Published On: Mon, Oct 21st, 2019

With the Leave-voting ignoramus worked into nervous frenzy (assisted by own leadership), tolerance at last for the Article 50 Treaty?

For nearly a year, this site has been explaining to its readership how the British Government has been attempting to engineer tolerance of the Article 50 Treaty, otherwise known as the Brexit deal, or the Withdrawal Agreement, using a series of operations to dent confidence in the idea that any kind of Brexit will ever take place unless it is in the way that Government delivers it. In other words, Leave-voters have been shock-treated into being desirous of the least worst option.

Today the Commons hosted what might well be the last act of theatre for engineering tolerance for the Government’s way. Speaker Bercow prevented a vote on the Withdrawal Agreement. It was circus designed to increase the tension, and the anger in those who think that Johnson’s Brexit is being sabotaged (see Leave.eu’s tweet, for example: “John Bercow has once again thrown his weight around as Speaker of the House of Commons. Such a sad, frustrated little man, desperate to prove how powerful he is by clogging up our political process and annoying millions of British voters!” ). It was circus because the Tory Executive is pressing ahead with the Withdrawal Agreement Bill (WAB), which would be a hard thing to do if no agreement with the EU had been authorised by the Commons. Hence, a vote on the second reading of the WAB, taking place tomorrow, will become the meaningful vote to authorise the Withdrawal Agreement. Moreover,

Downing Street’s understanding is that the “second reading” motion cannot be amended or qualified in any way so it’s a straight yes/no vote. It will be hugely significant.

(Source – Search for “Boris Johnson denied vote on Brexit deal — as it happened”).

In turn, this means that the so-called “Super Saturday”, which saw a special and rare weekened sitting of the Commons, was also the highest of theatre because of how the Letwin Amendment, which passed and prompted the Tory Executive to abandon an attempt to put the Withdrawal Agreement to the vote, would delay MPs approval for the deal until the enactment of the Withdrawal Agreement Bill. In effect, the trajectory had been set for the Bill and the Agreement to be passed in one “foul” swoop.

Of course, the Letwin operation had the added bonus of triggering the terms of the Benn Act so that a request had to be sent to the EU requesting an extension. It was yet more grist for the mill in terms of heightened anxiety in the averagely gullible Leave-voter. So, while it should have been predictable that the Commons would block a vote on the deal on the “bigged-up” Saturday in question, no one could perhaps anticipate just how nauseating the whole dog and pony show would be. “World cup goal” cheers went up from that crowd, there to protest for a second referendum, filling the streets of that London as the Letwin amendment passed. It was such great drama that there’s no way it could have been organic.

The fundamental target audience, watching on the ever-so-accommodating TV and having its confidence shaken, would be the Conservatroid: the sort who votes Tory reflexively as if an automaton. If the reader would care to pick any article at ConservativeHome at the moment, and proceed to the comments section, he will see ample evidence of how excruciatingly witless such people are: the eagerness to be shafted in return for an authoritative voice telling them that they have left the EU is remarkable. So, the theatre that the Government has subjected the country to, not just in the last 72 hours, but in the previous year, does work. In fact, it’s effectiveness is well known, for it is the basis by which Government manufactures general consent – as covered in the article, Delegitimising Parliament: why “we the people” must stop voting.

The other thing to add before looking at how the Judas-goat “maverick”, or alternative (from the Tory) Brexit movement contributed to the Super Saturday theatre is that this latest episode of engineering tolerance for the Article 50 Treaty was also very much about portraying the Tory Executive as having taken the side of the people in a dispute with parliament. In fact Boris Johnson, since his becoming Prime Minister, has been telegraphed as some kind of King Richard joining the Peasant’s Revolt (to effect the betrayal, of course). History will repeat itself if people are too stupid to learn from its bounteous examples.

Talking of stupid, Conservatroids will, of course, also be the prime target for devious strategists who have been seeking to create the impression of an embattled Boris taking on Parliament on their behalf. It has been done, naturally, with a view to winning an election by securing the returning flock after it had been scattered by fright of Theresa May. Also being brought to tether at the Tory stake – and this is why this article discusses the role of Farage and Leave.eu in worrying Leave voters regarding diminishing chances of achieving Brexit – is a broader range of would-be voters who currently believe that they will be voting for the Brexit Party at the next general election.

Moments after the Commons passed the Letwin Amendment, Nigel Farage was on Iain Dale’s radio show with an ultimate message that jittery Leave-voters do not want to hear:

The public will just see more parliamentary shenanigans, more delay, more attempt to stop Brexit. That’s what the public will see.

And of course, the truth of it is this is all about getting a second referendum. That is what the Remainer forces in Parliament want. And the more time they buy, the more chance they’ve got of getting something like that passed.

While there are some MPs who say that they would like to stop Brexit, there can be no real expectation that it would be achievable. It is not because the mechanics are not there to do it, but because the trauma would be devastating for the body politic. Likewise, there is a lot of talk about a second referendum, but there will not be any real expectation of one in those MPs who whip useful idiots on to the streets to protest one. It is for the show. If the British Government (meaning the City/Military Intelligence amalgam that actually runs the country) found itself in a position whereby Brexit had been revoked, or there was a second referendum that delivered a Remain verdict, then it would be very sorry indeed. The situation would mean, as 17 million people (and now more) saw their much vaunted democracy for the sham it is, the entire ground falling out from under system, and the machinery by which the Government is able to rule perhaps being terminally damaged.

As has always been maintained at FBEL, the threats that Farage echoed are empty and designed to scare. The trouble is, the average Leave-voter, being typically British and therefore dim, does not know this. As far as such a person would be concerned, Farage would just be affirming the propaganda that they had seem on the television: that the so-called “People’s Vote” street protest was a demonstration of the momentum of a national mood to challenge Brexit.

It’s not the first time at FBEL that Farage has been called controlled opposition (discussed further here); as such it is little wonder that he advocates slavishness as a solution: “I feel in the absence of a general election, nothing is going to improve”, says he. The naïve will think that Farage lives in the hope that a general election will create Brexit Party MPs. The reason why this will not happen has been explained a number of times at FBEL, with the latest occasion being here, and Farage is not daft that he would expect anything else.

With the Brexit Party keeping Tory voters interested at the EU elections (when by rights they shouldn’t have gone any where near with a barge pole), it’s not for no good reason that the Brexit Party is called the Tory Placeholder party here at FBEL, and a look at the activity, specifically at this highly-charged time, of the closely associated Leave.eu organisation (the co-founder, Richard Tice, is also the chairman of the Brexit Party) will lead to the revelation of more justification.

Ahead of Super Saturday, Leave.eu was also brandishing the second referendum scare – and how:

Labour is now a second referendum party. If the deal fails tomorrow, we will be forced into a rigged referendum with votes for school children and foreign nationals. It’s Brexit now, with Boris’s deal, or a Remainer stitch-up to stop Brexit forever.

Lions and tigers and bears! Oh my!

Unlike Farage, whose part in the full spectrum dominance is to position himself as uncompromising Brexiteer, Leave.eu  supports Boris Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement on the grounds that it is the least worst option. Leave.eu, then, positions itself in the exact place that Leave-voters are being psychologically manipulated to arrive at. Furthermore, Leave.eu sees things as a matter of two phases. The first is to get out of the EU at whatever the cost (not explaining to the fullest extent how Britain will exist in a state of EU-undeadness, being out in name only). The second phase involves having pro-Brexit candidates become MPs at a general election that is to be imagined as following swiftly on the heels of the exit (despite the obstacle of fixed-term parliaments). “Chalk it down to a win and bring on an election”, is the text on a meme that went out with a tweet worded thusly:

This deal is not perfect, far from it. But we now have the opportunity to get out of the European Union and to punish all those who have frustrated the referendum result at the ballot box. Phase 1 is complete.

The reader must pick up an important point from this tweet – in addition to noticing the blasé way in which forever-EU undeadness is characterised. It’s not at all clear what the MPs that Leave.eu want elected will do upon election, except that by attaining office they might extract revenge on Remain-supporting MPs by displacing them – perhaps. While this might be enough for an idiot to vote how Leave.eu directs them to, other people might well expect that these supposed pro-Brexit MPs will effect some change so that Boris Johnson’s deal is mitigated, or even forced to fail. However, could they be sure that the method, and therefore any opportunity, to be able to bring any of this about actually exists? Anyone who thinks that Leave.eu has a sound strategy for making a silk purse out of a sow’s ear is being given fair warning.

Leave.eu says that it would be looking to see a “huge majority” in the Commons made up of both Tory and Brexit Party MPs, and the text of a particular meme tweeted ahead of Super Saturday makes the method to achieve this clear:

Let’s get Brexit done and prepare for Phase 2…

Boris can win in the marginals while Nigel batters Corbyn in the Labour heartlands.

There is a problem with the assumption that voters who previously elected Labour candidates will be flocking to vote Brexit Party in support of Boris Johnson (especially as Leave.eu characterises its activity as “uniting the right”) – but this is not the main issue.

In 2017, as part of what was essentially the same strategy that is now being rehashed, Leave.eu generally encouraged voters to elect Tory candidates instead of UKIP ones. The dishonesty of what was dubbed the “Brexit Alliance” was covered in the FBEL series, The Tory Fake Brexit Candidates (Part 1 & Part 2). These articles go into how, in 2017, the Tories did not stand down candidates in places where UKIP had come second to Labour at the previous election, and how Leave.eu would nevertheless promote the Tory candidate. The objective seemed clear to yours truly, who wrote that Leave.eu was “a sly way of creating a Tory majority”. The big scandal, which should be discernable from the title of the series, was that generally speaking the Tories, both incumbents and incomers, were not genuinely pro-Brexit.

Expect the same thing to happen at the next election when the Tories do not stand down against Brexit Party candidates. And with this understanding, appreciate that Farage’s job is to place hold for the Tory party. With a view on the next election, his role is to create support from the disaffected (encouraging its participation), after which Leave.eu’s job, in the name of not splitting the vote, will be to direct it to the Tories – who won’t have to be pro-Brexit, or the least bit interested in undoing any damage caused by Boris Johnson.

It's important to donate to FBEL - please see here to find out why
A PayPal account not required.