The news breaking on Sunday evening into Monday morning that no fewer than three Tory ministers – including Brexit Secretary David Davis – have resigned in dudgeon over Theresa May’s Brexit weakness will surprise anyone only because Tories tend to threaten but not actually deliver when it comes to rebelling.
Whether Michel Barnier would notice an empty chair opposite is highly debatable.
The government’s worsening chaos over the Brexit issue has been obvious to any honest observer since the referendum result was first announced – and the desperate measures May took last week at her Chequers meeting were only confirmation.
But the resignations have also served to highlight – again – the bankruptcy of the media estate that has been shoring up the government against collapse ever since the Establishment was rocked by Labour’s general election surge.
At the Cabinet meeting at Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country retreat, last week Theresa May was forced to tell ministers that anyone who failed to agree to her ‘deal’ – in which she proposed to surrender on almost every front to EU negotiators, condemning the UK to a ghost-membership in which it was subject to EU rules without any say in them – would be forced to make their own way home, because ministerial limousines that had delivered them there would be withdrawn.
Yet after the meeting, the BBC and many other media fawned over May’s ‘deal’. The BBC’s political editor published an article [archived] on the BBC’s new site titled ‘The deal is done’, in which she told readers:
The deal is done. Or at least the deal that allows this fraught and complicated process to move to the next stage.
The article considered the idea that ‘one’ minister might resign over the imposed deal as unrealistic ‘almost possible’ and treated May’s manoeuvres as a success.
Yet in the early hours of this morning the very same URL – which should link to the original article – now takes viewers to an article announcing the resignation of Davis along with that of Brexit ministers Steve Baker and Suella Braverman and makes no mention of the earlier confidence it carried in May’s ‘done deal’:
The BBC’s broadcast coverage was no less effusive, talking of a ‘breakthrough’ and claiming May had ‘won the support’ of her Cabinet:
It was, of course, obvious to anyone who has been paying attention that the Cabinet’s ‘hard Brexiters’ – and the hardline fundamentalist Brexiters who influence them – were not going to just sit back and let Theresa May plough ahead with a deal that would ‘keep the UK closely aligned with Brussels’.
But the BBC made the claim of a ‘breakthrough’ nonetheless. And it was not alone.
The Financial Times lauded May’s strength in forcing through – they claimed – the deal:
Prime minister Theresa May has strong-armed her cabinet into backing a new vision for a soft Brexit.
The Guardian, supposedly opposed to the Tories, claimed she had ‘averted disaster’:
The hard-right Daily Mail claimed voters backed May’s plan, while the UKIP-supporting Express portrayed the ‘deal’ as a show of strength to the EU:
THERESA MAY’s Government has agreed to step up preparations to leave the European Union without a deal in the event Brussels rejects the Cabinet’s blueprint on Brexit following a 12-hour meeting at Chequers on Friday.
The Murdoch-owned Times talked of May’s claimed ‘Brexit victory’ – and on it went.
This morning, all the publications or journalists that last week treated the deal in any way ‘done’ have egg all over their faces. Some, like the BBC, have tried to wipe it away by simply re-using the page address for news of the resignations that they failed to treat as a realistic possibility.
But the resignations have done something else, too. They have demonstrated that Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn’s intelligent refusal to publicly commit to positions that would have made the Tories’ life easier has been exactly the right thing to do – allowing the Tories to implode under the pressure of their own incompetence and divisions over Brexit.
A general election this autumn must surely now be a definite possibility.
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Re Amesbury, the news is that the woman died Sunday night.
But I don’t for one moment believe the ‘official’ narrative….. “Oh look, there’s a syringe hidden under that bush, lets get it out and then squeeze a little bit of the substance first on to my hand, and then yours”.
I agree with the sentiment of your post but on Sunday MSM had already moved onto skip-diving and perfume atomisers.
It appears that the authorities are indulging in speculation to try and disguise the fact that they don’t really have a clue what’s happened.
Check the following out by Craig Murray:
https://www.craigmurray.org.uk/archives/2018/07/dawn-sturgess/
As you will see, he mentions the door handle of the front door of Sergei Skripal’s house, which we were told of course was coated with Novichok AND as such, was how he and his daughter became contaminated/poisoned (and also the cop who went to their aid, and shortly afterwards went to the house). So the would-be assassins coated the door handle with Novichok (presumably during the middle of the night when the Skripals were sleeping and no-one was about) and then scarpered, and the next morning at some point the Skripals left the house to go into Salisbury town centre for a drink and some lunch.
So what happens when two people are leaving to go out? Well of course one or the other of them OPENS the front door, then one or the other of them CLOSES it – ie pulls it to. So how on Earth did they BOTH get contaminated? Oh, I know! The one who DIDN’T pull the door to got to the end of the front garden path and suddenly remembered they had forgotten their mobile phone (or whatever) and went back to get it….. THAT would explain it!
And then several hours later they both became ‘incapacitated’ in exactly the same moment.
Yerse, of course, it all sounds so plausible.
Initially we were told that DC Nick Bailey became contaminated with the Novichok when he went to the aid of the Skripals (which led to people all over the internet questioning and wondering why the medics who attended the scene didn’t get contaminated, or medical staff at Salibury Hospital when they – the Skripals – were taken there).
Then three-and-a-half weeks later – on March 28th – we are told that the Novichok had been coated on the handle of Sergei Skripal’s front door, and THAT is how the three of them were contaminated and poisoned as such.
And then a week later – on April 5th – we are told that “Russia” had tested “assassinations by placing nerve agent on door handles”. The Sun put it like this:
‘RUSSIA tested if its deadly Novichok nerve agent could be used for assassinations by placing it on door handles, according to British spooks.’
Well if THAT’S the case, why did it take them three weeks or so before they thought to check the handle of Sergie Skripal’s front door?!! Oh, but how silly of me…… the “spooks” only found out about the “Russians” testing Novichok on door handles around three weeks AFTER Sergei and Yulia Skripal (and Nick Bailey) were contaminated. THAT would explain it of course.
Is it possible though that the ‘authorities’ could be making it up as they go along? No, surely not. Perish the thought.
PS I wonder how you test assassinations by placing a nerve agent/Novichok on a door handle? Intriguing!
Is this really what ‘strong and stable’ & ‘taking back control’ is supposed to look like?
May has let down the country and wasted her time in office by playing politics. She’s got absolutely bugger all to show for the last 2 years.
While the kuenssberg types & the rags’d never dare hint at calling for a general election, you just know that the next thing they’ll be telling us is that may’s successor (whichever ‘genius’ that might be) should have the left very worried…
Was out yesterday door to door campaigning suggesting there could be a snap General Election because of Brexit. Very few believed it but many Labour voters and crucially, ex Labour voters, said they wanted another vote.
I too was out campaigning, and invited people without any prompt from me, to ask us anything they had any worries about or policies they might need clarifying. Not one mentioned Brexit. And not all of them were Labour supporters either. Brexit wasn’t an issue that our colleagues came across either or they would have said as we walked back to our cars.
Time to ramp up the calls for mcvile’s head… It’s still in it’s position when it ought to have got the nine-ten-jack last week.
Maybe, just maybe, as a last resort she’ll be served up as a token sacrifice on the alter of Brexit distraction.
I doubt it though because Theresa May is desperately clinging on to her ‘friends’ and ‘supporters’ with all the tenacity of Boris’s Polished Turd. Her survival depends on it.
David Davis’s replacement Dominic Raab doesn’t inspire much confidence. I can’t see his usual technique of talking very fast without pausing for breath will have the EU negotiators in stitches.
correction
I can’t see how his usual technique of talking very fast without pausing for breath will cut much ice with the EU negotiators, they’ll be left in stitches.
Breaking News: There’s a woman in Downing Street trapped in a cave and trained nose divers in the media are trying to get her out.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/neuroscience/novichok-agent
Onset
Novichok is reported to be 5–8 times more lethal than VX nerve agent and effects are rapid, usually within 30 seconds to 2 minutes.
Major symptoms
Symptoms are the same as those of other nerve agents as shown in Table 5.11 (p. 257). Local effects are thought to be immediate, while systemic effects may be delayed up to 18 hours.
The description above tells me that from the onset a person should die in seconds or at least within 2 minutes.
Should they survive initial contact that systemic failure could take up to 18 hours show up. That means any time in between 18 hours they would eventually show signs of reaction to the agent.
The other minor point is that the Skripals were supposed to have been contaminated about 4 weeks ago and a mass clean up took place in between. One has now died from a so called dose (reduced after cleaning) and yet the Skripals survived to so make a full recovery.
It really does stretch the imagination to breaking point.
Oops 4 months not weeks, between the two incidents.
The flaws in the whole charade put the mass media under the spotlight, every day this government is in office, more people die but not from Russian Novichok.
Thankfully the masters of the universe gave up fomenting wars for profit years ago.
Back then if politicians and arms manufacturers wanted to make the population demand increased defence spending they’d pick a plausible enemy and have MI-Spy and the military come up with wheezes to make us hate and fear the nominated bogeyman.
Lucky us, not having to worry about that type of thing from today’s thoroughly honourable defence secretaries, spies and military industrial complex, eh?