Financial Times - How Britain’s Brexiters lost control of Brexit
the media pirate
June 29, 2017. Philip Stephens.
Cabinet ministers are in open conflict about the shape of a deal with the EU.
When things are this bad . . . well, they can only get worse. Summer parties at Westminster are reverberating with ghoulish predictions. Among the more dystopian of speculations is that another general election will soon present British voters with a choice of foreign secretary Boris Johnson or Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn as the next prime minister. Sad to say, it could just happen.
Theresa May won the election and lost it. The prime minister has now shored up her minority government by striking a tawdry deal with Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist party. A pact with such a reactionary group of MPs will do the reputation of the Conservatives no good at all. In truth, Mrs May’s premiership is over.
Officially the government’s Brexit policy remains unchanged: it will leave the single market and customs union and banish the European Court of Justice. Politically and, in the view of the Treasury, economically, this is untenable. Ministers are in open conflict about the shape of a deal with the EU27. Mrs May lacks the authority to impose cabinet discipline and the votes in the House of Commons to secure the outcome she favours.
She is kept in office only by the fear of would-be successors that her departure would precipitate another election. Mr Corbyn may have lost the last election but he also won it. He has what the pollsters call momentum. A second election would quite possibly catapult him into Downing Street. For his part, Mr Johnson’s ambition is undimmed by a woeful performance at the Foreign Office. David Davis, the Brexit secretary, and Philip Hammond, the chancellor, are openly touted as alternatives. Mrs May endures daily vilification by the Tory press. No one could blame her for quitting. A year ago Mr Johnson and his fellow Tory Brexiters vowed to “take back control”. Now they have lost control.
In significant respects Mr Johnson and Mr Corbyn are much of a muchness. They are natural soapbox populists with a preference for sloganeering over evidence, experts and reasoned argument. They are prisoners of the past — Mr Johnson of nostalgia for the days when Britain ruled the waves, Mr Corbyn of his memories of the revolutionary socialism of the 1970s. Both are Eurosceptics: Mr Johnson speaks for English superiority; Mr Corbyn has long viewed the EU as a capitalist conspiracy.
The foreign secretary’s response to the election result has been to continue to insist that black is white. A deal offering Britain tariff-free and frictionless trade access to the EU could be wrapped up without any trouble within two years, he remarked the other day. Someone should tell Mr Johnson that these are the benefits you receive by joining the EU rather than by leaving it.
In the manner of Bernie Sanders, the leftwing US senator, Mr Corbyn casts himself the honest politician swimming in a sea of cynical self-interest. The policies may be barmy but they are “authentic”. Labour’s manifesto does not stand scrutiny. It contrives to say Britain can be inside and outside the EU single market, in favour of open immigration but against free movement of workers. A Labour government would spend tens of billions renewing Britain’s nuclear weapons but Mr Corbyn would promise never to use them. A modest increase in the taxes paid by rich individuals and big corporations would pave the welfare state with gold.
You can see the irony. Last year’s uprising against the elites saw Britain turn to the nationalist right. This year’s anti-establishment insurgency has seen it turn sharp left to put Mr Corbyn in sight of power.
The Labour leader has something else for which to thank Mr Johnson. The foreign secretary has always had a strained relationship with the truth. During the referendum campaign he toured the country proclaiming that a leave vote would free up countless billions in funding for Britain’s treasured National Health Service. A remain vote would see the country, and the NHS, overrun by Turkish migrants. Measured against such mendacity, Mr Corbyn’s promises seem little more than economical with the truth.
It is quite possible, of course, that Mrs May will consider it her duty to absorb the brickbats and stick it out in Downing Street. Or, that her departure would see the Tories do something half-sensible by choosing Mr Hammond. What is all but impossible to imagine is that any of these permutations can produce a prime minister and government with the authority and the majority to strike a Brexit deal.
Self-evidently, the outcome of the election has empowered those, such as Mr Hammond, who want to safeguard the economy. But it has not diminished the zeal of the English nationalists who will be satisfied only by a complete rupture with the EU. As for Labour, it will strike an opportunistic pose, exploiting Tory divisions at every turn. The depressing thing is that there is still a pro-European majority in parliament — but crystallising it requires the two main parties to split.
More than a year has passed since the referendum. Neither government nor opposition has produced anything resembling a vision for Britain’s place in the world outside of the EU. Instead we are presented with Mr Johnson and Mr Corbyn. It is tempting to say they deserve each other. The snag is the nation deserves neither.
Read more paid articles free: https://t.me/media_pirate