Labour have said that, if the Tories do
not remove Boris Johnson from Downing Street in the next few days, they will
table a formal motion of no confidence in the House of Commons. It’s unlikely
to be passed, and I doubt that Labour would really want it to be either. They’d
much prefer the spectacle of a whole host of Tory MPs who’ve openly declared
their lack of confidence in the PM lining up to cast their votes expressing
their complete confidence in his government. But unlikely is not the same as impossible;
there is just a possibility that it might succeed and lead to an immediate
general election.
There is another unlikely but not
impossible event on the horizon as well. It’s always seemed to me that the ‘investigation’
into Starmer’s bottle of beer was a rather pathetic attempt by the Tories to
try and create some sort of false equivalence with Johnson’s incessant disregard
for the rules which he himself introduced, and that the police would eventually
conclude that no rules had been broken. I could be wrong, though – whilst the
force doing the investigation isn’t the badly-flawed Met, it is still possible
that Mr Plod will find an interpretation of the rules under which they can
issue fines to ‘Keith’ and his deputy, both of whom have already committed to
resigning if that were to happen. That could leave us holding a
general election in which both the main parties were under caretaker
management, and neither could tell us who would be PM if they won. It’s a fascinating
prospect, and the fact that it is not impossible underlines, yet again, just
how badly broken the UK’s political system is.
Leaving aside my personal fantasy of
watching two leaderless parties struggle their way through the contest, in the
real world the likelier scenario is that we face an election next Spring
(whilst the UK system does not necessitate a new PM calling an election, there
is a general expectation that he or she should do so). The Tory Party will be
under a new leader who will be going head to head with Keith. Given the need
for the new Tory PM to put some distance between him or herself and the disaster
that went before, there is one obvious policy choice which he or she could make
which might actually transform the chances of success, and that is to promise
to negotiate membership of the EU single market (SM) and customs union (CU). Membership
would, at a stroke, resolve the problem of the NI Protocol and help to reduce
shortages of some products. It would also boost economic growth and have an
impact on inflation. Most businesses would welcome the move – the Tory Party
might again come to be regarded as the party of business rather than the party
of F*** Business (© Boris
Johnson, 2018). Best of all (from the Tories’ perspective) it would
completely wrongfoot Labour, who, after Starmer’s commitment
last week not to seek membership of the SM or CU, would find itself arguing
that it alone could make the impossible work, by following a plan remarkably
similar to that of Johnson but without the petulance. Remainers might find
that, despite all that has happened, the Tory Party is more in line with their
views than Labour.
Could it happen? Certainly there are those
in the Tory Party, such as Tobias
Ellwood, who are arguing in favour of such a move. Dan Hannan (then an MEP),
one of the earliest prominent Brexiteers, said in 2015 that “Absolutely
nobody is talking about threatening our place in the Single Market”, and
has said this year that "Staying in the single market, or large parts
of it, would have saved us a lot of trouble". Despite what many
Brexiteers currently believe, there was never anything inconsistent between
leaving the EU and remaining in the SM and CU; the link between the two only
became ‘necessary’ after the vote had been held. Such views do not currently
appear to be mainstream in the Conservative Party, although it’s unclear
whether that’s because people don’t hold them or are simply parroting the
(current) official line. But neither are they entirely eccentric, particularly
among business donors, whose influence (in normal, non-Johnsonian times) should
not be underestimated. The question is, perhaps, less about whether the party
could change its views on such a major issue (it can, and frequently does,
usually at the whim of the leader), and more about whether a candidate talking
about making such a change could ever make it into the final two when MPs vote
for the next leader. If it were to happen, it’s much more likely to be the result
of a candidate who says the opposite to get elected as leader and then changes
his or her mind after taking up residence in Downing Street in the light of
getting a ‘full briefing’ on the economic realities. They call it ‘pragmatism’
(although others might see it as a lack of any underlying principle), something
which has rarely been in short supply under the Tories under all leaders except
the current one. And saying one thing to get elected and then doing the
opposite is not exactly an unusual proposition for Tories. Even without Boris.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment