Category: Uncategorized

Tory Brexit Failures

Steve Rose

I’m sick of Tory politicians blaming others for their abject failure to deliver Brexit. It is true that most Labour and Tory MPs signed up to Article 50 and stood on manifestos committing them to respect the results of the 2016 Referendum. However, bearing in mind that Brexit is not a binary issue, Labour did not commit to supporting a Tory interpretation of Leave into which they had zero input.

Had Theresa May been a collaborative leader, keen to find a consensus, we would now be in Transition, outside the EU, and negotiating trade deals everywhere. But she chose to design her own Withdrawal Agreement and blueprint for the future, adding red lines that no-one confirmed in a public vote. She reluctantly, at a very late date, decided to have talks with Labour but refused to budge on anything of significance – phoney talks for appearance sakes.

The sensible approach would have been an all-party constitutional convention to work through all the options and come up with a proposal that could be supported by an overwhelming majority of MPs, accepting that to Lib Dems, the SNP, and some others, any form of Leave would be unsupportable; nothing you can do about that. The Tories were not sensible though. They have tried to force through a hardcore Brexit that did not have a popular or parliamentary mandate and, thanks to Speaker Bercow, didn’t get away with it. Now they are keen to blame others for failing to back their narrow and dangerous extremism, including the latest Johnson wheeze to put a Customs border down the Irish Sea.

All Opposition candidates have a duty to counter these Tory excuses and point out their lack of collaboration and consultation with a broad spectrum of viewpoints is a direct cause of their failure to deliver a Brexit that a majority of people and MPs could support. They are the authors of their own misfortune and you cannot trust them any longer.

Tabloids and Royals

Steve Rose

I am a republican but I do think that the Queen does a pretty good job as Head of State if she avoids dodgy advice from iffy PMs. So no great sympathy for the Royal Family in general. I do, however, have sympathy for the Duchess of Sussex when it comes to tabloid rags and their incessant negative reporting on her that, until now, she has had to just silently accept. Good for her she is fighting back now.

As an example of the purile and nonsensical attacks, this article in the Express caught my eye. They start with “In the past, the Royal Family have strictly forbidden heirs marrying divorcees. However, Meghan was welcomed into the Royal Family very quickly…” Sixty to eighty years ago maybe they disapproved of divorcees, even though the Church of England was founded to enable a divorcee to marry. This is well into the 21st Century.

Their royal “expert” said: “[Meghan and her former husband] weren’t married for very long, so there isn’t tremendous baggage… But also she didn’t have children… If she did have children with her first husband, then that really would make it quite awkward and difficult to work out.”

What the Express seem to have forgotten is that three of the Queen’s four children are divorced, after quite lengthy marriages, and all have children. Two have remarried. Indeed the heir to the throne was divorced, and is married to a divorcee with children, Camilla, who constitutionally will become Queen Camilla on the death of the current Queen. No-one cares. It isn’t awkward, and it isn’t difficult to work out. It is 2019 not 1936. The Express are just trying to make trouble for the Sussexes for no apparent legitimate reason. The Daily Express Righteous Right Readership, of course, are largely negative about Meghan in their comments, backing up the ridiculous story.

I hope the case against the Mail goes in Meghan’s favour and that the damages do enough damage to dissuade the other rags from pursuing their current vendetta and switch to fair reporting. They seem to be a nice couple, and they do good work for charity unlike many other Royal hangers-on I would happily see relegated to a council flat in Hull.