Boris Johnson accuses MPs and EU of ‘terrible collaboration’

Boris Johnson took to Facebook live yesterday to perform the inaugural “People’s PMQs”, an event that, according to the prime minister, would allow him to take questions from the public “unpasteurised and unmediated.”

Johnson caused consternation with his answer to the first question he was posed. “I’d like to know how you intend to leave the EU on October 31, with no movement from the EU on their terms, and still so much opposition in parliament?” wrote Luther in Cheshire.

“There's a terrible kind of collaboration, as it were, going on between people who think they can block Brexit in Parliament and our European friends,” the prime minister said in response.

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“And our European friends are not moving in their willingness to compromise, they're not compromising at all on the Withdrawal Agreement even though it's been thrown out three times, they're sticking to every letter, every comma of the Withdrawal Agreement - including the backstop - because they still think Brexit can be blocked in Parliament.”

The conspiratorial language of “collaboration” caused outcry. “My office staff are not able to do their work without security. My family home has had a security system put in place,” said Guto Bebb, a Conservative MP and former junior minister, quoted by the Guardian, “and for Boris Johnson to accuse people like myself of collaboration is disgraceful language from a man who should know better.”

‘People’s PMQs’ met with scepticism

Many commentators considered the assertion that this was an “unpasteurised, unmediated” event disingenuous.

“Luther in Cheshire, just like everybody else whose questions were answered, had submitted his question an hour before, by doing as had been instructed and posting it on the prime minister’s Facebook page,” writes Tom Peck in the Independent. “These ‘unmediated, unpasteurised’ questions were then mediated and pasteurised by his staff.”

“What is presented as unmitigated access to politicians shouldn’t be taken for anything but an unsanitised political broadcast,” writes Yasmeen Serhan in the Atlantic. “While Johnson was free to answer questions from people across the country about his plans to deliver Brexit and restore faith in politics, he was equally free to ignore the more critical ones. He was also free to avoid the scrutiny that lawmakers or journalists would typically provide.”

Nevertheless, writing in The Daily Telegraph, Allister Heath agrees with Johnson’s characterisation of the situation. He claims there are MPs opposed to no-deal Brexit, like Philip Hammond, who’s strategy, “shared with John Bercow and Dominic Grieve, appears to be to signal to Brussels not to compromise: the rebels will neuter the Government, so the Eurocrats should stick to their guns.”

Heath’s article followed a piece in The Times by former chancellor Hammond. “The hardliners may make the most noise but they are not the most numerous. Most people in this country want to see us leave in a smooth and orderly fashion that will not disrupt lives, cost jobs or diminish living standards, whether they voted leave or remain in 2016,” writes Hammond. “No deal would be a betrayal of the 2016 referendum result. It must not happen.”

Pelosi weighs in on US-UK free trade deal

Later in the day, Brexit supporters’ hopes of a quickly ratified US-UK free trade deal to mitigate the damage of a no-deal Brexit were dealt a blow by Nancy Pelosi, the Democratic head of the US House of Representatives.

“Whatever form it takes, Brexit cannot be allowed to imperil the Good Friday Agreement, including the seamless border between the Irish Republic and Northern Ireland,” Pelosi said yesterday in a statement. “If Brexit undermines the Good Friday accord, there will be no chance of a US-UK trade agreement passing the Congress.”

Of course, it is precisely leaving the EU without a Withdrawal Agreement that will likely cause friction at the Irish border, and threaten the Good Friday accord.

Attempts to stop no deal

The prime minister claimed during his “Peoples’ PMQs” that MPs were “still off on holiday.” In fact, most are currently meeting constituents and performing local duties.

What’s more, many are forming plans to resist government attempts to force a no-deal Brexit.

As the Guardian reports, “Labour MPs opposed to a second referendum are considering a ‘radical and dramatic intervention’ to make clear to Jeremy Corbyn and Boris Johnson they are prepared to vote for a Brexit deal.”

Jeremy Corbyn has also been trying to marshal support behind his attempt to oust the government in the name of blocking no deal. According to the Financial Times, the Labour leader has written to MPs saying that if they block his plan, he would then seek to form a “time-limited temporary government” with the aim of calling an election.

Corbyn “urged his counterparts in the Liberal Democrats, Scottish Nationalists, Plaid Cymru and Green parties — along with Conservative MPs opposed to a no-deal departure — to support his bid to collapse the Johnson government and delay Brexit. ‘This government has no mandate for no deal, and the 2016 EU referendum provided no mandate for no deal,’ he wrote in the letter.”

Tory MP Tom Tugendhat has even stoked fears that Johnson could be planning to unilaterally withdraw the UK before these attempts can come to fruition.

“After fielding further tough questions, some of which bore a remarkable and no doubt entirely coincidental resemblance to Downing Street talking points — ‘What will you do to restore the British people's faith in politics and politicians?’ ‘What efforts will you take to ensure your government represents and hears the voices of all British people across the country?’ — Johnson responded to Oliver who wanted to know who the prime minister's political hero is,” writes Charlie Cooper in Politico.

Johnson’s answer was “Pericles of Athens, who believed in all sorts of wonderful things… he certainly believed in great infrastructure projects, he believed in the importance of the many not the few, but above all Pericles will go down as one of the most powerful articulators of the idea of democracy, which is that the people are ultimately in charge of their own destiny.”

“The idea that Pericles, who has been dead for more than 2,400 years, ‘will go down’ in history as a champion of democracy might have struck some listeners as an odd way to put it,” contends Cooper. “But perhaps Johnson had someone else in mind.”