ABHI Brexit Update: A Festive Futurology
I love Christmas. A very big fan. Always have been, all that guilt assuaged indulgence. With that in mind, I am engaging in a, probably completely over the top piece of self-indulgence, as I present this week’s Brexit Blog as a Christmas special. My defence of this approach, aside from the season, is that reality these days seems to be a looser concept that it perhaps once was. So, in offering my most sincere thanks to the many of you who have taken the time to say nice things about my writing this year, wishing you a peaceful Christmas and hoping you get to spend some quality, uninterrupted time with the people you really want to be with, this is my attempt at a seasonal spectacular. This is complete and utter stuff and nonsense. This is fantastical, festive futurology. In reading it, please remember that speculation is foolish. Merry Christmas everyone.
You will all know, of course, of my good friend the Doctor. She actually had to intervene in the Brexit process herself some time ago. She needed to prevent a live TV debate amongst Political Party leaders taking place on Sunday 9th December 2018. That would have disrupted the Doctor’s own schedule and, in turn, threatened the future of the Universe as it had been planned. It is with her help now, that I write this in the aftermath of the 2022 General Election.
In scenes reminiscent of those from 25 years ago almost to the day, a new Labour Prime Minister strode along Downing Street this morning, having reinvented and reinvigorated his party and inflicted a crushing defeat on a discredited and disheveled Conservative administration long past its sell by date. Labour’s victory, its margin and the extraordinary circumstances that led up to it, had been three and a half years in the making, having their genesis in the crazy chaotic period either side of Christmas 2018.
However obvious her personal integrity, however impressive her resilience, the tenure of Theresa May as Prime Minister is now regarded as one characterised by weak leadership, poor judgement and a stubbornness in persevering with a clearly flawed course of action of Charge of the Light Brigade proportions.
It is alright to make mistakes. It is allowed. To some extent it is to be encouraged, as it is probably the best way to learn. But, as the Cornish Pirates have found in this, their first season in the Huawei, RFU Premiership, you cannot keep making basic errors and expect to emerge victorious. May’s first and, although we did not know it at the time, probably fatal mistake, was to approve the unnecessarily early triggering of Article 50. It was a sign of the lack of authority that would cause her to cave in to the demands of whichever faction of her party was in front of her at the time, and also demonstrated her lack of willingness and ability to listen to good, solid, well-intentioned advice when it mattered. Starting the process in March 2017, handed her negotiators a ticking clock when they were hopelessly unprepared to go to Brussels. It also ceded a tactical advantage to the EU27, for whom time was a far less significant consideration.
Calling a snap election later that year, when she said categorically there would not be one, may have made some sort of sense at the time, although I have always contested that the casual way in which the House of Commons brushed away the Fixed Term Parliament Act, was nothing short of scandalous. But the way she ran the campaign, all presidential, I know best, my way or the highway, proved to be disastrous. Had she delivered the 100-seat majority that some were predicting, it might have been another thing, but, as I said at the time, she failed to win an unlosable election. She had no mandate to deliver Brexit on her terms. Worse still, to prop up her government, she had to enter a confidence and supply arrangement with the Democratic Unionist Party. Having taunted the opposition with the refrain that there was “no magic money tree” to bail out ailing public services, she proved its existence by finding a £1 billion sweetener for the deal. Weak leadership, poor judgement. And the DUP of all people in the circumstances. Anyone who had considered it for more than about a minute, realised that the whole of Brexit would play out on the Irish Border. There, local trade issues operate locally. 10,000 pigs a week go from North to South for processing, and virtually all the milk output of the North goes South. A common travel area between the UK, Channel Islands, Isle of Man and the Republic of Ireland was codified long before the EU existed. People born on the island of Ireland can adopt British, Irish or dual citizenship. Addressing these issues in a way that was consistent with the UK’s approach to the rest of the EU, and did not necessitate a return to a hard border, was always going to be tricky. In the end it proved impossible.
May had been consistent in her approach to Brexit. She had decided that the best way to avoid the associated economic disruption, was to stay as close as possible to existing arrangements. It was there in the series of Future Partnership and Position papers in the summer of 2017, and embedded in to the “Chequers Agreement” with her Cabinet in the Spring of 2018. And it was there in the deal that negotiators finally agreed. At every turn people told her that it was not Brexit. At every turn people told her it would never be ratified by the UK Parliament. At every turn Ministers resigned. She carried on regardless. The stubbornness.
Late in 2018, May achieved the inauspicious distinction of being the first Prime Minister in British history to lead a government found to be in contempt of Parliament. The crime was to fail to disclose the text of legal advice provided on the Irish border, when everyone knew what that text would say anyway. The poor judgement.
Subsequently, and faced with large, humiliating defeats, she twice denied MPs a “meaningful vote” on the terms of the Withdrawal, when she had said categorically that the votes would take place. Eventually, in February 2019, with no deal that could be approved in sight, and with the ticking clock perilously close to zero, May surrendered to the inevitable and called a second Referendum. She had said categorically that there would not be one.
She had already conceded that she would not lead her party into the next election, but when the people decided that they should, after all, remain in the EU, May was unable to deliver the one thing she had committed to, and stepped down immediately. That Michael Gove was seen as the solution illustrates the predicament the Tories found themselves in. A committed leaver now having to clean up the mess and extinguish burning bridges. Gove has limped into this election, an increasingly irrelevant figure, a monochrome dead man walking in much the way John Major was in 1997. In truth, Gove had no hope from the outset. All his energies were directed at preventing his bitterly divided Party, teetering on the brink, from actually pressing the self-destruct button. That he managed it is not an inconsiderable achievement.
But all was not exactly rosy with the Opposition during this period either. Few foresaw the sudden and dramatic events that occurred in the Labour Party following the reversal of Brexit. Jeremy Corbyn’s popularity dipped sharply after the Referendum. Many in his Party became frustrated at the lack of a clear and decisive direction. Others argued that, given the margin in the so-called People’s Vote, had Labour come out more strongly in favour of a second referendum, they would have been able to force an early General Election. As it was, Gove was never now going to effectively hand over power, and his parliamentary majority, threadbare as it was, ensured Labour could not force his hand. This time a Conservative PM had decided the Fixed Term Parliament Act was a good idea.
Labour began to leech talent. A number of promising backbenchers took the Northstead or Chiltern Hundreds, a couple, provocatively, accepting high profile positions in the European Commission. Whilst Labour did well enough in the ensuing by-elections, each further undermined Corbyn’s authority, and one allowed the return to the UK Parliament of David Miliband.
A decade after he had vanquished his Brother in a leadership election, Ed, soon to be Lord Miliband, turned provider. Using the inexplicable and quite remarkable rise in his Statesmanlike credentials since blowing his chance in 2015, and his credibility with the Unions, Ed was able to convince the Party that a move back towards the centre was in its own, best interests. Corbyn read the runes and, last year, stepped aside to let Millie the Elder succeed unopposed.
The last few months have been nothing short of a victory parade for the new PM. Significant has been the burgeoning relationship with the US President, the somewhat mysterious and hitherto unheard of philanthropist, Kris Kringle. Little is still known about Kringle, although he appears to be a decent, compassionate man, evidenced by his recent decision to grant a pardon to his disgraced predecessor, Donald J Trump. Trump was looking at a substantial jail term, faced with a string of indictments. However Kringle reckoned that, especially as Trump’s, now seized assets, had turned out to be virtually worthless, that there are only so many times you can kick a man on the ground, however deserving the punishment.
The relationship between the two leaders has already born fruit, with the US offering new, favourable terms to the EU in a renegotiated Trade deal. Miliband’s diplomatic skill, honed as Foreign Secretary, and his most recent role as international do-gooder, have allowed progress in the Middle East peace process, and relations with China, North Korea and Russia continue to thaw.
As I write, Miliband’s car is returning along the Mall, outriders resplendent in the warm, high summer sunshine. Britain sits more firmly at the heart of Europe than ever, NATO is at its strongest in a generation, and the prospects of peace and prosperity feel better than they have for some time. It almost feels like Christmas.
