‘BREXIT BRIEF’ – ISSUE 96, 6th December 2019

A week to save our country

This is the final ‘Brexit Brief’ before next Thursday’s UK General Election. However, I will produce another ‘General Election Made Simple’ on Tuesday with guidance on tactical voting. Because, dear reader, voting for whoever can defeat your local Conservative candidate is the only way we can stop Boris Johnson from driving this country off a Brexit cliff.

Make no mistake, “nice Tories” no longer exist. This is evidenced by the words of Boris Johnson himself when he declared in a recent Sunday Telegraph interview: “All 635 Conservative candidates standing at this election – every single one of them – has pledged to me that if elected they will vote in Parliament to pass my Brexit deal…and finally leave the EU.” And that is why, if you care about the future of this country, you cannot conceivably vote for any of them on 12 December. The broad church Conservative and Unionist Party I was proud to join in 1995 is dead. The handful of Tory MPs still driven by pragmatism and principle were drummed out of the Party by Johnson’s heavies earlier this year after daring to stick to their One Nation beliefs. Ken Clarke, David Gauke, Amber Rudd, Dominic Grieve, Justine Greening, Philip Hammond, Anne Milton and others - all of them were sacked by a Party they had served with distinction at the highest levels of Government. And why? Because they chose to put the best interests of our great country before the political careers of a clown Prime Minister and a band of right-wing jokers hitching a ride in his comedy car. There was nothing amusing about any of it.

The past seven days have underlined the stark nature of the choice before us. Taking their lead from the Trump playbook, every word uttered by Johnson and his acolytes is based on lies. I hope you had a chance to read this week’s ‘General Election Made Simple’ in which I flagged up the falsehoods spewed out by Johnson during a single interview last Sunday morning. Speaking on BBC Radio this morning, Johnson’s chief apologist Michael Gove repeated the lie that the Conservatives were planning the largest NHS funding increase “in memory.” Johnson said the same on Sunday. With a planned rise of 3.4%, the Tory pledge is well short of the 6% average annual increase injected by the last Labour Government.

Yesterday, Sajid Javid – apparently now Chancellor of the Exchequer – lied about homelessness in this country. He claimed that "homelessness reached its peak in 2008 under the last Labour government, since then it's down by almost half." He added: "It's Labour that was responsible for the massive rise in homelessness." Mr Javid was lying. In truth, homelessness peaked in 2003 under Labour before declining to its lowest point in 2010 just before the Tories came to power. Since then, the numbers of homeless people have risen by almost 40%.

Of course, no day on the campaign trail would be complete without a stream of lies from the Liar-in-Chief himself. Johnson biggest falsehood yesterday was to claim that tax would fall for everyone under the Conservatives. When pointed out by a journalist that the Tory manifesto made clear that taxes would increase over the next five years, Johnson retorted: “I don’t know what you are talking about.” That’s because the truth is foreign to this man – and his Party are certainly not fans of foreigners.

Yellow hair, yellow belly

As well as being a liar, Boris Johnson is also a coward. Social media is in meltdown after the BBC’s Andrew Neil challenged Johnson last night to follow the example of every other Party Leader and take part in a sit-down interview with him. Neil said: “The Prime Minister of our nation will, at times, have to stand up to President Trump, President Putin, President Xi of China. So it was surely not expecting too much that he spend half an hour standing up to me."

An anonymous “senior Conservative” (aka Dominic Cummings) has since briefed the media that the appeal will simply be ignored. So far, Johnson has refused to take part in the Channel 4 Leaders’ Debate, failed to show for the Channel 4 Climate Change Debate, not turned up for the Sky News Leaders’ Debate, boycotted an interview with Piers Morgan on ITV’s Good Morning Britain and yesterday went back on his promise to follow all the other Party Leaders in being interviewed by Julie Etchingham for ITV. The man with no morals is also a man with no core.

Meanwhile in America…

The Speaker of the US House of Representatives announced yesterday that impeachment charges with be filed against Donald Trump in the coming days. Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat, said that her Party colleagues had “no choice but to act" following the torrent of evidence that Trump sought dirt on his political rival Joe Biden from the Ukrainian President in return for US military aid. A vote of the whole House is expected later this month with Trump set to face a formal Senate trial on a range of charges in January. It caps a particularly bad week for Trump in which several world leaders attending the NATO summit were caught on microphone and on camera laughing at his buffoonery. Boris Johnson was one of them. When questioned about this yesterday, the Prime Minister claimed to know nothing about the incident which happened just hours earlier. This was yet another lie, as the video footage clearly shows.

Have a splendid weekend!

Jason

Dr Jason Aldiss BEM

Managing Director, Eville & Jones

You can follow me on Twitter @JasonAldiss