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Where Boris hit a wall is that he lost his majority. It is this fact that has changed the entire situation. He has been defeated on every motion he has presented, while the de facto majority have passed all theirs.

Bercow has timed his resignation so that it is the current Parliament, the one in which Boris can't manage to pull together a majority, that will vote for the new Speaker. Boris will be most unlikely to get himself a biddable Speaker.

Things are going to slide, slide in all directions
Won't be nothing
Nothing you can measure anymore
L. Cohen

by john_evans (john(dot)evans(dot)et(at)gmail(dot)com) on Tue Sep 10th, 2019 at 07:01:14 AM EST
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Which is in fact the point of this - at every turn so far, Johnson has been acting with the strategic intelligence of a toddler.

"I don't like Parliament, I'm going to teach it a lesson" - he gets thousands out on the streets and appalls many in his own party.

"I don't like rebels, I'm going to teach them a lesson" - he nukes his own majority.

"I don't like Bercow, I'm going to teach him a lesson" - Bercow guarantees the next Speaker won't be any more pliant.

He's a political imbecile. He doesn't even have Trump's ironclad pathological narcissism. When his brother resigned he was apparently very upset.

So his next gambit will probably be "I don't like the law, I'm going to teach it a lesson."

And we'll see how that works out for him.

by ThatBritGuy (thatbritguy (at) googlemail.com) on Tue Sep 10th, 2019 at 08:39:17 AM EST
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