There have been
many moments during the continuing Brexit debacle when I have wondered quite
what the UK has come to. This piece
by Robert Peston was another of those.
In it he says that ministers in the UK Government are left trying to
guess what government policy is on Brexit – they don’t know, and the PM is
refusing to tell them. She’s off to
Brussels today to put her government’s latest request to the EU leaders – but it
seems that she’s the only member of her government who knows what she’s going
to say. And I’m not entirely convinced
that she knows either.
A cynic might
suggest that that’s the only reason she’s not telling them - she doesn’t know
herself – but I suspect that’s only part of the story. The balance in the Cabinet is such that, if
she actually comes down in favour of anything, a number of them are likely to
respond by resigning; in Schrodinger’s cabinet, the uneasy truce can hold only
until someone opens the box.
Dysfunctional as a description doesn’t do justice to the position in
which we find ourselves; this is on a different scale completely.
How cabinet
members square their consciences with the idea that they are bound by collective
responsibility but haven’t a clue for what is an interesting if rather academic
question. I suppose that the spoils and
trappings of power help, but at least a few of them must surely be starting to
wonder whether it isn’t time for a change.
I’d be surprised if some of them at least weren’t starting to wish that
the UK had a written constitution containing a properly thought-through 25th
Amendment with a handy Section 4.
Still, even without that, custom and practice shows that the Cabinet can
remove a PM when they are left with no choice. That day is surely approaching.
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