EU referendum, brexit and the aftermath

This was 9 PM:

David Gauke confirms he will vote against the government tomorrow and Wednesday. He is set to lose the Conservative whip

I am finding all this thrilling, in the same way that jumping off a cliff into the sea or losing control of your bike on a big steep hill is thrilling. Need a bit of pure terror from time to time to keep things interesting

https://youtu.be/zKlirT5shzQ

Boris looking decidedly greasy and sounding incredibly hollow and nervous. If it weren't for the accent it could have been a Theresa May speech.

The man must know he's pushed his luck too far and fucked it-at one point he looked around like he thought he was going to get charged by a group of protesters.

From (failing) memory I've never heard a PM speech with so much background noise from protesters. Is the sound engineer a remaniac, or has this not happened for a long while?

Chamberlain misunderstood Hitler by thinking he was a normal politician working in the confines of traditional politics and diplomacy. But Hitler didn't play the rules and that is why today (3rd September) we remember the 80th anniversary of Britain's declaration of war against Germany.

Johnson likewise does not follow the normal rules of politics or diplomacy. So expecting him to act in a 'logical' way is understandable but misplaced. Expect the unexpected and as far as he us concerned 'to hell with the consequences' because 'i am Boris and I can get away with it.'

He's still been a career Tory though - just a more 'colourful' one.

I'm surprised by his behaviour, as I thought that deep down he just wanted to be able to have good standing in a room full of his peers (powerful Davos types, not Lords). I suspect right now they'd all think he's a wrecking twat.

If he follows through on the direction he's taking, he must know he'll be marked as one of the most disastrous PMs in history.

When he supported leave in the hope it'd be narrowly defeated.

Hasn’t happened in a while. The sound engineers have one goal: clarity. They would cut out as much of the chanting as possible

He’s a big Churchill fanboy. Big on leadership in times of stagnation/divisions etc.

So your saying we make a declaration of war against Boris! I'm up for that.

We can always eat him, like the Dutch did with their PM a few hundred years ago ;)

I'm sure the Daily M/Hail would approve (see a post a few pages back that showed a screengrab of their article about cannibalism)

There's a thread on twitter (natch) by @guitarmoog about the sound engineering and as @BleakRefs suggests the chanting was actually diminished for clarity. He has re-engineered it to get a more realistic 'live' sound + audio from LBC without directional mikes which shows how loud it really was.

Not quite...but perhaps not such a bad idea....I just reflecting on the irony of what is going to happen today and it's consequences and the consequences of WW2. One of which was to create, what is now the EU to create peace in Europe.

BoJo is waiting to see his MPs play their cards. He can adjust his position very easily once the winner is in clear view.

Yeah this - come on guys, what we are seeing is the warm up act.

I don't think no deal will happen. As idiotic as Boris is he must have read the reports. He's banking on being stopped ("oh whoops, they stopped me, what a shame, I tried sooooo hard") and will get some deal through with his newfound majority.

This is basically the only way I can make sense of this. Then I wonder though, to what extent has BJ been courted by the rich murky ERG backers? Has he been sold into the Singapore model?

He's a shoe-in for the shortest duration of (unelected) leadership of the country anyway. I suspect that will rankle.

Also "wrecking twat" : see Bullingdon Club

& @BleakRefs Thanks both, v.interesting twitter thread.

2 tory mps announce they'll step down at next g.e. - start of a steady trickle?

Topical.

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Prorogation may be blocked in Scotland after all-judge isn't taking kindly to UK Gov playing fast and loose with submission deadlines and failing to provide sworn documents. In non legalese this would appear to be 'blagging'.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-49560557 so looking like no-deal will be blocked. Now to see if there WILL a GE 14 October...

(unfortunately that massive asshole of a Nigel Dodds is safe in his seat...he blocked social housing cos that would mean "too many Catholics")

Well, well... as the Dutch parody site deSpeld quipped: Boris Johnson said Brits voted for years of political games when they voted for Brexit.

Better late than never (which seems to be the theme of the last 3 years), I've just sent off my Irish citizenship application

If you remember the fuel protest in 2002 (?) there was an awful lot of violence and mayhem at petrol stations. There'd be massive queues then someone would roll up and barge in and matters became heated.

Are we still waiting to find out what is going to be proposed tomorrow? I'm a little lost on how another extension will be acceptable to the EU, surely they're going to want some sort of assurance on there being some change on the UK side

Good luck! Mine was confirmed a few weeks ago. Took about 10 months

I suppose I'm assuming that riots, food/medicine shortages, cancelled flights, pound falling through the floor etc. would change people's minds

Sadly not. People are generally very resistant to the idea that they have been duped, so they tend to double down.

Polling has long established that the electorate tends to trust the Tories more to fix economic problems even when they are aware that the Tories caused them, which is not rational but it is what it is. Besides, you're also describing the conditions in which fascism tends to flourish, something Cummings (low-rent Bannon in a v-neck) seems to relish.

As for Boris, we've never seen him in a position of real power before (he didn't care about the London Mayor position, but this one he does), so I don't think we can predict what he'll do based on previous performance. This is the job he's always wanted, not a staging post along the way.

We do know he set the country on this destructive path not because he believed in Brexit - he doesn't - but because it offered him the best chance of getting this job.