@nooneinparticular Said
As you wish. Let's talk about something else then. Namely the extension. While I do understand that Boris was forced into taking this route, for the amount of bluster he kicked up before, during, and after the 'surrender bill' became UK law, I'm slightly surprised that there wasn't anything else he had up his sleeve to counter it in some way.
Also, while I personally don't completely blame Boris for reneging on his own promise to be out by the 31st, (He could have still done it even with the bill, but that's a different topic) the backlash was to be expected. When you make multiple grand speeches about how such and such will happen and then it doesn't, trust is put at risk. I honestly wonder how this will affect any potential polls going into a GE.
He did try to circumvent the Benn Act. He had an entire team of (very expensive at taxpayers expense) lawyers go over the Benn Act line by line in the hope of finding loopholes he could exploit, but it was watertight.
In the end he had to settle for his lame and risible "I'm not going to sign the letter" schoolboy strop.
There were any number of things that Johnson / Cummings didn't think would happen, that did. Parliament put on a rare show of unity and although they couldn't agree on how they would deal with Brexit itself, they were united in one thing:
Johnson must not be allowed to subvert the House to his own ends.
Everything that was done to stop Johnson was lawful and inside the rules of Parliamentary procedure. For all the Aussie's bluster about treachery and anti-democratic behaviour, it was JOHNSON who has been the guilty party.
How many pro-remain MP's have had their actions challenged in the Supreme Court...?
Pro-leave have repeatedly attempted to find ways around the rules.
Pro-remain have thwarted them entirely within the rules.
And yet..... we're the bad guys...? We're the traitors...? We're the "anti-democratic" ones...?
As for your question about the polls..... well, I personally have never been too enamoured of polls. People asked in the street about which way they vote may say one thing but where they put their X, in the privacy of the ballot booth, where nobody is looking, can be something completely different.
All the polls said that Remain would win the referendum.
All the polls said that Teresa May would increase her number of seats in Parliament in the 2017 general election.
Boris Johnson is probably at the very peak of his popularity right now, the Tory press has done a very effective hatchet job on Corbyn over the last three and half years and of course, the Brexiters have all the tried and tested dirty tricks that worked so well in the referendum campaign still in their armoury and won't hesitate to use them.
But Corbyn revels in campaigning. He's already off to a flyer with his "Bring it on" speech on Wednesday. He's not afraid of campaigning. It's what he does best.
He's an old fashioned "I'll-see-you -on-the-hustings" challenger. This is what he really enjoys. How that will affect the polls is yet to be seen, but the Tories have things to worry about.
They have to gain seats. They can't afford to lose any. Usually a government might be able to lose some seats and get re-elected, but Johnson has no breathing space in that regard. And with people like Amber Rudd (pro Brexit) defending a majority of only 346 in Hastings and Rye, she is extremely vulnerable. In my constituency (St Ives), the Tory MP Derek Thomas defends an even smaller majority of 312 in a constituency that was heavily influenced by the Brexit referendum.......... and the fishermen and farmers are NOT HAPPY that the government is not going to make up the money that they have hitherto received from the EU but will stop after Brexit.... Thomas told them in 2017 that the Tories would meet those payments. They won't. And the farmers and fishermen are not happy about that. They are not happy at all.
Two very, very vulnerable seats among a number of Tory held constituencies that wouldn't take much of a swing to lose.
Disaffected Tory remainers could change, not to Labour, but to the Lib Dems who have promised a second referendum, thus letting Labour in by default. There is also the matter of Nigel Farage's Brexit party which could split the Tory vote in some seats.
The Tories could be wiped out in Scotland. 12 seats down the tubes already. Some of the 21 Tory MP's who had the whip withdrawn my contest the election as independents. Phillip Hammond - as an MP - is very popular in Runnymede and it's difficult to see a new Conservative incomer challenging him.
All in all, this election is not the done deal that the polls might suggest it is. For sure, there will be some huge victories for the Tories in the Gammon Shires of the Home Counties and East Anglia. Those MP's will increase their majorities. But we have a First Past The Post system here and no matter how big their winning margin, it's still only one seat. And a minority government can't afford to lose any.
And in a hung Parliament, they won't even be able to call on the DUP next time. Johnson threw Northern Ireland under the bus last month, having said he'd never do that. The DUP won't forget it.
Labour...?
Well, the NHS could well be the Tories Achilles heel in this election. Corbyn needs to make big play of that because last week, Channel 4 exposed the secret negotiations already under way to sell the NHS off to American concerns.
The Tories hate the NHS, but they know it's the one thing they can't risk being taken to task on and so they throw a bit of money at it from time to time while undermining it politically.
In the usual course of events they manage to get away with it. Whether or not they can carry off the same old blag this time may have a great bearing on the outcome of this election. Why do you think Johnson is spending so much time visiting hospitals...?
He wants to campaign by making it look as though he is supporting the NHS when in truth he is already presiding over it's sell off. Corbyn needs to expose him on this at every opportunity.
Finally, there is no doubt that Johnson has been damaged politically by not meeting his much-trumpeted 31 October deadline. "Dead in a ditch"...... "No ifs, no buts"........... "We WILL leave on 31 October come what may".
But we didn't.
He couldn't deliver.
How many voters will now believe he can't deliver at all...?