Yesterday’s statement of the blindingly obvious came from David Lidington, who is de facto deputy Prime Minister. As the BBC has reported, “The [European Parliament] vote is due on 23 May, but Theresa May said the UK would not have to take part if MPs agreed a Brexit plan first. Now, David Lidington says ‘regrettably’ it is ‘not going to be possible to finish that process’ before the date the UK legally has to take part”.
Nothing like sounding the starting gun for a contest in which you clearly don’t want to take part. Nor is Theresa May’s detachment from reality: “Mrs May's spokesman said she ‘deeply regrets’ that the UK did not leave as planned in March and recognised many people felt ‘great frustration’ that the European elections were going ahead. But she hoped Parliament would agree a Brexit plan before MEPs start their session in July”.
Really? That might depend on some kind of deal with Labour. However, and here we encounter a significantly sized however, “Labour's shadow business secretary Rebecca Long Bailey said Tuesday's talks were ‘very robust’, but nothing had been agreed, and the government still needed to move on its ‘red lines’ in order to reach a compromise”. The Tories are still offering the same deal that has been rejected three times.
So elections it is, and elections that are just 15 days away. Worse for the Tories, they not only don’t want to fight those elections, they are in no state to fight them. Lifelong members on the right of the party are deserting them for the Brexit Party, Nigel “Thirsty” Farage’s latest vehicle for retaining his place on the gravy train. Party donors are rumoured to be moving in Farage’s general direction, too.
Yet worse is that Tory members will be looking not at May 23, but June 15, as iNews has observed. “The National Conservative Convention, which represents party activists, announced that it will hold an unprecedented no-confidence vote in the Prime Minister on 15 June. Mrs May will be invited to the emergency meeting to set out her reasons for not naming a date for her departure”. Will she turn up? Doubtful. Would involve decisions.
And the state of the Tories right now was summed up by this nugget: “Dinah Glover, who organised the petition, told i: ‘The party at the moment is in absolute meltdown because they are terrified she is going to do a deal which will do damage to our country’ … Activists were furious that she would try to force through ‘a so-called Brexit deal which isn’t Brexit at all’, she added”. Which would probably do less damage to the country.
Many Tories aren’t interested in whether their irrational hatred of the EU would damage the country - hence their affinity for the Brexit Party, whose leader doesn’t give a crap about the voters so long as they put him back where he can lord it over them, fiddle some more expenses, no bother turning up most of the time, and retain his LBC show.
The party membership is dwindling. Much of it won’t turn out to support their European Election bid. Then, when they get trounced in that election, they’ll be even more determined to get rid of the party leader they couldn’t be bothered supporting.
The Tories really do want to commit political suicide. Just rejoice at that news.
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2 comments:
I'd be rubbing my hands with glee if it wasn't for the fact that the Tories long awaited downfall is so intrinsically linked to the rise of Farage once more
I would be dancing round the houses if it wasn't for the fact that Tories have wrecked the country as comprehensively as they have wrecked their party.
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