Theresa May will lose in the Commons today. And badly. That is accepted fact, it seems. Just as it is accepted fact that this will not require her to resign. And that it will not follow that Labour can win a vote of no confidence. Or that Labour can win the call of a general election. Let alone that it could win such an election against a Tory Party so divided it is hard to recognise that it has any real existence.
What we have is a political situation previously unimaginable in modern history. The reality is that politicians have proven that their own dogmatic divisions are now so great that their parties are incapable of governing. But as a consequence of the paralysis that those same divisions have created we face economic, social, constitutional and even existential crises as a nation. And the two leading political parties are seemingly unable to do anything to resolve this at present. That is because they lack the vision, leadership, conviction and unity to do so. There is no point pretending otherwise. And bluster from left, centre and right does not change that.
The difficulty is the vulnerability that this situation creates. The best outcome anyone now talks about over the next few days is that Article 50 notice might be extended. The EU appears open to this. But a reason is required. That requires one be agreed upon. It is not clear what that might be.
Is it to have a new referendum? It to take part in electing new MEPs? Or to have a general election? All are plausible reasons for delay, although whether we would be permitted to partake in European elections when still planning to leave is hard to guess. But the question has to be asked, what would any of these resolve?
The UK political tradition is to take big ideas to the electorate and seek their endorsement. The big ideas have always been underpinned by class traditions in England, and other factors to varying degrees in the other constituent nations. But that has still required that the parties present unified and cohesive platforms to an electorate that they can then claim provide them with a mandate for action.
The failure of the UK political tradition that we are now witnessing is capable of summary in this context. Neither party is capable of presenting a cohesive manifesto that can attract support within it to the electorate for the latter's endorsement.
Most Tory members want to leave the EU. Most Tory MPs do not want to leave. A vociferous minority very strongly disagree with the majority. The Prime Minister is known to believe one thing and act as if another is true. Leadership is impossible in that environment.
In Labour, most members and MPs want to stay in the EU. A vociferous but quite small minority disagree. They happen to include the leadership that says it wishes to remain, or to stay close to the EU but very obviously really wishes to leave.
The SNP emerges as the only large parliamentary party with a policy largely agreed by its membership, leadership and MPs. That happens to only destabilise the situation by making majority government in the UK even less likely.
But the question then is, whether it reasonable in this situation to ask the people of the UK to decide on what to do next? Given that there is a political failure on this issue within the framework with which everyone in the UK is familiar with why should people be asked to decide instead of politcians? And on the basis of what evidence? Presented by whom? I do not know. So I cannot be sure that such elections are what are required now. It would be recognition of total political failure, and would at best perpetuate the current mess or make it worse.
So what could be done? I wrote this in June 2016 before the referendum result was known, and when I presumed there would be a 2020 general election:
I suspect the Article 50 exit negotiations will be incomplete in 2020. The EU will wish for that. Being able to demonstrate the crippling impact of attempting to leave on the UK will be vital to other member states wishing to crush their own exit movements.
So what of 2020 in this case? I would like to think that a coalition dedicated to these things might be elected:
- Electoral reform
- House of Lords reform
- EU readmission on revised terms
- A national economic plan.
This government should, I suggest, seek a mandate for no more than two years. Then there would be new elections and a referndum on the terms for re-admission to the EU.
I happen to think this is still the only way forward.
Who could ensure that this happens? Probably only the Speaker. And who might be in such a government, let alone who might lead it? I think that is another debate.
What we need is a plan for progression. I happen to think this is the best there is.
And I think the EU would accept a delay on this basis, which would be described as there being a constitutional crisis in the UK.
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The biggest mistake (out of many in this sorry saga) was to issue article 50 before there was any cross-party consensus in Parliament about what kind of Brexit the people wanted. MPs put the cart before the horse in triggering article 50, and now the cart has run away with itself. We must remember that the referendum put no timescale on Brexit, and neither did it define what kind of Brexit was wanted, other than a clear indication that freedom of movement would have to be restricted.
The right thing to do now is to withdraw article 50 (which we can do unilaterally) and continue with a status quo until parliament CAN find a consensus. So long as hard Brexit supporters think they can just run down the clock to an end date, they will simply not engage in any compromise. Just extending article 50 cannot change the politics, but only kicks the can down the road to the next constitutional crisis.
The people who told us ‘they need us more than we need them’ and suchlike, have been proven to be wrong.
The same people are now saying, ‘we’ll prosper under WTO rules; we’ll be fine.’
Should we believe them this time around?
No
Let’s just take one example. Britain has gained for years from three Japanese auto companies, Toyota. Nissan, and Derby that located in UK to gain tariff free access to the single market. If we switch to WTO on 29th March the tariff on UK cars into EU will rise to 10%. With terrible irony the big new EU-Japan trade deal comes into effect on 2nd Feb which drops tariff on cars and parts from Japan into the EU from current WTO10% down to zero. Its almost as if we want to decimate the 1 million UK jobs that still depend on the car industry. At least Sunderland will know they voted for their own demise.
What we have here is a constitutional crisis. Our parliament cannot exercise sovereignty because the executive controls its business. Our major parties cannot express the main issue of the day because they are irreconcilably divided on that issue. Our politics cannot cope because its assumes that every issue has two sides whereas this one has about four.
And that’s not all. In the background are the issues the political classes don’t talk about: The composition of the Lords (political placemen, bishops, hereditary peers and some people of distinction). The way that first-past-the-post denies most people a meaningful vote. Excessive centralisation. The corruption by big money. Russian subversion.
And all this is in the context of ongoing social and environmental crises that require extraordinary energy and determination.
What we need is a constitutional convention. A completely new process to decide how we should be governed. But before that we have to get through the Brexit crisis. Personally I don’t see much hope for a coalition – neither May nor Corbyn is a natural compromiser. So I think we have to push through the Brexit pain barrier – best with a PeoplesVote for remain but anyway with a result. Then we can look at the deeper issues.
I did indeed write to John Bercow MP last week supporting his actions and calling on him to keep at it for the good of everyone.
On page 287 of ‘The Blessed Plot’ (1998) Young describes the British electorate’s attitude from the 1950’s to Europe as ‘changeable, ignorant and half-hearted’.
Nothing new there then. It’s not that different frankly to our politicians.
As I read Hugo young’s book, I can’t help thinking if any other European has read it? There is Heath and his desire to get the UK in to apparently take charge of Europe. Then there is Wilson who used Europe as a domestic battleground between Labour and the Tories but then kept us in.
I feel that if Europe had read this book , they would never have let us in and would be waving us off with gusto. There are lots of chickens coming home to roost at the moment.
The United Kingdom just comes across as very immature, like a child who takes his ball home because he/she cannot get their way.
And all of this it seems because we as a nation (and chiefly its politicians) cannot come to terms with the loss of power & empire particularly after 1945.
We lost an empire and did NOT find a new role other than being a lap dog for the U.S. and an irascible and reluctant member of the EU.
@PSR
I very,very rarely am moved to post here, but I do value your comments which are in general well considered.
On this occasion however I would be very interested if you would take a few moments to consider carefully this part of what you wrote:
“And all of this it seems because we as a nation (and chiefly its politicians) cannot come to terms with the loss of power & empire particularly after 1945.
We lost an empire and did NOT find a new role other than being a lap dog for the U.S. and an irascible and reluctant member of the EU.”
To be clear on the preceding context, the previous sentence is:
“The United Kingdom just comes across as very immature, like a child who takes his ball home because he/she cannot get their way.”
When you were thinking “we as a nation” were you thinking “we as the (nation of England)”
or were you thinking “We as a nation (the just mentioned international unit, the United Kingdom) ?
When you were typing “We lost an empire” you were you presumably (implicitly) thinking “We lost an empire (the British Empire)”, yes?
So when you were thinking “We lost an empire” were you thinking of the “We” as implicitly “We (the English)” or were you thinking (implicitly) “We (the British ((who lost the Empire))”
I am not being in any way facetious, obtuse, or inflammatory.
I am genuinely interested on your thoughts on this.
There is a very deep existential question of Identity wrapped up in the Idea that you expressed, that the Nation of England (which is one Nation (of 4 partner Nations) in the International Unit that is called the United Kingdom has been -in your words-
an “irascible and reluctant member of the EU”
Thankyou for all your great comments, and I shall now disappear back to lurking, in one of the bestest comments sections anywhere in Britain. 🙂
I think PSR has been pretty clear on such issues in his comments
Perhaps we should raise a generation whose brain development hasn’t been hampered either by lack of sleep https://www.amazon.co.uk/Why-We-Sleep-Science-Dreams/dp/0141983760/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1547463430&sr=1-1&keywords=why+we+sleep+matthew+walker also see https://www.theguardian.com/education/2019/jan/13/school-deprived-pupils-extra-hour-classes or by lack of nutrition https://www.amazon.co.uk/Deep-Nutrition-Shanahan/dp/1250113849/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1547546350&sr=1-1&keywords=deep+nutrition+why+your+genes+need+traditional+food and haven’t had their ability to think creatively hampered by the schooling process itself https://ideapod.com/born-creative-geniuses-education-system-dumbs-us-according-nasa-scientists/ and let them work it out. I fear we are, deliberately, made too damaged to be able to address the issues which face us.
Bill
I think that there is a conflagration of issues that have led to us being here. There is the history of our troubled, uncertain membership (again read ‘The Blessed Plot’).
For all my angst with the Leave brigade, I cannot excuse them but neither can I even hate them. They have been manipulated.
Why an earth in a supposedly representative democracy did someone think that we could put this to a vote by ‘the people’? Political stupidity and gutlessness did it plus Cameron thought that he would win anything (I’m a winner’ he told our allies) so he thought that ‘the people’ would tell the euro-hostiles in his party to shut up for ever. He was going to use populism to solve his own euro problem so he thought.
What happened is that he was out foxed by the Leave vote who used the same basic format that was used to get Thatcher in in 1979 as new polling methods detected a shift away from ‘socialism’. That is to appeal to those who did not usually vote. And this time through social media that was done on an industrial scale. Not only that, it was based on lies. Lots of them. Meant to create fear. Project fear was not the Remain vote. It was actually the Leave vote peddling lies about the NHS, Turkey, etc,.
He also failed to grasp the effect of nearly 6 years of serious austerity by his own party on the the public mood. The man Cameron as Danny Dyer most emphatically said on public TV is indeed ‘a Twat’.
Yes , people are badly educated and tired and underfed. But those who rule us Bill – they have abused and not used their power. I hold them responsible. The referendumb (sic) was a joke for a supposedly developed nation like ours to do like that. Its result cannot be left to stand.
But it is – because those who rule or who could rule have not the courage to stop it.
We are leaderless Bill. That is the problem.
@PSR Excellent summary of the situation, thanks for articulating my thoughts (and more!).
The choice for honest parliamentarians today is clear, as is the ensuing option — it has to be a general election. With black and white manifesto commitments that can’t be weasled out of.
A GE takes 4 weeks.
A referendum will take at minimum months as Fox said on Monday evening.
The establishment wants a hard brexit — it was the only plan. PM May’s deal was designed to fail.
If they wanted cross party support they would have had the negotiations conducted WITH cross party input, as Starmer made clear in his statement in the current debate (hardly reported in the media)
They would have ended up with a better plan — that would have meant no hard brexit. With no running down of the clock and a shrug from May that it was the dastardly EU’s refusal to legally change the agreement which She took two years to finally agree — see?
Bercow may be forced to include yet another amendment that would let Grieve march his troops back down the hill — again. He is as much arch establishment as Letwin!
It is as historic and dangerous a moment for the survival of Parliamentary democracy as when Guy Fawkes!
I see not a shred of evidence that the establishment wanted a hard Brexit
None at all
That undermines your logic somewhat
I agree evidence is difficult to attain as an outsider, but I draw my supposition, from the following ‘facts’.
1. A preparedness by the brexiteers to not rule out defaulting to WTO rules.
2. A failure to rule out a ‘no deal’ brexit at any time.
3. Preparations and spending on ‘hard brexit’
Does that sound rational?
No
It’s game playing
In my opinion
This may be a way forward: https://wingsoverscotland.com/out-of-the-quagmire/
Stuart and I seem to be pretty much in the same page
Is this finally the time where political groups from different directions will be prepared – not to divest themselves of their differences – but to make common cause in order to create new political structures? Perhaps the time for ‘peoples assemblies’ has finally come.
Definitely. From my reading of the effects of ‘Citizens Assemblies’ they have a proven record of addressing the need for engaging voters and working together to find a common cause. They would be a valuable tool in each of the suggested 4 areas that a coalition government would need to address – Electoral reform, House of Lords reform, EU readmission on revised terms and a national economic plan. This could be the good that emerges out of the chaos, when our adversarial Parliamentary system seems to have failed us in this age of electronic media.
Houses of Parliament to Leave on the 29th March as their Article 50 stipulates the rest of the country to Remain with country run by civil service. This will give the politicians time to do thinking as opposed to sound bites. Once there’s cross-party agreement on a plan it can be put to the country for a People’s Vote.
I don’t think so
Can we keep to reality please?
When Ireland finally broke free of Westminster and withdrew from the Union, the Irish people remained deeply divided about the relationship they felt they should have with the UK/British Empire, and of course over the specific issue of the continued adherence to the UK of the six counties of Northern Ireland. There was a short but bitter civil war, and then the formation of two parties distinguished fro each other, not by the division between left and right, conservative and progressive, statist/capitalist and liberal/socialist, that prevails in just about every other democracy in Europe, North America, and Australasia, bur rather by their different attitudes to the Westminster treaty, the partition of Ireland, and Ireland’s relationship with the UK. Anybody who takes an interest in Ireland’s present day political scene will be aware that Fine Gael and Fianna Fail are both effectively conservative, indeed tory, political parties divided from each other, not by any significant differences in economic or political philosophy, but simply by an inherited continuity from the troubled times of the War of Independence and the subsequent Civil War and upheavals of the later 20s and 30s. The two parties are effectively heirs of Eamon de Valera on the one hand, and Michael Collins on the other. This arrangement, unique in Europe, one may feel, could be replicated in the UK. The two parties currently that have dominated Britain since the just after Great War, one of the left and one of the right, look both ready to splinter, with elements from each favouring a drastic break with Europe, or at least a loosening of ties with the EU, and others from each party joining to form a more pro-european party. In ten, fifteen years time, out of the political and economic chaos, may have emerged a sort of British (or English/Welsh) pair of parties, equivalents to Fianna Fail and Fine Gael in Ireland. Fanciful? Well, look at Scotland. What distinguishes the parties in the Scottish parliament? Not left versus right. It is the SNP against the Lab/Lib/Tory opposition, distinuished ultimately by their differing attitudes to the future relationship with Westminster. Scotland is well on the way to a Fianna Fail/Fine Gael arrangement.
Interesting.
My only reservation would be to note that the imperial ties that Ireland and Scotland had (and have) to the UK were much stronger and more overbearing than the relationship that Britain has to the EU. The UK has never been an oppressed colony of the EU, not even in Farage’s most delusional fantasies.
So your analogy may not be definitive but your idea is genuinely interesting and there’s definitely something in it. I think that the Tory right and UKIP would like to draw the divisions along nationalist lines but once the Brexit smoke has eventually cleared the left/ right division will re-emerge and, with that, the newer divisions will likely be demographic (a distinctive young vote) and possibly environmental.
We’ll see.
Scotland was never an oppressed colony of England.
But England tried….
So May’s plan will be defeated in the Commons today and the interesting part of that is NOT:
A. The opposition of the Labour Party. That is to be expected for various reasons including the fact most are Remainers
B. The opposition of Tory Remainers. That is also to be expected.
C. The opposition of the DUP as they have their own weird but well-known Unionist reasons as well as ulterior motives.
D. or the opposition of minor, mostly Remainer parties.
No, the interesting part is the opposition of the hard-right, no-deal Tories. Realistically (or kindly) assuming that the people in that faction are not complete idiots they will, as such, be aware that there was never any assumption or declaration that the people who voted Leave were voting for an arrangement that precluded a trade deal with the EU. Neither of the two ‘Leave’ organisations campaigned on that basis. It was generally assumed that membership of the EU would be replaced with a new deal of some sort to be negotiated by the PM.
Realistically, the hard-right would know that it never had the numbers or the power to force the EU or the Parliament to accept the sort of deal that the hard-right would apparently prefer. Having predictably failed in their challenge to May’s leadership the hard-right would also know that, according to Tory rules, her leadership is locked in for another year. They would also be aware of the cross-party amendment that would block a ‘no-deal’ Brexit.
I’ll draw the bow a little further here and add that the hard-right would also know that a no-deal outcome would be catastrophically disruptive as well as political suicide for them (most probably) and that the sort of complete ‘independence’ that they allegedly seek would involve a well-managed transition of several years duration should it happen. Finally, the hard-right would be perfectly aware that opposing the deal that the PM has negotiated with Brussels brings them closer to the risk of a 2nd referendum that they know they would probably lose or closer to a No-Brexit outcome.
Given that all (or any) of that is so, it would seem that the best available course for them would be to accept the deal that May has proposed, vote for it and work towards securing a more ‘independent’ deal in the months and years to come. After all, very few people in democratic politics ever get exactly what they want so most fight for the closest thing they can get.
That then leaves the question of why it is that the hard-right is taking those risks and opposing May’s deal with the EU? The answer should be obvious – they don’t really want a Brexit and they are clearly doing everything they can to avoid one. What they most probably want is to entrench their factional power by occupying a permanent state of false rebellion and perpetuating a culture of complaint where no positive agenda exists, no responsibility is taken and everything is blamed on foreigners, ‘traitors’, lefties and migrants.
Having avoided Brexit and the responsibility that comes with it, a cry of indignation would be raised as the “we was robbed” sense of martyrdom takes hold. The aim of all this, should it have a coherent aim, is to fundamentally disrupt the Conservatives, firmly establish its nationalist faction and destroy any cohesion that the party might have hoped to retain – to formalise a party within a party. That’s the first part of it.
Strategically, the Tory hard-right will know that a lost Brexit would lose a lot of working class and lower-middle class Leavers to a revived UKIP. But that need not be problematic. They could use that as a rationale for reclaiming those votes with more nationalistic policies. Meanwhile the Tory right could further occupy the space that’s left for old Etonian delusions about revived Commonwealth trade ties and Empire nostalgia. Boris loves that stuff.
In summary, the Tory right never expected to win the 2016 referendum and probably never wanted to. They apparently want to sabotage all sense of cohesion or bi-partisanship and not merely within their own party. The corollary of that is to create new lines of division within a more divided society – to redraw the battle lines in a negative way that would suit their purposes.
Or at least they seem to think that it would suit them. I’m not sure that it would in the long run. The demographics are against them (how many people aged under 50 voted for Brexit?). At any rate its a dishonest strategy that can cause a lot of damage and it seems to have done some of that already.
Anyhow, that’s my theory and I think that it fits with the facts and events thus far.
What has now become essential to add to this to do list is abolish the Fixed Term Parliament Act, which is having all sorts of unforseen effects and is the reason the current government can lose votes willy-nilly and still remain in power.
Agreed
Agreed #2
[…] The first, and most pressing demand is the Parliament take control of its own affairs. We very clearly have a government in office, but not in power. There is a pressing need for leadership, and if the Leader of the Opposition cannot supply it because a vote of confidence cannot be won then another type of leadership must be sought. This must be that of the House as a whole, based on the idea of seeking to create national unity at a time of undoubted crisis, along the lines that I suggested yesterday. […]
I can see the political benefits in the idea of revoking A50 and committing to finding a solution to the UK’s EU dilemma. It might – or might not – give a degree of stability to the political seesaw described so well by Richard in his article. However, the effect this would have on the economy would not be so good; for the length of time it would take for the EU “solution” to materialise, there could be no economic planning. Businesses would be stymied. And if the search for the longed for “solution” is as fruitless as it’s been for the past forty years, it could have indefinite length. Better to commit to remaining in EU.
Sometimes business ahs to come second
But how long can it keep putt g off big decisions and survive?