Published On: Wed, Dec 12th, 2018

The Stage: Theresa May copes in pantomime debut as old woman who scraped excrement from the bottom of a shoe

So, all of a sudden there is going to be a vote of no confidence in Theresa May, and possibly a Tory leadership contest.

Make no mistake, it is all about engineering support in the country for a bad Article 50 deal. Forget about any difference another party in office would make, and whether or not they would spoil Brexit. The truth is basically this: the tax revenue has voted to leave the EU, and if a Brexit is not delivered, then the entire system will find itself with a lot of problems. This also rules out a second referendum, because the Government couldn’t risk Remain winning, and doesn’t need a reemphasis of the will already expressed. So, Brexit must be delivered, but it doesn’t mean leaving the EU – as has been explained over again in these pages. What it does mean is that things must quiet down so that there can be some sneakiness, and this has been the objective since the Establishment recovered its stunned senses in July 2016 and Cameron, a divisive figure, was replaced by the unremarkable Theresa May. No need to whittle, turn on the Archers, clean the Volvo, pop to Waitrose, knit some yoghurt, carry on as normal because the cosy figure of Theresa will stave off that nasty Labour party who want to ruin everything. It’s the old devil you know scare routine: our Brexit, or no Brexit – of course, it’s rubbish, because Britain could just leave the EU with no strings attached if the Government wanted (which it doesn’t), but tax-paying Conservatroids (robotic Tory voters), a primary target of this effort, are no more brighter than most Britons. This is what is being tweeted out of May’s office today:

Labour’s policies would be devastating to businesses and working families across our country. By contrast, under this Government wages are growing, unemployment is falling and we are delivering a Brexit deal that is good for our economy.

This is absolutely about engineering support for the Fake Brexit. If 158 Tory MPs, as is being reported by corporate-media, have already pledged support for May in a confidence vote – enough for her to win – then this signals confidence in an ability to bamboozle the sheeple. At the same time, the Tory rebels can be alienated as those who would rock the boat; and here is evidence that that is indeed going on:

Chancellor Philip Hammond suggested the vote would “flush out the extremists” in his party whose Brexit agenda was “not in the interests of the British people”.

As some of us well know, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is not king, but under immense pressure to submit to having his last ocular organ removed.

Now, think about the timing of this. On the 15th November, after the appearance of a draught copy of the Article 50 agreement, there was talk of Tory MPs triggering a leadership contest. It didn’t happen. Nothing has changed since then. Yes, it is true that yesterday May got told that the EU will not renegotiate the deal, but everyone knew that would happen. Yes, it is true that the Commons vote on the deal did not happen as scheduled, because it was known that the Tory Executive would lose. But Tory rebels referred to this today, implying that when the deal ever comes to a vote, it would inevitably be rejected, and mean the end of the Tory government:

The ERG’s chairman Jacob Rees-Mogg and deputy chairman Steve Baker issued a joint statement saying, “Theresa May’s plan would bring down the government if carried forward. But our Party will rightly not tolerate it.

“Conservatives must now answer whether they wish to draw ever closer to an election under Mrs May’s leadership. In the national interest, she must go.”

It follows that if the Tories were always going to lose the vote, then this much would have been known in November. Nothing has changed in this regards, say the rebels. Why wait until now to move?

Maybe this portion of the speech delivered by Theresa May this morning provides a helpful clue:

A new leader would not be in place by the 21st of January’s legal deadline, so a leadership election risks handing control of Brexit negotiations to opposition MPs in Parliament.

The new leader would not have time to renegotiate the withdrawal agreement and get legislation by Parliament by 29th of March, so one of their first acts would have to be extending or rescinding Article 50 — delaying, or even stopping Brexit when people want us to get on with it.

A leadership election will not change the fundamentals of the negotiations or the parliamentary arithmetic.

Incidentally, the parliamentary arithmetic was set when the Commons became even denser with Remainers at that unnecessary general election of 2017. Anyway, here we have again the use of the old tactic: be frightened, the other side will ruin everything; moreover, a leadership contest will aid and abet. Evidently, it is this line of argument that has reassured 158 MPs into supporting May: this will be the way to fob off Tory grassroots when they demand to know why something wasn’t done to stop the Fake Brexit. In short, the leadership contest is closing the stable door after the horse has bolted. It is like when young Billy, who doesn’t want to go swimming, deliberately misses the bus by accident so that his mum won’t tell him off.

The reader might remember that in February 2017, an article was published in these pages titled, Fake Brexit and the continuation of Globalism; in fact it was a two-part piece. The first part contained a prediction, which went like this:

Let’s recap on what to expect to happen: a) the setting out of the EU’s position whereby there appears to be little or no flexibility, b) the creation of a scare that seemingly causes the UK Government to surrender to the EU, and then c) the UK Government being justified in the eyes of a nation when it signs up to a deal that is not in its best interests. This is how Theresa May and David Davies, and all the other fakers in the Tory party are going to deliver Fake Brexit.

As we know, the EU has adopted that position of no flexibility. What we are probably seeing at this time is that predicted scare for the purpose of creating good reason for the UK Government to surrender to the EU – in other words, for engineering acceptance in the British electorate for the surrender. In fact, it might well be the Plan B scare.

Think about what the Government would have known on the day that a date was set for a Commons vote on the Article 50 deal. It must have been known that the Tory Executive wouldn’t win, because lots of people wouldn’t accept their MP voting for it (the personal inclination of the MP doesn’t come into it – he is caught between the party whip and the voter’s contempt).  This means that for the vote to have passed, something would have had to have changed to alter public opinion in the intervening period before the vote was held.

It is the belief of the author that this Sunday just gone was meant to have caused a spectacle whereby “Hard Brexit” (or leaving the EU) could be firmly associated with racists and fascists (as the counter-demonstrators were labelling pro-Brexit protestors). Another dimension towards the same ends was the threat of a second referendum – proponents of which has a very measured and sensible looking rally in London on the same day. All in all, the desired outcome of the combined manipulation must have been to create feelings, in the Leave part of the electorate, of anxiety about association with “Hard Brexit”, combined with fear of a looming solution via another referendum. The desired outcome from such a pincer movement would be the creation of acquiescence for any Brexit that May could scrape off the bottom of Jean-Claude Junker’s boot: namely the Fake Brexit that has been planned all along.

However, things didn’t go as planned this weekend, and so there must be a new scare to manipulate opinion, this time launching from an ever so late leadership contest. The full extent of the scare is not yet apparent, for there are repercussions that can’t as yet be seen clearly, not least because we don’t know if Tory MPs who have pledged allegiance to May will choose to vote the other way in what is set to be a secret ballot. Expect a vote on the Fake Brexit when the Government thinks that the people will accept it.

There will updates appended to this article if there are any more developments that require commenting on (especially any proving the above incorrect). Otherwise that break promised in the article published overnight will be resumed.

 

Update, 15th January, 2019:

In perverse twist, the crisis to engineer tolerance of a bad Article 50 deal incorporates the vote on the deal (link)

 

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  1. Baron says:

    Would it surprise you, Mr. Laurie, if we left with no deal?