminality?

2. Why should we have to obey the result of a referendum in which voters were promised a Brexit that is not being and cannot be delivered?

3. Why are we pretending we have to obey the result of a referendum that was explicitly non-binding and advisory?

I have heard many, many Brexiters being interviewed on your programmes, but I have NEVER heard one of your interviewers putting these points. Why is that? Is it because they are ignorant of the facts or is it because an edict has come from on high forbidding them from raising these inconvenient facts. If it is the latter, from whom does it come?