On Tory Law Breaking

It's the most ambitious crossover event since Brownites and Blairites teamed up to do in the Corbyn project. Writing for the Sunday Times, John Major and Tony Blair have attacked the government for its stated intention to break the Withdrawal Agreement Boris Johnson signed last October, and was voted into UK law in January. They condemn the government's posturing as irresponsible and the damage it's causing the country's international reputation. And who can disagree?

It's long been the contention of this blog that the Tories articulate the interests of the most backward sections of the business class, whether it concerns Coronavirus management or, for that matter, everything else. Indeed, over the course of the last five years the horizon of Tory ambition has contracted quite sharply to the day-to-day survival of the Tory party itself and, latterly, the career of Johnson himself. Major and Blair, as hangovers from a previous age of establishment politics, are aghast because they know, and it's hardly the keenest of insights, that the extreme short-termism of contemporary Tory politics goes beyond discrediting the occupant of Downing Street: it imperils the authority of the state itself.

When Johnson tried rushing Brexit through with unseemly haste last Autumn, it was because his project was time limited. Get Brexit done as quickly as possible, purge the critics, and win an election without dragging it out. The game plan was plain as day from day one of the Tory leadership contest. And so when leading Tories prattle on about unforeseen political circumstances and the pressure the Prime Minister was under to get a deal, the pressure was entirely his. He determined the timetable, he determined the bombastic and reckless approach, and he determined the limited window for scrutiny in the Commons. The unprecedented situation was entirely the government's own contrivance, and the customs border in the Irish Sea between the north and mainland Britain a detail Johnson reinserted into the agreement after Theresa May had excised it.

For Major and Blair, and the grandees who've chipped in this last week, there are three chief concerns. The avoidance of the hardest of hard Brexits, which would exacerbate the problems of Britain's weak economy - already cratered by Tory policy pre- and post-Covid. There's the small matter of other governments wary of signing up to anything with the UK if treaties are rode over roughshod for politically expedient reasons, a message reinforced by US House Speaker Nancy Pelosi this last week. And as for authority at home, if it's okay for the government to break the law in a "very specific and limited way", the state runs the risk of undermining respect for the law for everyone else. Consider the widespread consequences of the Dominic Cummings affair, for example. Without the cloak of the law the real underpinning of state authority, that might is right, is exposed. Tory legal shenanigans short circuit the constitutional flummery on which its legitimacy rests, and who knows what might flow from this down the line. From their point of view, Major and Blair are right to be concerned.

This is one of those rare occasions where the interests of the left and part of the bourgeois establishment episodically align. The law, like all other aspects of the state is a terrain of struggle and a useful tool for checking the arbitrary exercise of executive power. Where we depart from our temporary comrades the former Prime Ministers is the refusal to fetishise law as something sacrosanct. The law is frequently wrong and unjust because of its class character, and as such it is entirely right it be defied in some circumstances, dependent on the politics of the situation and the nature of the struggle. And besides, mainstream politicians are prepared to act unlawfully if they too believe it suits their interests - as one of the two men taking Johnson to task did so spectacularly, until the United Nations provided necessary legal cover after the fact. Nevertheless, this is a thin end of a thick wedge. The Home Office routinely tries deporting people in defiance of court orders, the trial of Julian Assange, whatever one may think of him, is a travesty of legal process, the government ignores the law to dish out juicy Covid-19 contracts to their cronies, and the attempt by Suella Braverman and Robert Buckland - the attorney general and justice secretary respectively - to soft soap treaty breaking is more than a pattern of behaviour. It's a strategy aimed at hobbling the courts, protecting themselves from legal scrutiny and challenge, and allowing the government to do as it pleases. It's the same species of authoritarianmism we've seen from Donald Trump, Viktor Orban, and Poland's Andrzej Duda, albeit with British, Johnsonian characteristics.

Major and Blair have called on MPs to reject the internal market legislation due to come before the Commons tomorrow. For its part, Labour have said it will vote against it if the law breaking provisions are not removed. There's excitable talk of up to 30 Tories rebelling (recent history suggests no one shouldn't hold their breath), and then tying it all up in the Lords. All of which suits Johnson as long as he can convince the Tory base about how the remainers are ganging up to steal their Brexit again, but given how it's his own deal he's now opposing this will stretch the credulity of some. But the theatre, which the Tories are increasingly dependent on, is all that really matters. As Buckland said in his Andrew Marr interview, the proposed legislation won't come into force if the government and EU agree a trade deal anyway. Johnson thinks the noise now is worth the consequences that may never come, though as Major and Blair are right to point out, the casualty of this reckless approach will be the Tory objective of advantageous bilateral trade deals.

This is a pattern we've seen before with Dave and May, one in which increasingly risky bets are placed on gambles offering ever diminishing returns. Being seen to posture and act tough versus the UK's intergovernmental reputation as a respecter of treaties is the dilemma. Given this choice, for Johnson there is no contest. The short-term perception of personal and party political advantage wins out every time.

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