As Politics Home has noted in an email this morning:
A nice quiet start to a very big week, then. Just the Prime Minister warning Tory MPs that if they don't vote with the Government on Brexit tomorrow, they'll be booted out of the party and their political careers will be over. All perfectly normal and not in any way a sign that the Conservatives are now in the end game of their decades-long civil war on Europe.
It really is incredible that someone who was Chancellor up until a few weeks ago (Philip Hammond) is now being threatened with deselection by his own party, along with the likes of David Gauke and Rory Stewart, who also sat round the Cabinet table until Boris Johnson became PM. But that is precisely where we are this morning.
We really have already reached the point where civil war has broken out over Brexit. It may only be in the Tories, as yet, but it has begun.
I hope it remains at this level. But when ministers say that they may not abide by a law - no doubt implying that they will not be able to do so because of doubts as to legal interpretation, which is what I think Gove was wriggling to say - the risk of escalation is profoundly uncomfortable.
I have never seen politics as ugly as this in the UK. I wish I never had.
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These latest moves appear to be the tactical thinking of Dominic Cummings (who engineered both VoteLeave and – it is often forgotten – the North East’s rejection of devolution). Think of Boris Johnson as the ‘front-of-house’ manager/entertainer. Cummings, it seems is a disciple of the thought of the economist/cold-war stragetist Thomas Schelling, who received a Nobel prize for his game-theory analysis. Schelling certainly fits very well into Cummings typical modes and patterns of thinking, from his own writing. The Blogger Tom Chivers has suggested Cummings is gaming Brexit, using a derivation of MAD which may be reduced/simplified here to a game of ‘chicken’. Two cars approach each other at high speed on collision course. Which will swerve? The one that hasn’t thrown the steering wheel out of the window already: which Cummings has ostentatiously flung out for all to see.
It is suggested that the game of chicken is being played between the British Government and the EU; but I suspect the real target is Parliament itself.
If Cummings is using Schelling’s analytical framework outlined in The Strategy of Conflict, it was the cold war Schelling had in mind, not an internal coup, as it were; hence, I would argue, it is a misapplication of Schelling’s framework. Which isn’t to say that it is something other than what you say it is. In either case, it is dangerous.
I would be surprised to discover that Cummings did not know the context of Schelling’s work, which is well known.
I would recommend everyone read Dominic Cummings discursive Blogs, or especially his very long, diffuse, periphrastic 2013 paper ‘Some thoughts on education and political priorities’; which I found alarming, if it was written as the possible sketch of a purposive, thematic political programme. You must make up your own minds: but you do need to understand the background to what is unfolding in Westminster and Whitehall. Cummings is very successful at winning brutal campaigns.
Dominic Cummings might do well to remember how the chicken run pans out in “Rebel Without a Cause”. Trouble is, he was born after the film, in which both Jimmy Dean and Sal Mineo come out badly. I doubt he’s seen it. Or even heard of it. Nobody wins a chicken run. And Cummings lacks the tragic charisma of Dean. They’ll get him in the end.
The next stage will be when it spills over onto the streets, then may whichever god you believe in help us, but let the devil have those that brought this on us.
Not to worry, Richard, once we are indepenent a very warm welcome will be extended to you in Scotland.
🙂
Richard
Hope you are well today. Always nice to read your posts.
The only crumb of comfort I have is that history teaches us that most megalomaniacs (that is what Johnson and company are) tend to overreach themselves.
Pity they might take the country down with them. I don’t think this is going to end well.
Keep posting. If I ever meet you the drinks are me!!!!
Thanks!
“Vaulting ambition” comes to mind here 🙂
It is not intended to end well…..to rebuild society in your image, you first have to destroy it.
If you read Cummings’ work, you will soon get the drift https://dominiccummings.files.wordpress.com/2013/11/20130825-some-thoughts-on-education-and-political-priorities-version-2-final.pdf
For over 50 years now the hard right has used its need to i), blame the other and ii), its hatred of big (read ‘effective’) government to feed its own chimeraic anti-European leitmotif/ obsession.
Blaming the other and hating the ‘other’ (read ‘EU’) is all they know. Their press are world-class experts at it.
If – as you claim – the “civil war” is mainly happening amongst Tories and the usual suspects, then they have failed. The civil war *will* cause the Conservative party – and its unquestioned but unproven loyalty to Capital – to implode. Their mastubatory ant-EU-ism will mainly harm themselves and their atrocious world-view.
If – instead – withdrawal from the EU is actually mission-critical to large segments of the country, then the hard right’s gamble might still win: Sure they’d destroy themselves, but they destroy their enemies too and allow disaster capitalism to reset the whole game and $Tr to be up for grabs (again). It is not only the class interests of Capital and the Conservative party that this gamble would threaten, it wipes clean everything and lets glorious capital re-assert itself from scratch.
There is nothing quite as dangerous as a single-minded obsessive – especially when s/he controls much of the press and thinks every outcome necessarily benefits them. The end of history, it hasn’t started yet.
I guess Boris and Cummings must see a GE as their only way out of the hole they’ve dug. Or maybe this was their game-plan all along.
If Boris carries out his threat to remove the whip from those in ‘his’ party that vote to take control of the order paper surely with a majority of just 1 this will inevitably result in a loss of confidence and a GE that Johnson can claim he has been forced into.
Seems pretty obvious that the current regime (calling them an administration makes them sound too legitimate) has decided that a General Election is their best way of forcing both a no deal Brexit and retaining power. They can’t just whip to call a GE because of the perceived election fatigue so are doubling-down and doing all they can to force the opposition (both Labour and Tory remainers) into a vote of no confidence. The plans/threats to deselect those Tory MPs with the semblance of a backbone are simply staggering when you consider just how many of the current cabinet frequently rebelled under May without any consequence. Heck, half of them have been sacked from government in the past for either dishonesty or incompetence (often both) and yet now here they are. Expect the many, many spinally-challenged Tory MPs to shamelessly equivocate to defend this policy to the death. Bevan really was pretty correct about the psyche of many of them.
With the assistance of the right-wing media (who I don’t doubt are planning and scheduling their propaganda in tandem with No. 10 right now), it will then be a clear Us versus Them appeal, with the ‘Them’ taking in both those nasty unpatriotic remainers who hate Britain, along with the perfidious EU , who then will be entirely to blame for everything when it turns to crap. All sorts of Tory spending promises will be lauded without much in the way of questioning and, as the FT have beguin to show already, any such promises from other parties will be monstered.
I’d imagine the Brexit Party (as ordered by their wealthier backers) will helpfully agree to a pact whether official or not to back the Tory leaver candidate in constituencies where required. A handful of seats on the top table/gravy train for Farage others should be enough to keep them happy and, unfortunately, will probably be enough to deny the possibility of a ‘remain’ or ‘soft brexit’ government/coalition. The LibDems under Swinson will no doubt again prove to be useful idiots, taking enough of the Labour vote to deny them a chance of forming a government. I’ve never quite understood the point of the LibDems personally – as a nominally left of centre centrist party, all they are generally going to do is take votes from Labour to enable the Tories. Their appeal to Tories is very slender. Not that Labour will be likely to step down in areas where the LibDems have a better chance, for that matter.
Ultimately, it’s all going to sh*t and I think our only hope is that the ‘Brexit establishment’ overplay their hands and make it too obvious just how dishonest they are all being. Unlikely, especially with the now wholly supine BBC being the main source of news for many, along with the awful tabloid lies, but I suppose you never know. At some point, it would surely be obvious that the embarrassing lack of planning on the part of the UK was entirely our fault?
Not feeling very cheery about the current situation – if you hadn’t guessed!
Too me, this is a perfectly Neo-liberal ending for the Tory party – it was always going to end like this because of the rampant self interest of this particular political credo.
The question remaining is, can the other parties unite to bring Johnson down?
In my view they must. Today.
If they do not, then history will be hard on them and rightly so.
And although I too have been deeply frustrated by Corbyn, there is no doubt now that the Tories and their spending plans have had an easier ride than Labour would have ever had. I hope that others sense that the cat is out of the bag on this one.
We have to remember that in this chaos, the seeds for a better politics and polity are all around us at the moment waiting to be planted.
Very dark sad times . Our country is divided and there are some very angry irrational people out there. I live inLondon and I voted Remain. I am a Labour supporter since 2015 joining because of Corbyn’s fight against needless austerity. I am a member of many socialist Facebook supporters groups and whilst people might disagree over Leave or Remain there is always polite debate and care for others . I also comment on posts I receive from The Telegraph and that is a completely different animal. I have been called a tro for politely expressing a Remain opinion by some really unpleasant people. The distorted world of those who lap up the duel standards of the right wing press. No wonder they won with the likes of Cummings leading the charge. . I only hope that enough good people will see that the only way to get rid of this right wing government is to unite and fight against a no deal and then maybe realise there is another way. Please let’s unite our country and start working for the good of everyone. Fingers crossed today. X
Well said and same here!
“We really have already reached the point where civil war has broken out over Brexit. It may only be in the Tories, as yet, but it has begun.”
This division over Britain’s relationship with the EU goes back to Common Market days. Johnson and Cummings are being reckless enough to prick the boil, I think. John Major’s snap election was in response to his party refusing to agree on the EU relationship. Cameron called the Brexit referendum in the first place for no better reason than to establish his own mandate as leader of his own party and came unstuck. (For reasons that had little to do with EU membership, but that was his miscalculation) It was underlying differences in the Tory Party, over Europe, that were the principle cause of the Tory wilderness years which allowed Tony Blair’s neo-liberal-lite regime free reign in Parliament for more than a decade.
If we get the GE which everyone seems to believe will inevitably come soon it is to be hoped that it will be the last one fought on FPTP terms. Surely to goodness BOTH main parties can see their broad church coalitions are no longer fit for purpose ? We urgently need to fix our political landscape infrastructure.
If, and it’s still far from a given, Labour can win a GE in the coming months I expect the internal divisions in Labour ranks will prove as destructive to the party as they are to the Tories. The two party hegemony is a corpse which smells and is long overdue for burial.
Even Hammond is losing his cool, in his own ‘internalised fury’ way.
His body language and his voice betrayed his determination to attempt to bring Johnson/Cummings down.
He consciously used the word ‘faction’ to describe Johnson’s close entourage. Strong word for such a measured man. The linguistic root of fascism.
So we’ll see, it all seems to come down to tactics, ‘games’ of influence, and whether court cases will succeed in stopping this coup in the short term.
And then, it won’t be over.
Johnson may be used by Cummings, but remember he’s allowing it to happen too, he’s where the buck stops in the end, and he can’t hide behind the game boy.
Desperate times.