Like\u00a0 the German smash through the Ardennes in 1940, scattering the Allied armies hither and thither which nobody saw coming,\u00a0 this proroguing of parliament followed by a Queen’s Speech establishing the new government’s credentials and programme for the country post Brexit, has caught all Westminster on hop. With a punch which makes the combined opposition, lauded yesterday for coming together on a course within which there are loads of differing views and hidden disagreements, look weak and undecided. It also re-establishes the constitution on a proper track, crucially firmly controlled by the government. The only way now to stop Brexit on Boris’s terms is to defeat the Queen’s Speech, which is a confidence vote, or to take control of parliamentary business and recall Article 50.<\/p>\n
Unless the opposition changes its whole character and approach very fast and focuses on pin point targets rather than nuanced preferences, neither will happen. Boris was a showman Mayor, an incompetent Foreign Secretary and a clown leadership campaigner, but he turns out to be a Prime Minister\u00a0 in a totally different league. He mastered the G 7 summit with a Trump bromance, but backed the EU against Trump on every major issue. He was the only personality to rival Trump for media draw. He has now thrown down a gauntlet that might well disable the opposition entirely. Evidently Prime Minister was the only job he ever wanted.<\/p>\n
It may turn out to be the only one he can actually do. Really well.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Like\u00a0 the German smash through the Ardennes in 1940, scattering the Allied armies hither and thither which nobody saw coming,\u00a0 this proroguing of parliament followed by a Queen’s Speech establishing the new government’s credentials and programme for the country post Brexit, has caught all Westminster on hop. With a punch which makes the combined opposition, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[3,5,4],"class_list":["post-15290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-malcolm-blair-robinson","tag-facebook","tag-instagram","tag-twitter"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15292,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15290\/revisions\/15292"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.malcolmblair-robinson.co.uk\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}