What the parliament does want

True, I did not really expect a reply to my question the other day. A life of not being able to take oneself seriously has its consequences, I suppose. Nevertheless, the question in itself is interesting enough. Let me rephrase it, on the off chance I did not make myself understood.

The PM had a sudden insight yesterday, the day after her deal was crushed in the House of Commons: ´We now know what parliament does not want´ she said. It took her long enough, but all right. Now she wants to know what parliament does want.

Well, that is rather obvious, I should say. Parliament wants exactly what the British… uh, English people voted for in 2016: Leave the EU! Which in my view is synonymous to: Close the borders with the EU! Correct me if I am wrong, but that is slightly different from Backstop.

The problem with that outcome of the referendum was of course that the British government had decided less than twenty years before the only land border with the EU should remain open till the end of time.

Don´t get me wrong, they were well within their right to do so. I feel one referendum every 4 or 5 years, which are commonly called ´general elections´, is more than enough. During those 4 or 5 year periods government and parliament, as representatives of the people, have to make all the hard decisions on problems too complicated to expect them to be solved by the common elector. Therefore I am saying: they were well within their right to sign the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, without consulting the people first by holding a referendum.

Which brings me back to my original question: why on earth hold a referendum less than twenty years later on virtually the same question?

The easy answer to that question obviously is that the PM at the time was thoroughly convinced the people would vote Remain. And they actually would have, had not Boris ´Benedict Arnold´ Johnson at the very last instant jumped ship. The fact that he left Cameron in the lurch and joined the Leave campaign changed history forever. What or who made Bojo do that? Will we ever learn the truth? (Will we ever learn what clout Putin has over Trump that made (and makes!) the latter behave like a Kremlin puppet on a string?) At least the Irish people will know whom to hold responsible when the border hardens.