New opinion polls suggest that a majority of Brits may well think the Prime Minister is in the right to try and tame the disguised Revokers in our midst. Sadly, the increasingly obvious political nature of the recent Supreme Court judgement has been buried by an astonishing avalanche of bile and vicious accusation aimed at the Government from all quarters. Boris Johnson badly needs a set-piece appeal to set the record straight. Only he can do this….with a little help from a friend.
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It is now two weeks since the PM’s special adviser Dominic ‘Millwall’ Cummings told his Number Ten staff that they were going “to bury” those people seemingly determined to stick the Referendum result up 17.4 million back passages come what may. It was a bold claim, especially given that the forces ranged against him (and us) include Whitehall, MI6, 400 or so MPs, the mainstream media, Brussels, Blair, Verhofstadt, Macron, the CIA, NATO and now the Judiciary.
Since that time, apart from having one row with Karl Turner MP, the Labour Hobgoblin from Hell & Hull East, Cummings has not pulled so much as a gerbil out of his hat. Yesterday, he remarked that “The MPs said we will have a referendum, we will respect the result, and then they spent three years swerving all over the shop. It is not surprising some people are angry about it. I find it very odd how these characters are complaining that people are unhappy about their behaviour now and they also say they want a referendum.”
As one senior judge also said yesterday, “Dominic talks more sense than most”, and his words above certainly do carry weight because they cut through the hypocritical obfuscation of everyone from Gina Miller to Dominic Grieve like a Sabatier through butter. But getting something done about the anti-democratic soi-disant élites wrecking Britain (and this is the issue, not Brexit) is going to take a lot more than observing the Truth now and then.
On the plus side, the Slogpost of two days ago revealing the horrific bias in the Supreme Court attracted 20,000 hits, 69 comments and a record 182 5-star reviews. The strongest sense gained from reactions to the content is one of anger among a constituency of fair and decent people that extends far beyond the Leave community. But while BoJo himself continues to be ebullient, as so often with the bloke, he pulls no punches and lands few telling blows: there is very little emanating from Number Ten at the moment in the way of a persuasive argument designed to attract sympathy.
I am at a loss, for instance, to understand why Johnson hasn’t gone on the telly to make a national statement; perhaps he thinks PMs simply don’t do that any more. He is mistaken in that view.
So what does the British public think about it all – if anything, beyond bored confusion?
There have been eight polls since early September, with last Wednesday being the most recent fieldwork day. In a nutshell regarding Party support, both Labour and the Tories have lost ground (on 24% and 27% respectively) while the two ‘hardest’ mindsets on the Brexit issue – the LibDems and the BXP – have settled and sustained their levels at 22% and 16%. So while there is much talk out there about ‘draining the swamp’, no swamps of which I’m aware are going to be drained – based on those figures – without highly organised tactical voting to remove the worst examples of human excretia in said swamp.
As to opinions about the main players, the Illiberal Demagoguette Jo Swinson is proving to be more of a millstone than a miracle worker as Party Leader. FindOutNow – an online poll – found the country almost exactly divided – 40-40 – as to whether BoJo should resign. Significantly, 20% of respondents declined to comment – which is high. My hunch is that a large majority of them are pro the Prime Minister, but that remains to be seen. As to Johnson’s overall rating, it stands at a very healthy 41%….miles ahead of Corbyn on a pitiful 18%.
But looked at more closely, the qualitative responses as to why the Tories have only a 3% lead is intriguing: words used by respondents in focus groups (and leaked to this site) included ‘reckless’, ‘unconstitutional’, ‘dictatorial’, ‘counter-productive’, and ‘idiotic’ in relation to the move to prorogue Parliament. “Whoever had this stupid idea,” said one typical respondent, “should be fired”.
Which doesn’t bode well for the employment prospects of Dominic Cummings. For myself, however, I think there is a fundamental failure to educate decent and intelligent voters about the true constitutional position.
The major focus of Team Boris should now be to put this right. Thus far, there has been no concerted attempt to counter the Remainer/MSM/Libleft narrative – probably for fear of being seen to “bully” the Supreme Court.
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Yesterday’s Slogpost seems to have proved to most reasonable readers that the presentation of eleven Supreme Court judges as “above politics and with no conflict of interest” in coming to the decision they did is a pernicious fantasy. It simply won’t do to sit on Constitutional high horses about Boris Johnson behaving like a dictator: he has been forced into his decisions by a tiny cabal of privileged, undemocratic gargoyles – probably no more than 750 BSDs across Britain – who are out to pervert the rule of Constitutional Law with mouthfuls of humbug about “process” and “protection of people’s rights”. You do not nurture liberty and suffrage by ignoring a referendum majority donated executive power to make a decision where Westminster politics had spectactularly failed.
Memories need to be jogged:
- David Cameron flogged around the unelected corridors of the EU during the period 2012-14, trying to persuade the Gauleiters to reform their elective structure and do a U-turn on federalism. They told him collectively to forth up into his bottom. They and they alone are the reason why we had a Referendum, and the EU Remainers lost.
- The reason why we have Boris Johnson in Number Ten – a far from ideal position for me as a pragmatic utilitarian favouring no Party – is because a senior Whitehall mandarin and the Chancellor of the Exchequer conspired with Prime Minister May and senior spook Mark Sedwill in a rolling coup d’état against both the Executive and the Commons to displace elected Ministers of the Crown. The very same MPs now up in arms voted three times by enormous majorities to stop the poisonous Withdrawal Agreement manufactured in Berlin and given to Theresa May with no negotiation whatsoever.
- The need to prorogue Parliament became clear when the Front for National Socialism formed cynically by disgruntled Article 50 revokers not only reversed their own earlier decision to make No Deal the default Leave option, but homed in on making such a thing illegal. That too, as a former constitutional scholar, I believe to have been blatantly illegal per se….as was Mrs May’s threefold decision to ignore clear precedence on process re the WA from Sir Bill Cash MP. But to deny the Prime Minister’s right to ask the Queen for a dissolution prior to a General Election was – fixed terms or not – a truly irresponsible power grab. Bojo’s case in the reality of a neutered House riven by its own squabbling was completely justified.
- It is time to overturn the myth that Attorney General Geoffrey Cox gave “bad advice” to the Cabinet in relation to proroguation. The majority opinion in Law Society publications, circles and associated blogs is that Cox was entirely correct. It was the Supreme Court that arrived at a politically biased judgement, the degree of which is becoming clearer with every day….but which so far has, I suspect, not permeated through to a mass audience.
Johnson’s case is a very strong one: but while he has a penchant for oratorical good-old-boy blarney, he has always lacked the gift of energising clarity in which Winston Churchill was (and remains) supreme.
This is his chance for a Finest Hour. But so far, he lacks an original expression of why this epoch is about not just leaving the shambles across the Channel, but more importantly about freedom, independence and the avoidance at all costs of tyranny – be that from Whitehall, Corbynite Labour, the United Alt States or the Monnet-following fascists in Brussels. Because make no mistake, it is a quartet of threats.
I cannot help feeling that this is one for Carrie Symonds to tackle. She has now moved in to Number Ten. She is there to help and support when others have left, and she does have genuine PR talent.
I suspect the Prime Minister needs nothing more than a damned good speechwriter to help – and for once, some diligent practice on his own part – prior to grabbing a formal slot on British television. Boris likes to wing it, but this is no time for bumbling prayers on the wing. He needs to grow up and become a Statesman. The coming days will tell us whether he has that status within him, waiting to get out….or is merely an interloper who may soon be shown the way out.
The Slog 