Some advice for Tory PMs:
If your regime is found in Contempt of Parliament; if you illegally close down our sovereign Parliament; if you hire advisers found in Contempt of Parliament; if you threaten gleefully to work around our laws, don't be surprised when nobody trusts you.
If your regime is found in Contempt of Parliament; if you illegally close down our sovereign Parliament; if you hire advisers found in Contempt of Parliament; if you threaten gleefully to work around our laws, don't be surprised when nobody trusts you.
Don't be waving inordinately complicated and constitution-changing once-in-a-generation documents in front of people and asking them to sign them off, effectively unseen.
Don't be wondering why your attempts to appear statesmanlike fail.
Don't be surprised if your public appearances, forever, are marred by boos and palpable hatred.
Don't be surprised if your public appearances, forever, are marred by boos and palpable hatred.
Don't be surprised if history judges you just as we today judge you. Just as the courts judge you. Just as your counterparts abroad judge you.
Because when you act in contempt; when you deploy contempt as a deliberate, disruptive strategy; when you make a policy of revelling in it - you become it. You *are* it. You are contempt personified.
Small wonder you'd rather die in ditches than fail to have your way. Because, having cast aside all dignity and decency, the only hope left - the only chance of half-baked redemption - is the validation of some sort of victory, however dishonest, however pyrrhic, however ruinous.
Advice then? Your deeds cannot be unwritten, but they can be repented. Discord can be acknowledged for what it is: harmful, and no kind of mandate for causing harm. Contempt, in the end, will fail; better in the end to pivot, to do the right thing, to be remembered for that.
