Open the box - or merely take the money?

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There are, of course, some MPs whose actions are based, at all times, on a clear set of principles to which they adhere. Then there is another group, probably larger, who set out to do that, but find it difficult at times. Sometimes principles can clash, and sometimes the pressure of the whips can be just too great. Then there are Tories. That’s not to argue that all Tories are completely free of any sense of principle (although some clearly are – see, for example, Johnson, B.). It’s more that they either adopt a flexible (they would probably prefer the word pragmatic, but that’s just euphemism) approach to principles, or else follow the Marxian (Groucho) approach of having alternative sets of principles for different situations and occasions.

This tendency was on display yesterday, as parliament discussed the Illegal Migration Bill, when the likes of Theresa May and IDS (which really should stand for Irritable Duncan Syndrome, but disappointingly does not) took their principled stand on modern slavery out of the box where it is normally kept, gave it a good polish, and showed it to anyone who was interested (spoiler: not a large number) in the Chamber of the House of Commons. The government was very wrong, they put on record in Hansard so as to be able to refer to their own wise words when it's time to write their memoirs, not to exclude victims of modern slavery from the planned more-or-less automatic flights to central Africa. However, by the time it came to a vote on the issue they had carefully packed up the principle and put it back in its usual box whilst they sat on their hands and allowed the legislation to pass. It turns out that the principle they had so proudly been showing around the Commons was trumped by the Marxian alternative principle of not embarrassing a Tory government, using a vague form of words about further discussions and consultations to try and paper over the huge gulf between what they said and what they then proceeded to do. Still, I understand that it’s a very nice box, sufficiently solid and robust to betray no indication of its content until those rare moments when it is temporarily opened.

The Omigod variant

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It’s not clear precisely when the disease first struck. Theresa May suffered from an early onset variant with her proposal for what became known as a dementia tax, a proposal so poorly thought through that it was abandoned within days of making contact with the real world. The disease, which manifests itself as a tendency to announce policies first and think about the implications later, spread rapidly under Johnson and seems destined to reach its zenith under Truss. The disease vector seems to be the Conservative Party; there is no known cure and no hope of a vaccine, not least because all those who offered any such hope were promptly driven out. The prognosis (for the patient) varies from bad (a lengthy period in opposition) to worse (political oblivion). For the rest of us, that’s the good news.

The bad news is that we have a remaining period of up to two and a half years when the disease will continue to work its way through the body of the Conservative Party and during which we will have increasingly bizarre announcements made. Whilst Johnson seemed to have developed a curious form of semi-immunity under which policies would be announced and then simply forgotten (bridges, anyone?), it appears that Truss has a bad case and enjoys no such immunity. Instead of quietly abandoning mad proposals, it is believed that she will actually attempt to implement them, egged on by the fringe elements in her party which have caught the even more serious Omigod variant.

The medical experts are clear that the disease is unlikely to spread outside the confines of the Conservative Party as long as we all attempt to retain some sort of hold on reality and truth, but are unable to offer us much by way of protection from the consequences of the actions of the infected. It is thought possible, however, that concerted collective action might help. Escaping the asylum would be a good start.

Defining futility

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Some Tory backbenchers, including ex-PM Theresa May, were being very hard on the PM yesterday, demanding that he set out his plans for dealing with any future variants of Covid. What possessed them to believe that any plan put forward by Johnson would be worth the paper it was written on is one of life’s little mysteries – they know him well enough to know that nothing he says can or should ever be taken at face value anyway. Besides, we can already work out what his plan will be based on his actions to date, and there are three parts to it.

Part 1 will be to deny that there can ever be another variant at all. Deaths will continue at roughly the present rate, and Tory MP’s will politely applaud the PM’s announcement that no new measures are needed.

Part 2 will be to declare that the variant is harmless. It’s not based on data or science (why would we expect that it would be?), but additional deaths will only be in the hundreds or low thousands, and Tory MP’s will shout and wave their order papers at the PM’s announcement that no new measures are needed.

Part 3 will come into effect when mere facts show that the variant might indeed be more infectious than any we’ve seen to date, but the PM will declare that the NHS can and will simply ride the wave. Thousands, or even tens of thousands will die, hundreds of thousands will be hospitalised, parts of the NHS will collapse under the strain – and Tory MPs will cheer the PM to the rafters when he announces that no new measures are needed.

The strategy, if one might dignify it with such nomenclature, has only two elements in reality. The first is that, regardless of what happens, no new measures will be required, and the second is that the announcement of no new measures will please the majority of Tory MPs, with their degree of pleasure increasing in direct proportion to the seriousness of the situation. Given that the second part of that, with its concomitant that the crazies who have taken over the Conservative Party might allow the world king to stay in office a little longer, is now the only driver of pandemic policy, asking for a detailed plan is an entirely futile exercise. A bit like being an ex-PM sitting on the backbenches, I suppose.

Knowing they're exceptional

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The Times has published an article this morning which makes some excellent points. In response to the coronavirus pandemic, the writer laments the fact that “A polarised politics has taken hold. It views the world through a prism of winners and losers and sees compromise and co-operation as signs of weakness”. She goes on to argue that “Lost is the idea that countries do better by working together to solve common problems, even if doing so sometimes means an apparent sacrifice of short-term benefit for the greater good”. And the title of the piece is “Nationalism is no ally in this battle without borders”.

What I couldn’t understand at first is how the alleged author of this piece, a certain Theresa May, can square any of this with her membership of, and continued support for, the most dangerously nationalist party ever to hold the reins of power in the UK. A party which seeks, nay demands, that the UK stand alone and compete with everyone else, a party which does indeed see compromising with anyone else as a weakness, and sees the sacrifice of short term sovereignty for the greater good as something which unnecessarily constrains its own freedom of movement. Then I realised where I had gone wrong – English nationalism isn’t nationalism at all; the problem is that the rest of the world simply doesn’t understand how very exceptional England is. It’s everyone else who must compromise and co-operate, bowing down before the superiority of the only nation on the planet which can afford to eschew nationalism because it knows it’s the best at everything. Why, only yesterday we found out that we don’t have the worst pandemic death rate in Europe at all – it’s just that other countries don’t know how to count. The problem is never with Theresa May or the Conservative Party – it’s the inability of the rest of the world to understand their proper place.

Misreading the Labour Party

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In the dying weeks of her premiership, desperate to try and save her Brexit deal, Theresa May engaged in negotiations with the Labour Party.  I’m not sure that she ever really thought that she would win over the party as a block, but there did seem reason to believe that some of the concessions she made on maintaining standards in relation to issues such as workers’ rights might have been a way of peeling off enough Labour MPs to get her deal approved.  Ultimately, it failed.  Despite all her attempts to demonstrate a willingness to protect standards and rights, and even potentially seek a closer post-Brexit relationship with the EU, the number of Labour MPs willing to buy it was limited to the usual suspects.

The new PM has adopted a different approach.  Whilst the details remain unclear, all the indications are that he has scrapped the commitments to maintaining standards and rights and is seeking a less close relationship with the EU than that enjoyed by Canada, let alone that enjoyed by countries such as Norway.  Yet it seems that he is attracting the support of more Labour MPs than ever Theresa May managed.  If only Theresa May had realised that the way to get more Labour MPs to support her deal was to promise to weaken employee rights, reduce standards, and increase the amount of damage done to trade and employment, things might have turned out very differently for her.  How could she have misread them so badly?

The redness of the herring is irrelevant

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It’s just a guess, of course – I have no firm evidence to back this up – but I strongly suspect that the vast majority of people would be utterly mortified if we made a very public statement which turned out to be as utterly untrue as Boris Johnson’s reference yesterday to a kipper.  It would embarrass most of us to be exposed for having taken something on trust without having bothered to check its accuracy.  Johnson, however, is not (and never has been) part of any known definition of ‘most of us’, and lives by an entirely different set of rules.  He is more likely to be pleased at the coverage his kipper-waving garnered and to feel secure in the knowledge that corrections never achieve the same coverage as the initial outrageous statement.  Not for nothing is it said that a lie will be half-way round the world before the truth has got its boots on.

It’s a technique which the growth of social media has done much to promote: once a story is ‘out there’ it will be copied and shared – and, sadly, believed – much more often than any boring old correction.  Johnson isn’t the first or only politician to employ such a tactic, of course.  Who remembers the correction to the nonsense spouted by the former Home Secretary (and soon to be former Prime Minister) back in 2011 when she claimed that the human rights act prevented the deportation of a man because he owned a cat?  It was telling that she opened her narration of that particular piece of fiction with the words “We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act…”, a phrase which is invariably followed by a story which we only ‘know’ because it’s been repeated so often, despite being complete bunkum.

When apparently intelligent people come out with this stuff, it isn’t because they don’t know better, or because they can’t be bothered to check (checking might only allow the facts to intervene), or even because they believe it themselves; it’s because they know that it will be believed by a substantial number of people.  Playing to and confirming the prejudices of those people isn’t just an unintentional accident – it’s the whole purpose of telling the lie in the first place.  In Johnson’s case his casual bumbling and bluster is simply a poor attempt at disguising a cynical disregard for any truth or facts which might undermine his own ambitions.  And the saddest part is that even such a poor attempt as this one does actually work with the target audience.

The end is still not nigh enough

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Getting things right with the benefit of hindsight is easy enough; getting them right in advance is a lot harder.  But Theresa May’s premiership was doomed to end in tears from the point at which she picked up a red pen and started drawing impossible and contradictory red lines.  From the outset, the approach she deployed was hopelessly inappropriate for the task in hand, but even as she departs, I don’t think she understands where she went wrong.  Everything is the fault of someone else.

One phenomenon which I’ve observed over many years, both in politics and in the world of work, is the inability of some people – Theresa May being a classic example, but far from the only one – to distinguish between the roles of leader, manager and boss.  The result of such an inability is that such people see ‘leadership’ as a role to which they are appointed or elected rather than a series of attributes and approaches, and once in the role behave as though their job is to give instructions – ‘boss mode’.  If a boss is what is required, it can work; but in the field of politics in particular, expecting others to do as you say ‘because I’m the boss’ is rarely an effective strategy.

Yet that is the strategy which we have seen time and again.  We saw it in the way in which she attempted to bounce the DUP into agreeing her original agreement with the EU27 in December 2017.  She hadn’t thought it necessary to consult or even discuss what she had agreed with the DUP, assuming instead that they would simply fall into line.  We’ve seen it several times in Cabinet meetings, where members come out not knowing what has been agreed and end up being surprised at what got presented as the ‘agreed’ outcome.  It was precisely that approach which caused the ultimate meltdown this week – Cabinet members appear not to have understood that she was assuming they were agreeing to her latest plan.

Some are expressing sympathy for her now that she’s been so unceremoniously forced out – I’m afraid that I have none.  She was the wrong person for the job from the outset, elected accidentally after her internal opponents’ campaigns went into meltdown, and appears still not to understand why.  Her repeated failure to understand that applying a winner-takes-all majoritarian approach was never going to heal divisions or reunite people has only made things worse.  Looking at the likely successors fills me with trepidation, and the Brexit clock is still ticking.  Her biggest – perhaps only – achievement has been to steal the title of worst PM from her predecessor.  Sympathy and false praise from those whose futures she has tried so hard to trash are wholly inappropriate responses.

Neither new nor improved

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A common ploy for companies selling confectionery, foodstuffs, soap powder and so forth whose brand is looking tired or whose sales are flagging is to make some minor changes to the product and then put a big bold sticker saying “New Improved” on the packaging.  As Theresa May is finding out, it doesn’t always work, particularly if “new and improved” means that there is no discernible change to the product, and especially if it doesn’t do what it says on the tin.  Fortunately for her (?), politicians aren’t subject to the Trade Descriptions Act.

One thing of which we can be certain is that ‘the deal’ hasn’t changed at all – that would require agreement by the EU27, and no such agreement has even been sought, let alone received.  She claims that she has ‘compromised’ by extending the temporary customs union until the next General Election.  That’s as close to the truth as anything she says, but insofar as it’s a compromise, it’s being made with reality, not with her opponents.  No-one has ever believed that negotiations on a future trade arrangement could be completed within the transition period anyway.  And it’s only a partial compromise even then – no-one seriously believes that they would be completed by the next General Election either.  A convincing salesperson might just have persuaded people that this really and truly is a new product, but no company serious about a rebrand would use someone like the PM to try and sell it.

Another thing that often happens when companies try the “new improved” approach is that the customers protest and demand a return to the old recipe.  Still, that’s at least one thing which the PM doesn’t need to worry about.

A question of trust

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Yesterday, Labour’s Shadow Chancellor, John McDonnell, made it clear that he can no longer trust Theresa May “after this weekend” because she had breached the confidentiality of the talks between the two Brexit-supporting parties in Westminster.  I wasn’t at all surprised that he no longer trusts her, but what really did surprise me was the implicit statement that he apparently had trusted her up until this weekend.  Given her propensity for telling outright lies and the fact that there seems to be no-one left in her own party who has any faith in her, how on earth can the Labour Party have got to a situation where any of its senior figures trusted her in the first place?

The rewards of disloyalty

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I don’t know whether Gavin Williamson actually leaked the story about Huawei to the media or not – he says no, Theresa May says yes.  Selecting which to believe when neither are famous for having more than a passing acquaintance with the truth isn’t the easiest of tasks.  I’d like to believe that the real culprit was the Chancellor, not on the basis of any evidence or facts, but simply because there would be a juicy irony involved.  It can’t have been completely unhelpful for the Chancellor’s trade mission to Beijing for it to emerge the day before that the UK Government was softening its position on using a Chinese supplier – and if he could finger the man who got his last trip to China scuttled by threatening to send an aircraft carrier to the Pacific, then all the better.  Sadly, that would require a degree of cunning and planning of which no current minister seems capable.

I also don’t know whether a crime has been committed or not; leaking information from a confidential meeting doesn’t necessarily mean a breach of the Official Secrets Act has been committed if the information leaked was not, in itself, an official secret.  It is, though, surely unrealistic for anyone to think that even Theresa May is going to be daft enough to allow a police investigation into the matter when such an investigation would inevitably reveal more about the dysfunctional nature of the UK Government.

I don’t think that the process followed has been entirely fair, let alone open and transparent.  On the one hand, the PM said in her letter that she had “compelling evidence” of his guilt, but on the other she said that “No other credible version of events to explain this leak has been identified”.  That’s a standard of ‘proof’ which no court or tribunal would ever be likely to accept.  Unless of course, she put Chris Grayling in charge of Justice, in which case anything would be possible.

What I do know, however, is that there is something very unusual about the idea that a person who has been subject to instant dismissal for gross misconduct should be awarded three months’ salary as a payoff, and that a man sacked for revealing details of one of the most secret of meetings should be allowed to remain a member of the Privy Council where secrets are routinely shared.  In what other walk of life would that happen?

Avoiding a vote

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Brexit started life as a wizard wheeze by David Cameron to silence the awkward squad in his own party.  Cunning Plan A was to promise them an ‘in-out’ referendum in the hope that the awkward squad would simply shut up and allow him to get on with the serious business of government without the perpetual whingeing about Europe.  Besides, he ‘knew’ that he wasn’t going to win the election outright and therefore would never have to deliver; his coalition partners would simply veto the referendum.  The plan went badly wrong when his party accidentally won more seats than he had anticipated, leaving him in a position where the only way of maintaining any semblance of party unity was to attempt to actually deliver on his commitment.

Plan A might not have exactly worked out, but not to worry; not-quite-so-cunning Plan B was to breeze over to Brussels, pretend to negotiate a bit, gain a few minor concessions, and then hold a referendum.  He ‘knew’ that the EU was just sitting there waiting to give yet more special terms to the UK, and he ‘knew’ that he was going to get a thumping majority for Remain.  He then hoped that the awkward squad would simply shut up and allow him to get on with the serious business of government without the perpetual whingeing about Europe.  His ability to predict, let alone control, the outcome of a public vote proved as reliable as ever, and Plan B also bit the dust.  His Plan C was not really cunning at all – scarper and leave someone else to clear up the mess.

It was left to his successor to come up with Plan D.  After a period of umming and ahing, and after having kicked off the process of triggering Article 50 without a clue as to the end point, she decided that the way to get around her internal party divisions was to hold another general election.  Displaying the same acute predictive ability for which her predecessor was, rightly, not at all famous, she ‘knew’ that she would win a large enough majority to be able to silence the awkward squad and allow her to get on with the serious business of government without the perpetual whingeing about Europe.   Plan D went the same way as Plans A and B.  At this point, she might have been best advised to revisit Plan C, which was the only one that actually worked for her predecessor, but instead she came up with the ill-fated Plan E. 

Plan E was the transparently uncunning approach of telling both sides of her own party, repeatedly and in public, that if they didn't do as she wished the other side would win in the hope that neither would be clever enough to work out that she was actually proposing a route which none of them supported.  She might even have got away with it, if she’d opted for a short, sharp and decisive negotiation immediately after the election whilst MPs were still shell-shocked enough to have simply voted it through.  However, when thinking about Theresa May, ‘decisive’ isn’t exactly the first word that jumps into mind. 

In fairness, though, there is one thing that the PM has learnt from the common factor in the failure of Plans A, B, and D, and it is this: for a Tory PM with a Plan, allowing people to vote is a very, very bad idea.  The people have developed an unfortunate habit of not producing the answer that the Tories want.  Thus we arrive at today’s news, in which the Foreign Secretary tells us that the absolute top priority for the Government is to prevent the European Parliament elections from taking place in the UK.  Not to look after the economic interests of the people they represent, not to end the shambolic process which they have kicked off, not to sort out problems with health or education.  No, just to prevent people having a vote in an election which might not – and probably would not – produce the answer that they want.  If the elections take place, the probability is that the Tories will be badly mauled (or even ‘marmalized’, according to some).  They don’t have a policy on which they can agree, and even if they did, there’s no guarantee that those elected would support it.  At best, half the members elected from one of the parties would be supportive of the May deal, and the rest from that party, and all those from other parties, would be against it.  Allowing a vote, in whatever proxy form, on her plan is almost certain to show how little support it has.

That, of course, brings us right back to the beginning.  Avoiding an election is, just like the original conception of Brexit, all about the Tory Party.  It is, though, already far too late to silence the awkward squad.  It’s a lost cause; continuing to fight yesterday’s battles may be the prime interest of some of the awkward squad, but it’s already way too late to restore any semblance of unity to a disintegrating party.

Who writes the definition?

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In recent days and weeks, the Prime Minister has repeatedly demanded that MPs “put the country first” and “act in the national interest” rather than pursuing party political interests.  In principle, it’s an entirely reasonable expectation; the problem is that it doesn’t equate directly with supporting her deal in the way that she demands.  For what it’s worth, I believe that the overwhelming majority of MPs (there are a few, of course, who put their own personal interests first) are trying to do what they think is ‘right’ for their constituents and the country as a whole, it’s just that they define what is ‘right’ in different ways.  Some also, of course, define ‘country’ in a different way than May – it does not necessarily follow that what’s good for England is good for Scotland or Wales.

What May actually thinks about anything is a mystery even to those closest to her (and perhaps also to herself), but her words suggest that she thinks that the national interest is served by honouring the result of the 2016 referendum, since doing otherwise damages (further) people’s faith in the UK’s system of democracy.  In a limited sense, I’d agree; telling people that you’re giving them the decision and then ignoring the result is indeed damaging, and I can see that the ‘national interest’ is served by implementing the result.  But it is surely also ‘in the national interest’ that the government does not wreck the economy or take decisions which lead to shortages of food or medicines.  It is surely not ‘in the national interest’ to destroy jobs and opportunities, especially for our young people.  And it is surely not ‘in the national interest’ to reduce standards of environmental and employment protection.  Determining where the balance lies between those different factors is always going to be a matter of opinion, not fact; and opinions will differ.  Holding a different opinion on such a complex issue is not at all the same thing as acting against the national interest, as the PM seems to be claiming.

Demanding that people act ‘in the national interest’ is just rhetoric; the real question is who defines where that interest lies and on what criteria.  It is far from being the simple question as which she presents it.  There’s another aspect as well – she claims to be defining it in terms of ‘honouring democracy’, but what history teaches us is that individual leaders of governments who claim that they, and they alone, are the arbiters of what constitutes the national interests aren’t usually over-interested in democracy.  Claiming the unique right of definition and attacking all those who disagree as enemies of the people are the hallmarks of dictatorship, not democracy.

She's just having a laugh

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Having utterly failed to do the homework which she was set last time she went begging to Brussels for a short extension to the deadline, the Prime Minister returned this week to face the music.  She made the absurd claim that the failure wasn’t her fault because she’d outsourced the work to an essay-writing factory which had let her down by failing to deliver the work on time.  Despite being firmly of the opinion, which she had expressed forcefully on many occasions, that the essay-writing factory was run by an utterly untrustworthy cove who should never be allowed anywhere near any reputable institution of government, she still swore that she had total faith that he would deliver the required essay within a few days.

The headteacher and assembled staff listened carefully to what she had to say but found the excuses far from convincing.  They didn’t really believe that the outsourced essay was ever going to be delivered, and even if it was it was probably going to be on a different topic anyway.  But they were feeling in kindly mode; it was clear that the pupil had a range of additional needs, and rather than mark her as a failure they decided that it would be better to make ‘reasonable adjustments’ – in this case to ignore the admission of attempted plagiarism and allow a lengthy second extension to the submission date.

Whether she heard the rider about getting on with the work and not wasting the time again is doubtful, because she dashed straight back to her own classroom and announced that she and parliament could celebrate by taking a holiday for the next two weeks.  With any luck, the headteacher and staff wouldn’t even notice their absence, let alone think that she might just be extracting the Michael…

Redefining success

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It was very kind of Donald Tusk to tell the EU27 that they should endeavour not to humiliate the UK or its Prime Minister again when she went before them to admit that she hadn’t done the homework they set her last time to produce a plan for her next steps.  It might be argued, mind, that feeling it necessary to tell someone not to humiliate someone else is somewhat humiliating in itself, and it’s certainly rather patronising, but I’m sure that his motives were entirely well-intentioned.  As it happened his efforts didn’t exactly work out well anyway; having failed to produce a good excuse (or indeed any sort of excuse – even claiming that the dog ate her plan might have been better) she was always going to be forced to accept something which she had repeatedly said she didn’t want and couldn’t accept.  And being made to sit in an anteroom for hours whilst others decide your fate is never exactly going to be an exercise in generating pride and self-respect.

There is a problem, though: did Tusk breach her human rights under some convention or other by trying to prevent her humiliation?  I mean, if someone really wants to be humiliated, and enjoys it as much as she obviously does, what right does anyone have to try and prevent it?  It’s almost enough to make me think that perhaps the Brexiteers have got it right after all: how dare the EU interfere with the inalienable right of the UK to repeatedly humiliate itself on the world stage? For once at least the PM has stood up to these tyrannical dictators and defended the right of the UK to be mocked and laughed at.  Another successful outcome to a summit.

Revocation would not be an accident

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According to the Prime Minister, Brexit could “slip through our fingers” unless a compromise deal can be reached with Labour.  It is yet another of those statements showing an almost complete lack of awareness of the potential impact of what she says on different audiences.  She sets out to alarm one audience (the Brexiteers) into supporting her deal, but inadvertently encourages an entirely different audience to believe that Brexit can be reversed. 

The phraseology is curious, implying that Brexit is somehow going to be stopped by accident, unless something is done to prevent it.  But in reality, there is only one way in which Brexit can be stopped and that is by deliberate decision of a government – presumably her own government – to revoke the letter issued to the EU27 in accordance with the terms of Article 50 of the treaty.  It is true that there are two circumstances in which that could happen, but in either case it requires action by the government and is not something which happens by accident.  The first is in panic in the next three days if no extension can be agreed, leaving the government and parliament to face the two options of no deal or no Brexit.  The second – and more likely – is after a lengthy extension, incorporating a General Election and/or further referendum.

In either event, a cancellation of Brexit will occur not because a government or parliament has failed to follow through on a referendum decision, but because the parliament elected by the people in 2017 does not contain a majority for any particular outcome of the 2016 referendum.  There is a very real sense in which it is possible to argue that, whatever result parliament comes up with eventually, it is the result which people voted for when they elected their MPs in the election called by the PM in 2017.  It’s possible that those who voted didn’t fully understand what line their MPs would take when push came to shove (and who could blame them; few MPs would have been able to predict at the time of the 2017 election just how big a mess the Tory party would actually get itself into, let alone on what they would eventually be asked to vote).  But under what passes for ‘democracy’ in the UK, the 2017 election (itself called, at least in part, because Theresa May knew that she didn’t have a stable majority for any type of Brexit within her own party) trumps any previous vote and resets the government’s mandate. 

If Brexit ends up being cancelled, either this week in panic or else in some months’ time after a rethink and new referendum, such a decision will be every bit as ‘democratic’ as the 2016 vote, because it will be the direct result of the choices made by voters in the 2017 election.  But the ‘problem’ isn’t with parliament or its members, it’s with the ‘winner-takes-all’ electoral system used in the UK.  The same electoral system which gave us an ill thought out referendum which only a minority voted to hold has also failed to create a clear majority in either parliament or the two main parties for any particular interpretation of the result of that referendum.  I entirely accept that we’ve reached a point where any outcome is going to be unacceptable to an enormous number of people, and that trying to rebuild faith in the political system will be far from easy.  I’m certain, though, that trying to do so within a system which has been shown to fail so spectacularly is doomed to fail; electoral reform which more accurately reflects voting outcomes is a key precondition for any reconciliation.

Finding unity of purpose

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In a rather shaky home video released yesterday (the shakiness presumably being an intentional metaphor for either Brexit or the PM’s hold on reality, or perhaps just a reflection of her difficulty in getting anyone with any expertise to assist her in doing anything these days), Theresa May talked about the Brexit impasse and the need for politicians to compromise and work together.  ‘Compromise’, though, is still something that she thinks other people should do – as Labour report from the two-party discussions to date, there’s still no sign of any willingness by the PM to change anything.

Her little homily reveals perhaps why she doesn’t think any compromise on her part is necessary – as she sees it, Labour already agree with all the key aspects of her proposal anyway.  It was interesting, though, that the first thing she mentioned when talking about the areas of agreement between the Tories and Labour was the ending of freedom of movement.  This aspect of why people voted Brexit has been at the forefront of her mind from the outset; the card which trumps everything else.  I don’t think that she’s particularly concerned about customs unions or membership of the single market; her one reason for opposing both is that they would carry a requirement to allow free movement to a greater or lesser extent.  And although she frequently talks about having the right to negotiate independent trade deals for the UK, I doubt that she’s over-exercised about that either, just as long as she can stamp out free movement. 

I wish that I could be confident that she isn’t right in her assumption that ending freedom of movement between the UK and the rest of the EU is as big a priority for Corbyn and the Labour Party as it is for her.  There’s something rather depressing about the thought that the one big idea which unites the government and the main party of opposition is the deliberate restriction of citizens’ rights.

'Honouring the outcome'

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At the heart of the PM’s demand that other parties back her deal is the idea that the way people voted should be respected.  After all, according to her, not only did the leavers win the referendum, but in 2017 the voters went on to back, overwhelmingly, the Labour and Conservative parties, both of which published election manifestos which committed to delivering Brexit.

Up to a point, her argument has some validity – but as is invariably the case with Theresa May, even when she’s telling the truth (infrequent as that may be), she can only ever manage part of the truth.  So, she’s right when she says that a 52:48 vote in favour of a vague undefined Brexit means that people voted to leave, under the rules of the referendum as they were agreed.  There was a considerable amount of law-breaking and dishonesty, true enough, and the vote was only ever supposed to be ‘advisory’: but in essence, it’s hard to argue against the idea that it delivered a mandate for ‘leaving the EU’.

But when it comes to the terms of departure, or the type of Brexit, her argument promptly falls apart.  Since her party is in government, and that party’s manifesto stated clearly that Brexit means leaving both the Customs Union and the Single Market, she demands that others must fall into line.  However, the electoral mandate which she claims for that is a good deal less clear cut than the electoral mandate for the principle of Brexit.  Because even if the referendum never spelt out the meaning of ‘Leave’, the parties' manifestos in 2017 did.  So, although the electorate weren’t given a choice between types of Brexit in the 2016 referendum, they were given such a choice in the 2017 election, and the PM’s refusal to consider the content of more than one of those manifestos is part of the problem in reaching any sort of consensus.  Her party may be the largest party by votes and seats, but in terms of electoral mandate, the position is rather more complex.

Under the rules which are used in the UK for General Elections, the percentages of votes cast show that the Tories, on a manifesto of 'no Customs Union, no Single Market', gained 42.3% of the vote.  That means that her party’s vision of what Brexit should be was rejected by the electorate on a roughly 58:42 split – a significantly bigger margin than backed Brexit in the first place.  Whilst Labour’s manifesto equally clearly stated that the party would respect the result of the referendum, it also said that any agreement reached by the party would emphasise “retaining the benefits of the Single Market and the Customs Union”.  Applying the percentages of votes once more, Labour’s proposed Brexit model was rejected by a margin of 60:40. 'Our proposal was rejected by a smaller margin than yours' doesn't strike me as the most compelling argument for a particular course of action.  As far as I’m aware, no party represented in parliament proposed the ‘no deal’ option being pushed now by more than half of the Tory MPs, which means that not only are they ignoring their own manifesto commitment, they are also demanding an outcome on which precisely zero MPs were elected in 2017.

Since neither manifesto gained the party presenting it a majority in terms of seats – let alone in terms of votes – any agreement between them means that at least one of the parties must move away from what their manifesto said.  It’s been obvious for some time that the PM’s idea of ‘compromise’ is that it’s something that everyone else must do because she’s the PM, but there is no way politically that Labour can fall in with that (even if, as many of us suspect, Corbyn would quite like to do so); they have to be seen to be getting at least one major concession to their position.  Personally, I still doubt that anything much will come from the talks; I suspect that May’s real objective is simply to pile even more pressure on the dissidents in her own party (although her approach continues to look counter-productive in that regard) but leave herself in a position to then blame Labour if that fails.

But let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that a compromise of some sort does miraculously emerge, under which she drops her opposition to a Customs Union and Labour drop their insistence on remaining close to the Single Market (or some other combination of rubbed out red lines).  What that will mean is that the deal which parliament will then be asked to vote on is one which was not only not on the table in the 2016 referendum, it was also an option which nobody was even given the option of supporting in the 2017 election.  In effect, the outcome of the PM’s demand that what the people voted for must be delivered would become an argument that what no-one voted for must be delivered, and that it must be delivered without asking what the people think because they’ve already told us that.  It’s a very strange definition of ‘democracy’ and makes a complete mockery of the PM's demand that the ‘will of the people’ must be delivered, even if it were possible to believe that the ‘will of the people’ had not changed one iota in three years.  At the very least, it's a highly selective way of 'honouring the outcome'.

It's still Plan A

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The entire cabinet was given an hour’s detention yesterday after agreeing to something (although on the basis of past experience they probably didn’t know what they’d agreed to) so that they couldn’t get their usual blow-by-blow accounts of the meeting into the public domain through ‘briefings’ and whispers before the headmistress had given hers.  When the vegetables eventually found out what they’d agreed to, it was too late to change it.

The statement which she eventually made after the marathon cabinet meeting yesterday has been widely interpreted as representing a significant change in her position (for example, this, from the BBC); some sort of Plan B.  But it looks more like a repackaged Plan A to me.

The core elements are:

·        Meet Jeremy Corbyn to ‘consult’ over possible alternative options give him another lecture on why her plan is the only one available

·        Ask the EU for a short extension which takes us past the point of no return for participating in the Euro elections, and makes any longer extension legally impossible

·        Attempt to bully her own party into line by threatening the extremists with a softer Brexit

·        Attempt to cajole a few more Labour MPs into supporting her by threatening a no-deal Brexit

·        Run down the clock until the new ‘final’ date when the alternative becomes her deal or no deal (without participating in the elections, the right to unilateral revocation would have to have been taken off the table by any grant of an extension by the EU)

·        Resign as soon as she gets her deal through, leaving one of her party’s extreme Brexiteers to take over and tear up whatever agreement she’s managed to reach with the EU and/or the Labour Party

In what way, exactly, is that any different from what she has done to date?  It doesn’t take no deal off the table; indeed, it makes it more likely unless Labour agree to support her plan.  Why else would the Brexiteers in her cabinet have supported her?  Labour MPs would have to be certifiable to trust a single word she says given her history (although sadly that’s about the most credible aspect of her plan).  Hopefully, the EU will show the same wisdom and patience that they showed last time she asked for an extension and offer only a lengthy one (with the option of reducing it in the event of agreement being reached sooner) on condition of participating in the elections.  It is surely clear by now that a rushed decision will be a bad decision, and that the UK needs more time to find a proper consensus plan going forward rather than one achieved by bullying under the pressure of the clock.

Sticking with the most obvious

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Whether or not we believe that there is some deep and clever underlying strategy behind the Prime Minister’s latest attempt to get the House of Commons to agree to her deal probably depends on whether we subscribe to the conspiracy theory of history or the cock-up theory.  I instinctively lean towards the latter; Occam’s Razor has always seemed sensible to me.  There are others, though, who do detect some hint of a strategy, and they are alighting on the possibility that she knows she will lose but is setting out her stall for a snap election in which she can present herself and her party as the supporters of the ‘will of the people’ in trying to implement Brexit, whilst everyone else is merely obstructing her. 

There are a number of obstacles in her way, to say the least.  Firstly, courtesy of her predecessor, calling a general election is no longer in the gift of the PM, and there is absolutely no guarantee that her party will support her in calling such an election while she remains leader.  And even if they did, there is no guarantee that they would win it, particularly if fought by a leader who’s already half pledged to be gone within months (although we know by now that a Theresa-pledge doesn’t necessarily have any strong relationship with the actualité).  No matter how hard Labour try to lose such an election (and to date, they have been making herculean efforts in that direction), there is no guarantee that their own cunning plan would succeed.  And finally, even if the Tories under the leadership of a lame duck PM were to win, with a clear commitment to passing her deal included in the manifesto, there is no guarantee that Conservative MPs elected on such a manifesto would actually vote for it once elected.  They do, as it were, have form on that.  An election would be an interesting diversion but would probably end up changing nothing.

On balance, believing that the PM has a strategy is flying in the face of all the available evidence.  I think I’ll stick with Occam and incompetence as the best explanation.

A new age of politics dawns

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There was, until Brexit, a long-standing tradition that Prime Ministers who could not get their key policies through parliament felt obliged to resign, usually – but not invariably – to call a general election.  That tradition was shattered when parliament rejected the current government’s key policy by a massive majority – twice.  It now seems that, not content with smashing the old tradition, the current PM is trying to establish a wholly new one, which is that the Prime Minister should only feel obliged to resign if parliament supports her key policy.

It’s a novel concept, but where will it end?  Will any future PM who wishes to stay in office for a long time be forced only to put proposals before parliament if he or she can be certain that they will be defeated?  What should be the protocol if a PM wins a vote by accident – does the vote need to be re-run (with the permission of the Speaker, obviously)?  What if, despite successfully losing every vote during a complete term of office, a PM wins the next election?  Is that also to be a resignation issue in future?

On the plus side, new style politics might become a bit more fun that the old-style variety.