FOR most of his career, Dominic Grieve has enthused about democratic “rules-based” systems, insisting that legal form, minted by elected authorities under the Crown and cobwebbed by time, was essential for political stability.
You could say he quacked on about it, for there was something duck-like about this bespectacled lawyer’s metallic-sounding voice.
Maybe his parents should have called him Donald when he first popped blinking into the light of day in 1956.
But his mother was French and Dominic sounded more Gallic. Ah, oui, Dominique. Not as British as you might think, Grieve.
Which may explain why he is now doing such terrible damage to our national interest and to the future of our parliamentary system by trying to block Brexit. Over the two decades since he became an MP in 1997, this pukka, posh-suited, punctilious figure has been a pedantic regular in House of Commons debates.
He would crook one of his little fingers at an angle, give his neck muscles a creaky tweak and insist, with a shot of the cuffs and a shuffle of minimal notes, that ministers and officials must always comply with statute and precedent and time-honoured procedure.
When giving these lectures — they were seldom short — he would touch the rim of his glasses, give a little mallard-style cough and allow a patronising smile to inhabit his broadening bill.
He would explain that raw political instinct and passion, of the sort voiced by the Nigel Farages and Jeremy Corbyns of this world, were not by themselves good enough in politics. He looked down on such things.
Politicians whose demagogic brio reflected the public’s molten anger? Puh-lease, how vulgar. They did not accord with Grieve’s gods of logic.
“With respect,” he would say — and it is one of the older truths of Westminster that when people say “with respect” they mean the sneery opposite — “with respect, we have to do things according to the rules, for that is the way this Parliament works and those are the sort of people we are.”
I paraphrase him but that was very much Grieve’s position. He was a creature of propriety.
He could cite legal sub-section and addendum and annex and codicil that proved, we were told, the unarguable merits of his position.
With Monsieur half-French Grieve, the ancient principles of English law were our majesty. Our mainstay!
Plenty of us clocked that Grieve was a bit of a prune, an oddball, the fogeyish son of privilege. His dad Percy, wouldn’t you know it, had also been a Tory MP of the gusset-and-sock-suspenders old school.
Percy once worked as a liaison officer for French wartime hero Charles de Gaulle, who hated the British (even though Churchill gave him shelter in London when the Germans occupied France). It was said that Old Man Grieve agreed with de Gaulle.
“The trouble with Percy is that he likes foreigners a great deal better than his own people,” concluded an acquaintance.
Dominic, in childhood, worshipped his father and once won a school oratory contest by making an admiring speech about de Gaulle.
Does “Dominique”, too, like continentals better than his fellow countrymen? It sure looks that way. In June 2016, in one of the greatest thumpings our elite was ever given by the people, we voted to leave the EU. Dominic Grieve, newly decorated with France’s Legion d’honneur for his political work, was horrified.
Indignant. You could even say he was ag-Grieved. And so he touched the rims of his glasses, did some ducky quacking and set to work to block Brexit.
The trouble, as has often been pointed out to him, was that the democratic vote had gone against him.
At first he said, through gritted teeth (if ducks have teeth), that he would respect the result of the referendum.
In 2017 he was re-elected as MP for prosperous Beaconsfield, Bucks, on a Tory manifesto which said exactly that.
Every Tory MP promised to get us out of the customs union and single market.
Labour MPs also promised to honour the referendum result. What lying bastards these people are. When the new Government started to get into political difficulties, the once-principled Grieve saw his chance. He stopped saying he would respect the referendum result. He wanted us to stay in the customs union. He wanted a second referendum.
All along, it seems, his loyalties were not to a rules-based system but to the blue flag of a European Union that is now, increasingly, our rival and our deadly threat.
Most startling of all, he plotted to bypass all those rules and time-honoured procedures he used to say were so vital for our political safety.
After a secret meeting with the appallingly biased John Bercow, Grieve got that anti-Brexit Commons Speaker to chuck out centuries of accepted debating rules.
Propriety was smashed like plates at a Greek wedding. Legal advice was ignored.
This former Attorney General’s campaign against Brexit, which will next week see him and a minority of MPs attempt to remove law-making from the elected Government, took on a wild, crazed aspect.
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The possible upshots for our democratic system are terrifying. When MPs stop even bothering to pretend they will honour their election promises, why should anyone vote?
Why not just seize power by force? It’s a recipe for anarchy on the streets.
At the moment, Corbyn’s Labour Party is going along with Grieve and Bercow but Corbyn will surely eventually realise that warping parliamentary rules to stop an elected Government from governing will do him no favours if he himself becomes Prime Minister. It always takes time for the penny to drop with dozy Corbyn.
Meanwhile, we are left with the bizarre spectacle of one-time legal details nerd Dominic Grieve going back on everything he ever stood for, overturning ancient parliamentary conventions.
All along, it seems, his loyalties were not to a rules-based system but to the blue flag of a European Union that is now, increasingly, our rival and our deadly threat.
https://textbacklinkexchanges.com/brexit-wrecker-dominic-grieve-is-a-creature-going-quack-on-everything-he-stands-for/
News Photo Brexit wrecker Dominic Grieve is a creature going quack on everything he stands for
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