This time, it’s Tom Slater looking at the parliamentary situation well into the future:
The year is 2051. An 87-year-old Boris Johnson is still prime minister, commanding a majority of minus 200 in the House of Commons.
The taxidermied remains of Jeremy Corbyn looks lairily at him each day from across the chamber.
The Liberal Independent Group for Anti-Democratic Change, formed by breakaway elements of the other parties in the great merger of 2020, is by far the largest bloc.
For some reason it has never found the “right time” to assert control of the Commons. But by some convoluted means it has successfully delayed some 187 attempts to hold a General Election.
The UK is still a member of the European Union. But no one else is. Long since collapsed, it is now just a portacabin outside the Mini-Europe miniature park in Brussels.
It employs one man, whose job it is to sweep up, sort the post, and respond to the United Kingdom’s periodic requests for an extension to Article 50.
Somehow, his expenses are exorbitant.
They say making predictions these days is a mug’s game. But I’m pretty sure that’s where we’re headed. Or rather, given the Kafkaesque turn British politics has taken, nothing could surprise me now.
PM Boris Johnson has offered the opposition the election they claim to have been craving, again, and they appear set to reject it, again.
Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn has indicated he will back a General Election once the European Union grants an extension to Article 50. But the EU is holding off on making that decision until MPs vote on the election.
You can see the problem here. But at least it will keep half of Corbyn’s parliamentary party happy, who are apparently dead-set against an election and would rather we go for a second Brexit referendum first.
