The Worst B.J. Ever in Brexistential Breakdowns

I had a whole other entry I was working on that was going to be nice and positive and upbeat and just generally an antidote to the grinding misery of every other entry I’ve written recently but apparently a week is now an epoch in politics, and shit in this country just keeps on getting worse so we’re back here, once again, to discuss the latest happenings as the UK, already self-immolating on the global stage, continues to pour petrol all over itself before nipping out for a fag break and also to see if anyone needs help lighting the barbecue.

So where should I start? How about on the 30th of June 2016, when the first Tory leadership elections since David Cameron fucked everything up then fucked off were still on-going, and whilst I was in the middle of writing an entry news broke that Boris Johnson (or “Britain Trump” as the President of the United States of America, a grown adult who doesn’t understand how possessive words work, believes he is called and also believes that it’s a compliment) had dropped out of the leadership race. Though mildly annoyed that the news had broken by the time I’d written a significant percentage of the entry and too lazy to go back and edit it all, I did happen to end the entry with, and I quote:

“now that the leadership campaigns have kicked up a gear things should get interesting, though to be honest I think most of the country’s just going to spend the rest of the day breathing a collective sigh of relief that “Ladies and Gentlemen, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Mr. Boris Johnson” is now a sentence that will never be spoken by anybody ever.”

because that aged really fucking well , didn’t it?

Yep, Satan had to call in the British Gas technician as the boilers weren’t catching and all the immersion lights had gone off only for the technician to have to order parts in which they’re still waiting for at the warehouse so temperatures in Hell have plummeted, and Boris Johnson became Prime Minister following Theresa May’s short reign of error coming to an abrupt end. Can’t help but feel that “reign of error” would’ve made a better description of Boris Johnson’s time in charge but fuck it, I’m too proud of that one to wait the two months or so Johnson’s going to spend in charge before his head ends up on a spike next to Jacob Reeg-Mogg’s outside Traitor’s Gate in London following the post-No Deal Brexit uprising until a snap election happens to use it then.

Because he’s pushing for that now, for reasons similar to May: they had both earlier ruled out calling a snap election, May in 2016 and Johnson in July.

But instead of wanting the greater negotiating clout a united Parliament would’ve given May, Johnson instead wanted to run out the clock on the 31st of October Brexit deadline, which a combination of an early prorogation of parliament (which is like when there’s nothing to do at work so your boss lets you go home early, only in this case instead of there being no work your office is on fire and you’re a fully-qualified firefighter who can actually do something about it but your boss is still telling you not to worry about it and most of your colleagues have already got their coats) and the time needed for a general election to be arranged would easily push him past. However, in the most WWE move seen in the House of Commons that didn’t involve a steel chair and several cans of Budweiser, Tory MP Phillip Lee stood up while Boris Johnson was giving his opening speech and recapping the G7 summit on climate change and defected to the Lib Dems, crossing the House to sit with his new friends and, in doing so, depriving Johnson of the Conservatives’ working majority of +1.

This now means that, though still Prime Minister and still in charge of the largest party, since the opposition collectively outnumber him he no longer controls the House and thus what business gets debated there and what bills are passed are matters now in their hands and not his, a fact demonstrated shortly after Lee’s defection as the bill to take control of the House Agenda was passed with 328 votes to 301, with 21 Conservative MPs voting for the motion. Fortunately for Johnson, things soon moved on from this crushing defeat, but unfortunately for Johnson things moved on to his next crushing defeat as the Benn bill, a bill which basically compells the PM to return to Brussels and ask for an extension to the Brexit deadline so we can then have a General Election without the risk of a No Deal Brexit, was passed by the house by 327 votes to 299. Following that his attempt to use the Fixed Term Parliament Act to call an early general election was also soundly rejected as despite getting a majority vote of 298 - 56 Boris needed at least a two-thirds majority (of 434). This triple parliamentary loss is a staggering blow to Johnson and makes him look incredibly vulnerable, a situation somewhat exacerbated by the fact that the 21 Tory rebels who voted for the first bill have since had the whip withdrawn from them, effectively expelling them from the Conservative Party and whittling Johnson’s numbers in Parliament down just that little bit more, though what that will ultimately mean for how business is done over the next week or so remains to be seen. Suffice it to say, yesterday was not a good day for Boris Johnson.

Not that today’s shaping up to be much better, as in some seriously hot and tasty fresh BREAKING NEWS THAT HAD THE GOOD GRACE TO BREAK WHILST I WAS WRITING THIS ENTRY AND NOT FIVE MINUTES AFTER POSTING Business Minister and Boris Johnson’s own brother Jo Johnson has stepped down as a Conservative MP. Explaining that he is “torn between family loyalty and the national interest”, Jo Johnson’s departure at least helps us determine that clearly Boris is Cain, as he’s obviously not Abel.

Also, Jo’s announcement on Twitter contained the sentence “It’s been an honour to represent Orpington for 9 years & to serve as a minister under three PMs.” which sounds mental enough as-is, I mean, three PMs in nine years, that’s nuts, right? And then you remember that it’s actually been three PMs in three years, with Cameron stepping down in 2016 and May earlier this year. And that is when the utter madness of the situation sinks in: going through three Prime Ministers in as many years is a thing that is almost incomprehensible and if you went back to before the 2015 election and told literally anybody that a vote for David Cameron’s blue boys from Bullingdon lead us to this point you would’ve been immediately sectioned because such was the political landscape at the time that the thought of such chaos and instability would’ve been beyond the pale.

Wouldn’t it, Dave?

BONG!

Now you might reasonably be thinking “hang on a minute Steve, you savage polemicist and possessor of award-winning genitalia and Olympian stamina, hasn’t Corbyn been banging on about a general election up until recently? Why would Johnson have trouble getting the motion through Parliament if it’s what the opposition have been after?” And that might seem like a fair enough question to ask, if it weren’t in fact the main whinge of the right, as Corbyn has explicitly laid out that he is more than happy to take on Johnson in a General Election, just not right now because absolutely nobody believes that Boris Johnson isn’t trying to duck the issue of the Benn bill and manage to waste just a little more time to make a No Deal Brexit that much more likely, and Labour instead want the guarantee of the economic, social and political stability that removing the risk of No Deal brings.

However, his refusal to fall into Boris’ obvious trap gives the right the ability to paint him as cowardly, running scared… As a chicken, basically:

So expect to hear that point a lot over the next couple of weeks, as like Theresa “Strong and Stable” May Johnson is utilising the ancient political strategy of “repeat something over and over and hope it sticks” (see also: “frit”, “surrender bill”), a trick that Theresa “Red White And Blue Brexit” May often took advantage of and one that is particularly effective when given amplification by the media to this degree. How effective it will be I’ve no idea, you’ll notice I’m becoming a little more reticent to make more definitive predictions now that I’m bearing the weight of having thought at some point in my life that Boris would never be PM, but given how well it went for Theresa “Fields Of Wheat” May I hope he cocks it up and it’s just another in a long line of brutal reminders that he’s not actually some Machiavellian genius but instead a shameless liar facing up to the oncoming train of the consequences of his actions finally coming home.

Because, the tone of the Scottish version of the Sun was remarkably different…

Now, I’m not bringing this up so that I can link the fact that Scotland voted overwhelmingly to Remain to the difference in tone when it comes to coverage of Brexit-related matters and then go on to say that the vast chasm of difference that exists in how political parties are reported on by certain papers has a toxic effect on the state of the country by not only normalising and amplifying extremism but also warping social and political discourse to the point where a “reporter” for the Sun turned up on Jeremy Corbyn’s doorstep with a blouse bought from M&S after Johnson called him a “big girl’s blouse” in Parliament and the Tory press office are now handing out slices of chicken breast in “JFC”-adorned plastic tubs (with “JFC” ironically being the response most should have to this sort of stunt) and thus directly contributing to the situation we’re in now.

No, I’m just going to heavily imply it and move on.

BONG!

APOCALYPSES! Fans of the BBC’s classic 1980s Nuclear Armageddon-‘em-up Threads may remember that one narrative thread (pun very much intended, that’s literally the point of Threads) that concerned the local offices of the Government department specifically charged with managing the fallout (only somewhat intended) of a nuclear attack on the country, and how utterly ineffective their preparations were in the face of the literal collapse of society following an attack they simply had no concept of the immense scale of the impact of and their subsequent ignorance of how completely and totally fucked they ultimately were.

Well, life imitates art, and our Civil Contingencies Secretariat (the part of the Cabinet Office which is responsible for emergency planning, and yes you read that right, and yes I did mean “emergency” in that context) has been busy compiling a report on the potential impact of a No Deal Brexit and it makes for the sort of reading that would not be out of place being argued over in an underground bunker five minutes before the bomb turns Sheffield into a glowing car park. Dubbed “Operation Yellowhammer” (name chosen at random, honest), its existence was made public after the Treasury was caught out by the 180 year old invention “photography” and a press photographer snapped an internal document that referenced No Deal preparations and the codename the Treasury was using.

Yellowhammer examines the impact of Brexit on everything from food and medicine supplies (basically it’ll fuck those up and we’re stockpiling body bags in anticipation of a subsequent death toll) to the legal statuses of EU nationals currently resident in the UK (they’ll be able to apply for “settled status” and stay, but this has not gone well so far and some EU citizens here are so desperate they’re resorting to using the scheme set up for the Windrush Generation instead) to the border situation in Ireland (which it is absolutely going to fuck up and piss away 21 years of peace) and other offshore territories like Gibraltar (which it will also fuck up though with less threat of the return of sectarian violence).

Now, it’s important to stress that the typical response to the, let’s charitably say “pessimistic”, predictions in the yellowhammer document are that it is an old document (despite claims that it was written on the 1st of August this year, and thus after Johnson had become PM) which has since changed, is simply a “worst-case scenario” which a Government might reasonably be expected to plan for, and was nothing more than an internal document that the public were not supposed to see (which doesn’t really do anything to disprove any of the claims made in it, it just tells us we weren’t supposed to see how bad the Government thinks Brexit will be) in case we misunderstood it. Taking at face value the truth of these claims, in all cases I cannot think of a better question to ask than “well, why not release an up to date version and explain things to the public to calm us down?”

Well, actually, I can think of several, but they’re not really relevant. Regardless of how I’d grill Gove if I had the opportunity, the point remains that there has been no evidence of any change in planning since the 1st of August nor any real attempt by the Government to explain the realistic impact that Brexit might have on the country and what it’s doing to prepare to mitigate those impacts. Other than spending up to £100 million of taxpayer money on an advertising campaign to get us to visit the Government’s website which, while telling you how you might need to sort shit out if you want to visit the EU post-Brexit or what you will need to bear in mind if you run a business, doesn’t contain the information, say, diabetics worrying about the fact that there’s only one UK based company that produces insulin, and it only produces enough to supply less than 1% of the diabetic population of the UK, are looking for to reassure them that Boris et al. have a handle on the impending crisis they themselves have brought about.

Indeed, so reluctant is the Government to face up to the fact that the thing they told everybody would be absolutely amazing and a complete piece of piss to work out now has a body count attached to it give any information away that, when asked on LBC about what level of patient mortality rate he’d be willing to accept as the result of a No Deal Brexit, Jacob Rees-Mogg immediately invoked the omnipotent and dismissive defence of “Project Fear” and said that it was “deeply irresponsible” for the caller to be “fearmongering” and he should be “quite ashamed”. That caller happened to be Dr. David Nicholl who it just so happens actually wrote the medical impact section of the Yellowhammer document, something Walter the Softy was not impressed with as, when reminded of this fact, his response was “Well you didn’t write very good plans if you hadn’t worked out how to mitigate, had you?”

And that level of biting and incisive schoolyard wit is the level the people in charge of Brexit and our country are at when challenged over the very real possibility that people will die as the result of disruptions to medical supplies caused by the No Deal Brexit they are pursuing by the very person they hired to look into the impact on the flow of medical supplies of a No Deal Brexit.

BONG!

Of course, that’s not all Jacob Rees-Mogg’s been up to recently. Taking offence to the conduct and body language of the current Leader of the House of Commons, who was currently slumped across the benches and generally had the air of someone who found the whole thing frankly beneath him, Caroline Lucas of the Green party gave him an absolute bollocking:

and then the internet does what it does best, and meme’d the ever-loving fuck out of the man who legitimately used to go campaigning with his nanny showing his contempt for the political ramifications of the action he’s spent years desperately arguing for.

Now, we laugh, and how we laugh, because gallows humour is a common defence mechanism and, really, what else can you do in this situation? But imagine how many front pages would be consumed with anger and outrage had a Labour MP acted in the same way as Jacob Rees-Mogg was acting. Again, not gonna say, just gonna imply and move on…

BONG!

It would be remiss of me to not mention the recent wave of protests that have accompanied this constant turmoil in the political world, with outrage especially being directed at Johnson’s plans to prorogue Parliament and push through a No Deal Brexit and given voice through the chants of “Stop The Coup”.

Though exact numbers are always difficult to obtain, it’s fair to say tens of thousands of people took to the streets in towns such as Manchester, Cambridge, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Bristol, Bangor, Liverpool, Leeds, Swansea, Cardiff, Belfast, basically you can just pick a city in any part of the UK and there’ll have been protests against Johnson’s attempts to prorogue Parliament, and honestly that’s a thought that needs dwelling on for just a little while: these protests took place across the length and breadth of the country and, in my opinion, reflect a real change in the opinion of the general public about Brexit, a reality even Jacob Rees-Mogg admitted when asked about the possibility of a second referendum.

And if the public’s opinion has changed that much, wouldn’t that mean that “the will of the people” isn’t actually “the will of the people” any more?

BONG!

It’s finally time for the much-anticipated and highly prestigious “Burn of the Indeterminate Period of Time Between Entries Award”, and holy shit I think it might be our first ever draw as we’ve got two absolute crackers here. First up, Jeremy Corbyn’s “I really fail to see how I can be accused of undermining negotiations, because no negotiations are taking place” at PMQs, because sometimes a fucking sick burn doesn’t have to be witty or skilful wordplay, it doesn’t have to be incredibly personal or savage, it doesn’t even have to involve the subject’s Mother in any capacity, it just has to be true.

But fans of the far more personal and blisteringly savage style of burn may find their votes being cast for John McDonnell’s “I believe the Honourable Member for Uxbridge [Boris Johnson] is shouting at me. The last time he shouted at someone they had to call the police. So I don’t think we have to go as far as that.” because holy fucking shit, John!

But honestly, they’re both great for their own reasons, and as such both are winners of this incredibly sought-after (and only somewhat dubious) honour. If I gave out medals, they’d both get one, because we’re socialists you see…

BONG!

And that’s it for this entry, an entry that not only caused me to stop writing another entry I was like 2/3rds of the way through about something much more fun and positive, but has also taken much longer to write than Brexit entries typically do as it was interrupted by a short visit to the hospital to have steroid injections in my neck, an attempt to alleviate the pain in my arm caused by t’other herniating disc while I’m still waiting for surgery on the first disc in my lower back. And so far, yeah, it seems to have worked alright; arm doesn’t hurt as badly as it usually does, so here’s hoping it lasts a while. It’s not a permanent thing, it will stop working at some point, but for the time being I’ll take anything I can get that’ll help, and this seems to have helped so I’m taking that as a win.

And there’s a positive note to end on, let’s just hope it ages better than my proclamations about the likelihood of Boris Johnson ever becoming PM, eh?

Last updated September 06, 2019