The Thin End

What is Boris Johnson's strategy? Or is he stumbling from crisis to crisis, a victim of events? There are two views.  The first is that Boris is playing brinkmanship.  So many times, we have heard it said that no-deal has to be an option to force the EU to agree a deal "best for Britain."  It is a "who will blink the first" strategy.  If that is the plan, then it has failed. The second strategy is that Boris wants a no-deal Brexit and wants to blame the EU for the breakdown of the talks  "It's all their fault!"   That is what we see now - the blame game. In any event,  far from being the first to blink, the EU position has hardened.  Boris offered no sensible or workable plan to deal with the problem of the Irish border. So, now we are in the blame game.   It might have some success with hardened Brexiteers, those who want to leave the EU without a deal.   No-deal for them has become a kind of totem around which they do...

The sovereignty of parliament is at the heart of the unwritten constitution of the United Kingdom.  It is the key element of our democracy as it has evolved.  We elect our representatives to hold the government to account, and the government is accountable to parliament for its actions.   Parliament is our legislative body.  Governments are formed from parliament and are answerable to it. This is not an invention to thwart Brexit.  It is how our democracy works.  At the last election, all the major parties campaigned accepting the vote to leave in the EU referendum, but they also were committed in their manifestos to doing so with a deal that would protect jobs and our security.   The majority voted for parties committed to a Brexit deal.  Labour's was a customs arrangement and alignment with the single market.   The LibDems offered a similar approach. Accepting the EU referendum result and outlining the type of arrang...

Perhaps there was a feeling that the enormity of the consequences of leaving the EU without a deal would bring sense to prevail. What politician would purposively, knowingly wreck the economy? The warning signs were there. Brexiteers in the Tory party were becoming more strident as they were gaining more hold on the Tory party. They now sit round the cabinet table. They are making the decisions and they control parliament. They are convinced by their own rhetoric. Even now, when all the signs are against it, many believe 'sense will prevail', that it is all tactics and there will be a deal. But whose 'sense' is it that will prevail? Proroguing parliament removes the political machinery for holding the government to account at a time when it makes decisions that will affect our future for generations to come. In doing so they turn our democracy on its head. We had a parliamentary democracy. Today, our government is riding roughshod over it. Our representatives are no l...