On 06/09/2019 09:28, nightjar wrote:
On 05/09/2019 14:28, Norman Wells wrote:

It's rather the other way round.Â* A referendum would be a substitute
for a general election.Â* But a general election is what we currently
need because we have a government that is being prevented by
Parliament from governing.Â* And that has to be resolved.

That is entirely down to Boris. It was his insistence on a no deal
Brexit that lead a number of Conservative MPs, his brother included, to
put the national interest before their own careers. He single handedly
lost the government's working majority and, having lost control, nobody
trusts him enough to give it back.

But actually he hasn't insisted on a no deal Brexit. If he had, Farage
would not be saying at his conference that he will fight the
Conservatives in every seat in the land.

What Boris has done is insist on no deal being an option. He at least
appreciates the first rule of Negotiation 101 that you have to be
prepared to walk away with no deal rather than a bad deal.

He knows that he probably wouldn't win another referendum,

He doesn't have to.Â* We've had the one that mattered.

Aside from the fact that the evidence is that public opinion now favours
remain over leave, that referendum only gave the government a mandate to
leave the EU. It did not give it a mandate to leave in the most damaging
way possible.

It gave the government a mandate to leave the EU in the way the
government saw fit. The referendum set the direction and handed the
matter back to the government to implement.

People have a right to the sort of Brexit that the Leave
campaign described, which is not what they would get with a no deal
Brexit.

The people were not going to be consulted after the referendum. That
much was made very clear. 'The government will implement what you
decide' said the leaflet that came thudding through our letterboxes.
And it was supposed to be a 'once in a generation' opportunity for the
people to decide.

Besides, there are many who say the original question was too difficult
for voters to understand. Heaven alone knows how the public are
supposed to understand all the nuances of the different sorts of Brexit
there might be.

If Boris wants to be able to claim that the people back a no
deal Brexit, he can only do so if he gets a clear mandate for that
option in another referendum.

but thinks he could win a general election

Well, that's better surely than Corbyn who is running scared of one.

He isn't running scared. he simply isn't going to dance to Boris' tune.
Labour has already said it is quite willing to support a general
election in mid-November.

Never before in history has an opposition party spurned a chance to have
an election that could see them elected to power. It's supposed to be
what they want.

There's no getting away from it. Corbyn was unequivocal about wanting
an election and being ready for one just four days ago:

"When a government finds itself without a majority, the solution is not
to undermine dedmocracy. The solution is to let the people decide and
call a general election. It is the people, not an unelected Prime
Minister, who should determine our country's future. An election is the
democratic way forward."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mN1gBxAfZh4

(from 3:02 in)

Now that one has been offered, it turns out he didn't really mean it at all.

He's running scared and denying the 'democratic way forward' he so nobly
espoused so little time ago.