Boris Coup: Day 11

Day 11 of the Boris coup and Brexiters are in a terrible flap. 

They’re shocked. Appalled. Flabbergasted.

It seems that before voting to block a hard Brexit, the cross-party group of MPs opposing no-deal – the people I like to think of as the resistance – spoke to EU officials to check whether a request for a further delay would be granted if Britain requested one. The Brexiters are horrified. David Jones, a Tory MP, and one of BoJo’s accomplices – apologies, supporters – said that this:

... confirms the level of EU interference in our internal affairs and makes the need for Brexit all the more pressing.

I changed the word ‘accomplices’ back there because I’ve been warned about the importance of words. But more of that later.

It’s interesting that British MPs approaching EU officials amounts to unwarranted interference by the EU in our internal affairs. Does that mean that when Boris chatted to Trump at the Biarritz G7 meeting, that was similar interference by the US? Is it now a political sin to talk to our foreign partners before deciding how we should approach our partnership with them? Or is it simply that David Jones wants us only to consult and be guided by Boris?

Meanwhile, the bill to force BoJo to ask for a Brexit delay is due to receive royal assent on Monday. All eyes are on what Boris does next. Will he refuse to send the bill for assent? Will he refuse to abide by it when it becomes law? Is someone who suspended Parliament because he couldn’t get his way prepared to respect the law?

That we have to ask the question at all shows just how far we have sunk in this febrile coup atmosphere in which we live.

Tom Watson.
So annoying that his political antennae are better than his leader’s

It’s an atmosphere that affects Labour as well as the Tories. Mark Serwotka, President of the Trades Union Congress, was insisting on Thursday – or, as I like to think of it, on day 9 of the coup – that “the actions of some of the parliamentary Labour party such as Tom Watson and others have been really unacceptable”. 

Watson, deputy leader of the Labour Party, should it seems now get in line and stop acting against the will of his leader, Jeremy Corbyn. Whose will, according to Corbynists like Serwotka, should be religiously followed in all circumstances. Just like Boris feels all Conservatives should jump to his every whim.

Tom Watson is annoying to people like Serwotka because he has political instincts. Right at the start of the coup, Corbyn rushed off to Glasgow to do some election campaigning. Business as usual, for him. Tom Watson, on the other hand, got stuck in with the resistance, working immediately with the ‘Stop the Coup’ campaign in London. Corbyn only woke up to the importance of what was happening at the end of the week, when he also belatedly joined the movement.

No wonder Serwotka wants Watson silenced. Who’d want a deputy leader who so eloquently demonstrates how far off the pace his leader is? Especially when he shows it in practice and not just words.

Which takes me back to the subject of words.

I’ve had complaints about my use of the word ‘coup’. What Boris has done, my critics claim, is not a coup. It’s true that if a coup means tanks on the streets, military occupation of the TV stations and political opponents arrested, then it wasn’t a coup.

But there are far more insidious ways of seizing power illegitimately. What Boris did was even legal, as several judges have confirmed, but that only makes it more difficult to obstruct his power grab. The only defence we have in Britain to abusive executive power is Parliamentary oversight, an annoyance to would-be autocrats anywhere, so Boris decided to do away with it.

He would have established a precedent, and precedent is everything in a system governed by an unwritten constitution. It would have allowed the executive illicitly to take whatever power it wished, if it couldn’t bend Parliament to its will.

That is a coup.

It has to be resisted, as any coup should be resisted. Parliament deserves congratulations, and thanks, for having so resisted BoJo, so far with success.

While we’re on the subject of words, let’s look at this one too: conservative.

Generally, it means someone who wants to conserve things. In particular, that would include our conventions and political processes. It’s clear that BoJo has no intention of doing so. That makes him a radical, seeking to change Britain radically, though from the right rather than the left. A radical, not a conservative, with a small c, even though he leads the Conservative Party, with a capital C.

David Gauke
Expelled for opposing his leader’s attack on democratic values

That’s why David Gauke, former Justice Minister but one of the 21 Conservative rebels BoJo expelled from his Party for voting against him, says that Boris, to placate Brexiters, has “had to rebadge the Conservative party as the Brexit party”.

That’s the party of Nigel Farage. BoJo’s behaviour is turning him, in Gauke’s words, into “Farage-lite”.

Powerful words. As words can be when you deploy them to maximise their impact. Gauke did it, and I apologise to no one for attempting to do the same.

Boris coup: Day 6

Confidence is surging in the Downing Street junta on Day 6 of the Boris coup.

Indeed, Boris Johnson is so sure of himself that he’s decided he can simply break off any further discussion with members of his own party who oppose a no-deal Brexit. Indeed he, or more likely Dominic Cummings, Lord High Executioner in this particular Junta, has decided that any Tory MP who votes against the government will have the whip withdrawn.

That means expulsion from the party and would prevent them standing in an election as Conservative candidates. Since expelling them would wipe out BoJo’s majority – currently one, with the support of the Democratic Unionist Party from Northern Ireland – that election could happen pretty soon after so drastic a step.

BoJo (l) and Philip Hammond
Once Cabinet colleagues, now friends no more

Two of the MPs targeted by this threat were until recently cabinet ministers: Philip Hammond, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, and David Gauke, former Justice Minister. That makes the threat still more remarkable. Unprecedented, even. But BoJo has shown that he’s not going to be tied by dull old traditions like consultation or fair play, at least not if they seem to be roadblocks to his unbridled ambition for his own advancement.

Indeed, it’s hard to talk about BoJo as a conservative any more. The way he systematically trashes anything like convention or protocol means he’s conserving little. A true radical, indeed, happy to change anything that irritates him, as long as it’s from a right-wing perspective.

Hard right wing, at that. Today an independent MP, Nick Boles left the Conservative Party precisely over BoJo wing’s relentless drive for a hard Brexit. He told the BBC ‘Today’ programme this morning:

The hard right has taken over the Conservative party. The Conservative party has fallen prey to an almost religious obsession with the hardest form of Brexit.

Where does BoJo draw his confidence from? Well, that’s not difficult to discover. He’s decided, as many pollsters and commentators have realised, that there are enough voters out there simple enough to confuse authoritarianism with authority. What most of us identify in BoJo and Cummings as obsession and blinkered focus on their own desires, many voters take as strength and firmness. And they like them.

That’s what BoJo’s gambling on. That there are enough of these simple souls to see them through to victory. A bold stance, but then nobody can question this coup leader’s boldness, whatever other qualities he may lack.

And it may pay off.

A little humour, a little much-needed bloody-mindedness

Many years ago, I enjoyed watching the French film Ridicule, which focuses on how the court of Louis XVI – yes, the one who ended up losing his head on the guillotine – had made a cult of wit, deemed to be fiendishly clever though it was often also fiendishly cruel. 

The film contrasted such wit with a more British quality, which it called  ‘humour’, and clearly viewed as greatly superior.

At one point, the protagonist, a celebrated wit, meets the King who asks him to say something funny, there, immediately, on the spur of the moment.

“Be witty this minute!”

But on what subject could he be spontaneously witty? The King has a suggestion.

“Use me, for example.”

The wit has the perfect answer.

“Sire, the king is not a subject.”

I thought that was brilliant, but I suppose you could argue that it is perhaps spoiled by a deferential quality verging on the obsequious.

The contrast is emphasised at the end of the film by a French aristocrat, by then in exile in England while the revolution is running wild in his country, walking along a cliff path above a breath-taking seascape. A gust of wind takes his hat. He cries out.

“My hat! I’ve lost it.”

“Better than your head,” his English companion replies.

“Humour!” replies the Frenchman, “it’s marvellous!”

Ridicule: A hat is lost, but a head is spared

To me, that is as witty as the first rejoinder. But there is indeed a difference: it doesn’t establish any kind of hierarchy between the speakers, it shows neither deference to the other person or superiority over him, but merely shares a smile between equals. If that’s humour rather than wit then, yes, I too prefer it.

Sadly, in the last two or three years that famous British sense of humour has been a little scarce in public discourse. The leadership of both the Labour and Conservative parties take themselves far too seriously to allow of any smiles. So it was good to see something of the spirit reappear a little, even though it was  on the Tory side at the expense of Labour, and it felt more like wit than humour: the comments were designed to belittle opponents.

It seems that Environment Minister Michael Gove, even though he’s generally someone to laugh at rather than with, showed some elegance when he described MPs who hope Theresa May can get a better Brexit deal than she has so far, as swingers in their fifties hoping that Scarlett Johansson would show up at one of their parties. Quite amusing though I was glad to read that Amber Rudd, speaking up for the female side, suggested “or Pierce Brosnan”.

The Justice Secretary, David Gauke, went one further and described the official Labour Brexit position as hoping for Johansson to show up on a unicorn. Cruel but hardly unfair: Jeremy Corbyn keeps suggesting that if elected, he will somehow bring home a hugely preferable deal to May’s, with absolutely no evidence to suggest that he could do any such thing.

At least the comments were worth a smile, not something that marks British politics much these days.

But there’s another quality my compatriots regard as quintessentially British. It’s a certain cussedness, if not downright bloody-mindedness, which refuses to allow power to do just what it likes. “Over my dead body,” it seems to say, or even “over your dead body” – after all, we cut off our King’s head nearly a century and a half before the French more famously did the same to theirs.

It’s particularly welcome to see that spirit stirring again.

Twice in 24 hours, the May government has been defeated in the House of Commons by MPs across parties working to prevent a cliff-edge, no-deal Brexit. It is heartening, in this parliamentary democracy, to see parliamentarians asserting their right to resist the government.

What’s more, the initiatives came from the backbenches, not the party leaderships. Yvette Cooper, leadership candidate defeated by Corbyn led one attack. Dominic Grieve, ex-Tory Minister, guided the other. The leaders merely opposed, in the case of May who was defending her deal, or followed, in the case of Corbyn who is, well, Jeremy Corbyn.

The government was particularly angry over the second defeat, with the Speaker of the House of Commons, John Bercow, who allowed the vote to take place. Precedent was against him, and it was a decision that seriously threatened the government’s usual prerogative to decide what gets discussed and what gets voted on. But what it showed was a Speaker intent on seeing all parliamentarians able to decide national policy, and not just the minority of them that form the government.

A refreshing notion.

The Speaker, though originally a Conservative himself,
getting right up Tory noses by asserting the authority of Parliament

And there’s a delicious irony to it, too. Brexiters keep saying that the aim of leaving the EU was to ‘take back control’. I don’t think this is what they had in mind, but I’m revelling in the spectacle of Parliament reasserting its authority over the Executive, which had been allowed to erode away far too far.

Now, that’s the kind of control I’m only too glad to see us taking back.

Especially as it’s so cussed. And gives us a lot to smile about.