J
ust when we thought we were
heading for another wretched
round of ear-straining speculation
about whether the mood music in
Brussels is changing, the smell of
the political air in Britain has been
decisively transformed. The dull tang
of caution has given way to acid self-
resolve, as No 10 seeks to show the EU
that it is capable of pushing through
a no-deal Brexit. But, perhaps more
interestingly, the rot is really starting
to set in among the hypocritical and
cowardly Remainers.
Boris Johnson’s move to finally call
the bluff of Remainer MPs by asking
the Queen to suspend parliament is a
game changer. And the whirlwind of
outrage has been quite a spectacle to
behold. While Ruth Davidson is set to
resign as Scottish Tory leader, Jeremy
Corbyn, Jo Swinson and Anna Soubry
have demanded to meet the Queen.
John Bercow – the man who has
reduced the role of Speaker to a
paradigm of law-bending gooneryworthy of Putin’s Russia – has claimed
that shutting down Parliament is
“an offence against the democratic
process” and accused the PM of
committing a “constitutional outrage”.
So has former Chancellor Philip
Hammond. The one-time Goth, with
his almost pathological aversion to
sunny optimism, called the events
“profoundly undemocratic”, even
though he has spent the last three
years spewing black resentment in the
face of British self-determination.
Meanwhile, Dominic Grieve,
the MP who voted for Article 50
and then immediately launched
a campaign to oppose Brexit, told
the BBC in the metro-merican
drawl that has become ironically
fashionable among Europhile Tory
backbenchers that the situation was
“pretty outrageous”. He added, with
a Hollywood gangster flourish, that
the PM “will come to regret it”.
But the prize for the most amusing
reaction went to David Lammy, who
cannot help but sound militantly
bigoted no matter how thickly he
marinates his hateful hubris in the
mellifluous cadences of Martin Luther
King. For the poundland preacher
of Britain to blast Boris Johnson for
acting like a “poundshop dictator”
yesterday could not be more fitting.
Try as they might, the Remainers
can no longer even mildly pull off
the charade that they are respectable
constitutionalists who merely seek to
uphold parliamentary procedure. In
recent months, they have more closely
resembled tax-dodging lawyers,searching for grubby legal loopholes
to cheat the country out of Brexit.
Do they think we have forgotten how
MPs talked openly of a parliamentary
coup to replace Boris Johnson with
an anti-no deal leader? Or how John
Bercow set fire to the parliamentary
rulebook, Erskine May, in January,
by allowing members to pass an
amendment that gave Theresa May a
three-day deadline to come up with
a Plan B to replace her failed deal? Or
how MPs stretched parliamentary rules
to the very limit to pass a law, ordering
the executive to seek a Brexit delay? Or
how Labour forced the Government to
publish the Withdrawal Agreement’s
legal advice – which, irrespective of the
quality of the deal, flew in the face of
convention?
The seething ululations of the
Remainers seem even more absurd
when one considers that events are
unfolding in the sordid Westminster
parallel universe, where nothing is
as it seems and everyone is a liar.
The Remainers may try to depict
themselves as noble democratic
warriors, committed to a final
showdown with the Government, but
in truth earlier this week they gave in.
Arguably, Mr Johnson moved
to prorogue Parliament because
they showed weakness on Tuesday,
exposing themselves as unwilling
to back a no-confidence vote, even
though it is the only realistic way to
stop no deal; Mr Johnson seized on
this chance to force the hand of the
bluffing Remainers and focus minds
in unbending Brussels.The public can smell the Remainers’ hypocrisy
For all their pious carping,
recent events have
exposed anti-Brexit MPs
as calculating and cravensherelle
jacobsT
hose who doubted that Boris Johnson
would have the gumption to follow
through on his pledge to see Brexit
done by October 31, come what may,
have been proved spectacularly
wrong. Indeed, to call his decision toask the Queen to suspend Parliament an audacious
gamble would be something of an understatement.
After three years of backsliding, compromise and
humiliating defeat under Theresa May, the country
has a Prime Minister who is evidently willing to do
whatever it takes to carry out the people’s will.
Not that the suspension should have come as a
huge surprise. The idea of proroguing Parliament,
so as to prevent anti-Brexit MPs from tying the
Prime Minister’s hands as they did Mrs May’s, has
been a matter of debate for many months. While
Mr Johnson refused to rule out such a course of
action during the Conservative Party leadership
contest, his then rival Dominic Raab, now the
Foreign Secretary, insisted that it should be an
option open to the Government, much to the fury
of Remainers in the Tory party.
The stakes had been raised further this week by
the shameless plotting of anti-Brexit forces in
Westminster. Leaders from the Greens, the
Lib Dems, Labour and the Nationalist parties held a
meeting on Tuesday and concluded that when
Parliament returns from recess next week, they
would use every legislative measure available to
them to prevent the country’s exit from the EU
without a deal. So Mr Johnson chose to act and
Parliament will be suspended for a period of
several weeks prior to a Queen’s Speech. The
amount of parliamentary time available to anti-
Brexit MPs to complete their anti-democratic
manoeuvring has been drastically curtailed.
Hardline Remainers are calling it a constitutional
outrage. There will be readers who, while not
sharing this precise sentiment, are understandably
uneasy about the use of constitutional procedure
in an attempt to achieve the political aim of
disarming Remainer politicians. It is a supreme
irony that, in order to secure Brexit, whose stated
purpose is the restoration of parliamentary
sovereignty, the Government has felt the need to
circumvent Parliament.
Nevertheless, the real outrage in this saga is not
the suspension of Parliament, but the behaviour
of parliamentary Remainers. Many of them have
spent the past three years reassuring the public
that they respect the decision the voters made at
the EU referendum. A majority of MPs solemnly
promised to enact that same decision, with 85 per
cent standing for election in 2017 on manifestos
that committed them to Brexit. They voted in
overwhelming numbers to trigger Article 50.
A principled few were honest enough to admit
that they had no intention of honouring the
referendum result. Many were never that candid.
When the negotiations with the EU began, they
lobbied Michel Barnier to press on the UK terms
that they must have known the nation could never
acquiesce to. And when MPs rejected Mrs May’s
appalling agreement, instead of accepting the
no-deal Brexit we were told was the alternative to a
bad deal, through unprecedented parliamentary
machinations they forced an extension of
Article 50. They claimed that it was all in the name
of avoiding the “catastrophe” of the UK “crashing
out”, but as the furious reaction of voters at the
European elections attests, that was a thinly veiled
excuse for tactics that seemed likely to make any
form of Brexit impossible.
In any case, it is false to assert that the Commons
has been offered no chance to have its say over our
exit from the EU. John Bercow, the Speaker, whose
hysterical rage at the Prime Minister yesterday
stuck out in a crowded field, has hardly been
unwilling to give backbench MPs parliamentary
time to debate alternative strategies. The indicative
votes process failed to find any consensus.
The Prime Minister, in short, is faced with
opponents who have been willing to use the tools
of democracy in order to subvert a democratic
vote. That surely puts his decision yesterday
into context. In any case, Mr Johnson chose as
his mechanism the perfectly normal business of
asking the monarch for a prorogation in advance of
a Queen’s Speech. This is no alien innovation but
what governments do every time a parliamentary
session comes to a close. This session is already
the longest since the English Civil War. There
is nothing improper about a prime minister
requesting that it be brought to an end. Remainer
MPs now spitting tacks are doing so for political
reasons, not constitutional ones.
Where will this end? Mr Johnson’s gamble is that
this will stymie the Remainers’ efforts to prevent no
deal and see the Government through to the middle
of October, when a Queen’s Speech will be followed
rapidly by an EU summit. There is an argument that
Brussels will be more likely to offer an improved
deal if it knows the anti-no dealers in Parliament
have been routed. But it is a great risk. There is no
certainty that this will restrain the Remainers. The
expected resignation of the Scottish Tory leader,
Ruth Davidson, once a rising star, suggests the next
few weeks will be chaotic. Rebel Tories may even
decide that the time has come to vote against the
Government in a confidence motion.
But the die has been cast.
Mr Johnson has acted boldly and resolutely,
within the bounds of the constitution, to ensure
that the Brexit vote is honoured.
The real outrage is the
antics of the Remainers
ESTABLISHED 1855There is, alas, a disgraceful logic to
the dissipating Remainer boldness.
In Westminster, the only thing worse
than a battle lost is a battle won. And
while Jeremy Corbyn secretly favours
an election after a clean break with
the EU so his party can then cynically
lambast an “extremist” Tory Brexit,
Jo Swinson is concerned that backing
either the Labour leader or a Tory
MP in an anti-Brexit emergency
government would alienate swing
voters who have switched to her party
from both Right and Left.
If they call a no-confidence motion
it won’t be over principle, but to
save face. Perhaps one cannot expect
any better from two of the worst
opposition leaders in British history.
The Jo Swinsons and Jeremy Corbyns
are to our terminal political system
what nail bars and chicken shops are
to our dying high streets – the last
shoddy dregs clinging on for survival.
There are two happy twists in
this dismal saga. First, thanks to the
Remainers, it is now more likely than
ever that we will enjoy a clean break
from the EU – as, in contrast with the
Remainers, Brussels’ bluff cannot
be called. Soon our PM will have no
choice but to do a no-deal Brexit. And
second, as MPs who have defied the
referendum know full well, a swamp-
draining general election is imminent.We accept letters
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@Sherelle_E_J; read more at
telegraph.co.uk/opinionLetters to the Editor
sir – Rather than condemn the
Government for seeking to deliver
what MPs themselves voted for when
they approved Article 50, wouldn’t
Nicola Sturgeon, Jo Swinson and
Dominic Grieve be better to train their
fire on the European Union, which has
so far refused steadfastly to negotiate?
Their accusation that, in proroguing
Parliament, the Government is
undermining democracy is laughable
when one considers that they wish to
break the laws that they themselves
set, in order to overturn the 17,410,
votes cast by the majority.
They clearly believe in democracy
only when it suits them.
Alastair Muir
Bearsden, East Dunbartonshiresir – John Bercow has denounced
the suspension of Parliament as a
“constitutional outrage”.
This comes from the man who
dramatically broke precedent with
Dominic Grieve’s amendment in
January; then, in March, he invoked an
archaic parliamentary convention that
pre-dates the Gunpowder Plot and
had not been used by a speaker of the
House of Commons since 1920. All of
this he did, it seems, with the partisan
objective of interrupting the Brexit
process.
Mr Bercow has no authority
on which to judge “constitutional
outrage”, except in as much as he has
plenty of experience of provoking it
himself. It was members of the Remain
establishment that weaponised
parliamentary procedure to defeat
Brexit, so we should not be moved by
their crocodile tears when they can no
longer exploit that procedure.
Robert Frazer
Salford, Lancashiresir – I served as the Conservative
Member of Parliament for Gravesham
until 1997. It was quite normal thatMPs went away for the summer,
then returned for a short period to
finalise the previous parliamentary
year’s business, before Parliament
was prorogued pending the start of
the new parliamentary year, with a
Queen’s Speech in October.
This parliamentary session has been
going on since July 2017, the longest
period ever – yet another legacy of the
indecisive Theresa May.
We now have a Prime Minister who
proposes to put his Government’s
programme in a Queen’s Speech, quite
properly delivered at a State Opening
of Parliament, then debated and
voted upon. In the meantime, existing
enacted legislation carries us over.
This is a return to parliamentary
normality. The current fuss is being
manufactured for partisan purposes.
Jacques Arnold
West Malling , Kentsir – Boris Johnson is fully justified in
bringing the current moribund session
of Parliament to a close and setting out
legislative proposals for a new session
in a Queen’s Speech on October 14.
The additional very worthwhile
benefit is that it hijacks Remainers’
plans to outlaw leaving the EU without
a deal. If these Remainers wish to
change policy then let them bring
forward a no-confidence motion now
or vote against the Queen’s Speech and
precipitate a general election.
John Sharp
Great Glen, Leicestershiresir – Amid the cacophony of self-
righteous indignation expressed by
Remainer MPs over the suspension
of Parliament, we repeatedly hear
phrases such as “parliamentary
sovereignty” and that suspending
Parliament is an “affront todemocracy”.
How is seeking to deliver a wish
voted for by the people of this country
to leave the European Union (this was
the question – there was no reference
to a deal or no deal) an affront to
democracy?
Fraser Pithie
Kenilworth, Warwickshiresir – John Major prorogued Parliament
in 1997. His hypocrisy apparently has
no bounds.
Graham W Swift
Newcastle-under-Lyme, Staffordshiresir – What choice does Boris Johnson
have but to prorogue Parliament after
Tuesday’s treacherous attempt to seize
parliamentary power by undemocratic
MPs who cannot accept the will of the
British people? It’s not so long since
Anna Soubry accused John McDonnell
of being a very dangerous man; now
she poses for photos with him.
Mr Johnson had to act swiftly to
prevent these rebel MPs from delaying
the Brexit process yet again and
throwing British businesses into yet
more confusion.
Peter J Grasby
Tadcaster, North Yorkshiresir – Parliament has been debating
Brexit for the past three years and
achieved absolutely nothing. The
country voted to leave the EU and it is
now time to implement that vote, with
or without a deal.
Letting these MPs continue
debating is just a waste of time and
I hope they pay the price for their
dithering at the next general election.
A J C Gorman
Ickenham, Middlesexsir – Will MPs’ salaries also be
suspended?
Geraldine Higson
Constantine Bay, CornwallRemainer MPs are in no position to accuse the Government of undermining democracy
Lead replacements
sir – Professor Mark Hill (Letters,
August 24) is correct that only
diocesan chancellors have the
authority to decide what roofing
materials should be used by parish
churches. It is what is happening at
the pre-application stage that creates
what he describes as the “defeatism” in
some rural areas.
In the aftermath of distressing metal
thefts, small parish churches tend to
feel very reliant on their diocesan
advisory committee (DAC). Professor
Hill emphasises the need for
“compelling evidence” to support the
use of alternatives to lead, but limited
manpower and funds may make it
difficult for small churches to comply
with such demands.
Also, it may not even help if they do.
After I wrote to the Telegraph about
my church’s 2017 (successful)
application to use a modern roofing
material, I was contacted by a rural
church warden whose church had
made three different, unsuccessful
applications to its DAC to use the same
modern material.
His conclusion, after the final
refusal, was: “All the proposals we had
put in good faith to the DAC were a
waste of time and effort, as they had
not been passed on to the chancellor.
Surely the system must change.”
Emma Robarts
Great Hormead, HertfordshirePower of the press
sir – The report on deterring seagulls
by staring at them (August 24) was
very interesting. Sadly, this technique
did not work on the wasp buzzing
round my drink. A rolled up Telegraph
is still the best deterrent for them.
Tony White
Stevenage, HertfordshireFracking tremors
sir – Coverage of the tremors near
the Cuadrilla fracking site (report,
August 27) often refers to it as Britain’s
only active fracking site. In fact Britain
has been fracking – a technique first
developed by the Americans in the
Forties – for many years.
Wytch Farm in Dorset sits on the
largest oil field in western Europe, and
has been producing oil and gas for BP
since 1979 using a fracking process. It
is surrounded by trees and can really
only be seen from the air. It has never
caused any earthquakes.
Those against fracking also fear that
it causes contamination of the water
table. This is unfounded, as the
vertical pipe that drills down through
the Earth or seabed is made of
hardened steel. The hole that is drilled
is larger than the pipe and the space is
filled with concrete, so even if the pipe
passes close to an aquifer it will not
contaminate it. In almost 40 years,
no one in the Wytch Farm area has
complained that the water from their
taps tastes odd.
Adrian Foley
Ringwood, HampshirePain releaf
sir – It has been known for a long time
that patients in hospital beds that
overlook pot plants and greenery need
fewer painkillers (report, August 27)
and often go home earlier than those
who overlook, say, a car park.
The sight of living plants and
flowers creates calmness and helps us
relax. But what does the NHS do about
this? Very little. What do supermarkets
do? Force every single one of their
customers to pass through greenery
before they get to the rest of the store.
Margaret Bowman
Shrewsbury, ShropshireParliament will be suspended from the second week in September to October 14GETTYsir – There are good reasons why
walkers are against cyclists and horses
using rights of way designated as
footpaths (Letters, August 28).
Anyone who has walked a bridleway
after inclement weather is relieved to
be able to hop over a stile to a footpath,
given the mess hooves churn up. Stiles
also deter trespass by bicycles and
equestrians as well as entry by trail
bikes and four-wheel drive vehicles.
England is blessed with a generous
network of pedestrian-only rights of
way: we must protect it from further
intrusion by those who engage in
damaging leisure pursuits.
Steve Haynes
Chichester, West Sussexsir – Recently a friend and I decided to
run the Ridgeway, from Overton Hill
in Wiltshire to Ivinghoe Beacon in
Buckinghamshire.
The first 30 miles had been
metalled, forcing us to dodge flocks of
fast-moving cyclists and the odd
motorcyclist. The tarmac also removed
any sense of travelling the oldest
long-distance footpath in the country.
The second 30 miles had been left in
its original state and was glorious.
Many footpaths are historical
features in their own right and should
never be blighted with tarmac simply
to improve accessibility.
Alex Gerald
London SWWhy footpaths should be reserved for walkers
sir – In too many parts of the country,
mobile “not spots” (report, August 27)
are a persistent and frustrating part of
daily life.
There are many reasons for patchy
coverage, from building and vehicle
design to the number and location of
masts and cells and the topography of
built and natural landscapes.
The British Chambers of Commerce
launched its No More Not Spots
campaign last year to highlight
the issue and encourage central
government, the telecoms industry
and council planners to work together
to improve coverage for all.
The Government’s proposals to
simplify planning rules to improve
rural coverage are a step in the
right direction, but they must
swiftly turn to action if they are to
alleviate the barriers to connectivity
and productivity in our business
communities.
If we are to build an economyfor the future, we must first get the
basics right.
Hannah Essex
Co-Executive Director at the British
Chambers of Commerce
London SWsir – The main reason we have
appalling coverage is that operators
can build masts next to existing ones.
There is a village in Hampshire with
very poor coverage. One company’s
mast was placed about three miles
away. Later, another company was
allowed to build a mast next to the
first. Astonishingly, a year later, a third
company got permission to build. The
village still has poor reception.
We would soon have universal
coverage if companies were not
allowed to place masts in places where
50 per cent of the customers they
serve already have strong reception.
Robert Horne
SouthamptonLess talk more action on mobile coverage
The Daily Telegraph Thursday 29 August 2019 *** 19
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