Here’s taking control for you. Will Brexiteers still eat their sausage now its been touched by EU knives? Does a French cut pork chop meet UK pork chop standards? Lets not get into the resulting costs from this - both financial and environmental.
That’s a fair point, but I think there is something a bit more egregiously duplicitous about Paterson saying ‘only a madman would consider leaving the single market’ before then immediately trying to drag us out of the single market.
Or maybe it wasn’t a lie. Maybe it was a moment of devastating self-awareness.
I think all claims made prior to the referendum about what would happen ought to have been obvious flannel. They were all merely aspirational, from all sides.
None of those tasked with ultimately driving this process were asked to turn their minds to it. An appallingly deficient process.
As you know, I would have favoured an interim step along the EFTA/EU route but it was impossible to set out exactly what Brexit would result due to a whole host of factors.
Where did Paterson stand on the various votes that went through Parliament when trying to assess what path enjoyed the greatest Parliamentary support?
I’d have put you in charge of the whole thing if I could have! But we’re back to the old problem that every sensible and reasonable thought process that might have informed a leave vote wasn’t really on the table when you look at the people who would be delivering it.
Paterson wasn’t the only leave voice saying that leaving the single market wasn’t on the table. Quite a lot of very prominent leavers spent a lot of time reassuring the public that a hard/no deal Brexit wasn’t on the table. People will have cast their vote on this basis. Dismissing it as flannel and suggesting it’s just part of the game isn’t good enough.
I’ve long thought that there needs to be a law on electoral fraud that prevents politicians from essentially defrauding people of their vote.
Yes, just checked and you’re right. He voted against the Custom’s Union option (which was stupid anyway, so no problem with that), but he also voted against Common Market 2.0 (which was basically staying in the Single Market on terms similar to Norway).
He also voted against revoking Article 50 and against a Final Public Vote.
It should be said that all of the options put to the MPs for indicative votes had their problems. May’s deal was probably better than all of them but there we go.
It seems that Dom Cummings thinks that the vote to clear Paterson was equally about clearing Johnson of any further investigations into his little escapades such as a certain holiday and the refurbishment of no. 10. I’m inclined to believe him.
I’m not convinced Labour have been publicly strong / vocal enough on this again
The newspaper (Sunday Times) said that in the past two decades, all 16 of the party’s main treasurers – apart from the most recent, who stood down two months ago having donated £3.8m – have been offered a seat in the Lords
More concerning than the attempt to suspend Paterson’s suspension, is the seemingly lack of political nous to foresee what a huge fucking shitstorm it would cause. For what?
What a stupid fucking hill to die on. Whoever suggested it as a course of action and whoever then signed off on it…well, they’re stupid cunts aren’t they? Hugely concerning that fuckwits of that level of ineptitude and lack of foresight can be at the heart of government.