by John Ward
After two days r&r in the Gironde, remarkably little seems to have changed. Fine, Parliament is now in “early recess” (real reasons a little murky) and some pairing arrangements went wrong, seemingly ensuring that we’ll still have a customs union with the EU (real reasons very grubby and muddy indeed, several sticks stirring the stream) but apart from that it seems that there is still no God in Heaven. MPs are officially on holiday, and so the coast is clear for Olly Robbins to declare Britain a suburb of Brussels, and for Mrs May to argue that Brexit means Brussels.
However, things might well take a turn for the worst as the day goes on: Michel Barnier is scheduled today to give us all the benefit of his views on the Chequer-Board of Brexit as he sees it. I hope he’s up to speed with how many pieces are still on the board. All we can say is that The Independent is probably on speed of some kind: it now claims butter and milk are going to become luxuries after Brexit. As I no longer consume either commodity, I am treating it is a matter that doesn’t concern me.
In Turkey, things have proceeded to a logical conclusion.
Yesterday, the cub reporters at CNN announced that nice Mr Erdogan had lifted the State of Emergency following his recent election success. But this morning, it seems, Recep the Rabid has pulled off something of a putsch.
He has issued several lengthy decrees and presidential decisions, centralizing power and giving him the ability to exert control in nearly all areas of life with a degree of authority that almost reignites the idea of Divine Right. To sum up,
• The prime minister’s office has been abolished;
• The military has been brought under firmer civilian control;
• The president will draft the budget and choose judges and many top officials;
• The president can dismiss Parliament and call new elections at will;
• The president appoints the head of the National Intelligence Agency, the Religious Affairs Directorate and the Central Bank, as well as ambassadors, governors and university rectors, among other top bureaucrats;
The Slog has been on Erdo the Mad’s case since 2010. He has now fulfilled every last one of my predictions about his goals during that time. I thank him for his support in this matter. I wonder how NATO will react. No, I don’t: I know exactly how it won’t react.
In the Labour Party, Jew Wrong Muslim Right is obviously thriving: Atheist Richard Dawkins called the Islamic call to prayer ‘aggressive’, and he preferred the sound of church bells. He was instantly written off as just another scumfascistbigotracist. Corbynistas meanwhile – still inhabiting a two-way parallel Universe of double standards – finally opined that that ridicule of Israel was tickerty-boo because it is surely Stalinist to ban free discussion in relation to the politics of any State, regardless of its history or track record.
The LibLeft radical wing has gone further up the line from Cognitive Dissonance Junction over the last twenty or more years. It is now in Bathos City. All change there for Gulag Central.