UK Britain 

On media’s Planet Remain, truth has become a “hard-right” concept

President Trump’s dramatic intervention into Britain’s general election may have raised eyebrows, but he has made the absolutely crucial point that I have been making here. This is that the deal that Boris Johnson has done with the EU will damage the UK by preventing it from making beneficial trade deals with the rest of the world. It will keep the UK shackled to the EU but without the power to influence it. It will thus negate the point of Brexit altogether. In his audacious LBC phone interview with Brexit…

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Britain 

Why Brexiteers need Remainers to keep Boris Johnson honest

Yesterday’s government announcement that Parliament is to be prorogued for much of the next few weeks until the Queen’s Speech, plus the reaction this has detonated by greatly reducing the time available for Remainer MPs to block Brexit, has created the general impression that Prime Minister Boris Johnson intends the UK to leave the EU with no deal. Remainer-world has gone into scarcely believable meltdown as a result. Brexiteers are thrilled. They shouldn’t be. The danger of a faux-Brexit is now in some ways even more acute than it ever…

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cox Britain 

Brexit signals now pointing all ways at once

Boris Johnson is causing otherwise sensible commentators to throw necessary caution to the winds. In the Telegraph a few days ago, Charles Moore wrote that Johnson has brought a “miraculous” change to the political weather. “Until Boris Johnson became Prime Minister, the governing classes saw Brexit as a nightmare from which they would quite soon awake… Now they watch it happening before their eyes, and they fear they cannot stop it.” A few days previously in the same paper, Allistair Heath wrote: “It is therefore absurd in the extreme to…

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UK Britain 

The real target of Remainer plotters’ outrage? Their own legislative decision

MPs on both sides in the Brexit battle are gearing for next week’s anticipated showdown as Remainers try to block a no-deal Brexit. Their justification in doing so is a master-class in constitutional illiteracy and self-contradiction. To counter what they consider to be the anti-democratic outrage of by-passing Parliament, they are planning to…bypass Parliament. As the Mail reports: “Remainer MPs from five different parties have promised to join forces with Jeremy Corbyn to seize control of the House of Commons and pass a law to stop Boris Johnson pursuing a…

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no-deal Britain 

Will prime minister Johnson put lipstick on the pig?

Today’s Sunday Times reports that various EU countries are panicking so badly over Britain leaving the EU with no deal they are willing to offer a new one. At its shallowest, this proves the point some of us have been making from the get-go: that the only way the EU would ever offer withdrawal terms in Britain’s interests would be if the UK credibly threatened to leave with no deal at all. However, there is a far less rosy way to look at this reported development. Boris Johnson has positioned…

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UK Britain 

Why Brexiteers don’t trust Boris Johnson

Boris Johnson insists that he’s not bluffing when he says he’s prepared to take the UK out of the EU with no deal if, as is now widely predicted, he becomes Britain’s next prime minister later this month. Do we believe him? Maybe; maybe not. Many don’t. One reason why there’s so much suspicion is that he has consistently said he will try to get a better deal from the EU – and expects to do so. Since the EU has shown itself implacably opposed to any renegotiation, some might…

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Tories Britain 

How the Tories can save themselves and Brexit

A general election in Britain in the near future is surely well-nigh inescapable. Whoever wins the Conservative leadership election — and as we can see from the histrionics of the past few days, Boris Johnson may end up destroying himself — both Johnson and his rival, Jeremy Hunt, have committed themselves to leaving the EU with no-deal on October 31 if they cannot renegotiate the withdrawal terms. Since it seems overwhelmingly likely — regardless of Johnson’s claims to the contrary — that the EU will not offer any concessions, the…

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Britain 

The only way to end this abuse of power: replace Mrs May by a PM committed to no-deal

It has been reported that the government has ordered all operational planning for a no-deal Brexit to end. According to a leaked email seen by Sky News, the decision was taken at a meeting chaired by the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill. On what basis has this cynical, manipulative and irresponsible decision been taken? For the possibility remains that, whatever the eventual date on which it leaves (if ever), the UK will do so with no deal. The Cabinet doesn’t even seem to have been told that abandoning no-deal preparations…

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Boris Britain 

Will Mrs May now hammer the final nail into Brexit and democracy?

On the Briefings for Brexit website an anonymous civil service whistleblower, “Caroline Bell”, who previously wrote about the government’s duplicity over Brexit and the case for leaving with no deal as I described here, has now written an explosive claim that many of the detailed orders prepared by Whitehall to enable the country to continue to function smoothly in a no-deal departure are being deliberately held up by Number Ten. MPs and even ministers, s/he maintains, have been acting in a deliberately created information vacuum. Worse, s/he fears that, if…

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Boris Britain 

Hold your nerve, Brexiteers: there is a way forward and it’s called leaving with no deal

So now, finally, it’s make-or-break time and the issue remains exactly the same as it always was, for Brexiteers and everyone else caught up in this maelstrom. Are MPs going to do what they promised the electorate they would do and honour the referendum result and the (amended) act of parliament they themselves passed by allowing the UK to leave the EU on April 12; or are they going to break their promise, cementing into history their contempt for democracy and the British people, and stop Brexit? For after the…

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