Johnson 'whipping up riot fears to avoid Brexit extension'

[muriel_volestrangler]

Boris Johnson is deliberately whipping up fears of riots and deaths so he can try to invoke emergency powers and avoid extending the UK’s EU membership beyond 31 October, Labour’s Brexit spokesman, Keir Starmer, claimed on Saturday.

After a week in which the prime minister was accused by MPs from all the main parties, including senior Tories, of inciting violence by accusing Remainers of Brexit “surrender” and “betrayal”, Starmer said it was part of an orchestrated plan to stoke a sense of outrage among Leave voters and create civil unrest, so an extension might be avoided.

Increasingly MPs across the House of Commons believe Downing St is considering using the Civil Contingencies Act 2004, which grants special powers in the event of a national emergency, as a way to override the so-called Benn act, which mandates the prime minister to seek a delay to Brexit if no deal has been struck with Brussels by 19 October.

Johnson describes this as the “surrender act” and insists he will not under any circumstances ask for an extension. After heated exchanges in parliament last Wednesday he rejected pleas to tone down his language from female MPs who invoked the memory of their murdered colleague Jo Cox and said they increasingly feared for their safety as Brexit tensions rose in their constituencies.

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2019/sep/28/boris-johnson-invoke-civil-emergency-powers-brexit-deal

I have seen a remarkable amount of "there will be riots if Brexit doesn't happen" claims on the web. Maybe Cummings has a bot network encouraging them. For example, this reply to me, when the subject was whether prorogation is a parliamentary procedure:

It is demonstrably all part of the political process and the proceedings of parliament - what country are you in where it isn't?

The Supreme Court ruling does not describe what law it uses to reverse the decision for prorogation - which they have no power to do.

Smoke and mirrors by a traitorous judiciary that could possibly be hung if there is civil unrest because of the treason.

It starts off as just an incorrect argument about the corurt ruling, and then swerves into "there will be blood on the streets because of this".

[Celerity]

1. fuck you Boris

[Denzil_DC]

2. Brexit didn't happen on 31 March.

There was much grumbling, a bit of argy-bargy in Parliament Square, and right-wing columnists and people with nothing better to do on social media were miffed.

Governments for decades have known from research that the barrier between normal everyday life in the UK and serious civil unrest is a relatively short time span of days when food supplies are interrupted:

From 2010 (no reason to imagine we're much more resilient nowadays):

Nine meals from anarchy

... Britain's ability to feed itself has been in long-term decline, and food prices are reportedly rising in the cold spell. It was only two years ago that droughts in Australia caused a crisis in world grain supplies; in April 2008 food crises affected at least 37 countries and there were related riots in many. As climate change and volatile oil prices destabilise global agriculture, we are becoming more dependent on food and energy imports just as the geopolitics of both make it less likely that the world will generously meet our needs.

This year is the 10th anniversary of the fuel protests, when supermarket bosses sat with ministers and civil servants in Whitehall warning that there were just three days of food left. We were, in effect, nine meals from anarchy. Suddenly, the apocalyptic visions of novelists and film-makers seemed less preposterous. Civilisation's veneer may be much thinner than we like to think.

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2010/jan/11/nine-meals-anarchy-sustainable-system

You want to see riots? Go for a no-deal Brexit.

Stick that up your campaign spreadsheet, Cummings.