Imagine the courage and fortitude, borne of desperation, it requires to embark on a do or die attempt to cross the sea in a dinghy from a land where you’ve already been met with the fist of fury rather than the hand of friendship, to another land where more hostility and rage awaits your arrival.

Then imagine that no matter the hostility that awaits you at the end of this perilous voyage, it pales when compared to the horrors you managed to escape in your country of origin, horrors borne of the conflict, chaos and societal collapse underwritten at least in part by the foreign policy of the very country you are trying to reach for asylum and sanctuary.

To witness news crews from the BBC and Sky News sailing around some of those trying to reach British shores in these dinghies is to witness the funeral of the UK as the beacon of decency, human rights and civilisation it’s proponents have long extended themselves in arguing it is. Now, in this time of toxic Brexit nationalism, the mask has been ripped off to reveal the ugly face of a state whose brutality and barbarity is entrenched in its very DNA.

There is no flag big enough to cover the shame of the hysteria that’s been whipped up by the army of bigots who’ve poisoned our politics in recent years, chief among them Nigel ‘pint and fag’ Farage. He’s so unpleasant that it wouldn’t be a surprise to find that even his own shite can’t stand him. Competing with him in the toxicity stakes is a government of privately educated thugs, with Home Secretary Priti Patel in particular doing a great impression of a woman whose preferred perfume is poison. Her announcement of the appointment of a Clandestine Channel Threat Commander to tackle this ‘invasion force’ of desperate migrants and refugees is straight out of a spoof Bond movie.

Interesting to note in the midst of this current crisis that the baton as Leader of the Opposition (the real opposition that is) has over time been passed from Piers Morgan to Man Utd’s Marcus Rashford and now to the Twitter account of Ben & Jerry’s UK. One twitter thread in opposition to this rancid government’s war on dinghy-borne refugees from this account has done more to ruffle its feathers than Sir Keir Starmer and his desultory shadow cabinet has done in all the time they’ve been in post.

Hey @PritiPatel we think the real crisis is our lack of humanity for people fleeing war, climate change and torture. We pulled together a thread for you..

— Ben & Jerry’s UK (@benandjerrysUK) August 11, 2020

Migration and migrants have for far too long been a grotesque distraction from the real enemy without and within in Britain. Those are billionaires from across the world whose preferred destination is London, where the living is easy and ill gotten gains are turned into welcome donations to the Conservative Party, and a political and media establishment that has succeeded in putting the cruel into Cruel Britannia. Over 65,000 excess deaths in the UK during Covid-19 due to the criminal negligence of this execrable crew who are currently in power, and the worst recession just announced of any G7 country.

And if this isn’t enough to have you choking on your cornflakes, the government’s furlough scheme ends in October with Brexit set to materialise just two months later.

But just we head for a hard Brexit with no parachute, we are also thankfully headed for the sundering of this prolonged experiment in colonialism and mercantilism. The most recent YouGov poll at this writing reveals for the fourth poll running a decisive majority in support of independence in Scotland. With another YouGov poll revealing that a majority of Britons have no sympathy for the migrants trying to reach the UK across the Channel, we now have it confirmed that Scotland and England are two distinct countries with distinct and different cultural values and sense of national identity.

With this in mind, let Brexit Britain take the bigots and let an independent Scotland take the migrants.

As the man said, “A map of the world that does not include Utopia is not worth glancing at.”

End.

medium.com

I find election campaigns in which the Prime Minister addresses scrubbed, smug Tory audiences, filmed by the BBC in close shot to conceal the sparsity of their numbers, deeply disturbing. I find the speeches in factories to employees even more chilling. The sullen compliance of employees, too cowed to show discontent before their bosses, should disturb any right thinking person. This may bore millennials, but back in the 1970s it was inconceivable that a politician of any stripe could address a factory floor without some robust reaction from the workforce. In those days, workers had rights, their employment was protected, and they could not be dismissed on a whim. I have no doubt that the rise of the North Korean factory style meeting in British politics relates directly to the destruction of workers’ rights. Johnson did one in a electric taxi factory a couple of days ago and it was a staple of May’s appalling campaign.

Politicians only give speeches nowadays for them to be carried on electronic media, and the camera angles are considered more thoroughly than the content by their managers. The idea of a political meeting was that a politician would hire a public hall and invite the general public to come and listen to their attempt to win their vote, and engage in discussion with people. That idea has almost died, in favour of the outright propaganda model.

To his great credit, yesterday in Dundee Jeremy Corbyn did hold a relatively open meeting at the Queens Hotel, and he was heckled by Bob Costello. As it happens I know both Jeremy and Bob and have a lot of time for both of them. Bob’s heckle was the perfectly reasonable “I’m interested in what you’re going to do about the will of the Scottish people in relation to Section 30”. Section 30 in this context is Westminster’s agreement to an Independence referendum.

Heckling is a good thing. I do not hold for a moment with the notion that politicians must be heard in a respectful silence and questions reserved to the end. I almost always start my individual talks by encouraging people to interject if they have a burning desire to disagree. This was proper democratic politics as it ought to be conducted. Half decent politicians relish hecklers – they have the microphone and the platform and ought to have no difficulty in dominating the exchange if they are any good at all.

I would add that I have fierce contempt for the “security” argument for hiding politicians from their constituents. Far too often robust disagreement is falsely portrayed as threat. Another friend of mine, Nigel Jones, was when an MP attacked in his constituency office and left with permanent injuries. Public life carries risks. I have received a number of actual death threats over the years since I quit the FCO and started campaigning (often originating in Florida, for some peculiar reason). I doubt any MP has genuinely received significantly more than I. But I still hold perfectly open public meetings. I am in the phone book and on the open electoral register. My address is in Who’s Who. I find the continued bleating by politicians about their security insufferable. I faced the same nonsense in the FCO, when I was advised at various times under the FCO “Duty of Care” not to travel around the Ferghana Valley and around Sierra Leone and Monrovia – all of which I had to do in order to do my job properly. I ignored the advice, telling the FCO that if personal safety were my goal in life, I could have been an accountant.

I am surprised that the Tories feel the need to keep Johnson almost as wrapped in cottonwool as May, because Johnson is a better campaigner. His veneer of chummy bonhommie hides his menace effectively enough to fool most people most of the time. Where he is not good is under detailed, forensic questioning and I shall be surprised if the Tories let Andrew Neil at him. The broadcaster’s decisions on participation in debates are entirely governed by the Tory agenda. The Tories calculate that a sustained campaign of vilification has damaged Jeremy Corbyn to the extent the public will not listen to him, so the Tories are happy to debate Corbyn. They are determined to stop Sturgeon from interacting with Johnson, as she is an excellent debater. The Lib Dems are a major threat to Tory seats, which is why they want to keep Swinson as marginal as possible, although she is not a threat in debate.

By standing down candidates in 300 odd Tory constituencies, Nigel Farage drastically reduced the amount of time the broadcasters will give the Brexit Party. That is so fundamental, I simply do not believe it was done without a hidden Farage/Johnson understanding. The current “spat” between them over other candidates standing down is simply window dressing.

This is a fascinating campaign. I have not undertaken any quantitative analysis, but I have never before in a UK general election felt that, once a campaign was actually under way and the broadcasting rules in force, BBC bias continued quite as blatantly as it does at this moment. It is still my prediction that Cummings’ strategy means that vote spread will heavily disadvantage the Tories under FPTP and they will not get a majority. If they do, that can only hasten Scottish Independence and I will not personally suffer it for too long. But I feel very worried for the millions who would live under boot of the 1% in the conditions of deregulation a Tory victory would unleash.

craigmurray.org.uk

BoJo ran out of rope when all his gambits intended to bounce parliament into accepting his Brexit deal got nowhere (as was widely predicted). The EU accepted his deal, but he wanted it rushed through parliament to meet his 31^st October deadline, and parliament failed to oblige.

BoJo, never one to shun bombast, had promised to “die in a ditch” if Brexit did not take place by Halloween.

Few took BoJo’s deadline seriously, except for the hardline Brexit loons who hang on his every word.

Members of his immediate family say publicly they don’t trust him, so what hope is there left for the rest of us?

The only option left for “dead in the ditch” BoJo was to shelve his deal and seek a snap general election, which will now be held on 12^thDecember.

BoJo is hoping to tap into the exhaustion resentful voters now feel about the endless Brexit delays, and the cornerstone of his campaign is to blame the “anti-people” parliament for these stoppages. He’s also promised to deliver Brexit by mid-January if elected.

This pretense of a having a “people’s election” is precisely that—a sham. For once The Guardian got it right:

“Mr Johnson wasted time after attaining office by not talking to the EU. He then unlawfully prorogued parliament to evade scrutiny. Mr Johnson came out with a set of proposals that were unacceptable to Brussels before being swiftly amended. There was no way MPs would permit Britain to be bundled out of the EU with no deal or on terms that threaten jobs, the economy, peace in Northern Ireland or the union with Scotland. The courts and MPs did not allow the prime minister to disregard proper procedure – to their credit, because a future government could use the precedent established for more sinister purposes. Mr Johnson does not care about such things. His calculations revolve around naked self-interest and power”.

It will be interesting to see how BoJo campaigns in the election, after having abandoned his promise to die in a ditch by Halloween.

When he ran for the leadership of the Tory party, BoJo’s handlers did their best to hide their gaffe-prone boss from party members, journalists, and the public.

BoJo’s handlers got away with this strategy then, but shielding a candidate who professes to be a “man of the people” from “the people” in a nationwide election was never going to be as easy.

Johnson’s team will have to let loose their bumbling but over-confident leader, and take their chances with whomever he encounters.

BoJo’s first public appearance did not go according to plan (if indeed there was one).

A politician who is on record as wanting to sell-off the NHS to the private sector would be advised not to visit an NHS hospital as a PR stunt.

However, BoJo’s handlers, aware that the Tory record on the NHS is a weak spot in their campaign platform, decided their candidate should display some fake love for the NHS by visiting the university hospital in Cambridge for a photo op.

BoJo was booed off the hospital premises by medical staff, patients, and visitors. His visit was covered by mainstream media, including the pusillanimous BBC, which did not however mention the raucous send-off given BoJo in the reception lobby at Addenbrookes hospital.

Social media though was more diligent in its coverage and did full justice to BoJo’s cynical visit to Addenbrookes.

Social media also had a field day with the Tory election slogan “Britain deserves better”. Given that the Conservatives have been in office since 2010, and made a complete pig’s ear of Brexit, the PR team responsible for this deeply ironical slogan should perhaps be banished by Tory HQ to the mansion of Prince Charles and made to flat-iron Charlie Boy’s shoelaces each morning.

The old adage “with friends like this you don’t need enemies” has always been applicable to Nigel Farage, the ever-opportunistic grifter who leads the far-right Brexit party, who has proven himself to be even more adept at lying than Johnson.

Farage pretends to be an ally of the Tories in wanting Brexit, but issued them an ultimatum: form an electoral alliance with us or else my Brexit party will field candidates in all seats in the election.

Farage had one condition, given that he considered BoJo’s shelved deal with the EU to be a “lousy” one–  a No Deal Brexit had to be on the table for Farage’s pact with the Tories to be implemented.

Farage’s condition is designed to peel-off hardcore Brexiters—most of them far-right nationalists, Little Englander xenophobes, and white supremacists– from the Conservatives, something BoJo can ill-afford to have happen.

At the same time, Farage’s seemingly uncompromising No Deal Brexit condition for a  pact with the Conservatives could drive Tories opposed to Brexit (and they do exist) into the arms of the Remainer almost-Tory Lib Dems.

Farage also had a fawning interview with Donald Trump on LBC radio.

Corbyn would be “so bad” for the UK, the “America First” president told Farage’s listeners, quite unaware that his huge unpopularity with Brits meant this message was bound to backfire.

Trump, unaware of the competition between Farage and BoJo for Brexit voters, sought to give BoJo and his Brexit deal a boost in this interview, but ended-up guaranteeing that BoJo would now be linked to someone regarded by many Ukanians as America’s sick joke on the world.

Meanwhile Johnson continues to come-up with his trademark whoppers.

On Sunday, The Daily Telegraph was forced to correct a column written by BoJo, in  which he falsely claimed the UK is set to “become the largest and most prosperous economy in this hemisphere”, i.e. that the UK will overtake Germany as an economic power “in our lifetimes”.

The reality is quite different. The World Bank’s GDP-by-country rankings shows something that is not on the horizon for Johnson— e.g. that far from overtaking Germany, the UK is about to be overtaken by India (UK $2,825,208 vs India $2,726,323).

I’ll be in London next week to get a further sense of the directions taken by the election campaigns of the main parties.

We already know that Nigel Farage has declined to stand as a candidate for parliament in the election.

counterpunch.org

Johnson, like Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage, favors a no-deal “hard exit” for the United Kingdom from the European Union. It does not matter to Johnson, Farage, and their supporters how the rashness of this policy will affect the British economy, British workers, and the stability of Northern Ireland’s border with Ireland.

Like his political doppelganger in Washington – Donald Trump – Johnson is an inveterate liar and fabulist. Johnson was fired from The Times of London for fabricating a quote that appeared in a front-page story. Johnson also concocted stories for his second newspaper, The Daily Telegraph. In 2004, Johnson was fired by Conservative Party leader Michael Howard after he lied to Howard about an affair with a columnist for The Spectator. Johnson continued to lie while he served as the mayor of London.

Johnson’s purge of the Conservative Party hierarchy and his appointment of his sycophants to top Tory party and government positions is not much different than Trump’s own purge of “Never Trumpers” from the Republican Party.

Johnson also mirrors his political twin across the Atlantic in being an avowed racist. Johnson has called Africans “picaninnies,” stated that Africans have “watermelon smiles,” called a group of young black singers “AIDS-ridden choristers,” and sees centuries of British colonial rule in Africa has being governed by a series of “big white chiefs.” Johnson pines for the days of the British Empire and his post-EU strategy for Britain is to attempt an economic trading bloc recreation of a British-dominated Commonwealth of Nations.

Johnson’s prorogation of Parliament for five weeks was intended to forestall any move to put political brakes on the United Kingdom’s hard exit from the EU scheduled for October 31. Even if a majority of the House of Commons voted to curb Johnson’s government’s enthusiasm for a hard Brexit on October 31, chief Brexit minister Michael Gove suggested that Johnson’s government might simply ignore any legislation passed by Parliament.

Prorogations of Westminster have occurred in the past, but only for brief periods of time, usually less than a week, and normally before snap or scheduled general elections. Opposition Members of Parliament see Johnson’s move differently, with some calling it a “coup” and others likening it to the 1933 Reichstag fire in Germany that spelled the end for the Weimar constitution and even King Charles I’s prorogation in 1628 that introduced Charles’s “Personal Rule.” Former British Prime Minister John Major, who opposes Brexit and prorogation, reminded Johnson of what befell Charles I for his act. After Oliver Cromwell’s republican forces defeated Charles I, the king was found guilty of treason and was beheaded.

While no one currently is demanding “off with his head” when it comes to Johnson’s prorogation, there are a number of court battles taking place throughout the UK to declare Johnson’s actions null and void. One argument is that Johnson and the Privy Council, led over by the pro-Brexit Lord President Jacob Rees-Mogg, lied to Queen Elizabeth II in receiving her Royal Assent for prorogation. Opponents of proroguing Parliament are arguing before the courts that Johnson and Rees-Mogg failed to inform the Queen of widespread cross-party opposition to prorogation by a majority of Parliament.

The prorogation order leading to a hard Brexit was condemned by Conservatives who favor remaining in the EU, as well as by officials of the Labor; Liberal Democrats; Green; Scottish, Welsh, Manx, and Cornish nationalist; Change UK, Northern Ireland Social Democratic and Labor, and Sinn Fein political parties. John Bercow, the Speaker of the House of Commons stated, “We cannot have a situation in which Parliament is shut down. We are a democratic society and Parliament will be heard,” adding, “I will fight with every breath in my body to stop that happening.” Some opposition MPs toyed with the idea of Parliament locking themselves inside the houses of Westminster, while others called for Parliament reconvening in another location.

As Johnson and his allies dug in, it was more apparent that their “base” only consists of white nationalists in the south of England who followed the extremist policies of Johnson, Farage, and English Defense League neo-fascist founder Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as “Tommy Robinson.”

The political right-wing in British-style parliamentary governments are fond of proroguing parliament to achieve their objectives. In 2008, the Canadian Liberal Party and the social democratic New Democratic Party (NDP) decided to take advantage of the ruling Conservative Party’s minority status to announce a deal to form a coalition government and replace the Tories led by Prime Minister Stephen Harper after a successful no-confidence vote in parliament. Although the Tories had increased the number of their seats in the October 14, 2008 election and held a plurality in Parliament, they were still in a minority rule status. The proposed Liberal-NDP coalition had the parliamentary support of the Bloc Québécois and the political support of the Green Party.

Just prior to holding a no-confidence vote, Harper received Royal Assent from Governor General Michaëlle Jean to prorogue Parliament until late January 2009. Essentially, Harper did what Johnson decided to do – prorogue parliament prior to it holding a no-confidence vote in the government. In either case, the decisions by Jean and Queen Elizabeth were undemocratic moves by monarchical anachronisms. Opinion polls in Canada showed majority opposition to the prorogation with a majority also favoring a new national election. The Conservatives, under the leadership of Andrew Scheer, are attempting to oust the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau in the October 2019 general election. Scheer is seen as a political puppet of former Prime Minister Harper.

The political right in the nations of the Commonwealth have relied on “King’s contrivances” like prorogation and dismissals by Governors General acting with the authority of the British monarch. This was the case in 1975 in Australia when Governor General John Kerr dismissed Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam and his entire government and appointed conservative leader Malcolm Fraser, whose coalition held a minority in the Australian House of Representatives, as prime minister. It was later discovered that Kerr had been on the payroll of the Central Intelligence Agency and that Secretary of State Henry Kissinger worked closely with CIA deputy director Vernon Walters to stage a “constitutional coup” against Whitlam, who Washington viewed as too friendly to the Soviet Union, China, North Korea, and other socialist nations. In 1989, the CIA’s fingerprints were found on a New Zealand Labor Party internal rebellion against Labor Prime Minister David Lange. The George H. W. Bush administration had grown tired of Lange’s insistence on banning US nuclear-powered and nuclear-armed naval vessels from New Zealand waters, triggering a severance of intelligence links between Wellington and Washington. Lange was forced to resign as prime minister.

Along with Westminster style government, the legacy of the British Empire has also seen the power of prorogation of legislative assemblies being used in republican forms of government within the Commonwealth. Under successive governments, including the current government of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, state legislatures have been prorogued, the latest being the prorogation of the legislature of Jammu and Kashmir. In fact, direct rule from New Delhi, along with prorogation of state legislative assemblies, has occurred in every Indian state, with the exception of Chhattisgarh and Telangana. In 2018, the president of Sri Lanka prorogued Parliament. On many occasions, Trump has stated that he has an “absolute right” to curb the constitutional powers of the US Congress.

Prorogation and other “King’s contrivances” practiced in the former realm of the British Empire have come back to haunt the “mother country,” Great Britain, in an extremely undemocratic way.