1. So here’s where we are: Johnson’s authority is made of balsa. He depends upon the taxpayer-purchased votes of the DUP and the support of his own parliamentary party, many of whom want much more than the backstop excised from May’s deal....
2. He is only in office at all because of the decision taken by the tiny selectorate of Tory members. His mandate is constitutionally sound but politically frangible. BUT...
3. By adopting the kinetic energy of a campaign rather than the governing ethos of a serious administration- by colonising the centre of Whitehall with the 2016 Vote Leave team - he has achieved momentum and focus.....
4. The entire apparatus of the British state is now being deployed in the service of a single goal: the implementation of a single (dubious) interpretation of the 2016 referendum: namely, that the public understood that the UK might leave without a deal and..
5....is more than willing to pay the price of no deal, as long as we leave on October 31, ‘do or die’. The govt simultaneously congratulates itself for preparing for no deal, and then condemns those who report these preparations as agents of ‘Project Fear’...
6. So absolute is this focus that the PM thinks nothing of threatening Parliament with prorogation: an astonishing moment in the historic post-1688 relationship between executive and legislature. It is a mafia-style warning that he will not blink...
7. Which begs the question: will Parliament? All normal conventions and norms are out of the window. This is total political warfare now. Johnson and Cummings will go to any lengths to get the UK out on October 31....
8. Across London, as the political and media class returns in batches from holiday, you can hear a feeble murmuring sound: it is the Establishment wondering if the PM means it and longing quietly for a good old-fashioned British fudge..
9. And here’s the newsflash (scarcely news to those who have been following): the fudge train is out of service. It is isn’t coming. Not even a replacement bus. It’s time to face up to cold, unforgiving. realities....
10. There is a clear majority in the Commons against no deal. Is it prepared to act as one and stop this extraordinary march into the abyss? Are its constituent parts ready to set aside tribalism and seek common purpose?....
11. Or does this Parliament want to be remembered as the group of MPs that couldn’t get its act together against a PM with single, profoundly pernicious purpose? Only those MPs can know. But time is running awfully short. Tick tock. ENDS
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