No. 22 - Playing with Time James? The Day of Amendments Looms.

Dear James,

Many thanks for your round robin e-mail yesterday in which you presented your current position regarding Brexit.

I am afraid to say that I think you are simply playing for time. Your position at the moment seems to be to fiddle with the remaining threads of Mrs May’s ‘deal’ while the vast and obvious solution to her impasse is looming ever closer on the horizon. Unless the DUP and the ERG go into a massive reverse gear next week, Mrs May’s attempt to solve our nation's problems is doomed. If the DUP and ERG do make such a massive about turn, they will become the laughing stock of the nation and cynical game playing will be seen to be the prime mover within our parliament. So I am afraid I see your efforts for a series of indicative votes as no more than time filling until the evil day when you will be forced to reveal your true feelings and make your big decision. Next Tuesday i.e. The ‘Day of Amendments’, will be very important for all of us. It is the chance for Parliament to take control from a government that has lost control. As Mrs May continues to ‘run down the clock’ thereafter, it is essential, in my view that she be stopped. Article 50 needs to be extended and this will only be allowed if the EU can be convinced that the reason for extension is to allow the country to decide finally what it wants. Only a Second Referendum can deliver such a verdict and it should therefore be your primary responsibility to deliver it.

I am willing to be patient. Others however, are not. The nation’s major companies are yelling into Mrs May’s deafness that disaster is at hand. Frances O’Grady, the boss of the TUC put it rather well when she said that, 'The Prime Minister should stop listening to the bad boys at the back of the class.” and start listening to the nation. Yesterday however, your leader continued with the charade of consulting others - even meeting Len McClusky - the ultimate Tory Party bête noire! The result was as expected, complete inability to think outside the box created by those bad boys way back in the late 80s.

You are clearly not alone in your party in prevarication. This morning I heard Mr Hammond, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the radio with his views on a ‘No-deal’ . He said that no deal ‘…was not what the people voted for in 2016’. He is attempting to remain loyal (like you) by saying that only thing left for him (at the moment) is May’s deal. Again, what he does not say is what he will do once her deal is finally rejected. I suspect that he’s playing a very clever game whereby one day he will be able to say that, while wanting to be loyal to his party, in the end the only way out of the quagmire was for a Second Referendum. Nice one Phil! I knew you were a Remainer all along! Perhaps it is a strategy that you should also adopt James?

So at this point, as a first step and before the final big vote, I am asking you to vote next Tuesday for the amendments tabled by Dominic Grieve, Rachel Reeves, Caroline Spelman and Yvette Cooper. These amendments will allow parliament maximum flexibility to help solve the problems that your government is clearly failing to solve. 

Kind regards,

BH - Your Concerned Constituent