Could you imagine Mrs Thatcher breaking the law?

Margaret Thatcher was, of course, a grocer's daughter.

Letter from Major and Blair

How extraordinary that two former PMs, one Labour, and Conservative should get together to write such a letter.

It must show us all what an extremely dangerous situation our country is in.

I wonder if we've demanded unfettered fishing rights, a say in their state aid arrangements, and that our law courts override theirs when we discussed a trade deal with Japan?! Better still, I wonder if they agreed?!!!!!

I doubt whether there are many Japanese fisherman in the Irish Sea or North Sea or the North Atlantic, or, for that matter, British fishermen fishing in Japanese coastal waters.

The point which was always lost on the brexit brigade is that our most important trading partners will always be our nearest neighbours.

Fine for the French fishermen to threaten to fish in our waters regardless of any restrictions and break international law in doing so, but for Boris?!! Shock horror! Frankly I just wish he would get us away from these hypocritical, blackmailing threatening, demanding little Hitlers! We haven't broken any law by activating article 50, but it seems we are to be punished, ruined, trashed and outlawed for having the temerity to want to leave the corrupt and frankly evil EUSSR.

What vile people they truly are!

Jaberwok

Fine for the French fishermen to threaten to fish in our waters regardless of any restrictions and break international law in doing so, but for Boris?!! Shock horror! Frankly I just wish he would get us away from these hypocritical, blackmailing threatening, demanding little Hitlers! We haven't broken any law by activating article 50, but it seems we are to be punished, ruined, trashed and outlawed for having the temerity to want to leave the corrupt and frankly evil EUSSR.

You seem very het up??

Now Boris Johnson wishes to ignore a treaty he asked parliament to approve just eight months ago, whose qualities he praised with his familiar vacuous bluster and whose existence the majority of the British people are all too clearly aware. And, although it is the treaty enabling us to withdraw from the European Union, even many Brexiteers are appalled when they consider the reputational consequences of simply breaking a solemn and binding treaty, not least one the present Prime Minister was himself so keen to conclude.

On Thursday one of Johnson’s predecessors as Tory leader, Michael Howard, a committed Brexiteer, attacked him for a move that, if followed through, would take Britain down to the moral level of the sort of rogue states whose own disrespect for the rule of law keeps some Tory MPs chuntering (quite rightly) from one Christmas to the next.

Given his famous inability to grasp detail, or the sheer laziness that prevents him from applying himself to do so, it is possible that Johnson had no idea of the implications of the treaty that, only last January, he was so keen to persuade his party and parliament to endorse. Either that, or in professing how “oven-ready” it was, Johnson was telling yet another of the serious lies that has marked his career as a journalist and politician and indeed his baroque private life. In the context of the Covid-19 crisis, of course, he has been telling them almost every time he opens his mouth – last week about the huge numbers returning to work (they weren’t), this about a “moon shot” solution to the pandemic for which the technology doesn’t yet exist.

Only now, as Prime Minister, when he engages in these degrading acts he brings down the perceptions of the country he leads and the reputations of his colleagues who choose, for reasons of ambition, to continue to be bound to him by collective responsibility. These include the law officers who appear simply to have shrugged their shoulders at this proposal flagrantly to breach international law, and other cabinet ministers (notably, in the last 24 hours, Michael Gove, who ought to know better) who have supported this outrage and thus blithely accepted this dereliction of their duty as public servants. It is specious to say that the ministerial code, which they are violating, does not apply to international law: the treaty is the law of the land too, passed by the House of Commons.

If there is a rebellion next week over the proposed legislation to violate the treaty, it looks at the moment that there are not the numbers to defeat the government. However, Michael Howard and others have indicated that the government is likely to be defeated in the Lords, unless Johnson tries to provoke a 1911-style constitutional crisis by having the Queen create more peerages to give him a majority there. Having already scraped the barrel with his last list of peerages, another list hardly bears thinking about.

But there is no doubting that the anger at his brazen disregard for a treaty that he himself advocated and concluded extends deep into his own party, and indeed into the Brexit faction. Johnson is, indeed, a notable exception among prominent Brexiteers in delighting in not playing it straight: whatever others may think of their politics, the Brexiteers usually told the truth and played a straight bat. But that is not Johnson’s way and nor, now, is it the way of his allies.

For more Tories – not just a growing number of backbenchers, but also most of the grandees in the House of Lords, again irrespective of their stance on Europe – Johnson’s style of government is becoming sufficiently repellent to stir them to anger. Even up to the moment when the proposed legislation was published, a number of them thought it wouldn’t happen, because they could not believe a Conservative government capable of such a thing. Sadly, it is more than capable, and it is causing some people who willingly supported Johnson to begin to question whether they might not, after all, have made a mistake in doing so. But they were warned about Johnson’s record as a liar: he will lie to anybody, about anything, if it serves his own purposes, and he simply doesn’t care about the consequences either to him or to the country or to the cause he purports to espouse. His only loyalty remains to himself.

If the government persists in taking this Bill through parliament, a lot of decent men and women will have to decide whether to taint themselves with his naked dishonesty by supporting it. He simply doesn’t care, and others are so worn down by his lying, and his refusal to stop lying, that they have given up protesting about it. I suspect, though, that his colleagues can only take so much of being treated with such contempt, and the time when they have had enough may be approaching.

www.newstatesman.com/2020/09/boris-johnson-s-repellent-style-government-has-angered-even-those-close-him

Anyone who puts the interests of this country and the Union against an organisation that is using NI as a weapon to force us to agree to three things that no other independent sovereign country would either be asked ,still less agree to, is frankly a bully and a blackmailer, a description which fits the EU perfectly, has the thumbs up from me and many many others. As far as I'm concerned the end justifies the means, or perhaps, needs must when the devil.drives!

The only person who is using NI as a weapon is the lying b*stard who negotiated the current Withdrawal Agreement, shouted from the rooftops that it was much better than May's WA, that it was a complete and oven ready deal and that it would enable the UK to step boldly and freely into the brave new post Brexit world. He then rushed the enabling bill through parliament in 3 days, giving MPs no time at all to scrutinise it and it was , of course, passed by virtue of the large tory majority.

NOBODY HAD ANY OBJECTIONS TO IT AT THE TIME

This was despite the fact that for the last four years, and more, people have been pointing out the difficulties of finding a solution in Ireland to the problems posed by the Good Friday Agreement.

This mess belongs entirely to the tories and the Brexiters.

You are getting hysterical, Jabberwok. I suggest a large gin and a good night's sleep...

Jaberwok can I ask how you imagine a no-deal Brexit will impact on British fishermen who currently sell 75% of their catch to the EU? It won't be much use catching the stuff if you have no one to sell it to.

This has Cummings crawling all over it!

The Telegraphs headline states that the government is intent on opting out of HRA and ECHR.

Of course they totally underpin the GFA.

Bastards!! Is there nothing they will stop at?

We know from what he’s said in the past that Gove loathes the GFA with enormous intensity, so I suspect he is backing Cummings all the way here.

Well that our rights down the pan, we will have less rights than every single individual in Europe.

Anyone confident with this truly shocking government that our rights will be upheld?

I'm hysterical?!!!! What you remainers fail to understand is that other people apart from you are allowed an opinion which differs from YOURS, so you just dish out the usual insults making any discussion impossible! As far as I'm concerned you can all get on with it as I've better things to do ! Praising Mrs Thatcher!!! People like me do that! Honestly, you couldn't make it up!

Wow! Leo Varadkar has joined the gravy train and picked up a nice little earner as a reward from his EU masters! Super salary, gold plated pension, unaccountable expenses, first class travel, well,first class everything at someone else's expense! Who wouldn't support the EU maffia with expectation of those of rewards! Nice work if you can get it! Credentials? A failed politician, easy really!

On the subject of fishing, Jabberwok, perhaps you'd read this thread on proceedings at the Committee stage of the Fisheries Bill:

mobile.twitter.com/LukePollard/status/1304006095585923075

A taster:

Tory MPs now voting against creating jobs in British ports by requiring more fish to be landed here. Bizarre the Tories are betraying coastal communities and the promises they made during Brexit to those towns

@LukePollard
Conservative MPs have just defeated Labour’s amendment to ban supertrawlers over 100m fishing in the UK’s marine protected areas. Our amendment would have delivered @GreenpeaceUK’s supertrawler campaign. With such huge public support for this campaign this is a disappointing move

I thought that accusing another poster of being ‘hysterical’ was anathema to the moral high ground brigade?
Apparently not....when it suits them.

Labour amendments being defeated means zilch...the Opposition lay them like landmines for the government of the day.It does not mean that supertrawlers will never be banned in British waters.

There was an interesting suggestion on a FB page which I follow: all of those MPs who are solicitors or barristers ( a lot of them) who vote for this breaking of the rule of law should be reported to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority or the Bar Standards Board for breaking their code of conduct. Robert Buckland nicely swerved Andrew Marr this morning when Marr asked ' If I have 8 people over at Christmas can I just tell the lockdown marshall that I am only breaking a little bit of the law?'

Jaberwok

Wow! Leo Varadkar has joined the gravy train and picked up a nice little earner as a reward from his EU masters! Super salary, gold plated pension, unaccountable expenses, first class travel, well,first class everything at someone else's expense! Who wouldn't support the EU maffia with expectation of those of rewards! Nice work if you can get it! Credentials? A failed politician, easy really!

What job is this please? Jaberwok? I tried to find it on Google but no luck.

Nick Boles

Just had coffee with a mild-mannered friend, a natural conservative who used to work in Cameron’s No 10 and is now running his own business. “The loss of our reputation internationally is catastrophic. People see us as a failed state.”

He's been offered Paul Hogans job.
I see J.Major and T Blair have waded in! Say what you will, nothing is worse than taking a country to war on false pretences, neatly deceiving parliament, bye passing the U.N. causing mayhem and misery in the middle east, which still prevails today and then a dodgy report 5 years later whitewashing the whole eisode! How that man still has the gall to be pontificating is quite beyond me! As for Major, I think scrutiny of his parliamentary conduct would make for a lot of risen eyebrows! If anything is hardening the governments resolve and public opinion,these old fools are doing an excellent job! If Barnier hadn't deliberately threatened NI in order to try and force us into agreeing to his so called conditions without compromise, before even discussing talks no one would be contemplating taking protective measures.. I think Bill Cash, realising what snakes this country would dealing with inserted b38 into the WA, which should do the trick! a very clever man!

On Leo Varadker, he wasn't offered the post and he's ruled out applying for it. Disinformation.

www.google.co.uk/amp/s/www.irishmirror.ie/news/irish-news/politics/leo-varadkar-phil-hogan-eucommissioner-22587668.amp

“UK: Can we sell you beef?
EU: Are you going to feed your cattle dead sheep and develop a new health threat?
UK : shrugs Haven't decided yet, can we sell you beef?
EU: We need to know if it will be safe, clarify your rules first
UK: They're blockading Northern Ireland!!!!!“

Rubbish! Business people my son deals with abroad particularly Australia are looking on in horror at the bully boys we're having to deal with, trading with counties/organisations is one thing but being run by them is quite something else! Australians and I guess Americans simply wouldn't put up with it!