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

Schrödinger's Weekend

The HoL Supreme Court will keep us on tenterhooks until Monday (I think) for the prorogation ruling so enjoy the next three days. I always regarded this time, between the conclusion of submissions and the finding of the adjudicator in construction disputes, as a Schrödinger's Holiday; you don't know whether you've won or lost, so both states exist, you can do nothing more, there are no more deadlines, no more lengthy case conferences, so you might as well chill and do some leisure.

It seems Dave's gob has ended any hopes that Sam Cam may have nurtured at ever becoming Lady Cameron. Silly chump. However, Fraser Nelson  in the Telegraph reckons that Dave's Brussels experiences should have made him a Leaver anyway -

Once inside its inner circle, he was exposed to the horrors. The directives, the stitch-ups, the knives always out for the City of London. He found Silvio Berlusconi advising a table of EU leaders to take a mistress in Brussels, because it was the only way to survive the late-night summits. The purpose of these meetings, he discovered, was to grind everyone into submission. Including, eventually, him.

He found the EU to be "peacenik" on security, unable to respond to threats on its doorstep. He vetoed one of the eurozone bailout packages that threatened to suck in Britain, only to see the rules changed so the UK veto would not count. When the UK tried to go its own way, it "wasn’t simply a disagreement with the others, it was a heresy against the scripture".

We were early here in blogging about the deep need for democratic housekeeping in the UK and certainly over the months and years posts about reform and renewal, legal and electoral systems generate deeply felt and high quality participation. I'm wondering whether constitutional reform could be another Europe - let me explain.

Before the referendum, the political wisdom was that no-cared about the EU except a small and vocal group of fanatics. June 2016 brought a Damascene revelation - suddenly the entire nation was galvanised into passionate interest. Who knew? Well, today the political wisdom is that an election can be fought on the old ground of education, law and order, the NHS. To suggest that local government or constitutional reform might be a manifesto issue seems as absurd as suggesting in 2010 that the nation would polarise over the EU.

Another momentous week ahead

We are living through times that will feature large in the history texts of the future. These are times as portentous as those of 1688 or 1848. This time we are not fighting a Catholic monarch or a wealthy land-owning oligarchy for control of our lives and futures, but an elite of globalist supranationalists who would trade away nation and people for petty self-advantage.

Readers and contributors here previously drew our attention to the error of appointing Amber Rudd to government. I was ready to give Boris the benefit of the doubt - but it seems she gulled and fooled me as much as she did the Prime Minister. With a week ahead of events as momentous as any I have known in my life, I'm giving the rest of this morning's post over to a comment made by Sobers to the post below, which deserves a more prominent airing; 

"So why don't they just accept the democratic vote of 17.4 million people and give up then? Why can't they accept losing?"

Because they don't understand what losing is. What one needs to understand is the the Remain element of the HoC, and their supporters outside it (which are not all Remainers by far, just the vocal ones) are all members of the same class - the one who for 30 years, ever since Thatcher basically, have been the winners of the political game. They are the sort of people who swan from politics to heading large charities, from heading quangos to think tanks, to well paid media jobs, to running NHS trusts, or whatever. They all swim in the same sea, move in the same circles. They are the movers and shakers in State funded circles. They consider they run the country, and for 30 years its always moved in the direction they agree with. Yes there might be a nominal Conservative government every now and again, but none of them ever do anything to reverse the flow of more regulation, more State control of everything, more immigration, more taxes, more public spending, more European integration. A Tory government might slow the advance a bit, but the direction of travel always remains the same.

So in their heads they have decided that what they want is the only way the country can move in. Its just the natural state of affairs to them. Anything else is immoral as far as they are concerned. Just suggesting slowing down the speed of travel generates plenty of vitriol at those who dare to question them, the very idea that someone might throw the supertanker into reverse doesn't even fit in their comprehension.

So all of this isn't really about the pros and cons of being in a supra-national body such as the EU any more. Its about a political class being faced for the first time ever with the word 'No'. Its so discombobulated them, the mask has slipped. No longer are the usual platitudes about 'working families' and 'democratic choice' even paid lip service. They have been thrown out as their naked desire for power is exposed. Its become a nothing less than a power struggle - who is to govern, the People, or the Political Class? That's why they can't let Brexit happen, not because of any specific arguments about it, but because its become an existential fight - if they lose it they lose everything. If the voters can force the political class to leave the EU against their will, what other ideas might the people get?

May unlikely to survive Commons defeat

The Prime Minister's appearance in parliament yesterday confirmed as nothing else could that the Robbins Treaty will not get through a Commons vote on 11th December. From every side of the house, in refined parliamentary voices, our MPs said "Pish! We don't believe you" as Mrs May struggled to repeat in slightly different ways the same six lies on which she's depended since giving up on "No deal is better than a bad deal". This itself has gone the same way as "Strong and Stable" and others of Theresa's trite little maxims. She is set to tour the country for the next two weeks repeating those same six lies ad nauseum to anyone holding a microphone, and her supporters and Brandon Lewis' office have been sent off to conquer social media. I suspect they've all been instructed to publish six tweets in support of their doomed leader, but judging by their output, their hearts are not in it. 

Conservative MPs have a finely tuned sense of survival, and by last night they had begun to realise that the game was up. Mrs May is unlikely to survive her coming Commons defeat on 11th December, and her supporters know it. Brandon Lewis, who will fall with Mrs May, has nothing to lose, but others including I suspect James Cleverly, just last week the most prominent of Mrs May's social media warriors, has suddenly gone very quiet. Other MPs have practised for eating-up their Christmas sprouts; some who can't quite bring themselves to repeat Mrs May's six lies have just done their homework by re-tweeting those that can. "What he said". Then running away with proof for the Whips. 

Before that 'meaningful vote' on 11th December we have five days of Commons debate on the Robbins Treaty. The Lords have no vote, but the Commons will consider their views on the 12th. Then those protracted and complex amendments from earlier in the year kick in.  As the Commons Library advises

a Minister of the Crown would be obliged to make a statement under s. 13(4) European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018 no later than 21 calendar days thereafter. The Government then has seven sitting days within which to move motions in both Houses on the statement.

The House is due to rise for Christmas on the 20th, returning on 7th January. The Chief Whip already has his timetable sketched out; 

After Christmas things are equally tight. As the guide advises;

If, on 21 January 2019, no political agreement has been reached regarding the Withdrawal Agreement and/or the framework on the future relationship, a Minister of the Crown must make a written statement within five calendar days, as per s. 13(11) European Union (Withdrawal) Act 2018.

This means a written statement as to the Government’s intentions must be made by Saturday 26 January at the very latest.

The motion must then be moved within a further five sitting days, meaning Parliament would be asked to debate the Government’s intended course of action no later than Monday 4 February.

Now two matters which are being trailled in the press. The first is the extent of the government's defeat, punted by those who believe that it is possible to be a little bit pregnant. If the majority against May is not over 100, they say, it's an invitation for her to ask the House to vote a second time, after she's made a purely cosmetic visit to Brussels to record some encouraging noises, but no actual changes to the WA, from the Commission. 

The second is what is being billed as the TARP option; between the first and second votes, Hammond and Carney will co-ordinate a crash in Sterling and UK stocks, thus scaring MPs into agreeing the Robbins Treaty in the same way that US Congressmen were frightened into passing TARP on the second go. 

I think both are unlikely. I think by the 12th, the Conservative Party will be looking for a new Leader - the May government will effectively have fallen. The question is whom will Her Majesty invite to form the next government - for Ministers are needed to get those key Brexit actions through.

Thoughts?