LBJ sounded as incoherent and rambling as his doppelganger Donald Trump, leading many to wonder whether the police ought to have arrested him for being drunk in charge of Brexit. Because if that’s not an offence, it should be. He was so incoherent that when he met US Vice-President Mike Pence today, Pence was left wondering if he’d gone to the White House by mistake. The speech to the police was so bad that, at the end of it, there was an announcement on the TV screen for a helpline: “If you have been affected by any of the issues in this programme …” Apparently, 60 million people tried to call it.
Obviously winging it, it was equally obvious that this is a man who is completely out of his depth. This is what happens when you surrender control of the UK to a tiny self-selecting group who judge one another on their poshness. He’s only had to deal with the Commons for a few days and he’s already lost his majority, lost control of the Brexit process, been refused an early General Election and been stabbed in the back by his own brother.
This is a man who has just realised that the job that he’s been scheming for for so long isn’t just another opportunity to exercise his own privilege and entitlement. He’s actually got to work. That’s not how it played out in his imagination when he was daydreaming of being world king. He’s rapidly discovering that he’s got something important in common with Gordon Brown (remember him?). His only real talent lay in scheming to get the top job, not actually in doing the top job once he’d got it. Although even Gordon managed to last three years as Prime Minister, LBJ will be lucky to last another three weeks.
The Prime Minister of the United Kingdom told the assembled press, “Waaaffaah waugh fnaugh fnaugh waugh Pericles waaaffaah.” And that’s a direct quote. He wifflewaffled on at such length that he even managed to make a policewoman sick to her stomach in a literal and not a metaphorical way, something that he’s been successfully doing to a lot of us for months now.
The highlight of the speech was when he averred that he would rather be dead in a ditch than ask the EU for an extension to Article 50 and half of the UK went to themselves, “Oh! Is that an option? Is it too late to add that to the bill? At last, an idea from LBJ that we can all get behind.” And sparked off a wave of enthusiasm for politics that hasn’t been seen since I can't remember when. Well, I say it was a highlight. We were all talking about it, but for all the wrong reasons. Now LBJ has effectively just vomited all over his chances of getting the opposition parties to agree to a General Election.
The bill that was passed by the Commons on Wednesday obliges the Prime Minister to ask the EU for an extension to Brexit. The bill which then got passed by the Lords that night after the Government threw in the towel and abandoned its efforts to get pro-Brexit peers to filibuster the bill. Possibly they threw in the towel because that towel was needed to clean up after LBJ vomited all over the constitution.
Anyway, having passed successfully through the Commons and the Lords, the bill is due to be signed into law by Liz at Balmoral on Monday. That means that the Prime Minister will have a legal obligation to ask the EU for an extension to Article 50. It is no longer a matter of political choice. It’s the law. If LBJ is not actually dead in a ditch by the time of the EU Summit on 17th October, he will have no option but to either ask for an extension, or resign as Prime Minister.
Now the opposition parties have another motive for refusing a General Election until after the EU Summit meeting and a request for an extension to Article 50. If they continue to refuse him his wish for an early election, they can force him to have to choose between lying dead in a ditch, resigning, or asking the EU for an extension. Schadenfreude, pure schadenfreude.
It seems clear now that the Government and its, ahem, genius advisor hadn’t actually counted on the opposition parties refusing an early General Election. The plan had been to provoke them into voting down the Government, and then LBJ could go to the polls saying that he wanted to deliver Brexit but those pesky remainer MPs were standing in his way. Now that the opposition isn’t playing ball until a no deal Brexit is very firmly off the table, the options for the great strategist are looking increasingly limited. LBJ’s and Dumb Cummings’s big mistake was to think that the opposition parties were just as egoist as they are themselves. Which admittedly, given that we’re talking about Westminster politicians here, wasn’t an unreasonable assumption. All that’s left is to keep calling Jeremy Corbyn a big girl’s blouse. That’s what counts for a British Government strategy these days. There’s your mother of parliaments for you.
That ditch must be looking ever more attractive
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