Petulant PM wants Labour to agree to rushed withdrawal agreement timetable – and support early general election as well. Labour wants him to have double helping of scrutiny
Boris Johnson has been accused of greed and arrogance after attempting to ‘have his cake and eat it’ during a meeting this morning with Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Johnson asked Corbyn both to support Johnson’s ‘programme motion‘ to get his bill passed quickly and to agree to a December general election with a very short campaign.
A senior Labour source told the SKWAWKBOX:
Johnson’s having a laugh. Rushing to a general election before anyone has had time to digest the reality of Brexit, let alone to stop looking to the past and discuss what kind of country we want going forward, would be ridiculous and entirely unfair on voters.
It’s typical greedy Johnson, always wanting to have his cake and eat it – but as usual, he’s terrified of scrutiny. Since he’s such a fan of having two things at once, we’ll make sure he gets a good helping of both.
Johnson’s attempt to race headlong into both enacting his Brexit deal and a general election is a transparent and rather desperate attempt to avoid scrutiny by either Parliament or the public.
Labour is happy to support a programme motion that will allow three weeks for proper scrutiny – and will give Boris Johnson a general election six weeks after that process is completed.
Parliament needs only three weeks to scrutinise the withdrawal bill – which passed its second reading last night – so the only person stopping Johnson ‘getting Brexit done’ is Boris Johnson.
Once Brexit is done, voters must have an election campaign of proper length to scrutinise each party’s vision for the future.
Have that cake and eat it, Mr Johnson.
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“Once Brexit is done, voters must have an election campaign of proper length to scrutinise each party’s vision for the future.”
Erm and when might that be after MPs have actually bothered to ‘scrutinise’ this bill? Parliament cannot be trusted anymore than Johnson, so ‘vision of the future’ is all that it is. ‘Hope’ is now a ‘vision’ and even hope has become a sick illusion and it doesn’t feed anyone or heat their homes.
Good article in today’s Morning Star – with Grimsby’s Labour MP, Melanie Onn (Grimsby voted 71% for Leave) explaining in detail why she voted for the Johnson Brexit Deal. Melanie actually EXPLAINS some of the many restrictions EU membership puts on a Left Government economic agenda – and points out that an incoming Labour government could still steer the two years of negotiations to come in a decisively Left direction. Not things the Right Wing Remainer trolls on here or the Mandelson PV campaign wants people to know !
Of course the now ever clearer pro Remain and second Referendum stance of Labour in its various leading light Shadow Cabinet public pronouncements now makes this electoral victory highly unlikely ! Craven Left (ie, Left Liberal) cowardice and political ignorance and Right wing PLP cynical manoeuvring have in fact most likely delivered a future electoral victory to an even more viciously Right Wing Tory government than hitherto.
https://morningstaronline.co.uk/article/f/melanie-onn-mp-why-i-am-supporting-boriss-brexit-deal
Very good points by Melanie Onn there about the effects of EU public procurement law on working people, as well as EU restrictions on state aids. This analysis by Costas Lapavitsas features both aspects in depth:
https://www.thefullbrexit.com/quit-single-market
How amusing. LexiTory supporters of Johnson and the ERG as friends of the workers 🙂
Likely story.
Plastic imitation Wolfies. We’ve seen it all before.
After you, penney…
No, after you, danny…
I insist you go first, penney.
I will not. You go first, it’s your turn.
No it isn’t, I went first last time – look in our diary.
Ah… err.. Yes, you’re right. Sorry, my dear.
More peas?
Cummings has been briefing the press this morning that Corbyn is only interested in delays and spending the whole of 2020 having referendums.
The truth is that Johnson is desperate. The man’s a thoroughly untrustworthy, manipulative, lying toff. He’s trying to engineer an election so that it becomes another one-question referendum rather than a chance for the British people to address the multitude of other problems that the Tories/Blairites have created as they laid waste to the country for 40 years.
He’s being ably abetted by those who are determined to sabotage Brexit, no matter what the cost to the country and democracy. People’s Vote or an election on Bojo’s terms: they both essentially amount to the same thing.
“People’s Vote or an election on Bojo’s terms: they both essentially amount to the same thing.”
I agree and the label ‘peoples vote’ really sickens me.
I agree Maria, to Leave voters like myself the label “People’s Vote” is indeed sickening. What do the PV folk suppose the referendum was, if not a people’s vote!!!
For Leave voters it is INSULTING to be asked to vote again. The PV’s Blairite leadership do not discern this. Empathy – even with the British electorate – is perhaps not the strong suit of those who supported the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq.
Problem for Labour is that they need the votes of many of the Leave voters in order to win the Tory-Labour marginal target seats. And with the Party saddled with this electoral albatross of the second referendum, another Tory win is now on the cards.
” those who are determined to sabotage Brexit”
Really? – i.e. those who want to save the country from it’s ravages and the fantasies of the right?
Brexit *is* sabotage.
The frantic attempts to avoid putting the question top a wider electorate says it all. Heaven forbid that the gullible become knowledgeable.
Go look in the mirror & repeat the last line…………
Did. It computes as a parody of the Lexitories position.
“He’s being ably abetted by those who are determined to sabotage Brexit, no matter what the cost to the country and democracy.”
So… your argument is that those nasty remainiacs don’t care about the country or democracy cos they’re abetting the King Of The Leavers, aka BloJob…
But… we know Blojob doesn’t give a fuck about the law, the country, Europe or democracy because the Supreme Court, Ireland, the DUP, the Scots, the EU, his ex-boss and the dogs in the street know he’s a lying piece of shit…
Sounds like WE can’t trust the… what should we call them? Brexiteeniacs? Brexiacs? Remexitards?
Remind me again who we DO trust?
Labour and Jeremy doing splendidly. Oh Boris not going his way
There must be a proper length GE campaign this time. Not only was the campaign for the last GE a short one but it was also interrupted twice because of terrorism. Personally I believe Labour would have done much better than it did if not for that.
Moving beyond the surface of what’s going on to the underlying lying appearing as ‘News’ – appearing on the ‘Open Democracy website. It’s an examination by Peter Oborne of the unattributable spin that appears in ‘news’ bulletins as authentic.
You will recognize the content as a pointed summary of one aspect of the infestation of ‘news’ by propaganda and bias, relevant to a much wider sphere :
https://www.opendemocracy.net/en/opendemocracyuk/british-journalists-have-become-part-of-johnsons-fake-news-machine/
Remember – Oborne is one of the few journalists who tells it as it is about the Israel Lobby’s influence. Despite his rightward leanings, he does a proper journalist’s job rather than being just a mouthpiece. He is particularly scathing about Kuenssberg and Peston : not so much in terms of their inherent bias, but in terms of their useless lack of proper professional standards.
His closing comments are interesting :
“I’ve found it hard to get this article in print. One editor explained reluctance to publish on the grounds that the newspaper’s political team had cultivated excellent insider sources and publishing my piece would invite charges of hypocrisy.
How long does it take to read a 120 page document? I would have thought that one criteria for picking up a salary of close to £80K is the ability to read, but then voting for Article 50 & then ensuring it can never happen indicates……..?
It’s not a question of ‘reading’ it – it’s a question of understanding implications and picking the bones out of it – and then debating it properly.
Why all this fear of scrutiny and putting the question back to a better informed public? (I think we know the answer : Brexit is built on press-fuelled ignorance)