Prime Minister Boris Johnson has made his first speech in parliament since yesterday’s shock ruling by the Supreme Court – and he wasn’t in the mood for taking any prisoners.
“No disrespect to the judiciary”, he began – using the time-honoured formula he will have learned from his teenage children, meaning “Maximum disrespect, actually, you scum-sucking losers” – “That court decision was wrong.”
His prorogation of parliament, Boris went on to insist, was essentially a political event – and therefore one which ought to be beyond the jurisdiction of the judiciary.
He certainly wasn’t going to apologise – as, of course, all those on the Remain side of the argument have been urging him to do.
Rather, he was going to come back at his critics, all guns blazing.
His strategy is clear. Boris is going to drape himself in the mantle of the British people who, he will continually – and not unreasonably – argue have been betrayed by a remote, shadowy elite. The Supreme Court — a creation of constitutional wrecker Tony Blair, stuffed with politically correct, Europhile placemen and placewomen — is very much part of that problem.
He thundered:
“This parliament does not want Brexit to happen at all.”
and
“The people of this country can see very clearly what is going on”.
Johnson laid into the “Surrender Act” — his description of the bill, introduced by Hilary Benn and ratified in record time by Remain-dominated parliament with the connivance of the Remainer Speaker John Bercow.
He accused his Remainer opponents in the House of “living in a fantasy world” in which they imagined that they could cancel the result of the first EU referendum, legislate for a second referendum, and that this time the public would vote for Remain and parliament would honour it.
He lambasted them for they way they had continually, through “ever more elaborate manoeuvres”, thumbed their noses at the 17.4 million people who voted for Brexit.
To jeers from the Labour and SNP benches, he taunted Opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn again and again for his failure to propose the No Confidence motion which would lead to a general election – not out of principle but “to avoid facing the electorate” in an election which Corbyn would certainly lose.
This was not the speech of a Prime Minister on the back foot – much as that is how the mainstream media, the BBC especially, would love to present him.
“We will not betray the people who sent us here,” Boris said — meaning the voters.
Britain is now more divided than perhaps at any stage since the Civil War.
Between those who agree with this Labour MP (that you’ve probably never heard of before: I certainly hadn’t)…
…And those just itching for a general election to be called as soon as possible, so that Luke Pollard, and all the other creepy characters in the Remainer Establishment can be booted out of their jobs, and Boris can get on with the business of making Britain great again.
My prediction: Boris may yet lose a few battles, but he’s certainly going to win the war.