On Monday, the British parliament will votes on a new set of indicative votes, hoping to find one that contains the elusive formula that can gain a majority that will pass as a legislative option, after the previous such exercise sent all the options to defeat. It now appears that Theresa May is also planning to put forward her thrice (or twice depending on how you view the third vote) defeated Brexit plan to parliament for a fourth vote later in the coming week. This time she has upped the stakes and threatened to call for a general election if it fails, no doubt hoping that the fear of Jeremy Corbyn winning the election and becoming prime minister will scare the hell out of all the Conservatives and neoliberals within the Labour to vote to pass her plan.
But given the rules of parliament, if her plan fails she cannot call for an election on her own but needs a two-thirds vote in parliament and many Conservatives are threatening to rebel and vote against such a motion. The Labour party has been calling for an election but I think it unlikely that she will put herself in the position of having to largely depend on the opposition to pass a motion that she advances. It would be the ultimate humiliation even for someone for whom humiliation has become almost a daily ritual.
This flowchart describes the options as things stand today.
When there is complete and utter breakdown like this, one needs something that restores clarity. But who or what can provide it? Ordinarily an election is the solution to get a mandate on such a divisive issue. But that would only hold true if one major party were strongly for Leave and the other strongly for Remain. But that is not the case here, at least at this moment. It seems like both parties would campaign on who was better able to negotiate a deal, a path that seems unpromising if one seeks clarity. Both major parties are also internally divided into warring factions, especially the Conservatives, with long-time party members facing the wrath of their constituents for not backing the Leave position. The passion of the Leave voters reminds me strongly of the Tea Party and Trumpists.
A second referendum may be better at arriving at a decisive result but that would depend on what the winning referendum question was. If the vote is to Remain, that would be at least clear and decisive. If the vote was to Leave again with no precise guidelines given for what the deal should include, we would be back to where we are now, except that there would be much more pressure to hammer out any deal at all, however bad.
There is another option: a GE can be called if the government loses a no-confidence vote (by simple majority), and no other government can be formed and win such a vote within two weeks. So we may yet see the incredible spectacle of the government calling for a no-confidence vote in itself… Which is obviously ridiculous, but not really that much more ridiculous than what we’ve seen so far.
@ 1 Dunc
So we may yet see the incredible spectacle of the government calling for a no-confidence vote in itself
That was close, I had a cup of tea to my lips when I read that.
The bizarre thing is, I can actually understand your point. The Tories could do it. Clearly Lewis Carrol is writing the script for this.
If the Govt does this, what happens? As Mano says, it does not see that Labour or the Tories have a united front. Does the UK suddenly get two new parties the L’s and the R’s each composed out of fragments of the old parties?
What, in the mean time, is Scotland doing? Is this total confusion in Westminster helping the cause of independence or is Scotland just watching in bemused horror?
Nobody knows! Isn’t it fun?
For some time now, I’ve been making the argument that the largest single block in Parliament is the combination of the Blairite wing of the Labour Party and the “moderate” wing of the Tory party (what they used to call the “wets”), if only they could get over their instinctual party loyalties. There have been various mutterings (most recently from John Major) about the possibility of a “national unity government”, which I could see happening. Or you might see more people jumping ship to The Independent Group plc (or whatever they’re calling themselves now)… Certainly, both major parties look poised to tear themselves to shreds, but what happens next is anybody’s guess.
It’s a good question, but not an easy one to answer. The polling I’ve seen generally indicates that independence is more popular than Brexit, and that leaving the EU (particularly without a deal) would tip independence support into the majority, but it’s not a done deal by any means. You can read some of my thoughts on the matter in this comment here. Thus far, Nicola Sturgeon is speaking out very forcefully against Brexit, but keeping her powder dry on the topic of a new independence referendum. The matter is significantly complicated by the fact that somewhere around 40% (IIRC) of independence supporters also voted Leave, so arguing for independence as a means to remain in (or, more likely, rejoin) the EU is likely to alienate a fair number of them. Once you start trying to figure out how many people care more strongly about membership of the EU or membership of the Union, and in which direction they vote as a result, things get pretty complicated.
All I can say is that I personally know a number of people who’ve come around to supporting independence purely as a result of Brexit, having been opposed previously. Others point to the Brexit mess and make the not-entirely-unreasonable argument that Scottish independence would be at least as bad. Certainly I’d have to admit that, whilst I still support independence on balance, I now think it would be much more complicated and difficult than I did at the time of the last referendum. But I think I may be unusual in that… If anybody else is having similar thoughts, they’re keeping them to themselves.
Heh. Thats been the Republican party platform from Reagan’s time.
Dunc @#3,
Would the realignment you envisage be able to work beyond this single issue?
Mano, @ #5: I believe so, since I’ve always considered the Blairite wing of the Labour party to be basically a bunch of Tory-adjacent entryists who wouldn’t recognise true Labour values in a million years* -- but then I abdicated my right to criticise when I swore I’d never vote for Labour again, sometime around 2003. You might be better off asking somebody closer to them.
* Possibly more accurately, I think the mainstream of both major parties has become what Charlie Stross once referred to as the beige dictatorship.
I’ll step in an offer the opinion that yes, if the right of the Labour party (i.e. most of their actual MPs) and the left of the Conservative party (again, most of their actual MPs) were to bite the bullet and put their heads together, they’d form a comfortable majority (for now). And that majority would be (almost) entirely composed of politicians who are for Remaining. I’m not convinced, even were they to manage to wave a magic wand and form such a party overnight, that they’d have the gall to simply disregard the referendum result, repeal A50 and get on with the business of governing the country -- which is what I think should happen.
They’d probably call another referendum, and offer two choices: Remain, or no deal exit, with all the nightmares that would lead to. And they might actually get a grip of the campaign and do it properly, and put measures in place that would prevent (or at least mitigate) the illegal acts of the Leave campaign last time. And at this point, I’m reasonably certain that Remain would prevail. Then all they’d have to do is deal with the likely riots -- Leave voters are the stupid, violent ones of course, so civil unrest in the event of a cancelled Brexit is likely.
The central lesson that can be learned from the nonsense of the last three years is that this country is NOT split, as our parliamentary party system is, between old ideas of Left and Right. It’s not split between privatisers and nationalisers, between employers and employees, between capitalists and socialists. It’s split, in my experience of conversations with Leavers (some of them in my own family), between, on the one hand, people who follow politics, read newspapers, google terms or references they’re not familiar with, have a healthy cynicism about the agenda of the mainstream media and in particular the Murdoch-owned press, and can name (for instance) the current foreign secretary, and on the other hand, people who know what they believe. Or as I have come to think of them -- morons. (What they believe is usually a farrago of bullshit they’ve been fed over decades by the press, but they’re about as reachable on this subject as your average jihadist on the subject of gay rights.)
And there about as many of them on the left as on the right, which mean BOTH our main parties have to be terrified of upsetting them.
If the right of Labour and the wets of the Conservatives got their act together, personally I’d be pretty happy. Blair’s government left us with peace in Northern Ireland, the minimum wage, SureStart centres, civil partnerships, and a whole bunch of other good stuff. History being the cruel thing it is, Blair’s footnote in history will be one word: “Iraq”. But if a government could be assembled out of the ashes of the two main parties that was basically an updated version of that, we could definitely do a lot, lot worse.
It won’t happen. Tribal loyalties are way too strong, and fundamentally almost no MPs have the good of the country as their primary consideration. It’s party first, country possibly a distant second, on both sides.
TBH, I’m not so sure… Remember, the Leave voters are also generally older, and thus less likely to actually get out in the streets and start smashing stuff up. There will be a lot of shouting on Question Time, undoubtedly, but I’m not sure about riots. However, my view is from Scotland -- and the most heavily Remain-voting city in Scotland at that -- so my perceptions may be off.
The best thing about Brexit is Bercow:
Thomas Mair is 56.