Good Idea Wrong Person

So now we have a proposal for an emergency Government to stop no deal using the process of the Fixed-term Parliament Act. It has come from Jeremy Corbyn, and it is to make Jeremy Corbyn as the temporary Prime Minister.

Tony Lloyd, speaking on BBC Newsnight, said it's not about personalities. Well, if it is not, Jeremy Corbyn can wait.

Jeremy Corbyn heads a political party that has its own electoral programme for office. His programme seems to include, though no one is very sure any more, a plan to negotiate a Labour deal to leave the European Union and/ or to have a second referendum. He seems to want the latter in his proposal, if in power after a General Election.

Jeremy Corbyn does not command the widespread confidence of the House of Commons. If it is not about personalities, then we need a temporary Prime Minister who is someone else, for example a respected member of the Labour Party, or one or two Conservatives (Clarke, Letwin) there to do one job, and not necessarily to introduce a second referendum either. The task is to delay by rock solid legislation a no deal exit - take the date out of existing legislation.

I have written on blog entries here for months about using the Fixed-term Parliaments Act provision as the sound way to stop Johnson, and indeed remove him from power.

The people in government for the temporary period would come from the people active in trying to prevent no deal to date. There would only need to be a basic Cabinet for the duration: the short time would mean the Civil Service running a number of departments as if in a General Election period - which would follow.

We have the madness now of plans in a no deal exit to load large lorries full of medicines on to huge aircraft to come from Europe to the UK; we also have from this crackers government a scheme to put anti-knife crime messages on the side of chicken shop packets - reflecting an ethnic stereotype that says all one needs to know about this lot in charge at the moment.

 We have this notion, still heard from a few deal-wanting Tory MPs, that Johnson is loading up the gun pointed at our own heads as a way of bringing the European Union to heal. Well, Angela Merkel made that clear today - the agreement was made between the EU and the British Government and that is the basis forward. Even after a no deal exit, any trade agreement with the EU would have to include the Withdrawal Agreement with its insurance policy for the north of Ireland/ Northern Ireland. This government is stupid, gambling again (as Cameron did in holding the referendum) with this country to save the Tory Party. It is playing fire with Scotland and Northern Ireland in particular and seems not to care less about all the UK tensions exposed by the government's stance.

It is very pleasing that Sarah Wollaston has joined the Liberal Democrats, and this is earlier than I expected. It must be clear to her as it is to more MPs that we base assessing the Johnson government by what it does and not on what it says, and it is on this basis that it must be stopped. And for this we need a temporary government and a temporary Prime Minister: not Jeremy Corbyn, not Jo Swinson either. They have programmes for government.