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ANDYou could have been forgiven for imagining you were lost in a 2019 time warp. The House of Commons was debating the Brexit withdrawal bill, nearly a year after that same bill passed. A bill that had been negotiated by the prime minister, declared “an oven-ready triumph” by the prime minister, and in which he had won an 80-seat majority in the general election after promising a desperate country that ” I would get Brexit done ”.
On the bright side, however, we were treated to one of the best speeches of this and Ed Miliband’s recent speeches, when he smashed Boris Johnson’s easy and fraudulent arguments. It is true that it was not the most difficult task, facing a man who can barely remember what he believed yesterday or even the excuses he may have made for his failures, but Miliband left Boris hopelessly exposed.
It was not immediately clear why Johnson had made the last-minute decision to open the debate in person, as the business secretary, Alok Sharma, had originally been handed the poisoned chalice. And he probably would have done a much better job as Sharma has the unique talent of putting even himself to sleep every time he opens his mouth. But maybe arrogance beat Boris. Or maybe it’s just a common criminal who can’t resist returning to the scene of the crime. Either way, his guilt was pouring out of every pore.
This was Boris at his worst. Johnson usually has little trouble dealing with bullshit and lies – in fact, he’s made a career out of it. Yet from the start, he seemed nervous and defensive, despite the fact that a nearly empty chamber saved him from having to endure too many embarrassing interventions from both the opposition and the conservatives. Instead, what we got was total inconsistency.
The EU was not negotiating in good faith. She was trying to block the importation of clotted cream into Northern Ireland from Devon. The EU was trying to destroy the Northern Ireland protocol and no British parliament could sign it. Except, of course, that he already had. Under his own leadership. Boris rejected almost all the interventions of the Labor banks, choosing instead to take those of the intellectually challenged Andrea Jenkyns and the timid rebel Bob Neill, who said he could be prepared to violate international law as long as parliament was allowed. a specific vote first. Boris happily indulged him with this nonsense.
Only one Tory, former Attorney General Jeremy Wright, challenged Boris on the ministerial code of breaking international law. Johnson muttered and said that Suella Braverman, a lawyer she would not trust to witness a passport application and who had been elected attorney general for compliance, had calculated that the government could do anything Boris wanted. Wright, as with all other former Conservative attorneys general, prime ministers, and cabinet ministers of any integrity, simply shook his head in disbelief.
Under normal circumstances, the Labor leader would have answered for the opposition. But Keir Starmer isolated himself after one of his sons was found to be showing symptoms of coronavirus, so Miliband, as a shadow business secretary, was able to deliver the speech he had originally prepared. And Miliband couldn’t believe his luck, because a lot of his taunts could have failed if they had been targeted at Sharma. It’s a lot more fun to have the person really responsible for destroying the reputations of both the country and the Conservative Party in front of you rather than some goofy narcoleptic aparatchik.
Miliband was not wrong, both inciting the prime minister for his lack of understanding of key aspects of the Northern Ireland protocol and asking how he expected other countries to take us at our word if we were so willing to break international treaties, sooner. taking it point by point. At first Boris simply rolled his eyes, wishing Ed would disappear, but in the end there was nothing but icy fury in their gazes. Boris has been discovered countless times before by almost everyone who has had the misfortune of dealing with him, but rarely in such a complete and public way.
Or with such obvious enjoyment. Miliband knew he had Johnson straightened out as a second-rate con man and he wasn’t going to let him get out of trouble. All of his arguments were delivered with the style and flourish of a man who knew he was right on his side. Even the Conservatives felt it with only Bernard Jenkin foolish enough to intervene on behalf of the prime minister. Miliband did it for him in a couple of short sentences, saying the conservative-led Northern Ireland select committee had reported that the EU had been negotiating in good faith.
What followed was one highlight after another. The serial incompetence of a man who couldn’t remember was his deal he was breaking. The list of politicians who agreed that the agreement had protected the Northern Ireland protocol. The observation that a dispute resolution procedure already existed that did not involve the failed state option. But the collector’s item was his invitation for Boris to back up his claim that the recall agreement imposed a blockade on GB products in Northern Ireland.
“Come on,” Ed said, his voice laced with condescension. I know you are a man of details. Show me the lock. I’ll give way to you. “Boris stood almost motionless, blood leaking from his face. He was so, so broke. But Miliband wasn’t done. He also amused himself with the five possible reasons for breaking the law. Especially the reason for breaking the law. a specific and limited way. As if he weren’t really great invading Brussels and executing Michel Barnier somehow he got it right. However, he left out a sixth reason. That Boris has yet to come across a law applied to him .
The speeches that followed were somewhat anticlimactic by comparison. Bill Cash found he could be even angrier now that Brexit was happening than when it wasn’t, while SNP leader Ian Blackford attacked Johnsons proposals to take powers away from delegated governments. Not that Boris was there to listen to them. It had slipped out of the chamber shortly after its evisceration. Turns out Boris has a humiliation threshold after all. And Miliband had just found it.
