The UK’s new
Prime Minister has been referred to many times in recent days as someone who ‘campaigned
for Remain’. This seems to me to be an
extremely loose use of the word ‘campaigned’.
As I recall, she said little or nothing during the campaign, save to broadly
agree with the anti-immigration line of the Leavers; and there was speculation
about which side she’d support right up until the formal start of the
campaign. I’ve wondered throughout
whether the tag of ‘reluctant remainer’ should not have been ‘secret leaver’;
someone who chose, perhaps simply out of loyalty, to state her support for the
official position of the then government and prime minister without really
believing it.
Whether that’s
true, or whether it’s simply the zeal of the convert, the placing of prominent
anti-EU figures in key positions of influence over foreign relations looks to
me to be a clear indication of her determination to press ahead with Brexit,
regardless of what emerges during negotiations.
It also looks
as though the government’s economic policy will change significantly; the
ideological commitment to ‘austerity’ is quietly being sidelined, and the
rhetoric looks likely to change.
Calls for a new
election because none of us voted for the new PM are the natural but misplaced
reaction of opposition parties – after all, outside of the Witney constituency,
no-one voted for Cameron either. The UK
does not operate a presidential system of government (although personally, I’m
attracted by the idea of separate elections for the legislature and the
executive); we elect a parliament from which a PM is then chosen, and there’s
nothing to stop any party of government changing its leader (and therefore the
PM) at any time.
There is though
a much better argument for holding a new election; if the ‘new’ government
jettisons much of the manifesto on which all the MPs of the outgoing government
were elected, then that is a change compared to what we voted for. And economic policy was central to the Tories’
manifesto just a year ago. I’m not sure
how good an idea a new election is though; I wouldn’t care to predict the
likely outcome. Jumping from the pan
into the fire might not turn out to be the brightest idea.
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