I was going to start this blog by saying that the PM needs to be a bit cleverer, after the Chagos Islands decision he only had to say that none of this affects Gibraltar or the Falklands, but he didn’t.
But then you look at the discord in the Tory party that this is causing and you think, maybe Sir Kier is the clever one.
After all James Cleverly apparently opened these talks, his campaign manager claims to have vetoed these negotiations. Liz Truss says that Boris Johnson started them and Mr. Johnson says she did.
All claim the deal will endanger the base at Diego Garcia, when it is guaranteed for the next 100 years, minimum.
But all are shocked, shocked you hear, to discover that the talks they started and carried out have reached a successful conclusion. None seem to mention the FO line, that Brexit meant we could no longer rely on total European wide support for our previous position.
Maybe this is good news for the Tory party, for the moment they are acting as if they did not lose the election but are only waiting for the new government to implode and for them to be ushered back to permanent power by a contrite electorate, sometime next week.
When in fact they are going to be blamed for the mess they have made over the last 14 years, for years.
A dose of reality will do them good, meanwhile as they fight to the death over that comb, they should consider what other skeletons they may have unfortunately left behind.
PPE, the Covid enquiry, Covid loans, Brexit, climate change, the black hole, Gibraltar, Russian money, HS2, the NHS, school buildings, defence, tainted blood, dodgy asylum contracts, and corruption.
To work denials have to be plausible, the Chagos decision is a perfect illustration of why the Tory party’s denials are anything but plausible and will be for years to come.
Economics, trade and Brexit, not necessarily in that order but the dog always comes first.
By Jonty Bloom Media
“for years” - decades, Jonty, sodding decades (about the length of my kids’ mortgages)