Why Penny Mordaunt shouldn’t be prime minister, part 438 The Tory left, the One Nation types, usually have a sort of saviour figure held in reserve at any given time - someone who is going to steal the party away from the hard right nutjobs and make the Conservative party all about calm steadiness once more. Matt Hancock filled this role for a while, if you can believe it (which gives you some idea already of its lack of historical effectiveness). For some at present within in this section of the Conservative party, a possible saviour is Penny Mordaunt.
I read your Express article. It is right up there with the best of the disingenuous, patronising, insulting drivel I have noticed many Conservative MPs come out with. Johnson and Brexit have caused much damage. I detest the politics of division which Johnson has embraced.
Brexit has failed already. I thought it was a bad idea when I voted Remain. I have no degrees. I have vocational qualifications I paid for myself by working and saving. I moved here from Canada aged 26 to do these qualifications. I have lived here 35 years, raised a family, become a citizen. My EU citizenship was taken away from me against my will. I resent that deeply, a matter of considerable sadness to me. And my children’s prospects have been affected by loss of freedom of movement. I will not forgive that, come what may. When next drafting some drivel why not think a little more widely before jumping to conclusions and insulting people. Over educated under achievers. Sweet Jesus, get real, please. I am a joiner. I know how hard it is to build things and how easy it is to destroy. You people really haven’t a clue what life is like for working people.
Boris Johnson is without doubt the worst PM in British history, and the government he leads is despicable. I will be doing everything I can to ensure the Conservatives are out at the next GE, so Labour can start repairing the damage. Personally I wish you well. Politically I hope you and your party crash and burn.
From here it looks like the UKgov is essentially populist, which is a dangerous situation because they may not care if policies work or not. If the UKgov triggers A16 and the EU comes back with a solution, they'll sell it as a victory for the plucky UK fighting against the EU dictatorship. If the UKgov triggers A16, and the EU responds with sanctions causing (more) economic damage to the UK, it will be sold as further evidence that the EU dictatorship is trying to harm the UK for leaving.
Either way it will also be presented as proof that only the Conservative and Unionist Party can stand up to the foreign aggressor. (and incidentally anyone disagreeing must therefore be a traitor and against the Democratic Will Of The People, et c....)
"Many doomsters want Britain to fail perhaps because they're also failures".
Way to go! Remember how Remainers were (and still are) accused of sneering at leave voters? It now seems it's perfectly acceptable for brexiters to do the same and indeed worse in calling more than half the population''failures''.
Besides, knowing Brexit is a failure is not the same as wanting the UK to fail esp. as brexiters have patently failed to do is convince many of us that Brexit will succeed.
Hello, Cliff. You are correct to an extent, for sure there is a Canadian cultural perspective, plus my own values, which are internationalist, what I consider to be pretty centrist politics, and a deep care for the environment and the future. What does not compute at all is the politics of division, and we've seen that in a big way in the USA with Trump, who maintains a large and fanatical following. The Conservatives here have done something like the Republicans, lurched so far right that they are no longer recognisable, effectively the English Nationalist Party. And it is driving the UK apart, NI to becoming part of the ROI and and independent Scotland. I am tolerably certain that Keir Starmer will be the next PM, Labour will have the most seats, but not enough to make a majority. They will need to co-operate with the Lib Dems and Greens before the next GE to maximise the progressive vote, and after, to form a government. If it turns out the SNP are the king makers, I think we can guess what their price will be, and I would not like to predict how that referendum turns out. Johnson and the Conservatives are loathed with a visceral intensity in Scotland. I think the only thing that will avert Scottish independence is single market membership, and some kind of federalism. Otherwise, I think we will see the end of the UK as a political entity before 2040. And frankly the blame for that can be placed with the English Nationalist Party.
The answer to Conor Burns waving his import documents about, besides as you say pointing out the basic fact that it's Brexit that created the need for these border checks in the first place, is to ask him why he doesn't agree to the EU offer to sign up to Phyto-Sanitary alignment, which if the government did do that would drastically reduce the amount of paperwork required to ship to the Northern Ireland market. The agreement to sign up could be temporary, if sovereignty-hawks are worried about being able to change the food rules in the future. AIUI, there are no current government plans to weaken food standards, little call for weaker food hygiene standard in the country, and little prospect of a big US trade deal that would require us to weaken our food standards to let US imports in to the UK market. So what's the problem with signing up to something that would make life a whole lot easier for every business in and exporting to Northern Ireland, except for the ideological problems of accepting any rules that are made in the EU, even if you would probably come up with the same rules yourself?
Do you think there’s an assumption by the Tories that if they drop all import checks for ever, the only course the EU would have to “rebalance” (in the words of the NIP) would be to also drop all checks. This would, in their mind, put us back in a single market wouldn’t it?
I hope the morons do trigger article 16, tear up NIP, and the events you predict come about. It would bring the crisis to a head, and bring about the demise of this government.
I know you're making more serious parallels here, but that really just sounds like "it's spring, the sun is shining. Let's not worry about economics or Brexit." Which given the fact that people are really facing unprecedented inflation (or at least, unknown in recent decades) surely sounds out of touch to everyone, even if you are still a Brexit true-believer and think it's only the fuel price rises and the Russian invasion of Ukraine that's a problem here.
Then again, couldn't the sun shining be a problem in itself? I'm sure I heard in the news the other day mention of the fact that spring is happening earlier in the UK than it used to because of global warming. It was certainly in my mind a few years back when we had those incredibly hot days in February, and I recall that there were some weather forecasters who were still on the script of how "wonderful" it was that we were having unseasonably hot weather.
My letter to Penny Mordaunt sent 11 May:
Hello Penny Mordaunt,
I read your Express article. It is right up there with the best of the disingenuous, patronising, insulting drivel I have noticed many Conservative MPs come out with. Johnson and Brexit have caused much damage. I detest the politics of division which Johnson has embraced.
Brexit has failed already. I thought it was a bad idea when I voted Remain. I have no degrees. I have vocational qualifications I paid for myself by working and saving. I moved here from Canada aged 26 to do these qualifications. I have lived here 35 years, raised a family, become a citizen. My EU citizenship was taken away from me against my will. I resent that deeply, a matter of considerable sadness to me. And my children’s prospects have been affected by loss of freedom of movement. I will not forgive that, come what may. When next drafting some drivel why not think a little more widely before jumping to conclusions and insulting people. Over educated under achievers. Sweet Jesus, get real, please. I am a joiner. I know how hard it is to build things and how easy it is to destroy. You people really haven’t a clue what life is like for working people.
Boris Johnson is without doubt the worst PM in British history, and the government he leads is despicable. I will be doing everything I can to ensure the Conservatives are out at the next GE, so Labour can start repairing the damage. Personally I wish you well. Politically I hope you and your party crash and burn.
Yours sincerely,
Ian Fraser
From here it looks like the UKgov is essentially populist, which is a dangerous situation because they may not care if policies work or not. If the UKgov triggers A16 and the EU comes back with a solution, they'll sell it as a victory for the plucky UK fighting against the EU dictatorship. If the UKgov triggers A16, and the EU responds with sanctions causing (more) economic damage to the UK, it will be sold as further evidence that the EU dictatorship is trying to harm the UK for leaving.
Either way it will also be presented as proof that only the Conservative and Unionist Party can stand up to the foreign aggressor. (and incidentally anyone disagreeing must therefore be a traitor and against the Democratic Will Of The People, et c....)
"Many doomsters want Britain to fail perhaps because they're also failures".
Way to go! Remember how Remainers were (and still are) accused of sneering at leave voters? It now seems it's perfectly acceptable for brexiters to do the same and indeed worse in calling more than half the population''failures''.
Besides, knowing Brexit is a failure is not the same as wanting the UK to fail esp. as brexiters have patently failed to do is convince many of us that Brexit will succeed.
Thanks so much for this. I found it horribly illuminating and it provided lucid insight into the workings of that wretched Protocol.
Penny Mordaunt is not similar to Raab she is similar to Powell. The Turkey speech.
Hello, Cliff. You are correct to an extent, for sure there is a Canadian cultural perspective, plus my own values, which are internationalist, what I consider to be pretty centrist politics, and a deep care for the environment and the future. What does not compute at all is the politics of division, and we've seen that in a big way in the USA with Trump, who maintains a large and fanatical following. The Conservatives here have done something like the Republicans, lurched so far right that they are no longer recognisable, effectively the English Nationalist Party. And it is driving the UK apart, NI to becoming part of the ROI and and independent Scotland. I am tolerably certain that Keir Starmer will be the next PM, Labour will have the most seats, but not enough to make a majority. They will need to co-operate with the Lib Dems and Greens before the next GE to maximise the progressive vote, and after, to form a government. If it turns out the SNP are the king makers, I think we can guess what their price will be, and I would not like to predict how that referendum turns out. Johnson and the Conservatives are loathed with a visceral intensity in Scotland. I think the only thing that will avert Scottish independence is single market membership, and some kind of federalism. Otherwise, I think we will see the end of the UK as a political entity before 2040. And frankly the blame for that can be placed with the English Nationalist Party.
The answer to Conor Burns waving his import documents about, besides as you say pointing out the basic fact that it's Brexit that created the need for these border checks in the first place, is to ask him why he doesn't agree to the EU offer to sign up to Phyto-Sanitary alignment, which if the government did do that would drastically reduce the amount of paperwork required to ship to the Northern Ireland market. The agreement to sign up could be temporary, if sovereignty-hawks are worried about being able to change the food rules in the future. AIUI, there are no current government plans to weaken food standards, little call for weaker food hygiene standard in the country, and little prospect of a big US trade deal that would require us to weaken our food standards to let US imports in to the UK market. So what's the problem with signing up to something that would make life a whole lot easier for every business in and exporting to Northern Ireland, except for the ideological problems of accepting any rules that are made in the EU, even if you would probably come up with the same rules yourself?
Do you think there’s an assumption by the Tories that if they drop all import checks for ever, the only course the EU would have to “rebalance” (in the words of the NIP) would be to also drop all checks. This would, in their mind, put us back in a single market wouldn’t it?
I hope the morons do trigger article 16, tear up NIP, and the events you predict come about. It would bring the crisis to a head, and bring about the demise of this government.
I know you're making more serious parallels here, but that really just sounds like "it's spring, the sun is shining. Let's not worry about economics or Brexit." Which given the fact that people are really facing unprecedented inflation (or at least, unknown in recent decades) surely sounds out of touch to everyone, even if you are still a Brexit true-believer and think it's only the fuel price rises and the Russian invasion of Ukraine that's a problem here.
Then again, couldn't the sun shining be a problem in itself? I'm sure I heard in the news the other day mention of the fact that spring is happening earlier in the UK than it used to because of global warming. It was certainly in my mind a few years back when we had those incredibly hot days in February, and I recall that there were some weather forecasters who were still on the script of how "wonderful" it was that we were having unseasonably hot weather.