The Brexit update, with gorilla suits

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We’ll get to the gorilla suits toward the end. In the meantime, with all the usual apologies (it’s important to know what’s going on; I didn’t start it; it has a lot of redeeming absurdity), here’s the Brexit update.

Parliament ordered Boris Johnson to send the European Union a letter asking to delay Brexit, and now he’s being warned that if he adds a covering note saying, “P.S., We don’t really want an extension, so please ignore the enclosed letter,” he will be breaking the law. The warning comes from an assortment of senior judges and lawyers.

That hasn’t gone to court yet. The warnings are in response to leaks saying the prime minister’s looking for a way around the law Parliament passed.

The Irish prime minister, Leo Varadkar, issued a warning of his own. He told Johnson there’s no such thing as a clean break from the EU. Even if Britain huffs out without an agreement, all the unresolved issues will still need to be negotiated. On his list were citizens’ rights, the Irish border, and a financial settlement with Europe. And fishing rights. And tariffs. And product standards. And and and and.

In other leaks, documents planning the prorogation of parliament–

Let me stop to explain this in the most objective terms for anyone who’s new here: Prorogation means locking Parliament in a broom closet while the prime minister pursues Brexit unencumbered by the democratic process.

Or two broom closets, since you couldn’t ask the Lords to share a broom closet with the Commons. They need a higher class of broom closet, with better champagne.

Actually, they all get sent home.

Where were we? Parliament ordered Johnson and his friends and advisers to hand over the documents they exchanged while they were planning the prorogation. They (that’s Parliament, not Johnson & Co.) managed that just before getting locked ceremoniously in their broom closets. The reason this matters is that the government claimed it the prorogation wasn’t political, it was just business as usual. Initial leaks indicate that it was anything but–and that the documents will prove that.

Since Johnson had to ask the queen’s permission to prorogue Parliament, the current flap is over whether he lied to the queen in order to get her to wave her magic feather over it.

The government is swearing it won’t release the documents, and that could put it in contempt of Parliament.

Does it matter if it is? An MP who’s held in contempt can be booted out of Parliament–and any prime minister is also an MP. If the prime minster isn’t an MP, is he or she still prime minister? Probably not. That’s awkward, and from a prime minister’s point of view, not desirable.

An MP who’s held in comtempt can also be confined to the Westminster clock tower, but the last time that was done was in 1880. Non-MPs can be imprisoned (not in the clock tower as far as I can figure out–that’s for a better class of contemptuees) for the duration of the Parliament, which these days can be for as long as five years.

Johnson’s adviser Dominic Cummings has been held in contempt and not only isn’t in jail, he was given a security clearance. I won’t try to explain that.

In 2018, Theresa May’s government was held to be in contempt of Parliament for refusing to release some Brexit legal advice it had been given. That was the first time in British history a government was held in contempt of parliament. May backed down and was not banished to the clock tower.

That business about the clock tower is real. I say that because it’s hard to tell what’s real and what isn’t. As a rough guideline, if I tell you that all government advisers have to dress in gorilla suits, that’s a joke. If I tell you that a politician can be imprisoned in (or under) the clock tower, that’s real.

Really.

I hope that helps.

In other leaked documents, the government has ordered a top priority centralization of user information from the government’s public information websites. This is supposed to help with Brexit preparations.

How will it help? No one seems sure, but although the government swears that no personal details will be collected, privacy campaigners, opposition politicians, and policy experts are uneasy about what’s being done and why, not to about mention the secrecy surrounding it. Especially because Cumming–that’s Johnson’s adviser, you may or may not remember, and he does not wear a gorilla suit–is the driving force behind this and was (not at all incidentally) the driving force behind the Vote Leave campaign’s complicated and partially illegal use of personal data.

Also not incidentally, £100,000 million has been budgeted for a campaign to direct people to the government’s Brexit preparation website–more money than some experts say can actually be spent. I don’t like conspiracy theories, but when I connect the dots I can’t help constructing one. And believing it.

In an earlier update I mentioned that three lawsuits had been filed against the prorogation of parliament. In England, the court said it wasn’t a subject a court could rule on. In Scotland (on appeal), it’s been ruled illegal. Both rulings were unanimous. Northern Ireland hasn’t ruled yet and the case was launched on different grounds.

Why the different rulings? Because the UK has three separate legal systems, which can allow courts to rule differently even when they consider the same facts, and even if you rule out the possibility of conscious or unconscious political bias. All three systems have equal weight. Britain’s highest court, the Supreme Court, has scheduled a three-day hearing starting on September 17. I have no idea which of the three systems they’re supposed to base their ruling on, or if they’re supposed to follow all of them simultaneously.

I wasn’t going to get into the maneuvering surrounding John Bercow, the speaker of the Commons, but I just have to. Following tradition, when he became the speaker he gave up his party affiliation, but before he did, he was a Conservative. Recently, he’s allowed the anti-no-deal coalition–now (really) known as the Rebel Alliance–to act effectively against the government. Whether that involved bending the rules or following them depends on what side of the divide you’re on, but the current government just hates the man.

Traditionally, when MPs are up for re-election no party runs a candidate against the speaker, but the Conservatives–they’re the current government, and I mention that in case you’ve been locked in the clock tower for a few months and have lost track of anything but those damn bells every fifteen minutes–have announced that they will run a candidate against him, which leaves him vulnerable since he won’t have party machinery to back him.

In response, Bercow’s announced that he’ll step down as speaker, but he’ll time it so that the current parliament, with its anti-government majority, will get to elect the next speaker.

If all that isn’t enough, a series of unleaked but reluctantly released documents detail what the government estimates are “reasonable worst-case assumptions” in case of a no-deal Brexit, although another version of the document apparently calls it a “base scenario.” (No-deal Brexit preparations, by the way, are called Operation Yellowhammer, because, hey, that sounds all military and cool.) Predictions include higher food prices, shortages of medicines, and riots on the streets.

The poorest people will be hit hardest. Some businesses will go broke (or “cease trading” to put it more blandly), including providers of adult social care. The black market will grow. Disruptions could go on for as long as six months.

Still, it’s nothing to worry about and revised estimates are due out any day now, as soon as the government can be strong-arm them out of the appropriate civil servants.

The paper also predicts smuggling across the Northern Ireland border and says the plans to impose checks there (it’s been an open border, but that depends on both Ireland and Northern Ireland being in the EU) would quickly become unworkable. We can also expect clashes at sea over fishing rights and the disruption of cross-border financial services.

For food sales to the EU to keep going, vets will have to sign 1.9 million food standard certificates, although it’s not clear from what I’ve read how quickly they’ll have to do that or how long they’ll last once they’re signed. Do they sign them every year? Every day? Every waking moment? For every shipment?

Meanwhile, Senior civil servants can expect to be caught between MPs’ demands and the government’s. Their union has written to the prime minister demanding an assurance that staff won’t be asked to break either the law or the civil service code.

We’re deep into uncharted waters, and you can’t make this stuff up. All you can do is add the occasional gorilla suit.

61 thoughts on “The Brexit update, with gorilla suits”

  6. Every time I read anything about brexit I wind up feeling like I’ve undergone an emergency lobotomy (before which they anesthetized me by reading to me three articles on brexit.) And things are not exactly copacetic on this side of the pond either. But onward, into the fog.

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  9. I have a choice between reading your blogs and dusting off 1984. You win, as you make me laugh more than Orwell. On both sides of the Atlantic the governments appear to be looking for ways in which their arrogance can ignore the law. The difference is that we have a looming deadline at which time the country will declare war on itself and disappear into oblivion.

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  10. Good post. Informative. I find the whole thing mysterious and confusing. A lot of it anyway. Which raised the question. Do the Brits make it confusing on purpose. This seems to be a point of national pride.
    Please keep us updated. Trying to sort this all out is good exercise for the brain.
    What kind of feather does the queen waive. Must be from a large bird. Suppose it has to be native. Maybe from a black swan. Which is what Brexit may turn out to be. (Black swan is a Wall Street term.)

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  16. Speaking of many multiple billions of pounds, had Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson recently stated that, post-Brexit, the EU would no longer be draining a billion pounds a day from the UK? It seems that the more spectacular the lie, the more fervently is it believed — and repeated ad nauseam — by those of the leaver persuasion. Or Trump-believers over here.
    I also much enjoyed learning about the clock-tower banishments. Vivid stuff.

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  18. I’ve never really understood the whole Brexit thing but it is clearly a mess. I haven’t followed it closely, but it was the talk of Ireland when we were there. The other talk was about our US political mess. People we met shook their heads over our current craziness, and it seemed we did the same over Brexit. It all seems too cray to be real! #Pitstop

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    • I keep thinking that if I were writing this as a novel I’d have to rein it in because it’s much to crazy for anyone to believe. I expect Ireland’s not just shaking it’s head but holding its breath, because the mess we’re making out of this could well undo the Good Friday Agreement and start the violence in Northern Ireland all over again. Elements of the mess are pretty funny, but the consequences could be disastrous.

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  20. You should be writing Boris’s speeches for him Ellen.. a great deal of clarity in your post which is more than can be said for the national press who find a nugget they do understand and then work it to death. Most of the population has now lost the will to even engage and are just hoping it will be alright on the night. On the subject of growing food, our compost heap is doing a great job with two avocado plants, a potato plant and a carrot… so we will be okay. On the plus side it might do our long term diets good to go back to basics and not have easy access to half the stuff they import..will put in the blogger daily later in the week..

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    • I’d love to write a speech for Boris. It would start with, “In a rare moment of sober reflection, I noticed the harm I’ve done the country and I am resigning before I lose track of that insight.”

      I quote from that speech in case you ever wonder why no one’s hired me to write political speeches.

      On a happier topic, I’d be interested to know if an avocado plant can actually fruit in this climate. If so, I may plant one and lie under it until the avocados drop into my mouth.

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  21. Pingback: Smorgasbord Blogger Daily – Wednesday 18th September 2019 – Sue Vincent, Ellen Hawley and Stevie Turner | Smorgasbord Blog Magazine

  22. Coming late to this post, I can’t resist the suspicion that “Yellowhammer” is one of those subterranean civil servant jokes. I was brought up, many decades ago, on the kind of nature study books that told you what various birds’ songs sounded like. So, for example, the great tit sings “Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!”: and the yellowhammer sings “A little bit of bread and NO cheese!”, which may well be what we end up with, if there’s no deal.

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