Brexit to the sound of trumpets

Well, HM has just broadcast our Party's draft election manifesto to the nation - and it didn't cost a farthing of our permitted election spend. I lost count at 24 Bills - it may be 26 - and every single one a feel-good, popular measure that reaches across traditional party allegiances and touches the parts of voters that other parties cannot reach. Labour, the Illiberal Anti-Democrats and the Scot Gnats will be furious - and I'll be listening to the debate in a couple of hours to laugh at the dribbling meltdown on the opposition benches.

That's the price of not enabling a general election - every single day they delay allows the government to use the entire machinery of Whitehall and the State to build voter support.  Their spittle-flecked fury this afternoon will go down like a lead balloon with the electorate - they will just be reinforcing Boris' narrative that the Remainers are unhinged, bigoted saboteurs with little self control and no potential whatsoever to fulfil the duties of HM's Loyal Opposition, let alone be seen as a government in waiting. 

Carry on, Corbyn. You're doing a fine job.

Internet shopping post-Brexit

I am an inveterate internet shopper. This is generally because I am an ingrained price-chaser and source stuff from across the world - including knock-off Poulsen luminaires from China, still a third of the cost of the originals even with shipping and customs duties and VAT added. So I am used to the process, which is simple and efficient here. The Post drops you a card with a URL and reference, one logs-on to the website, enters a few details, scans a couple of documents and makes a SOFORT transfer and then the goods are delivered. Not a problem a few times a year - but what about those regular weekly / monthly purchases from UK suppliers or UK eBay?

Well, those regular suppliers, you won't be surprised to know, are already ready for Brexit. Everything bought via the internet from outside the EU needs a customs sticker as the delivery of a couple of memory sticks from 7-day shop yesterday shows -

After Brexit the value will be the critical factor. No VAT is payable on imports under €22, and no customs tariff on imports below €150. UK suppliers who are VAT registered will in future make sales to EU customers free of UK VAT. Thus purchases under €22 will (I expect) be 20% cheaper - like my memory sticks.

One of my other regular monthly buys is from Screwfix (the Kingfisher group's success story).  Screws, fixings, blades and discs, sealants, adhesives mostly - much cheaper than local. They offer free delivery to Europe on orders over £50 and looking at my order values over the past year -

They're all well under the €150 customs duty limit - the UK cost will (I expect) be 20% lower, local VAT will be payable at 20% so the net result is zilch.

There will always be a few exceptions that will no longer be economic. Pallet deliveries, mostly. I've become used to booking my own pallet deliveries online, for as little as £160 a pallet. Stone floor tiles from Italy, a nation whose border is fifteen minutes drive away, cost no less than £65/m2 plus delivery (a minimum of €200 per pallet load) from any of the EU27 but can be bought from the UK for £27/m2 plus delivery. Yes, the exact same tiles from the same quarries. I need another 14m2 for an unfinished bathroom so will have to figure this out after Brexit. 

But so far, the personal impact of Brexit looks to be .... nil. Bring it on.

The EU army's theatre of operations ...

It's a slow day so let's have a bit of fun. Let's presume there is a future shake-out of military alliances, with the EU choosing to go its own way, after having admitted Ukraine. Let's presume also that the neutral countries stay neutral, and that the UK, Norway and Iceland remain in NATO. Turkey? Well, not in NATO, clearly. And unlikely to have been admitted to EU membership. Which would lead Turkey to look to Russia for an alliance.

Now the military types amongst you will appreciate the position better than I, but if I were the EU, I think I'd want very much to have Turkey on my side rather than Russia's. With a population of 82m, 12m of which are men of prime military age and not soft and woke like EU youth, what's the bet that the EU will go-a-courting again? If they have to defend three fronts, will that cost them more or less than the 2% they're supposed to spend on NATO?

NATO blue, Russia red

NATO blue, EU green, Russia red

Turkey is a Rogue State and must be treated as such

Long time readers will no doubt recall I have been consistent for many years in promoting the dangers of our alliances with both KSA and Turkey, the two greatest fomenters of conflict, terrorism and instability in Europe. I have been consistent in advocating the expulsion of Turkey from NATO. Back in July I even congratulated the Telegraph's Con Coughlin for unusually lunching with the right MOD briefer and writing -

When Turkey joined Nato back in 1952, the idea was that it would help to protect Nato’s eastern flank from Moscow’s aggression. Now that is clearly no longer the case, and European leaders should join their American counterparts in facing up to the fact that Turkey under Mr Erdogan is a lost cause. The days when Turkey had a genuine interest in cementing its ties with the West by joining the European Union are long gone. Instead, we have a country that openly associates with those who wish to do us harm.

Consequently, now that Mr Erdogan has demonstrated that he feels more at home in Moscow than he does in Brussels, we should acknowledge where Turkey’s true interests lie, and terminate its NATO membership.

As far back as 2015 I was of the opinion that only internal action by the Turkish people to remove Erdogan could turn things around but was later forced to admit the failure of that course -

Well, the coup was tried - and failed. Tens of thousands of civil servants have been dismissed, hundreds of the most senior military officers imprisoned, and at least a score of them judicially murdered in custody ('fell out of a window' 'had a heart attack' etc). Erdogan appreciated his isolation and moved to make an ally of Russia, with $20bn of arms purchases. It is pertinent that at least some of that money comes from the EU, the billion-Euro bribes for not sending migrants across the Greek border.

Turkey's invasion of northern Syria can hardly come as a surprise to anyone. That a NATO member can undertake such unlawful aggression without the sanction of immediate expulsion is a disgrace. That Turkey can threaten Europe with a tsunami of 3.6m migrants if anyone objects to its unlawful invasion is proof if proof were needed that Turkey is now a rogue state.

Unshaven 
On the subject of baddies, a word of advice to shirt-and-tie characters who are desperate to cultivate a cool image with designer stubble. Like a teenager with a face full of bumfluff trying to grow a moustache, make sure you have enough facial hair before you try - or you just look dirty and unshaven. EU commissioner Johannes Hahn and XR's Rupert Reid please note. 

EU functionary Johannes Hahn and XR man with a suit Rupert Reid

Histrionics and small cows

Yesterday I felt a yearning as never before for a world free from reports that the EU 'insists' that the UK does this or that, that the EU 'refuses' consent for Britain to do something, that the EU finds 'unacceptable' a British position. The relief of being free of such impertinences will be like being free of a bully that blights our lives. The closer we get to Brexit, the more nakedly dogmatic and peremptory the commands from the Brussels Kanzlei are becoming, and the less heed we pay to them. It's like watching a clueless leash-holder shouting ineffectually at a dog who doesn't give a fig and revels in disobedience with a huge grin; 'heel! heel!' 'stop! stop!' shouts the fool as the dog drags him to explore an interesting smell.

The recent histrionics from both Guy Verhofstadt and Donald Tusk, surely two of the world's politicians least in control of themselves, only underlined the utter, bodging amateurishness of the whole EU. It's really no use the standing at the edge of the park holding the lead and shouting 'Come back! I order you!' as a joyful dog bounds off into the distance.

Guy Verhofstadt in particular confirms his folie de grandeur every time he gets on his hind legs with his pronouncements about 'Europe'

Some weeks ago I wrote to Der Spiegel's London correspondent about a reasonable and well considered piece he had written under the utterly false strapline 'Boris hates Europe'; he's a reasonable chap and responded "What can I say? You are right, there is a huge difference between Europe and the EU – and I hope and believe that my article makes that distinction. The cover catchline is a total different matter though. It’s not in my responsibility, and often even we writers only see it at the very last moment .." He promised to pass on the point to the magazine's subs and it seems to have had some effect - I haven't read the same error since. Someone needs similarly to point out to Guy with great patience the difference between a continent of 730m people that includes nations such as Switzerland, Norway and the United Kingdom and a little empire of 460m people within it. Perhaps only Father Ted would have been up to the task ...

A black swan moment for Brexit

Well, twenty-four hours really is a long time in politics. The surprise is not that the EU has demanded Northern Ireland as the price for Brexit but that the gloves are now off and that Number Ten has made it public. I suspect strongly that Mrs Merkel said exactly the same thing to Mrs May, which explains much of the draft Selmayr-Robbins treaty (Selmayr himself said explicitly that losing the six counties was the price Britain would have to pay for leaving). Mrs May did not of course tell us that this was the EU's position - and I wonder whether she mentioned it to the Queen during her regular weekly briefings.

That Downing Street made the demand public - a demand that could not be denied by the Bundeskanzlerei, as the conversation was undoubtedly recorded - marks the real political change. Mrs May aimed for an agreement that the EU would find acceptable; Boris is looking for an outcome that the citizens of the UK find acceptable. That is an enormous difference in approach. 

I've no doubt that some fatuous idiot will pop up and opine that as NI voted 'remain' this is reason enough for the EU to insist on sovereignty over the province. Asinine. Demography in Northern Ireland may mean that at some time, maybe in five years, maybe in twenty-five, that there will be a majority in the Province to join with the republic of Ireland. This is wholly a matter for the people of Northern Ireland, wholly a matter for a referendum for only that purpose. That decision has not yet been made. 

Well, I cannot take pleasure in being correct when I doubted that the Prime Minister's deal would get the three green ticks it needed, but yesterday's events have brought us to a point that is hardly unexpected - a clean Brexit. It also leaves remainers in the position of advocating the loss of Northern Ireland as the price they would pay for a deal with the EU. Not a position, I suspect, that will be popular with voters. 

People -v- Parliament: Round 3

With parliament prorogued today for the rest of the week, at least remain MPs will be unable for a few days to keep digging the hole they're in. Parliament is today held in greater contempt than at any point in my life. The one clear finding of today's Comres poll for the Telegraph is that the nation overwhelmingly blames parliament for the Brexit mess - Boris gets away relatively unscathed;

The public have quite accurately identified their enemies - and any election in the next month or two will irrevocably be coloured by the contest between people and parliament. I can tell you in advance that parliament will lose.

The privileged elite, having captured all the institutions of the State, naively assumed that they could do away with the will of the people, could dispense with democracy. MPs became deluded to the point of imagining that they were important as individuals, that their personal opinions on this matter were more important than the people to whom they had lied in 2017 to win their seats.

All they have done is to ensure that constitutional reform is now inevitable. Everything starts with the elector. Universal suffrage, the secret ballot and the right to associate and form and subscribe to political parties are fundamental to the security of every single citizen in our isles - leavers, remainers and those who don't care. If the elite try to subvert our system of representative democracy, we will constrain our representatives. If the Speaker abuses the privileges of the Chair, we will constrain the powers of the Speaker. If the Supreme Court starts to play politics, we will make its composition a political matter. Power in this nation is delivered via the ballot box, and votes are won not by threat, violence, closing the streets or silly stunts but by reason and argument, by establishing and maintaining a narrative that chimes with the lives and experiences of the electors. People -v- Parliament has lodged in the people's mind and cannot now easily be dislodged.

If you haven't yet seen it, I commend the 27 minute video in the post below. Just ordinary electors, real people, you and me, talking calmly to the camera. The elite will no doubt find it astonishing that we common folk value our democracy so highly.  

Boris fighting for a democratic Britain

The illiberals and anti-democrats have had it their way for so long that they still can't accept that the will of the people, the democratic mandate, can override their wealth, power and privilege. Beaten at the ballot box, they have resorted to the millionaire's cudgel of lawfare; ejected from the leadership and membership of the Conservative party they continue to use power, influence and media to frustrate the will of the British people. A few eminent citizens are so far in the pockets of the Brussels mafia - Blair, Major and their dags - that they directly betray the interests of their own country for their corrupt ideology, their own interest. Their collaboration with those who wish us ill befouls our nation and stains our public institutions.

Macron is an énarque, isolated and shielded from the people by a wall of bureaucracy. The thick windows of the Élysée keep the enraged cries of the people, the fumes of the tear gas and the burning streets from his Lillipution nostrils, a triple line of balaclavered black-clad armed riot police keeps the people from the gates of his palace. No wonder he believes Blair and Grieve more than he does Boris - and they are promising him that they will sabotage democracy from inside the country whilst he acts to damage the UK from without. They are urging him to hold out against a deal, to pin Britain against the ropes. And they are wrong.

We are leaving. One way or another, we are leaving. We will not allow the dismemberment of the Union, not permit the EU to remain as Britain's overlord, not tolerate subjugation as a Satrap state under the heel of the unelected Brussels cabal. M. Macron had better start to believe Boris rather than Blair and the other weasels.

This week the Prime Minister embarks on a series of meetings to tell them this face-to-face. He is bolstered by a whole series of polls that show that his party has a commanding lead, that voters are turning against the illiberals in droves, that two-thirds of voters want Brexit done, now. The sabotage-delays engendered by the establishment elite, the ruling privileged class, are about as popular as a cup of cold sick with voters.

We are Leaving.

French police, exhausted from months of street combat with the Gilets Jaunes, are invited to change sides

Addendum
========
This from Spiked - calm, rational and reasonable. Just people who believe in a Fair Go. I commend. 

The UK - Pour encourager les autres?

One sometimes starts to wonder whether the entire mess, blunder and deep divisions of the past three years have not been contrived for the benefit of the EU, as a lesson and warning to the remaining 27 of what will happen to them should they dare to challenge the rule of the EU. Such musing is not discouraged today by Der Spiegel, normally the most illiberal and anti-Brexit of organs -

The EU Must Soften Its Approach

As such, the EU should take a step back -- it's in its own interest -- to meet the British at the halfway point. The EU no longer needs to fear that Brexit will find imitators if Brussels shows itself to be too yielding. The picture Britain has painted over the past three years -- the crises in government and parliament and the threat of the United Kingdom disintegrating -- should have a sufficiently deterrent effect. After more than two years of negotiations and considerable struggle, Brexit has become inevitable. It would be good for the process to finally be completed. Separating in a positive manner is the prerequisite for a reasonable relationship in the future.

Apart from a tacit admission that May's ineffective bodgers had previously been beaten into a wholly unequal deal by Brussels, it is also a plea for Germany not to be burdened with a hostile and belligerent Britain when she has just herself fallen into the most difficult of recessions.

My own view is that we will emerge stronger, renewed and reformed from the Brexit debacle - with some much-needed constitutional cleansing once we have a decent working majority in Commons and Lords, some democratic house-cleaning and electoral repairs. One reform must be to limit lawfare - the ability of the very wealthy to undermine democracy through the courts - and to restate the limits on the power of the courts. We are not the EU, and have no wish to surrender our democratic freedom to the corrupt rule of lawyers and the very rich. 

The Democracy Deniers, puce-faced and spittle-flecked with rage

The anti-democrats in Brussels (including their dag in Dublin Castle) acted exactly as one expected yesterday. One of about fifty unelected EU 'vice presidents' had the front to appear on Iain Dale's show and condemn the plan as unworkable although it quickly became clear she hadn't seen the detailed plan and hadn't even read the seven page heads-of-terms released to the press and public. Verhofstadt had seen the precis document and waved it about on his mobile phone before ranting that the Empire would never let go of the United Kingdom. Varadkar was the comic turn, saving his petulant flouncing until mid-afternoon with a declaration that the people of the UK had changed their minds and Brexit should be cancelled (in fact polls give a solid 65% who think that whatever the rights or wrongs of Brexit, we should respect the vote and leave).

It was, in short, as dispiriting a display of jejune tantrums as one would expect from the crooked cabal in the Berlaymont. What it wasn't was any indication that any of them possess a scruple of statesmanship. They were like excited children. And so in the Commons.

Corbyn, now a very elderly man who with his equally elderly comrade McDonnell dreams of Marxist power before he dies, was provoked into a spittle-flecked fury of invective by the calm reasonableness of the Prime Minister's statement. I feared his heart was about to go at any second - an event that would provoke a high-fatality crush on the opposition front bench as half the Labour Party would lunge to take his place at the dispatch box, his twitching corpse kicked beneath the bench. He had earlier threatened the most severe measures against the score or more of Labour MPs who were favourably impressed by the Prime Minister's proposals enough to vote for them.

All in all, yesterday brought out into clear view the demented and almost incoherent anger of the democracy-deniers, the illiberals and the anti-democrats. Such people are not only enemies of Brexit but enemies of democracy - a threat to us all, leavers or remainers. If they cannot accept the most fundamental way in which democracy works, there is no place for any of them in public life.

Not yet triumph, but the tide has turned and the wind has backed

The government's double whammy yesterday of the Prime Minister's conference speech and the release of his final offer to the EU has changed the whole feel of Brexit. Overnight the front foot and the moral advantage have passed to the United Kingdom. No more are we a vacillating, wobbly amateur bunch of bricoleurs with the letters falling-off the wall behind us. Inept, confused and mistaken advisors such as Nick Timothy and his ilk have been cleared out of Downing Street and the PM for once has a professional team behind him. What a difference a year makes.

The cabal in the Berlaymont would be mad not to accept Britain's offer.

I wrote on Tuesday that I doubted Boris could get the three green ticks he needed to get a deal through. Today it looks as though two of those ticks are tentatively there. The Telegraph reports that the ERG, the Tory turncoats and about 25 Labour rebels could vote for the deal in the Commons. Whatever Farage is saying isn't being heard by the media. Germany is in recession and the Eurozone faces a series of economic bodyblows that will be exacerbated by a clean Brexit; they will grasp at the offer. That just leaves Brussels.

I've always pushed strongly for a clean Brexit, and like many have problems with some of the other baggage apart from the backstop in the draft Treaty. So why do I find myself this morning ready to shrug my shoulders and support Boris if he gets agreement for this deal? I'm not sure. But there it is.

Boris has effectively isolated the EU zealots in Brussels and Varadkar's fatuous posturing. Britain's mature, sensible offer and our reasonableness and statecraft are now on view to the world, released in those documents. The EU's every petulant instinct must be to reject the UK's offer - but do they dare?

Kit cars - now outlawed in much of the EU - will be saved for the UK

The world turned upside down

An empty-nester in Bavaria, the acquaintance of a friend, sold the large house in which she had brought up her kids and undergone a divorce but had no choice but to commit herself to another large mortgage on a new property. Financial downsizing was not an option. "Why?" I demanded. Because. The Germans are incurable savers, and without harsh government measures to ensure they keep borrowing and spending the economy would be hit. So the German tax system effectively prevents homes being used as pension pots.

In a world in which negative interest rates are normal, in which central banks are printing monopoly money used only to inflate the asset values of the wealthy in a huge shimmering vulnerable bubble and lenders are drowning in cash to lend (I must check whether personal lease plans have been extended to powerboats and ride-on mowers ... there is no better way of parting a man from his wealth than ownership of a prestige planing vessel kept in a marina; and no, my old displacement fishing boats lived on a half-tide mud berth up an open creek). The Guardian is at least honest about Europe's problem -

Yet as one economist perceptively put it, the problem for the eurozone is that “weak credit growth is driven by the lack of demand from creditworthy borrowers rather than the supply cost of finance”. This can be solved in part by governments stepping up to boost demand in the eurozone.

That's it; the right people don't want to borrow. Lenders are desperate to lend. I wonder if we can look back to some point in history, say the oughties, to see what happened before ....

Have PLPs been extended to adult toys?

The final countdown

There is really nothing useful to be done for the next day or two. Nothing to analyse, nothing upon which to opine. We are waiting for Boris.

The Prime Ministers' proposals, whatever they are, face three hurdles. The first is the Irish and the EU, still not ready to relinquish the opportunity to subject the UK to a punishment beating. Second are Brexiteers - the ERG within our own party and TBP without - who need to see much of the other dangerous stuff in the draft Robbins-Selmayr Treaty go. And finally is the Remain Alliance, now fully out in the open in declaring that they don't give a fig for democracy and will use their final days in parliament, before we voters evict them, to do everything they can to block Brexit.

My own feeling is that there are no proposals on earth that would allow a deal to get a green tick from all three.

One must therefore suppose that the PM's proposals are for the world outside Europe and for posterity. In international statecraft terms, leaving without a deal is akin to the British ambassador waving his todger about and pissing from the embassy balcony. So if it happens, apportioning the blame for it is critical. Submitting a perfectly reasonable, workable plan to the EU to have it rejected with their usual amateur jejune petulance puts the blame on Brussels.

Likewise it sucks the wind from the sails of any remaining shred of pretence from the bent Speaker, Bercow, and his corrupt parliamentary cabal that they are genuinely concerned about no deal.

And Boris' refusal to countenance any deal with TBP says to me that he is very confident that we will be out in 30 days - deal or no deal. If he pulls it off and keeps his job, it will be the greatest political triumph since MT re-took the Falklands. We have a month to wait and see.     

A Fair Go

There is somewhere in the anglophone world ingrained, sometimes deeply, sometimes more superficially, a peculiar sense of fairness. The post title is of course Australian vernacular - a phrase that even finds a place in the citizenship handbook, defined as "what someone achieves in life should be a result of their hard work and talents, rather than their wealth or background". It's a pretty good example of how the English language can take several meanings; 'A Fair Go' means equality of opportunity, not equality of outcomes. Outcomes should be dependent neither on inherited privilege nor on protected status.

This idea of fairness  is redefining our political landscape. It's powerful. Douglas Murray points out in the Telegraph that even the BBC, normally impervious to accusations of unfairness, has had to admonish two presenters, Emily Maitlis and Naga Munchetty, for being so blatantly unfair on-air that it was an embarrassment to the broadcasting behemoth. Murray writes

The idea of impartiality in news has always been something of a misnomer. The choice of which story to cover owes something to the preconceived ideas of whoever makes that decision. What we are now seeing is the line between commentary and reporting becoming increasingly blurred.

As partiality in its different forms becomes ever more flagrant, the idea that broadcasters are at least making an honest attempt at being unbiased is becoming increasingly difficult to maintain. All this raises the prospect of British media following the example of that in the US, where nobody expects anything but partisan coverage.

The point about the BBC is that everyone has to pay for it; one can choose whether or not to buy the Sun or the Mirror, but not the BBC. As I have written previously, if the BBC has passed the point of balance between Leave and Remain, it has forfeited the right to the Charter - due for renewal in 2027.

The Speaker, too, has failed to chair a chamber in a way that embodies fairness. His petulant holiday tantrum in which he promised to the media to block the government, his dodgy egoistic partial judgements from the chair, his bullying and bias all mean he has lost utterly the respect of the nation.

The current turmoil is a battle on many levels - but most fundamentally it is a battle for fairness, between a crude alliance between those with inherited privilege and those with protected status on the one hand, and the mass of the people on the other. The former have, in the words of Betz and Smith, captured the State;

With the rise of the new political classes, a different political dynamic is emerging. Drawn from similar backgrounds (often middle-class, university educated, with little prior career experience outside politics itself), members of parliament increasingly sound alike, think alike and act alike. The evolution of a monochrome political establishment is producing a radical disconnect, which the Brexit denouement is throwing into stark relief. What we appear to be witnessing is the corrupt mutation of the notion of the representation of the people in parliament, into the substitution of the will of the people by the interests of the political class. We are entering the realms, no less, of state capture. What happens when sectional interests capture the political institutions of the state? This is a question we will get to, but first it is worth reiterating that in many senses this has been a long time coming, and to emphasise, in the British case has little or nothing intrinsically to do with Brexit.

On this level, what the dominant class are given to sneering at as 'populism' is actually a protest from a vast mass of people, who thought they were living in a democracy, that the entire system had become unfair - advantaging the political elite and their supporters at the expense of the mass of the people.

In that light, watching hereditary Labour millionaires such as the younger Kinnocks, Straws, Benns, Sawars, Soames and Millibands pontificating about anything at all 'for the many not the few' becomes farcical. Watching Owen Jones working himself up into a mouth-frothing fury in defence of globalist corporations and gay-murdering factions is free entertainment and listening to anything said at all by Shami Chakrabarti on people misusing their power and privilege is pure comedy. Even Labour MPs who took advantage of the Brighton conference to take their kids out of the dorms for a weekend exeat from their £30,000 a year public schools ('but keep clear of the press when you're out ..') whilst promising to abolish such schools on the platform provided exemplars of a depth of hypocrisy rarely seen in public politics. A Fair Go is not for them. For any of them.

Boris - The People's Champion

Every citizen in the land who supports democracy over disempowerment, who supports the rule of law but not rule by lawyers, will have cheered the people's Prime Minister for his bravura performance in the Commons yesterday. Boris is the people's champion, and he rode to the lists fueled by righteous indignation and with millions upon millions of electors behind him in demanding the cowering, frightened illiberals on the benches opposite go to the people.

Of course they don't want to go. Most of them will lose their jobs. That's why they're trying to force a surrender to the EU - yes, let's use that word; they ARE collaborators and Quislings as complicit as Petain, Laval and Darlan in selling their nation in order to cram their mouths with Euro gold. Surrender is right.

Never before in the history of this nation have a tiny, unrepresentative cabal of saboteurs of democracy, who lied to their electors in 2017, denied the ballot box to our forty-five million voters. Never before have these wreckers, these selfish, entitled arses, this political elite, felt so emboldened in denying democracy to the masses of the British people. 

They're Frit, scared of the ballot box, frightened of the verdict of the voters, afraid of democracy itself. Of course they love the EU - whose anti-democratic, corrupt and crooked regime requires no elections at all to win and hoard power - oh how the opponents of democracy in our own Parliament must long for that!

But even a bent Speaker, a dishonest BBC and MSM in thrall to the enemies of democracy cannot hide the anger starting to build in the country, from a proud nation being denied access to the ballot box in order that we can sort out the mess this Quisling political class have created. WE DEMAND AN ELECTION. Hear us.

When even the Daily Remain reports polling that suggests that 64% of those who voted Labour in 2017 want an election, you know the time is nigh.

GENERAL ELECTION NOW

It's time to clear the shit from this stable.

Yes, let the people decide. I suspect the HoL SC  may just have won an electoral landslide for the Brexit parties. It's People vs Parliament - and they may delay it, but we will win.

I must apologise for not penning a longer post. We're waiting for the government to speak, to give leadership, direction and reassurance to the nation. No one knows what happens next. The elite may conspire to postpone an election even further, the government may pull a rabbit out of the hat.

However, yesterday's ruling has changed our democracy for ever. An open conflict between the people and the political establishment may be fought on the battlefield of Brexit but we're fighting for power - they to retain the State they've captured by stealth, we to regain the democracy that is our birthright. This conflict will not end until one side is defeated and the other victorious.

And we demand an election.

& H/T Mark for this -

Dumbstruck

I'm dumbstruck. Just dumbstruck.

Well, we live in a democracy ruled by law and the judgement was delivered by our own highest court. It was unanimous. Therefore Boris screwed up.

I think I may have just seen the death of the Conservative Party - I can't imagine us even getting the 9% we sunk to in the EP elections. I can also understand if the entire Conservative vote goes to TBP in the inevitable GE.

However, before this is all final, we must wait and see what the Prime Minister has to say.

But let's be clear what the judgement was about - it was about the legality of the government's action. The Brexit vote, and the need for us to leave the EU still stands.

And By God when we've got a majority in both houses, there will be a tsunami of legislation to come to ensure that this can never happen again..

Addendum
========
I've just put my finger on the moment in the past I felt exactly like this - it was the announcement that HMS Sheffield had been sunk.

All that did was to fill us with a terrible resolve that we must win.

Intermission II

Whilst we wait for the judgement, I've been re-acquainting myself with Somerville and Ross' The Irish RM. The problem that Brussels completely fails to understand in relation to any Brexit border is the character of the Irish themselves. For many years, before the pre-2008 development boom destroyed much of what was valuable, I made an annual early Summer pilgrimage to a cottage near Oughterard on the shores of Loch Corrib for the trout fishing. The fish went into feeding frenzy during the mayfly season, and the technique was to 'dap' a live fly on a thin floating line. Local kids sold boxes of live flies to fishermen, and the sport was so easy that even an Englishman could not fail to land a couple of 3lb fish before the 'Boat' opened. So here (with apols to Messrs Somerville and Ross) we have ... The Irish MEP

A Horse! A Horse!
In which Flurry dyes a hunter and smuggles it across the border as a 'ringer' for the favourite in the point-to-point, evading EC78/245 'Movement of equine livestock (marking, tagging and chipping) cross-border trade Directive'

The Dispensary Doctor
When Finn is caught with a poached salmon by the Gardai he protests that as the fish had swum from Northern Ireland it was an alien species that had violated EU phytosanitary controls by failing to claim asylum status at the border. Whilst the case was referred to the authorities in Brussels the fish was eaten by Dr O'Rourke, to whom it had been passed for retention as evidence by the Gardai.

Oweneen the Sprat
A car from the north has an accident near Galway - but is not fitted with Winter tyres in accordance with Directive EC 86/294. It damages a tractor being used by Oweneen the Sprat but he refuses to exchange insurance details as the land he was working was being claimed as set-aside under the CAP. Instead he demands that Sergeant O'Connor lock the motorists up until they pay in cash - but he is wary of their Article 8 Human Rights

The Muse in Skebawn

zzzz OK that's enough whimsy

Loch Corrib

Intermission ..

With great sympathy for the staff and customers of Thomas Cook this morning, I fear this is as much a casualty of the High Street squeeze and the decline of the Catalogue Culture as of the obvious overcapacity in the budget flight and travel markets. The firm's competitors will now fight like jackals over landing slots, but I wouldn't put much interest in those High Street travel shops.

Whilst we await the main news event of the day (if it comes) I leave you with a photo of a charming young girl no doubt forced by peer and parental pressure into a cult youth group, the BDM or League of German Girls back in the 1930s.

Update 14.40
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The Supreme Court ruling is due at 10.30 tomorrow. I'll post following.

BRACE BRACE BRACE

Issued by Conservative Press Office at 08.30 today, Sunday

"In the difficult days ahead I hope all MPs recognise that we are servants of the people, they have spoken, and we must keep faith with their democratic verdict"