No.61 - A Failure at the First Fence, Project Fear & Kippers

Dear James, 

So you failed the first test last Thursday. You voted No on the Northern Ireland Bill thus, I am afraid, revealing your willingness to allow Boris to force through a no-deal Brexit without consulting parliament should he deem it necessary. Fortunately for the nation, many of your Conservative colleagues had the courage to vote on principle and this resulted in a 41 vote majority to pass the Bill. I think you will agree that this does not bode well for the Boris government. 

I cannot be privy to your motivations James but I have to ask the question. Is your absence of objection to allowing a proroguing of parliament due simply to personal ambition? Or Is it your family circumstances? Or I suppose it could be your blind loyalty to your party? What it is clearly not is any attachment to the national interest. How can it be in our nation’s interest for your party to throw us all over the brink into a chasm forecast on Frlday by the OBR to threaten a £30bn net cost of a no-deal Brexit – and that is just a ‘least worst’ prediction. No, I am afraid James, that your only principle seems to be to get yourself a job in the new government. That is disappointing to say the least. 

I had harboured some small hope that you might stick to at least one of Mr Hunt’s principles, namely that while he was not against a no-deal Brexit, he would not crash through our constitution to get his way. But it is becoming ever more clear to me that you will do anything to cling to your party – no matter what. So, having made your decision, you will find yourself next week having to defend Boris’s many gaffes, misspeaks and downright lies. The latest of course was his Kipper trick. When Boris produced his notorious fish at the last hustings, he claimed that EU red tape had imposed its crazy regulations on the said piscatorial object to be kept cool with an ‘ice pillow’. Yesterday the EU corrected him. It was not the EU’s decision but the British government’s, or in other words, UK red tape not EU red tape. Fancy being slapped in the face by your very own kipper!

But defending the indefensible is soon what you are going to have to get used to James. Having segued nicely from Mr Hunt to Mr Johnson, you will soon be crossing a line and have to starting defending the ERG. May I recommend a classic tool for this exercise?  Project Fear is used regularly be Messrs Farage, Johnson and Rees-Mogg, amongst many, it is the populists' tool of preference for rubbishing the deluge of expert forecasts from many reputable bodies that no-deal would be a catastrophe and that leaving the EU a disaster that will make us all poorer - according to the OBR by 2% of GDP by Q4 2020, an unemployment rate above 5%, a reduction in house prices by around 10% and public sector borrowing up by 12% by 2024. Your new masters claim that Project Fear has been ‘consistently wrong.’  Well, where it has been wrong, it is because until now we have been trading normally with the EU. In the event of our exit from the EU, we would be face to face with disaster for the very first time. But fear not, the ERG shout dementedly, the risks of no-deal are being exaggerated and ‘the future will be fine’. What a basis for future policy1

So James, in my humble view, you made a poor choice last Thursday. Next week, when Boris is crowned PM by your aged membership, several current ministers will resign in protest at his threat to prorogue parliament. They will be called ‘rebels’ and ‘traitors’ by the new Populist Tory party but, in reality, they will be the true defenders of representative democracy whereby MPs are selected to make decisions on behalf of their constituents and the nation. Unfortunately, it seems, you will not be one of them. 

The nation is now going to have to endure a re-run of the old Boris falsities and witness the temporary return of the failed Tory ministers of old. Mr Johnson, Mr Davies, Mr Raab and possibly even Mr Gove. But there will still be no considered plan. The new government will continue, to quote Frans Timmermann last week, to be, “like Corporal Jones (saying) Don’t panic! Don’t panic! Running around like idiots.”  In effect what we shall be seeing is the final fracture of your party between the fanatical right and the reasonable centre. 

Which side will you be on James? I sincerely hope that you will come down on the right side of history but on your voting record this last week, I doubt it. 

It will be such a shame. 

Kind regards, 

BH - Your Concerned Constituent