The Right Dishonourable

At the risk – nay, the certainty – of fuelling an already stupid argument, I would like to comment on whether the president’s wife, Jill Biden, should be using ‘doctor’ as a title.

The frivolity of this topic should probably be confined to a blog of the Right Dishonourable’s low esteem, but such is the nature of American journalism that the debate has spread from the Wall Street Journal to Vox via the Atlantic, the New York Times and the Washington Post. In Britain the Telegraph and the Independent are even now discussing it.

In the depths of remoaner denialism a stereotype emerged of the regretful leaver who, having seen the effects of his ballot, wished he had voted the other way. Such people were especially championed by those lobbying for a second ‘people’s vote’ because they didn’t like the first one.

Various polls will tell you that more people would vote to remain now than leave (although they said much the same on the referendum’s eve). We have nonetheless left, legally speaking, and the transition period that keeps us under EU rules looks likely to lapse without any formal arrangement of where we go from here.

Although we have heard no more about the constitutional committee due this month, the Conservative government is about to make good on another manifesto promise. A bill published yesterday will repeal the Fixed-Term Parliaments Act (FTPA), seeking to restore the prime minister’s right to call an election through the royal prerogative.

While it tilted towards broader constitutional reform, the act’s narrower aim was to guarantee a five-year lifespan for the coalition government. This is about the only thing that its critics agree it achieved, scepticism abounding even before the parliamentary shenanigans of 2019. Even so, this reform looks retrograde.