Uncharted waters

The new government continued the process it began in its first week of defining, or redefining, relations with the EU. There’s not much to add to what I said about that in last week’s post. The de facto Europe Minister, Nick Thomas-Symonds, had a “constructive meeting” with Maros Sefcovic, and Business and Trade Secretary Jonathan Reynolds spoke of “seeking a closer, more mature, more level-headed” relationship with the EU at a G7 meeting in Italy. There is now tentative talk of the first-ever UK-EU summit (£), which would be at least symbolically significant.

Much more high profile was the UK’s hosting of the European Political Community (EPC) summit. That represented a key moment, acknowledged as such by Charles Michel, President of the European Council, in beginning “a new phase in the EU-UK relationship”, but it potentially matters for a wider reason than that. Although as yet not much more than a talking shop, the still nascent EPC may develop into an important forum for European cooperation at a time of uncharted waters for the entire continent (not just the EU) especially as regards defence.

If nothing else, the sight of a British Prime Minister emphasising the importance of his country’s relationship with Europe, and the importance of the European Convention on Human Rights, represented a clear break with the Brexitism of his recent predecessors. This, and the entire way that the UK government approached hosting the EPC, is one, still small, but real, sign that the new government is minded to address what I’ve long argued to be the core strategic error of Brexit, namely its failure to understand the centrality of regionalism to contemporary economics and geo-politics.

Of course, all of this is still only at the (necessary) stage of improving the tone rather than shaping the substance of Britain’s relationship with its regional neighbours. It may be many months, perhaps even years, before it is possible to evaluate its success in practical terms. However, there was a substantive development this week in something which does not require EU agreement, in that the King’s Speech contained planned legislation to make it easier for the UK as a whole (i.e. not just Northern Ireland) to track changes in EU product standards and safety regulations. This is significant in that it partially damps down ‘passive’ regulatory divergence which, since Brexit, has been the main driver of regulatory divergence from the EU, and would have become more so, given various upcoming EU regulatory changes.

It is also significant as it marks a formal recognition of what the Tories had anyway been forced to acknowledge in practice, namely the ‘Brussels effect’, and its particular gravitational pull on the UK for reasons of geographical proximity and economic integration. However, this particular measure doesn’t stop the accumulation of Brexit effects in other regulatory areas and, although the UK will be the main (temporary) beneficiary of a new delay to the introduction of the EU Entry Exit System (EES), that, whilst no doubt a relief to the government, is in no sense the fruit of  any improvements there may have been in the UK-EU relationship, it’s just another technical overrun.

As so often, Rafael Behr sums up the current situation well, writing that “the era of Brexit as a faith-based system of government, setting precise theological parameters for acceptable policy, is over. But that means a new era of Brexit as a different cluster of economic and diplomatic headaches is just beginning.” In that respect, the Brexit process may be entering calmer waters but they are still, inevitably, uncharted ones.

Tories: stick or twist?

Brexiters will, no doubt, be infuriated by these developments but they have other things to occupy them. For the Tory Party and its conjoined twin, Reform, are entering uncharted waters of their own. It’s easy to dismiss what they are up to as irrelevant. It’s satisfying to do so, too, after all the years where every piece of gormlessness or nastiness from every pipsqueak on the Tory backbenches had to be taken seriously since it did, in fact, often have serious consequences. However, it does still matter, in that what happens now to the political right will eventually shape politics, including the politics of the UK’s relationship with the EU. Ultimately, it will determine whether Brexit was a prelude to Brexitism being a permanent presence in British politics, or an aberration that could eventually be corrected.

As the dust of the election has settled, it has become clear that the scale of the Tory defeat was both too small and too large to be easily processed by the party. By any normal standard, it was an historically catastrophic defeat. But compared with some of the most dramatic predictions, which conjured up the possibility of a near complete wipe-out, the Tories did reasonably well. The consequence is that they have enough seats for some kind of ‘business as usual’ approach to be just about possible, and yet too few for it really to be credible.

What ‘business as usual’ would mean is the idea that this was just the normal turn of the cycle of electoral fortunes, perhaps bigger in scale, but no different in kind, to those which have periodically happened before. Combined with the widespread idea that Labour has enjoyed only a ‘loveless landslide’, this could suggest that, whilst noises about ‘learning lessons’ will be made, there will be no ‘root and branch’ re-appraisal of the party or its fundamental purpose and identity. In leadership terms, this would probably be signaled by the choice of James Cleverly, Jeremy Hunt or even Kemi Badenoch, currently the front-runner amongst the Conservative membership according to both  a Conservative Home poll, where she scores 26%, and a YouGov poll, which has her at 31% (Cleverly is at 9% and 10% in the respective surveys, Hunt at 7% and 12%).

It may seem odd to identify Badenoch, who is clearly on the right of the party, as a kind of continuity candidate, but it is correct in the terms I mean it. Yes, she is a Brexiter and a culture warrior. Yes, some of the Ultras have praised her for being one of the few members of Sunak’s cabinet willing to make a public case for the ‘success’ of Brexit. But she enraged them when, alongside Sunak, she put a stop to their crazy idea of scrapping the entirety of Retained EU Law, defiantly declaring that she was doing so as she is a conservative rather than an anarchist. It was a telling phrase, as it captured and critiqued the frenzied destructiveness of the Brexit Ultras. She has also been highly critical of Suella Braverman since the election. So she isn’t someone who is fully aligned with the Brexitists. Equally, whilst she has been highly critical of Sunak’s “election blunders” (£), what this suggests is quite a shallow reading of the defeat, as if it were tactical rather than epochal. So in these ways she is a ‘business as usual’ rather than a ‘root and branch’ candidate.

But it seems obvious that ‘business as usual’, whilst a possible approach, is not, indeed, a credible one. It doesn’t address the evident creaking of the party machine or the demographic challenge it faces. The headline figure of 121 MPs conceals the fact that 80% of Tory seats, far more than the other parties, are held with only small pluralities of the vote, and that the party is heavily reliant on older voters. More fundamentally, such an approach does not address the gaping ideological fissures within the party or the manifest desire of many within it to have a showdown over the very meaning of conservatism. It’s conceivable that ‘One-Nation’ Conservatives might nod along with some attempt at business as usual under any of those three leaders. It’s not as if they have exactly shown Cromwellian resolve to stand their ground over the last few years. But it is surely inconceivable that the Brexitist National Conservatives (NatCons) will do so.

The coming showdown

The NatCons just about contained their loathing of Sunak whilst in government, but only just about. There is no chance of them buckling down for a similar attempt in opposition. For this is not about left and right in the familiar sense. Badenoch, Cleverly, and Hunt are right-wing by any normal standard, as is Sunak, and yet he is a socialist and a globalist in the eyes of the NatCons. The latter are a different breed altogether, and for them the very notion of ‘business as usual’ is a sell-out. A report by Polly Toynbee in the Guardian about attitudes amongst those who attended a Bruges Group event after the election provides a good illustration. In a similar vein, Liz Truss may no longer be an MP, but the oxymoronic ‘disruptor Conservatism’ (cf Badenoch’s ‘anarchism’ comment) she represents is still very much alive amongst the kind of people who hailed her mini-budget as a triumph and still regard it, as she does, as having been defeated by a malign, remainer, ‘Establishment’.

So if the NatCons get saddled with a leader who follows any version of a ‘business as usual’ strategy then they will immediately start sniping (and if it is Badenoch, then her conduct to date suggests that conciliation will not be her forte). A few lost by-elections and some poor local election results later, and the new leader will be toppled. This is easy to predict with near certainty because it is exactly how these people, or their political forebears, have conducted themselves going right back to the emergence of Tory Euroscepticism in the early 1990s, whilst the vote for Brexit has added to that ungovernability the implacable conviction that they speak for the silent majority.

All this suggests that later, if not sooner, there will be a face-off between the NatCons and the One-Cons. If it is not later, but comes now, rather than by the circuitous route I’ve just sketched, then, in leadership terms, it will most likely be between Suella Braverman or Robert Jenrick, for the former camp, and Tom Tugendhat, for the latter. In the two current polls mentioned above these candidates score respectively 16%, 7%, and 15% in one survey and 10%, 13%, and 13% in the other.

If chosen as leader, each of these candidates would, in different ways, represent a significant departure from ‘business as usual’. Each might be expected to dig deeper into what had happened throughout the 2010-2024 period, rather than just the Sunak years, though none, even Tugendhat I imagine, would raise the fundamental question of what Brexit did to the Party. Whichever side won – and it is because of this that the party may, in the first instance, seek to avoid this showdown – a good chunk of the party membership, its MPs and, with them, its voters, would defect. That is, the NatCons would defect to Reform if a One-Con wins, and the One-Cons would defect to Labour or the LibDems (or conceivably, in some cases, even to the Greens) if a NatCon wins.

When two tribes go to war

So, now, all this can be turned around to think about the relationship between the Tories and the various versions of Farage’s party (i.e. UKIP, the Brexit Party, and now Reform UK). I referred to them earlier as ‘conjoined twins’ because they fit together like pieces of a jigsaw – distinct in themselves, yet having a unique, overlapping connectivity.

This is obvious in the movement of voters and party members between them, in both directions, over many years. It is obvious in the ease with which Lee Anderson moved from Tory to Reform, and in the plausibility of current rumours that Braverman may defect to Reform, just as Douglas Carswell and Mark Reckless defected to UKIP in 2014 or, just before the recent election, two Reform candidates defected to the Conservatives. It is obvious, too, in the rapturous welcome that Farage received at last year’s Tory conference, and the fact that Nigel Farage would be as popular a choice amongst Tory members for the leadership as all the main eligible candidates, bar Badenoch (13% and 10% in the surveys quoted above).

These are, effectively, one party which has split, initially over the priority given to leaving the EU. Indeed, it’s worth recalling that Farage left the Tory Party in 1992 in protest at John Major signing the Maastricht Treaty, exactly the root of Euroscepticism within the Tory Party itself, before becoming a founding member of UKIP. In principle, the fact that the UK has left the EU has rendered that split redundant. In fact, it has morphed into a split between the Brexitism of Reform and the Tory NatCons, and something even less easily nameable. It’s not simply One-Nationism, though that’s the only obvious shorthand term for it, it’s a complex amalgam of pragmatism, economic and social liberalism, opportunism and respectability, decency and laziness, the remnants of Tory Europhilia and of patrician dutifulness, and a kind of ideology of non-ideology. Interestingly, both sides lay claim to being heirs of Thatcher, much as Leninists and Trotskyites laid claim to Marx.

The way that the Tory vote just about held up at the election so as to yield 100+ seats, whilst the Reform vote was so dispersed that they managed only five seats, makes Farage’s pre-election talk of taking over the Tories redundant. But it is evident that the fate of the two parties remains linked. If the Tories attempt a ‘business as usual’ approach they will continue to leak votes and possibly MPs to Reform, especially if, as is likely, Farage’s party starts to win some by-elections, local elections, and even seats in the Welsh Senedd. If the Tories flip to One-Nationism, there will be a major exodus to Reform. If the Tories flip to National Conservatism, then it’s not obvious that they can survive without merging with Reform, and little reason why they shouldn’t do so, or at least make some sort of pact. That is what Braverman already favours, as do almost half of Tory Party members according to current polling. And, whether they merge or not, in this scenario there will be a major exodus of One-Nationers. There just doesn’t seem to be any viable strategy for the Conservative Party.

Unreformable?

That doesn’t however, exhaust the travails of the political right, because if the Tory internal coalition is now highly combustible, it is by no means the case that Reform is a stable entity, or that it is well-equipped for the uncharted waters of its new role and aspirations as a Westminster political party. For one thing, it is heavily dependent on one individual, Farage, and, astute as he is at cultivating his media persona, he has vulnerabilities. His Putinophilia is the most obvious, but so too is the vanity that, as can already be seen, makes him more interested in posturing in the US and his GB News show than in the daily grind of being MP for Clacton or of party management.

Relatedly, Reform has almost nothing in terms of grass-roots organization or local government presence (of the sort that makes the LibDems so resilient, whatever happens to their Westminster vote). In that respect, it isn’t even as well-developed as UKIP had been. Many of its candidates at the last election have already generated scandal, and there may well be more to come. And it is also already under challenge over its governance, or lack of it, from ousted Deputy Leader Ben Habib.

Habib is a ludicrous and unpleasant character, but the governance issue is real and won’t go away. The episode also revealed other uncomfortable truths about the party. For Habib’s summary sacking was part of the changes that saw party donor Zia Yusuf installed as chairman, provoking some Reform supporters to racist outrage about a Muslim holding this role. Indeed, part of Farage’s problem is that were he to allow the party to democratize he would also open the floodgates of influence to people who would undermine his attempt to make the party appear respectable and electorally viable.

In short, it would not be absurdly risky to bet on Reform imploding before we get to the next election. Equally, were the Tories to merge or even just form a pact with them, that would entail taking a share of the fallout from such an implosion.

The looming danger of Donald Trump

Looming beyond all of the issues discussed in this post is the uncharted water of a possible second Trump presidency, something that seems more likely, and certainly came to renewed prominence, with the failed attempt to assassinate him last weekend. His victory in November – and it is important to recognize just how imminent this possibility is – would pose profound problems for any British government, exacerbating the sense that Brexit has left the UK floundering alone, outside any major political or economic bloc, despite the very tentative developments mentioned above.

The consequences are set out in detail in a recent briefing by Luigi Scazzieri of the Centre for European Reform, but, in broad terms, it would put a fresh premium on better relations and greater integration with the EU, especially as regards defence, but also trade. That would clearly be consistent with, and would provide further justification for, Labour’s general approach (as would a Biden victory, though for different reasons). To that extent, the Labour government is better positioned to deal with the consequences of Trump 2.0 than the Tories would have been.

But as regards the relationship with the US itself, whilst it is indeed true that any UK government would struggle with Trump, Labour will find it especially difficult. The personal and ideological differences between Starmer and Trump are huge, notwithstanding reports this week of a positive conversation. That will become all the more evident since it’s clear that another Trump administration would be even more extreme than the first one. Already Trump’s freshly-announced running mate, JD Vance, has showed his contempt for the Labour government, specifically. It’s not clear how easily normal diplomacy will be able to smooth UK-US relations this time round. Equally, whereas last time, as always, a lot of the nuts and bolts of the relationship were maintained at the level of official bureaucracies, it’s not clear how those on the US side will fare under what seems likely to be a relentless assault from Trump.

At the same time, if Trump wins it will represent a new phase in the long and complicated story of his relationship with Brexiters, or Brexitists. His first election gave them a particular fillip, persuading them that they were part of a populist tide of history, whilst he, himself, laid claim to being ‘Mr Brexit’. Since then, there has been far more open intellectual and ideological traffic between Brexitists and the US radical right, exemplified by the explicit links between the National Conservatism movement and the British NatCons, including Jacob Rees-Mogg, David Frost, Miriam Cates, and Liz Truss (who this week openly endorsed Trump’s campaign). Trump 2.0 will put momentum into their parallel desire for Brexit 2.0.

And that is before we even come to Farage, who will undoubtedly seek to make much of his own ‘special relationship’ to act as if he were Britain’s de facto Ambassador. Trump will encourage that, both as a way of cocking a snook at Starmer’s government as well as for fairly obvious psychological reasons. For Trump, like a school bully or a gangland boss, thrives on the kind of cringingly undignified fanboydom that Farage all too happily provides (and, presumably, thinks earns him the esteem rather than the contempt of his hero).

However, Farage may find, as he briefly tasted during the election campaign over his remarks about Ukraine and NATO, that lining up with Trump in the coming years will, finally, break the largely easy time he has been given by the media and, even, break his hold over some of his supporters. For clearly the biggest danger from Trump 2.0 is what it would mean for Ukraine, which is likely to be tragic, and for emboldening Russia, which would be profoundly dangerous for peace in Europe, with the nightmare scenario being open conflict in the Baltic states. Even without that nightmare, the consequences of these uncharted waters for the UK and its politics are difficult to predict, but will be profound. They may well be even more profound than those of Brexit but, in any case, they will certainly make the folly of Brexit even clearer.

Correction, 20/07/2024: In the post I wrongly say that Kemi Badenoch explained her approach to REUL by saying she was a conservative not an anarchist. In fact, she said 'arsonist' not 'anarchist'. I don't think it affects the substance of my point, though