Corona: not just the problems we knew about

Corona just means crown. We use the word for things that have, or seem to have, a crown. There’s a corona around the sun. There’s a corona around the particularly nasty virus we talk about so much these days. And, of course, there’s a corona on every crowned head, by very definition.

So spare a thought for poor Spain. Like England, it’s struggling with both the health and the financial impact of the virus. Its strict lockdown to protect public health worked a lot better than the weaker measures in Britain, but the damage to the economy has been painful. Though, oddly, England has damaged its economy even more seriously, while controlling the pandemic less well. But then, England has Cummings and Johnson.

Today, however, cases in Spain are increasing once more at a depressing rate, and lockdown measures are having to be reintroduced. Just as they are in England. Although in England they seem to be targeting the Midlands and the North first of all, as though the Conservatives want to punish traditional Labour areas for having the audacity to vote for them instead.

Spain has an additional element of suffering. It’s also having to cope with Corona problems of the other, more ancient variety. The ones associated with the Crown. Especially since its previous occupant, Juan Carlos I, erstwhile King and now King emeritus, decided to do a bunk, fleeing abroad to some destination that has yet to be made public.

Juan Carlos I: ex-King who did a flit, and who knows to where?

His flight was precipitated by the ongoing investigation of his financial affairs. In particular, the judicial authorities find that his bank accounts in Switzerland raise a number of questions they’d like answered (yes, the understatement is deliberate).

This is sad, because Juan Carlos was the designated successor to the dictator Franco but, instead of maintaining the dictatorship, he oversaw an orderly transition to democracy. A referendum adopted the new constitution, still in force today, less than three years after the dictator’s death.

What’s more, not three years after that, when a coup against the new regime was launched by disaffected members of the paramilitary police and the army, Juan Carlos spoke out powerfully against it, rallying the nation to the cause of legitimate government. That ensured the coup’s failure.

Guardia Civil Colonel Antonio Tejero invading Parliament

Now, I’m a bit of a cynic and I share the misgivings of many over the length of time it took the King to come out with that statement. The initial attack against the Parliament took place just before 6:30 in the evening and the King’s broadcast went out at 1:14 in the morning. He recorded it around an hour earlier, but even that was six hours after the coup was launched.

There are those who say he knew in advance that it was going to happen, and only came out firmly in opposition once it became clear not enough of the army supported it. I don’t know how true or false that is. It is interesting, however, that there are those doubts, and that even as long ago as 1981 there were therefore some suspicions clouding the admiration felt towards the King by the Spanish people.

Which may have been a harbinger of what has happened now.

Even so, there are over 600 streets and squares called after Juan Carlos I across Spain. I am, indeed, in one of them now, as I write this piece from the flat near Madrid my one-year-old granddaughter inhabits and kindly shares with her parents (and, right now, us).

Today, a number of councils are facing motions from the Left suggesting it may be time to change the names of those streets and squares.

The government, too, led by Pedro Sánchez, a Socialist but on the Right of his party, is having to fight off moves from his coalition partner, from parties on whose parliamentary support he relies, and even from Socialist colleagues, to review the legal position of the Crown in Spanish politics. It is an offence, for instance, to insult the King, though that could be changed simply by new legislation. More problematic, the King can’t be held accountable for his acts either, and to change that would require a constitutional amendment.

Not the moment, Sánchez argues.

Ah, yes. He has a lot on his plate. Spain is closing down discos and bars again as the scourge of the virus builds again. The country has a shattered economy to rebuild. And now it has the distraction of a monarchy with a former King who’s beginning to look as toxic as the virus.

It amazes me that in today’s world we still have regimes led by men entitled to deference by right of birth. That strikes me as something to fix, so I’d like to see all three questions addressed at once. And perhaps in Britain as well as Spain.

But I can see how it makes the uphill struggle that Spain already faces even steeper and longer than it already was.

So spare my adopted nation a little sympathy…

Postscript: when the military knows how to respond to a coup

On the night of the coup, 23 February 1981 (so the event is referred to as 23F), the only city that was taken over by the military was the one where we live now. Let me quickly say that the two things aren’t causally connected. It’s just that the military region of Valencia was commanded by the general who supported the coup most actively.

Things went reasonably smoothly for him, until he sent tanks out to the airport at Manises, to get the air force unit there to join in. He got a dusty reply from the colonel in charge, according to the story a minister of the time later told:

“I have a Mirage on the runway with its engines running and armed with air to ground missiles. If the tanks heading for the base don’t turn around and pull back I’ll order it to take off and attack them. And I have another Mirage fighter ready on the runway just in case.”

The tanks retreated.

Making our nations laughable again

It’s always good to have a laugh, isn’t it? Laughter’s the great natural therapy for humans, in the state technically known to psychiatrists as ‘down in the dumps’. That’s a sad condition particularly common in our hard times.

Unfortunately, the laughs these days, precisely because times are so difficult, are sometimes a little bleak. We smile, but on occasion, more than a little wryly. The laughter, when it comes, is often hollow.

That’s true, for instance, of our amusement over the dark irony that those leaders, from the radical, populist right, whose proclaimed aim it is to make their countries world leaders, in fact make them into laughingstocks.

Cummings (l), the organ grinder, and Johnson
The mini-Trump combo currently running Britain

This week that has been particularly true of Great Britain. That benighted country has a government headed by Dominic Cummings, the Prime Minister’s principal adviser, a man who led efforts to put in place the country’s lockdown regulations, but immediately broke them himself when he found that they inconvenienced him personally.

His decision to travel several hundred miles around the country while ill with Coronavirus, potentially infecting rather a lot of people on the way, was curious enough, but what was truly fascinating was his apparent inability to understand that anyone might find that behaviour reprehensible. He explained that he had problems organising childcare while he and his partner were in quarantine. It was as though no one else had ever faced similar difficulties, and his case should be treated as exceptional, because his circumstances were unique.

The Cummings government is fronted by Boris Johnson, a man often referred to as mini-Trump. He owes the nickname to his apparent desire to emulate the mega-Trump across the Atlantic. Why he should want to do that is hard to understand. It may be that he belongs to the shrinking band of people around the world who think Trump shows deftness of decision-making and sureness of vision, capable of inspiring people like Johnson with a desire to emulate him.

Anyway, this week the Cummings-Johnson duopoly went seemingly out of its way to provide us with material for laughs, if of the slightly grim kind. Johnson announced policy U-turns, on quarantining visitors returning from Spain and on tightening Coronavirus restrictions in the North of England, in the late evening and without anything like proper notice.

This gave the impression of a government without a strategy or any kind of ability to adopt measures in a rational or controlled manner. An impression which, if its track record is anything to go by, is entirely accurate.

One of Maggie Thatcher’s iconic sayings was in relation to U-turns. “You turn if you want to,” she told the 1980 Conservative Party conference. Then she paused for the inevitable applause and followed up with, “The Lady’s not for turning.” And the applause turned ecstatic.

Well, the Cummings-Johnson show clearly is for turning. Gyrating in the breeze, indeed.

So we laugh, grimly, at the irony of a government whose stated aim is to make Britain’s response to Coronavirus ‘world-beating’, while in fact it has succeeded only in making it laughable.

Trump:
braying can be quite funny but is no substitute for planning

Meanwhile, what’s the latest on mega-Trump? As he constantly assures us, researchers and drug companies in the US are working at speed (warp-speed, indeed, to adopt the administration’s own term, a reference to a form of travel in science fiction which corresponds to nothing real). Their efforts to develop a vaccine against Coronavirus are such that one may yet be available before the end of the year. But, it has now emerged, the administration has developed no plan to manage the distribution of the vaccine if one is developed, or to decide who should receive it first and who should wait as supplies ramp up.

As the received expression has it, fail to plan, plan to fail.

Another hollow laugh then, at yet another example of incompetence from Trump. Not, of course, that we expect anything else from him. Or indeed from Johnson.

I suppose it’s that complete fulfilment of expectations that makes Trump and Cummings-Johnson something to laugh at. Not a merry laugh. But a laugh all the same.

We should take some comfort from that much at least. See the funny side. Find a smile as an alternative to tears.

Though perhaps we might also pause a moment to learn an actual lesson. Which we might sum up quite neatly, as:

Plan to vote Populist, plan for disaster.

The great Bill Gates conspiracy. A bit of context

In my previous post about the strange case of the Bill Gates conspiracy theory, I talked about those curious aspects of it that are, when all’s said and done, common to all such theories.

They’re impervious to lack of evidence. The fact that there’s nothing at all to prove that Gates is engaging in some sinister plot against the whole of humanity only shows how clever he is at covering his tracks.

Equally, no contrary evidence has any value. Any story showing that it simply isn’t true that Gates is doing any of these things, or even that they’re actually impossible in the present state of technology, are obviously wicked inventions by his acolytes, insidiously fed out to the gullible individuals who believe his protestations of innocence.

Well, as I said, this is the stock in trade of any conspiracy theory. But there is another specific aspect of the Gates story that’s worth looking at. That’s the global context in which it has emerged. Which is almost enough to make me want to launch a conspiracy theory of my own.

Look around the world today.

In China, we have Xi Jinping. He has had the constitution of his country changed so that he can remain in power more or less indefinitely. He’s been in the news recently for the way he has, at a legislative stroke backed by violent police power, wiped out the partial liberties that Hong Kong had enjoyed before.

More sickening still, around a million Uighur people, Muslims from Western China, are being held in what the regime calls re-education camps, and anyone else calls concentration camps. The figure of a million is a bit of a guess and the real figure may be much higher: the regime isn’t particularly forthcoming with the statistics.

Meanwhile, in the United States we have a Donald Trump for whom nothing matters other than his own advancement. He works to divide people, he advances racism, and he incites violence from some of the most despicable individuals in the country. And all the time, he has presided over the worst economic collapse the nation has known at least since 1929, and the deaths by Coronavirus of over twice as many Americans as were killed in the whole of the Vietnam war.

His own incompetence contributed to both those disasters.

Turning to a less significant country (but don’t tell its conservative voters – they like to think otherwise), we have Boris Johnson in Britain. He has in recent weeks defended, and ultimately failed to take any action over, Coronavirus lockdown breaches by his chief adviser, Dominic Cummings, and one of his Ministers, Robert Jenrick. Again, the mortality due to the virus in the UK is far higher than in might have been, entirely down to the incompetence with which Johnson has addressed it.

Top right: Mark Zuckerberg, the enabler
Then, clockwise: Trump, Putin, Bolosonaro, Xi, Johnson

And the list goes on. Brazil has Jair Bolsonaro, a man presiding over the devastation of his country by Coronavirus, and who, after months of denying there was a problem, and refusing to wear a mask, has now tested positive himself. Or Vladimir Putin in Russia who has gone down the Chinese road, of a constitutional amendment to keep him in power for a lot longer, and who is almost certainly involved in a real conspiracy, to try to influence the US Presidential election through dirty tricks on social media.

Talking about social media takes us, of course, to the dominant figure in that world. Mark Zuckerberg continues to refuse to act against hate speech and incitement to violence on Facebook. There are allegations that the massacre of the Rohingya in Burma was promoted through Facebook. And Zuckerberg can play his role, unaccountable to anybody, and free from any kind of control, regulation or sanction. He is one man, elected by no one, and running on his own authority a communications system that feeds information, or disinformation, to 2.6 billion people around the world.

So we we see these characters at work across the globe. Some of them are preparing conspiracies. That’s likely to be true of Putin, and his people will use the means provided by Zuckerberg. But others aren’t even trying to work conspiratorially. We know what Trump’s up to, we have a pretty good idea what Xi Jinping’s doing too.

And in this world, we pick on Bill Gates? Because he correctly predicted that pandemics might be more serious than war? And contributed money to combating the present one?

Why, it’s almost as though someone were trying to deflect attention from some real villains. Distracting us because they’re working to a hidden agenda we know nothing about. Spreading disinformation, perhaps through Facebook, so we don’t look at the people who really deserve our suspicion and distrust.

Curious, isn’t it? Is it just a coincidence that Gates conspiracy theorists are putting this kind of stuff out right now? Or is it something more sinister?

Release for some, jeopardy for others

We’re emerging here in Valencia. Slowly. With a little optimism.

We’ve moved into phase 2 of the Lockdown relaxation process. With some justification. According to the Health Ministry, Spain has just had two days without a single Coronavirus death anywhere. Friends of ours from a few doors down the street tell us that their daughter, a nurse in the major local hospital, is being redeployed to Oncology after a couple of months in intensive care. The ICU beds are empty at the moment.

The only jarring note is that the Ministry has also warned that there are signs of an increase in infections as the restrictions relax. We’re clearly not quite out of the woods yet. It’s going to be face masks and social distancing for a while yet. Maybe even rubber gloves.

Still, we needed to celebrate our entry into phase 2. And what better way to do it than to go back to the sea? Especially if we took advantage of the new regulations to go there with friends. So we drove to a lovely spot south of Valencia, El Saler, with Maria José and Santi, our near-neighbours and the parents of the no-longer-ICU nurse I mentioned before.

The beach at El Saler

The day started relatively grey, but that meant the temperature was ideal for walking, warm enough for tee shirts, cool enough to be comfortable. We started in an almost jungle-like nature reserve before heading for the beach where we could walk with our feet in the surf.

The Nature Reserve at El Saler

A forest dweller we met

The company was great, the place was glorious, and as we walked, so the clouds cleared and we finished the outing, back in the woods, with bright sunlight filtering through the tree cover.

Danielle and Maria José wandering into the sunlight

It was a fine way of celebrating our emergence into a freer life. And it lifted my mood which had been rather depressed by a Tweet I saw in the morning from Trisha Greenhalgh: “I’ve never been so scared. There. Is. No. Plan.”

When I first heard Trish Greenhalgh, she was giving a conference presentation of remarkable brilliance. So brilliant that I wrote a post about it at the time. She is one of the leading Public Health specialists in England and one of the most convincing experts on evidence-based medicine I’ve ever heard.

If she is worried about the government simply having no plan, it seems to me a lot of other people should be too.

There’s much to criticise the government for in Spain. It was painfully slow in recognising the seriousness of the crisis about to hit the country. As a result it did far too little to prepare for it and reacted far later than it should have. But when it awoke to what it had to do, it acted fast, decisively and effectively. The results are obvious, as we've been slowly emerging from lockdown for a month now, and have had two days without a death.

It won’t necessarily benefit the government. Its vote seems to be more or less holding up, but it certainly isn’t improving, and the Conservative opposition is progressing. Given how well the government’s performed, that hardly seems just, but politics is an unkind game.

Meanwhile, Britain has a government which, as Greenhalgh puts it, simply has. no. plan. It never has had a strategy, but has stumbled from crisis to crisis since the pandemic hit, making up policy on the hoof, inventing commitments out of thin air and then failing to honour them.

Now it’s relaxing a lockdown that was never as strict as Spain’s, and doing so far too early. Spain, with its slow start, long had a far worse record in deaths per million than the UK, but the gap is now so small that it looks as though Britain will move beyond Spain in a matter of days.

The hasty relaxation is happening only in England, I should say. Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland, with better governments, are being more prudent. The fear, and it’s certainly Greenhalgh’s, is that the Cummings/Johnson English administration is opening the UK up to a second wave of infection. The population certainly doesn’t deserve that fate, but I fear that can only be fixed when it chooses itself a better government.

Meanwhile, over here we’re slowly moving towards a new normal. There’s no reason for complacency, so it involves a lot of use of face masks, of hand gel, even of gloves. But we can go out more, we can meet friends, we can even get our hair cut or go to the dentist.

The dentist, in fact, was the downside of our first day in Phase 2. After the visit to El Saler, I had to head into town – my first metro trip since March, with gloves and mask and an empty seat next to each seated passenger – to visit the dentist. Who proceeded to beat the daylights out of my jaw, far longer in my view than strictly necessary, since it never offered him the slightest resistance.

Still, it was a small price to pay for another step out of lockdown. I just hope it doesn’t lead to a surge of disease. As I hope there’s no new peak in England either. 

Let’s hope Greenhalgh’s fears prove unfounded.

Danielle and Maria José collecting seashells

Boris Coup: Day 13

The face of day 13: John Bercow.
One of the great Commons speakers. We shall learn to miss him.

After several days of having Parliament inflict defeat after defeat on him, day 13 is when Boris’s coup at last enters into full effect (not enough happened on day 12, which is why I had a break and didn’t dignify it with its own post). The hated Parliamentarians who have been tormenting him are to be suspended. 

I mean, not suspended as individuals, though I wouldn’t put it past him to wish he could. For now, he’s merely suspending the whole institution. That’s the measure known as prorogation.

Attentive followers of this series of posts will remember that this is was the coup act his junta first thought of. Now they’re moving into implementation. Parliament will have no voice for the next five weeks at least.

Executive authority with no scrutiny. Power without responsibility. As another Tory Prime Minister put it, the prerogative of the harlot down the ages.

Above all, it’s the autocrat’s dream.

And, boy, does he need it. I mean, look what’s been happening to him. He’s living proof of the falsehood of the old saying that the truth never hurts. Only the truth hurts, and MPs, from the Opposition but even from his own party (though he then kicks them out, so I suppose they’re the new Opposition) have been exposing the truth about BoJo.

Look at the high-profile defections. It’s pretty desperate when even your own brother finds the atmosphere you’ve created so toxic he can’t work with you. But his resignation was followed by an even more damaging one: that of Amber Rudd, the most senior of the handful of old-style, one-nation Tories (relatively moderate pragmatists as opposed to hard-right ideologues) that had managed to hang on in his government in increasing despair at his antics.

Among other reasons she cited for leaving, was “I no longer believe leaving with a deal is the government's main objective”.

Curiously, this runs counter to BoJo’s own repeated claims that he’s making progress with his negotiations. To which, it has to be said, the people on the other side of the table, the EU’s negotiators, all reply that he has made no progress whatever. You’d have to concede, wouldn’t you, that one side or the other must be lying.

So you choose. Given what we all know about Boris, which side do you think is more likely to be playing fast and loose with the truth?

And once you’ve answered that question, you can also ask yourself, is it really the case that the truth never hurts? Just look at BoJo’s face.

BoJo in disarray. As well he should be

Meanwhile, just before going into its state of suspension, the House of Commons passed one more measure, demanding publication of government documents concerning no-deal preparations, and messages from its advisers (by which I think it means principally the backroom manipulator in Number 10, Dominic Cummings).

The cheek of it! Parliament thinks the public should know what the government really believes. If that happens, how can ministers be duplicitous enough to sustain the self-delusion of Brexiters?

And then came the final sad announcement of this difficult day. John Bercow, Speaker of the House of Commons, announced that he would be resigning, either at the next election or on 31 October, whichever came first.

Many dislike him. I think historians will see him, once the dust has settled, as one of the great speakers. And, above all, as exactly what he said of himself: a man who sought to increase the power of Parliament, a backbenchers’ speaker, indeed, turning to his advantage an expression from the Brexit debate as he did himself, the backbenchers’ backstop.

As Parliament enters its period of suspension, it’s sad to see it lose such a man, such a champion of its rights against an overweening executive.

An executive which, for the next five weeks at least, will feel itself free to run amok. Truly the Boris coup. Unless a new way can be found to stop him.

Boris Coup: Day 9

Day 9 of BoJo’s coup, and the wheels have really come off the Borismobile.

His first three parliamentary votes as Prime Minister all went against him. His first Prime Minister’s Questions were a disaster where even Jeremy Corbyn, generally pretty wooden, came across as not just more honest but a lot quicker than Boris. Even though arguably he’s neither.

It looks as though the combative style Boris chose to adopt turned out to be thoroughly counter-productive. Threatening to expel Conservative Members of Parliament (members of his own party) if they presumed to vote against his wishes worked entirely against him. It seems to have strengthened their will to resist his rule. Certainly, without that band joining the Opposition, he would not have lost his three votes.

Nor has carrying out his threat and sacking those recalcitrant members done him any favours. Nick Soames had been a Conservative MP for 36 years, as well as being Winston Churchill’s grandson. Ken Clarke sat in Parliament as a Tory for even longer, 49 years. Phil Hammond was Chancellor of the Exchequer until a few weeks ago, when Theresa May’s government fell.

Sacking figures of such stature from the Conservative Party has excited a great deal of criticism and protest from those who remain.

Phillip Lee literally crossing the House, while Boris is speaking,
to join the Lib Dems and wipe out the Tory majority of one

It also means that his voting strength in the House of Commons is reduced still further. He had, indeed, already lost his tiny majority – of one – when Philip Lee decided to cross the House, voluntarily leaving the Conservative Party to join the Liberal Democrats, choosing a moment of maximum drama and harm to make the gesture: in the middle of BoJo’s report to Parliament on the G7 meeting.

No. Boris’s strongest moves all seem to have backfired. One wonders how long Dominic Cummings, the shadowy figure who seems to be controlling all the doings of Downing Street, will survive. After all, this highly combative, not to say confrontational style, is very much his. BoJo may just have to throw him to the wolves to try to win back some sympathy from his fellow MPs.

If nothing else, the behaviour of those MPs makes clear, if anyone needed it clarifying, just why Boris launched his coup. Parliament is a major annoyance to him. It acts to block the arbitrary decisions of a man who feels his will should be sufficient to set national policy.

For those of us who believe that Britain should be a democracy, that is exactly what we believe its role should be: to prevent arbitrary rule, to stop anyone else setting himself up as some kind of latter-day satrap ruling with virtually monarchical power.

Unfortunately, a great many others take a wholly different view. They mouth the word democracy, but it’s rather like a child denouncing an action as unfair: children don’t usually find it unfair to be given a sweet denied to a sibling, and these pseudo-democrats only complain about undemocratic behaviour when it fails to yield them what they want.

Sadly, there are a lot of people like that. And they weren’t defeated in those parliamentary votes. Indeed, they will certainly resent them, as the papers which reflect their views already do. Indeed, many of them are particularly incensed because one of the votes Boris lost was to call a General Election. Labour abstained and so the motion fell short of the two-thirds majority needed.

Corbyn, say the right-wing papers, chickened out.

The Tory Press whipping up fury over BoJo's defeats

He was entirely right. Because for once he looked at political reality with a clear eye, instead of believing it to be as he might wish it. Labour would lose an election called now. And, if anything, the three defeats suffered by Boris only make that more likely. Those who back him will regard them as instances of Parliament denying them their entitlement, and doing so for self-serving or even corrupt reasons.

Astonishingly, given that no one belongs so entirely to the Establishment as BoJo, they will see him even more than ever as their champion against the established parties in Parliament. They will rally to his cause.

Labour needs to wait. Boris is on a rapid downward slope. The sheen is coming off his premiership. In time, even his supporters will begin to see that.

Corbyn still talks of agreeing to an election soon. That may just be spin, to try to cover his change of position, from forever calling for a vote. If he has any sense, he certainly won’t agree to one in the next few weeks.

A few months from now would be a far more favourable moment. Although I doubt BoJo, or whoever takes over from him, will be half as enthusiastic about holding an election then than they are now. 

Who then will the Conservative press call chicken?

Boris Coup: Day 8

It’s day 8 of the Boris coup, and our hero, chief of the Downing Street junta, has suffered his first setback.

A fine setback, too. The very first vote he’s faced since becoming Prime Minister. And he lost it.

Even more toxic than BoJo: Jacob Rees-Mogg, his Brexit sidekick
Showing the full extent of his respect for the Parliament to which he belongs

John le Carré tells us in Smiley’s People that ‘burning’ (blackmail) is a powerful tool for breaking an adversary, but sadly it can have exactly the opposite effect and stiffen resistance rather than overthrowing it.

The idea of cowing Conservative MPs tempted to rebel against the junta’s diktats, by threatening them with losing the whip and effectively ending their careers, probably came from Dominic Cummings, the PM’s hitman, rather than from BoJo himself. Cummings, it will be remembered, is the man whose management style boils down to, “you don’t like my style? There’s the door”.

Sadly, for him and his boss at least, that approach seems to have had the stiffening rather than overpowering effect. Or so we’re told by some of the Conservative MPs who voted again the Conservative government last night. One of them, Sam Gyimah told the Guardian:

For MPs like myself, Downing Street has framed the choice as: speak your mind or keep your job.

It seems 21 Tory MPs had their opposition strengthened, rather than weakened, by the threats. Or, to put it another way, decided that speaking their mind was more important than keeping the job. Some, indeed, might say that a politician’s job isn’t worth having if you can’t speak your mind.

The cause was helped by the behaviour of BoJo’s sidekick, Jacob Rees-Smogg, who has somehow pulled off the trick of being even more obnoxious than his boss. He lay sprawled across the government front bench during much of yesterday’s debate, showing exactly the respect in which he holds the Parliament to which he belongs.

The vote, however, only meant that Parliament wrested control of its own agenda away from government.

Ironically, it was a wonderful application of the principle Cummings has made his own: ‘taking back control’.

That step was necessary for a bill to go forward blocking a no-deal Brexit. The debate on the bill itself will only start today and it has to be completed fast, before Parliament is prorogued (suspended) on Monday.

Prorogation was the central act in the coup, after all. And it was designed to avoid precisely what MPs are trying to do now. One defeat doesn’t mean BoJo’s authoritarian drive is over. Not by a long stretch. As well as being adopted by the Commons, any move to block a hard Brexit also has to get through the Lords by Monday, and it’s clear that BoJo loyalists in the upper House are going to do all they can to delay it there.

BoJo’s bloodied but not yet defeated.

Meanwhile, on the other side, Jeremy Corbyn has let it be known that Labour won’t vote for a General Election until hard Brexit has been blocked. The Fixed Term Parliaments Act means that a snap election – and early one – can only be called with the consent of two-thirds of the House. If Labour votes against, it won’t happen.

It would be a great idea, from Labour’s point of view. It’s true that Corbyn has been calling for a General Election for years – ever since the last one, two and a half years ago – so changing his tune now won’t be easy for him. But, as I argued yesterday, he needs to. An election in the next few weeks would almost certainly return BoJo to power, with a majority. Just as his blackmail of Tory MPs only strengthened their resolve, so his defeat in Parliament will only reinforce his support among that large minority that wants a Brexit and sees him as their champion against the vile manoeuvrings of MPs.

They see strength where in reality there’s authoritarianism. They see a man taking on the establishment where in reality no one is more establishment than he is. And they’re a minority but a big enough one to give him a win.

Corbyn, and Labour generally, would be far better advised to wait, if Brexit happens, until its pain starts to bite. Then, if BoJo’s still Prime Minister and identified as Mr Brexit, Labour will stand a far better chance against him than it does now.

BoJo, however, may not cling on until then. He’s prepared the ground to weather a defeat like yesterday’s. But how many can he handle? If there are several more, he may find it more than he can bear.

Cummings would doubtless be fired first, the sacrificial lamb to save his master. And then he too would go.

That means that there are two ways to be freed of BoJo’s baleful power: an election a while after Brexit, or more defeats in the coming weeks than he can withstand.

A glimmer of hope. Because in either of those situations, he would be gone. And the coup would be over.

It’s not over yet, but at least we can be more hopeful than at any other time in these first eight days of his drive for autocratic power.

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.

Boris Coup: Day 5

Day 5 of the Boris coup coincides with the eightieth anniversary of the day German tanks rolled across the Polish border, on 1 September 1939, and the Second World War broke out in Europe.

It’s perhaps appropriate since the battle lines within Britain have also hardened.

Stop the Coup protestors

Tens of thousands of protestors yesterday gathered in towns and cities across Britain and, indeed, onto continental Europe where Brits demonstrated outside their embassies. They gave voice to the growing demand to stop the coup. And, at last, Jeremy Corbyn, the official leader of the official opposition, joined in. Not from in front, sadly, where the leader should be, but at least he made an appearance in a crowd in Glasgow.

It’s surprising that a man who claims to be a radical of the left took so long to recognise a popular movement resisting the far right. A radical worthy of the name wouldn’t simply be joining it, he’d be taking the leadership. Indeed, he might have been in the leadership from the outside.

That, however, isn’t Corbyn’s style. The Guardian inadvertently expressed it well: it wrote that Corbyn was putting his weight “behind the movement”. That struck me as fully summing up his approach to leadership: from behind.

Corbyn (in a pale blue suit) makes an appearance
at a Stop the Coup rally in Glasgow

Meanwhile, on the other side the ranks are closing too. Within the junta, not a word is being spoken in opposition.

Sajid Javid who, as I mentioned yesterday, had been the target of a thoroughly despicable move by the real power in Downing Street, Dominic Cummings, has since described his relationship with BoJo as excellent.

Nicky Morgan, Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, who said on 6 June that “proroguing parliament is clearly a mad suggestion”, now has nothing to say against it.

Matt Hancock, Health Secretary who, also on 6 June, said “prorogation would mean the end of the Conservative Party”, has equally dropped all objections.

And why?

The Conservative Party isn’t like a party of the left. It doesn’t exist in order to achieve any particular societal or economic goal, like redistribution of wealth, collectivisation of industry or social justice. It exists for one and only one reason: to win and hold power.

Millions of voters have decided that, far from being an illustration of how a representative body divides over a question that divides society, parliament’s inability to decide on Brexit is a failure of that body. More specifically, it is a failure of the supposedly corrupt and self-serving politicians who form it. Those voters have a strictly limited grasp of democratic notions. Essentially, they believine that what they want is what should happen, since they speak for all of the people. They therefore see a Prime Minister confronting parliament as a champion of their rights and beliefs.

In other words, to them the coup is a blow for freedom. Only when it is complete, and their freedom has gone, will they at last dimly understand that they may not have been acting in their best interest.

But for now, it means prorogation is a vote winner. And that’s why so many leading Conservatives are rallying round BoJo. They seem in him, at last, the chance of re-election which had spectacularly evaporated under May.

Sadly, they’re probably right.

Boris Coup: Day 4

Day 4 of BoJo’s coup dawns bright and fair.

We find cracks appearing even in the ruling junta. Sajid Javid, Chancellor of the Exchequer, is unhappy. Javid’s nominally a key figure in Boris Johnson’s administration, but in reality he’s a cypher in a government being run by a special adviser called Dominic Cummings.

Cummings was Campaign Director of the Vote Leave campaign in the 2016 Referendum. As such, he was a foremost exponent of mendacity in a campaign not unduly marked by truth-telling.

He is credited with having come up with the powerful, because beautifully simple, slogan “take back control”. Now we’re learning just what he meant by that.

Only unofficially is he BoJo’s chief of staff. Only unofficially is he running the whole Downing Street operation. Only unofficially but with great impact.

Sonia Khan, ardent Brexiter but fired by Cummings, who wasn’t her boss.
Her face didn’t fit, apparently. And one wonders why...

For instance, he took it upon himself on Friday to fire Javid’s media adviser, Sonia Khan, without even consulting her boss. It’s not clear what she was accused of, since she’s a committed Brexiter and she denies having done anything disloyal. She may simply have been the wrong gender (Cummings is clearing out women) and perhaps the wrong ethnicity (which suggests Javid is even more vulnerable than it seems).

In any case, Cummings is clear that anyone who doesn’t like his management style can simply go forth and multiply.

I write “go forth and multiply” because I don’t want to write “fuck off” here.

At any rate, if this is how the junta treats BoJo’s allies, it sends a chilling message about the fate that awaits those who oppose him.

Meanwhile, a group of 50 MPs has decided to continue meeting as an alternative Parliament, outside the House of Commons, once the prorogation comes into effect.

That’s just a gesture, but one to be applauded. It’s only a gesture, because what authority would an alternative parliament have? But it’s to be applauded because gestures matter. After all, the prorogation itself is only a gesture. It’s due to last just five weeks. But it matters because it’s BoJo’s way of saying, “if Parliament gets up my nose, I can just sweep it away”.

The alternative parliament is MPs response to that, saying “we won’t go far. And we’ll keep right on getting up your nose”.

A courageous, principled gesture. Led by courageous, principled people. David Lammy from Labour, or instance. Jo Swinson, leader of the Liberal Democrats. Caroline Lucas of the Green Party. A few Conservatives

Is a name conspicuous for its absence? Why, yes. Jeremy Corbyn, nominally leader of the Labour Party, isn’t with this group.

It seems that when the courageous and principled foregather, Jeremy Corbyn is otherwise engaged.