Jeremy Corbyn Calls For 'Elite' Boris Johnson's Resignation

A few weeks ago when he was trying (badly) to convince everyone that proroguing Parliament was not about suspending democracy to ram through a car-crash no-deal Brexit, Boris Johnson said it was in fact about his important domestic agenda. It was vague, and a barely concealed lie that he could hardly be bothered to sell convincingly. But the messaging was clear – I know you’re bored of Brexit, he was saying, vote for me to get Brexit done and then we can get on with the stuff that matters to you.

If Johnson wants to get on with it in order to talk about what actually matters, then Jeremy Corbyn’s speech completely gazumped him, with a list of policy announcements about stuff that actually matters that are bound to have his party faithful singing “Oh Jeremy Corbyn” and hitting the streets and letterboxes in a coming election.

Today the Supreme Court ruled that the suspension of Parliament was unlawful and that Johnson had futilely attempted to involve Her Maj in a joint enterprise to disrupt democracy. To compound the lie, Tory spinners will try and convince the public that this is an example of the establishment getting in the way of Brexit, directly contradicting their own legal submissions to the court and what the Prime Minister was saying just a few short weeks ago.

It’s in that context that Jeremy Corbyn’s speech was made. The speech happened a day early, and Corbyn made sure he got his call for Johnson to go in straight away: “This unelected Prime Minister should now resign” – something Johnson will surely hear from his own backbench MPs when Parliament reconvenes tomorrow on Wednesday.

Johnson wants to frame an upcoming election as “Boris vs. Parliament”. Corbyn hit back at his “born-to-rule government of the entitled”. (Sometimes, all you have to do is call a spade a spade.) “He thinks he’s above us all. He is part of an elite that disdains democracy.”

And into that yawning gap opened up by Johnson insisting that the Tories want to get on with domestic policies despite not actually having any, Corbyn poured his full fat social-democracy cream. Zero-hours contracts scrapped. A £10 living wage. The “Tory Trade Union Act”, scrapped within the first 100 days (presumably, this means the 2016 Act that makes industrial action only possible when the ballot turnout is over 50 percent, rather than bringing us back to pre-Thatcher times.) Rail, mail, water and the national grid bought into public ownership. Prescriptions: free in England. Tuition fees scrapped. A Green Industrial Revolution. All of this stuff paid for by tax rises, “but only for the top five percent.” The kind of thing that is bound to have tabloid editors screeching about a red-terror throughout the coming election, basically.

There were blind spots. It was left to Shadow Home Secretary Dianne Abbot’s speech on Monday to once again promise an expanded police state with 20,000 more cops to trump the Tories, and to say that they’ll shut a couple of migrant detention centres (but not all of them). But what Corbyn was laid out was an ambitious domestic programme designed to invigorate his party base at a conference that was touted by some as a make or break for Corbynism. To give them something to believe in and a reason to stick around after all the anti-Semitism scandals and endless Brexit fudge. This speech will have achieved that.

And look, they will be able to say, at the alternative. Speaking in New York at a breakfast reception on the fringes of the UN conference yesterday, the Prime Minister pledged to “roll out the red carpet” to American businesses by cutting regulation. This has handed Corbyn a nice little line on a plate: a No Deal Brexit is a “Trump Brexit”. At the next election, voters will be offered a choice between a four day week and “Britannia Unchained” – this turbo-Thatcherite cabinet’s miserable dream of endless toil.

Brexit hardliners like the Boris Johnson’s genius political advisor Dom Cummings just want to break shit and start again. In doing so they have opened up a huge space for Corbyn’s to propose radical policies. In fact, they have practically necessitated it.

@simonchilds13