Ten lessons for young climate activists

1. More layers
Don't keep turning the thermostat up when wearing just a tee shirt. We're saving the planet at that 18° setting. Put on more layers.

2. Plastics
Look for well-made clothes fashioned from linen, wool, cotton or even hemp. The other stuff - stretchy, spangly, fleecy, non-crease - is made from plastics or oil-derived synthetics. Don't keep buying new cheap throw-way stuff from Asos and suchlike - you're either serious about the planet or about Instagram. And learn to darn your socks and sew buttons - if your grandfather can do it so can you

3. Lights
When you leave a room, turn the light off. When you leave a room unoccupied for any length of time, turn the radiator off or down to the lowest setting. Don't leave stuff on 'standby'. Dont leave chargers on all the time.

4. Shoes
Cheap glued Chinese and Asian shoes and trainers made from plastics, synthetic rubbers and oil-derived fabrics that last only a few months are killing the planet and choking landfill. Invest in well-made long-lasting footwear from UK makers - leather for preference.

5. Coffee
We know you don't like Starbucks any more, but Costa and the fake-brand 'artisan' chains owned by big-name global corporates are just as bad. Make your coffee at home, take a thermos and donate £9 a day to a climate change charity instead

6. Reuse and recycle
This doesn't mean just chucking stuff into the right bin but not chucking stuff away at all. Why does everything have to be new? What's wrong with your old phone that we need to poison the world with rare-earth cyanides and enslave children in Asian factories just so you can have a new one every year?

7. Walk and take the bus
Your parents are not free Uber. Maybe if you didn't keep treating them like it they wouldn't need that huge SUV in the drive. Walk. Take the bus. Lose a few pounds.

8. Help with the vegetable patch
A little help tilling and weeding the veg patch wouldn't come amiss. You're missing just how much growing our own French beans for the freezer saves the planet. And ditch avocados. Where do you imagine they come from? Somerset? Learn to love courgettes.

9. Forget Festivals
Don't even think about Glastonbury. It's not the fact that you throw away 80,000 plastic tents each year and create 5,000 tonnes of unrecyclable landfill waste but your travel carbon costs are killing the planet - fan travel costs make up 80% - 90% and performer travel costs the balance. And we're talking 10,000 tonnes of CO2 in total for Glasto.

10. Copy your grandparents
 Remember, your grandparents were saving the planet long before you were born. Brewing their own beer, making and mending their own clothes, keeping hens, growing food, making jam and cycling and trips in their old 2CV. You may be surprised that they regard you as an insufferable self-absorbed eco-lout trashing finite resources who talks the talk but doesn't walk the walk. 

Avocados are not grown here

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.

Democratic reform and renewal

This follows on from the previous post. Today we have the prospect of the cerebrally inadequate John Major making an appearance in court - though not speaking - for his 12.10 to 12.30 slot. One hopes Lord Garnier, who represents this most mediocre of intellects, has made some substance of his simple-minded bigotry or we will be bored to tears.

European nations as we know them are, constitutionally, mostly infants. As I have written before, by the end of the 14th century in England (and I mean England and not the UK) serfdom had almost practically ceased to exist, the wage labourer having emerged from the Black Death. By the end of the 16th we had an independent and prosperous middle class and were developing systems of law and democracy from which we would emerge through the turmoil of the 17th to the era termed by historians 'early modern'. In contrast, serfdom and feudalism survived in Europe until the mid-19th century, and Europe's birth-pangs took a century or more of war and chaos before democracy (of a sort) emerged. Yes, they have written constitutions - but in English terms, are barely out of nappies;

Date of Constitution
Sweden	1974
Denmark	1953
France	1958
Germany	1949
Italy	1947
Spain	1978
Portugal	1976

For most of Europe, the Maastrict and Lisbon treaties - in effect the EU constitution - are just a natural progression from what are already new systems of governance.

Not so for the UK, though as commenters made clear yesterday, Brexit has exposed major faults in our system which now needs some fixing. The Lords and the Speaker are the most obvious. Allister Heath in the Telegraph does a decent job this morning of setting out the Heads of Terms -

.... the next government will have to legislate to prevent MPs from ever “seizing control” again and then repeal the Fixed-term Parliaments Act. The power to conduct international treaty negotiations must be left solely to the executive; at the same time, the ability to prorogue needs to be codified, alongside much else.

The governance of the Commons must change radically, with the Speaker bound by clear rules. Any MP who wants to change party should be forced to call a by-election.* The House of Lords will have to be scrapped or, preferably, comprehensively reformed, with a debate about who should belong to it and what proportion should be elected and how. An English Parliament is long overdue, with tax and spend genuinely devolved to a properly federalised United Kingdom.

The civil service is in desperate need of an overhaul: ministers should become CEOs, with staff working directly for them. In a world where special advisers have become so important, we ought to discuss whether more ministers should be directly appointed, or belong to the upper rather than lower chamber.

The next government must take to heart Lord Sumption’s Reith Lecture, perhaps the best political analysis of the year, and row back on the "rights culture". There has been too much mission creep, and too many decisions have been taken by the courts, rather than left to democratically elected politicians. This doesn’t mean that we mustn’t continue to protect rights: on the contrary, I would argue that we need a robust British Bill of Rights to replace our membership of the ECHR.

Add a general power of recall with a threshold high enough to prevent vexatious abuse and an overhaul of local government and electoral health measures and there you have a legislative agenda for the greatest reforming Parliament for over 150 years.

I hope and believe we can do all this without a written constitution. Just as statute law sits happily alongside common law and precedent, we can achieve change without throwing out the baby with the bathwater. As Blair found to his frustration and chagrin, you cannot abolish the Lord Chancellor.

It's really no longer just about Brexit. It's about re-forging our nation for the benefit of future generations, a legacy of love. 

*Allister is thoroughly wrong about this particular point; MPs represent their constituents, not their parties. It's the constituents who should have the right to force a by-election, not the judges. A power of recall would cover this.  

In praise of our non-constitution

The interest with which the HoL Supreme Court has captured an unimagined video audience yesterday strained the government's servers. One could actually detect additional servers kicking in like generators on the national grid coming online, and the government's very recent upgrades of IT capacity to meet the heavy demands generated by the 'we're Leaving' ad campaign look now like a sound investment made in good time. The EU nomenklature and apparatchiks tuning into Middlesex Guildhall, used to the rehearsed and pre-determined theatrics of their own political court must have been deeply confused. They must have thought our eleven law lords were doing a brilliant job of pretending not to know the outcome of the case - surely they could never imagine, based on their own experience, that in the UK cases are not actually decided before they come to court? Let's hope for more bundle-fun today - the joy of an entire bench of QCs each charging Mrs Miller £2k an hour for losing their files in public is a pleasure not to be missed.

Back to Lord Sumption's Reith lectures and this:-

For quite a few years now, these calls have taken the form of proposals for a written constitution. I have been concerned in these lectures with our persistent habit of looking for legal solutions to what are really political problems. Calls for a written constitution mark the extreme point of that tendency. Theoretically, we could have a written constitution without expanding the constitutional role of the judiciary. The constitution of the French fifth republic, in its original form of 1958, came pretty close to that, but, in practise, every scheme of constitutional reform suggested for Britain in recent years has sought to limit the powers of Parliament and government and to increase those of judges.

This is not an accident. A written constitution is, by definition, a supreme source of law. It prevails over Parliamentary legislation. Any supreme law which sets out to regulate relations between the citizen and the state must necessarily put some rights beyond the reach of the elected legislature. But the power which the legislature loses under such schemes does not simply disappear, it passes to judges. Judges recognise, interpret and sometimes create constitutional rights. Judges decide when these rights may be trumped by other interests.

And it really does come down to how we want our democracy to operate - with, as David Starkey explained, the People sovereign or the People ruled by a caste of lawyers, a political class alien to the masses, a political class that holds us in contempt? The question hardly needs asking.

Wellington, after Waterloo, compared his own command of the armies to a bridle made of rope - that of the French to a bridle made of stitched leather. Theirs may look more elegant, more perfectly designed but it was vulnerable. Wellington said that if his bridle broke, he simply knotted it back together and carried on. If the French leather bridle came apart, it was finished and could not be rescued. And at the Duke's hands the French bridle frequently came apart. Our non-constitution is similarly - to use the jargon of the management consultant - agile. Sumption again;

If our existing constitution was intolerable, we might have to put up with the disruption and instability involved in jettisoning it. But, in fact, it has brought us real advantages. Because it remains essentially a political and not a legal constitution, it is capable of significant incremental development without any formal process of amendment. This has enabled the British state to adapt to major changes in our national life which would have overwhelmed much more formal arrangements, the onset of industrialisation and mass democracy, the existential crises of two world wars, the creation and then loss of a worldwide empire, the rise of powerful nationalisms in Ireland, Scotland and Wales.

All of this has been accommodated politically without changing the basic constitutional framework. Take devolution, not just because we are gathered here in the capital of a politically reborn Wales, but because it is probably the outstanding modern example of the advantages of constitutional flexibility. Devolution has radically altered the internal workings of the United Kingdom, but it was achieved politically by ordinary legislation after a general election in which it was part of the successful party's manifesto.

This Supreme Court case is seminal not just for the issue of the Brexit prorogation before their Lordships. Its outcome will also be a landmark in our constitutional history; either the affirmation of our unique democratic advantages, or the start of a descent into slavery under the heel of the political class and an end to the longevity and stability of our system of governance. 

Bettel nuts

The images cannot be unremembered; a hysterical hairy little man in a cheap suit, looking more like Ricky Gervaise than the Prime Minister of a European nation (albeit a very small one) ranting about how much he hates Brexit. And this after he had tried unsuccessfully to set Boris up in a trap to be caught by a hostile crowd of establishment British ex-pats (mostly EU civil servants and their dags, I'll bet) yelling and chanting just yards away. Herr Bettel was nuts.

You can understand Herr Bettel's pain. Luxembourg is a handout State; 5% of the country's GNI, some €1.8bn a year, comes from the pockets of other European taxpayers. Brexit may mean a lower handout for the coddled citizens, coupled with a competitive UK that will be attracting overseas investment  at a time when Luxembourg's crooked corporate tax arrangements (set up by one Herr Juncker - whose criminal conviction hasn't stopped him reaching capo di capi of the EU) are being brought to an end.

However, this was an appalling display of boorish incivility not just towards Boris but towards Britain. Our Head of Government was there representing us, our nation, and this calculated insult from a little Nazi-friendly joke of a nation (they didn't exactly welcome Liberation) that has sponged on our taxes for too long is unforgivable. It was a major lapse in Statecraft.

The vacuous gurning fool who we are told is Luxembourg's PM

Finally, many thanks for the pointers to Brendan O'Neill's superb hour with David Starkey. rarely have I enjoyed a podcast more - and for anyone who hasn't yet heard it I commend it. HERE on the spiked! site. Worth it alone for the vehemence with which he calls Dominic Grieve a shit.

The three day hearing of the prorogation judicial review starts today in the Supreme Court with the appellants' arguments, government respondents tomorrow and 'interventions' on behalf of various concerned citizens (one John Major and others) on Thursday. Ho hum.

Rogue Parliament - Rogue Speaker

When I was a youngster there was a dinosaur factoid about the time it would take a nerve impulse to travel from the tip of a Diplodocus' tail to its minuscule brain. I've still no idea whether it was true or not for dinosaurs, but it's a convenient metaphor for the lag between a change in public mood and the realisation of that change by our MPs. At times the message doesn't get through at all, as in the case of status and expenses. Contrary to every single snapshot of public opinion, MPs, like the models in the cosmetics adverts, believe they're worth it. They really do imagine that they're special.

Yet over the weekend another poll appeared that confirmed once more that our MPs are utterly mistaken in their high opinion of themselves. The ComRes poll for the Express hasn't at time of writing appeared on the ComRes site so I must rely on the paper's published excerpts.

- 73% of Remain voters think Parliament is in desperate need of reform
- 85% of Leave voters think Parliament is in desperate need of reform

- 73% of all voters think Parliament does not attract the brightest and the best

One MP in Parliament thinks he is even more special than anyone else - the vile and meretricious Speaker Bercow, the sanctimonious dwarf who has, more than any other MP, trashed our democratic nexus. He is defending nothing but his own tattered reputation, standing for nothing greater than his personal notoriety, committed to nothing but his own egoistic fantasies. And the British public are united in their view of his disastrous time in the chair - he has helped destroy confidence in Parliament.

My hope is that our only saving grace is the venality, cupidity and self-interest of MPs themselves. Faced with this crisis of confidence, they will agree to sacrifice the Lords to save themselves. It may be too little too late. Janet Daley writes in the Telegraph -

... even if the Leave case wins through, the damage that has been done to British political life is horrendous. We seem to have imported two of the worst features of the American tradition. First there is gridlock. In the US this occurs when one party has the presidency and the other controls Congress, thus making government inoperable. This should not be possible in the British system since the executive is comprised of the majority, or a functioning minority, in parliament. But the Speaker and Continuity Remain have found a way to abolish the principle of democratic consent which once accepted this arrangement.

Then there is the US predilection for a losing side to try to sue its way to victory with continuous vexatious litigation. This is alien not only to our customs but to our national understanding of the role of politics and the function of the law.

My own view is that the system, the configuration, is robust. It has been corrupted by a Rogue Parliament and a Rogue Speaker, a man who should never in a million years have been elevated to the chair. I just hope we can cull them, throw them from the place, eject them and reclaim OUR Parliament and OUR democracy free from these vulgar weasels.

An excellent graphic from the Daily Express

Cameron and the Referendum

"I remember exactly how I decided to call the Referendum. Giles and Penny were coming up for a kitchen supper, and Sam had a spag bol on the go. I had cued-up a whole box set of the West Wing, fluffed the sofa cushions and had ordered up three bottles of Rioja, which were nicely chambré.

Then the internal phone went, It was Oliver from the private office. I had sneaked away early (as I often used to do) using my usual trick of leaving an old suit coat on the back of my chair - a trick I learned at Eton to make me appear a girly swot when I was really listening to the Smiths on my Walkman behind Wankies. Oliver had discovered I hadn't done my red boxes again. Boring! In fact I had been looking at brochures for houses to rent for the Summer in Rock. I couldn't wait for the annual hols in Cornwall - miles better than all this politics and government and stuff!

Oliver said I had to make a decision on the EEC thing. Well, if there's one thing I learned from Mrs T it was never to get serious about anything to do with that Brussels lot. Just leave them be, sign anything they sent and pay the money - that way the hols wouldn't be interrupted by pesky phone calls from blokes with funny foreign accents! So I told Oliver to bring the file up and I'd break off my evening to give it full consideration.

It was HUGE. I couldn't read all that! I had a rule that if anything took more than three minutes to read I'd just pretend I'd read it. Well, this was no different. I turned straight to the signature and decision sheet. There were two options, one of which had to be crossed out. I reached into my pocket and called out to the kitchen

'Sam! Heads or tails?'

'Tails' she said - brave girl!

'Right then! Referendum it is!'

'What?'

'Nothing'.

I gave the file back to Oliver in the morning looking a bit haggard, as though I'd been up all night reading. In fact we watched an entire series of the West Wing and drank all three bottles of wine and Giles and Penny didn't leave until 1am!"  

Democracy Trumps Courts

Lord Sumption was clearly by accident or design a superb choice to deliver the Reith lectures this year. The current hysteria is seeing the courts and judges assailed by a plethora of very wealthy litigants, from London to Edinburgh and Belfast, litigants fired with zealous righteousness and with faces infused to a shade of puce with the justice of their cause. They are seeking to find a court, any court, that will assist them in blocking the nation's democratic decision to leave the EU. Sumption had this to say - albeit as part of a lecture on Human Rights law, but it fits -

Democracy, in its traditional sense, is a fragile construct.It is extremely vulnerable to the idea that one’s own values are so obviously urgent and right that the means by which one gets them adopted don’t matter. That is one reason why it exists in only a minority of states. Even in those states it is of relatively recent origin and its basic premises are under challenge by the advocates of various value-based systems. One of these is a system of law-based decision making which would entrench a broad range of liberal principles as the constitutional basis of the state. Democratic choice would be impotent to remove or limit them without the authority of courts of law. 

Now, this is a model in which many lawyers ardently believe. The essential objection to it is that it is conceptually no different from the claim of communism, fascism, monarchism, Catholicism, Islamism and all the other great isms that have historically claimed a monopoly of legitimate political discourse on the ground that its advocates considered themselves to be obviously right. But other models are possible. One can believe in rights without wanting to remove them from the democratic arena by placing them under the exclusive jurisdiction of a priestly caste of judges. One can believe that one’s fellow citizens ought to choose liberal values without wanting to impose them.

This recourse to private law is in many cases an attempt by those who do not enjoy democratic support  for their viewpoint to seek to bludgeon, compel and coerce a majority whom they cannot outvote into giving them their own way. As such, this use of our courts and judges is a clear abuse of process in an advanced democracy. It is open only to the very wealthy, and if it succeeds it unbalances our democratic equilibrium. Remember that Mrs Miller only has one vote, and it is worth exactly the same as your vote or my vote, however wealthy and well-connected she may be.

Sumption also examines in depth the relationship between law and democracy in the area of, for nations that have one, the constitution. Spoiler alert: he is opposed for very clear reasons to the adoption of a written constitution for Britain, and I'll tackle this in a future post.

And as that arsewipe Bercow must learn, an anti-democratic and Rogue Parliament and a bent Speaker hiding from the ballot box and the electors behind the walls of Westminster must also be brought to heel by the votes of the people.

Deep State moves towards conflict

Few would ever have imagined that the deep State - that unlawful cabal of senior establishment, civil service, intelligence, legal, business and political actors - would ever break cover to the extent that they have in the past weeks in a final Ardennes offensive to try to sabotage Britain's exit from the EU.

Like the Ardennes offensive, they are throwing everything into a final gamble, risking all, including the peace of the country, to maintain their grip on power. We must wait until next week to see what happens to yesterday's display of nationalistic Scottish petulance masquerading as jurisprudence. Oh yes - that's exactly what it was. They have no evidence for the defamatory slur they made against the government - a defamatory slur that would be legally actionable had it been made outside the Safe Space of their McLordships' court - and like mini-me Sturgeons they relied, as the Telegraph tells us, "on an arcane 17th century law originally designed to protect Scotland’s right to self-determination before the Act of Union". This was nothing more than Scots establishment foot-stomping.

More sinister are the actors uniting the Parliamentary opposition in an alliance against the government; parties normally so disunited that they cannot even agree within their separate selves what to have for lunch are now phone-conferencing and mounting a co-ordinated response. Even the police are joining in with advice being solemnly given to the public across Scotland to assemble 'grab bags' of the kind we keep on board our vessels in the event of having to abandon ship. Documents, medicines. Thankfully, this Caledonian panic-mongering been met so far wih public ridicule.

We must deal with this deep State offensive in precisely the way Montgomery did with von Rundstedt's offensive; let them expose themselves in a deep salient that strains their lines of supply until their intentions are unmistakable, then chop them off at the knee. This is an existential battle for a free and independent British nation - and in preparing for conflict, the deep State, the enemy within, normally as invisible as a submarine, is showing itself. They're actually making themselves a target.

The Scottish establishment's national police force invites ridicule

The Brexit economy

Whilst Boris has a breather to consider how best to tackle the Gordian Knot of Brexit (a mess, it is being reported, exacerbated by Bloody Blair's machinations on behalf of  our European friends across the negotiating table - does anyone else think it's about time he lost the by now purely decorative 'right honourable' and 'PC' post-nominal?) let's take a quick look at Eurozone matters. 

The pound remains depressed but at €1.12 or thereabouts is where its been all year. Gold on the other hand is through the roof; oscillating at around £950/oz since the referendum three years ago, this Summer it soared to around £1,250 and is still today at around £1,200. The UK economy is still in robust shape, if not thriving, but clearly this cannot go on - the global slow-down and more importantly, investment and other key decisions by business that have been postponed time after time as Brexit drags on are taking their toll. Business and the economy need certainty more than anything; even the CBI, whose Remain stance on behalf of about 3% of UK businesses has been aggressive against Brexit, must admit that we need, as the Septics say, closure.

The Eurozone is in the doldrums and about to get worse. As the Telegraph reports, Cristine Lagarde, who narrowly escaped jail with her conviction for complicity in a fraud, takes up the Presidency of the ECB. She brings a unique brand of incompetence and poor judgement to the role. There may be some consolation for the feminists in that the grave errors she is about to make are about to be made by a woman, but few consolations for the rest of us. She's not an economist she's a schmoozer and cannot bring to the role the genius required to get the Eurozone out of intensive care -

They can do nothing about Brexit, they can do nothing about trade tensions, they cannot force Germany to loosen the fiscal purse strings, they have no answers to growing political instability, and they cannot force the pace of innovation and structural reform as Europe requires. Central banks have been reasonably effective in keeping the patient alive during the political paralysis of the last ten years, but they can provide no long term cure for the chronic nature of today’s economic ills.

Poor Sajid Javid's spending review was lost in the Parliamentary noise, but I think he is making the right moves. Plenty to include in the Conservative election leaflets, anyway - but it was a budget for more than that. Unlike the dreadful turncoat Hammond, he's actual budgeting for Brexit - and that's a first.

Good riddance to a meretricious arsewipe

For anyone landing on this post from the post title, I bet you knew the subject straight away. At least UK readers would. Yes, this is the excellent news that the meretricious little arsewipe who has disgraced the office of Speaker for the past nine years (I think - I really can't be bothered to check the creature's Bio) is to vacate the chair.

Parliament was first broadcast on radio at the same time as I acquired my very first 'music centre' as they were called in those days. A chipboard-plated slab with a plastic cover, a record deck and cassette player on the top and controls and radio tuning window on the front, with a pair of little chipboard cased speakers. It may have been low tech but by God it put me straight at the centre of our national politics in full stereo FM. George Thomas was in the chair, and as the historic Callaghan VoC debate went out live, the debate in which Callaghan half-sang a Marie Lloyd ditty and Mrs T called him 'Frit'. Callaghan lost by 311 to 310 and the rest is history. George Thomas was magnificent. I was transfixed, and in thrall thereafter to the wonder of our Parliament. There was one factor of which I think I and all others were unaware at the time - as Wiki tells it

In the BBC documentary "A Parliamentary Coup" it was revealed that Bernard Weatherill played a critical role in the defeat of the government in the vote of confidence. As the vote loomed, Labour's deputy Chief Whip, Walter Harrison approached Weatherill to enforce the pairing convention that if a sick MP from the Government could not vote, an MP from the Opposition would abstain to compensate. Weatherill said that pairing had never been intended for votes on Matters of Confidence that meant the life or death of the Government and it would be impossible to find a Conservative MP who would agree to abstain. However, after a moment's reflection, he offered that he himself would abstain, because he felt it would be dishonourable to break his word with Harrison. Harrison was so impressed by Weatherill's offer – which would have effectively ended his political career – that he released Weatherill from his obligation and so the Government fell by one vote on the agreement of gentlemen.

Of course that same gentleman, Bernard Weatherill, took the seat as the next Speaker, and set standards of equity and probity in the chair that remain unsurpassed.

After Weatherill came Betty Boothroyd - ex Tiller Girl, and to date our only female Speaker. She brought a twinkle and a touch of humour to the chair in a way that in no wise diminished either her dignity, the authority of the Speaker or her command of the chamber. For the matters of her term, 1992 - 2000, she was perfect.

Then came Gorbals Mick, an inadequate and corrupt machine politician with little merit who sought to suppress, by power and bullying, the expenses scandal from reaching the press. And after Gorbals Mick the arsewipe, that sanctimonious dwarf Bercow. Two lousy Speakers, Bercow the very worst in my long memory and possibly in the life of our Parliament.

I could not help catch some of those oleaginous encomiums bleated from the benches yesterday at the diminutive cretin, who has devalued the office, shat on the accomplishments of former Speakers and corrupted the business of the house. How low have we sunk to tolerate such worthless trash at the heart of our democracy.   

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?

All Out! Boris to go on strike

As the early Autumn chill bites, an environmentally-friendly coke brazier at the entrance to Downing Street warms both the government pickets and the policemen on duty. Michael Gove leans his strike placard against the railings and warms his hands at the glowing coals. He is talking football with one of the policemen.

" ..... and on the pitch, he moves like Nijinsky"

"Like a horse? Not sure I see that, Mr Gove"

"No no not the racehorse, the dan ....." they are assailed by a fug of heady gin vapours

"I demand to see the Prime Minister!" screeches Mother Soubry, for it is she

"Scab! Scab! Blackleg! Blackleg!" chants JRM languorously. He is wearing his lounge-lizard double-breasted boilersuit. Chalk striped. A police officer raises an eyebrow in warning.

"You can't" snaps Gove at Mother Soubry "he's on strike."

"But I've been deputed by the Commons to demand that he he obeys them! Either he gets on with it or we'll .... we will ....."

"You will what?" snarls Gove "trigger a general election? Yes please! Why do you think he's on strike? All you have to do is vote him out and we go to the country!"

"But we can't do that! Most of us would, er, um.. a lot of us would ..."

"Lose your seats? Be kicked out by voters? Be thrown on the scrapheap?"

Outside on Whitehall a furious squawking and a flurry of feathers indicated that the Leader of the Opposition was on his way to the House.

Mother Soubry sidles up to one of the policemen "Got any gin, love?" she asks plaintively

The British Road to Dirty War - a cogent warning

I am struck by the prescience of a considered piece by two British academics for the Bruges Group, which we featured when it first appeared back in mid-January, over eight months ago. 'The British Road to Dirty War' by Betz and Smith has been right on every count so far in detailing the process and the consequences of the establishment Remainers blocking the people's democratic choice to Brexit. I urge you to read it again in full. They say

The system works because everyone behaves by the rules. On either side of the bargain—the governed and the government—mutual obligations are observed in service of the common interest, which is the stable continuance of a non-tyrannical political order. Here we come to the disquieting part of the continuing Remain campaign, a campaign that seemingly supersedes party loyalty, not to mention national loyalty, which is its willingness to throw away the rulebook. Only a brazenly confidant, or foolishly out-of-touch, political class would chance this. The bet on the future is doubled.

The object of all these machinations has been to corral the British population into a Hobson's choice between Brexit-In-Name-Only and no-Brexit. It is no secret now. The plotters, finally, so close to the bell calling time on Britain's membership of the EU with a deal or without one, have declared it openly that they will not permit to occur what is the current legally mandated outcome of events. They will instead tie the government in knots, prevent its preparations for No Deal Brexit, and if necessary, crash it.

They think they can get away with it, the authors write, because they think we will lump it; that they can cancel the biggest democratic mandate in British history and we will all just shrug and get on with letting the corrupt and anti-democratic establishment continue to rule.

Those behind the plan to thwart Brexit by altering the standing orders of the House of Commons on the fly imagine this as a temporary alteration to the established mechanisms of power, which will return to normal after Brexit. That is to say, when the rules serve their ends, they are inviolably sacrosanct; but when they do not, they are perfectly mutable administrative procedures. 'This is not a wholesale reordering of the British constitution', averred one of the plan's prime movers. 'It would be a one-off surgical strike and afterwards things would go back to normal'. Such thinking reflects an astonishing degree of mental closure, an astonishing degree of hubristic contempt, or an astonishingly dangerous wager—anyway it is simply astonishing.

The two academics are amongst the nation's foremost experts in War Studies. They know of that whereof they write. Their final warning is chilling (my emphasis)

But we are expert on these matters. We have for decades studied why things fall apart, how a stable, essentially self-policing, productive society can turn into an ungovernable tumult roiling with rage. We know that this happens at first very slowly, a creep-creep-creeping to the limit; and then very fast indeed after the limit has been passed. We also know that no amount of free beer and pizza parties will swiftly return a society deranged by the shattering of the social contract by its own elite back to normality.

The Hattersleys of this world are deeply complacent. They are the new Bourbons who have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing. The threat of violence is not absent in the British polity. It is there, lying dormant. From time to time, it even makes an occasional appearance. A hollowed out and increasingly discredited set of political institutions is all it can take to set the flames alight. This is the British road to dirty war. The political classes are sowing the wind. They shall reap the whirlwind.

We must hope and pray that Speaker Bercow, the deep State actors behind the plot to thwart democracy, the credulous and gullible dags and fools of politicians and broadcasters who support them and the simple idiots who think it will work will all pull back from the brink.

If democracy is denied, and if Betz and Smith are right in their predictions, I weep for my nation.

Anti-democrats fighting like rats to retain power

The anti-democrats in parliament determined to block Brexit are fighting like trapped rats to try to cling onto power. It will do them no good. There is a hurricane coming - a storm of popular anger that will sweep them from their corrupt sinecures, flush them like recalcitrant turds, smash the barriers they have built against the peoples' will.

There is a Twitter meme doing the rounds; a capcha grid of the sort you must complete here to post a comment. The squares are filled with a view of the Commons chamber and the caption "Select all squares with a c**t". It pretty much sums up the mood of the nation.

Not only Corbyn's Labour are scared of the electorate. Up to a third or more of sitting MPs face being wiped out, swept away in the democratic storm at the hands of the Conservatives, Brexit or LibDems, and along with them any other MPs in Leave-voting constituencies that have betrayed their voters. This is the last we'll see of Yvette Cooper.

An election is inevitable and this time it will be People vs. Parliament. 

For the first time since 1945, the people of Britain are remembering the power of universal suffrage and the secret ballot, and the anti-democratic rats are cowed in fear of their only nemesis - Democracy.

A tsunami of popular anger will sweep away the anti-democrats in parliament

And they're OUT! The party b'long us!

It's now People vs. Parliament

Here is the full list of the EU's collaborators and Quislings who will now have the whip withdrawn and who will not stand as Conservative MPs at the forthcoming election; they've been purged from our Party -

As I've written many times before, this crisis is about very much more than Brexit. Brexit is the proxy through which all those who oppose the patrician class, the political elites, the privileged metropolitan globalist winners and their corporatist backers are united. Yesterday the EU's most vocal Quislings were identified beyond doubt and expunged from the Conservative Party, which now heads the spearhead against the supranationalists. The Conservatives are now truly the parliamentary party of the people - and I am proud to be a member.

It really doesn't matter what Bill the Remoaner parliament passes today. It's an irrelevance. It can be revoked. Two things are certain - the United Kingdom WILL leave the EU, and there WILL be a general election.

If the Quisling parliament refuses the 2/3rd majority needed on a no-confidence motion by the FTPA, Boris can introduce a simple Bill to over-ride the FTPA provisions on this occasion; it will need just a simple majority. Loyal Tories may even be supported by Labour rebels and the SNP, who are predicted to increase their seats (below) from 35 to 50 if an election is held now.

All in all, excellent stuff! We're finally moving. 

The Elephant in the room

OK let's talk about the Brexit Party. This is Electoral Calculus' latest data run, from 31st August. It gives Boris a majority of 62.

Things change fast. Just three weeks earlier, the plot was showing no overall majority for the Conservatives - and it goes without saying that in three weeks' time it could be different again. So my guess is that Boris will keep watching the polling and particularly Dominic Cummings' private research before making any final decision, ruling nothing in or anything out.

Post-May, Tory donors have been coming back. The Midlands Industrial Council, the most engaged and effective of the funder groups, already have a target list of marginal seats. You can be sure that unlike the incompetent May and her ex-Home Office mates, this election will be fought very slickly.

Boris will do what's necessary to gain a working power base. That includes clearing out the Tory rebels who will oppose him today. The one crystal clear, unequivocal, overwhelming desire of the country is NOT to extend the Brexit process any longer. If the Commons remoaners win their vote today, they will cement this as a People vs Parliament election - and the people, of course, will win. 

It's time we lanced this boil. The country needs to - if not get back to normal - start getting back to work.

Is Theresa May facing deselection?

Tomorrow will be  a crunch day for Theresa May, as for a score of other Remainer Tory MPs.

It is expected that Conservative MPs will be subject to a three line whip to defend the government against Remainer attempts to sabotage Brexit. Mrs May has chosen to remain on the back benches in the Commons - and is now no different from any other Tory MP in having to comply with the whip. Boris has made it clear that voting against the government, or abstaining, means automatic deselection. Only death or serious injury is an excuse.

So it seems Mrs May has three choices tomorrow; obey the whip, literally throw herself in front of a (slow moving) bus or defy the whip and be turfed out of her Maidenhead seat in advance of the inevitable general election in a few weeks.

My bet is that she will vote for the government, that Rory Stewart won't, and will be booted out of Penrith, and of the others, some will and some won't. And I don't think there's a newspaper or columnist in the country who can call it better than that. 

English teachers have a day out in Ipswich

Ipswich town centre saw its largest ever gathering of English and geography teachers on Saturday, as a score or more of pro-EU protesters descended on Cornhill to recite something together quietly and in perfect cadence. Though inaudible to those at the back, it is believed they were objecting to the actions of the government. They dispersed at 3.45 pm, and it is believed many headed for the nearby Bring-and-Buy sale in St Matthews.

English and geography teachers gather in Ipswich

It is also believed that similar gatherings of teachers were held elsewhere in the UK, but these have gone largely unreported by the national media.

Like all bullies, the EU backs down in the face of courage

Little Macron, we are told, his delicate heels perched on his shoe-lifts, will now permit the United Kingdom to remain in the EU for a little bit longer than 31st October. Yes, he did stomp those same diminutive feet not so long ago and proclaim "Non! Non! Non!" to suggestions that Mrs May might be given a year or more to change Britain's mind about leaving. But that, his supporters say, was just for the benefit of the Euro elections. In other words, Le Petit was happy to trade the future welfare of all the nations in Europe for his personal political advantage. It's not a good look. Not that we want, or can be forced to take, an extension; we will leave when we said we would.

Anti-democrats determined to stop Brexit are now all out in the open, and have even stopped pretending in most cases that they are just concerned about 'no deal'. Our exit is looming, and it is their last chance to sabotage our leaving. So ex-PMs Blair and Brown work openly with the Brussels bullies to help them defeat the UK, and Major, the hypocritical architect of the entire mess, does so less openly but to the same effect. Why he and Heseltine are still permitted to remain members of our party defeats me.

Everyone knows the thing about bullies. They respect only courage, and a refusal to cow before their threats.

For the first time in nine long years of Conservative government, we have an executive imbued with the courage to lead the people of Britain in mounting a gallant challenge against the bullies. Boris has barely been in office for a month, but it feels as though he has done more in that time than the all the long years of Cameron and May together. It is truly refreshing and morale boosting.

And the bullies are, as bullies do, backing down. Little Macron may have to stand on his tippy-toes to try to match the stature of our PM; let him stand on a shoe-box if he must, or a tea-chest. We no more want France to look up to us than we want to look down on France - we want just what we've always wanted, a political relationship of respect between equals. The jejune bullying and intimidation of the Berlaymont has no place in international politics. 

When shoe-lifts are not enough - Macron stands on tippy-toes to look Boris in the eye