With at least 30 Tories, principally those in the ERG, as well as the 10 DUP representatives, committed to opposing Theresa May’s Brexit deal, it looks like it will be Third Time Unlucky for the PM as she makes that one last push to get the deal over the line. Desperation is in the air, and nowhere more so than with the Europhobic part of our free and fearless press, which is also in Last Push Mode.
This desperation has induced much involuntary mirth at the logic leaps being performed and pointless fantasies being enacted by those who scrabble around the dunghill that is Grubstreet. Typical is the Mail’s thundering front page rant “11pm tonight was meant to be the moment Britain became a proud sovereign nation once more. Instead, Parliament’s in paralysis. To every MP, the Mail says this: put your country first. Uphold democracy. Back the Brexit deal today. You’ve got … ONE LAST CHANCE”.
Democracy, for those in the Northcliffe House bunker, means accepting the dictatorship of the Rothermeres. No thanks. The Express was in similarly apocalyptic mode with “Today at 11pm Britain was to be freed from the shackles of the EU, but after 1,009 days of deliberation MPs have failed to honour the referendum result. Our belief in the democratic process has been rocked to its core. But Brexit MUST still be delivered … DARKEST DAY FOR DEMOCRACY”. Do as the Express says, eh? And the Sun is away with the fairies.
“Brexy’s Midnight Runners … DUP chief urged to save Brexit deal … PM gambles on final Commons vote … COME ON ARLENE!” Thus the revelation of how out of touch those in the Baby Shard bunker are, on both connecting to Da Yoof, and their inability to appreciate that, with the DUP, no really does mean no. It is, after all, The Party Of No™.
The increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph fares little better, although the tabloid verbiage is thankfully replaced with the brevity of “The day of reckoning”. And just to make sure readers know the rotten MPs are selling them out, Allison Pearson is there with “Champagne celebrations have been replaced by the bitter taste of betrayal”.
So that’s another clueless pundit who hasn’t been outside her comfort zone for the past two and a half years, then. And she isn’t the only pundit losing it today, with the Sun giving a berth to flailing floor-crosser Loe McKinstry to rant “THE guiding slogan of Ulster Unionism has always been ‘no surrender’ … This is a movement that glories in its unwillingness to compromise and makes a virtue of its grim stubbornness”. Do go on.
“At a time when flexibility and imagination are needed to pull Brexit out of the quagmire, our destiny is governed by a bunch of narrow-minded, intransigent bigots who care nothing for the wider interests of the UK”. That’ll be an admission of defeat, then.
Meanwhile, while the Mail’s talentless churnalist Richard Littlejohn is whinging about a possible Tory Leadership contest, EU chiefs have concluded that the UK has two options if it once more votes down Theresa May’s deal - No Deal, which would give Brussels even more of a whip hand, or a long delay concluding, possibly, in No Brexit.
By that much have we taken back control. What you will not read in the papers today.
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It's 29th March.
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