No mention of Lord Frost's resignation? Ostensibly he is leaving cos he disagrees with Covid policy or something but I can't be the only one who thinks that in actual fact it may be cos in January the UK will finally implement the final part of the incredibly shit brexit deal that he drew up and goods coming into the country will be subject to checks and taxes and the inevitable delays that will come with that. The obvious guess is that he just doesn't want to be there to get the blame when it all goes tits up, as it almost certainly will.
The whole episode - saga even, it's dragged on far too long to be an episode - with this deal is one of the strangest bits of politics I can remember. First* Johnson claims to have an "oven ready" Brexit deal, drawn up by Frosty, which is perfect and the Tories campaign on this and win the election. They then force the deal through parliament, denying MPs any time to study it or really even to read it properly. They simply use their majority to insist that the country does the deal with the EU, which it duly does.... and since then the main cheerleaders for the deal have all made an extraordinary volte face. Ian Duncan Smith who insisted that it need not be debated, who stood up in parliament and demanded that it be passed as quickly as possible without any delay, is now claiming that the EU have somehow trapped us in small print and details that we didn't understand. Frost who drew it up and Johnson who won an election on the basis that the deal was perfect and that it would be fully implemented are now insisting that the EU somehow tricked us into signing such a bad deal and that they are now acting in bad faith by not allowing us to disregard parts of it we have decided we no longer like. Completely insane.
In fact it was around this moment when I realised that politics had totally separated from reality... the Brexit deal had been written by Johnson and Frost and they had forced it upon the country... and then the two of them could repeatedly criticise the deal and the circumstances of its signing, they could cry foul at being held to their deal and they could blame the EU for all of this AND PEOPLE AGREED WITH THEM!
The idea that someone could completely change direction to the extent that they could claim that what they had sworn yesterday was great was in fact terrible, could say that what they insisted yesterday everyone must do they had actually been forced into and should never have done... and not lose supporters, in fact that their supporters would happily stand up for and parrot their utter nonsense, this was new to me.
Of course I understand that in general we've long been in a situation where people just pick their side and cheer for them right or wrong, but I'd never seen this before. I had never seen people switch by one hundred and eighty degrees and pretend it had never happened and half the country agree to pretend with them. I felt embarrassed by this degrading charade, the ease with which so many people were prepared to throw away their integrity and any pretence of honesty.
*Actually that's not first at all of course, there was the whole thing of May's mooted deal which Johnson criticised and in fact used to prise her out of power as PM before drawing up a deal that was almost exactly the same but slightly worse and pretending it was the solution.