Admittedly, Johnson did himself few favours with his bumbling performance when put on the spot by a TV reporter over photos of a young boy sleeping on a hospital floor.

But it wasn’t the NHS that made millions brave driving rain to mark an ‘X’ with a stubby pencil.

For most Tories – and many former Labour voters – it was, in the words of the only three words the campaign will be remembered for, to ‘get Brexit done’.

Simon Walters writes that the election was all about Brexit. Britain’s Prime Minister Boris Johnson speaking at Copper Box Arena in London in a last campaign effort the day before the General Election

And for Home Counties Tory Remainers egged on by Sir John Major, hectoring Jo Swinson’s Lib Dem Europhiles and Labour’s pro-Brussels London luvvies, it was to get Brexit undone.

The truth is that almost exactly three and a half years after the referendum the country is still deeply divided over whether the UK should leave the EU. Every party was tied in knots trying to grapple with Brexit fissures during the campaign.

Corbyn panicked when he realized his feeble fence-sitting was driving working-class Leavers in Labour’s so-called Red Wall of seats in the North into Boris’s arms.

A token pro-Leave Corbynista was sent North to try to curb the insurrection – and was greeted with a loud raspberry from one end of Hadrian’s Wall to the other.

Shadow Brexit Secretary Sir Keir Starmer – a silken-tongued southern MP and arch-Remainer – was so invisible in the North he might as well have spent the campaign on Mars. But if you were a Labour supporter in pro-Remain Putney, south-west London, you could have been forgiven for thinking Starmer was Labour leader, not Corbyn.

Brexit party leader Nigel Farage pictured on the campaign trail in Hartlepool, the day before the general election

Starmer’s face, not Corbyn’s, was plastered all over one of the Putney Labour candidate’s leaflets in a straightforward attempt to milk the Remain vote and ‘Stop Brexit’.

Lib Dem leader Jo Swinson did the seemingly impossible when she was rejected by fellow Remainers who said her pledge to summarily revoke the Article 50 departure process from the EU made a mockery of the word ‘democrat’ in her party’s name.

She consoled herself by trying to wrestle the Foreign Secretary – karate black-belt Dominic Raab – out of his seat in Esher in the heavily Remain Surrey commuter belt.

Nigel Farage disappeared in a cloud of his own cigarette smoke when his Brexit Party supporters concluded he had become the biggest threat to his own declared objective.

Johnson got every Tory candidate to sign his Brexit pledge, but this did not prevent blood-letting between the Conservatives’ warring factions.

In Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire, former Conservative attorney general Dominic Grieve, standing as an independent after being thrown out of the party for his one-man crusade to block Brexit, called Johnson a ‘pathological liar’.

Parliament is widely held to have failed to do its duty over Brexit, with endless dither, delay, bickering and back-biting that reduced a once great nation to a laughing stock.

If only Brexit cheerleader Boris had moved into No 10 after the referendum instead of Remainer Theresa May, we would have ‘got Brexit done’ three years ago and moved on, goes the argument.

I am not so sure.

Current Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn pictured outside a polling station in his North Islington constituency in London

Before the referendum campaign began, veteran Brexiteer John Redwood told me it would be ‘the English Civil War without muskets’. That war lasted nine years, cost around 100,000 lives and split families for generations. But it but sowed the seeds for the nation’s future tolerance, prosperity and success.

The long-term consequences of Brexit may not be so profound. Most would settle for a decent trade deal with the EU, continued pet passports and controlled immigration while ensuring we have enough people to staff the NHS, care homes and the local Costa Coffee.

There has been vicious social-media abuse and threats to MPs on all sides. Tory Iain Duncan Smith received a dismembered rat through his letterbox just days ago.

But staying in the EU has not prevented neo-Nazi protests in Merkel’s Germany and Gilets Jaunes riots in Macron’s France.

The Parliamentary deadlock in Westminster has been petty, agonizing and frustrating – but in my view, the extra three and a half years spent thrashing out a hugely complex issue have not all been wasted.

Most people who turned out yesterday had a greater understanding of Brexit than they did in June 2016, when few had heard of the Customs Union, let alone knew what it was – including some MPs I could mention.

If you wanted to vote for or against Brexit yesterday, there were guides on how to vote tactically in every seat.

Before the election was called, the depressing prospect (to me, anyway) of the UK spending much of 2020 fighting a long, bitter second referendum seemed increasingly likely.

With luck, it took place yesterday. And not a musket was fired.

Source: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-7787071/SIMON-WALTERS-election-came-just-one-thing-Brexit.html

The post This election came down to just one thing – Brexit first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Polls show his Conservative Party on course to win a majority, which would mean Parliament voting to leave the European Union by Jan. 31. But in the 2017 election, those polls were wrong, and Johnson will urge supporters not to be complacent.

On Monday, the prime minister is visiting Sunderland in Northeast England, one of the first places to declare in favor of leaving the European Union on the night of the 2016 referendum. He’ll say that vote has been frustrated by members of parliament with “dither and delay, prevarication and procrastination, obfuscation and obstruction,” according to his office.

Johnson himself was part of that parliament and a leader of the Conservative rebellion that stopped Britain from leaving the EU in March. But the signs are that voters aren’t going to punish him for this in Thursday’s election.

Polls in the Sunday newspapers all put the Conservatives in the lead. There were some signs that Jeremy Corbyn’s opposition Labour Party was closing the gap, but not by enough yet to keep the Conservatives out of power.

“No one can rule out a surprise, especially after the surprise of 2017, but on the face of it, Johnson is headed for victory,” said Anthony Wells of polling firm YouGov. “There’s a spread in the polling, but it’s between polls that show Johnson getting a big majority, polls that show a medium majority and polls showing it’s touch-and-go for a majority.”

One possible catalyst for a Tory upset would be if opponents of Brexit manage to persuade people to vote “tactically” for the candidate most likely to defeat the Conservatives. The difficulty is that in tight races, it’s not always clear which party that is.

Labour Campaign

Labour, too, will return to its core message, with Treasury spokesman John McDonnell telling voters that the party will put “money in your pockets” and “power in your hands” by increasing government spending and setting up new bodies that will regenerate the U.K. outside London.

But the party is struggling. McDonnell acknowledged on the BBC on Sunday that the emergence of a strain of anti-Semitism in the party under Corbyn’s leadership was hurting Labour in the election. “I worry that this has had its effect,” he said.

Johnson on Sunday strove to brush off issues about his Brexit deal, denying that products traveling between Northern Ireland and Great Britain would need to undergo inspections. “There won’t be checks,” he told Sky News. “There’s no question of there being checks on goods.”

Johnson Sows Confusion Over Northern Irish Trade After Brexit

The prime minister’s campaign message of the final weekend was that he will curtail immigration. Even so, the details of his “Australian-style points-based immigration system” suggest its workings will change little from the U.K.’s existing points-based system.

Both offer a smooth pathway into the country to the highly skilled and the rich and a route to citizenship for those who have skills that are needed. The new plan expands an existing third route for temporary unskilled workers, which is currently restricted because it’s easy for employers to get unskilled workers from the EU.

For its part, Labour said it would introduce free care for all elderly people. It’s an increasing problem in the U.K. that parties have struggled to solve as the cost of looking after an aging population rises.

Liberal Democrat leader Jo Swinson will try to mitigate the damage done by her pledge to simply revoke Brexit — something critics view as undemocratic — by saying her party has legislation drafted for a second referendum. On Sunday, she said that if there’s another hung parliament, she’d be willing to put Labour in power, but not Corbyn.

To contact the reporters on this story: Robert Hutton in London at rhutton1@bloomberg.net; Greg Ritchie in London at gritchie10@bloomberg.net

To contact the editors responsible for this story: Tim Ross at tross54@bloomberg.net, Tony Czuczka

Source: https://www.bnnbloomberg.ca/johnson-returns-to-key-brexit-message-as-polls-put-him-ahead-1.1359494

The post Johnson Returns to Key Brexit Message as Polls Put Him Ahead first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

BORIS Johnson has raised the stakes over Brexit, paving the way for a general election on Monday, October 14.

He made clear that if MPs backed a move to block a no-deal Brexit today, he would call a Commons vote within 24 hours to authorize a snap poll.

The post Brexit: Boris Johnson paves way for snap election first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.

Theresa May has refused to say she would back Brexit if the referendum on quitting the European Union was held now.

In a move likely to anger Tory Brexiteers, the Prime Minister, who backed Remain, repeatedly sidestepped questions over which camp she would be in.

During an appearance on LBC, Mrs May insisted she was being “open and honest” when she could not give an answer.

Asked if she had changed her mind about how to vote, she replied: “I don’t answer hypothetical questions.

“I voted Remain for good reasons at the time but circumstances move on.”

Mrs May was told Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt had switched from Remain to Leave because former Chancellor George Osborne’s gloomy economic predictions had failed to materialise.

Presenter Iain Dale said: “If he says he can change his mind I don’t quite understand why you can’t seeing as you are Prime Minister leading us into Brexit.”

“Yes and I’m Prime Minister ensuring I’m going to deliver Brexit for the British people,” she replied.

Pressed again, Mrs May said: “I could say I would still vote Remain or I would vote Leave just to give you an answer to that question.

“I am being open and honest with you. What I did last time round was I looked at everything and I came to a judgment and I would do exactly the same this time round.

“But we are not having another referendum and that’s absolutely crucial.”

Exactly – the people should have the right to ‘weigh up the evidence’ when she has a deal on the table! https://t.co/feVk3VeC2f

— Lib Dem Press Office (@LibDemPress) October 10, 2017

Liberal Democrat deputy leader Jo Swinson said: “It is staggering that even the Prime Minister isn’t convinced by the Government’s approach to Brexit.

“If Theresa May doesn’t have any faith in her own Government’s policies, why is she still driving this country towards the cliff edge?

“Theresa May says she would weigh up the evidence again, she shouldn’t deny that right to the British people.

“The public must have the chance to change their mind if they want to, once the Government comes back with a deal.”

Mrs May’s de facto deputy Damian Green suggested he would stick to his Remain vote from last year’s referendum but described the question put to the PM and him as “meaningless”.

The First Secretary of State told Channel 4 News: “Well, I was on the board of the Stronger In campaign so my views on Europe are well known and I don’t resile from anything I said during the election campaign.

“Of course, the fact is it’s a meaningless question because there’s not going to be a referendum tomorrow, so it’s a purely hypothetical question.”

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Source: https://www.aol.co.uk/news/2017/10/10/theresa-may-refuses-to-say-she-would-back-brexit-if-there-was-an/

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The post Theresa May refuses to say she would back Brexit if there was another referendum first appeared on Garner Ted Armstrong Evangelistic Association.