Tactically, May staying may be a good thing for No Deal

Hector Drummond Posted on by

As someone who wants a No Deal Clean Global Brexit, I’m starting to think that maybe it would be for the best if Theresa May stays in place, because that’s the Brexit we’ll get with her. Her Withdrawal Agreement won’t get through Parliament. A new leader, though, may get some watered-down abortion through, because the party votes for it, grateful that it isn’t May’s WA.

Also, with Theresa May still in place the Conservatives will be finished, and then we can have a new right-wing party which isn’t run by, and full of, fake conservatives.

In fact, the new right-wing party may come about from a split by the Conservatives, as there are rumours on Twitter that if May wins the vote the party may split:

Update: Michael Fabricant is thinking along similar lines (well, apart from the bit about killing off the Tories):

And if she is not prepared to pivot and work for a no-deal Brexit, then – and only then – will I be free to write my letter to Sir Graham.

The thing is, though, May has shown, as we suspected all along, that No Deal is absolutely the one thing she will not countenance. She’ll do anything to avoid that, and she and the party machinery and Whitehall will apply any pressure on the MPs to vote some sort of deal through. So maybe it is beter to get rid of her now. Unfortunately., Fabricant thinks there’s little chance of this happening:

If there is a vote of no confidence, I believe that Theresa May will win and that she will win convincingly.

 

Crashed out and fell off a cliff

Hector Drummond Posted on by

I have terrible news. I went to a shop today, but crashed out without a deal. I had to walk out the door with nothing, my wallet still bulging. It was a disaster that I sleptwalked into. Metaphorically sleptwalked, that is, although nothing actually happened when I walked out the door, I just had to slightly change my plans. I even had to go to another shop, can you imagine?

So my future is gone, or so I’m told. My children’s future is gone too. Although they do have cool XBox now, which I got at the second shop for a better price. But their future is ruined, because everything’s fallen off a cliff. It was only a metaphorical cliff, mind, and only a journalist’s metaphorical cliff at that, which basically means ‘Nothing like a cliff, not even metaphorically’. But still, think of the children, and their future, which is like a trainwreck now, in the same way that it’s terrible that your old Blockbuster Video card is no longer of any use.

Not in our name

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Any agreement between the UK and the EU that’s along the lines of May’s latest deal has no legitimacy or moral standing whatsoever, and should be considered null and void. Even if Parliament votes for it.

The referendum result was that we should leave the EU, not become more tied to it. That was the instruction from the people. What’s more, in the last general election both the Conservatives and Labour stood on a platform of implementing the result.

So they have no authority to make any such agreement in the name of the British people. They do not sign it in our name, and we shall not recognise it.

The Stepford Mail

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Overnight the former Daily Mail has been taken over by aliens, and a fake newspaper set up with the same name. IT IS IMPORTANT THAT YOU NEVER PURCHASE A COPY OF THIS NEWSPAPER, NOT EVEN TO WIPE YOUR BUM WITH.

The Stepford Mail is distinguished by its ludicrous Remain-supporting headlines, anti-scientific health advice, knee-jerk morality, and sub-Guardian-level campaigning. Although the last three characteristics have admittedly been there for decades.

The stupid party

Hector Drummond Posted on by

How can anyone stay in a Cabinet led by a woman who has twice deceived them with secret operations carried out behind their backs? May is a lying psychopath, and as is usual with psychopaths with power everyone has to go around pretending they’re great. Even the people who have resigned have written in their resignation letters how wonderful Mrs May really is, despite all the treachery. Sure this is partly because they don’t want people to get the idea that the party is at war, but it’s also because they don’t want Mrs May to take revenge on them should she win the confidence vote.

Speaking of the confidence vote, which is surely coming, as I’ve said many times on this blog in the last year if a Conservative leader wins such a vote they can’t be challenged for 12 months, a fact which is finally starting to filter through to the commentariat. So what happens if May wins the vote, and then the DUP goes ahead with its threat to pull out of the deal with the Conservatives, and the government falls? Guess who the Conservative party has to go to the early election with as leader? Theresa May, that’s who. Good luck with that one, Tories.

I suggest that Tory MPs take this weekend to go back to their constituencies and talk to their grassroots supporters to get an idea of the necessity of a change of leadership. The mood there is near mutiny. The party either gets rid of May in the confidence vote, or it dies that very day. Seriously. Why would any conservative continue to vote for a left-wing anti-Brexit party who has continually deceived them? Why would they work for them, and tramp the streeets for them? Fear of Corbyn is no longer enough.

The days of the Conservatives thinking they can coast along with a bunch of CINOs — Conservatives In Name Only — running the ship are gone. Conservatives need to Trumpify (in their own English way) or they’re finished.

I have no great confidence that the Tories will see sense and get rid of May, though. Yesterday there were people on Twitter saying, ‘Remember that the Tories are incredibly good at knifing their leaders’. But that was the old Tory party. Today’s Tories couldn’t locate a spine at an osteopath’s convention.

Finally, let’s consider Gove and his gang of idiots and their stupid idea to get May to let them change the deal. This is not the time to ‘stay in government to help influence things’. There’s a confidence vote coming; this is the time to get rid of May and save your party, and you’ve just given her a major boost at a crucial time.

You don’t negotiate with a lying psychopath and hope they listen to you. You take the opportunity to remove them from power when it’s given to you.

May has become Death, destroyer of parties and countries and European empires

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Ordinary conservatives and libertarians have been on the brink of dumping the Tories for years. The last few weeks has seen them right on the edge of the cliff, but unable to summon the courage to push the party over.

But May just drove the Conservatives right past them in a huge monster truck, right over the edge.

A darkly humorous possibility

Hector Drummond Posted on by

There are reports that the DUP are refusing to work with the Conservatives any more unless Theresa May is deposed as leader. This means the following scenario, while very unlikely, is possible:

1. The Conservatives vote to keep May as leader, and she keeps pushing her Brexit deal.

2. Support for them plummets, while support for UKIP goes up greatly.

3. Labour calls a Parliamentary confidence vote in the government.

4. The DUP vote with Labour, and the government is defeated.

5. An early election then has to happen.

6. The Conservatives are wiped out in the subsequent election, reduced to a LibDem-like handful of seats.

7a. Funniest (but remote) possibility: UKIP win the election.

7b. Not quite as funny, but still funny, and not quite as unlikely: UKIP win a swag of seats for the first time, and become a major party.

 

How exactly would Theresa May call a general election?

Hector Drummond Posted on by

She’s threatened to do it if she doesn’t get her way. But how? According to the Parliament website, there are only two ways an early election can be called. The first is this:

a motion for a general election is agreed by two thirds of the total number of seats in the Commons including vacant seats (currently 434 out of 650)

I don’t see how she can get 434 votes for this, even supposing she can survive long enough to call such a vote. Suppose all the opposition MPs support it, which is likely; that’s about 321 seats. That means she would need another 113 votes (give or take a few) from Conservative MPs. Given the high risk these MPs would run in losing their seats at this stage, not to mention their party losing government to a hard left Labour party led by Jeremy Corbyn, would 113 Tory MPs really vote for it? Maybe you’d get some May loyalists doing it, but 113? When they could just change leader and have another 3.5 years in power, and hopefully get themselves into better shape by 2022 for the next scheduled election? Tory MPs may be dumb, but they’re surely not that dumb.

And what would they be voting for, exactly? If Theresa May loses her Brexit vote, then she and her deal are finished. The country isn’t going to flock to the polls to support her. The party would most likely dump her as leader anyway, and things would move on without her. So the idea that she’d get 113 Tory MPs to support her on an early election are very far-fetched.

The other way an early election can be called is this:

a motion of no confidence is passed in Her Majesty’s Government by a simple majority and 14 days elapses without the House passing a confidence motion in any new Government formed

So that just requires a majority of MPs, not two-thirds. But would Theresa May really call for a no-confidence motion in her own government (or arrange for the opposition to call one)? Actually, after what we’ve seen of her in the last few years, I think we can say, yes, she probably would. She’d do anything, no matter how unscrupulous, if it helped her cling to power, and scuttled Brexit. For that to work, she may only need a dozen unhinged Remainer Tory MPs who hate their own party to vote with her.

But I’m not sure even the likes of Anna Soubry would be that crazy, for the reasons given above. And even if they were, and the vote somehow passes, there would still be fourteen days before the early election would be called, and in that fourteen days a lot could happen. Perhaps Corbyn would himself win a confidence vote, which would immediately make him PM. That’s not an unlikely outcome, because I imagine the DUP MPs would switch sides if May went down this route, and their votes would be enough to propel him and Labour to power.

Besides, you’d presume that if May did pull this off that she’d be immediately dumped by the Conservatives in a party confidence vote. With the prospect of a new leader in store, even if that requires the full party election process, the Conservatives might win another Parliamentary confidence vote, by, er, voting for themselves (with the help of the DUP).

So it looks to me like May is bluffing about the early election. I can’t see any such attempt ending well for her. What will save the day for her in reality is getting her wretched deal through Parliament. Her various threats, including the early election threat, are desperate attempts to scare MPs into voting for it. She has to get the deal through Parliament. That’s where she stands or falls.

Some Brexiteers, like James Delingpole, who’s soothing my nerves a bit with this article, are pretty confident that her deal won’t get through Parliament. I’d also say it’s likely that it won’t get through — in fact you’d hope that it won’t even get to Parliament and that May is deposed within days — but you can never be sure. Who knows what devious games will be played? Who can be sure that a sufficient number of Labour Remainers won’t support her when it comes to the vote?

(The best thing for Labour, though, is to vote against so that May can go even more haywire and then sabotage her party even more.)

One thing’s for sure. If May gets this through Parliament then the Conservatives will be immediately dead. But if it’s killed, and a better leader installed, then they’ll probably limp on.

Update: Cabinet ministers finally starting to do the right thing and resign, so hopefully May will be gone within days. But why did they let it get to this stage? At least Davis, Johnson and Baker had the excuse that May had been pulling the wool over their eyes with her secret plans.

Update 2: Of course it’s possible that a new Conservative leader might choose to call an early election, and be able to do so under the two-thirds rule because the party feels that in those circumstances it has to to happen. But in this post I was concerned with how Theresa May would do so.

 

Hubris

Hector Drummond Posted on by

After outwitting everyone for over a year May has now badly misjudged her hand. If she’d presented something halfway awful, instead of so totally awful, she may have got it through Parliament. But she’s been so hubristic that it’s about to blow up in her face…

(Similar comments apply to Whitehall and the EU itself.)

You might as well worship a pile of bones as expect Theresa May to come around

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Harry Cole says

Logic of Cabinet ministers in resignation spotlight is basically seems to be: if it’s bad enough to make me resign it won’t get through Parliament so best to stick tight as pressure needed internally when it goes back to drawing board. So today is nose holding.

But that means they want, or expect, the final deal to be a variation on this one. Which is not what we want at all.

Resign on masse, and May will be finished, then we can escape the EU’s clutches.

The all-new longest suicide note in history

Hector Drummond Posted on by

How can my post today be anything other than the observation that Theresa May has taken over from Michael Foot as the person who’s written the longest suicide note in history?

And any cabinet minister who doesn’t resign has in effect signed off on the longest suicide note in history.

Any MP who votes for this has also added their name.

I should also stress as strongly as I can that anyone such person will go down in history, along with Theresa May, as a traitor to the United Kingdom, and democracy itself, and will forever be remembered as such.

Snatching catastrophe and endless oblivion from the jaws of victory

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Theresa May hasn’t just missed an open goal, she’s picked up the ball, and ran for miles with it in the opposite direction, ending up two counties away. And what’s made it worse is that half the Conservative Party MPs have run after her.

And the rest of them are sitting by the goal, saying, ‘Maybe she’ll come back if we just keep waiting’.

Not everything Glinner touched was gold

Hector Drummond Posted on by

Graham Lineham causes consternation on the right, not just because he’s reputedly the ‘worst person on Twitter’, but also because he writes comedies that everyone, even evil right-wingers, love, like Father Ted, and Black Books (which I was always lukewarm about). But before we get too carried away with the ‘how can a comedy writer who’s so good be such a creep?’, let’s not forget that he co-wrote one of the most unfunny sketch shows ever, or at least one of the most unfunny in that golden era when comedians weren’t deliberately trying to be unfunny. Big Train is currently getting a lot of stories written about it as it’s twenty years since it made its sad debut.

Big Train had its own approach to sketches: ludicrous “what if” concepts – what if a 40-year-old man entered a schoolgirls’ gymnastics contest?

It wasn’t funny then. It’s even less funny now:

What if a woman fell in love with some temporary traffic lights?

This is like Monty Python on the back of a cereal box.

What if Jesus and Satan worked in the same office? – but played totally straight.

The sort of sketch idea I’d expect from a 12-year-old.

“We were very impressed by On The Hour and The Day Today,” says Linehan. “What they seemed to do was take ridiculous ideas and treat them extremely seriously. In such a way that you could say there were no gags.

You certainly got that bit right.

“We borrowed the Armando Iannucci super-realism thing. Stupid ideas but performed very naturalistically.”

And you showed that that quickly became dull. Each and every such sketch.

Across both series, Big Train retained another key principle: no returning characters or catchphrases.

 

“I like sketch shows that are constantly different, or if they have running characters they parcel them out sparingly, so you don’t get sick of them,” says Linehan. “I had a theory that the reason people like sketch shows is the novelty and excitement of what the next one’s going to be. Running characters can be relied on too heavily – often the same joke with tiny variations.

Okay, let’s see how that avoidance of using the same joke with tiny variations worked out in reality:

The 43rd World Stare Out Championship Finals
“I found the principal so funny. It was just the same panel again and again and again with different commentary beneath. We just came up with tiny variations.

Oh dear.

The ‘staring competition sketch’ was an exploration of comic tedium that suceeded way beyond the creators’ wildest dreams.

Prince Hunting Jockeys

 

“Prince stalking Jockeys, that’s all it is!” says Matthews.

Yes, we noticed that’s all it was.

“It’s the jockeys’ innocence… they’re simple-minded and Prince is a devious animal.

In theory it’s a laugh riot… well, actually, it’s not even funny in theory.

Jockeys are funny aren’t they? They’re small and dress in an unusual manner. You get the impression you could throw them around.

It’s a good thing you’re not a right-winger and saying this, Arthur, you’d never work again. An angry and influential man called Graham Lineham would call for you to be strung up.

Bee Gees Vs Chaka Khan

 

Perhaps the ultimate “what if” style Big Train sketch. The Bee Gees and Chaka Khan (Llewella Gideon) are reimaged as wild west gunslingers and locked into a OK Corral-style shoot-out.

Perhaps the ultimate shithouse Big Train sketch.

Sweary Florence Nightingale

 

Nightingale (Amelia Bullmore) pays the hospital manager a visit. She has the heart of a saint but the mouth of a hard-drinking sailor, and assaults the poor man’s ears with a tirade of (beeped out) profanity. “The Lady with the f_____g lamp” (as she describes herself) is eventually dragged out by security.

Wow, nobody’s ever thought of having a nice character swearing, have they?

Hall and Oates On The Estate

 

The pop duo (played by Simon Pegg and Kevin Eldon) are sent to clean up a tough estate – scrubbing graffiti off the walls, picking human excrement out of the lifts, and getting tips from the Eurythmics. The residents are not amused by Hall and Oates’ efforts.

I think you get the idea by now. Reading these outlines is like reading a comedy article about sketch ideas that are so bad it’s comical. Let’s make some of our own up, following the Big Train patented instant-shitty-sketch formula:

Michael Parkinson and Billy Connolly are management consultants sent in to improve a firm run entirely by oompa-loompas.

Thor tries to go to work in his office in a swanky high-rise building, but the jobsworth at the door won’t let him bring his hammer in.

Martians land on the Earth, but they get into a series of comical misunderstandings with some inarticulate ordinary people in regards to the aliens’ desire to be taken to Earth’s leader, and so they end up at the local council offices, where they totally get the runaround, eg. they have to wait outside an office so they can see some minor departmental head, who ignores the fact that they’re aliens, and he fobs them off onto some other department. [Actually this idea is quite good.]

All the sexes at work have to share the same toilet… oops, that one’s now real.

Not everyone hated Big Train, so please feel free to defend them in the comments if you like. (Yes, I know the cast was good. It was the writing that stunk.)