The madness of Queen Theresa

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Insofar as there is a discernible strategy behind the Prime Minister’s continuing refusal to rule out a ‘no-deal’ Brexit, it seems to be aimed at (a) convincing opponents of Brexit that her deal is better than the alternative, and (b) convincing the EU27 that she’s really, really serious about this, in the hope that they will cave in and throw the Irish (north and south) under a bus to give her what her own party’s extremists want.

The first problem with this, to date, has been that few people believe that she is really mad enough to do it.  Apart from a few swivel-eyed ideologues in her own party no-one seriously believes that no deal will be anything other than a disaster in the short to medium term, which means that both opponents of Brexit and the EU27 have had considerable difficulty in taking her seriously.  It hasn’t helped that there is clearly no parliamentary majority for taking such a step – and probably no majority in her cabinet.   Hiring a ferry company with no ships didn’t exactly help her credibility either.

I have a feeling, though, that perceptions might be changing.  A government prepared to waste billions of pounds on preparations for something which they claim they’re trying to avoid is not a government in control of its senses.  And when we learn that the military are stockpiling supplies on military bases at home and abroad and that the government is actively considering imposing martial law, it might be time to consider the possibility that she really is that mad, and it isn’t just a pretence.

That brings us, though, to the second problem with her ‘strategy’.  Supposing, just for a moment, that she succeeds in convincing everyone that she is mad enough to do it, why exactly would that make the EU27 decide to get rid of the backstop?  When dealing with someone prepared to renege on the UK’s treaty obligations, unilaterally break any agreement made, and lead her country into complete and utter chaos, surely the most rational response is not ‘let’s just give her what she wants’, but ‘there’s no point whatsoever in negotiating with someone like that’?

Protecting 'democracy'

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I’ve noted before that one outcome of the Brexit process has been the way in which those claiming that the EU is ‘undemocratic’ have successfully, if entirely unintentionally, exposed the extent to which the UK’s democracy is far from being as complete as they would have us believe.  Yesterday saw another example.  An elected MP (in this case the member for the eighteenth century) has urged the Prime Minister (who we do not elect) to tell the monarch (who we do not elect) to suspend the House of Commons (which we do elect) in order to stop those who we do elect from over-ruling those who we do not.   And this, apparently, is to ‘protect democracy’.  And he did it – as he does everything – with a straight face.

Subject to interpretation

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One of the consequences of the UK’s membership of the EU over the past 40 years has been the extent to which English has become the lingua franca of all the EU institutions.  Although it’s a second language for most of the players, its international status (which actually, of course, owes more to the US than the UK) means that it is a popular and widespread second language across Europe, and indeed the rest of the world.  If the UK does eventually leave the EU, it will only be an official language in two smallish member states (Ireland and Malta), but notwithstanding that I suspect that English will continue to be widely used in the EU institutions.

There is a problem though for those who speak any language as a second language – they can all too easily interpret the words too literally.  Take this story, for example, reporting that EU diplomats were left in disbelief when, in phone calls to EU capitals after her crushing defeat in the Commons, and her widely-publicised promise to seek out alternatives, all the PM did was repeat her previous demands.  How can second language speakers of English be expected to know that sometimes words mean - and are intended to mean - the exact opposite of what they appear to mean?

Equal members of the union?

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One former Secretary of State for Wales has been sharing his pessimism about the future of his party this week.  Whilst I might share his view that his party could be about to tear itself apart, I see that more as a cause for rejoicing than pessimism.  Still, each to his own.

In the detail of his comments he made the observation that “When you go outside London as I was at the weekend you hear more and more people in the street saying we just need to leave without a deal.  I think we're in quite dangerous territory as a country where certainly a chunk of my party, a wing of my party is fomenting that kind of opinion. It's deeply, deeply irresponsible.” On that, I certainly do agree with him (although I wonder what has become of him that ‘going outside London’ seems to be exceptional).  And not just because of the potential economic consequences; the underlying attitude which allows people to hold such a view is deeply concerning.

It argues, in effect, that we can and should simply disregard the concerns of the Irish, on both sides of the border which the UK imposed on the island.  Indeed, May’s persistence in going back to Brussels to demand change to the backstop arrangements is part and parcel of the same attitude.  Egged on by Johnson, Rees-Mogg et al, she is effectively demanding that the EU sacrifice the interests of one member state in order to give a better deal to a non-member.  It shouldn’t surprise us; we already know that at least one senior Tory has openly been saying that “The Irish really should know their place”; and we know only too well that the UK government would willingly sacrifice the interests of Wales or Scotland (and the outlying regions of England too, come to that) in order to serve what they see as the ‘greater good’ but which we might choose to call ‘the south-east’.

I can understand how and why Anglo-British not-nationalists-at-all have become conditioned into such an attitude (although it’s rather more worrying that so many ordinary people are following them so readily).  They inhabit a world in which it is entirely natural that the biggest and richest get what they want and the interests of the smaller and poorer are brushed aside.  That is the way they would instinctively treat the outlying parts of their own ‘precious union’, and they really can’t understand why the EU is not simply putting Ireland in its place and doing the deal that the bigger countries want.  They don’t understand, in short, why the European Union doesn’t work in the same way as the British Union does. 

From the point of view of an independentista, however, the situation highlights, very starkly, the difference between the two unions.  A union based on historic incorporation and expansion is not the same as a union based on voluntary association by independent member states.  The latter, of necessity, will strive to protect and promote the interests of all its members when dealing with ‘third parties’ which is what the UK decided to become.  It could not be otherwise; if the interests of one of the smaller member states were to be sacrificed, the other small members states could no longer have faith in the whole and the enterprise would be endangered.  Just because the word ‘union’ is used in both contexts doesn’t make them the same thing at all.

An election wouldn't get May off the hook

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There has been a degree of speculation about Theresa May calling a snap election, with reports that some ministers have warned their local activists to be ready.  The Prime Minister has ruled it out and has already promised her party that she will not lead them into the next General Election, but given her record, neither of those are reasons to assume that she won’t do it.

Depending on the extent to which seats actually change hands, an election could certainly change the parliamentary arithmetic, but whether it unblocks the Brexit process is another question entirely.  It would force Labour to clarify its position in its manifesto, and a lot of questions have, rightly, been asked about what Labour’s manifesto would say about Brexit – whenever the next election comes.  Rather unfairly, considerably less attention has been given to the Conservative manifesto.  At one level, this is understandable: the PM writes the manifesto, and we can probably assume that it will refer to the implementation of her deal. 

But to what extent would any such manifesto actually bind the MPs elected on it?  Even if she were to win a working majority in such an election (itself very much open to doubt) is she really stupid enough to assume that Jacob Rees-Mogg, Boris Johnson, Anna Soubry and Dominic Grieve would all suddenly feel themselves bound to support her deal?  An election might well make Labour’s position clearer, but it will do little or nothing to resolve the internal conflicts within the Tory party.  Those conflicts have driven the Brexit mess from the outset; they will continue to do so even if, by some strange chance, the PM were to win a majority of seats in a snap election.  

As far as Brexit and the Conservative Party are concerned, an election would resolve nothing.  It would, though, kick the can a bit further down the road and therefore meet the only discernible political objective which the Prime Minister has.

The right to vote for a fantasy?

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There was a report yesterday that the Electoral Commission is drawing up contingency plans for a second referendum on Brexit.  It’s a sensible thing for them to be doing, albeit that it’s potentially another example of the amount of time and money being wasted on Brexit which could be used more productively elsewhere.  At the moment, I’m not entirely convinced that there will be a second referendum – the Prime Minister hasn’t ruled it out enough times yet.  However, once she has ruled it out a sufficient number of times for us to be certain that it’s going to happen, attention will turn to the question to be asked.  

This is far from being as straightforward as many are assuming; whatever the chosen question, there will be those who will cry foul.  According to Craig Murray, Downing Street is working on a plan to use the alternative vote system, asking electors to rank three options in order of preference (ignoring any potential options other than no deal, no Brexit, or May’s deal).  Once the least popular (probably no deal) is eliminated, the votes of those supporting it would be allocated to the remaining two options.  Whilst holding such a referendum might look like a change of plan by May, it turns out that it’s just another way of getting her own way, the assumption behind it being that there would still be a leave majority which would end up coalescing around her proposal.  And if she’s got it wrong, and there is no longer a leave majority and Remain win the day, it lets her off the hook for cancelling Brexit since she can argue that she gave people the chance to support two alternative types of Brexit.

But the possibility that opinions have changed isn’t the only potential flaw in this putative plan.  It depends on ‘no deal’ remaining on the table despite the obvious parliamentary opposition to it.  That goes some way towards explaining her refusal to even countenance taking the option off the table to enable productive discussion with opposition politicians.  Yesterday, she went so far as to declare that it is ‘impossible’ to remove the option; a statement which did nothing to convince people on her own side, such as former Minister Nick Boles who is bringing forward a Bill to do precisely that.  Theresa May telling lies in pursuit of her own aims?  Surely not.

There is another point to bear in mind as well.  The results of referendums aren’t always easily predictable.  As Cameron found out, calling a referendum between the obvious ‘correct’ answer and an answer which he thought so unlikely that he couldn’t even be bothered to define it accurately doesn’t stop people from voting for the undefined.  And including an option (no deal) on the ballot paper the outcome of which would be a short-term economic disaster doesn’t stop people voting for it either.  It might look like an improbable outcome, but it’s not an impossible one.  There is currently no majority in parliament for a no deal Brexit, but any MP supporting the calling of a referendum which includes that as an option is implicitly committing to vote for that outcome if it’s what the electorate decide.  And a government which even proposes such a referendum would be acting wholly irresponsibly now that the implications are as well-known as they now are.  May’s refusal to rule out such an option may start out as a cunning ploy to get support for what she does want, but recent history tells us that we cannot depend on it not coming to pass.

That does, of course, raise another important question about the nature of democracy.  If the majority of people, in full knowledge of the potential consequences properly and authoritatively spelt out, want a no deal Brexit, why shouldn’t they be allowed to have one?  Of course, proponents of such a course of action will continue to lie and mislead, but don’t people have a right to believe the lies if they prefer?  At the extreme, if people want to vote for every household to be given a free unicorn, why shouldn’t they be allowed to do so?  That last might look like a silly question, but how different is it really to the fantasy for which some people were persuaded to vote in the last referendum?  I find this question of restricting the rights of electors to vote for whatever they want a difficult one in principle; in practice, the only answer that I can give is that no government should ever give the electorate a chance to vote for something which that government is not prepared subsequently to enact.  Cameron did it and left the mess for someone else to clear up.  I wish that I could believe that May will not repeat the same mistake - or, worse still, that she isn't prepared to enact a no deal Brexit.

Breaking the log-jam

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Insofar as the last few days and weeks have clarified anything, it is that there are two major obstacles to making progress in any direction on Brexit.

The Irish ‘backstop’ isn’t one of them.  The backstop itself isn’t something which some people who should know their place, aided and abetted by Brussels bureaucrats, are unfairly and unjustly imposing to fetter the freedom of a great global power; it’s the inevitable outcome of previous international agreements and a series of contradictory demands laid down by the UK government.  It’s a hole which is entirely of the UK’s digging.

The intransigence of Brussels isn’t one of them.  The withdrawal agreement which has emerged is, again, the inevitable outcome of a combination of previously agreed commitments and the red lines laid down by the UK Government.  And the Political Statement on what happens next is as vague as it is because there is no known way of squaring what the UK is demanding with what the EU can ever give without destroying itself in the process, but they had to put something down on paper anyway.

The fact that the House of Commons contains a majority of ‘Remainers’ isn’t the problem either.  Some of them might do so reluctantly, but if they were presented with a deal which meant that the UK left the political institutions of the EU whilst remaining in the single market and customs union, I remain convinced that a majority would probably support it.  The Brexit extremists would argue that it isn’t really Brexit at all, and it might well destroy the Conservative Party (it's an ill wind...), but the only decision taken by the referendum was to ‘Leave the EU’, and in legal and constitutional terms, such a deal would honour that result.  It wouldn’t honour all the wild, contradictory and fantastic claims made by pro-Brexit campaigners, but those claims weren’t on the ballot paper.  Such a deal might really have been “one of the easiest in human history” (© Liam Fox), and had it been presented to parliament within a few months of triggering Article 50, I suspect that it would have sailed through with the support of Remain MPs still shocked by the result.

No, none of these are the real obstacles to sensible progress.  Both the obstacles are actually people – two individuals who are, as it happens, both in the position which they occupy more by accident than design, and who are both incapable of applying flexibility and common sense to adapt to changing circumstances and revise their stances.

The first, obviously, is the Prime Minister herself.  Here is a person who is forever claiming to be ‘listening’ but without hearing a word that is said to her.  If Plan A loses by a huge margin, then Plan B is to explain to the opponents once again why they are wrong to oppose it.  And discussing alternatives must be limited to discussing alternative ways by which Plan A can be pursued.  Even many in her own party realise that this won’t work, and members of her cabinet, including the Chancellor, are actively briefing a completely different approach to that which she is pursuing.  The ‘red lines’ on which she refuses to budge are her interpretation – and her interpretation alone – of the result of the referendum.  They are not an inevitable part of any agreement except in the circumstances where she is directing the negotiations.

The second is the leader of the opposition.  Here’s another individual who is forever claiming to be listening; in his case it’s the claim that it is the members of his party who make policy, not him, and that he is pursuing that policy.  He does, though, seem to be in a tiny minority of members who believe that what he is currently saying reflects the opinion of the membership.  He, too, is suffering from open disagreement by those around him who are saying something very different to him.

Brexit has led to a log-jam in UK politics and in parliament in particular.  It seems to me that the only way to break out of that log-jam is to remove the two individuals most responsible for it.  I honestly don’t know exactly what the outcome of that would be, but I suspect that it would be a rapid and dramatic change in the dynamic.  If – or when – either happens it’s likely to be quite sudden.  And, based on their history of ruthlessness towards leaders in pursuing and retaining power, I expect the Tories to get there first.  If Labour are not to be totally wrong-footed, they will need to follow rapidly.

May may not be as safe as she looks

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I’ve posted previously on the way in which our own priors can colour our interpretation of facts and events; such interpretations can never be entirely objective.  Whilst to most of us, yesterday’s vote in the House of Commons was a resounding defeat, there are those around the Prime Minister who seem determined to interpret it in a rather different way.  

What to one person might appear to be an enormous Tory rebellion might well look to another as having successfully flushed all the rebels into the open where they can be picked off.  And it is indeed plausible that at least some of those 118 Tories who voted against the deal might be persuaded to vote for it when, as seems likely, it (or something very similar) is re-presented to parliament.  There is a slight flaw in that analysis, however; amongst the 198 Tories who voted for the deal, there will undoubtedly be some who did so out of a sense of loyalty to their government, knowing that it would be defeated anyway.  They may not feel the same obligation again and keeping all of them onside next time round is as big a challenge as winning round those who voted against the first time.

Would May really be silly enough to present essentially the same package to parliament again?  All the signs are that that is exactly what she proposes to do.  It’s clear that her offer to talk to her own backbenchers as well as opposition MPs on the next steps is largely limited to asking them what assurances they need before they will support the deal; she has already made it clear that her own red lines are not up for negotiation.  I used the word ‘asking’ – given her style and approach to date, it’s more likely to be an imperious demand that they fall into line and do as she says.

The Brexiteers continue to live in that fantasy land where the Irish know their place and the EU27 over-ride the interests of a member state in pursuit of the interests of German car makers, despite the fact that those car-makers themselves have already made it very clear that, if push comes to shove, they value the achievement which the single market represents more than they value the reduction in sales to the UK.  David Davis continues to push the line that the EU always manage to find an acceptable deal at the last minute.  He’s right of course; but he overlooks the fact that this is in relation to deals between the members where the interests of all need to be accommodated somehow, and not in relation to deals with outsiders where it is the interests of the EU member states which will always be paramount.

None of us knows what happens next, but a new election looks unlikely – and would resolve nothing anyway.  If Labour were to swing behind the idea of a second vote, the dynamic could change, but Corbyn still looks like a major obstacle to that.  Personally, I wouldn’t be at all surprised if the PM were to resign and her party move quickly to the election of a new leader who could shake off the restrictions of May’s red lines.  She may be feeling secure after having seen off the vote of no confidence by her own MPs, but no PM in history has ever seen his or her central policy rejected like this and been able to carry on.  And the Tory party’s history of leadership changes owes more to men in grey suits operating behind closed doors than to democratic votes of confidence.  Enough members of the Cabinet may yet decide that any progress now depends on her removal.

Who elects the government?

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There’s nothing at all unusual about the way in which politicians have reacted to the apparent rewriting of the rules by the Speaker; those who are happy with the outcome of the vote which he allowed are praising him, and those dismayed by it are criticising him.  There’s something less than entirely honest about supporting whichever process gives the ‘desired’ result, but it’s a natural tendency.

Some of the responses seem to be more than a little ‘over-the-top’ but are all the more revealing for that.  For me, the idea that allowing MPs to amend motions placed before them is some sort of ‘coup’, and ‘threatens the ability of the Government to govern’ exposes just how supine the elected legislature has become.  It also illustrates just how arcane the procedures of parliament have become - and the idea that some motions are ‘unamendable’ and that the government controls the timetable of the legislature both serve to limit the power of the legislature.

It’s worth bearing in mind that, in the UK (and the National Assembly in many ways apes this approach), we do not elect a government, only (part of) a legislature; the government is then drawn from that legislature by whoever the monarch appoints as Prime Minister (usually, but not necessarily, the leader of the largest party).  In effect, for most government activity, ministers then exercise their powers on behalf of the crown, not parliament; they only need parliament to approve their budget and any changes to the law – and a government can, in theory at least, govern for years without changing any laws if it so wishes.  What the Speaker has done has handed back some power from those we don’t directly elect to those we do directly elect, and he’s been able to do so because so much of the procedure of parliament depends on ‘precedent’ rather than on formal rules – the idea that decisions on process taken by one Speaker bind his or her successors for eternity.

More importantly, the row exposes to examination the curious relationship in the UK system between the Executive and the Legislature, and I, for one, don’t much like what I see.  There are several reasons why parliament has allowed itself to become the servant rather than the master of the government – it’s an arrangement which has suited governments of all parties, and because the Executive is drawn from the Legislature there are always plenty of ambitious legislators eyeing a role in government.  There are a lot of aspects of the US system which I don’t like, but in principle, the idea of electing the Government and the Legislature separately has a lot of attractions.  In many ways, the UK system has become much more ‘presidential’ over the years, but in an essentially undemocratic fashion.  Why not go the whole hog and separate the Executive branch completely from the Legislative branch?  We could call it something like ‘giving back control to parliament’.

Inaccurate comparisons

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Apparently, the Prime Minister is planning to compare Parliament blocking or changing the nature of Brexit with the referendum on devolution in Wales in her speech later today, asking people to “Imagine if an anti-devolution House of Commons had said to the people of Scotland or Wales that despite voting in favour of a devolved legislature, Parliament knew better and would overrule them. Or else force them to vote again”. 

But the scenario she presents is not one where a country’s parliament over-rules the result of a consultative referendum held in that country, but rather one where parliamentarians from one country over-rule the people of another, which is quite a different thing.  Parliamentarians from England over-ruling the expressed wish of the Scottish electorate for devolution would, as she says, be unacceptable - although she seems to have no qualms whatsoever about the idea that parliamentarians from England should over-rule Scottish wishes on Brexit.  Neither, as we saw in relation to the Brexit legislation clawing back powers from Wales and Scotland, does she see anything wrong with over-ruling the wishes of the Welsh and Scottish electorates on the details of devolution when it suits her.

One obvious flaw in her argument, of course, is that an “anti-devolution House of Commons” would never have legislated for a referendum on devolution in the first place – indeed, anti-devolution members of parliament did their utmost to prevent the question being put at all.  And we all know that the nature of “devolution” under the supremacist idea of sovereignty which underpins Westminster is that the UK Parliament has the absolute right to change the powers of the National Assembly any time it so wishes, as it has already done in relation to Brexit.

The second obvious flaw is that after the first referendum on devolution to Scotland and Wales, parliament legislated for a second when it became clear that opinion had changed; exactly what she is so strongly opposing in relation to Brexit.  Admittedly, there was a gap of 18 years rather than 3 between the 1979 vote and the one in 1997, but the principle and precedent for holding another vote if opinion appears to have changed is clear enough.  Setting an arbitrary time limit somewhere between 3 years and 18 is just that, arbitrary.  The principle to be considered can only be whether there is sufficient evidence to suggest that a decision taken today in different circumstances might lead to a different result, especially when an overwhelming majority of parliamentarians believe that implementing the original decision would be an unprecedented act of self-harm.

As a result of the utter folly of the Prime Minister herself in calling an unnecessary election in 2017, the parliament which we have today is not the parliament which legislated for the original Brexit referendum in 2016; and it is a key tenet of the UK constitution that no parliament can hind its successors.  There is nothing unconstitutional or undemocratic about a new parliament taking a different view on an issue – indeed, if there were, there would be little point in holding an election. 

A more relevant argument is that both the largest parties in the House of Commons fought the election on a manifesto committing them to implement Brexit, and that failing to do so is a breach of faith with the electorate.  That is a valid argument, and a good reason why it would be wrong for parliament to simply cancel Brexit and ignore the result of the referendum; but it surely can’t compel legislators to simply plough ahead when, in the light of additional facts, they come to see that what they promised is undeliverable in the form in which they promised it.