Permanent crisis suits the blustering Brexit liars

Boris Johnson’s lies encapsulate Britain’s democratic decay, wrote columnist, Nick Cohen, in yesterday’s Observer newspaper.

They are the bluster of a man who holds parliament and political accountability in contempt.

They reveal the corruption of a Brexit movement that has no purpose now other than to secure an empty victory, whatever its original intentions and whatever damage it does to the traditions of Britain’s democracy, once thought to be indestructible and now revealed to be as ephemeral as dust in the wind.

Do I need to justify the above? It’s what they want you to do.

They come out with a big brassy lie and then insist that you so lose yourself in the thickets of a detailed rebuttal no one can follow your argument.

But for the record and because I must, when the Observer revealed last Sunday that Johnson was planning to shut down parliament to stop it thwarting a no-deal Brexit, Downing Street spin doctors led by Robert Oxley, Johnson’s press secretary, said the report was “entirely false”.

When it was shown to be true, Johnson did not apologise for the behaviour of his underlings.

Instead, he tried to divert attention with a blabbering pretence he was not closing parliament to stop MPs preventing a crash out, but so he could prepare a Queen’s speech on police and education funding. No government needs to close parliament to prepare a programme.

The civil service and party researchers can work on it, regardless of whether parliament is sitting or not.

MPs, however, cannot ask questions about constituents whose businesses and jobs are in danger. Select committees cannot test whether Johnson’s preparations for Brexit are as thorough as he claims.

And parliament as a whole may not have the time to stop a no-deal Brexit, which it has every right to do because at no point in the 2016 referendum did Vote Leave say that a crash out was what a vote for Brexit might entail.

Indeed, Johnson, Dominic Cummings and all the other quacks who fill our government said the precise opposite.

“The prime minister believes politicians do not get to choose which votes they respect,” said Cummings, who, lest we forget, has himself been found in contempt of parliament for refusing to answer its questions (our new masters really don’t like questions).

He forgot to add that governments don’t get to choose whether our elected representatives vote at all. Or at least they didn’t until Cummings took over the country.

I am glad to see the polls show 70% of the public don’t believe a word Johnson or his press officers say.

(Although I wonder about the bovine credulity of the minority who accept their stories even after the defence secretary was caught on camera saying the suspension was all about Brexit.)

I could go on. But I am in the undergrowth slashing around in the detail, which is where they want me to be.

Hack through it and you see a bleak road ahead.

Brexit has become a war to the death where “winning” is all. Its supporters are not even fighting for a cause any more – just for the thrill the unrestrained assertion of power can bring.

? This extract from The Observer’s article is republished here by Courtesy of Guardian News & Media Ltd under their Open Licence agreement. Read the full article in The Guardian.

? Nick Cohen is a British journalist, author and political commentator. He is a columnist for The Observer, a blogger for The Spectator and a writer for Standpoint magazine.

? Reasons2Remain is a campaign for a democratic reversal of Brexit. We believe that Brexit will do great harm to Britain, and that we didn’t have the full facts in 2016.