There is little time for blogging today: the day job demands attention from hereon.
But, first a thought on reaction in this morning's media, which appears to think May had a good night in the Commons yesterday.
Since when was having a good night talking your own ‘best deal' down so that you can go back to the EU for changes that you know will not ever be granted?
If that's a good day it shows how low expectations have sunk.
I suspect the press is preparing for its celebratory stories that supermarkets still have some food to sell in mid-April. It may be cat food but there will be something.
The reality is that this reporting reflects a nation at so low an ebb, and so confused, it can celebrate having the appearance of a functioning prime minister for an evening.
I, however, rather worryingly found myself almost agreeing with Oliver Letwin (which may be a first) when he said:
I have actually got to the point where I am past caring what the deal is we have — I will vote for it to get a smooth exit … If those [no deal] risks materialise, our party will not be forgiven for many years to come. It will be the first time when we have consciously taken a risk on behalf of our nation, and if terrible things have happened to real people in our nation because of that risk, we will not be able to argue it was someone else's fault.
I fear that is how I would vote now, so worried am I as to the alternative.
And he is right about the Tories.
But I fear they are going to learn the hard way. And so are we.
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Interesting comment by arch Tory vandal Letwin.
But maybe he is dissembling as per usual?
I sensed a collective sigh of relief by Parliament last night. As far as they are concerned they sent the PM back to Europe. They have got the issue off their desk so to speak and onto someone elses table. But when you create a ‘free vote’ sort of context for something like this amongst members, the results are bound to be chaotic when really Parliament (whose own research into BREXIT has told them it will be harmful) should be voting on what is best for the country and not just for the Leave vote.
Talk last night from the Tories like Raab was all about ‘going down to the wire’ to pressure Europe into folding. This sounds like the dog eat dog world of business and not the measured world of politics. And what is worse, too many of us think we have the winning hand.
We have moved from the sublime to the ridiculous now given last night. Some will say that that happened some time ago but somehow we keep finding new ways to emabarrass ourselves rather than to admit that the course we have been on since 2016 is invalid as well wrong.
For once, I believe Letwin
Yes – it has to be smooth and as painless as possible – even longer and more drawn out.
But make no mistake Letwin and his political creed still know how to maximise a situation to their own benefit. Remember that a lot of the Tories are from the financial sector and know how to profit from destruction. BREXIT may finish their political careers but many will go into the night are lot better off than the majority of us who will take the full brunt of any form of departure from Europe.
‘The first time that they (the Tories) have taken a risk on behalf of the nation’? Really? The man is deluded. What sort of brain is at work here? Good God!
And then what?
I agree – that bit was staggering
Austerity, anyone?
“I fear that is how I would vote now, so worried am I as to the alternative.”
I think you just put the PM’s whole strategy rather well. Frighten the public to death with No Deal, publish daily in a drip-feed of looming catastrophe the lurid potential outcomes No Deal will bring; no food in the supermarkets, no drugs in the pharmacies, riot, havoc and martial law; all given credence by the fed Media and calculatedly chaotic Civil Service preparations for armageddon, misprepared at lavish public expense; and by these ruthless means, whip public and MPs into the only option left: the appalling May deal (whatever it happens to be on whatever day it is – this is the world of Newspeak after all), that will harm people severely, make them poorer, probably sicker, and they wouldn’t touch with a barge pole unless they had their backs to the wall, with a gun to their head – which the PM is holding close, to demand they vote for whatever deal she decides to claim is the best deal for Britain, even if it is the very one she said was not possible, or even worse – only yesterday: that deal.
And if Parliament can be persuaded that the PM’s rank, supurating apology for a deal is worth supporting in these circumstances of thuggish intimidation, without condemning the Conservative Party to instant oblivion; then of course it was rather a good night for the PM.
But she has rejected this deal now….
Of course. The PM has her own backstop if all else fails: No Deal, even if she doesn’t want it or mean it. This is Theresa May; there is nothing at all written on the tin when you buy her politics.
After all, we wouldn’t be here if May was not PM (and Corbyn wasn’t leader of the opposition, because ironically his presence holds the Conservatives together much better than the Whips). I suspect if there was no Corbyn the Conservative Party would collapse. Theresa May represents an Anti-Leibniz phenomenon, reified in politics: the worst of all possible worlds.
John SW
“I suspect if there was no Corbyn the Conservative Party would collapse.”
Seriously. What on earth….
I have to say I agree
The Tories dislike anyone who is not a Tory
Look at their attitude to Srurgeon
What is holding the Conservative Party together?
The ideological hard-right party of Rees-Mogg or Bill Cash has little in common with the Conservatism of the calm and dignified Anna Soubry, or the seasoned Ken Clarke for that matter. I would not say that any ‘Wets’ have survived Thatcher (sadly), but the slightly damp are still there. What is holding them together? I surmise it is the capacity to rally round a common enemy: the Labour Party of course; but not the Labour Party of Yvette Cooper or Hilary Benn; the Conservatives are held together by two fragile, fracturing features: the conventional genetic instinct of the Conservative Party and MPs to hang on to power at any price (Theresa May is the price nobody else is prepared to pay); and second, the unifying conviction, the mantra that Jeremy Corbyn is the political Devil Incarnate. You need only listen to the tenor and venom of the attacks from Government benches in the Commons. This ritual observance of finger-pointing righteousness provides a form of common ‘bonding’, from which Conservative MPs derive the last threads and shreds of unity.
I would not claim the Party’s collapse is inevitable otherwise, but certainly possible if not probable. It is certainly near enough at hand, to smell it.
I think they hated Ed Miliband too
And would have done the David variety
Or Cooper if she was leader
But you’re right – the common bond may be failing
And of course if the May deal is forced on us then the ERG cronies can defer any blame on them for the consequences and continue to hold to the dream that if a cash out had happened we would all be living in clover. That is a gift to populist, right wing nutters. Weimar, dolchstoss anyone?
John S Warren
I’m sorry John but if Soubry was a TRUE parliamentarian she would have voted against her incompetent and dogmatic leader in the vote of confidence and triggered a GE for the good of the nation and put her party second.
Soubry’s attitude to all of this has been poor – initially before things got serious I’ve seen her stick her nose in the air to overtures from pro-remain Labour MPs – not wanting to be seen with them. Only now as things have got more serious (‘serious! Ha!) has she started to become more openly co-operative.
I’d also like to look at her voting record in support of her Government’s more nasty policies on austerity, universal credit and immigration.
Soubry is a party animal John. Like her colleagues in this most nasty of Governments that has absolute belief in what they are doing, she hasn’t got the minerals (like the rest of them) to test their hypothesis in a GE. Instead she is content to hide behind the FTPA whilst wringing her hands about BREXIT. Well, it makes interesting telly but in the end it will not solve anything. Soubry has to go – with the rest of them.
The Tories have been a minority party since 2010 really. I agree that to watch her in action draws admiration – she is feisty and comes across as heartfelt – but these attributes are all in pursuit of the wrong things that have hurt people in this country this last 9 years.
The Tories are the party of hurt. And Soubry is a member of it. As is Heidi Allen. There’s no hiding from that.
I did not claim that Anna Soubry MP was a Wet; nor that she was not a Conservative MP, and like most MPs, possesses a very strong commitment to her Party. There is nothing surprising about this; it is the essence of Party Parliamentary Government and has a long, long history. The problem with our form of democracy is that it very quickly collapses into faction. David Hume understood this best – almost three hundred years ago, and was pessimistic about its grim effects. He was right. In my view the system perversely also attracts, values and promotes the worst kind of factionalist, and helps them thrive, reinforcing the toxic culture: a fatal flaw of the system in my opinion. Nothing has changed.
Actually 14 Labour MPs voted against the Yvette Cooper amendment: I understand why, but I feel less charitable about them, than Conservative MPs standing out against their Government, and the hard-right in this deep crisis.
Welcome to British democracy; it is what it is. I appreciate how “nasty” this Government is, but I think you are losing perspective. He or she who controls the numbers in Parliament has all the power (Dicey considered it ‘absolute’; like a Russian Czar). The Government is incapable of exercising that power, so the way our system works the contingency is there to work something out that establishes that majority and power, from outside Government, to dig ourselves out of this mess. With all due respect to your anguish, I do not join in your (forgive me, but I consider what you just wrote) overwrought response to the problem. I do not need to share the politics of Anna Soubry, Dominic Grieve and Ken Clarke (or the tiresome whataboutery of critics – there is far too much reliance on mere consistency; a standard that human beings, who scarcely ever understand themselves, rarely achieve) to respect greatly what they are trying to do, or expect people across the floor to meet them, at least halfway. I do not intend to apologise for respecting Anna Soubry; if I did I suspect I would be just another grim Party ideologist, and that is anathema.
I should add, after my last sentence, that I do not belong to any Party; in my carefully considered opinion, a fate slightly worse than death.
I can assure you that I do not expect you to apologise anything. That’s not my aim. My aim is to disagree on the basis of what I have seen. ‘Sorry if I have touched a nerve somewhere. I’m not accusing you of being a Tory.
I told you what I see when I watch Soubry in action – if she wants to be a floor crosser at long last then she has left it too late – like her leader. She is not calm and dignified. She has initially pushed others a way – I’ve seen her haughtily rebuff them for nearly two years man – thinking that BREXIT it is an internal/localised Tory problem that they ‘the superior party’ will sort out. Now she realises that this is not the case. Soubry may be (may want to be) seen as a moderator when history is written – but she doesn’t fool me and nor do I think that she should be allowed to fool anyone else. Including you.
I’m pointing out things that are relevant – not ‘overwrought’ John. We might expect Party MPs to vote for their party but we can also in a dire national situations like this demand and expect that they think differently about the consequences of what is going on when Government Ministers themselves know what will happen. The thinking we need is along the lines of national government really.
Hume may have been far-sighted but the FTPA did not exist then as the Tories have twisted the system and made it even worse. There was nothing inevitable about that John, no matter what you might think.
I do agree with you though about the 14 Labour MP s who voted with the Government. I hear that May is talking to individual Labour MPs. Obviously her tactic is to pick at weaknesses in Labours wall – probably bribing a few as she bought the DUP?
Any Labour MP who does that should be named and shamed as far as I am concerned. And then deselected.
May can’t end austerity but it looks as though she can dip her hands in her pockets anytime she wants to make it harder for the other side to say no. It may very well that this sort of thing has gone on since Adam was a lad.
But this is a barefaced, unapologetic and knowing way of working – its scraping the bottom of the moral and ethical barrel. It’s unacceptable actually. And if I am overwrought, it is about behaviour like this. Not who you choose to admire or not.
Not only is it wrong, but it will destroy this country’s reputation globally and encourage others with spoiler ambitions that will simply hold back the development and implementation of some of the excellent alternatives we discuss here.
I assure you no “nerve” was touched. It is much simpler; llike Hume, I detest factionalism. Candidly I am unfamiliar with Anna Soubry’s whole poiltical history, and frankly, in our current predicament, I am not much interested; and that, perhaps is the point. Such a concern, for me has all the hallmarks of obsessive ideology; picking the bones out of an individual’s ‘authenticity’. In the middle of a crisis, what a complete waste of time.
Your characterisation of Soubry as: “…. thinking that BREXIT it is an internal/localised Tory problem that they ‘the superior party’ will sort out. Now she realises that this is not the case. “; again seems to me overwrought. As far as I am concerned you can stop fulminating at the point you acknowledge “Now she realises that this is not the case”. That is all we need to know. Your outrage doesn’t fix the problem, and as politics it is disastrous when it is precisely people like Anna Soubry to whom you need to extend the hand of fellowship. It seems to me you are caught in the same fatal ideological trap as Theresa May offered Labour – the opportunity to discuss the issue, but don’t listen, never adopt their amendments and trash them at the despatch box, at the very same time as you are claiming to wish to win them over. I am sorry but that is no solution.
You acknowledge my point about the 14 Labour MPs who voted against the Cooper amendment. I could say; not good enough. Was it 11 more Labour MPs who abstained – some from inside the Shadow Cabinet, and remain in post: unbelievable. Whose side is Corbyn on? And the result of that we an already see being enacted (while you are busy fulminating about an MP’s credentials): when the PM claims she now has a “majority”, it was provided by Labour; and the Government has seized on the opening, and it is claimed, is now lining up financial support for Labour Leave constituencies.
I rest my case.
In order to remember just what is at stake with a No Deal and something we need focus on whichever way we leave:
http://blog.spicker.uk/brexit-is-set-to-deprive-uk-citizens-of-basic-rights/
I think most MPs now accept how this is going to pan out in the end and all their efforts between now and then will be directed at showing the voters and viewing public that they did everything in their power to prevent it and it was all someone else’s fault that it panned out like this. I also thinks that May knows this will end her political career but I don’t think that saddens her. I think she will be glad to see the back of the lot of them.
This is how I think it will pan out. I’m not a lawyer at all, let alone a constitutional lawyer so I don’t know what the mechanism will be but a mechanism will be found. I also think that in the circumstances it is the best outcome we could reasonably hope for.
Dangerously close to the deadline, parliament will agree that
– the people instructed them to deliver brexit but
– some may have died, reached voting age or changed their minds and
– there are many different versions of brexit and
– no one version commands majority support in the house or in the country so
– whatever it does will be against the wishes of most of the people and
– delivering brexit has therefore failed and
– the right thing to do is that which can be most easily undone if that is what the people, parliament and government of the UK want which is to
– withdraw the UK’s Article 50 notice and start again.
A general election will then be called and each party will set out in its manifesto whether it wants to leave or remain. If it wants to leave, it should set out in detail the arrangements it wishes to agree with the EU for and following our departure and if it wants to remain, the policies it will seek to follow within the EU. They’ll need to be realistic in their assessment of what can be achieved as they know they’ll be ripped to shreds by the media and other parties if they’re not.
A government will be elected and it will then do what it said it was going to do. Wouldn’t it be nice for politicians to do that for a change.
John
Why does my outrage have to fix the problem? How can it? I’m not being paid nearly £75K (plus expenses) to be in that place to sort those things out. What are talking about man? Goodness – you’re just as overwrought as you make me out to be.
As someone who is not an MP, I think that my role as someone involved in your so called ‘factionalism’ is extremely minor – don’t you?
As a voter – and because of the FTPA which has disenfranchised me from voting in people who might be able to sort this out (ideally a cross party Government with ‘wait for it! – Tories in it! Yes! ) – maybe there is nothing else I can do but ‘fulminate’.
I call Soubry as I see her. I didn’t imagine it – I saw it. I think that there are more reasonable people in the Tory party one could work with and you know who they are as well as me. My point remains that Soubry could have held out a fig leaf or two well before this debacle. And I will not allow her to whitewash the role she has played in getting us to an impasse. Savvy?
But wait! I have however written to Mr Speaker (the Rt Hon John Bercow – a Tory) and offered him my full support and encouragement to help make parliament work for the whole country for which his Secretary at least warmly thanked me.
So much for factionalism eh?
As for the Labour lot – its not good I know. But BREXIT has tied them up in knots. And it was a Tory Prime Minister who enabled that to happen. And it is a Tory Prime Minister who perpetuates it. So what Labour does is dictated by the Tories or at least influenced by it. As you said – its about power – right?
And now – yes – May is doing her Mafioso impression and bribing desperate Labour constituencies with offers they cannot refuse. Some will take the shilling, others will not. Tell me – who is the more reprehensible character? Or is that inconvenient to you?
All these things need to be noted for one particular reason – a reason that seems to be beyond you because of course you John are above it all and not of any political persuasion (or so you say). And it is this:
Once this is over, it must never happen again. And that objective is achieved by noting and remembering the really bad behaviour that we have seen this last 2-3 years and even before that. And then maybe we can learn something and change things.
So, as far as resting your case is concerned I suggest that you rest it by writing to Mr Speaker – who – it seems to me is one person in Parliament at the moment who is closest to being a grown up – and give him your full support. I mean why not – you must find his neutrality attractive to your refined sensibilities.
I mean – I wouldn’t want you to just sit there fulminating John? Would I ?
Do it.
It seems I am both overwrought and “above it all”. I think I should just lie down for a while in a darkened room.
You ask “who is the more reprehensible character” over the Labour Leave constituency financing? But I didn’t criticise the constituencies, I criticised the Labour Party for facilitating the opening of that line of attack by the Conservatives . Actually, all this is my point. Why is this an argument?
I have not written to the Speaker, who seems one of the few in this catastrophe sponsored by widespread mediocrity and worse, obviously capable of looking after himself, and of the House of Commons. I have also written to several MPs – all Conservative, because these are the people I wish to encourage or challenge; Dominic Grieve, Anna Soubry and – from a highly critical perspective my own MP, Stephen Kerr (who has supported the PM throughout). I have had a sustained correspondence with Kerr, and indeed last year I arranged for him and I to exchange our very different views on the website Bella Caledonia; oh, and I still abhor faction.
I shall now rest the case I had already rested.