Quintin Jardine's blog

I am watching Boris address a captor audience at Wakefield Police College, wondering who has briefed him. If you are going to quote the official police caution to an audience of police officers, fcs get it right.

It’s official: we don’t have a government any more. Nor will we have one until the Opposition stops playing silly buggers and gives the people what they want and need.

It’s an outrageous situation in a parliamentary democracy, but whose fault is it. On the face of it, The can is Corbyn’s to carry; all he had to do was say a simple ‘Yes’, and his side would have been whipped to support the Election Bill. He didn’t, out of perceived self interest, and as a result most of us bystanders are left frustrated.

But how did the current state of affairs come to pass? In fact it goes back to a single act of cowardice, nine years ago. David Cameron didn’t have to indulge in his rose garden bromance with Nick Clegg. As the leader of the party with most seats in the House, he could have formed a minority government, presented a Queen’s Speech that a then rudderless Labour could not have voted down, and undoubtedly secured an outright majority a year or even months later as Wilson did in 1974.

He could have but he didn’t. Why not? Because he lacked the courage. Instead he formed his clumsy coalition from which emerged a piece of legislation that nobody had voted for or even anticipated, the Fixed Term Parliaments Act.

That was only the start. In 2015 he promised a referendum that he thought he couldn’t lose, and when he did he shat himself, and chickened out again. He ran away and left others to clear up his malodorous mess.

So where is he now, the architect of the current ongoing shambles? With immaculate timing he is readying himself for the launch of his memoirs, ‘For the Record’, scheduled for publication on September 19.

I won’t be buying it, that’s for sure.

As a nation, we deserve better.

I am 74, old enough to remember when our political system was populated by people of integrity. They’re all gone now, apart from a few, I suppose, but I am struggling to name them. Ken Clarke, maybe, Dennis Skinner certainly, but that’s it.

Last night a majority of the mob who currently debase the House of Commons voted to begin a process that will remove the possibility of leaving the EU without a deal. Boris doesn’t get much right but when he forecast that this will lead to years of uncertainty he may have been on the button.

The huge frustration is that there is a deal available. Theresa May negotiated it, only to see it rejected three times by the very people who frustrated her successor last night.

For Zog’s sake, we’re all exhausted by the ongoing disgrace that masquerades as our system of government. Let’s just bring back Theresa’s deal, as an independent motion if necessary, and vote the damn thing through.

This is a personal statement about the inescapable.

I voted Leave three years ago. I wasn’t influenced by that twat Boris, or by Nigel Phalange or anybody else. My vote wasn’t cast on economic grounds, or out of any personal financial motive. It was cast because I believe that the EU will eventually implode.

I didn’t vote against a continuing customs union with our European neighbours or against a future trading arrangement that makes them our principal partners. And I don’t give a single fuck about Arlene Foster (who the hell is she anyway in the great scheme of things?) and the Irish backstop.

I voted Leave, plain and simple, because I feel we should, but now I don’t care. I have been overcome. Any passion I have ever felt about the issue has been exhausted by the utter failure of our parliamentary system to cope with a situation that requires MPs to put national interest above self interest. I have been outraged by the slithering of Corbyn, a proven master of disloyalty, embarrassed by the Commons performance of Blackford, a clever man pretending to be an idiot, and driven to despair by the stupidity of a Prime Minister who was persuaded to throw away a working majority when it was entirely unnecessary, and now by her obduracy in continuing to hang her Norwegian Blue upside down in her shop window above a for sale sign. If Theresa May is a betting woman she is probably even now having a punt on Manchester United to win the FA Cup, even though they were knocked out in the last round.

The ultimate lunacy is that a General Election is being mooted as a way of sorting it all out.

This will copy on to Facebook as my blog posts do. I repeat, it is a personal statement. As they say on Twitter, my views are my own. So is my despair.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47670717

Amidst all the daft stuff coming out of Brussels, the Trump administration still leads in terms of howling craziness.

www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-46623617

The Trump Presidency. I have laid off the Donald on Facebook in recognition of the feelings of family and friends in the US who voted for him for legitimate reasons.

However I doubt that they appreciate the damage that ‘The Trump Presidency’ is doing to the esteem in which that office has been held in the rest of the Western world.