Continuing yesterday’s rant, the ever-amazing Tony Jay: … The answer soon arrived in the form of a brutal report (https://www.bmj.com/content/375/bmj.n2530) on the Government’s response to the Covid pandemic put out by two of Parliament’s joint select committees, Health & Social Care and Science & Technology. Now, bear in mind that these Committees are chaired by …
Foreign Affairs Guest Post: L’t#@t, C’est Moi (Part II)Post + Comments (43)
WARNING – DRY DATA DUMP AHEAD – MOSTLY
Brexit. It’s always Brexit with this lot. They ran and won an election on the simple promise to ‘Get Brexit Done’ and promoted the Withdrawal Agreement they signed with the E.U. as nothing less than the immortalised bestiary of every single nocturnal dream and goosestepping desire Leave voters envisaged when they lay back in those voting booths and thought of Greater England back in 2016, but all they’ve done since their moment of glory is whine incessantly that the very same agreement is an unconscionable tether around the gonads of British sovereignty and pick fights with the E.U.’s negotiators whenever they need a bit of tabloid love to grease them out of a tight PR spot. Johnson’s point man for the monumental task of ensuring that the United Kingdom consistently chucks dead cats on the table of diplomatic battle is Baron David ‘No, not the Nixon one’ Frost, a man so formidably talentless that he could lose a staring contest with a blepharmospasmic cyclops. A man so pig-ugly he exists solely to give Brian Cox and Michael Gambon a role to fight over in the TV adaptation of his tell-all diaries. A man so self-reverentially truculent he makes Ted Cruz look like First on the Guest List material in comparison. A man so… you get the drill. Frost’s sole and defining role in this national humiliation seems to be as follows.
1) Make a speech in front of a friendly audience demanding that the E.U. completely changes the agreed terms of one or another foundational clause in the Northern Ireland Protocol or else the UK will simply stop observing it.
2) Grumble threateningly while various European diplomats go into a huddle, with one or another occasionally peeking out to see if he’s still there, then the huddle breaking up so that the tallest and thinnest can stand next to the porcine Frost, bend all the way down to the microphone and emit a breathy “Non. Ce n’est pas négociable”.
3) Stamp his little piggy feet in more interviews with friendly journalists warning the E.U. they have until he’s finished eating a 12-course tasting menu and three bottles of expensive wine at the most exclusive restaurant he hasn’t been banned from in Paris/Brussels/Kings Landing to change their tune and recognise British Exceptionalism.
4) Boast to those self-same journalists that Johnson’s last-minute decision to capitulate and agree to whatever face-saving terms the E.U. offer in order to get Frost to fuck off for a while is another Brexit victory and proof that everything is going exactly as planned.
They’ve been dancing this dance again with the latest row over the NIP — which, at the end of the day, boils down to two related things. Northern Ireland has remained within the EU’s Single Market and Customs Union rules while the rest of the UK has left them, which has meant Northern Ireland enjoying a booming economy and none of the supply chain/shop scarcity problems bedevilling the rest of the UK, which makes Brexit look like a stupid and destructive self-own and so cannot be allowed to stand. And the fact that the very Withdrawal Agreement Johnson signed to “Make Brexit Happen” specified that the European Court of Justice would remain as the ultimate arbiter of legality where issues touched on the NIP, but Brextremists HATE, HATE, HATE the European Court of Justice with the heat of a thousand auto-da-fé’s, so now it’s absolutely unacceptable.
Demanding that the ECJ should be booted from having any role in overseeing the NIP is simply a no go, won’t happen, but that’s what Frosty the Showman has been sent out to demand, with the inevitable result that the E.U. will tell him to go and shove his demands up his tunnel de vent while also having their diplomats draft some face-saving language about trade that Frost and Johnson can take to their tabloid friends as proof of a great victory over the Tyrants of Brussels. Nothing will change, the clock will still keep on ticking down to the moment when the UK either implements the full terms of the Withdrawal Agreement (and finally takes the substantial hit of being outside the E.U. right in the kisser) or openly reneges on the internationally binding promises it made… at which point hold on to your heinie because then shit gets real and no outcome is good.
Thanks again, everyone who voted for this crap. Super solid you did us there.
For issues outside of the NIP where the European Commission’s diplomats haven’t been given the job of negotiating some kind of deal that both sides can swallow, patience with Little Brexitannia has clearly run out. President Macron of France has an election looming, and would you believe his luck, but Johnson’s minions have been engaging in a bit of Frenchie-baiting over the issue of licences for French boats to fish in British waters. The Withdrawal Agreement specified that the UK and France would maintain the status quo, meaning that boats that could prove they had long fished in each other’s waters could still do so, but, and here’s the issue, suddenly the only form of proof that the UK would accept was electronic navigational data from expensive kits that smaller French boats don’t possess. Refusing to issue fishing licences to French boats led to the French arresting and impounding a large British trawler (actually Scottish, okay actually owned by a small Canadian firm called Clearwater Seafoods, yes, this is sarcasm) for a bit.
Macron has threatened to ban the entire British fishing fleet from unloading their catches in French ports, which would be almost as disastrous for the British fishing industry as Brexit itself has been, but has held off imposing sanctions until after talks with Baron Frost (remember him?) in a decision made much simpler by the hasty issuing of numerous licences by the island of Jersey, since that’s the part of UK waters where the bulk of the French boats fish anyway. As usual the Government and pro-Brexit Media have acclaimed the French decision as a climb-down in the face of British grit, but back in the real world it’s a sign that the French are in no hurry to let this issue come to a boil, not when they hold the majority of the cards, and it can be successfully parlayed into an election issue that Macron can benefit from. Either Johnson capitulates as normal and changes the licencing rules to allow the French fleet to get licences (this will happen) or Macron gets to extract a little juicy flesh from the haunches of Terre de Rosbif and display it in the Place de Concorde.
Life as a tiny little country that no one likes. It’s magical.
Conservative MP David Amess was murdered by someone for as yet unclear reasons while holding a surgery (which is what we call it when constituents can book a meeting with their MP without being a lobbyist for a major corporation) in his constituency. I don’t think I have to lay out my opinions on murder, so I’ll just say that it’s been pretty revolting to see the same people who couldn’t rustle up two shits when Labour MP Jo Cox was stabbed to death by a radicalised far-Right nutjob in the run-up to the 2016 Referendum suddenly bemoaning the language people use when attacking their political opponents. And exploiting Amess’ death to bring in completely unrelated rules designed to hide their expenses, donor lists and travel itineraries from public view, on the grounds that, if people saw the amounts they were claiming, what for, who they were being funded by, and where they were being wined and dined, they might get angry and trust them less. No shit, Sherlock. Oh, and I think it’s alright to be repulsed by the rush to beatify a homophobic promoter of forced birth laws who consistently voted to take food out of children’s mouths and strip basic dignity from the poorest amongst us. You are what you do, and what Amess did with his career was be a reliable vote for the worst Tory policies of the last few decades.
And I can’t sign off without mentioning the latest dish to plop onto the all-you-can-eat crap buffet, though it’s hard to do it justice.
Basically, a Tory MP called Owen Paterson was investigated by the Commons Standards Committee for taking £100,000 in donations from two private companies and lobbying for them in Parliament, which is a big no-no. He was found incredibly guilty in a damning report which suggested he should be sanctioned with a 30-day suspension from Parliament (the horror!). So far, so normal for naughty Tories. During the course of the investigation Paterson’s wife hung herself in woods by their home, and while initially Paterson claimed he had no idea why his wife did this, once it became clear that Johnson’s Government were opposed to the concept of anyone on their side of the House of Commons being punished, however mildly, for a bit of highly profitable corruption, his story changed to her suicide being a direct result of the ‘witchhunt’ he was suffering through and we were off to the races. Yesterday the Tories called for a vote on whether or not to accept the findings of the Standards Committee, and in a partisan vote (that saw scores of Tory MPs abstain – brave Sir Robin’s that they are) they not only voted to give Paterson a free pass, but to scrap the entire system of enforcing standards on MPs and replace it with a leaner, more up-to-date system consisting of a room full of Tory MPs all standing on tables and singing Billy Joel’s “Innocent Man”.
To say this went down badly would be an understatement. If they’d drafted in the writers of The Onion they couldn’t have scripted a more pitch-perfect example of the utter contempt the modern Conservative Party has for Parliament, rules, laws, justice and/or the opinions of anyone outside of their donor class. The fact that they tried to justify their corrupt power-grab by unearthing the rotting corpse of St David the Martyr (we’re just trying to protect our honourable public servants from hostility, they cried) was just the cherry on top. It takes a lot to stir Sir Keir Starmer out of his pose of mannequin stillness, but Peter Mandelson must have forgotten to confiscate his mobile phone because he was right out there condemning the sleaziness of it all and following the Scottish Nationalists in saying Labour would not give the new and improved (no) standards format time of day.
As far as colossal political own goals go, it was a pretty humungous one, and true to form, the jellied substance which passes for the spine of Johnson’s Government soon started to melt into goo once the wave of revulsion felt by most of the country started to hit MP’s social media pages. The day started with Business Secretary Kwasi Kwarteng (the Minister for Going On TV To Justify Shit When No One Else Wants To) going on TV to justify the whole shambles (he didn’t) lie about what had happened (he did) and heavily imply that the Commissioner in charge of the Commons Standards Committee should step down (she didn’t). Then the Chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life gave a blistering press conference in which he openly called out the Tories for partisan fuckery of the system and told them to stop that shit right the fuck now (or words to that effect). In the last few hours they’ve started the inevitable u-turn, with Government sources briefing that Paterson’s triumphalist rounds of the evening news bulletins (like they hadn’t been scripted for him ahead of time) had hit the wrong tone and now, suddenly, MPs would be allowed another vote on whether he should have to suffer the 30 day suspension after all, and the idea of a new Standards Committee was, of course, just an idle thought and not something they actually intended to run as an Old Boy’s Club, because somehow the vote they’d held the day before hadn’t been supposed to mean what they said it meant and could everyone just stop shouting at them and let them get away with this, please?
Paterson obviously had a visit from the Men in Suits because he’s just resigned as MP, still squealing his innocence and blaming everyone else for being absolutely beastly to him, but what can you expect from a Tory?
One dangling plotline that hasn’t gone away, and hopefully won’t, was the suggestion that the whole farrago was a Batman Gambit by Johnson’s circle to force the aforementioned Commissioner of the Commons Standards Committee to resign, with Johnson choosing her successor, because she is in the process of investigating the thought dead and buried story from a few months ago of who, exactly, paid for the expensive redecoration of Number 10 demanded by Johnson’s wife (ex-Tory Party Communications Chief Carrie ‘Antoinette’ Symonds-Johnson) and glossed over by the minion Johnson appointed specifically to clear him of any wrongdoing. There’s always been something very stinky about that incident, and apparently the Johnsons are shitting bricks over what an investigation might reveal. Which is nice.
See what I mean? There’s always something else to get outraged over where the Tories are concerned, and the crap rockets never stop falling. I haven’t even mentioned the laughable shitshow of COP26 where the same Prime Minister who has allowed private companies to pollute our river and beaches with raw sewage on a massive scale and made thousands of pounds rubbishing environmental issues in his newspaper columns tried to pose as a concerned Green for the second time in a month (didn’t drag the muppets into it this time, though, which is a relief) before falling asleep, maskless and probably the worse for wear after a liquid lunch, next to the 95 year old global treasure David Attenborough. It’s almost – almost – cause to jack it all in, exclusively watch episodes of ‘The Goes Wrong Show’ and just piss myself sodden with laughing, but no, that’s the vodka and absinthe appetisers talking, and if there’s one thing we can all agree on, it’s that talking drinks should be ignored whenever possible.
Good night, and may your god go with you.