May - good riddance

I can't wallow, I'm afraid, in the sort of political class hypocrisy that today will heap May with faint praise. Today she goes as Party leader, and good riddance to bad rubbish. There is, in all honesty, not one single positive thing she's achieved. Everything she touched turned to shit. A woman of no talent, no real ability, uninspired, mediocre and without charisma, it seems she got as far as she did on a mixture of raw cunning, ruthlessness and deluded self-love. She has been Britain's worst PM since Lord North. We are better off without her. Sadly she remains in Number Ten like a bad smell until we have replaced her.

Meanwhile the shock of Peterborough should be a reminder of what will happen to Britain if May's abject failure to Brexit is continued by her successor. If we're not out by 1st November - in time for the most glorious firework displays since the millennium - the Conservative Party is finished.

Don't waste a breath of sympathy on May. She's cost this nation scores of billions, created schism and disharmony, prolonged the uncertainty and has split families and workplaces. If she truly loved this nation she would have gone after her disastrous 2017 election. No, there is only one thing that May loves - herself.

Now she's gone, there are two more destructive narcissistic liggers we must bring into our sights -

May in last ditch struggle to stop Brexit

The Telegraph reports that the besieged May is engaged in a last ditch struggle to block Brexit. Securing Corbyn's co-operation in sabotaging Britain's exit looks doomed to failure as even the Comrades are unwilling to leave their fingerprints on an act of electoral suicide when they can leave May to achieve this for the Conservatives on her own. The Telegraph claims she is planning a new referendum with three choices -

Mrs May and her advisers are understood to have 'war gamed' the possibility of giving voters a choice of her deal, no deal and remain, though Government sources insisted it would only become relevant if talks with Labour collapse and Parliament forces a vote on a second referendum.

It is exactly this three-way option that is designed to split the Leave vote and allow her to defy the Brexit vote. However, since it is so clearly biased, it is unlikely to be agreed even by the deeply Remainer Electoral Commission - it would earn them opprobrium from across the developed democratic world and mire them in legal challenges. In this form, a referendum would be almost impossible to engineer before the end of October - our final end-date for EU membership. Agreeing it would mean agreeing an extension with the EU.

There are two key problems with May's final defence of her Führerbunker; with Farage set to storm the EP in July, it is unlikely the unelected officials in Brussels will want to prolong this beyond October. The second is that May's political life is limited. The latest poll of members by Conservative Home with 82% demanding May's departure now means her claws will be dug out from the Number Ten doorposts before too long - probably after the EP elections.

The Party's members will only vote for a new Leader who vows to deliver the Brexit we voted for in 2016. The Chairman called upon us to show Unity. Well, I reckon 82% demonstrates a fair degree of bloody Unity.

Theresa May wipes out 1,300 Conservative Councillors

May's done it - she's creeping up on John Major's 1995 record losses for Conservative local government. With 10 councils yet to declare, she's more than decimated Conservative local government; she started with 5,521 local councillors and has eliminated some 1,300 -  24% of Tory Council seats lost.

In contrast Labour look to have lost about 100 out of 2,300 -  around 4%. However, Labour should have been drowning in seats. Last night McDonnell was predicting 400 Labour gains on TV - which meant he was hoping for at least 600.

Now Mrs May must realise this is a damning indictment of her leadership, but never explain and never apologise is the politicians' creed, so both she and the Party chairman have blamed Parliament's failure to pass the Selmayr-Robbins treaty for the debacle. Not her fault at all, they aver.

When the facts sink in over the weekend, when Local Associations stunned by the magnitude of the defeat turn their shock to anger, May's position will worsen considerably. Can she hang on until the Euros in a couple of weeks deal the death-blow? I hope so. I've got a bottle of Prosecco waiting in the cellar for her smug, silly medicated-to-the-eyeballs face trying to laugh off the 3 Conservative MEPs likely to be returned to Brussels.

In fact I'm already feeling quite chirpy - the massacre has somehow cheered me. Surely the end cannot now be far away?

Huawei - Why May must go now

The Huawei mess is yet another mess wholly of Theresa May's making. There is a technology cold-war underway between the US and China, and we are being asked to make a choice. Making a choice is simply something of which May is incapable - and so she has repeated, in the case of the UK 5G network, exactly the brainless false-compromise that has betrayed Brexit.

Let's take the US side for half the network, she has decided, and go with Huawei for the other half.

Thus demonstrating her utter, fatal, unquestionable inability to serve in any great office of State, let alone that of Prime Minister. It is an approach so stupid, so flawed, so as to make her previous worst decision, to try to both Leave the EU and Remain at the same time, appear almost cerebral.

Dear God, how did such cretins ever succeed in getting elected?

Meanwhile
=========
A consistent Brexit narrative is gaining an wider araldite-like traction; Patrick O'Flynn in Spiked

The Tories, the party of government, are primarily responsible for all of this. We can see now that they installed a Remainer as leader and they negotiated a Remain version of Brexit, behind everyone’s backs. From very early on, Theresa May was sending Philip Hammond and Greg Clarke round to all the multinational corporations to say, ‘Don’t worry lads, nothing is going to change for you’. They promised the multinationals completely frictionless trade, which meant they would be making all kinds of concessions on other things. Brexit voters, on the other hand, were being told they would get the real deal. It’s been a massive con from the start.

 Yep we were right all along about the Globalist betrayers in government.

Globalists - Committed to 'Big State' global government, a world-wide constitution and harmonisation of laws and standards, open borders, the primacy of global economic activity and the global corporatists, worldwide legal, judicial and justice systems, abrogation of personal freedoms to a class of unelected appointed experts who will act in the general good, the growth of the 'citizen of everywhere', the rule of benign technocracy and managerialism over 'old fashioned' democracy, the supremacy of supranational State authorities – EU, UN, IMF.

Toxic Theresa May election broadcast "cost us another million votes"

I was chatting on the phone last night to a London chum after I had accidentally caught the Conservative election broadcast transmitted just before the ITV evening news. I found it extraordinary that the thing had featured May at all - but half way through, there she was. There was no escaping the most loathed woman in Britain. I suspect about half the ITV audience flicked channels at this point. I mentioned this in passing on the phone later - to be told "Don't! The idiots have just cost us another million votes".

As the Telegraph reports today, Conservative canvassers out on the knock have been trying to pretend that Toxic May isn't the leader of the Conservative Party and that she hasn't completely screwed up Brexit. They have been met by angry shouty Tory voters either slamming the door in their faces or venting their anger over the parliamentary and government sabotage of Brexit. For anyone who missed it, the misjudged May broadcast is HERE. I won't embed it. There's some content for which we won't give blog-space. 

I think the difference between these local elections and the Euros is that for the former, Conservative voters are simply going on strike. They will not turn out to vote, far less to campaign or donate. Even if the Labour or LibDem loonies win Councils from us, who cares? Council tax has a legal ceiling (which most English Councils have hit this year) and stuff that Tory voters don't mind paying for - a decent school in their catchment area, pot-hole free roads and a local library - have either gone or can't be made worse by a Marxist administration. For the Euros, they will vote TBP. 

My guess is that an appalling local government result will galvanise final moves to oust May. I suspect many fellow Conservatives think the same. You really can't blame them.

Toxic May talks down to the nation - election broadcast

They think it's all over .... It is now!

202 For
432 Against

May Lost by 230 votes

Well, we wanted a stake through the heart of the Robbins-Selmayr treaty, and that's exactly what Parliament has delivered. They will be weeping into their beer in the Berlaymont tonight.

We're in uncharted waters here.

Right. I'm going to drink a bottle of Prosecco, play some loud music and maybe air guitar. Ahem.

EU VAT grab - It's all about Ireland

The Telegraph leads with a story today on the EU's proposed reduction from next year of the EU-wide maximum VAT threshold from £85,000 (€95,000) to £76,700 (€85,000). The UK uses the maximum, and has the highest VAT registration threshold in Europe (good for small service businesses). The paper is correct in identifying two effects; first, that under the Robbins Treaty, all firms in the UK will have to comply for the next two years, and second that under the backstop arrangements, the requirement could be permanent in Northern Ireland. Not only would thousands of UK businesses now trading just under the VAT threshold be caught in an onerous EU net, but the change would cause irrevocable harm to Northern Ireland.

Imagine a situation under May's treaty if, in two years, without a trade agreement having been concluded, the UK decided to abolish VAT. Although we would be free to do so in England, Scotland and Wales, all shops, supermarkets, pubs, trains and aircraft and all other businesses selling in Northern Ireland would still have to charge VAT. 

The paper doesn't mention VAT competition between the UK and Ireland. Most VAT thresholds in Europe are substantially lower (Belgium €25k, Germany €17.5k, Lux €30k, NL - nil) but two nations closest to Britain have had to carry split high thresholds - Ireland with €75k for goods and €37.5k for services, and France with €82.8k for goods and €33.2k for services. 

Without a UK veto, the EU can progressively decrease the threshold in Northern Ireland down to about half its current level, allowing the Irish government to increase its tax-take. May's agreement would prevent Northern Irish businesses from taking advantage of any reductions in VAT rate or increase in thresholds in mainland Britain after Brexit. 

Just another trap set by the EU and willingly incorporated by May's muppets in Team Robbins. 

However, it would all go to buggery if we left without a deal in March. We could then abolish VAT if we wished across the whole of Britain - including Northern Ireland. The DUP would have to be literally insane to move even a millimetre in placating May's government on the Robbins treaty.

On Tenterhooks ...

Well, we're underway.

By 10pm UK time we'll know if we're lumbered with a time-expired failure of a PM to further drag the nation into chaos, despair and division, or whether my Party's MPs are giving the nation a fair chance of coming out of this with something salvaged. 

The ERG will settle on a single candidate. One Brexiteer MUST be on the ballot that will come to we members over Christmas - and I hope to God the Party uses an e-voting option rather than relying on the Christmas post. 

I hope and pray the Lord guides the conduct of our MPs today for the good of our nation and people.

What medication is she on?

It's almost unbelievable. The woman has become the laughing stock of Europe and beyond. And she has the front to pile mendacity upon mendacity without blinking a bovine eyelash. Either her self-delusion is so overwhelming, so all-consuming, that she actually believes the incredible piffle she spouts or she knows she is lying through her arse.

What will it take to drag the bloody woman out of Downing Street? She's already won the accolade of Britain's worst postwar PM, beating even the dire 'a big boy did it and ran away' Brown. 

William Hague breaks from his naked oil-wrestling in the Parliament gym to plead in the Telegraph "The Tories are on the edge of their greatest crisis in modern times - MPs must rally together", an even more incredible plea for members to abandon their consciences, their sense of justice and right, their patriotism and their honour in order to put Party before country and save this disaster of a PM. You're away with the fairies, William. 

And for what? To delay for a few days the inevitable rejection by Parliament of the Robbins Treaty? 

Every day her stubborn stupidity degrades our nation, destroys international confidence in our democratic competence. The Conservative Party, including the oily Hague, must come to its senses and rid itself of this Prime Minister.

Brexit inquiry evidence now being catalogued

We haven't even managed yet to leave the EU - and may not do so at all - but Whitehall is quietly preparing for the inevitable inquiry into how it all became an almighty cockup. The government have screwed up from Day One - from May's throwing away the announcement of the start of Art 50 for a minor personal political advantage, to her refusal even at this stage to allow contingency arrangements for leaving without an agreement. Plus giving away all the significant advantages before talks even started, falling into trap after trap, allowing the EU to hold the UK to ransom over our territorial borders, and the deception and mendacity around May's parallel treaty, the Robbins Treaty, which, it is suspected, the EU saw before May's own cabinet. The entire process has been one of gross incompetence, crass maladministration and indictable misconduct.

Once the documents are sequestered, long interviews under caution completed and statements collected from all the third-tier actors down (and it's always the telling, detailed evidence from these people that sinks the big fish) the senior mandarins and May and her cabinet members will face their public grilling in the witness box.

This, I'm quite sure, is the motivation behind Oliver Robbins' leaked letter. Why write to the PM to tell her that the treaty was fatally flawed when both of them know that too well already? Robbins is getting his retaliation in first - in an effort to ensure May doesn't pass the blame to him.

We need to wait for the inquiry, of course, and it will be little satisfaction to those who have warned of May's malfeasance, incompetence and unsuitability for this critical role from the start. We all want the best outcome for our nation much more than we want to see Theresa May broken, humiliated and spurned. But this will come. I cannot see how she can escape formal national excoriation and dismissal to obscurity without honours. But again, let the inquiry do its job.  

Throw out May's poisonous renegade deal

If you have not done so already, I urge you to read the Speccie's '40 horrors' - unacceptable terms lurking in the poisonous treaty that May sought to bounce her government into accepting, after giving them fifteen minutes to skim-read the 500+ page document in a small room with the heating turned off*. A sample;

3. The European Court of Justice is decreed to be our highest court, governing the entire Agreement – Art. 4. stipulates that both citizens and resident companies can use it. Art 4.2 orders our courts to recognise this. “If the European Commission considers that the United Kingdom has failed to fulfil an obligation under the Treaties or under Part Four of this Agreement before the end of the transition period, the European Commission may, within 4 years after the end of the transition period, bring the matter before the Court of Justice of the European Union”. (Art. 87)

4. The jurisdiction of the ECJ will last until eight years after the end of the transition period. (Article 158).

5. The UK will still be bound by any future changes to EU law in which it will have no say, not to mention having to comply with current law. (Article 6(2))

Even more tellingly, then read the government's rebuttals, rushed out to the Speccie over the weekend. They are feeble. So feeble, and rebutting so little, that rather than lessening the impact of the Speccie's fatal analysis, they actually underline its accuracy. Downing Street's own defence of the renegade deal is itself damning. 

It is also being reported in the Sun that Martin Selmayr has delighted in the humiliation the poisonous deal would impose on the United Kingdom - the loss of Northern Ireland was the price the UK would pay for leaving, they report him saying.   

For those who say this is not a war, pray tell me the difference? 

And our Prime Minister is a Petain, an appeaser, waving the white flag and offering the enemy our abject surrender. 

No, there is no way our nation and peoples can ever live with this treacherous treaty. Rejecting it, throwing it back at Selmayr and his corrupt cabal, will hurt our GDP but we must reject the idea that Brexit is just an economic process. It is not. It is about our nation, our freedom, our constitution (unwritten) our laws and our way of life. And I'm not about to surrender ANY of those. 

* This may only be partially true

We need to leave May in office until .....

When the Conservatives fight the next election, we need to do so under a new Leader. That much is absolutely clear; Mrs May is finished. 

We also need to ensure we either leave the EU next March either with no deal, or a deal very different to the May-Robbins capitulation. So the first job is to ensure May's travesty is defeated in Parliament.

The Win situation would be the Neutron Bomb option - defeating the Robbins Treaty but keeping May in office to sort out the chaos and disruption that could have been avoided had she prepared contingency plans in time or sought a deal that the people of Britain could accept.  Since May has been responsible for the screw-up, it's only right she should be in office when it all goes down.

But as events of the last week have proven, outcomes are impossible to predict. Even in Brussels where they were discreetly chilling the champagne yesterday to celebrate Britain's humiliation, they're not now so sure. 

There are few Conservative party members and fewer Conservative MPs that have confidence in Mrs May, but don't discount the Doenitz Vanity*. Even as the Third Reich was collapsing in ruin and defeat, just days before her unconditional surrender, ambitious functionaries were still seeking appointment to government and ministerial posts. Better to have been a minister for 48 hours, they reckoned, then never to have been a minister at all.

You can be sure that there are enough Conservative MPs who think the same way to ensure she can fill her Cabinet table.  

*With the Daily Mail taking the role of the Völkischer Beobachter if this morning's edition is a guide ...

The crushing recrimination of hindsight

I was amongst those who were willing to give Mrs May a fair chance. I didn't join the chorus of warning and disapproval when she took office. Even during her crass, awkward and unconvincing election campaign, when she threw away the Conservative's remaining strength, I gave her the benefit of the doubt. It was Nick Timothy's fault, we were told, and to my shame I was prepared to believe it. Let's give her a chance.

But of course anyone who has reached even a middling senior position knows the one job you can never take a chance on is the boss. There's no backstop, no one to watch them, no one to head-off the errors. But that's exactly what we did; we accepted as Prime Minister a woman wholly and utterly unsuited to the demands of the role at this most critical juncture of the nation's life. Now as she's entirely screwed Brexit, Tim Stanley in the Telegraph (£) catalogues with the crushing recrimination of hindsight our errors;

... what we’ll end up with is a Brexit shaped by both this woman’s remarkable strength of will and her catastrophic lack of political vision.

.. She sees life as a series of challenges to be overcome in order and by careful steps. Mrs May followed the EU’s route to Brexit, which seemed reasonable enough: first we talk money, then citizenship, then Northern Ireland, then trade. But the EU set a trap – the Irish border – and Mrs May walked straight into it

... Britain did sit down with the EU, did run with a complicated European game plan and it did get screwed. The fault for this lies directly with the Prime Minister. 

... When Mrs May says that she’s delivering what the people want – as she reiterated in the House – then by any standard of our democratic tradition she is lying.

... The greatest tragedy of Mrs May’s leadership is that she has squeezed the vision out of Brexit.

... It’s a damning indictment of her colleagues for not having the courage to dump her – and of Mrs May, too, for not grasping her own limitations.

Will our grandchildren ever understand or forgive us for entrusting the nation's future to a woman so inept, so lacking in judgement, so devoid of emotional intelligence, so cerebrally unequipped and so entirely unsuited to the demands made of this great office of State? Will they forgive us for giving this destroyer of hope a chance? God forgive me, I was one of those that did.

May's stupidity has screwed the negotiations from the start.

Mrs May caved in to Brussels from Day One. There are many who believe it has all been a deliberate plot - a conspiracy to wreck Brexit. I don't think so. I think it is rather the stubborn stupidity of a woman who values her abilities far above what they're worth. If I could buy Mrs May's strategic appreciation for it's market value and sell it for what she herself reckons it's worth, I'd make my fortune. Excluding the few wise heads in the FCO, her own cabinet and a willing battalion of external experts from the Brexit process and using instead her self-deluding small team of ditherers, incompetents, fools, cowards, Quislings and Treasury dullards, May's complicit dags, she conceded to the EU on every point. Stupid, Stupid, Stupid.

She's not fit to be Prime Minister of Great Britain. She's not fit to run a whelk stall.

Now she's faced with an impasse - either the UK stays part of the customs union for ever, a Satrap, vassal state, kow-towing to the anti-democracy that is the EU, or we split the Union. 

There's a third option. Screw them. No deal, and pick the bones out of that. 

Get rid of that Rasputin idiot Robbins. Let the Cabinet take charge. Keep the stupid woman as a figurehead, at least until next year; load her with bad-taste costume jewels and ridiculous, asinine shoes, but never, ever let her speak again.

No, Mrs May - We will NEVER accept your shoddy sell-out

If both Mrs May and the capos of the EU seriously believe that 17.4 million British voters will remain quiescent following a sell-out deal that screws our nation, our freedom, our economy and our rights they are away with the fairies. 

If the EU believe that Britain will be bound by treaties and agreements signed for Britain by a political cabal acting in direct contravention of their democratic mandate, a mandate conferred by the largest vote in our nation's history, they are deluded. Tomorrow, the day after, the year after, we will repudiate those shoddy and anti-democratic scraps of paper. 

Our government has an epochal opportunity to steer this realm on a new course, on a heading outwards towards the world, to the thrusting, bursting economic growth and vitality of Asia, India, South America, over the great oceans. If Mrs May abuses this chance and tries instead to ground us on a stinking rancid EU mudbank to rot like a hulk, she will not succeed. We will not allow this nation to be so abused, so mishandled. 

A political leader with an ounce of ability could have turned this into an opportunity to win national acclaim, international respect and achieve unity and political stability in the United Kingdom. Mrs May is not that person. A political leader of integrity and imbued with veracity who had promised the country many times that we were leaving the single market and customs union would have striven over every obstruction to keep their word. Mrs May is not that person. A political leader of courage, vision and probity would have led their party effectively despite the divergences of view within it, would have had the courage to appoint to their cabinet ministers who would support their promises made to the people of Britain. Mrs May is not that person. 

One message at least should be made crystal-clear to Mrs May and her shadowy global corporatist and EUphile backers - that we will NEVER accept this shoddy sell-out.

May a 'walking corpse' say Conservatives

Posting is light this week as it's dry and warm and I have 6m3 of Red Beech to cut and stack in the little barn. 

When a Conservative MP writes "Conservative MPs may vote for a walking corpse, but the electorate will not" and hardly anyone notices, one knows it's a time of great schism in the Party. Yes, against all common sense, against all probabilities of self-survival, against the entire national interest and of benefit only to the global corporates and EU27 economies, both of which seem to inspire Mrs May more than her own party, she seems determined to pursue a Customs Union. I've never read so many voices counselling against this folly, so many fellow members of my Party for whom this would be a final step too far. Yet it seems the shoddy Robbins plan, dead everywhere in the UK and Europe except for Downing Street, is still twitching, absent a stake through its heart. Mrs May's stubborn stupidity will cost our Party and the country dear; as Allister Heath writes in the Telegraph (£)

Jeremy Hosking, a City financier and major Tory donor, has carried out private polling in a number of seats that shows “clear support” for a new party that would help achieve “what the electorate thought it would be getting”. Others are thinking carefully about similar options if May decides to keep us permanently in the customs union. A Vote Leave-style party could grab 30-35 per cent of the vote in swathes of the country, destroy the Tories and win seats even in a first past the post system.

I don’t wish for this outcome: Corbyn would seize power, with cataclysmic consequences. It would be infinitely better if the Tories could do what they do best, come to terms with Brexit, find a new language to sell capitalism and reinvent themselves, absorbing and civilising the new populism. The question is: do they have the guts to listen to the voters? Or do they have a political death wish?

In these desperate times, my only hope is for the Eurozone economy to collapse before Corbyn comes to power. 

May and Hammond preparing to sell-out Britain?

If the story in the Times is to be believed, May and her Remainer ally Hammond are preparing to betray the UK's interests in favour of the wishes of the global corporates. On past form she will deliver a twisted-mouthed mendacious speech at conference that will be aimed at placating Brexiteers with oily words and smooth insincerities whilst all the while caving into the demands made by an intransigent Brussels.

May and her Remainer team are simply not up to the job of defending the UK's interests. They trust neither the British people nor the assurances of our many friends across the world who wish us to do well. They would rather we remain a Satrap nation under the authoritarian rule of an anti-democratic and unelected cabal in Brussels. 

Make no mistake; if May attempts to follow the route suggested by the Times, our children and grandchildren will weep bitter tears of regret at her betrayal of their future.
 

Global Corporates ramp up Brexit scares

The biggest threat to the future success of the United Kingdom is pinning our economic hopes on the global corporates, yet this is exactly what Mrs May, under the brainwashing of the CBI and Oliver Robbins, is trying to use Brexit to secure. Neither are the globals themselves backwards in adding their own lies to Project Fear; the latest last week were from the international car makers. 

What they forgot to mention is that in ten years or so their cars will be banned for sale in Europe, their plants just so much scrap metal and wasteland, and their vast Euro workforces all redundant. That's not the fault of Brexit but of technological progress. An electric powered car has just something like 15% of the parts of an internal combustion engined one. So why screw the entire British economy, as they want May to do, to prolong their JIT uselessness by a few more years? The sooner the UK bites the bullet and attracts investment into 100% UK assembled electric vehicles the better. 

It's not just carmakers. We've reached peak global. The corporates are simply unable to increase their profitability from their operations by a single cent more - only a continuous process of mergers and takeovers generates new money, and we're at the end of that road. We're way past Standard Oil, and now only a radical rethink of Conservative capitalism can rescue the British economy. Sadly, Mrs May, with her limited understanding and abilities, is not the Prime Minister to head this process. Tenacity and resilience are only positive virtues when exercised in following the right path.

Steve Baker in the Telegraph today (£) and Janet Daley yesterday are both singing the same hymn. A party for a young, energetic, entrepreneurial, internationalist and enterprising Britain doesn't shackle itself to the dead-weights of the terminally-ill global corporates and the CBI. Our future Conservative membership is waiting for a party that articulates their hopes and aspirations, their knowledge and world-view, yet Mrs May wants to lead the party into failure and error, wants, like Corbyn, to lead a party stuck in the 1970s and unable to progress. 

For the sake of Brexit, and for the sake of Britain, she must now resign and hand over to a Leader who can do the job.

Boris gives May one last chance to ditch Oliver Robbins

With, I must say, unexpected Statemanship, Boris yesterday ended his resignation speech not in the manner of Geoffrey Howe but by calling on May to ditch the siren voices of Oliver Robbins, Jonathan Black and the  other Viziers of the Europe Unit and return to her Lancaster House vision. You can be sure that speech was not written by a colourless, robotic EUphile mandarin in love with the power of officialdom but by someone with a deep love for their nation, confidence in the British people and with hope for the future. None of which three traits are remotely apparent in the higher echelons of the civil service. 

Allister Heath in the Telegraph (£) pretty much has it today - 

Too many ultra-Remainers think that those who voted Leave suffered from “false consciousness”, that they were duped, manipulated or conned, that they will eventually tire of the exercise and roll over, and that a Brexit in Name Only – or even pretending that the referendum never actually happened – would allow the natural order to be re‑established.

This is delusional nonsense, the kind of attitude that would have been prevalent in the court of Louis XVI after the Bastille was taken; tragically, it is also the advice that May has been receiving since she sidelined her Cabinet Brexiteers and entrusted her entire strategy to the civil service.

It's now certain that May will go - but at a time of her successor's choosing, not hers or her Grand Vizier's. She has only one chance to avoid either the UK crashing out next March without a deal or a humiliating request for an extension of Article 50 - and that's to do as Boris says. Move Mr Robbins to head up the Ascension Island Development Corporation, disperse the highers to Agriculture, Transport and Local Government, and send the rest of the Europe Unit back to DEXEU and Dominic Raab.  

One chance, Mrs May. Don't blow it.  

Never trust the Viziers

Game On!

Well, she's done it. And she's got the £ nudging €1.20, which is nice. And the global corporates are squeezing out a little high pressure flatus, which is also reassuring. Farron, Mandlebum, the Remoaners, the BBC, the EU and the Guardian are incandescent with rage, which is always worthwhile. All in all, it seems like the right thing to do. 

The main complaint of all those so upset by Mrs May's calling an election seems to be democracy. They are objecting to Britain's voters having a definitive say, rather than claiming to speak for us themselves. 

Oh yes. And that chap Grayling, which I always thought was a fish. If this doesn't trip him into gibbering insanity I don't know what will. So good all round, really.