UK Government’s 141 Greatest Hits — Brexit to Covid
In the spirit of helping remind us of the UK government’s 141 Greatest Hits between Brexit and Covid, I offer the following:
1 Cummings Saves Lives — On 12th March 2020
After his “Domocene Conversion” on Friday, March 13th (as reported in the Sunday Times on 22nd March) (ED: unlike Saint Paul the Apostle, Mr Cummings’s conversion from Lockdown scepticism towards imposing a “Strict Lockdown” only seems to have lasted until April 1st. Thus proving he’s no messiah, I guess), Mr Cummings helped to convince the govt to reverse its policy to allow Covid to “pass” (translation: kill hundreds of thousands of people on the unproven theory this would prevent even more hundreds of thousands of people dying some six months into the future) through the population. As a result of this Domocene Conversion only 60,000 people have died with Covid in the UK instead of the 250 – 500k who might otherwise have died (The Story of the UK’s “100,000 Deaths Is Ok” Covid Strategy
2 Her Majesty’s Government’s post-Lockdown strategy is rejected by Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, the teachers’ unions, parents, police forces, its scientific advisers, thus improving the strength of decentralised policy making and enforcement within the United Kingdom and promoting the case for devolution
3 On his new boss’s first day in Parliament after taking over the leadership of the Tory Party, by following DC’s strategy Johnson transmogrified a Commons Majority of +1 into -65
4 Johnson’s Govt lost 7 of 8 votes between August 2019 and December 2019, an unprecedented record
5 Mr Cummings was part of the team that convinced Johnson to order, unlawfully, the suspension of Parliament
6 DC was part of the team that convinced the Privy Council to advise Queen to suspend Parl unlawfully
7 Strategic misfires provoked formerly loyal Tory grandees into passing the Benn Act that prevented the no deal withdrawal from the European Union that Gove and many of his Vote Leave supporters craved
8 By successfully labelling the “Benn Act” the “Surrender Act” when the UK finally agreed a Treaty with the EU, those extreme Brexiteers not convinced by the Treaty which introduced a border in the Irish Sea, had a ready-made label to tarnish that treaty and the Act of Parliament that validated it — the Surrender Act
9 Because of an overly long SMS by DC sent to a Spectator journalist spinning the private words of the Chancellor of Germany to the Prime Minister, the UK was bounced into accepting a border in the Irish Sea instead of on the island of Ireland at a conference with the Taoiseach in Liverpool a few days later
10 Due to off-the-record will-he/won’t-he “No Deal” Brexit (ultimately empty) threats, provoking Scottish Court into doubting evidence by the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom so that if extension’s not requested by said Prime Minister prior to 31st October 2019 Brexit deadline, court stated it would intervene immediately and use an unprecedented power to force the PM to request such an extension
11 The Supreme Court judgment (Gina Miller No 2 case — her first case forced the government to understand it could not withdraw from the EU using Royal Prerogative powers; that it could only withdraw, by Act of Parliament because the Bill of Rights 1689 prevented the Monarch from changing the rights of UK residents by prerogative) confirming the supremacy of Parliament that was precipitated by the government trying to scam the Queen into proroguing Parliament upon unlawful advice. We would never have had this affirmation that Parliament is supreme, had the government not cooked up the idea of suspending Parliament before it had a chance to enact a Benn Act like piece of legislation preventing a No Deal Brexit on 31st October
12 Promoting the nasty atmosphere in Parliament which enabled the “Humbug” comment response by Boris Johnson to the MP who had replaced the pro-EU MP who had been assassinated during Mr Cumming’s Vote Leave campaign when she said she felt unsafe thus providing an answer finally to the question of Johnson by BBC journalist Eddy Mair in 2013: “You’re a nasty person, aren’t you?”
13 Dropping Theresa May’s government’s commitment to maintaining regulatory alignment post Brexit which meant the EU had no incentive/interest and trust to cut U.K. some slack, thus strengthening the EU’s negotiating position and weakening the Brexiteers’
14 That long Spectator SMS, that provoked ‘One Nation’ Tories into forcing PM to meet the Taoiseach, which led to the EU Withdrawal Treaty many Brexiteers who had said they would never accept a border in the Irish Sea ended up agreeing to. Thus exposing their lack of principles and willingness to sacrifice the union on the altar of their own political ambition (see 9 above)
15 Refusing to negotiate with the EU until it dropped the Backstop demand then, as was inevitable, surrendering, thereby showing the United Kingdom understands its weak position and enabling the EU to get everything it needs in the Brext withdrawal process
16 Betting the government he was advising’s entire Brexit strategy on an early mid-Oct election, while failing to understand that government can’t get an election without 3/4s vote & that the opposition’s incentives change as soon as the govt’s desperation for an early election became clear
17 Making enemies of the born again Alt-R Northern Ireland DU party which supported the Brexiteers so loyally, until those Brexteers accepted a border in the Irish Sea which weakens the Union, which is the DUP’s raison d’etre to promote
18 Cummings helped destroy the Tory Party in the minds of many who had thought it was a “moderate” party. This is a gift to future generations, although not to the 160,000 who’ve died so far mostly preventable Covid deaths
19 Like Trump, Johnson flushes out morally weak people, by persuading them to parrot morally untenable positions which ultimately destroy their credibility (look at all those privately angry cabinet ministers who are publicly defending DC’s trips to and around Durham during the Lockdown (see Greatest Hit No 100 below))
20 Does anyone imagine that B Johnson’s colossal ineptitude would have been so comprehensively exposed so quickly without DC’s influence?
21 By ensuring the Benn Act came into force, anyone who bet on the market that the U.K. would leave with no deal on 31st Oct likely lost their shirt/blouse
22 Until Covid came along to save it, DC had essentially eliminated the DUP’s power, promoted the cause of Scottish independence and helped speed up a united Ireland
23 Provoking a December 2019 election that saw the election for the first time ever of an anti-sectarian Alliance Party of Northern Ireland MP in North Down, Stephen Farry
24 By helping to force the UK’s participation in the European Parliament’s election in May 2019, enabling the election for the first time in history to the European Parliament of an anti-sectarian Northern Ireland MEP, Naomi Long
25 Citizens’ Assemblies were totally fringe ideas until very recently. Due to the terrible governance of the UK which DC has done so much to promote, the idea of Citizens’ Assemblies as a means of resolving tricky issues is becoming normalised. Indeed Extinction Rebellion is campaigning for such Assemblies to have vested in them the legislative power that Parliament currently has, if Parliament continues to fail in providing Good Governance
26 By failing to Brexit on 31st October, after spending tens-of-millions on a publicity campaign, operation yellow hammer, Sea Borne Ferries fiasco, and up to £8b preparing for a No Deal Brexit his long SMS to the Spectator scuppered, DC managed to show up the pointlessness of the Brexiteers and their entire crazy project
27 Tory Party, the governing party, got 9% of the vote in the European Parliament election, after the last extension precipitated by Team Johnson’s jockeying for the Tory Party leadership
28 Brexit still hasn’t been done, due to unforced strategic errors necessitated by wanting Johnson as party leader and PM, instead of Theresa May who was pushed out for accepting a border in the Irish Sea which Johnson accepted in the end anyway, after DC’s SMS to the Spectator made it unavoidable
29 Had the government’s original DC intentioned strategy of an election in Sept/Oct happened, Johnson would have been a Clean Skin. By the time the election happened he was “the Incredible Sulk” who had lost an incredible 10(?) important HoC votes; advised the monarch unlawfully; done the world’s most quickly forgotten Queens Speech;… see above…)
“By participating in the June 2016 Brexit vote, the UK PM’s senior adviser is a cause and condition of events afterwards that exposed weaknesses hitherto unsuspected by many within and outside the born-to-govern element of the Tory Party. I am highly confident that in a future era of Good Governance we will look back at these events (as enumerated in Greatest Hits 1–100), influenced by the campaigning “success” of Brexit, as resulting in a better more decentralised governance structure in the UK.”
30 Prime Minister May deciding a two-week holiday at Christmas to prevent Tory MPs voting against her government’s withdrawal agreement because it introduced a border in the Irish Sea was appropriate at a moment of national crisis (ED: at least she didn’t spend weeks at a State owned country house as a once-in-a-century pandemic infected the UK’s population, as Johnson did in February 2020): see
The Story of the UK’s “100,000 Deaths Is Ok” Covid Strategy
31 Planning too late and spending billions for a March 2019 so-called no deal Brexit that was always implausible but when it failed to happen several times and then again in April 2019 left the government in a much weakened negotiating position with the EU
32 The Brexit referendum: advisory; non threshold apart from simple majority; nothing to protect the Union; foreign interference; nothing to protect against vastly exceeding spending limits;…
33 Not even having a sketch of a plan for Brexit
34 Cabinet Ministers constantly breaching the constitutional convention of Collective Responsibility (e.g. ministers like Johnson and Davis signing up to the Northern Ireland Backstop in December 2017, then “suddenly” over the course of the year realising what it inexorably meant and claiming they were not bound by that convention. Then, Johnson winning the leadership on the back of his rejection of the Backstop he had signed up to, before signing up to it again. Delicious)
35 The European Research Group, and its inability actually to do timely and rigorous research. We can expect similar success of its successor the China Research Group
36 Prominent Tories constantly talking down their/our Prime Minister, eventually voting in Johnson and now doing the same to him because of his weakness in supporting DC come what may and promoting Sunak because Sunak’s Covid policies basically nationalised the entire British economy. Something Tories have been campaigning against since the 1970s. That they now accept it as necessary, as normal: delicious. Without Brexit, Johnson would never have weakened the herd among the Tory Party so much that the Covid strategy would have been so disastrous. I’m just sorry that that herd was so weak it didn’t do enough to prevent those 60,000 preventable Covid deaths, a stain on the conscience of all involved (including DC):
Why Didn’t the West Pick Up China’s Covid Signals?
37 Amplifying the idea that a second referendum would be undemocratic thus enabling us to understand their view of democracy is, well, undemocratic and provoking one of the largest rallies in the history of the UK — 1m people flowing around London protesting against Brexit, while the pro-Brexit forces managed a counter demonstration of around 1000 people
38 Senior government figures comparing E.U. to Nazis, etc.
39 Conducting the least transparent international treaty negotiations in recent history, while the EU is utterly transparent
40 Homelessness
41 The sheer heartlessness and small mindedness of the Universal Credit fiasco is only matched by the refusal of the Prime Minister to exempt immigrant care workers from a surcharge on top of the taxes they pay to enable them to access the NHS services they themselves provide (even though the PM had made a big show of thanking two immigrant nurses for saving his life while he was in intensive care with Covid). Only for the PM to U-turn on this and exempt them from this iniquitous charge
42 Despite findings of extraordinary and material breaches of electoral law that appear to have been cynically planned to manipulate public opinion during the Brexit referendum campaign, doing exactly nothing to discover the extent of foreign interference in our electoral system
43 Promoting as Cabinet ministers people complicit in the illegally funded Leave campaigns (Gove, Rabb, Johnson, et al)
44 Fighting Gina Miller twice, and losing, twice
45 Fighting the idea of giving Parliament the “Meaningful Vote” on any Brexit Withdrawal treaty, when Parliament is supreme as anyone trained in English constitutional law understands and the September 2019 prorogation Supreme Court judgment affirmed
46 Stabbing former attorney general Dominic Grieve in the back (twice): first time, when govt persuaded him to withdraw his Bill forcing government to allow Parliament to have a meaningful vote on the content of the Withdrawal Treaty. Then, when Johnson took over, kicking him out of the party after his key role in ensuring the passing of the Benn Act, preventing the government to default into a No Deal Brexit
47 Promoting idea of parliamentary supremacy, during the Brexit referendum and afterwards, while at every opportunity trying to thwart it by asserting Royal Prerogative powers whose exercise are not subject to Parliament. Then mucking up when Johnson unlawfully advised the Queen to exercise her prerogative power to suspend Parliament in September 2019
48 Going into government with a sectarian political party (Northern Ireland’s DUP), after T May’s disastrous election in 2017, thus destroying faith in HMG’s neutrality in NI after two decades of the building of trust after a 40 year war came to an end
49 Pissing off and costing billions for our closest, dearest and most ancient allies by Brexiting in the most shambolic and embarrassing way possible
50 Ignoring Scotland, Wales and NI during the whole Brexit process
51 Going along with the bizarre idea that qualification for Cabinet solely depends on which side of the Europe question one happens to be on. Thereby weakening the herd so much that there are no women and no capable ministers left when a once in a century pandemic hits the country
52 Being held in contempt of Parliament, and still resisting the publication of the legal advice citing comically stupid arguments to resist: we the people are the client, not you and the Brexit Cabinet (DC too was held in contempt of Parliament, let’s not forget, for his refusal to answer a summons to give evidence at a Common Committee investigating among other things the misuse of data and illegal campaign funding in the 2016 Brexit referendum)
53 Windrush, not as a mistake but as a systematic attempt to deport often powerless British citizens of colour whom we should be protecting and honouring
54 Pretending to care about immigration while not using E.U. compatible brakes, as Belgium did, on EU immigration; not halting the introduction of the SARS-CoV-2 into the UK by exercising vigilance at the borders until after millions of people were infected and over 60,000 were killed by the virus; and at the same time not controlling that part of immigration from outside of the EU over which HMG had complete control, while at the same time pretending things will change after Brexit and HMG will suddenly become competent
55 Breaking any number of election manifesto promises (see 100,000 immigration promise) while selectively amplifying bizarre idea that when the facts change, you just continue as if nothing is wrong, until an abrupt change renders your Fingers-in-Earism so mad that change you do, but then deny that you’re doing anything other than what it was always planned to do
56 Having no humility
57 Not promoting women. Being against equality of opportunity. Not being inclusive. Not being transparent. Preventing the widest possible participation in decision making
58 Giving off bad vibes, man
59 Allowing the whole machinery of government to be captured by and subsumed by this Brexit debacle/cataclysm (note how the E.U. has managed to contain it)
60 Being led by the same people whose incompetent execution of their privatisation ideology has led to disasters in prisons, trains, hospitals, student loans, rat-invested asylum seekers housing/prisons, military housing, disposal of body parts, forced deportations, Olympic security fiasco, environmental catastrophe (nuclear related), risks to national security (i.e. the integrity of the U.K. and 60,000 unnecessary COVID-19 deaths. So much for biosecurity), long term risks to power generation, etc not to forget the delivery of public services in ways which have not saved a penny, but which have enriched the few and at the expense and suffering of the many, not least when the public has to bail them out anyway and deal with the horrifying social impact of heartless, ignoble and inefficient public policies delivered to negatively impact on our poorer neighbours
61 Following ridiculous advice e.g. Lancaster House speech contents
62 Ignoring Ireland and trying to sow division between Ireland and individual EU27 countries
63 Ignoring the advice and knowledge you could have accessed via the U.K.’s world class universities and instead relying on inexpert, seats-of-the-pants chancers and an anti-intellectual, simplifying rhetoric whose bias is against evidence-based public policy practice by government
64 Sacrificing what you say you hold most dear — the Union — on the altar of a shoddy, Dad’s Armyesque undemocratic English nationalism which hates everything which is Great about the United Kingdom: its tolerance, its multiculturalism, its diversity, its transparency, its capacity to adapt agiley to what’s actually happening, its positive impact on the destiny of our continent…
65 Driving a Coach-and-Four through the English Constitution and demonstrating to the whole world why having a so-called Unwritten Constitution (which only one other country on earth has) is a shortcoming rather than an advantage
66 Blaming foreigners (citizens of no-where, and all that) for everything (even M Macron gets blamed cos he points out the obvious that the N.I. Backstop will impact on future trade negotiations)
67 Not negotiating in good faith a Trade Deal so you’re proposing that we jump into the abyss to “preserve the legitimacy of our democracy”… I mean, seriously???! The Single Market represents 51%+ of the UK’s export market and instead of getting Brexit done, you’re threatening again for the third (ED: Fourth?) time a No Deal Brexit. Only this time in a time of Covid, you’re briefing that it’s a good time to bury the bad impacts (you promised us would never happen) of a No Deal Brexit
68 Austerity and closing the public libraries: Daddy, what did you do to resist the closing of our local library?
69 Forgetting that it was £70b quantitative easing which prevented so-called Project Fear prognostications coming to pass in the immediate aftermath of the referendum and playing fast and loose with our currency since whose devaluation has only fuelled anaemic growth
70 Rewarding failure which in other jobs would lead to permanent dismissal but which by inviting those whose corruption of standards of Good Governance corrupts our very society (wasn’t it Ms May whose job it was to keep immigration under 100,000; never less than 250k+?!). Yes, I’m talking about Cabinet Ministers who have failed, even when Badgers haven’t been moving the goalposts, they have. Yes, I’m talking about former Cabinet Ministers who get £100k a year from companies which “win” no compete contracts to deliver Covid testing systems which don’t work. We see you’re back in the job anyway. One minute a Cabinet defence minister is leaking Cabinet discussions about Huawei and being fired for it. The next Johnson gives him a job in a government (as Education Secretary where he stops schools obliging children to wear masks AFTER it becomes clear children are being massively infected by the Delta Variant as the Fourth Wave kicks off) which commits to allowing Huawei into the UK’s 5G network infrastructure. Next minute, Johnson changes his mind. Huawei will be gone in three years! Sure thing
71 Ignoring the 48% who voted against Brexit and might have expected to be courted after the 52% “won” yet who until about 5 seconds ago when desperate for a deal that’ll pass parliamentary muster you frantically realise that it’s too late to win us back
72 Oh, and given that taking back control of our borders mattered so much, who’s to blame for the National Audit Office’s finding that 12 of 13 necessary systems for governing our borders after Brexit won’t be ready for years and that the 13th won’t be ready on time?!
“Have I missed anything? I feel I have…”
73 Why Didn’t the West Pick Up China’s Covid Signals?
74 13 Reasons Why Herd Immunity’s Nuts
75 Three Democratic Deficits at the Heart of Brexit
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/three-democratic-deficits-heart-brexit-stephen-douglas/
78 Did UK Lie to Councils About 100k Deaths?
79 UK’s New “de facto deputy PM” = Strong Leadership?
80 This Is The Way Brexit Ends… Not With A Bang, But A 😢
81 The Story of the UK’s “100,000 Deaths Is Ok” Covid Strategy
82 One Year Ago Today… UK PM told Italian PM: “We’re going for herd immunity.”
84 Why are deaths in Italy, Spain and UK much ⬆️⬆️ than China?
87 Can I infect others before symptoms’ onset?
89 Will the “Sleeping Beauty” Covid Hack Work?
91 English Brexit Misinformation Tropes: Alert v.1342.3
93 ☘️ Govt Scientists: Herd Immunity, even with vaccine, “Unlikely”
94 Jury’s now in on the most disastrous governance failure 😨 in decades: 10% herd immunity in 🏴 cost 71k lives
95 Ides of March 3rd: The Day The Die Was Cast
97 Why UK Govt’s virus policy changed today (thankfully)
98 What’s wrong with this U.K. govt table?
99 U.K. gives police power to detain people who sneeze (I kid you not)
100 What the UK PM’s Illness Really Means?
(This post captures the very moment when the PM’s special adviser was running from Downing Street — to his fate, but this wouldn’t become clear until 6 weeks later)
