May knows there aren't about to be any last minute concessions or changes to the deal. But by ditching a vote she knows her rump Tory party were bound to lose and rescheduling it to the never-never, she can play brinkmanship without the catastrophe of seeing her deal voted down in the first place. As Paul Mason observes, holding it in late January - which appears to be the consensus among Westminster watchers for the moment - might make soft rebels on the Tory benches and the odd Labour MP sweaty enough to reluctantly back the deal. Another month of the falling pound, delayed investment and business whingeing will surely do the trick for some. Yet this won't matter appreciably. The polarisation out in the country is unlikely to shift, especially after May's egregious and ungracious dumping on parliamentary democracy. Whether you're leave or remain, left or right, she has shown herself up as a dishonest chancer and a bottler.
Nevertheless, in addition to the brinkmanship May has bought more time for another round of negotiations with the Tory party. Speaking on Andrew Marr on Sunday, Boris Johnson - The Economist's Idiot of the Year - did throw May something of a life line. The usual bluster and Brexit fantasyland nonsense got spun. Likewise, when can you tell Boris Johnson is lying? When he publicly affects concerns for others, as he did so when he said he would feel personally responsible if anyone lost their job because of Brexit. But yes, the lifeline. In the sole point of interest during an otherwise wasted 20 minutes, he said his only real problem with May's deal was the Irish backstop. If this could be fixed, he more or less said he'd be prepared to back the deal. Shifting the Ireland position ain't going to happen for as long as May is in power, but the "reassurances" May is seeking might help Johnson evolve toward a position where he "reluctantly" backs her deal. Why? The majority of the Commons are against the deal, and Tory Brexiteers have made enough noises. But say you're in the I-want-to-lead-the-Tories game, who are the biggest bloc of MPs? The Woke Soubz remainers? Pah. The Moggites? They can't even muster a no confidence party. The wider fraternity of Brexit ultras? Nope. The biggest chunk of Tory MPs are, believe it or not, the May loyalists. Johnson has proved himself the most opportunistic, unprincipled and amoral Tory to grease his way around the backbenches for some decades. If moving to support May's deal gets him closer to Number 10 he will do it.
However, the news the UK can unilaterally revoke Article 50 couldn't have come at a worse time for the government. All of a sudden the remain-minded factions on the Labour benches know a halt to Brexit is, constitutionally speaking, within reach. It doesn't matter that May has ruled out revoking it. After all, what are her promises worth these days? A delay followed by more spanners in the works come January makes its revocation more likely, at least so goes the reasoning. But it also affords Labour's position more weight. If your route to a general election involves not antagonising Labour leavers and keeping remain on board (though the EU vote plays a different role among Labour's voter coalition), then vigorously attacking May's pathetic deal, saying you're going to renegotiate it around your priorities - the central plank of which is a permanent customs union instead of a backstop - and then offer a vote on the final deal is the best way of knitting Labour together for the purposes of winning an election. This becomes all the more credible now Article 50 can be deactivated.
There we have it, another day in Brexitland. The peculiar place where the rules of politics are reversed, and the extraordinary becomes the ordinary. The long grass beckoned and that's where May has thrown her deal. It buys her time, but for what? It reduces May to a Macawber-like character, sat in Number 10 hoping something will turn up. Perhaps Boris Johnson will save her, perhaps the mood of the country will change magically and swing behind the deal. Whatever happens, May's fate and May's Brexit is in the hands of others. Far from taking back control, chaos and uncertainty reigns, and no one has the foggiest about what happens next.
Lions led by donkeys, as ever ...
ReplyDelete"If your route to a general election involves not antagonising Labour leavers and keeping remain on board (though the EU vote plays a different role among Labour's voter coalition), then vigorously attacking May's pathetic deal, saying you're going to renegotiate it around your priorities - the central plank of which is a permanent customs union instead of a backstop - and then offer a vote on the final deal is the best way of knitting Labour together for the purposes of winning an election. This becomes all the more credible now Article 50 can be deactivated."
ReplyDeleteThis makes absolutely no sense. It's as obvious as a pink and blue spotted horse that Labour has no more chance of negotiating its Fantasy Brexit version of have cake and eat it than do the Tories. In fact, Labour's fantasy Brexit is even more fanciful and removed from reality than is the Tories. Continuing to lie to workers for the sake of a Blair-right style attempt at triangulating the vast majority of Labour voters who support Remain, along with trying to retain a handful of Labour voters who might not vote Labour, because, against all historical precedent they might put this single issue above their support for Labour's overall programme, is not just unprincipled, its electorally stupid.
Its the kind of unprincipled riding two horses triangulation that Corbyn and the Left would previously have criticised mercilessly. We all know that Labour could not negotiate its fantasy Brexit, so if it goes into an election promising the impossible, and which Channel 4's Brexit programme's audience demonstrated large numbers of the electorate know is impossible, which is why they rightly laughed at Gardiner's advocacy of such a programme based on unicorn's, and is also why Labour even with this totally dysfunctional government cannot even mobilise a majority behind it, the result can only be disaster.
Either voters will rightly treat the party as not credible, duplicitous, and unprincipled, or if Labour were to win, because the Tories appear even worse, then Labour will inevitably, and quickly fail to materialise its fantasy Brexit proposals, leading to the question, "What Now?" Will Labour push through its own no deal, Brexit? Capitulate itself, or then having wasted all this time, say it has no clue, and seek to avoid its responsibilities by throwing the question back to voters?
Either way it is the route to total disillusion of all those that have rallied to Labour in recent years, and a potential to strengthen the forces of more extreme reaction. Given that Corbyn can't even raise himself to put a motion of no confidence in the Tories, and wants to put off that question until next year, allowing May to set the agenda, it all adds up to a leadership that is drowning rather than waving.
Theresa May is possibly the first of the undead to gain high office, or is that Macron. She is literally a Zombie who is kept in place because the establishment are so shit scared of Corbyn. The BBC, Sky and the msm act as her PR company. We were told before the last general election that May was strong and stable, playing a clever game against the EU bureaucrats and really taking it to the men in suits, a great figure of feminism even. Then when the general election didn’t go so well the BBC, Sky etc suddenly told us that Theresa may wasn’t to blame for this but her 2 advisers were. Advisors who we had never been told about before but as it happens controlled everything Maybot did, from making a speech to going for a dump. The answer to our problems so the BBC, Sky etc told us was to get rid of the 2 advisors and let May show her true leadership skills. And here we stand surveying her qualities.
ReplyDeleteI think Labour can negotiate a different Brexit by not adopting May’s red lines. Remember Corbyn and the Labour Brexit team have had meetings with EU negotiators too so they are far better placed than any internet armchair observers about what is fantasy and what is not. The reason the Tories are still on 38% in the polls is not because of Labours Brexit position but because of deeper system, cultural, economic and historical reasons.
The problem comes when trying to sell the deal domestically. If May can’t get her deal to wash then Labour , with all the establishment railing against it (spending millions of public money to rail against it incidentally), have no chance. And as Kenneth Clarke said we have factions all with varying degrees of a deal. The only honest positions as far as I can see are hard or no Brexit. Hard Brexit will have some probably short term economic consequences and more depressingly will be a victory for the right. No Brexit will be a national humiliation, drive many people to the far right, will cause uncertainly on how Britain behaves within the EU after humiliating itself (I can hear the sniggers in the EU parliament now, an EU parliament that could end up being stuffed full of odious far rightists) and last but not least any chance of further EU integration will be off the table because if Britain can barely accept the EU on current terms then how the hell will it accept deeper integration?
And we haven’t got into how the EU is a fragile thing in itself, being buffered by its own contradictions.
To paraphrase Zizek, Capitalism, very much like Theresa May, is diabolically undead, the harder you cut it the greater it grows, the more you fight it the deeper the woes!