The sound and fury signifying nothing in the Stop Brexit At All Costs drama has reached a deafening crescendo today.

Remainers are going to get their Bill to lock the UK into a long extension in order to hold a second referendum (in which actually leaving the EU may not be an option). They should be thrilled. But big bad BoJo entered stage left and said (to great effect, by the way) that he would “rather be dead in a ditch” than ask for an Article 50 extension. Nothing quite like a do or die remark to get people’s blood up.

Remainers have claimed with horror, and a load of hypocrisy about defending democracy, that he will simply ignore their wholly undemocratic Bill, drafted to meet EU demands against the democratically expressed mandate Parliament received from the British people. They are now threatening to take him to court and get him locked up (in the Tower, presumably, where he could star in a “Meet the former British PM” reality TV show, sure to be very good box office) so they can get an alternative PM to ask for an extension. Some people claim that even a civil servant could be dispatched to do the dirty deed…

This is doubtless to damp down Jeremy Corbyn’s glee that his political enemies among the Remainers are now facing the inexorable logic of installing him as prime minister in order to get another Brexit delay. Many commentators feel that this will never happen. I could almost guarantee that Jeremy Corbyn would be PM by 20 October if Boris Johnson refused to ask for an extension or somehow muddled the request with additional caveats.

The Remianiacs in the Conservative Party have shown themselves willing to trash their constituents, their government and their party in order prove their loyalty to the EU. Without the threat of no deal, the EU can offer any deal it likes, and what it most likes is the Withdrawal Agreement with its dreadful backstop.

Stopping Brexit is as much do or die for some Remainers as delivering Brexit is for Boris Johnson. With the clock ticking down to 31 October and Boris refusing to obtain an extension, Labour would demand a Remain Alliance government led by Corbyn as the price of the extension, which also would enable the whole sorry bunch hypocrites to avoid facing the wrath of their voters at the ballot box. Micawber-like, they will hope something turns up to help them dethrone Corbyn afterwards, but don’t bank on it. His tenacity is formidable, and he has a willing army of revolutionaries just waiting to get their hands on the levers of power. He could cling to office until he had changed the law sufficiently to make sure he couldn’t be removed. We are not dealing with democratic norms here, but with ruthless operators who have weaponised Brexit (which they care nothing about) to bypass the electorate and take control of the country.

That any former Conservative minister could contemplate handing over the government of this country to a Marxist who has supported terrorists and protected anti-Semites in his own party is beyond comprehension. That they are aghast at having been chucked out of their own party for their actions is beyond ridicule. What did they expect? How on earth could the Tories contemplate going into the next election with ten per cent of their candidates in safe seats opposing their key policy?

These Remainer MPs have shown that their allegiance is to Brussels, and some will do whatever it takes to stop Britain leaving the EU, because once we have left, do they honestly think after the last three years that they could persuade anyone to rejoin? Far easier to stay in while more and more powers are surrendered on the quiet to Brussels. It avoids those dreadful ‘populist’ debates where voters might actually get a chance to say no.
Brexiteers perked up yesterday when the French and the EU helpfully chipped in by saying they would refuse another extension request. But beware – the rider is ‘in current circumstances we cannot keep extending Brexit every three months’. This simply means that whoever goes to ask for the extension will have to accept a minimum of six months (but quite possibly until the next general election in 2022 under the Fixed Term Parliament Act) in order to hold a second referendum, where the choice may well be between May’s rejected vassalage agreement or remaining in the EU.

Keeping up? Remainers are now worried by press reports that Dominic Cummings is going to sabotage the extension request by some additional documents and legal wrecking tactics in the EU institutions. In such circumstances, the Queen would apparently be called in to make Corbyn prime minister, according to the Express.

But just to make sure that their hostage PM cannot honour his manifesto and pledges to the people (not to mention to the Conservative Party members who gave him a thumping majority in the leadership election) the Opposition is trying to seize parliamentary business again today to ask the prime minister exactly how he proposes to break their law (presumably so they can amend the Bill before it passes and so stop him)…
Silence, as they say, is golden.

The do or die defenders of our democracy could of course vote for the general election they will be offered once again today. But it is the wrong sort of democracy.

Prorogation of this monstrous parody of a Parliament cannot start soon enough. And then we shall see what happens. It could be that we have yet to reach peak Brexit lunacy. Halloween is looking like a zombie fest of political corpses already.

Caroline Bell is the pen name of a civil servant who needs to remain anonymous.

This article was first published on Briefings for Brexit, and is republished with permission. You may not use, copy, distribute, publish, syndicate, sub-license and transmit the whole or any part of such material in any manner and in any format and/or media without the permission of the original publishers.

Link to the original article: https://briefingsforbrexit.com/peak-brexit-lunacy/