It seems to me that Bercow has been reinforcing, not undermining, parliamentary sovereignty. It's ridiculous to suggest that he has declared that he would do anything to stop Brexit. He wants to make sure that parliament's voice is heard. Rightly so.
It's Parliament's indecision, constant negativity and failure to agree a way forward to honour a democratic referendum that takes back powers and law-making ceded to foreign institutions by previous UK governments that is stopping the country being sovereign again. Once we're out on October 31, if Johnson prorogues parliament thereafter (which he won't) I'll man the barricades with you. But Boris is right now, to break the log-jam, and if the Europhile rebels are successful next week, we'll be into a GE imo. In that case, Corbyn thinks he'll make up the current polling deficit, but this time, given his fence-sitting on Brexit and anti-semitic attitudes, I'm not sure he will. If Boris does a deal with Farage, he could get a substantial majority - and hallelujah!
Totally this. The Tories are now planning to put a candidate up against Bercow in the next GE, which flies against convention, but convention was founded on trust in the Speaker to be impartial, and as we know, Bercow is very far from that. What Bercow is doing undermines the very foundation of Parliament.
If you want an example of Bercow's independence, simply note that he was driving around in a car with "Bollocks" to the result of a democratic referendum. He brings those running Parliament into disrepute. He also has serious bullying allegations against him which have been swept under the carpet. Time to hear them
Of course Bercow has his own view on Brexit, but Sooper's suggestion the has declared that he would do anything he could to stop it is daft. What he has done, and should continue to do, is try to ensure that the government doesn't railroad parliament. He won't be going anywhere before 31st October.
Boris can't railroad Parliament by carrying out Article 50 as enacted by Parliament, which anticipates a no-deal leave, in the absence of agreement with the EU. Of course, no one can get rid of him before 31/10. But there are newspaper reports that he is collaborating with the rebels behind the scenes. Unthinkable for a Speaker. If he becomes part of the conspiracy to stop Brexit, he will shame himself and his important/vital post.
Hopefully. Country before party and all that. If Remainers had played half as dirty as Leavers before the vote we wouldn’t be here anyway.
It's not "Country" to try to reverse a democratic referendum of that country. And Cameron's government spent millions on the Remain campaign, and Remain had wealthy American merchant banks like JPMorgan and Goldman Sachs and the corporates, multinationals etc that get favours from Brussels funding it. Leave was largely individual donations from Joe public. So the "poor old Remainers" argument doesn't wash. And as the success of the Brexit Party shows in the European Parliamentary elections, people haven't changed their minds since the referendum
It is country first when the government’s own analysis (and everyone else’s) predicts it’ll be ****e. If people are too thick, stubborn or unaffected by it that’s on them. Not a chance Leave would’ve won on a No Deal ticket not if people knew there’d be three years of such ****e in between.
Sorry, but your claim about funding is simply factually inaccurate. And not even by a small margin: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/...usinessmen-peter-hargreaves-a7699046.html?amp No doubt not intended on your part and I'm sure you'll be happy to stick your hands up on this one. Edit - note, no claim the remain campaign was any better
It's interesting to see two sides of the same coin, because I was going by this - https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/20...n-union-campaign-is-part-funded-by-goldman-s/ which shows that while Leave got more funds (although don't forget, the taxpayer paid for the government's pro-Remain campaign including that brochure that was sent to all of us), it was from more and smaller donors. Remain was getting money from foreign companies that had a vested commercial interests in the UK remaining part of the EU bloc. These were both EU and non EU based companies but were not British. By far the most Leave funds were apparently from donors within the UK.
People voted Leave. They didn't vote Leave with a deal. You seem to be suggesting that Leavers have changed their minds over the past 3 years and now want to stay in the EU. There's not a shred of evidence for that. The Brexit Party is soaring. The fact is (1) the best way to get a good deal is to go for a no-deal. The EU will move heaven and earth to avoid a no-deal. Large parts of it are in recession or on the brink like Germany, so they'll do whatever they can to find a compromise. (2) Nobody knows what a no-deal will look like. Reports prepared on a worst-case basis are not realistic. They're prepared on the basis that e.g. you may not get to the next QPR match because you may have food poisoning, have a car crash, be hit by a falling tree and suffer a terrorist attack in the Ellerslie Road stand. That is worst case basis. Realistically, if we leave without a deal, the UK and the EU will do all it can to mitigate any adverse effects for their own selfish reasons. Mostly, because we have a trade deficit, they want to continue selling to us, and we'll buy their stuff. It is possible in the first months that when you go down to Tesco's, they may have sold out of avocados for the day and you have buy tomatoes instead. I'm sure you'll manage it.
Sure, there are issues with the remain campaign's funding too, I was very clear that I wasn't commenting on or defending the Stronger In campaign's funding. [Political funding as a whole could do with a root and branch reform imo.] But, to claim that "Leave was largely individual donations from Joe public." is a big stretch when £15 out of £24m came from five extremely wealthy businessmen. Hardly 'Joe public' by most definitions. If you mean that the leave campaign(s) were predominantly funded from those with stronger ties to the UK, then I'd have no argument with that.
I could have worded it better and it's a fair point about the five wealthy businessmen, but that left £9 million to be made up largely by the public - as against government using taxpayers money and large amounts of foreign money. That's the point I was trying to make (badly)
Depends how you define the public, but I think we're in broad agreement. When you look at the longer list of big donors it's full of the establishment giving £100k a pop: https://www.businessinsider.com/twe...campaign-2017-5?IR=T#21-tessa-keswick-20000-1 To be clear, the Stonger In campaign will be the same/worse/marginally better, but as you say, certainly with more foreign money. And it certainly had 'unofficial' Government support. I think we need to have a broader think about how we fund our political campaigns and elections. Parties would have to act very differently if they really did rely on lots of small donations you mention, or the time of many volunteers. Would be much harder for influence to be purchased. Ironically I think that Government support [financially and otherwise] for remain did more harm than good. I often wonder whether Stronger In would have had a much easier task if Cameron had declared neutrality.
You may well be right about Cameron and the Remain Campaign. He was getting ever desperate to win (perhaps knowing he would resign as PM if he lost) and was making some extreme statements about third world wars etc that few thought were credible. And Osborne's predictions about financial meltdown occurring the day after the 2016 referendum are a main cause of voters not trusting the predictions of economic "experts" imo, and much of the public taking claims of economic armageddon after a no-deal in their stride.
So you think remainers played nicely, dear god you are naive, David C.A.Moron spent 9 million of taxpayers money telling us if left we would leave both the customs union and single market, Osborne and Cameron went on tv telling us that within 14 days of the referendum if we voted out the following would occur, the pound would lose at least 10%of its value, 500,000 jobs would go overnight, house prices would fall by over 30 % the aeroplanes would fall out the sky the day we left, there would be no food on the shelves, the list goes on , so don’t tell us who voted leave that the campaign we believed in was all a lie because from where I sit the Remain campaign was based on scaremongering bollox and lies.
