28 March 2019
Diary of a Corbynista
Indicative Vote for Tory leader?
By Don Urquhart
21 March
Tomorrow could be a big one for our local cats’ home. Lunching with friends and Dave we set the following rule.
Any mention of the 6 letter word beginning with B incurs a £1 contribution (doubling up, every time mentioned) to any charity you name!!!!!
22 March
Dear Jeremy
Here are your questions for PMQ’s on Wednesday:
- Why are you still here?
- Would you mind not interrupting while we clear up your mess?
- Where are you and Philip going for your holidays?
Should be enough.
All the Best
Don
23 March
In one of the political programmes Jill Rutter of the Institute for Government made the point that a lot depends on the order in which the Brexit options are debated in the House. Who will determine the process? I hope that Jeremy Corbyn is working on this as it is a real test of leadership. We know that he can do the rabble rousing and garner the votes of those who basically agree with him. But can he manage a complex process and bring together people who fundamentally disagree with him? If he can’t, is he clever enough to delegate the management to someone who has the right skill set? Perhaps the CBI’s Caroline Fairbairn and Frances O’Grady of the TUC working together?
24 March
According to the Evening Standard Sir Oliver Letwin MP has come up with a process for achieving Brexit consensus among the 650 MPs. Most of them seem to have spotted this and talk of a vote tomorrow to facilitate indicative voting on Wednesday. It will be fabulous if this works and throws up a solution which Parliament can get behind. There will be those for whom compromise is not possible. Sadly one of them appears to be Brexit Secretary Stephen Barclay who told Andrew Marr that if Parliament comes up with a consensus the government doesn’t like they will wheel out the old Theresa May deal for another spin.
25 March
The hapless Stephen Barclay wound up the debate for the government. The main focus was the Letwin Amendment. Barclay promised that the government would itself bring in the measures if Parliament would only vote it down. Letwin suggested that he adopt the amendment as government policy but no. The Amendment passed 329 to 302, the latter figure bolstered by much bullying and coercion of Tory MPs outside the chamber.
26 March
Politics Live had on Tory MP Tim Loughton, Labour MP Lisa Nandy, SNP Commons leader Ian Blackford and some PR person. The MPs gave us a foretaste of tomorrow’s indicative votes by talking over each other and clearly not listening to each others’ points of view. Still you live in hope. What struck me quite forcibly was that the process might well throw up some unexpected curve balls. For example, any Brexit is almost certain to lead to a second Scottish independence referendum and any hard border solution increases the chances of an Irish Unification vote.
27 March
Newsnight had four journalists on to predict the Brexit outcome. It was soon clear that none of them had any more clue than your average Joe. Not one of them foresaw a second referendum. Three saw a General Election on the critical path, and two a Tory leadership election. And here’s where the indicative votes process might have a positive spin off. There are at least as many leadership hopefuls as there are Brexit options so they could do a lot worse than to use an indicative leader process.
