Early Christmas Presents

Private Eye, the UK's best and only fortnightly satirical magazine, on the consequences of agreeing to a general election without ensuring that the voters had the final say over Brexit in a second, confirmatory referendum.  

 

Boris Johnson's Elephant Trap (13/12/19)

Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP gave Boris Johnson an early Christmas present by agreeing to his call for an early general election without insisting on a democratic People's Vote over the final terms of Brexit.

The 'prize' for the SNP is a clean sweep of all seven Glasgow seats and a landslide victory across the rest of Scotland - courtesy of a discredited, unrepresentative First Past The Post (FPTP) electoral system.

But if you ask me, all of the opposition parties should be throughly ashamed of themselves for walking straight into Boris Johnson's FPTP elephant trap.           

 

 

On Your Marks. Get Set. Go! (12/12/19)

Labour, the Lib Dems and the SNP all agreed to an early general election which always seems like a terribly high risk strategy to me.

Not least because the much smarter move was for the opposition parties to refuse to budge without securing the right of voters to have the final say on Brexit - by holding a democratic People's Vote between Remain and Boris Johnson's deal. 

The Times cartoonist, Peter Brookes, captured the pre-election mood rather well, I thought, but we will know how things turn out later today.