The preening popinjay

Yesterday, Wednesday, the Speaker of the House, Mr Bercow, allowed an amendment to a Government motion, when perhaps he shouldn’t have. The amendment by Tory Backbencher, Grant Shapps, won the vote, and now the PM is restricted to returning to the house after just three days, rather than the three weeks the original wording said.

The reason for the Speaker doing so might have more than a little to do with the contempt, literally, that the PM and her Government has held Parliament. After scrapping the meaningful vote before Christmas, supposedly to allow for further negotiations with the EU, negotiations that did not in fact take place, and never were. So, to make sure that matters are quickly brought back before the House, the change was allowed and voted for by The Commons.

This is further evidence that Parliament is further wrenching control back from the Government which has been determined to prevent Parliament from knowing just about anything that was going on, restricting debate and discourse, over what is the most important matter to happen in politics in my lifetime. It is almost like a Government coup, with May and the Brexiteers and the press screaming will of the people if things are not going their way.

Thing is, May asked the people in 2017 to back her further when she called her snap election, so to strengthen her hand she said. She lost a Parliamentary majority and became a minority Government which needs support from the DUP to stay in office. I did not say power as she clearly wields no power. But the point is that after the election, the country clearly did not back her view on Brexit, and she should have changed course, away from the iceberg.

That with such limited power and support she carries on although she enjoys total backing from her Cabinet, Government, Party, Westminster and the country, when its doubtful that the Downing Street cat even supports her.

The press today turned on the Speaker, The Hate Mail calling him a preening popinjay, whatever that is, and that he was helping Parliament stop Brexit, The Sun said “Speaker of the Devil”, but the Express went for “You’re so out of order”. Apparently all the Editors of these and other papers are constitutional law experts, or are angry that Parliament is claiming control back when that was the point of Brexit in the first place. Or was it the wrong sort of control.

We have already seen what Government does when it has unchecked power, can you imagine what it might do post Brexit, and might get the taste for it and extend those powers on and on?

In other news, Jaguar Land Rover announced 4500 job losses, partly blaming Brexit for it. Queue lots of people telling JLR how they should run their business.

Reality is here, it is everywhere where Brexiteers look, and yet they deny it. And what of our saviour, Mr Corbyn? In a much heralded speech, his plan was to have an election, and if Labour won, he would “urgently” renegotiate Brexit with the EU. He was very cool indeed on a 2nd referendum. If this is Labour’s position, it will kill the party. In Scotland, polls this week show that it would win just 1 seat of the 31 it currently holds. I’m sure similar results would follow over the rest of the UK.

The for the electorate, there might not be a choice other than a blue of red Brexit. But reality might yet change things, of course the WA still needs ratifying, and that vote happens on the 14th, a vote May is expected to lose by around 250 votes. In normal times she would have to resign after that.

But these are not normal times.