A great ox has stood on your tongue

I must say it cheered my heart to have the old Boris back yesterday. The effects of Covid are debilitating, enervating and sap bounce. His trouncing of Starmer at the despatch box was a delight. Starmer is a Karen, a Frinton-on-Sea litter warden, and when Boris told him a great ox had stood on his tongue when he would not answer why he's sitting on the fence over schools re-opening he, like most of the rest of us, had little idea what he meant. They don't teach that sort of thing at Essex litter-warden school. 

Classicists told us later it was a parliamentary way of saying the teaching unions had bribed Labour; in some ancient time, the coinage depicted an ox, and an ox on the tongue was someone bribed to stay silent. Glad they cleared that up.

The abolition of DfID was just the start. Anything that draws a whinge from remainiac ex-PMs has got to be good. But he's got his work cut out - the war for the State is now out in the open, and it's us against those who have captured our establishment and institutions. As Allister Heath writes in the 'graph

The drift of the past two months has allowed the Left-wing establishment to reassert itself. The BBC has appointed one of its own as its new boss; an ex-Treasury, ex-IMF, Left-wing think tanker was appointed as head of the Office for Budget Responsibility; the CBI’s new boss used to advise Gordon Brown and work for the Guardian. The only economic policy we heard about – apart from the necessary spending of hundreds of billions to cushion the economy – were “green jobs”, state-infrastructure, government this and government that. The Left-liberal elites were beginning to hope again that Boris’ project was about to fail. The EU detected weakness, crashing the talks before seeking to prolong the transition.

With Boris at the helm, we're ready for the fight. Bring it on.

Keir Starmer bust commissioned by the teachers' unions?

Time for Boris to be bold

Everyone it seems is agreed. The PM must move quickly to deal with the most egregious failures of the central State exposed by the Wuhan virus. Public Health England, so obsessed with fashionable caprices that it neglected the nation's fundamental disease control measures; NHS procurement, so focused on gobbledegook management consultant speak that it became incapable of buying PPE, and a government reliance on disease modelling and projection so amateurish, bungling and confused that the code management would not have been tolerated in an Indian app factory.

Allister Heath in the Telegraph this morning is spot-on. The PM must act boldly, take the initiative, not be put on the back foot by an effective opposition and a rejoiner establishment. And above I will add he must not yield to the Whitehall establishment's siren calls that the answer to everything is greater centralisation, much as for Brussels the answer to every crisis is more Europe.

And whilst he's at it, he should scrap the Electoral Commission and replace it with a genuinely fair, neutral and unbiased body. The EC's actions over Brexit have been nothing short of disgraceful, partisan, partial and ultimately corrupt. And while scrapping HS2 would play well in the country, at a time when we will need government created economic activity to keep the economy alive it unfortunately fits the bill.

Above all, I would like to see devolution. Devolve everything to the lowest level at which it functions both effectively and efficiently. And it's the SMEs and small vigorous domestic firms that will burst forth from the coming economic carnage and drive growth and employment; abandon the global corporate behemoths crying for special privileges and billions. Keep BA as a national carrier - it's fat with QE cash and doesn't need tax aid yet - and maintain strategic industrial activities, but don't waste time or money trying to preserve 2019. Let it go.

Boris of all PMs should realise that the challenge he faces is also an opportunity, and he has a green light for bold moves, a restructuring of the central State and an unblinking focus on the future.     

Prime Minister emerges from under his bushel

I have only one recommendation today - to watch the Prime Minister's Greenwich speech in full. This was not the painstakingly careful cautious Boris of the December hustings, the Boris protecting himself with a stuttering duffer act, but a keystone speech by a Statesman of undoubted intellectual grasp and vision. He damned the mercantilists and protectionists both, and spent half-an-hour championing the great freedom of trade, Smith and Ricardo. It will make uncomfortable viewing for the EU. He set out Britain's new place in the world as a newly independent State, deprecated the actions of both the EU and the US in blocking free trade and committed his government to catalysing trade against the sclerotic myopia that blinds both to its benefits. 

After half a century of travelling the wrong path, the UK is back on course (my underlining) -

.. we will always co-operate with our European friends in foreign and defence policy whenever our interests converge – as they often, if not always, will – this will not in my view necessarily require any new treaty or institutions because we will not need them for the simple reason that the UK is not a European power by treaty or by law but by irrevocable facts of history and geography and language and culture and instinct and sentiment.

And I say to our European friends – many of whom I’m delighted to see in this room – we are here as ever, as we have been for decades, for centuries, to support and to help as we always have done for the last hundred years or more and the reason I stress this need for full legal autonomy, the reason we do not seek membership or part membership of the customs union or alignment of any kind, is at least partly that I want this country to be an independent actor and catalyst for free trade across the world.

He also blasted the jejune slurs of the dysfunctional left for the pathetic untruths that they are. Our social and environmental protections exceed the EU's - he quoted chapter and verse, available for all to reference within the full text of the speech. Neither would we be selling the NHS to the US. And neither would M. Barnier get any rights at all over the UK's EEZ waters -

We are ready to consider an agreement on fisheries, but it must reflect the fact that the UK will be an independent coastal state at the end of this year 2020, controlling our own waters.

And under such an agreement, there would be annual negotiations with the EU, using the latest scientific data, ensuring that British fishing grounds are first and foremost for British boats.

The reality is that our own fishing industry has been run down for half a century, ever since Grocer Heath gave it away. That capacity won't come back overnight - not just boats and crews, but boatyards and slips, piers and moorings, processing and freezing plants, markets, transport infrastructure and the entire tail of the nascent industry. For as many years as it takes to rebuild UK capacity, we will licence EU vessels to catch fish in our waters. Those catch totals will only diminish - never grow - but how quickly or slowly depends in great part on the speed with which we will rebuild.

This will not always be easy. This is a yard I knew well in Newhaven that built fishing boats under 20m - it is still there (at least on Google maps) but many more are not, replaced by ubiquitous jerry-built waterside apartments with galvanised balconettes and through-colour renders.

  
The Prime Minister helped scotch fears that his team was about to trade away British waters for the commercial gents in the City. It seems the commercial gents are supremely relaxed about EU threats anyway - and only Globalist mouthpieces such as the CBI are raising this as an issue. As Roger Bootle writes in the Telegraph

The fishing industry will, I think, be the litmus test. Apparently, Brussels is going to try to secure continued full access to British waters by trading this off against access to EU markets for the UK's financial services industry. The fishing industry may be pretty insignificant economically - and especially in comparison to financial services - yet it has enormous political importance.

It was sold out by Edward Heath, the then prime minister at the last moment during the negotiations that took Britain into the EU in 1973. And fishing is of particular significance in Scotland. The SNP wants to keep Scotland in the EU. If we sell out the fishing industry again this will be seen as a massive betrayal, especially in Scotland.

As for the financial services industry, that is a different kettle of fish - as it were. The EU needs the City of London as much, if not more, than the City needs the EU. If the EU makes things difficult for British financial services firms then it will be cutting off its nose to spite its face. Meanwhile, the City will thrive, as it always has done, selling services, including new ones based on fintech, around the world.

Guido carries a full video of the speech. Sit back, clutch drink of choice and enjoy!
Prime Minister - Greenwich - 3rd February 2020 

A typhoon is blowing through government

In the latter part of the 19th century, our legislators realised that government was seriously lagging the monumental changes to the Britain outside SW1. Britain had revolutionised but government was stuck in the past. Actually it was originally, from 1858, just SW. That postal coding in itself was one of the tsunami of reforms, legislative clearing-out, organising and administrative innovations that brought Whitehall into line with a world of trains, post, telegraphs, new towns and cities and the popular press. It all meant that the cobwebs of governance that had accumulated through centuries had to be swept away. The Palace of Westminster itself was rebuilt, and a rank of grand new Portland stone facades hubristic with Imperial pride thrust their chests out onto Whitehall. That's the scale of change it felt like yesterday - no wonder Corbyn looked so glum! Momentum is now definitely owned by the Conservatives (sorry, Owen) and when the great flywheel of state reaches speed, inertial forces will take the nation forward with stunning power. This session of Parliament may last little more than a year - by the Spring of 2021 the government aims to have enacted

• European Union Withdrawal Bill
• Agriculture Bill
• Fisheries Bill
• Trade Bill
• Immigration Bill
• NHS Funding Bill and NHS Long Term Plan
• Medicines and Medical Devices Bill
• Health Service Safety Investigations Bill
• Social Care Reform
• Education reform
• Broadband legislation
• Air Traffic Management and Unmanned Aircraft Bill
• Airline insolvency legislation
• Railways minimum service legislation
• Rail reform and High Speed Rail 2 (West Midlands - Crewe) Bill
• National Security and Investment Bill
• Science, space and research framework
• English devolution
• Employment Bill
• Housing and renters legislation
• Building and fire safety legislation
• Crackdown on terrorists
• Sentencing reform
• Serious violence measures
• Online Harms Bill
• Police powers
• Helen’s law
• Domestic abuse and divorce reform
• Extradition, foreign offenders and espionage legislation
• Victims’ law and Royal Commission
• Environment and animal welfare bill
• Climate change Bill
• Constitutional reform
• Armed forces maintenance

That's quite some programme.

Only one face looked less than ecstatic on the government benches - JRM. He looked in fact as though he'd been given advance warning that he was unlikely to survive on the Treasury bench beyond the February big Cabinet reshuffle. Or perhaps he was merely confused by all the novel regional voices behind him, some of which he could not perhaps quite understand.

Parking our tanks on Labour's lawn

The country has always been an egalitarian place. For a start, the planners haven't buggered it by creating monocultural ghettoes like the vast council estates of the metropolitans and the £1m villas of detached suburbia. In my old market town the cottage of a railwayman's widow nestled with the Tudor merchant's house of an FRS, and council houses (yes, we had them) were pairs or small groups of semi-detacheds woven seamlessly into the historical fabric. The pubs, the retailers, the amenities were used by all. Contrary to the caricatures, such small societies have the knack of tolerating and absorbing differences and varieties. My neighbour was curiously proud when Needham Market acquired its first Vegan - and the poor woman became the object of well-meaning but universal curiosity; "Are they allowed to touch newspapers?" asked the owner of the newsagents-come-toy-shop. Oh sure there were feuds, disputes and long-standing stubbornness, but we had five pubs (six if you included the bar of the Limes Hotel) and people spread themselves out. It was, if you like, One Village. There is little fertile ground for the Marxist politics of class hatred in such places.

Which brings us to Momentum. Everything that Labour promised in their campaign, every crazy giveaway and gift, every insane spending commitment, was not an end in itself but a lever with which to gull voters into building the bars of a Marxist central command State around themselves. Though their objectives were vile, it didn't mean that some of the persuasion-agenda stuff didn't chime with voters across the spectrum as laudable ends in themselves.

More social housing - why not? A young couple working in low-paid jobs should not be excluded from the possibility of a family life and a home, but of course neither should they have an absolute right to State housing. There's a median way. Rail fares - Villach to Vienna and Durham to London are both around 400km, but one will cost £29 for a single fare and the other £176. That's too great a difference. Training more nurses - for sure. Let's be flexible - there's room for not only SENs and SRNs but graduate Nurse Practitioners as well, for a variety of on the job, day release, full and part time training. Let's not be didactic.

The Conservatives, unlike the Marxists, don't have an ideology. However much Marxists try to impose one upon us. We're pragmatists, flexible and open to change. Agile, in the jargon of the modern management consultant. And this is where I fear those who are already projecting both their fears and their hopes onto Boris may well be disappointed. Just as they ditch their failed Leader, Labour may find that Boris has parked his tanks on their lawn.

Robert Tombs does a decent job of outlining the direction of travel in the Telegraph. No, Boris won't water down Brexit, and neither will he betray our Friends in the North. There is an obligation there. And an opportunity to destroy everywhere in Britain apart from the toxic big cities the poison of Marxist division. Tombs writes

Boris Johnson has a similar mission to transform the thin-lipped party of Cameron, Osborne and May – and beyond the borders of England too. This is a formidable task. But he has advantages: not only the spectacular own goals committed by Labour and the LibDems, and the desperate stridency of an SNP whose long-term hopes are threatened by Brexit.

He can, and indeed should in the opinion of even conservative economists, borrow more to invest – investment in its true sense, and not as a euphemism for all state spending. He can launch a big infrastructure strategy. He can push forward improvements in schools and in training: the tools – which Labour wanted to abolish – are already there. Outside the EU, he can help deprived regions more effectively and he can bring down the cost of living by cutting unnecessary tariffs.

That will do for starters.

Investment - the railway band was on hand yesterday for the official opening of a branch line electrification

Only Boris can deliver Brexit

Somewhat busy at the moment with the election, but be inspired by a tidy piece by Dan Hannan in the Telegraph this morning -

Ask yourself how Britain can reasonably hope to move on from the nastiness of the past three years. The Liberal Democrats propose to annul the referendum, a policy at which even many convinced Remainers baulk. Cancelling the result wouldn’t restore the status quo ante; rather, it would institutionalise the alienation and anger that envelop our politics.

Labour, meanwhile, wants to string the argument out through another referendum – and, in doing so, to string out the uncertainty for our exasperated businesses. Jeremy Corbyn proposes, with a straight face, to secure a better deal from Brussels and then campaign against his own deal.

And the Brexit Party? Sadly, it has been becoming clear for some time that the party is less interested in the first word in its title than the second. It was always going to oppose any Brexit deal, even if that meant staying in the EU (which would, of course, keep it in business).

In order to justify itself, it has to insist that leaving the EU is “not Brexit”, that taking back control of our money, laws and trade policy count for nothing and that Boris, who was the leader of the Leave campaign, is somehow not a Leaver. Unsurprisingly, two thirds of Leave voters back Boris’s deal, with only one in 10 opposed.

Yep. Only Boris can deliver Brexit.

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.

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.

AEP skiing off-piste

I normally devour anything that AEP delivers through the pages of the Telegraph, but this morning's column, departing as it does from his safe territory of finance and economics, has him skiing off-piste. He tries to construct a close match between France's Macron and Boris - that Boris is closer to the little Emperor than he is to the Donald - but it doesn't really hold. Here's why.

• AEP is correct in labelling Macron a nationalist - and his adoption of the Cross of Lorraine confirms it. However, Boris is not. I've no doubt he is patriotic, but nationalistic, no. Boris is a sophisticated Internationalist - committed to Britain and her place in the world.

• Because Boris is an Internationalist, he is in complete opposition to Macron's Globalist agenda. But he's a pragmatist, and will sup with the global corporates if it suits him. Macron however is committed to what Supranational authority, global government and global corporatism can deliver to a France hungry for power

• Boris is at heart a small-State social liberal. Macron is at core a Big-Government central Statist and deeply socially conservative.

• Yes, they both have elitist backgrounds - Boris at Eton, Macron the énarque - but Boris has the common touch and genuinely little 'side' to him whilst Macron has donned the gilded mantle of French State pomposity with the hauteur of a little Emperor.

I can see the point that AEP is striving for. Let me help him. No, Boris is not a Trump facsimile. But it is because he is a European that he and Macron can understand eachother. There. I've said it. Let me repeat it; I'm also European, and proud of it. Europe is a continent of 740m peoples, only 460m of whom live in nations under the heel of the EU.

Liveability, Localism and Law and Order - Boris in Manchester

Over lunch I've just listened to Boris delivering his Manchester speech (25 mts) and if you have the time it's worth a listen. The Leeds - Manchester fast rail link was well signalled and came as little surprise to the audience, but it really wasn't the point of the speech.



This was a speech aimed at Brexit Party voters, at Libertarians such as me, at Labour voters disgusted at their betrayal by the soft southern metropolitan ponces who have taken over their working-class party and at all those with a pride in their county, region, city or towns outside London.

He gave us Localism - greater devolution of powers across the regions (though Cameron said the same at the start and I believed him, too) but not too specific as to what Whitehall and SW1 will let be taken from their grasping talons.

He also gave us Liveability - a word banned from government since Gordon Brown's days. It's a word I'm very familiar with - I delivered one of the old ODPM's Liveability pilots back in the day in London. Under the tagline 'cleaner, safer, greener' we invested in declining local commercial centres with designs for easy maintenance, designs for safety and security, and for enhanced public transport access and use. I've just looked on google street maps at one of the marginal high streets we tackled back then - on the edge, declining and with vacant units when we picked it. Well, readers, I kid you not, they haven't changed our improvements and it's thriving - not a single vacant shop, a blooming pub, a clean and welcoming place through which to walk and shop. They've even left alone London's widest zebra crossing. You see, when I won the battle with the council's transport numpties to install a zebra crossing without barriers rather than the pelican crossing with extensive cattle-pen barriers they fought for, I rubbed it in. Zebra crossings have no width limit. So I instructed the designer to make ours 6m wide, on a raised table. I never thought it would have survived the petty vindictiveness of the local muppets whose transport planning ideas were stuck somewhere back in 1976 and who thought Jan Gehl was a Swedish rock band.

And then he gave us Law and Order. Prisons. Sentencing. Stuff to warm the hearts of blue-blood voters, despite himself being quite socially liberal.

It was all very well crafted and motivational. But you can judge for yourselves.

I'm soon going to have to search for something to be critical about in the Boris administration or the foundational purpose of this blog since 2008 - to hold their feet to the fire, and to do so day after day - will disappear.

Wow. I don't think anyone was expecting that.

A taste of the way things were going yesterday came early, with news that Dominic Cummings was in the Number Ten team. Then we knew Boris was serious, and would be a PM of very different stamp to the dilettante David Cameron or the dismally incapable May. Every new announcement of a new member of the Dream Team brought rapture to Leavers on social media and meltdown to remainers.

Boris has three jobs. First, to get the UK out of the EU by 31st October. Second, to consolidate a party whose congruence has been dented by EUphile rebels. Finally, to trounce Corbyn and win an autumn general election. The team he has put together has been designed precisely to deliver those three outcomes - and so far all the square pegs have gone into the square holes.

There were a number of media columns yesterday suggesting that Boris should trigger an immediate election. Risible nonsense. It is time for the Treasury to release its grip a little so that measures to sweeten the changes of the coming months can be appreciated by the electorate before they go to the polls; the public would also not forgive an election until Boris is forced into one by a petulant and obstructive parliament. Those forcing an election will be compromising our ability to put all our efforts into an October Brexit, and thus will be acting against the interests of the British people.

As for Brexit, his message is clear. We are planning for a clean Brexit, but are asking Brussels to accept a cut-and-paste deal taking all the best bits from May's mess; citizens' rights, travel, pets, financial passporting and those sorts of things. If the inflexible bigots and zealots won't budge then so be it; a clean Brexit. Any fall out will be the EU's fault - we tried. And we keep our £39bn.

Cleverly as Party chair is a good move. He's a plodder, not a cerebral. House trained and socially skilled, he can schmooze with the best of them and is utterly loyal to whomever is in power. With the lesser posts filled overnight, this morning we have a cabinet of 30 with 14 leavers and 16 who voted remain in the referendum - though who now are fully committed to Boris and to a clean Brexit.

So many good appointments. And so many strengths - a cabinet that can both manage leaving the EU and plan an election win, that can win loyalty from both the parliamentary party and the Conservative Associations. I'd almost forgotten what a capable PM looked like. DUDE.

Now to bring the party funders back and fill the war chest. James, go!    

Just enjoy their discomfort

Columns will be filled for many months with Boris and Brexit, and we have a way to go and a likely general election to face, but just for today, for one day whilst Boris moves in, let's give ourselves a break.

For three years we've had a remainer government that didn't want to deliver Brexit working hand in glove with a remainer parliament that doesn't want to deliver Brexit. Now, for the first time since 23rd June 2016, we will have a Cabinet and key mandarins and sherpas committed to leaving. This has of course triggered all the fifth-column remainers - and their petulant, juvenile tantrums are a joy to behold.

Florence of Belgravia has flounced out and will continue to be a prat from the back benches. #RoryWanksOn. Hammond, Gaulk and other nobodies have gone before they're sacked. Boulton is so puce with anger I thought his head would explode, the Guardian is in meltdown, social media is as stunned as it was three years ago and despite their #NotMyPM tags they will find that in fact he is. So for a day, chill, laugh and enjoy their discomfort.

Guardian must produce the Boris surveillance files

As the sofa wine stain story broke yesterday, as early as dawn it became clear that the perpetrators - the Guardian newspaper and  hostile left-wing neighbours of Boris Johnson, were deeply compromised. Claiming to be concerned for the couple's welfare, Tom Penn called the police. Fair enough. He claims to have knocked at his neighbours' door - for which there is of course no evidence. Now if Penn were genuinely concerned for the couple's welfare, and his story were true, the police having confirmed that nothing was amiss, the sofa wine stain spat having fizzled out, he would have shut up and that would have been the end of the matter.

However, Penn and his American-born wife Eve Leigh were less concerned with their neighbours' welfare than with damaging them in any way they could. Penn handed over a surveillance recording he had made to the Guardian, which ran the sofa wine stain story.

Boris and Carrie have already been subject of a campaign of harassment and intimidation in their home with flyers (pictured below) plastered around the building and on vehicles outside. It is not known whether Penn and Leigh are responsible for these.

We also don't know how the recording was made. In a statement to the Guardian, Penn claims "I went inside my own home, closed the door, and pressed record on the voice memos app on my phone." If his claims that the recording in which the words of a heated conversation can be heard clearly was made in this way, it is extraordinary. Until we have the audio file to analyse, the veracity of Penn's claim cannot be confirmed. It is possible that the hostile neighbours made the recording using professional mics (they are theatre people, after all) fixed onto/into the party wall or floor - and that the clip heard by the Guardian was just an out-take from a comprehensive series of surveillance recordings. Until we have access to the audio file we simply don't know.

Boris Johnson is a terrorist target and an MP and ex-cabinet minister. The police must surely now determine whether he was being bugged by his hostile neighbours - and crucially, whether Penn and Leigh have breached s.58 of the 2000 Terrorism Act -

Collection of information.

(1) A person commits an offence if—

(a) he collects or makes a record of information of a kind likely to be useful to a person committing or preparing an act of terrorism, or

(b) he possesses a document or record containing information of that kind.

Then there is also the person or persons behind these leaflets - were they printed or made on an employer's colour copier?

Britain is neither in thrall to the Stasi or the Gestapo and their gangs of block and neighbourhood informants. Penn and Leigh committed an unforgivable breach of privacy at the very least, and possible criminal offences at worst. This is not an end to the matter.

Rhetorical question I guess ...

For whom, dear readers, should I vote?

Boris promises to bribe the public sector

There is one part of the nation's demographic lost to the Conservative Party - the public sector. Home to agile, graduate, socially liberal Remainers, our schools, universities, hospitals, councils and every body or NDPB funded by tax are now solid Labour or LibDem territory. Not at the bottom, of course - not the young constables, cleaners, cooks and clerks - but the professional and executive ranks, say from £40k upwards, and all teachers and clinical practitioners.

These are the cohorts of our society least affected by globalism, most adapted to take advantage of AI changes, and who have suffered least from 'austerity' - which has meant closing libraries and school kitchens, not making managers redundant. They are not users of food banks, not customers of payday loan sharks, not precariously balancing food, heat or clothing against each other. These are the young, privileged new elite of Britain; the Netflix and Uber generation, with car leases and new apartments in Peckham who take one main and two weekend breaks abroad each year, visit restaurants and have surplus cash for entertainment.

So Boris is proposing to give away £10bn in tax benefits to them by raising the tax threshold from £50k to £80k. And it's quite clear who he's promising to bribe - as the Telegraph reports

Those who found themselves paying the higher rate included teachers, senior police officers and some nurses. The Conservatives subsequently increased the threshold from £41,900 to £50,000 in response to the concerns of Tory MPs. Mr Johnson's plans, however, go significantly further.

Personally I no longer have a stake in this - my post-retirement income is under the higher tax threshold. But I do care deeply for our nation, and for the welfare of all our people. The shittiest part of this public sector bribe is that the lowest-paid will fund it; the £10bn "cost of the move will be funded partly by increasing employee national insurance payments .." reports the Telegraph. Boris. you dickhead, take a look at this ONS chart -

Since 2008, the value of earnings of those on median pay (£28,400 in 2018 according to the ONS) has actually fallen.

This is not 'One Nation' Conservatism. This is naked, calculated subversion of public funds to bribe those who have electorally deserted the Conservative Party. I could not, this morning, cast my vote for Boris Johnson. For now, my vote is with Raab.

Update
=====
I've just split the effect by region (GOR) from the ONS tables. Below.
There was a news comment earlier that puts the gross cost at £20bn - net cost £9.6bn. Boris claims this money would go back into the economy; hmm. I suspect at this level a lot of it will go into savings, pensions and investments rather than into the tills of High Street shops, so perhaps a limited benefit for the country as a whole. And bugger all good if you're in the North East though your NHS GP (~ £100k) may look happier.

Boris - Chequers cheats the electorate

Text of the final part of Boris' speech - with apologies to ConHome
Full text at ConHome HERE

So now therefore is the time truly to take back control and make the elegant dignified and grateful exit the country voted for. This is the moment – and there is time – to chuck Chequers, to scrap the Commission’s constitutionally abominable Northern Ireland backstop, to use the otherwise redundant and miserable “implementation period” to the end of 2020 to negotiate the Supercanada FTA, to invest in all the customs procedures that may be needed to ensure continued frictionless trade, and to prepare much more vigorously for a WTO deal.

And if we get it right, then the opportunities are immense. It is not just that we can do free trade deals. In so many growth areas of the economy this country is already light years ahead. Tech, data, bioscience, financial services, you name it. We can use our regulatory freedom to intensify those advantages.

And of course our European friends know that is possible – and that is exactly why they want to constrain us. Yet I would argue that it is actually in their interests too, to have the fifth biggest economy in the world, on their doorstep, acting as a continuing brake and caution to the over- regulatory instincts that have held the EU back for so long. Instead of being relentlessly homogenised, we can actually learn from each other again, in the spirit of friendly emulation that inspired the renaissance of European civilisation.

If we get this right, it can be win-win for both sides of the Channel.

If we get it wrong – if we bottle Brexit now – believe me, the people of this country will find it hard to forgive.

If we get it wrong, if we proceed with this undemocratic solution, if we remain half-in half out, we will protract this toxic tedious business that is frankly so off-putting to sensible middle of the road people who want us to get on with their priorities.

If we cheat the electorate – and Chequers is a cheat – we will escalate the sense of mistrust. We will give credence to those who cry betrayal, and I am afraid we will make it more likely that the ultimate beneficiary of the chequers deal will be the far right in the form of UKIP.

And therefore the far Left in the form of Jeremy Corbyn – a man who takes money from Iranian tv, who can barely bring himself to condemn the Russian state for the Salisbury atrocity, who indulges anti-semitism, and who by opportunistically committing himself to the misery and farce of a second referendum, has finally revealed himself to be the patsy of the EU as well.

We cannot allow it to happen.

We must not allow it to happen.

And so for one last time, I urge our friends in government to deliver what the people voted for, to back Theresa May in the best way possible, by softly, quietly, and sensibly backing her original plan. And in so doing to believe in conservatism and to believe in Britain.

Because if we get it wrong we will be punished. And if we get it right we can have a glorious future.

This government will then be remembered for having done something brave and right and remarkable and in accordance with the wishes of the people.

Nice whistle

Congrats to whichever Boris fans have found and distributed this meme - it's a decent photo, the suit fits, the hair is combed. He looks ... different.

Hmm. 

"British sovereign self-government must be restored"

"British sovereign self-government must be restored". So writes AEP in the Telegraph this morning (£). The gist of the piece is

1. The EU is essentially a lawless criminal cabal with an ethos of rule-breaking utterly antithetical to more honest, principled Brits; a sclerotic Empire focused solely on its own interests. There is no international law, no solemn contract, no bilateral treaty and no legal obligation that they will not breach, ignore, twist or pervert to their own ends, using their corrupt Freisler-court the ECJ to whitewash the crime scenes.

2. Theresa May is a wet hen without the nous to run a whelk stall. The 1922 committee should ditch her pronto and select a Leader willing to fight for Britain. Boris fits the bill.

'The cold reality for Brexiteers is that if they do not like Chequers [the Robbins Plan - Ed], they must mobilise and fight. Shanker Singham, a former WTO negotiator at the Institute of Economic Affairs, says nothing can be achieved as long as Britain clings to the EU’s regulatory structure and the perennial Acquis.  “We’re prevented from doing any deals until we have clearly taken the customs union and the single market off the table. Nobody wants to talk to us. The moment Chequers came out we ceased to be of any relevance to the US,” he said.

“We need a leader who is willing to get out of this halfway house, blast through the barriers, and play hardball with the EU. At that point the cohesion in Europe will break down,” he said.'

Well, Tory remainers have shown already how much they are spooked by Boris. The well-concerted efforts supported by May yesterday over his innocuous Burqa comments. And there could be no greater vote of confidence in Boris' ability than Dominic Grieves's promise to quit the party if Boris wins. I'd love to be a bluebottle on Anna Soubry's gin glass to catch her response.

And though Michael Gove will be back next month with his colon newly pressure-washed, his zits squeezed and forty new words in his vocabulary book, Boris has learnt his lesson and will keep the Govelet at arm-plus-dagger length. Particularly when his back is turned.

This is turning out to be a duck-August after all; the turbid waters beneath the surface of Tory tranquillity may well break, to our nation's benefit. 

Boris is just telling a simple truth

Boris Johnson is neither a Muslim-hating bigot, a Corbynst-type passive-aggressive racist nor, as the smaller and more hysterical of the Guardian's hacks would have it, a fascist. As the cartoon below says so clearly, our culture finds sinister those who hide their faces. Women who wear the Niqab or Burqa are seen as hostile, threatening, to be feared. Sadly, many Muslim women know this and use their silly costumes like cultural weapons - the reason they are now banned in so many European countries. 

There you have it. Boris was just telling a simple truth. There will be those desperate for confirmation and endorsement of their own delusions who will seek to interpret his words as a condemnation of the whole of Islam - but rest easy, it isn't.