REAPING THE WHIRLWIND: Readers of my old blog back in the paleolithic era of the web will remember I frequently wrote about Tony Blair’s dismantling of the British constitutional settlement. Two of the most radical experiments of the Blair era were regional devolution and the introduction of referenda. Fraser Nelson points out in the Spectator today that Boris Johnson’s way of governing is a child of these innovations:

Boris Johnson is different. He is the creature of two Blair-era inventions: devolution and referendums. The team he is building around him in No. 10 is from City Hall and Vote Leave, where he was able to pioneer a new style of politics and government…

The result of this will be to reject the old rules: that you govern, then at some stage switch to campaign mode. The Boris project is starting in campaign mode, and I doubt it will ever stop. This is one of Donald Trump’s innovations: never stop campaigning. To apply pressure to the insiders, appeal to the outside…

But Brexit or no, I suspect it will be the changes to government that will last. Boris’s team will apply the techniques of modern campaigning and a more modern system of governing to Westminster, pioneered in the labs of Tony Blair’s constitutional reform.

Hosea 8.7 applies.

REJOICE, REJOICE: James Delingpole correctly notes that Boris Johnson has picked a cabinet of all the talents – and on merit, to boot:

I’m particularly happy to see Priti Patel, Liz Truss and Theresa Villiers given top jobs – and for the right reasons.

Sure it will suit Boris’s spin doctors to note how diverse and gender balanced the new team is. But they didn’t get the jobs because they were women or because Priti is ‘Asian’: they got them because they’re bright, talented and, well there’s really no other word for it, sound.

One of the things Boris has always been exceptionally good at is picking the right team. He has, in British football parlance, played a blinder here.

ECO-PAGANISM?: Classical Liberal and classicist Helen Dale, who wrote the fascinating Kingdom of the Wicked books, looks at echoes of ancient pagan religion in modern societies at Law & Liberty. While she argues against progressivism itself as a reassertion of pagan morality, she is less sure about environmentalism:

Whether one scrutinizes James Lovelock’s historic Gaia Hypothesis or considers how activist outfit Extinction Rebellion advances autistic savant Greta Thunberg as a type of child seer, one perceives a blend of immanent pagan orientation with millenarian Christian eschatology. ‘Gaia’, incidentally, was a popular Roman girl’s name.

This is a fascinating topic, and Helen goes into more detail in her podcast.

DEREGULATION MATTERS: The Council of Economic Advisers has just released a new report summarizing and quantifying the effects of the President’s deregulatory agenda. It

…estimates that after 5 to 10 years, this new approach to Federal regulation will have raised real incomes by $3,100 per household per year. Twenty notable Federal deregulatory actions alone will be saving American consumers and businesses about $220 billion per year after they go into full effect. They will increase real (after-inflation) incomes by about 1.3 percent.

As the report also notes, “The ongoing introduction of costly regulations had previously been subtracting an additional 0.2 percent per year from real incomes, thereby giving the false impression that the American economy was fundamentally incapable of anything better than slow growth. Now, new regulations are budgeted and kept to a minimum.”

Turns out the new normal…wan’t.

BREXPLAINER: My friend Helen Dale provides the best summary I’ve seen yet of the Brexit mess. Key takeaway:

In days gone by, superannuated elites refusing to accept defeat on existential questions of this type finished up with their heads on pikes. Democracy put a stop to that by doing what democracy does best: facilitating the peaceful and orderly transfer of power. But democracy means you elect a new parliament, not a new people. That, in truth, is the only deal that matters.

RTWT.

NEWS YOU CAN CONSUME: It’s National Donut Day! Eat one for yourself, and one for freedom!

NEWS YOU CAN USE (CLIMATE ALARMISM EDITION): “Statements like the following are increasingly common in popular media, academic journals, and political discourse: “The evidence that anthropogenic climate change is an existential threat to our way of life is incontrovertible.” Not so—not even close.” Marlo Lewis explain why here.

GREEN NEW STEAL: My colleagues at CEI have a new video out explaining how the carbon tax – one of the cornerstones of the Green New Deal – will cost average American families a bundle.

They have much more on the subject here.

SECULAR RELIGION: The UK is up in arms over the idea that a trade deal with the US might include the National Health Service. Meanwhile, the NHS continues to produce tragedies like this.

ANOTHER REALLY INCONVENIENT TRUTH: Much of the plastic sent for “recycling” is simply dumped in the oceans. Environmentalists know this but are silent. So instead, we get plastic straw bans.

CHILLING: A District Court judge in England has allowed a private prosecution of Boris Johnson for the medieval crime of “misconduct in public office” to go forward, on the allegation that he lied during the Brexit Referendum.

Obviously, all political statements henceforth should be cleared with a competent body empowered to make determinations on matters of truth or falsehood. We could call it the Ministry of Truth. Nor should any mere politician head such a body. No sir! It should be headed by someone anyone could feel comfortable with, or love, like a family member. A big brother if you will.

Seriously, if you want a run-down of the English law involved in this case, click here.

GREEN IS THE DIRTIEST COLOR: An anti-Brexit front group has been revealed to have been set up by Greenpeace campaigners. Well I never.

DENIAL IS IN NO.10 DOWNING STREET: The last poll from YouGov before the European elections tomorrow puts Theresa May’s Conservatives on just 7 percent support, compared to Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party at 37 percent.

Senior Ministers have asked to see the Prime Minister, which is normally a sign of impending defenestration. In response, Mrs. May shut the doors to her Downing Street bunker. Now Andrea Leadsom, probably the leading Leaver left in the Cabinet, has resigned.

Owing to the lack of free speech in the UK, political news reporting is banned over there tomorrow. It would be just like May to resign when a) it can’t be covered properly and b) it comes of no help to the party she’s supposed to be leading.

Omnishambles.

PRIVATE CHOKEPOINT: Leftist activists have forced a vote at the Mastercard AGM next month to establish an Orwellian “Human Rights Committee” aimed at cutting off the rights of anyone they disagree with. The initial aim is to choke off the income stream to right-wing activists. If this sounds familiar, it should.

ETA: Wrong first link, now fixed. My bad.

MOST USELESS PARLIAMENT SINCE THE RUMP: Not content with betraying Brexit voters, the British parliament has just passed a motion declaring a “climate emergency,” a key demand of the law-breaking Extinction Rebellion movement that has disrupted the lives of thousands of Londoners over the past couple of weeks. This pathetic shower will bow to Brussels bullying and climate clamor, but not to the democratically-expressed wishes of 17 million people. As someone once said, “You have sat too long for any good you have been doing lately… Depart, I say; and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go!”

BOOM NOT DOOM: The strong economic growth Glenn notes below is particularly interesting for a couple of reasons. First, the government shutdown only lowered growth by 0.3 percentage points (so much for all the cries of doom), and secondly there appears to be a lingering seasonality to the Q1 figures that the BEA hasn’t properly accounted for yet, suggesting that real growth could have been almost a full percentage point higher. Finally, inflation isn’t a worry at all. Here’s the upbeat CEA summary.

QTWTAIN: Should conservatives support a carbon tax? Of course, it’s a Question To Which The Answer Is No, but some people keep asking it – especially since the Green New Steal was floated. Marlo Lewis explains exactly why the idea is horsefeathers here.

REINING IN THE DEEP STATE: One of the ways the regulatory bureaucracy works is through issuing “guidance documents” that essentially have the force of law, without having to jump through the pesky hoops of getting a bill through congress or complying with the Administrative Procedure Act. Some good news today, though – the President is issuing an executive order aimed at curbing this practice.

The EO will also require agencies to comply with laws about submitting documents to Congress, something previous Presidents have let their agency heads ignore. It’s a few small steps along the road to dealing with the bigger problem, but it’s good they’re being taken.

The Executive Order is something my colleague Wayne Crews has been advocating for, so kudos to him.

THERESA MAY HEMORRHAGING SUPPORT: In the mid-90s UK I looked on in horror as John Major’s campaign people insisted that discontent with his government was temporary and voters would come back in the general election. They didn’t, Tony Blair won in a landslide, and he wrecked the constitution. This time a similar dynamic is in play, but May is losing the activists, not just the voters, and the Labour leader is an out-and-out Marxist. Mark Wallace relates the level of anger at May’s Brexit betrayal.

SHUT UP PEASANTS: Joel Kotkin on how green regulation has led to a decline in home ownership, the squeezing of the middle class and the return of feudalism. His book-length treatment of the problem is due early next year and promises to be the must-read of 2020.

THIS IS HOW YOU GET TRUMP BREXIT: The other day, the EU Parliament voted to destroy the Internet in Europe. Now it appears that several MEPs voted for the measures by accident. Although they have had their recorded votes changed, the result still stands.

Meanwhile in the country that voted to get away from such lunacy but can’t, the House of Commons upended the constitution (yes, there is one) yesterday to vote on eight different measures to find a consensus way forward. All eight measures failed. Moreover, the Cabinet abstained from the votes in protest at the unconstitutionality, meaning that they would all have failed by more than it looks.

In one last effort to get her awful-but-at-least-it-gets-us-legally-out deal through the House, Theresa May has promised to resign if it gets passed, which is a strange inversion of how things usually work. The power-mad Speaker of the House, however, may refuse to let it be put to a vote.

This will all probably have changed by the time you read this…

MASSIVE FRAUD AT DUKE: Glenn reported this earlier, but Steve Milloy notes further that some of the research grants to the Duke Medical School involved EPA grants for ozone and PM2.5 research and part of a $7.7m EPA grant for research on “environmental justice.” There’s a Green New Steal for you.

THE RIGHT TO EARN A LIVING: Does the Fourteenth Amendment’s “privileges or immunities” clause protect unenumerated rights, such as the right to earn a living (which labor and employment law violate)? My colleague Devin Watkins says it does over at Law & Liberty.

“EVERYONE IS WELCOME! EXCEPT YOU…”: San Antonio has decided to ban Chick-fil-A from its airport. Its bizarre reasoning is that “Everyone has a place here, and everyone should feel welcome when they walk through our airport,” so Chick-fil-A’s charitable donations to Christian groups disqualifies it from inclusion. As Hans Bader notes, this is a violation of the company’s First Amendment rights. David French, meanwhile, points out the Orwellian doublespeak involved.

GREEN NEW STEAL: Hans Bader finds that Americans are happy to support the Green New Deal – so long as others pay for it. Which reminds me of this classic Onion piece.