Writing a weekly blog that appears on a Friday morning carries an inherent risk of something important happening later in the day. So it was no doubt tempting fate to begin last week’s post with the observation that it had been a relatively quiet Brexit news week, only for Boris Johnson to resign as an MP that evening, having read the draft report of the Privileges Committee inquiry into whether he had misled the House of Commons over the ‘Partygate’ scandal.
Subsequently, yesterday, the final report was published, and it contained what the BBC’s Political Editor called a “punishingly brutal” and “devastating” judgment both on the original offences and on Johnson’s “campaign of abuse and attempted intimidation” of the Committee and its members, finding him guilty of multiple contempts of parliament. It was a verdict that left no room for doubt about Johnson, and could also be regarded as a vindication of the robustness of Britain’s democratic institutions that he should be held to account in this way, including in the very robust defence the Committee offered of its own process in the face of the vitriolic, Trumpian attacks against it by Johnson and his allies.
In other circumstances this would mark the end of a political career, the definitive exposure of a wholly dishonest ex-Prime Minister and, now, ex-MP, and that may well be the result. Yet, whatever Johnson’s ultimate fate, there is more at stake than that because it is not just about Johnson but about the wider politics of Brexit and of post-Brexit Britain. For this was, indeed, a major piece of ‘Brexit news’, even though, in principle, the inquiry had nothing to do with Brexit, because there’s an ineluctable link between Johnson and Brexit, such that it is impossible to discuss the one without the other.
Johnson and Brexit: conjoined twins
Brexit had many causes, and it is an over-simplification to say, as Guardian columnist Martin Kettle does, that “Brexit was Johnson and Johnson was Brexit”. But it’s quite plausible to say that but for Johnson’s involvement the campaign to leave would not have succeeded in winning its narrow majority. It’s certainly the case that he played a crucial role in shaping the form Brexit eventually took. And, looking at things from the other direction, it is at least arguable that, but for Brexit, he would never have become Prime Minister and that, but for his ambition to do so, he wouldn’t have supported Brexit.
So, like a safebreaker too careless and complacent to wear gloves, Johnson has left his fingerprints all over the Brexit crime scene. And just as his pathological dishonesty, entitled incompetence, grotesque egotism and moral depravity caused his downfall first as Prime Minister and now as an MP, so did they indelibly mark Brexit. From the outset, who better to front a campaign based on lies than someone to whom lying is first, never mind second, nature? Who better to deny the complex trade-offs entailed in the Brexit process than someone who applied his ‘cakeist’ philosophy to every aspect of his priapic, venal life? Who better to oversee a project based on vapid boasts and slogans than someone so lacking in substance and depth that to accuse him of vapidity would be the most generous of flatteries?
Perhaps the most disgraceful thing is that many of these criticisms of him, and more besides, would be made by those who supported leaving the EU. For they always knew that his involvement in it had no foundation of principle or belief. He was never ‘one of them’ – indeed he was never one of any particular group or ideology – he was useful to getting what they wanted, just as they were useful to him in getting what he wanted. This was no Luther or Calvin, dogmatically committed to Reformation, but a political Vicar of Bray, guided by opportunism, albeit with a view to glory rather than mere survival.
“Revenge for Brexit”
All of this is would be so regardless of whether Johnson’s resignation had any specific connection with Brexit. But, in fact, he himself chose to make them connected. Within his more general attempt to depict himself as the innocent victim of a ‘witch hunt’ and a ‘kangaroo court’ (for Johnson, whose supposed qualities as a wordsmith invariably yield snide metal not gold, has no fastidious objection to cliché) he explicitly claimed in his resignation letter, and since, that the reason he had been targeted was “to take revenge for Brexit and ultimately to reverse the 2016 referendum result. My removal is the necessary first step, and I believe there has been a concerted attempt to bring it about.”
It is hardly surprising that he should make this claim, and it is similar to the one made by Dominic Raab about his own resignation as well as those made about supposed ‘plots’ against Suella Braverman (£). In part, it is just a refusal to accept responsibility for his own wrong-doing. But it is also distinctively ‘Brexitist’ in tapping in to the familiar ‘victimhood’ narrative, and the associated idea that Brexit is some ‘anti-establishment’ revolt being undertaken in the face of a shadowy remainer elite ‘plot’ to foil it or ‘coup’ to overturn it.
Thus, equally unsurprisingly, it was taken up across the Brexit Blob as the explanation for Johnson’s demise, a further illustration of the way that Johnson has always been enabled by others and a reminder that, even now, there are still plenty of saddle-sniffers like David Frost to parrot the paranoid squawks about the ‘Remain establishment’ getting its dastardly way (£).
Of the many things that could be said of these fantasies about the anti-Brexit establishment, perhaps the most obvious is that, since Brexit did in fact happen, it can’t be very powerful or effective. The very obviousness of that fact may explain why Johnson defenders like Jake Berry are reduced to the transparent lie that Brexit has been “blocked” by the establishment. It’s a peculiarly self-defeating lie, as well, since his defenders are also adamant that Johnson’s great achievement was to ‘get Brexit done’.
In the case of the Privileges Committee’s judgment about Johnson, an anti-Brexit plot is an especially absurd allegation, since the majority of its members are Conservatives, and some of the most critical questioning of Johnson at the hearing came from Bernard Jenkin, one of the most hardline of Brexiters. Presumably this is why Johnson made a particular attempt to discredit him this week on the grounds that he had apparently broken lockdown rules himself, an utterly bogus argument since the Committee was investigating whether Johnson had misled parliament, not whether he had broken the rules.
Johnson, Brexit, and the Establishment
Even so, this idea of Brexit as an ‘anti-establishment’ project is a more complex and less risible one than it would appear from some of the sillier claims made about it. There is certainly a sense amongst the ‘Brexit Jacobins’ that all conventions and norms can be dispensed with in order to ‘save Brexit’. That was seen with the Prorogation, and the various threats to break international law with the Internal Market Bill and the NIP Bill. Johnson’s temperamental disdain for rules was useful for that, and his willingness to trash the process that judged him illustrates that disdain, but his anti-establishment credentials were as questionable as his Brexit ones.
That isn’t so much because of his decidedly elite, Eton and Oxford, background. As I’ve argued before, it isn’t this kind of elitism which populism necessarily objects to, especially if it is combined with some public perception of ‘authenticity’, which, perversely given the plasticity of his principles, Johnson enjoyed. Rather, the deeper ambiguity of Johnson is the sense that, despite that disdain for rules and conventions, he also wants the respect of the Establishment and the respectability of belonging to it.
In this way, he strikes me as somewhat different to Trump, despite the resemblances in their character and conduct. It is most obvious in his manifest desire to be compared to Churchill, and not the Churchill of his maverick ‘wilderness years’, but the Churchill acclaimed as a great national leader and international statesman. Clearly, Johnson lacked any of the necessary qualities to be such a figure – perversely, had he done so, the pandemic gave him the best opportunity short of war to display them – but the desire to be seen that way made him much more conventional than some of the ‘true Brexiters’.
Had those true Brexiters been right in thinking that Brexit was a national liberation which would unlock both freedom and prosperity then he might even have been acclaimed in that way. As it was, even had he been cut from finer cloth, he presided over what was doomed to be a divisive and damaging fiasco. And, actually, one of the reasons that he lost the support of Conservative MPs when Prime Minister was that the Brexit Ultras thought he was failing to deliver the deregulation they saw as what would make Brexit a success, and many of them thought he was too ‘soft’ in defying the EU over the Northern Ireland Protocol.
Similarly, whilst Nigel Farage may now float the idea of joining forces with Johnson to “defend the Brexit legacy”, and be “eternally grateful to him” (£) for delivering Brexit, it is the Brexit Johnson delivered which is what Farage regards as a failure. Whether that alliance comes about remains to be seen, but it seems unlikely, not least for the reasons set out on the politics.co. uk website by Josh Self (who, by the way, is emerging as one of the most acute of the new generation of political commentators).
Brexit Conservatism
It is more likely that Johnson has his sights set on a post-election return to leading the Tory Party. That, too, seems improbable right now but he still has some powerful, influential, and rich backers (£) and the idea is already being spoken of by his allies (£). Certainly his resignation letter seemed an attempt to position himself as ‘properly Conservative’ in the Liz Truss, tax-cutting, small-state mould which is surely the direction the Party will go in after Sunak. Again this entails getting Tories to forget that, when he was Prime Minister, his internal critics castigated him for not being a “real Conservative”. And then, of course, there was his call to “make the most of Brexit”, to which the response might be to ask why he didn’t do so in office if there is anything good to be made of it. As for his professed puzzlement about the government having “so passively abandoned the prospect of a free trade deal with the US”, that is easily answered: the US doesn’t want such a deal, and he had already discovered that when he was Prime Minister.
So all of this – along with reports of him planning a comeback to deliver “total Brexit”, whatever that may mean – looks like a pitch to lead what, writing in The American Conservative this week, David Frost called “Brexit Conservatism”. This essay sets out the application of ‘National Conservatism’ to the UK context, which has already attracted much interest in Tory circles, and which Frost has recently championed (it also reveals, yet again, that Frost’s sole point of intellectual reference is Edmund Burke). It might also be read as part of Frost’s own thinly-disguised ambitions to lead the Tory Party, although his greasily sycophantic tribute to Johnson (£) suggests he could be angling for a place in government if his old boss does stage a return. After all, it’s possible that, although neither self-awareness nor modesty are his most obvious characteristics, Frost might recognize that nor is the gift of charismatic leadership.
However, Johnson’s attempt to re-ignite the glowing embers of his political career with the bellows of Brexit isn’t just a way of appealing to Tory Party members in the unlikely event that he stands in a future leadership contest. For both him and his supporters It is also an attempt to retain political relevance by reference to that brief moment of triumph in 2016. His injunction, again in his resignation letter, to “remember that more than 17 million voted for Brexit” seeks to revive the idea of Brexit as a (somewhat) popular project and of ‘the will of the people’ as a way to scarify opponents, as well as to garner support.
But that mandate was long ago discharged, and harking back to it ignores the fact that only a minority, and that a dwindling minority, now actually support Brexit. It also reflects the failure of Brexit, since the only achievement Brexiters can claim is having won the referendum or, perhaps, the fact of having left the EU. All the promises they made for what it would actually mean in practice have been discredited. Yet at another, and deeper, level it is about returning to the comfort zone of campaigning rather than governing. Even when actually in government Johnson and his fellow-Brexiters always acted as if they were still campaigning. Obviously, the whole shtick about being anti-establishment and anti-elite is a way of positing Brexiters as being powerless, or insurgent, even when in power, but it is especially useful to Johnson now that he is out of power.
Brexitist logic
All of this points to the wider issue of ‘Brexitism’. That is not quite the same as, though it relates to, Brexit Conservatism, in that it refers to a mode of logic (or illogic) rather than to a particular policy agenda. Central to that logic is the bogus anti-elitism and victimhood, just discussed, and also the ‘simplism’ in which complex problems have simple, supposedly ‘commonsense’ solutions.
Beyond that, though, Brexitism has other features which are more difficult to pin down. Possibly the main reason why, to me and many others, Brexit has seemed different from any other political division is the way it’s not just a matter of different opinions, interpretations, or even values in the normal sense. Rather, it’s that the very basic stuff of political debate, some shared commitment to basic facts, evidence, rational argument, and logical consistency is missing. Or, even, that having such a shared commitment matters or is possible.
It’s about more than just lying, though it may entail that. It’s things like, to take a well-known example, trying to justify the ‘Turkey is joining the EU’ line by (amongst other things) weird logic-chopping about how ‘is joining’ denotes an ongoing process rather than carrying the obvious meaning that it is an accomplished fact and an imminent reality. Much of this blog has consisted of discussions of how this way of approaching politics has permeated the Brexit process itself (see, especially, all those posts specifically tagged ‘Brexit logic’), but this week’s furore over Johnson and the Privileges Committee illustrates its wider currency.
On the one hand, there is the Committee’s report, a textbook example of calm, forensic, evidence-based analysis and quasi-judicial rationality, and itself the outcome of an established institutional process of peer-based self-regulation with a public hearing at its heart. On the other hand, there are Johnson and his allies who, faced with all this, gurn out the dismissive line of it being ‘kangaroo court’, which no sensible or reasonable person could apply to that process and report, and despite the fact Johnson himself had deprecated the term before the Committee had reported. So any basic commitment to truth, let alone to consistency of argument, is simply dispensed with.
Then there are the numerous sub-arguments from Johnson and his defenders. For example, there’s the complaint that it should be voters, not other MPs, who decide who sits in Parliament. But, by resigning, Johnson forwent the chance for the electors in his constituency to make that decision. Or there’s the persistent attempt to discuss the findings in terms of the question of Johnson’s Covid rule-breaking or, relatedly, the actual or alleged Covid rulebreaking of other MPs or, as mentioned earlier, Bernard Jenkin, when the inquiry was solely about whether Johnson had misled parliament. Or the attempt to depict the Committee’s Chair, Harriet Harman, as having pre-judged Johnson in earlier remarks, when none of those complaining about this had voted against her chairing despite those remarks having already been known to them (£). Or, most ludicrous of all, the idea that the Committee had shown prejudice because during the hearing some of its members had made facial expressions of disbelief.
All of these arguments have a kind of ‘black is white’ craziness that makes them easy to discredit from the outside, and yet utterly impermeable amongst those who continue to advance them with stubborn obtuseness come what may. Moreover, within minutes of them first being aired they flow rapidly through the political ether to the point that, no matter how often discredited, they take on a permanent life, and not just on social media but ‘in real life’ with, in this case, members of the Committee having to be offered extra security in case of physical attacks on them.
And of course, both initially and ultimately, these arguments find confirmation by any criticism of them being dismissed as coming from actual or supposed ‘remainers’. One reason why this should be called Brexitism is because it spreads into every single aspect of political discourse. For example, already Rees-Mogg and others are trying to discredit the Hallett Inquiry into the Covid pandemic as being biased by “die-hard remainers” because reference was made on the first day to the possibility that no-deal Brexit planning got in the way of planning for a pandemic.
A cathartic moment?
This Brexitist twisting of logic and bare-faced denial of even basic facts had, in Johnson, its most skilled exponent, as it coincided his own character. Now that his practice of it has been so brutally and publicly exposed the question is not just what it means for him but what it will mean for Brexitism. Of course, Brexitism will never be expunged, but it might be marginalised. In this respect, there are grounds for very cautious optimism. It is significant, and very much to his credit, that so committed a Brexiter as Bernard Jenkin conducted himself as he did, as this certainly did much to blunt the Brexitist attack on the Committee. Similarly Penny Mordaunt, another Brexiter (and, indeed, one of the worst culprits in pushing the ‘Turkey is joining the EU’ line) spoke out in defence of the Committee.
More generally, it is notable that, whilst all Johnson’s defenders appear to be pro-Brexit, by no means all pro-Brexiters are defending Johnson. Indeed, amongst MPs, those defenders seem to be confined to the most obscure and peculiar even amongst the ranks of the obscure and peculiar. For example, anyone finding themselves reduced to being dependent upon ‘Sir’ Michael Fabricant to tour the studios to defend them might conclude that the jig is up. Against that optimism, there still seems to be a sense within the media that these fringe figures have to be represented for ‘balance’, giving the public the impression that there may to two sides to what was a cut and dried report.
An early and important test will be how Conservative MPs vote on Monday, including how many of them decide to abstain, when the Committee’s report will be debated. Beyond that, a great deal will depend on whether, with or without Johnson, what Frost calls Brexit Conservatism comes to dominate the Tory Party after the expected loss of the General Election.
Ultimately, that will matter a lot for British politics, but in one way at least it will be less immediately damaging than what we are currently living through. For this latest eruption of instability and infighting within what is, for now, the governing party has to be counted as the latest instalment of the political and reputational damage wrought by Brexit. The crucial question is whether it will also prove a cathartic moment? Could it, indeed, a be a further sign that, as I tentatively suggested in March, Britain’s ‘Brexit fever’ has broken?
Nested within that are many sub-questions, or perhaps versions of the same question, which are currently being asked by many commentators from across the political spectrum. These include whether the UK system is proving more resilient than that of the US (£), how embedded the toxic myths of Brexit are, whether Johnson and Brexit have left a permanent legacy of political ‘doublethink’ (£), and whether this current Sunak-Starmer period marks a return to more conventional politics (£)?
The Privileges Committee has delivered its damning verdict on Johnson, but on these deeper questions the jury is still out.
Showing posts with label Boris Johnson. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Boris Johnson. Show all posts
Friday, 16 June 2023
Friday, 5 May 2023
Damage limitation
It has been a quiet week for Brexit news, but a revealing one too. The main story, if it is a story, is the latest though still not absolutely definitive report (£) that the government will pull back on the scope of scrapping Retained EU Law (REUL), so that it will ‘only’ remove 800 rather than all of the estimated 4000 pieces of legislation. That is still quite a lot of law that is going, and, crucially, there doesn’t as yet seem to be any confirmation of what these 800 laws are. Nor is it even clear whether the new plan is actually to ‘scrap’ all 800 or, as was originally proposed for the whole body of law, for this to be the default outcome but with provision to retain or amend in particular cases. So whilst this would be a sensible scaling back of the original plans, the damaging uncertainty about which parts of REUL will disappear, and when, remains.
As with all Brexit stories, this one has multiple dimensions and reveals much about the incoherence and inconsistency of the entire project.
A new pragmatism?
At one level, it is the latest sign, of which the Windsor Framework was the first, that Rishi Sunak’s government is more ‘pragmatic’ about Brexit than its predecessors. Notably, this decision seems to emanate from Kemi Badenoch, an enthusiastic Brexiter, in her newly expanded brief as Trade and Business Secretary which might suggest either that Sunak hopes that this will blunt the opposition of her fellow Brexiters or that, having to face the realities that they prefer to ignore, she, herself, has become a pragmatist.
Not that Sunak’s hands are clean. The Retained EU Law Bill started life under Boris Johnson as what was going to be the ‘Brexit Freedoms Bill’, and its legislative passage began, under the baleful stewardship of Jacob Rees-Mogg, during Liz Truss’s brief and disastrous premiership. But Sunak, in his ill-fated first bid to become Tory leader, was its enthusiastic champion, saying he would review or replace all REUL within the first 100 days of being Prime Minister. Then, as Prime Minister, he insisted it would go ahead in its original form as recently as this January even as a ‘senior government source’ was leaking that this was “impossible” (£).
It may well be that in the first case this was purely to appeal to the Conservative membership voting in that leadership election, and in the second case was from fear of the ERG’s anger, something that their failure to derail the Windsor Framework now emboldens him to defy. If so, it serves to illustrate the wretched deformity that a relatively small number of Brexiter ideologues in the Tory Party have inflicted on politics. For without them, even given Brexit had happened, this self-evidently unworkable piece of legislation, which had even been ‘red-rated’ by the government’s independent Regulatory Policy Committee because of the inadequacy of its Impact Assessment process, would never have gone as far as it has. Nor would the retreat from it have had to be made inch-by-inch so as to avoid their tantrums, leaving things in this still indeterminate position.
The Brexiter reaction
Naturally it is all but impossible for Brexiters to recognize that what they had wanted was as impractical as it was undesirable. Ever the blameless victims, it had to be someone else’s fault. Thus, for some, Badenoch joined the list of those who, like Steve Baker, are deemed to have ‘sold out’ the true faith of Brexit purity. More commonly, in line with last week’s post, it was the lazy, incompetent and anti-Brexit civil service that got the blame.
Inevitably it was Rees-Mogg, in full spiteful schoolboy mode, who used his GB News bully pulpit to lead that line of attack, although it could be found across the Brexit bubble. Within that critique, the usual Brexiter simplism was also on display, with one pro-Brexit barrister claiming he could undertake all the work needed to scrap the full 4000 laws on his own in a year, or that a law firm could do so in a month.
Yet it's not entirely clear why this issue has become so totemic for Brexiters. Even in their own terms, to the extent that all these laws were carried over on to the UK statute book by vote of parliament, in the 2018 EU Withdrawal Act, they do not violate the principle of sovereignty. Indeed, if anything, it is the power the REUL Bill’s provisions give the Executive which does so (£).
In any case, when the 2018 legislation, described as the ‘Great Repeal Act’, was passed, let alone before the 2016 referendum, few if any Brexiters said, as Rees-Mogg does now, that passing the REUL Bill is “fundamental to the completion of Brexit”. So it seems to be yet another example of Brexiters making ever-harder demands for ‘true Brexit’ and, in the process, creating new tests to enable themselves to proclaim a “betrayal of Brexit”, in ways which even some Brexit supporters are beginning to see is ridiculous.
If there is no good Brexiter argument for the principle of the Bill, and especially for its original scope and speed, what is their case for its substance? Here, there is a remarkable coyness. There must be more than a suspicion that their desire is significant reduction in, in particular, employment rights, including the provisions of the EU Working Time Directive, although even Truss ruled out Rees-Mogg’s proposals for this as “half-baked”.
Certainly, now, Brexiters, including Rees-Mogg, are insistent that no diminution of employment rights or environmental protections is envisaged, instead talking airily of “pettifogging” product standards which supposedly make the UK less competitive and are “just annoying to people”, giving the example of vacuum cleaner power, apparently a reference to the EU rules introduced in 2017.
REUL and product standards
Reportedly (£), when Badenoch asked ERG members to identify examples of retained EU laws they wanted repealed, it was product standards that they, too, came up with. Although it’s not clear which product standards they were referring to, she rejected this suggestion “as Business Secretary and as a mother”.
That rather curious formulation doesn’t reveal what her specifically maternal concerns are, but perhaps she knows her Brexiter colleagues well enough to suspect they might not baulk at a good pinch of arsenic in baby food, just as they would perhaps regard sending small children up chimneys as a good way of boosting competitiveness, with the added benefit of giving woke and snowflake youths a short, sharp lesson in traditional British values.
However, the significance of Badenoch’s business brief is clear enough. Right across the business world there is substantial concern about the REUL Bill, with Roger Barker of the Institute of Directors criticising its entire approach and saying “ideally, we would like to see this Bill dropped”. Bluntly, those who know anything about product standards are quite happy to see the relevant retained EU law stay retained.
Of course, in the strange new world of Brexiter Conservatism, business and its representative bodies are seen as part of the whole ‘remainer Establishment blob’ but, that aside, this pre-occupation with diverging from EU product standards reveals one of the key ways that Brexiters don’t understand the single market, or the role of regulation in modern trade generally. Nor do they understand why, for both consumers and businesses, harmonized product standards are highly desirable.
For consumers, they offer a reliable guarantee without the need to delve into the technical minutiae of comparing UK and EU standards or worrying about compatibility issues. That guarantee may extend, as in the vacuum cleaner example, to the environmental impact of the product. As for people finding EU regulations annoying, in February last year Rees-Mogg, then the Brexit Opportunities Minister, called for the public to identify laws they wanted scrapped but, although the full results have never been reported, it seems to have yielded only trivial results. Certainly nothing has been heard of it since, rather like yet another absurd Rees-Mogg initiative, the government consultation on the supposedly burning public desire to remove the EU prohibition on selling goods using imperial measures only, which closed last August with the results still unpublished and probably quietly filed in the ‘Brexit stupidity archive’.
For businesses, far from divergence making them more competitive it makes them less so to the extent that it forces them to produce to different standards for the UK (or GB) and EU markets. Indeed, that’s well-illustrated by the fact that, to the relief of all British mothers, UK manufacturers will choose to follow the new EU standards on arsenic in baby foods, even if the British government doesn’t adopt them. It’s true that maintaining product standard alignment doesn’t in itself maintain all the benefits of single market membership, but it does reduce the costs of having given up membership. Clearly the same thing applies to conformity assessment marking, and it is to be hoped that the apparent turn to pragmatism over REUL will be followed by the final scrapping of the long-delayed UKCA mark* and that it, too, will be lodged in the Brexit stupidity archive where even Rees-Mogg seems to realise it belongs.
As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, this is not to deny that, Brexit having happened, there may be some areas where UK divergence makes sense. But that needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis, involving consultation with those who have relevant expertise or legitimate interests, undertaken in a sensible timescale, and with open public and political debate and parliamentary scrutiny. The REUL Bill process meets none of these criteria, even in its slimmed-down form (though the scale is more realistic). They are even more important if what is envisaged is indeed, despite the denials, the downgrading of employment rights or environmental protections.
The legacy of lies
All this would be true anyway, but it is made more true by the persistent dishonesty and bad faith with which Brexiters sold their project, and their long track-record of careless ignorance about what that project entails. This makes it all too easy to believe that the REUL Bill covers malign intent and/or that it will inadvertently create legislative and regulatory blackholes.
There is no better illustration of that mixture of the dishonesty, bad faith and careless ignorance than Boris Johnson. Whilst not exactly a news story, the full horror of Johnson’s premiership is freshly revealed with the publication yesterday of Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell’s book Johnson at 10. The Inside Story. I haven’t read it yet and I’m not sure I could bear to do so, but the extracts (£) that have already been published, the early reviews, and an interview with Seldon paint an almost unbelievable, but all too easily believable, picture. It’s not just one of incompetence, venality and vanity, but of a person so psychologically and morally empty as to be unfit for even the lowliest position of responsibility, let alone that of Prime Minister.
It's a terrible indictment of the Conservative Party, and perhaps of the whole political system, that he ever came to power. As regards Brexit, specifically, it may be over-reductive to say that it wouldn’t have happened without Johnson, but he must have made a difference and, in such a close vote, even a small difference may have been decisive. It would certainly be untrue to say that he was alone in bringing grotesque dishonesty to the Vote Leave campaign, and for that reason it is hard to feel much sympathy for those ‘principled’ Brexiters who always knew he was ‘not one of them’. For they were happy enough to have him as their front man, just as those ‘liberal Brexiters’ who affect to despise Nigel Farage were happy enough with the votes be brought.
Leaving aside his role in the referendum, Johnson’s impact on how Brexit subsequently played out was utterly malign. Of the many examples that could be given, perhaps the most disgusting was what he did with the Northern Ireland Protocol, about which he lied to the electorate and to his own MPs and as a result of which he deeply damaged the UK’s international reputation and caused long-term harm to UK-EU relations. At the same time, he showed not just carelessness about Northern Ireland and its fragile peace, but reckless contempt.
The politics of damage limitation
Like the Windsor Framework, the tentative retreat from the REUL Bill is an example of repairing the worst of Johnson’s damage, as is the recent news that Sunak is seeking a new deal over passport checks. A report this week from the House of Lords European Affairs Committee points to further ways in which the UK-EU relationship could be improved, and the new EU Envoy to the UK has recognized that, post-Windsor, this is now a possibility.
These are all welcome things, so far as they go, but they amount to no more than damage limitation. And even the damage they are very slowly limiting is that of the way Brexit was done by Johnson and others – amongst whom should certainly be numbered Theresa May, whose early ‘red lines’ so constrained the parameters of how it was done – rather than the damage inherent in Brexit itself.
It is tempting to demand something better than gradual damage limitation from a future Labour government, but the biggest constraint upon that is the massive row that, under that or any government, Brexiter politicians and journalists kick up even at damage limitation, let alone anything bolder. It is they, as the instigators and defenders of Brexit, who bear primary responsibility not just for it having happened but for the political difficulties of addressing its failure now.
It is too much to expect it of Johnson, but if just one of the high-profile advocates of Brexit in 2016 had the honesty and courage to admit they had made a mistake that would help. To the extent that it might lead to more of them doing so it could make a decisive difference. Not one has done so. Until that happens, we seem set to limp on, a nation that has shot itself in one foot and is now trying to compensate by slowly fashioning a rudimentary crutch, all the time shackled and heckled by those who insist that to do so is a betrayal of hopping.
*As always, it’s more complex than this. One possibility is that the UK government decides to continue to recognize CE marking as valid for goods placed on the UK market as a whole (GB and NI). That wouldn’t mean scrapping UKCA marking but in practice, as with the baby food example, businesses would probably choose to use the CE mark. Another possibility is that UKCA marking will be required, but could be used without additional testing/ certification for goods which have been tested/ certified for CE conformity. There are also issues about what the fate of the planned UKNI mark will be. And there are different issues for, specifically medical devices. For an overview (though note it predates the most recent extension) see the briefing from Lexology. Clearly there is an interaction between decisions about product standards made in relation to REUL, and also those about whether to mirror (i.e. align with) subsequent changes in EU law, and if so in which areas, and those about conformity assessment testing, certification and marking. This whole area is a minefield and goes to the heart of the practical complexity of slogans about ‘taking back control’ and ‘sovereignty’, especially given the extensiveness of UK-EU trade and supply chain integration.
As with all Brexit stories, this one has multiple dimensions and reveals much about the incoherence and inconsistency of the entire project.
A new pragmatism?
At one level, it is the latest sign, of which the Windsor Framework was the first, that Rishi Sunak’s government is more ‘pragmatic’ about Brexit than its predecessors. Notably, this decision seems to emanate from Kemi Badenoch, an enthusiastic Brexiter, in her newly expanded brief as Trade and Business Secretary which might suggest either that Sunak hopes that this will blunt the opposition of her fellow Brexiters or that, having to face the realities that they prefer to ignore, she, herself, has become a pragmatist.
Not that Sunak’s hands are clean. The Retained EU Law Bill started life under Boris Johnson as what was going to be the ‘Brexit Freedoms Bill’, and its legislative passage began, under the baleful stewardship of Jacob Rees-Mogg, during Liz Truss’s brief and disastrous premiership. But Sunak, in his ill-fated first bid to become Tory leader, was its enthusiastic champion, saying he would review or replace all REUL within the first 100 days of being Prime Minister. Then, as Prime Minister, he insisted it would go ahead in its original form as recently as this January even as a ‘senior government source’ was leaking that this was “impossible” (£).
It may well be that in the first case this was purely to appeal to the Conservative membership voting in that leadership election, and in the second case was from fear of the ERG’s anger, something that their failure to derail the Windsor Framework now emboldens him to defy. If so, it serves to illustrate the wretched deformity that a relatively small number of Brexiter ideologues in the Tory Party have inflicted on politics. For without them, even given Brexit had happened, this self-evidently unworkable piece of legislation, which had even been ‘red-rated’ by the government’s independent Regulatory Policy Committee because of the inadequacy of its Impact Assessment process, would never have gone as far as it has. Nor would the retreat from it have had to be made inch-by-inch so as to avoid their tantrums, leaving things in this still indeterminate position.
The Brexiter reaction
Naturally it is all but impossible for Brexiters to recognize that what they had wanted was as impractical as it was undesirable. Ever the blameless victims, it had to be someone else’s fault. Thus, for some, Badenoch joined the list of those who, like Steve Baker, are deemed to have ‘sold out’ the true faith of Brexit purity. More commonly, in line with last week’s post, it was the lazy, incompetent and anti-Brexit civil service that got the blame.
Inevitably it was Rees-Mogg, in full spiteful schoolboy mode, who used his GB News bully pulpit to lead that line of attack, although it could be found across the Brexit bubble. Within that critique, the usual Brexiter simplism was also on display, with one pro-Brexit barrister claiming he could undertake all the work needed to scrap the full 4000 laws on his own in a year, or that a law firm could do so in a month.
Yet it's not entirely clear why this issue has become so totemic for Brexiters. Even in their own terms, to the extent that all these laws were carried over on to the UK statute book by vote of parliament, in the 2018 EU Withdrawal Act, they do not violate the principle of sovereignty. Indeed, if anything, it is the power the REUL Bill’s provisions give the Executive which does so (£).
In any case, when the 2018 legislation, described as the ‘Great Repeal Act’, was passed, let alone before the 2016 referendum, few if any Brexiters said, as Rees-Mogg does now, that passing the REUL Bill is “fundamental to the completion of Brexit”. So it seems to be yet another example of Brexiters making ever-harder demands for ‘true Brexit’ and, in the process, creating new tests to enable themselves to proclaim a “betrayal of Brexit”, in ways which even some Brexit supporters are beginning to see is ridiculous.
If there is no good Brexiter argument for the principle of the Bill, and especially for its original scope and speed, what is their case for its substance? Here, there is a remarkable coyness. There must be more than a suspicion that their desire is significant reduction in, in particular, employment rights, including the provisions of the EU Working Time Directive, although even Truss ruled out Rees-Mogg’s proposals for this as “half-baked”.
Certainly, now, Brexiters, including Rees-Mogg, are insistent that no diminution of employment rights or environmental protections is envisaged, instead talking airily of “pettifogging” product standards which supposedly make the UK less competitive and are “just annoying to people”, giving the example of vacuum cleaner power, apparently a reference to the EU rules introduced in 2017.
REUL and product standards
Reportedly (£), when Badenoch asked ERG members to identify examples of retained EU laws they wanted repealed, it was product standards that they, too, came up with. Although it’s not clear which product standards they were referring to, she rejected this suggestion “as Business Secretary and as a mother”.
That rather curious formulation doesn’t reveal what her specifically maternal concerns are, but perhaps she knows her Brexiter colleagues well enough to suspect they might not baulk at a good pinch of arsenic in baby food, just as they would perhaps regard sending small children up chimneys as a good way of boosting competitiveness, with the added benefit of giving woke and snowflake youths a short, sharp lesson in traditional British values.
However, the significance of Badenoch’s business brief is clear enough. Right across the business world there is substantial concern about the REUL Bill, with Roger Barker of the Institute of Directors criticising its entire approach and saying “ideally, we would like to see this Bill dropped”. Bluntly, those who know anything about product standards are quite happy to see the relevant retained EU law stay retained.
Of course, in the strange new world of Brexiter Conservatism, business and its representative bodies are seen as part of the whole ‘remainer Establishment blob’ but, that aside, this pre-occupation with diverging from EU product standards reveals one of the key ways that Brexiters don’t understand the single market, or the role of regulation in modern trade generally. Nor do they understand why, for both consumers and businesses, harmonized product standards are highly desirable.
For consumers, they offer a reliable guarantee without the need to delve into the technical minutiae of comparing UK and EU standards or worrying about compatibility issues. That guarantee may extend, as in the vacuum cleaner example, to the environmental impact of the product. As for people finding EU regulations annoying, in February last year Rees-Mogg, then the Brexit Opportunities Minister, called for the public to identify laws they wanted scrapped but, although the full results have never been reported, it seems to have yielded only trivial results. Certainly nothing has been heard of it since, rather like yet another absurd Rees-Mogg initiative, the government consultation on the supposedly burning public desire to remove the EU prohibition on selling goods using imperial measures only, which closed last August with the results still unpublished and probably quietly filed in the ‘Brexit stupidity archive’.
For businesses, far from divergence making them more competitive it makes them less so to the extent that it forces them to produce to different standards for the UK (or GB) and EU markets. Indeed, that’s well-illustrated by the fact that, to the relief of all British mothers, UK manufacturers will choose to follow the new EU standards on arsenic in baby foods, even if the British government doesn’t adopt them. It’s true that maintaining product standard alignment doesn’t in itself maintain all the benefits of single market membership, but it does reduce the costs of having given up membership. Clearly the same thing applies to conformity assessment marking, and it is to be hoped that the apparent turn to pragmatism over REUL will be followed by the final scrapping of the long-delayed UKCA mark* and that it, too, will be lodged in the Brexit stupidity archive where even Rees-Mogg seems to realise it belongs.
As I’ve pointed out in previous posts, this is not to deny that, Brexit having happened, there may be some areas where UK divergence makes sense. But that needs to be decided on a case-by-case basis, involving consultation with those who have relevant expertise or legitimate interests, undertaken in a sensible timescale, and with open public and political debate and parliamentary scrutiny. The REUL Bill process meets none of these criteria, even in its slimmed-down form (though the scale is more realistic). They are even more important if what is envisaged is indeed, despite the denials, the downgrading of employment rights or environmental protections.
The legacy of lies
All this would be true anyway, but it is made more true by the persistent dishonesty and bad faith with which Brexiters sold their project, and their long track-record of careless ignorance about what that project entails. This makes it all too easy to believe that the REUL Bill covers malign intent and/or that it will inadvertently create legislative and regulatory blackholes.
There is no better illustration of that mixture of the dishonesty, bad faith and careless ignorance than Boris Johnson. Whilst not exactly a news story, the full horror of Johnson’s premiership is freshly revealed with the publication yesterday of Anthony Seldon and Raymond Newell’s book Johnson at 10. The Inside Story. I haven’t read it yet and I’m not sure I could bear to do so, but the extracts (£) that have already been published, the early reviews, and an interview with Seldon paint an almost unbelievable, but all too easily believable, picture. It’s not just one of incompetence, venality and vanity, but of a person so psychologically and morally empty as to be unfit for even the lowliest position of responsibility, let alone that of Prime Minister.
It's a terrible indictment of the Conservative Party, and perhaps of the whole political system, that he ever came to power. As regards Brexit, specifically, it may be over-reductive to say that it wouldn’t have happened without Johnson, but he must have made a difference and, in such a close vote, even a small difference may have been decisive. It would certainly be untrue to say that he was alone in bringing grotesque dishonesty to the Vote Leave campaign, and for that reason it is hard to feel much sympathy for those ‘principled’ Brexiters who always knew he was ‘not one of them’. For they were happy enough to have him as their front man, just as those ‘liberal Brexiters’ who affect to despise Nigel Farage were happy enough with the votes be brought.
Leaving aside his role in the referendum, Johnson’s impact on how Brexit subsequently played out was utterly malign. Of the many examples that could be given, perhaps the most disgusting was what he did with the Northern Ireland Protocol, about which he lied to the electorate and to his own MPs and as a result of which he deeply damaged the UK’s international reputation and caused long-term harm to UK-EU relations. At the same time, he showed not just carelessness about Northern Ireland and its fragile peace, but reckless contempt.
The politics of damage limitation
Like the Windsor Framework, the tentative retreat from the REUL Bill is an example of repairing the worst of Johnson’s damage, as is the recent news that Sunak is seeking a new deal over passport checks. A report this week from the House of Lords European Affairs Committee points to further ways in which the UK-EU relationship could be improved, and the new EU Envoy to the UK has recognized that, post-Windsor, this is now a possibility.
These are all welcome things, so far as they go, but they amount to no more than damage limitation. And even the damage they are very slowly limiting is that of the way Brexit was done by Johnson and others – amongst whom should certainly be numbered Theresa May, whose early ‘red lines’ so constrained the parameters of how it was done – rather than the damage inherent in Brexit itself.
It is tempting to demand something better than gradual damage limitation from a future Labour government, but the biggest constraint upon that is the massive row that, under that or any government, Brexiter politicians and journalists kick up even at damage limitation, let alone anything bolder. It is they, as the instigators and defenders of Brexit, who bear primary responsibility not just for it having happened but for the political difficulties of addressing its failure now.
It is too much to expect it of Johnson, but if just one of the high-profile advocates of Brexit in 2016 had the honesty and courage to admit they had made a mistake that would help. To the extent that it might lead to more of them doing so it could make a decisive difference. Not one has done so. Until that happens, we seem set to limp on, a nation that has shot itself in one foot and is now trying to compensate by slowly fashioning a rudimentary crutch, all the time shackled and heckled by those who insist that to do so is a betrayal of hopping.
*As always, it’s more complex than this. One possibility is that the UK government decides to continue to recognize CE marking as valid for goods placed on the UK market as a whole (GB and NI). That wouldn’t mean scrapping UKCA marking but in practice, as with the baby food example, businesses would probably choose to use the CE mark. Another possibility is that UKCA marking will be required, but could be used without additional testing/ certification for goods which have been tested/ certified for CE conformity. There are also issues about what the fate of the planned UKNI mark will be. And there are different issues for, specifically medical devices. For an overview (though note it predates the most recent extension) see the briefing from Lexology. Clearly there is an interaction between decisions about product standards made in relation to REUL, and also those about whether to mirror (i.e. align with) subsequent changes in EU law, and if so in which areas, and those about conformity assessment testing, certification and marking. This whole area is a minefield and goes to the heart of the practical complexity of slogans about ‘taking back control’ and ‘sovereignty’, especially given the extensiveness of UK-EU trade and supply chain integration.
Friday, 6 December 2019
Decision time
As the
election campaign enters its final days my
warning at the outset that, despite this being an election defined
by Brexit, there would be no
substantive discussion of Brexit has come true.
Labour have failed to fill out what their ‘sensible Brexit’ would look like, especially as regards the single market. But at least they are being clear in offering voters the choice, if and when the time comes, of whether they want this Brexit or not - even if they are not engaging seriously with the timetable for such a referendum. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have said little beyond their ‘get Brexit done’ slogan, apart from Johnson’s usual blustering non sequiturs.
Difficult choices deferred
Even so, within that bluster can be seen the outlines of some of the real and difficult choices which, if he is elected, Johnson would immediately face over Brexit. The most obvious and widely discussed example is the insistence that no extension will be sought to the transition period. Beyond that, a piece by Denis Staunton, the London Editor of The Irish Times, argues that statements made by Johnson in relation to a possible future US trade deal, to the abandonment of EU state aid and public procurement rules, and to post-Brexit UK-EU arbitration mechanisms could all significantly affect the options open to him if he wins the election.
In particular, Staunton argues, Johnson is setting up a scenario in which the UK is too distantly aligned with the EU to achieve decent terms of trade with them, whilst – partly because of the promises he has made about the NHS, and agriculture and food standards –being too closely aligned to the EU to achieve a meaningful, or any, trade deal with the US.
Underlying causes
This observation grows from one of the central contradictions of Brexit. Sold to voters by a largely nationalist and protectionist campaign, it was immediately re-described after the Referendum as an endorsement of globalism and trade liberalization. Hence the shift from a referendum campaign dominated by immigration policy to a post-referendum debate dominated by trade policy, which had been only peripheral before. Unsurprisingly, for the purposes of this election campaign in which he hopes to rebuild the leave alliance and, in particular, woo Labour leave voters, Johnson has reprised the nationalist and protectionist message, including anti-immigration sentiment.
Beyond these immediate political issues lies the strategic incoherence of the entire Brexit project. In a world characterised by two, or arguably three, regulatory super blocs (US, EU and, arguably,China
With that comes a political reality of having to obey rules and follow policies made outside of national parliaments - either by multilateral engagement or simply by force majeure in consequence of isolation - rendering the entire ‘regaining sovereignty’ or ‘taking back control’ argument redundant. By leaving the EU,Britain
will have less rather than more control over its regulation and policy choices,
and will be poorer and less influential into the bargain. It’s a definitional
lose-lose made inevitable by a world characterised not so much by globalization
as by economic
and political regionalization.
These complex strategic realities and trade-offs that Brexit entails are precisely what should have been discussed by its advocates (and critics) as the central theme of this election. Instead, as Matt Ross explained in detail in an excellent analysis on Global Governance Forum this week, Johnson is set to reprise all of the problems and mistakes that have dogged the Brexit process to date (many of which will be familiar to regular readers of this blog).
The post-truth election
Of course, it’s very likely that Johnson did not fully understand the implications of the things he said. And, even if he did, it’s hardly inconceivable that he will backtrack on them if he wins the election, dumping promises made about protecting British industries and public services. For the most depressing thing about this campaign is the extent to which we have seen the full (though perhaps still not yet final) flowering of the post-truth politics that characterised the Referendum.
That is very different from the traditional, and rather lazy, refrain that ‘all politicians lie’. Rather, it is a politics in which the truth does not matter, or even – and perhaps more accurately - that there is no truth to be told and no way of telling what the truth is anyway. In a punchy assessment in the New York Times, Peter Geoghegan and Mary Fitzgerald itemise some of the ways that has characterised the campaign. For example, after the Conservatives were found to have created a supposed ‘fact checker’ Twitter account, the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, opined that voters “don’t give a toss” about what happens online.
More insidiously, when asked about the fake fact-checker in a Channel 4 News interview, Michael Gove attacked the interviewer for asking ideologically loaded questions and, even, refused to look at the evidence of its existence on the reporter’s laptop on the grounds that it might have been doctored. So ‘fake news’ is defended on the basis that the accusation is itself fake news, creating a dizzying spiral in which no one knows what to believe and, perhaps, concludes that they might as well believe whatever they want to believe. And who’s to say that your belief is better than my belief – except an elitist?
Depressing and despicable as these and many similar incidents have been, they do contain at least a glimmer of hope. For, of course, many voters do ‘give a toss’ about what is said on line. If they did not, then why bother with on line political campaigning at all? And they do care about facts and some attempt at objectivity. If they did not, then why pretend to be an objective fact-checker? And they do see ideological loaded-ness in reporting as problematic. If they did not, then why use the accusation (unfounded as it was) as an attack line against reporters?
That’s not to say that politics could ever be simply about ‘the facts’, absent of interpretation and judgement. Indeed, where facts are not disputed they do not generally form part of normal politics, whilst much of what normal politics consists of is a contestation over securing widespread acceptance of facts and designing policy accordingly. But that only works if there is some shared commitment to evidence, logic, and rules of argument. It’s this which is under attack in post-truth politics.
Voting matters
Even in this world, democracy can still be a powerful force. Whatever manipulations may occur, people still have agency, and have the capacity to make their own choices based on evidence, logic and argument. Voting still matters, and the right to vote should not be cynically dismissed – as those denied it, such as EU nationals in UK elections, can attest. Despite – perhaps because of – the squalid and dishonest campaign for this election, people have a responsibility to use that vote. Not voting, however attractive some find it, does not evade that responsibility since it also has an impact on the outcome.
But in many constituencies the British first-past-the-post electoral system makes it hard to make your vote count. This election is likely to see tactical voting and party-switching on an unprecedented scale, not least because of the way that Brexit cuts across party allegiances. And because of the anticipated closeness of the outcome, these decisions will matter. However, the very volatility of opinion polls and the complex local variations make it difficult for individual voters to make tactical voting decisions (£).
In my previous post I highlighted Jon Worth’s tactical voting information site. Since then, he has refined it to create a short video for every single seat in which tactical voting can make a difference to the outcome of Brexit. For those who want to keep open the possibility of preventing Brexit, it provides a well-informed steer as to how to vote. Another useful site is VoteSmart2019. These sites cannot entirely solve all of the indeterminacies caused by voter volatility but are certainly a helpful guide, especially if used in conjunction with new polling data as it emerges and local conversations with other voters.
Dilemmas for tactical voters
Whatever the difficulties of assessing how to vote tactically, for voters who want to prevent Brexit there is no excuse for refusing to do so because ‘the LibDems supported Austerity’ or because ‘Labour supported the Iraq War’. If you want to stop Brexit, then, to be brutal, those things, important as they are in their own right, are not relevant to doing so. Even intense concern about and opposition to anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, which is understandably creating anguish for some potential tactical voters, can arguably, as suggested by Jonathan Lis, be combined with voting Labour.
Whilst that is a genuinely agonizing dilemma, those remain voters – perhaps especially habitual Tory and LibDem voters – whose fear is that a Corbyn administration would be too economically extreme face a less difficult choice. For they should recognize that the only realistic alternative to a Johnson majority government is a Corbyn minority government. There is no realistic prospect of Labour having a majority. So Corbyn would be highly constrained in what he could do. Yes, some increased public services spending – which will also happen under a Tory government – and taxation but nothing very radical.
That may or may not be a good thing but, as always on this blog, I am only concerned with the implications for Brexit. And with LibDem and SNP support what a minority Labour government would be both able and obliged to deliver is another referendum and, with it, the chance – only the chance, but the only chance – of remaining in the EU. No other realistic combination of events does this.
The other side of that coin is that whereas a minority Labour government would be highly constrained, a majority Tory government would be a very different beast from any that we have seen in the past. Every Tory MP elected will have pledged to an immediate Brexit and to no extension of the transition period, even if there is no trade deal in place. Compared with the last parliament, the more liberally and independently minded will have gone, whether those who left by choice or those who lost the party whip. They include, don’t forget, the deeply Eurosceptic Philip Hammond, and not just the veteran Europhile Ken Clarke.
So the next Tory benches are going to be far more extreme than, even, those of the Thatcher years, and not just in relation to Brexit. Voters who may for decades have been unhesitatingly Tory should note that Michael Heseltine now advocates voting LibDem. Neither he nor Ken Clarke (who, despite his latter-day cuddly image, was also a central figure in Thatcher’s governments, and the architect of the NHS internal market) are really ‘centrists’, but the rapid shift of the Tory Party has made them strangers to it.
If it is no longer even the party of Thatcher, still less is it that of Macmillan, Heath or Major. It is certainly very different to any previous Tory Party in its unsympathetic, even disdainful, attitude to business (£). So whilst voting tactically will only mean a constrained minority Labour administration, the alternative is an unconstrained Tory majority government in the grip of its own extremism.
A test for remainers’ commitment
Throughout these election period blogs, I’ve been using a formulation along the lines of ‘those voters for whom remain is their primary or sole objective’. Ultimately, the question of tactical voting by remainers and, therefore, very possibly the election outcome will come down to the extent to which they do indeed prioritise remain in that way. If they do, it will cut through party loyalties and habits and all other misgivings and concerns.
That will be testing for those whose commitment to remain is relatively weak, or weaker than it has been, compared with other concerns. It will actually be even more testing for the most passionate and committed remainers. For some, perhaps many, of them, there is a strong temptation to ‘purity’ which could lead them to voting, probably, LibDem in seats where a tactical vote for Labour would be more likely to defeat the Conservative candidate.
Such voters may consider Labour not to be a ‘true remain’ party, may recall the dithering and ambiguity of Labour over Brexit, and may consider that Corbyn, himself, is ideologically pro-Brexit. All of which may be fair comment and may provide a rationalisation for the comfort of staying true to a party which is unequivocally anti-Brexit. That will be their choice, but it will be a choice with an undeniable consequence. That consequence will be to make the slim chance of avoiding Brexit slimmer still.
A decisive moment
This time next week I will be writing my next blog post. If it is discussing the fact that Brexit is now a certainty the responsibility for that will lie in part with remain voters who valued something else – remainer purity, party loyalty or simply another political consideration – more than they did the possibility of avoiding Brexit.
Of course if that is the outcome there will be many who are responsible for it, well beyond remain (non-)tactical voters. Most obviously it will have been caused by those who genuinely want Brexit, or a Tory government, or both – which is perfectly reasonable, though they will be surprised at the Brexit they get – including any tactical voting decisions made by Brexit Party supporters. But there is another group of voters who out of boredom or ignorance are apparently simply content to accept the lies they have been told and to ignore the lack of proper discussion of what Brexit will entail, petulantly insisting that they ‘just want it done’.
Perhaps if, as happened with the Referendum, enough people of such a mind-set vote in this election to endorse Brexit then they will get what is due to them. For, as H.L. Mencken – a deeply anti-Semitic and generally rather vile character, by the way – in his oft-used quotation had it, “democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard”.
Labour have failed to fill out what their ‘sensible Brexit’ would look like, especially as regards the single market. But at least they are being clear in offering voters the choice, if and when the time comes, of whether they want this Brexit or not - even if they are not engaging seriously with the timetable for such a referendum. Meanwhile, the Conservatives have said little beyond their ‘get Brexit done’ slogan, apart from Johnson’s usual blustering non sequiturs.
Difficult choices deferred
Even so, within that bluster can be seen the outlines of some of the real and difficult choices which, if he is elected, Johnson would immediately face over Brexit. The most obvious and widely discussed example is the insistence that no extension will be sought to the transition period. Beyond that, a piece by Denis Staunton, the London Editor of The Irish Times, argues that statements made by Johnson in relation to a possible future US trade deal, to the abandonment of EU state aid and public procurement rules, and to post-Brexit UK-EU arbitration mechanisms could all significantly affect the options open to him if he wins the election.
In particular, Staunton argues, Johnson is setting up a scenario in which the UK is too distantly aligned with the EU to achieve decent terms of trade with them, whilst – partly because of the promises he has made about the NHS, and agriculture and food standards –being too closely aligned to the EU to achieve a meaningful, or any, trade deal with the US.
Underlying causes
This observation grows from one of the central contradictions of Brexit. Sold to voters by a largely nationalist and protectionist campaign, it was immediately re-described after the Referendum as an endorsement of globalism and trade liberalization. Hence the shift from a referendum campaign dominated by immigration policy to a post-referendum debate dominated by trade policy, which had been only peripheral before. Unsurprisingly, for the purposes of this election campaign in which he hopes to rebuild the leave alliance and, in particular, woo Labour leave voters, Johnson has reprised the nationalist and protectionist message, including anti-immigration sentiment.
Beyond these immediate political issues lies the strategic incoherence of the entire Brexit project. In a world characterised by two, or arguably three, regulatory super blocs (US, EU and, arguably,
With that comes a political reality of having to obey rules and follow policies made outside of national parliaments - either by multilateral engagement or simply by force majeure in consequence of isolation - rendering the entire ‘regaining sovereignty’ or ‘taking back control’ argument redundant. By leaving the EU,
These complex strategic realities and trade-offs that Brexit entails are precisely what should have been discussed by its advocates (and critics) as the central theme of this election. Instead, as Matt Ross explained in detail in an excellent analysis on Global Governance Forum this week, Johnson is set to reprise all of the problems and mistakes that have dogged the Brexit process to date (many of which will be familiar to regular readers of this blog).
The post-truth election
Of course, it’s very likely that Johnson did not fully understand the implications of the things he said. And, even if he did, it’s hardly inconceivable that he will backtrack on them if he wins the election, dumping promises made about protecting British industries and public services. For the most depressing thing about this campaign is the extent to which we have seen the full (though perhaps still not yet final) flowering of the post-truth politics that characterised the Referendum.
That is very different from the traditional, and rather lazy, refrain that ‘all politicians lie’. Rather, it is a politics in which the truth does not matter, or even – and perhaps more accurately - that there is no truth to be told and no way of telling what the truth is anyway. In a punchy assessment in the New York Times, Peter Geoghegan and Mary Fitzgerald itemise some of the ways that has characterised the campaign. For example, after the Conservatives were found to have created a supposed ‘fact checker’ Twitter account, the Foreign Secretary, Dominic Raab, opined that voters “don’t give a toss” about what happens online.
More insidiously, when asked about the fake fact-checker in a Channel 4 News interview, Michael Gove attacked the interviewer for asking ideologically loaded questions and, even, refused to look at the evidence of its existence on the reporter’s laptop on the grounds that it might have been doctored. So ‘fake news’ is defended on the basis that the accusation is itself fake news, creating a dizzying spiral in which no one knows what to believe and, perhaps, concludes that they might as well believe whatever they want to believe. And who’s to say that your belief is better than my belief – except an elitist?
Depressing and despicable as these and many similar incidents have been, they do contain at least a glimmer of hope. For, of course, many voters do ‘give a toss’ about what is said on line. If they did not, then why bother with on line political campaigning at all? And they do care about facts and some attempt at objectivity. If they did not, then why pretend to be an objective fact-checker? And they do see ideological loaded-ness in reporting as problematic. If they did not, then why use the accusation (unfounded as it was) as an attack line against reporters?
That’s not to say that politics could ever be simply about ‘the facts’, absent of interpretation and judgement. Indeed, where facts are not disputed they do not generally form part of normal politics, whilst much of what normal politics consists of is a contestation over securing widespread acceptance of facts and designing policy accordingly. But that only works if there is some shared commitment to evidence, logic, and rules of argument. It’s this which is under attack in post-truth politics.
Voting matters
Even in this world, democracy can still be a powerful force. Whatever manipulations may occur, people still have agency, and have the capacity to make their own choices based on evidence, logic and argument. Voting still matters, and the right to vote should not be cynically dismissed – as those denied it, such as EU nationals in UK elections, can attest. Despite – perhaps because of – the squalid and dishonest campaign for this election, people have a responsibility to use that vote. Not voting, however attractive some find it, does not evade that responsibility since it also has an impact on the outcome.
But in many constituencies the British first-past-the-post electoral system makes it hard to make your vote count. This election is likely to see tactical voting and party-switching on an unprecedented scale, not least because of the way that Brexit cuts across party allegiances. And because of the anticipated closeness of the outcome, these decisions will matter. However, the very volatility of opinion polls and the complex local variations make it difficult for individual voters to make tactical voting decisions (£).
In my previous post I highlighted Jon Worth’s tactical voting information site. Since then, he has refined it to create a short video for every single seat in which tactical voting can make a difference to the outcome of Brexit. For those who want to keep open the possibility of preventing Brexit, it provides a well-informed steer as to how to vote. Another useful site is VoteSmart2019. These sites cannot entirely solve all of the indeterminacies caused by voter volatility but are certainly a helpful guide, especially if used in conjunction with new polling data as it emerges and local conversations with other voters.
Dilemmas for tactical voters
Whatever the difficulties of assessing how to vote tactically, for voters who want to prevent Brexit there is no excuse for refusing to do so because ‘the LibDems supported Austerity’ or because ‘Labour supported the Iraq War’. If you want to stop Brexit, then, to be brutal, those things, important as they are in their own right, are not relevant to doing so. Even intense concern about and opposition to anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, which is understandably creating anguish for some potential tactical voters, can arguably, as suggested by Jonathan Lis, be combined with voting Labour.
Whilst that is a genuinely agonizing dilemma, those remain voters – perhaps especially habitual Tory and LibDem voters – whose fear is that a Corbyn administration would be too economically extreme face a less difficult choice. For they should recognize that the only realistic alternative to a Johnson majority government is a Corbyn minority government. There is no realistic prospect of Labour having a majority. So Corbyn would be highly constrained in what he could do. Yes, some increased public services spending – which will also happen under a Tory government – and taxation but nothing very radical.
That may or may not be a good thing but, as always on this blog, I am only concerned with the implications for Brexit. And with LibDem and SNP support what a minority Labour government would be both able and obliged to deliver is another referendum and, with it, the chance – only the chance, but the only chance – of remaining in the EU. No other realistic combination of events does this.
The other side of that coin is that whereas a minority Labour government would be highly constrained, a majority Tory government would be a very different beast from any that we have seen in the past. Every Tory MP elected will have pledged to an immediate Brexit and to no extension of the transition period, even if there is no trade deal in place. Compared with the last parliament, the more liberally and independently minded will have gone, whether those who left by choice or those who lost the party whip. They include, don’t forget, the deeply Eurosceptic Philip Hammond, and not just the veteran Europhile Ken Clarke.
So the next Tory benches are going to be far more extreme than, even, those of the Thatcher years, and not just in relation to Brexit. Voters who may for decades have been unhesitatingly Tory should note that Michael Heseltine now advocates voting LibDem. Neither he nor Ken Clarke (who, despite his latter-day cuddly image, was also a central figure in Thatcher’s governments, and the architect of the NHS internal market) are really ‘centrists’, but the rapid shift of the Tory Party has made them strangers to it.
If it is no longer even the party of Thatcher, still less is it that of Macmillan, Heath or Major. It is certainly very different to any previous Tory Party in its unsympathetic, even disdainful, attitude to business (£). So whilst voting tactically will only mean a constrained minority Labour administration, the alternative is an unconstrained Tory majority government in the grip of its own extremism.
A test for remainers’ commitment
Throughout these election period blogs, I’ve been using a formulation along the lines of ‘those voters for whom remain is their primary or sole objective’. Ultimately, the question of tactical voting by remainers and, therefore, very possibly the election outcome will come down to the extent to which they do indeed prioritise remain in that way. If they do, it will cut through party loyalties and habits and all other misgivings and concerns.
That will be testing for those whose commitment to remain is relatively weak, or weaker than it has been, compared with other concerns. It will actually be even more testing for the most passionate and committed remainers. For some, perhaps many, of them, there is a strong temptation to ‘purity’ which could lead them to voting, probably, LibDem in seats where a tactical vote for Labour would be more likely to defeat the Conservative candidate.
Such voters may consider Labour not to be a ‘true remain’ party, may recall the dithering and ambiguity of Labour over Brexit, and may consider that Corbyn, himself, is ideologically pro-Brexit. All of which may be fair comment and may provide a rationalisation for the comfort of staying true to a party which is unequivocally anti-Brexit. That will be their choice, but it will be a choice with an undeniable consequence. That consequence will be to make the slim chance of avoiding Brexit slimmer still.
A decisive moment
This time next week I will be writing my next blog post. If it is discussing the fact that Brexit is now a certainty the responsibility for that will lie in part with remain voters who valued something else – remainer purity, party loyalty or simply another political consideration – more than they did the possibility of avoiding Brexit.
Of course if that is the outcome there will be many who are responsible for it, well beyond remain (non-)tactical voters. Most obviously it will have been caused by those who genuinely want Brexit, or a Tory government, or both – which is perfectly reasonable, though they will be surprised at the Brexit they get – including any tactical voting decisions made by Brexit Party supporters. But there is another group of voters who out of boredom or ignorance are apparently simply content to accept the lies they have been told and to ignore the lack of proper discussion of what Brexit will entail, petulantly insisting that they ‘just want it done’.
Perhaps if, as happened with the Referendum, enough people of such a mind-set vote in this election to endorse Brexit then they will get what is due to them. For, as H.L. Mencken – a deeply anti-Semitic and generally rather vile character, by the way – in his oft-used quotation had it, “democracy is the theory that the common people know what they want, and deserve to get it good and hard”.
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