Quotes of the day 2nd February 2017

There were several excellent quotes this week which were considered as possibilities for today's quote of the day. A historical quote which had originally been scheduled for yesterday and was then bumped to today has been put back again to tomorrow.

I have already posted yesterday about the PM's "The NHS is not for sale" quote so won't put that down again.

She also had a great line in response to Jeremy Corbyn's student-politics style call to cancel a visit by President Trump before it has even been scheduled:

"He can lead a protest: I'm leading a country."

 But the best quote from yesterday was the title of Michael Deacon's parliamentary sketch in the Telegraph. It was

"Labour have failed as an opposition, so Ken Clarke's doing their job for them."

Quite.

Comments

Jim said…
Dont really get that. you see what Ken Clarke did was pretty much unforgivable, as were the other 113 votes.

let me explain.

the governments and the parliaments have gone on and on and on and on for years, over this very issue. Its killed a couple of prime ministers, and it always left the house divided.

so, lets let the british people decide this, you know those people WHO WE ARE SUPPOSED TO REPRESENT. so they did, and they said leave

then there is some silly idea that this should be blocked just because you are not in the government, but the opposition. hardly.
6:03 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
As I thought I had made crystal clear, I don't agree with Ken Clarke's position either, though unlike the most of the Labour and Lib/Dem MPs who voted against the bill he is not being a hypocrite because he has always opposed a referendum on the subject.

The point of Michael Deacon's comment is that, while Labour was all over the place, Ken Clarke delivered a speech which was recognised even by people like me who disagree with him as a clear, powerful and very well argued statement of the case against what the government was doing.

Labour had abdicated any claim to speak clearly for anyone, and Ken provided the real opposition.

I think I would agree that it would have been "pretty much unforgivable" if parliament as a whole voted the way that Ken Clarke did given the referendum result. But there was no danger of that, which does IMHO make a difference.

What Ken did was go down fighting arguing a case which he passionately believes in and which everyone on both sides knew was going to lose.

Britain will leave the EU, and both those who wanted this all along and those of us who didn't but accept the verdict of the people can afford to be magnanimous to an honourable and defeated opponent.
12:56 am
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