The return of competence and why it matters

What a difference a week makes. Not so much because of policy changes, though there have been some crisp announcements, including discarding the stupid, illegal and immoral Rwanda policy and lifting the ban on new onshore wind farms. And certainly not because Britain’s many problems have been solved; on the contrary, we have repeatedly been told how slow and difficult fixing them will be. But that, actually, does begin to point to the difference. It is a sign of reasonable, adult, and honest politics.

The return of basic competence

That is what is new, and it was manifested again and again this week. Smoothly, methodically, a cabinet was constructed. It is peopled largely by those who have been shadowing their portfolios for a while and who have already given careful thought to them, or who have been immersed in them by dint of having chaired the relevant select committee. Outside the cabinet, but in important ministerial posts, there was a peppering of non-political experts, Sir Patrick Vallance for the science brief, James Timpson for prisons. As a ‘government of all the talents’, this is far more convincing than Boris Johnson’s recruitment of David Frost or, further back, Gordon Brown’s appointment of Digby Jones, blowhards both.

These are all, for the most part, serious, competent people, for all that many are untested in government. That, and the lack of drama accompanying the process, might be thought of as the bare minimum, and it’s not as if Starmer has not had plenty of time to plan for it. But it is far too long since even this bare minimum has been the norm. Recall Johnson’s first cabinet, selected solely on fealty to Brexit. Recall the mess of his 2020 reshuffle when, rather than be subjected to the absurd demands of Dominic Cummings, Chancellor Sajid Javid resigned. Recall how, at their first meeting after his 2019 election victory, Johnson forced his new cabinet to chant the dishonest promises he had made.

As for competence and fitness for office, recall the almost endless list of recent Tory ministers who failed those tests. It is hardly necessary even to give examples, and certainly impossible to list them all, let alone to identify the worst. I suppose Chris ‘Failing’ Grayling might be the most compelling candidate for that title and, in case there was any danger of forgetting him amidst so many others, that danger was removed by his inclusion, at Sunak’s behest, in this week’s Dissolution honours list. It was a final, graceless, shameless spit in the country’s face from the outgoing regime.

Recall, too, the prodigious churn of those ministers over the last few years. Of course, it remains to be seen how Labour fare in this respect, but, as Catherine Haddon of the Institute for Government argues, the composition of this new cabinet suggests that Starmer has begun by putting an emphasis on continuity and stability, alongside competence.

Repairing some of the Brexit damage

So - methodical, undramatic, competent, stable. The same words apply to Starmer’s first press conference and first appearance in the House of Commons, and to Rachel Reeves’s first speech as Chancellor and her launch of the National Wealth Fund. And these words alone show the stark contrast with what has characterized recent political life. We simply haven’t seen anything like this for years. More particularly, these words also represent one reparation of the damages of Brexit. For, as I outlined early on in the election campaign, a large part of the chaos and incompetence they replace was directly attributable to Brexit. It's worth emphasizing this point because, of course, it is familiar territory that Brexit itself is not going to be reversed by this government. Yet this does not preclude addressing any of the harms associated with it.

Governmental competence at home is one example, but so too is repairing Britain’s international relations and reputation. Thus Foreign Secretary David Lammy immediately travelled to Germany, Poland and Sweden saying “it’s time to reset our relationship with our European friends and allies”. Reset from what? Self-evidently, from the damage of Brexit. And a re-set to what? An ambitious security pact, encompassing not just defence but also energy, climate change and irregular migration. On the latter, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper discussed border security issues with her counterparts in EU countries and Europol. Business Secretary Jonathan Reynolds is already talking about seeking improvements in the trading relationship with the EU, and already getting positive noises of potential support from the Irish Taoiseach. And Nick Thomas-Symonds, who has the pivotal post-Brexit role of Minister for European Relations, had an immediate and positive conversation with Maros Sefcovic.

Meanwhile Northern Ireland Secretary Hilary Benn immediately hosted a meeting with Northern Ireland’s First and Deputy First Ministers, promising an improved relationship with Westminster. Starmer himself went on a tour of the devolved nations, also seeking a ‘re-set’ of relations, and emphasizing Britain’s commitment to the Good Friday Agreement when in Belfast. He then headed to Washington, where alongside the NATO summit he met some European leaders with the avowed intention of “forging closer UK-EU relations” and had a bi-lateral meeting with President Biden. There are to be further meetings with the Irish and French leaders in advance of the meeting of the European Political Community, which is being hosted by the UK.

I’m not suggesting that all of these things are solely to do with repairing Brexit damage, but there is no doubt that the way Brexit was done with almost no regard for the devolved administrations did great harm to, and caused a new and specific resentment within, the relationships between those administrations and the London government. There’s certainly no doubt that Brexit opened a particular crisis in Northern Ireland’s politics, with consequences for the UK’s relationship with the US, and especially with Biden. Equally, Brexit did great harm to the UK’s relationship with the US generally, so much of which had been predicated on the UK as a bridge between the US and the EU, and tellingly, it’s reported that Biden suggested to Starmer that improving UK-EU relations now would help to reinstate that role.

Re-setting the UK-EU relationship

There’s no cause to get carried away by all this. These are very early days, and most of what has happened is ritualistic, or at least diplomatic, politeness – though how could it be anything else, yet? The hard politics of, especially, re-setting the relationship with the EU has still to be done. On that, there is no shortage of wise advice available to the new government, none wiser than that in the excellent open letter written to Keir Starmer by Charles Grant, the Director of the Centre for European Reform. It contains important insights about both the possibilities for what could be agreed with the EU and the domestic politics of delivering it. There are similarly insightful suggestions as regards, specifically, a security pact from the Royal United Service Institute.

What unfolds from now on for the UK-EU relationship is going to be a very complicated story. The trade expert David Henig has usefully pointed out that there is not going to be a single ‘re-negotiation’, but a whole swathe of “inter-linked discussions” about different policy areas, undertaken via different institutional mechanisms, and involving different actors. It will be a big task to hold all of this within a coherent strategy. But what we have seen this week, and, like the cabinet formation, it has been done quickly, methodically, and undramatically, is the broad direction of intended travel, which is towards rapprochement. In that respect there has already been a decisive break, certainly in tone, and potentially in substance, with the last eight years of Tory government.

Moreover, it is a break being enacted without internal opposition in the governing party in the sense that, whilst the latest polling shows that the vast majority in that party want to go further than the government seem to be proposing, none want it to go less far, or to pursue a more antagonistic relationship. That, too, is a clear break with the Tory government, which faced fury from within at any step to improve things (or even at seeing a better relationship as being an improvement). Conversely, whilst there have been squeals of outrage in the pro-Brexit press and from some Brexiter politicians, another difference that has come this week is that, suddenly, their voices seem all but irrelevant.

The legitimacy of Labour’s mandate

Although the speed and energy with which this has re-set has begun have been impressive, the basic approach to this (and other policy areas) has not come as a surprise. It is exactly in line with the promises Labour made during in the campaign and had signalled for months, if not years. It is the platform that won them a huge victory. Yet the other theme of this first post-election week has been a buzz of commentary and criticism suggesting, both explicitly and implicitly, that Labour may have won a majority but do not have a legitimate mandate to govern. The point, of course, is that the vote share was so small compared with the size of the majority.

I discussed this briefly in my previous post, written in sleepless haste early on the morning of the day after the election. It poses some genuine questions about the case for electoral reform, but they are being weaponized in misleading and sometimes dishonest ways. And whilst we are very fortunate indeed that there has been nothing remotely like the attempts to derail the handover of power that accompanied Biden’s presidential victory, these insinuations about the legitimacy of Labour’s win are a very distant echo of them.

As I said in that post, the First-Past-The-Post (FPTP) system is difficult to defend on rational grounds (though not impossible). But it is the system we have, and, within that system, Labour won the majority it did. More than that, it did so having recognized exactly what was needed to win within such a system, namely to achieve the greatest possible ‘vote efficiency’, so that, rather than piling up huge majorities in some constituencies, Labour sought, and gained, smaller majorities but in more constituencies. That was also associated with a policy programme, including that related to Brexit, which lost some of the votes they would otherwise have received in seats where they could ‘afford to’, whilst gaining votes in seats where they needed more in order to win. There’s nothing illegitimate in that, and in a sense it broadens support for the government, whilst also making it more shallow.

Nor is there anything illegitimate in voters choosing, as it seems they did in large numbers, to vote tactically for whichever party had the best chance of defeating that party such voters least wanted elected, rather than voting for that party which they most wanted to win. I did it myself. It has always happened to an extent, and it happens in other countries’ voting systems, too, as the recent French election demonstrated. If it did so more on this occasion, then that is partly because of the level of hostility to the Tories, and partly because it is now easier to identify how to cast tactical votes effectively. This also means that, in itself, share of vote does not tell us everything about voters’ preferences. They have adapted their votes in the light of the FPTP system, so it doesn’t follow that, under a Proportional Representation (PR) system, they would vote in the same proportions.

Moreover, and it was clearly the case in this election, voters’ willingness to choose one party is partly about their view of the other party that may let in, as well as of the one they hope it will keep out. To be more concrete, as I pointed out last week, tactical voting against the Tories (especially by those who voted LibDem in previously safe Tory seats) will in part have been informed by the fact that they were not put off by the prospect of a Labour government. And on top of all that, some who did not vote Labour, and some who did not vote at all, will have made those decisions in the expectation that Labour would win without their votes. That may be part of the reason why the percentage of those who decided which way to vote on polling day is higher for the other parties than for Labour

So for all of these reasons, the outcome of the election, for all the gross disparities it has created, is not illegitimate, since it is a result of the system which we have (and which has produced similar disparities in the past), and the decisions made by voters in the light of how it works. You can only win according to the rules, and if you do, then the win is a legitimate one. That is a quite different issue from whether the system itself is a good system and there have long been very serious doubts about that. So, by all means, let’s have a ‘public debate’, perhaps a Royal Commission and even, heaven help us, a referendum, about changing the electoral system. But, in the meantime, it is quite wrong to use those doubts as a way of casting doubt on the legitimacy of this particular government.

Farage’s opportunism and his opportunity

Of course, the reason this is being raised so widely now is only partly to do with the Labour vote share. It is also because of Farage’s complaints that Reform’s share of the seats is so much less than its share of the votes. That isn’t new. Almost the same thing happened with UKIP in the past, for example in 2015, when they achieved one seat on the back of 12.6% of the votes, compared with Reform’s five seats from 14.3% of the votes at this election. (It has also happened to the LibDems for decades, and they, like Labour, found a way to maximize vote efficiency this time, in their case by focusing everything on a relatively small number of constituencies, a large number of which they won, in this case making their share of the vote very similar to their share of the seats.)

That this problem isn’t new doesn’t make it less of a problem. But, whilst UKIP complained about it before, Reform are doing so more vociferously (and now with support from some Tories) as they now have ambitions to government, rather than being primarily orientated towards leaving the EU. This is actually a key new development in the UK political landscape, since it is the first time a populist party has had such an ambition, no matter how distant the prospect. UKIP really had no aspiration beyond pressurizing the Conservatives over Europe. Reform want to replace them and, given the parlous state of the Tory party, that isn’t entirely inconceivable.

As for Farage, we can be quite certain that, but for the fact that it doesn’t favour his party, he would be insisting that “the fine British tradition that has served our great nation for so long should not be set aside for some ‘continental’ jiggery-pokery. It has given us strong government! Do we really,” – and here he would give his peculiarly repellent, man-of-the-people, gurning chuckle – “want to be like the Italians? Really?” He might well also point out that we have had a referendum on whether or not to keep FPTP and decisively voted to do so, and the will of the people, once disclosed in this way, can never be revisited.

Strictly speaking, all that is irrelevant to the case for replacing FPTP with some form of PR, as Ian Dunt has persuasively argued this week, which stands or falls on its own merits regardless of what anyone thinks of Farage. There is a counter-argument, which is that there is a democratic case for a system which makes it hard for extremist parties to gain representation. But no one should be under any illusion that Farage is driven by the desire for a disinterested debate about political theory. He sees that there is an opportunity within grasp, and he is correct.

What is at stake?

There are many excellent blogs, even if they now mainly go under the name of ‘newsletters’, competing for too little reading time (making me especially grateful to the many readers who continue to read this one), but one I always make time for is Matt Carr’s Infernal Machine. That’s not because I always agree with it, though I often do, but because it is wide-ranging, intellectually sophisticated, and well-written. In this week’s post, Carr criticizes as “premature” and “not a little lazy” those commentators who have “hailed Labour’s victory as a defeat for populism”.

He's right. At best, it’s a breathing space. More to the point, as commentators as diverse Robert Shrimsley in the Financial Times (£) and Fintan O’Toole in Foreign Affairs have observed, this government could represent a ‘last chance’ for Britain to hold back populism and demonstrate the efficacy of ‘centrism’. If it fails, it is all too easy to easy to imagine Farage’s siren call that, now, both Conservatives and Labour have been found wanting, and it is time to ‘try something different’.

By sounding innocuous, it will have an insidious appeal well beyond Reform’s core vote. It was very noticeable during the campaign how rattled Farage was when Reform candidates and activists were exposed as racists or, in other ways, disgraceful. As with RN in France, the strategy is to try to present a ‘respectable’ front, garnering respectable voters, whilst dog-whistling to the less respectable, but it is a strategy with inherent tensions: if the whistle is sent in the wrong register, then the humans can hear it. (This isn’t, by the way, “sneering and name-calling” at those who vote for populist parties, one of several things I was accused of this week in a rather peculiar, unprovoked attack made on me this week. It’s analysis.).

During this breathing space, two things could, and hopefully will, happen. One is that the realities of being in parliament, and claiming an aspiration to govern, will take their toll on Reform. They may find it more difficult to manipulate the House of Commons than they did the European Parliament. Farage is in many ways their greatest asset, but he is notoriously difficult to work with and, to my eye, his narcissism, which is the cause of that, is growing. There are already signs of internal arguments, and there will be greater media scrutiny of their policies, their funding, and the peculiar structure of the party itself. Much also depends on what happens to the Tory Party, of course, something I’ll come to in future posts.

The other, somewhat related, hope is that the combination of energy and unfussy competence which Labour have begun to show this week will continue, and will bear fruit – demonstrably and fairly quickly. Populism likes to define itself as anti-Establishment, anti-elite, anti-Woke, and anti-globalist. But amongst the better ways to define it is as being anti-competence. Competence is the one thing it cannot deliver, and one of the best ways of countering its appeal.

Morrissey's Brexit

There’s really only been one major Brexit development this week, the vote on the Statutory Instrument to create the Stormont Brake as part of the Windsor Framework. If that sounds convoluted that’s because it is. This wasn’t about passing primary legislation, and there was only a short debate, and no amendments were allowed. It was not even about the entirety of the Windsor Framework (WF), although it seems that the government will treat it as such. Nor was there any possibility of the government losing the vote, as the Labour Party was pledged to support it.

What difference does it make?

Nevertheless, it was important in terms of how many, and who, would vote against. In the event, just twenty-nine did, of whom a mere twenty-two were Conservatives, with the others being DUP MPs plus the whipless, and increasingly unhinged, former Spartan Andrew Bridgen. The list of Tory rebels, by the way, includes some of the most disreputable and despicable politicians of our, and perhaps any, age. So it was a fairly puny revolt, and though it was notable that both Boris Johnson and Liz Truss joined it, what was more notable was that neither have the pull to have made it a significant challenge to Rishi Sunak. Johnson himself had to interrupt his ill-conceived defence against charges of having misled parliament, of which more below, in order to cast his vote.

It has been known for some time that the ERG’s membership has fallen, and the group is much less organized than in its 2018-19 heyday. Its members, or ex-members, are also split, and some of those in government, especially Chris Heaton-Harris and Steve Baker, were closely involved in, and became advocates of, the WF. Indeed, in Baker’s case, that led to the one-time ‘Brexit hard man’ being thrown out of the ERG’s WhatsApp group whilst being described as a “little weasel” by Nigel Farage. As Robert Shrimsley, Chief UK Political Commentator of the Financial Times, observed, “the revolution eats its own children”. Perhaps more to the point, it is the latest example of the difference between taking responsibility for the realities of delivering Brexit and the luxury of espousing Brexit purity from the sidelines.

Even so, there are plenty of Brexiters on the Tory benches who are not ERG members but who might have been galvanized to rebel in different circumstances. Had there been enough to mean that the vote would have been lost without Labour support that would have been a significant embarrassment for Sunak, and a sign that the Brexit Ultras are still a force to be reckoned with, but there were not. It’s true that several Tory MPs didn’t vote, but it is impossible to tell how many of these were meaningful abstentions and how many were simply absences. In any case, abstention hardly bespeaks of Cromwellian resolve.

The day before, the ERG’s ludicrously-named, if not downright ludicrous, ‘Star Chamber’ had found the WF, including the Stormont Brake, to be unacceptable. But the fatal political flaw in this, as with all the Brexiter objections to the WF, is that everything they object to about it was also contained within the Northern Ireland Protocol itself, which they voted for. Not only that, but it was part of the ‘oven ready deal’ the 2019 Tory Government was elected to deliver. Now that the reformed Protocol has, effectively, been accepted, there is little realistic prospect of these objections being resurrected. Equally, the persistent Brexiter lie that the Protocol was always intended to be temporary, wheeled out again by Priti Patel in a Telegraph article this week (£), must surely have died this week, even if any of them actually believed it. It is expected that the WF will now be formally adopted at today’s meeting of the Withdrawal Agreement Joint Committee.

There is a light that never goes out

So it is plausible to say that the grip of the ERG has finally been broken, and that Sunak, unlike any of his predecessors since 1992, has successfully faced them down. Certainly, Wednesday’s vote is widely seen to have strengthened his political position, with Jessica Elgot of the Guardian writing of it “having been a moment of pure delight for the Prime Minister”. Against that, it’s not just plausible but likely that, if the Tories go on to lose the next election, there will be a backlash from the Brexit purists, saying that the problem was that Brexit was betrayed.

By that, they will mean betrayed not just by Sunak and the WF but also by the failure of both Sunak and Johnson to deliver the deregulatory nirvana that many of the Ultras crave, for it is worth recalling that Brexiter dissatisfaction about delivering these ‘benefits of Brexit’ long pre-dates Sunak’s arrival. Johnson, if he stays the course, might seek to lead that backlash, arguing no doubt that his own failures were the fault of others. But his political stock may never recover, even if he dodges the bullet of the Privileges Committee hearing, and, anyway, the true Brexiters have always known he was not of the faith.

More likely, it will be championed by one of the true believers, perhaps one of this week’s WF rebels. Truss is probably irredeemably tainted by failure, a failure for which the greatest evidence is her own inability to recognize it, so Priti Patel or Jacob Rees-Mogg are more obvious candidates. It is already possible to see the battle lines being drawn, with Sunday Telegraph Editor Allister Heath, in an article (£) ominously yet absurdly titled “The Brexit revolt against the Remain Establishment has only just begun”, hailing the twenty-two Tory rebels as “heroes” and insisting that, if Sunak loses the next election, “the next Tory leader will be chosen by the party membership and will be a Brexiteer, anti-ECHR and anti-woke”. In other words, neither the Tories, nor British politics, have yet seen the back of the ERG.

Ask

All that is for the future. More immediately, the Windsor Framework vote could be a sign that, as I put it in a recent post, Britain’s Brexit fever has broken. However, there are several questions to be asked about that. One is what now happens about the operation of the Northern Ireland Assembly, which of course is in no way resolved by the vote, even though a new opinion poll shows not just strong support amongst the people of Northern Ireland for the WF (overall 45% support, 16.9% oppose), but that even within the unionist community only 15.7% (though 22.8% of DUP voters) are opposed to it (and 45.8% support it, though only 36% of DUP voters). Wrapped up in that is whether, regardless of whether the Assembly is restored, the Protocol will go on being not just a running sore for some unionist politicians, but also, in being so, will function as a rallying point for Brexiters generally.

Another question is whether, how, and to what extent, Sunak follows up his success with the WF by moving in more pragmatic directions on Brexit policy generally. As I suggested last week, there are already signs that he will do so in relation to defence and international relations. But what about domestic policy and, crucially, the Retained EU Law Bill? If he continues with the latter, Brexitism can hardly be said to be in abeyance. If he doesn’t, will that provide a new rallying point for the Brexiters? It is of note that both this Bill and the Bill of Rights Bill are on the agenda for today’s meeting of the Partnership Council of the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

Barbarism begins at home

Even if passing the Windsor Framework has broken the Brexit fever as regards government policy, it will also serve to re-enforce and perhaps grow the poisonous reservoir of Brexit betrayalism within British Conservatism in its wider sense. That matters not so much in terms of Brexit policy but the rag-bag of populist causes with which Brexit has become bound up. Those causes have their adherents amongst the Tories, of course, with Lee Anderson and Jacob Rees-Mogg being obvious examples, but also within the Reform Party and the very powerful media and social media nexus that promotes Conservative populism.

Although the political parties in this space, not just Reform but the rump of UKIP, and Reclaim, which has never been more than a rump, remain angrily disunited, there is a sense of this ‘movement’ coming together, an example being the way GB News employs as hosts Tories like, again, Rees-Mogg and Anderson, as well as Nigel Farage and oddballs like Laurence Fox, alongside its wider cast of viciously aggressive presenters and freakish commentators. Similarly, an offshoot of Fox’s Reclaim was recently revealed to have funded Andrew Bridgen, whilst Bridgen himself co-hosted a lavish dinner for anti-vaxxers at the Carlton Club last month. In some ways, such loose-knit communities of interest are more effective than a political party, creating the impression of a disorganized ‘general consensus’ rather than an orchestrated agenda.

GB News is also becoming unusually favoured in being granted interviews by Tory Ministers, who sometimes are even interviewed by Tory MPs moonlighting as presenters, with the approval of Ofcom, whilst on other programmes these same Tory MPs – Rees-Mogg again is an example – feature as interviewees. And, of course, GB News is only part of the wider and more established media phalanx pushing similar agendas, especially still influential print titles including the Telegraph, Mail and Express.

Meanwhile, the increasingly cowed and compromised BBC, though certainly a very far cry from GB News, routinely hosts spokespeople of the ‘Tufton Street’ thinktanks, and bends over backwards to placate its implacable populist critics. Thus, with or without parliamentary representation, or even creating a single party, this populist movement will continue to exert a significant and malign influence on the British polity. Perhaps most alarming is how difficult it is to distinguish between some of the apparently ‘respectable’ populists and far-right street groups like Britain First.

Much of this Conservative populism has nothing to do with Brexit directly, and many of its causes and tropes long pre-date Brexit. However, Brexit is now its touchstone, being both an article of faith and the one occasion when one of its causes was voted on and won. That strengthens the longstanding populist idea of speaking for ‘the silent majority’, and by a kind of osmosis the narrow vote to leave the EU became configured as ‘the will of the people’ and then ‘the will of the people’ for Brexit got repurposed to present many other populist causes as if they, too, bore the imprimatur of having been subject to ‘the biggest exercise in democracy our country has ever seen’ (sic).

This charming man

That elision is evident not just in the rough and tumble of anonymous social media slanging matches and newspaper columns like that of Allister Heath, mentioned earlier, but in the writings of populist intellectuals. For example, in last week’s Mail, politics Professor Matthew Goodwin managed to run together issues as diverse, yet predictable, as Brexit, the paucity of further and technical education, the ‘over-representation’ of ethnic minorities in TV shows and adverts, and, of course, “’woke’ policies in our schools [and] universities” to propose that “there is a yawning gap between the values of the New Elite and the majority”.

Tellingly, Goodwin sometimes slips between referring to the majority and to “ordinary people”, something reminiscent of the Farage formulation of the Brexit vote as being “a victory for ordinary decent people” and its implication that very close to half the country is, in some way, neither ordinary nor decent. The difference is that, after that brief moment of triumphalism, Conservative populism has now reverted to its habitual sullen victimhood, a kind of hybrid of the bedsit self-pity of Morrissey’s early lyrics and the aggressive martyrdom of his more recent political stances (yes, it took a while, but now the title and sub-titles of this post make sense).

None of this is new – Goodwin talks of the ‘New Elite’, but most of what he says about it was already hackneyed when I was young, and he himself rather paradoxically asserts that “The New Elite has been on manoeuvres for decades”, leaving one to wonder how far back we have to go for the Old Elite, or even quite what it was. Certainly historians will be puzzled to learn that “in days gone by the governing classes had much more in common with the millions of ordinary people who shared their nation”, though they would probably spot it as an example of populist nostalgia in which even the elite ain’t what it used to be. And all of us might be puzzled as to why, if this ‘New Elite’ is so powerful, it is having to endure Brexit.

But, that aside, my point is that, for all that the vote on the Windsor Framework may betoken that we have passed the high-water mark of Brexiter extremism in parliament and government policy, it has metastasized into something wider or more general, but which retains Brexit as its primary point of reference. For that reason, rather than call it Conservative populism or even, taking a tip from Goodwin, the ‘new populism’, it is most apt to call it Brexitism.

That joke isn’t funny any more

For particular example, the biggest political news story this week has been Boris Johnson’s appearance before the Privileges Committee to assess whether he knowingly misled the House of Commons over infringements of the Covid rules. This has nothing to do with Brexit, except in the indirect sense that both relate to Johnson’s pathological dishonesty, and that Johnson might well never have become Prime Minister but for Brexit (and certainly only supported it in the hope that would be the consequence).

Yet the omnipresent Rees-Mogg was at pains to represent the hearing as the work of “the haters of Brexit”, despite the Committee containing four Tory MPs of whom at least one, Bernard Jenkin, is one of the most Ultra of Brexit Ultras. Indeed it turned out, as Martin Kettle noted, that “the unexpected star turn here was Sir Bernard Jenkin, a Conservative MP whose Brexit credentials are unchallengeable, who quietly carved Johnson’s evidence into pieces, leaving him spluttering and humiliated”. Perhaps Jenkin will now join Baker in the ranks of ‘crypto-remainers’, Jacobins turned Girondins.

Rees-Mogg’s attempt to discredit the process reveals his grating hypocrisy, seen also in his role in the illegal 2019 prorogation, since he so often affects to represent himself as the voice, an unctuous and preposterous voice admittedly, of parliamentary traditionalism. For, as Hannah White of the Institute for Government explains, the significance of the hearing is far less about Johnson’s future than it is about protecting the vital constitutional importance of ministerial accountability. But it also shows how Brexit continues to be the cornerstone of British populism, for all that it has ceased to have majority support. It is the talisman of Brexitism.

And, in fact, the hypocrisy and the role of Brexit in populism are linked. For the Brexit Ultras, no perversion of parliamentary rules and norms was too great if it delivered ‘the will of the people’. In that context, Johnson’s ‘anti-ruleism’ made him their ideal leader. But as I argued at length at the time, ‘Partygate’ exposed the risks and fragility of populism by opening a chasm between ‘ordinary people’ and their supposedly anti-elitist leaders. So it will be fitting if it is his lies over this, rather than all his other lies, which finally end Johnson’s political career. And it will be a fitting irony if, as argued by (£) the ferociously pro-Brexit Associate Editor of the Daily Telegraph, Camilla Tominey, the ‘implosion’ of “the cult of Boris” is taken by association to mean the implosion of “his Brexit dream”.

Still ill

For the reality, of course, is that the “dream” has imploded quite independently of Johnson. It collapsed under the weight of its repeated encounters with reality. For that matter, even if, under Sunak, government policy is becoming more pragmatic about Brexit, that does nothing at all to stop the continuing damage Brexit is causing, damage still being assiduously charted by Yorkshire Bylines’ Davis Downside Dossier. At best, it means ceasing to add new damages on top of the existing ones.

Discussing those damages is still largely taboo for both the Tory and Labour parties but, to coin a phrase, the people have spoken, at least to the extent of successfully petitioning parliament to debate a call for the government to hold a public inquiry into the impact of Brexit. The debate will be held on 24 April, and whilst little can be expected as a result it is at least something that Brexit will actually be discussed and not treated as an embarrassing medical condition that shouldn’t be mentioned in public. The Brexit fever may have broken, but the nation is still ill.

 

Afterword

In case you missed it, I wrote an extra post this week, reviewing two recent Brexit books – The Parliamentary Battle over Brexit by Meg Russell and Lisa James, and Inside the Deal. How the EU Got Brexit Done by Stefaan De Rynck.

Brexit is shaming Britain

Since the very early days of this blog in 2016, I have been writing about the self-pitying victimhood and perpetual grievance that permeates the political psychology of Brexit. A recent example was last weekend’s doltish claim from David Davis that what we have is “remainers’ Brexit”. Admittedly, almost everything Davis has ever said about Brexit has proved wrong, but this latest comment is undoubtedly widely shared by all those, including David Frost who negotiated it, who now insist that Johnson’s ‘triumphant’ Brexit deal of 2019 was actually an abject defeat forced on them by ‘Theresa the remainer’, ‘remainer civil servants’, the ‘remainer parliament’ and its ‘Surrender Act’, and, of course, the EU’s ‘brutal’ treatment of poor little Britain.

This recurring sense of victimhood is directly linked to the main Brexit event of the week, the publication of the long anticipated and several times postponed Northern Ireland Protocol Bill (NIPB). For as Fintan O’Toole puts it, “self-pity has always been the dominant emotion in Brexit, and it has shaped the story the Brexiters are now telling themselves about the protocol”. In that story, the Northern Ireland Protocol (NIP) is treated not as an agreement freely made, and trumpeted as a triumph, but a grievance to be redressed by any means, fair or foul. For what’s perhaps less well-recognized is that the the flip-side of Brexiter victimhood is that it justifies them breaking all the rules to ‘get Brexit done’: we’ve been ‘cheated’ of ‘true Brexit’, so we can cheat in pursuit of it.

Ever since agreeing the NIP, Boris Johnson has continually stoked grievance about it amongst both the ERG Brexit Ultras and the DUP, not least by lying to them about its provisions and its impermanence. At the same time, in typically Johnsonian style, he has wavered between that and taking a slightly more pragmatic approach. Thus, for all the threats throughout 2021, he never ‘triggered Article 16’, and his unwillingness to do so and his apparent softening on demands for changes to the Protocol are widely believed to have led to the resignation of Frost who, ever since, has been a high-profile agitator for a hardline approach.

With the NIPB, the government’s approach has now become considerably harder in that, although retaining the right to use Article 16, it seems that it has abandoned that idea as too partial. Instead, the NIPB would unilaterally scrap the bulk of the NIP’s agreed provisions and replace them with the UK’s preferred, much more limited, arrangements, despite knowing that most of these are unacceptable to the EU. Yet, already, Johnson is reported (£) to be wavering about that, and wanting to ‘de-escalate’ the row at the very moment he escalated it.

In consequence, there are at least two strands to understanding the NIPB. The first is solely bound up with the internal politics of the Tory Party and the second to do with the wider Brexiter politics of the UK-EU relationship.

Tory factionalism

Regarding the first strand, as has been the case in various ways for 30 years, and despite the considerable clear out of ‘remainers’ and other moderates since the last election, the Tory Party is riven by different factional views of European policy. That factionalism is made more complicated by the post-partygate weakness of Johnson’s leadership and by the consequent jostling for position amongst his potential successors. As discussed in last week’s post, there are particular divisions between the ERG, the One Nation group and what might be called the ‘Mayite’ faction, which framed arguments over the text of the NIPB. With its publication, it became clear that the ERG view had won out (£) because, if enacted, it almost completely guts the NIP, the only rider being that its provisions would not immediately come into effect but would be available for subsequent implementation by ministers.

This would also seem to be a victory for Liz Truss, who has hitched her leadership ambitions to proselytising for the ERG. That’s understandable enough, since it’s highly unlikely that anyone will succeed Johnson who doesn’t have their support. But she might want to reflect on the fate of Theresa May, who also sought to lose the taint of having been a remainer through the warmth of their embrace. It turned out to be a bear hug.

So if Truss does succeed, she had better be ready for the inevitability of their next demand which is likely to be derogation from the ECHR. That has long been in the Ultras’ sights and, as shown this week, it’s a demand they are hair-triggered to make. It won’t be met for now, if only because it would contravene the Good Friday Agreement, protection of which is the government’s supposed rationale and diplomatic cover for the NIPB, but the one thing that can be said with certainty about the Ultras is that they never give up trying.

The legality of the NIPB

That’s a matter for the future. In the meantime, the ERG have got their way, and the only sop to the ‘moderates’ is the summary of the government legal position explaining why the NIPB supposedly does not break international law. Simply providing an explanation demonstrates that the government has learned the lesson of having publicly admitted that the 2020 Internal Market Bill (IMB) did break international law. The fallout from that episode still matters, since it showed that the government is willing to break international law, and that it does actually understand that unilaterally breaking the NIP constitutes such a breach. For both domestic and international reasons it wants to avoid that charge.

Domestically, much will depend on whether enough Tory MPs, not to mention Peers, accept the validity of the government’s new legal position. This departs from the previous, absurd, attempt – which did the rounds again this week, attracting much Brexiter excitement - to argue that the IMB was legal because domestic law trumped international law, and even from the recently trailed and much mocked suggestion that the NIPB could be justified on the hitherto unknown legal concept of ‘primordial significance’ apparently advanced by Attorney General Suella Braverman. Even so, it is clear that she views the new legal position through the distinctly non-legal lens of leave versus remain.

This new legal position is based centrally on “the doctrine of necessity”. Numerous heavyweight legal experts have already explained what that means and cast substantial doubt on its applicability in this instance, with David Allen Green saying the position is “weak to the point of non-existent”. Meanwhile, the former Head of the Government Legal Service, Sir Jonathan Jones, who resigned over the illegality of the IMB, has called it “hopeless”.

One of the main problems these legal experts identify in the government’s legal position is that, indeed, Article 16 has not been invoked. How, then, can over-riding the NIP meet the “grave and imminent peril” criteria required by the doctrine of necessity when the provisions within it to deal with any difficulties have not been made use of? And if the peril is “imminent” why forego the immediacy offered by Article 16 in favour of a legislative process that may take a year?

Equivocation and inconsistency

I am not a lawyer, but an important political aspect of this is the ongoing equivocation about whether the UK’s objection is to the operation of the Protocol or to its very existence. One reason why the government seems to have decided not to use Article 16 is precisely because doing so would be to stay ‘stuck’ within the framework of the NIP rather than breaking free of it altogether, or at least drastically re-writing it. The desire to entirely ditch the NIP, rather than just operate it differently, is clearly the position of at least some of the ERG, the DUP, and some other unionists, whilst the text of the NIPB certainly entails it being drastically re-written. Others, including Johnson himself when he refers to the NIPB as simply dealing with some bureaucratic trivialities, imply the opposite.

That it is the operation not the principle at stake is also implied in the paper on the government’s legal position, which states that “the peril was not inherent in the Protocol’s provision”. Yet, since the ‘peril’ is, apparently, the strain being put on the power-sharing institutions then, certainly from a unionist point of view, it was inherent in the Protocol’s core provision of the Irish Sea border. The legal position paper also refers to the way the NIP has been “applied and administered”, again as if it is implementation that is at stake, even though it is not claimed that this implementation violates the written terms of the NIP. Yet that seems inconsistent with a requirement of the doctrine of necessity that the UK (in this case) has not “substantially contributed to the situation of necessity”, since the government freely agreed to the written terms of the NIP. Of course this is where the Brexiter myth that the NIP wasn’t freely agreed (because of the Benn Act etc. etc.) hits the brick wall of reality.

This lack of clarity has been present since the outset, with Brexiters’ and the government’s arguments oscillating between objection to specific practical effects of the NIP, and objection to and denial of the very existence of an Irish Sea border. It is also present as regards the Good Friday Belfast Agreement (GFA), which is central to the government’s legal argument of necessity. Does the NIP violate the GFA as a matter of principle, and if so why did the UK government sign it and say that it did not? Or is it averred that it only does so in terms of its operations, in which case why will it not suffice to reform these in the ways already offered by the EU? This matters, not simply in terms of the viability of the government’s legal position but also in terms of how the politics of the NIPB are likely to play out, something I will return to below.

Beyond issues of international law, the NIPB has constitutional implications. The Brexit process has already resulted in a growth in the power of the Executive, especially in the use of ‘Henry VIII powers’. So MPs and Peers might also be alarmed by what the Hansard Society describes as the “quite breathtaking” powers the legislation would give to Ministers, with virtually no Parliamentary scrutiny. All this will play out in the days, weeks and probably many months to come. For now, at least, it seems as if most Tory MPs are ready to go along with the NIPB, though I doubt that will hold.

However, unsurprisingly, it is already clear that the European Parliament, the European Commission, and many member states including Ireland, regard it as both illegal and a grotesque breach of trust irrespective of its legality. Whatever now happens, the memory of this moment will leave a long and sour after-taste. It will also have implications for how the UK is viewed globally, and will certainly make it much harder for it to take the moral high ground in all sorts of international disputes. That makes even the publication of the NIPB an especially irresponsible act given current global issues, something else which will weigh with some Tory MPs and Peers. As Anton Spisak of the Tony Blair Institute pithily put it, “wait until Moscow or Beijing invokes ‘the doctrine of necessity’ to override its international obligations”.

The politics and diplomacy of the NIPB

That brings us to the second strand in understanding the NIPB. Its appearance is not simply about the internal dynamics and current disarray of the Tory Party, but also about the myths that Brexiters, and Johnson and Frost especially, have developed about what happened in the Brexit negotiations with the EU. As mentioned above, these include the idea that the NIP was forced on the government because parliament denied it the ‘nuclear option’ of no-deal Brexit. Added to that is the claim that it was the threat of the illegal clauses in the IMB that pressured the EU into reaching the Trade and Cooperation Agreement.

Given this ‘analysis’, it is perfectly possible that the NIPB is not intended to be used, perhaps not even to be passed, but that its threat is simply a tactic to extract far greater concessions from the EU than might otherwise be the case. Indeed, the repeated comments from Truss and others that the government would prefer a negotiated solution to using the NIPB may well imply that this is the aim. But if it is such a tactic, it is fraught with difficulties, even leaving aside the damage that it has already done to the UK's reputation.

First, precisely because it is so unreasonable from an EU perspective it is likely to be counter-productive in securing such concessions. In the meantime it has already attracted EU retaliations, with new infringement proceedings for non-compliance with the NIP plus the revival of those relating to the UK’s unilateral extension of grace period last year – for it shouldn’t be forgotten that the NIPB démarche is only the latest, albeit the most serious, of the government’s duplicities over the Protocol. Despite much media comment, the EU’s response will fall short of a trade war for now, though it’s true that the publication of the NIPB is a step down the track towards that. Generally, the EU is likely to ‘play it long’, partly because the NIPB will take a long time to pass and partly because Johnson’s fragility means he may not survive. That doesn’t make it economically cost-free, however, because the possibility of an eventual trade war creates an uncertainty that is a disincentive to investment.

The second difficulty, if the NIPB is ‘just’ a negotiating tactic, is that even if it were to extract the maximum conceivable concessions that wouldn’t satisfy the ERG or those unionists within and outside the DUP who want the NIP not just gutted but totally scrapped. This relates back to the ambiguity of whether the government regards the NIP as unacceptable in principle, or only in the manner of its operation. That ambiguity is enough for now to satisfy the ERG and, possibly, to keep semi-sensible Tory MPs on board, but it can’t be sustained forever and is already under strain, as Johnson’s ‘de-escalation’ comments show.

Northern Ireland and the NIPB

This links to the third problem, namely the dimension of Northern Ireland politics specifically. The claimed proximate cause of the NIPB is the DUP’s refusal to participate in the power-sharing institutions, thus Truss suggests that the legislation will “support political stability in Northern Ireland”. However, despite reported government pressure to do so (£), it’s unclear if the DUP, whose MP Ian Paisley denies there has been any such pressure anyway, will change position on power-sharing until the legislation is passed and perhaps not even until it is applied.

This in turn reflects their profound distrust in Johnson because of his previous duplicity, and their awareness of the ambiguity just alluded to. In consequence, if the NIPB is just a tactic to bluff the EU into greater concessions but without necessarily scrapping the entire Protocol, that may not satisfy the DUP and certainly not groups such as Traditional Unionist Voice (TUV). Indeed the TUV leader has already made it clear that even the provisions of the NIPB do not go far enough to satisfy them.

But, in any case, for all that the DUP may loathe the NIP, the recent Assembly elections produced a majority for parties which do support it and have already expressed their opposition to the NIPB. Northern Ireland business groups want any changes to be negotiated with the EU, rather than unilaterally declared. As for public opinion in Northern Ireland, Truss claims that the majority want the NIP to change, but that is based on including the 36% who in an opinion poll of November 2021 said it would be “acceptable with some adjustments”. That doesn’t endorse the much more extensive proposals of the NIPB, for which the same opinion poll implies at best 41% support. More recent polling, from Queen’s University Belfast in February 2022, shows that 53% did not think the triggering of Article 16 would be justified and 39% thought it would be, and it’s reasonable to think that support for the much ‘harder’ NIPB approach would be less than, and certainly no greater than, that.

So anything that does satisfy the DUP, let alone the TUV, is likely to be anathema to the majority. Of course, ultimately, this reflects precisely the warnings before the referendum that, however Brexit was done, it would destabilise the fragile politics of Northern Ireland. That is now undeniable, but the NIPB certainly doesn’t solve things. This in turn means that the US stance is likely to be a significant factor. Already, several influential American political groupings have made criticisms of the Bill ranging from the robust to the downright damning. However, the official reaction from the Biden administration to the publication of the bill has so far been muted and reports suggest it will continue to be low-key, though much will depend on how the NIPB process unfolds.

A new and shaming low

The publication of the NIPB is a pivotal but not a decisive moment. It certainly marks a new phase in the Brexit process – yet again making a mockery of Johnson’s boast and promise about ‘getting Brexit done’ – but it is a phase which, unless something very unexpected happens, will last for a long time, conceivably longer than Johnson himself.

It also marks a new low, beyond all the many that Brexit has occasioned. It’s easy to become caught up by all the political machinations and legal intricacies which surround this latest event. But we shouldn’t let that blind us to the sheer rottenness, dishonesty and irresponsibility of it all. The idea of a country signing a major international agreement in what was plainly bad faith and threatening to break it on threadbare grounds is contemptible. So too are all the lies told to and by MPs along the way. So too is the reckless disdain for the troubled politics of Northern Ireland and the daily lives of its people.

It is shaming, and the worst of it is that those responsible feel no shame. It is left to others of us to feel ashamed at what Brexit has done to our country and to how it is now seen by the rest of the world. Ashamed of Johnson’s incurable moral delinquency, enabled by a cabinet of sycophants, ghouls and nonentities. Ashamed, too, of a country where ghastly old waxworks like Bill Cash and his ‘Star Chamber’ get to pass judgment on whether what has been proposed ‘goes far enough’ to satisfy their perverse fantasies, and where circus sideshow freaks like Liz Truss dance to their debased tune.

And it is not even the most shameful thing the government has done this week.

Under cover of Brexit

The most important Brexit event of the week came and went with relatively little fanfare, yet it marks a significant moment. The opportunity to extend the transition period went unused (though, just about conceivably, could be revived in new form). That was not a surprise because it had been so strongly signalled by the government that the UK would not seek, or agree to any request for, extension. Still, it is remarkable for being a further indication of the total lack of pragmatism or good sense with which Brexit is being undertaken.

Without reprising all the arguments, with an already short period for negotiation, ratification and implementation massively disrupted by coronavirus only sheer dogmatism mitigated against an extension. As for the negotiations themselves, this week’s round finished earlier than scheduled, with seemingly little or no progress or convergence of positions. There are differing interpretations of the significance of this (to get the range, see here and here) but, frankly, there’s little point in speculating. The crunch point will come in the autumn.

Remarkable, too, that the Labour opposition did not even in passing set down a marker about the folly of non-extension. It makes it more difficult to reach a deal, more likely that any deal that is reached will be limited in scope – with all that means for businesses already reeling from coronavirus - and leave much still to be decided. Yet, having engineered this very situation, the latest complaint of the Brexiters is of an EU ‘plot’ to trap Britain in a never-ending process of negotiation.

Brexit has consequences that people should have known

That is just the latest version of the longstanding disconnect between the decisions of Brexiters and their understanding of the consequences. Of the many examples that could be picked, recall the first Brexit Secretary David Davis’ belief (£) that there was nothing to stop the European Medical Agency or the European Banking Authority from headquartering in the UK (both have now left as a direct result of Brexit), the rage over the UK being excluded from the 2023 European City of Culture competition, or second Brexit Secretary Dominic Raab’s belated realization of the significance of Dover-Calais freight traffic.

This week, an example was Brexiter MP Peter Bone’s bemusement (during a Select Committee meeting) that mutual recognition of standards between the UK and EU will not be possible when we have left the single market. Bone has been campaigning to leave for his entire political life, has all the resources of the House of Commons Library at his disposal and yet still hasn’t acquainted himself with relatively basic facts.

Further, perhaps even more egregious, examples were contained in the ever-ludicrous Mark Francois’ letter to Michel Barnier. Francois, the current ERG Chair and very much the Brexiters’ Brexiter, if only for his “puerile bombast”, cemented those dubious credentials by combining a gracelessness of its language (“A missive from a Free Country”; “it is possible you may have heard of us [the ERG]”), with an obvious ignorance of key facts. These included his apparent lack of awareness of the provisions in the Political Declaration for the Level Playing Field, and the existing commitments within the Withdrawal Agreement for some continuing role for the ECJ in the UK’s “national life”. One might think the ERG should know this. But, then, just as - as everyone except Norman Tebbit realises - the ‘socialist’ in ‘National Socialist’ was a misnomer, as was the ‘democratic in ‘German Democratic Republic’, so too is the “research” in the partly taxpayer-funded European Research Group.

It’s easy to ascribe all this to wilful ignorance – famously, the day after the Referendum saw a spike in people googling to find out what leaving the EU meant – and no doubt that would not be unfair, and very possibly over-generous, in relation to Bone and Francois. But for some, and especially for leave voters rather than their leaders, it is part of something different, namely a belief that, somehow, ‘nothing really changes’ as a result of leaving the EU or, if it does, that this is due to the EU being unreasonable or even punitive.

Brexit isn’t just ‘symbolic’

That’s partly to do with the taking for granted of the familiar accoutrements of modern life without realising that they are the product of extensive, albeit largely invisible, institutional arrangements. So ‘of course’ nowadays planes fly us to wherever we want without restrictions, as if this were not the outcome of complex agreements such as the European Common Aviation Area (ECAA), and ‘of course’ we can travel, work and live freely within Europe, as if that were not the outcome of freedom of movement rights.

In some ways, Brexiters, who despise EU bureaucrats and rail against extra-national decision making, seem to treat it as an act of nature that there are Europe-wide regulatory systems whereas, when transition ends, British citizens will be excluded from their provisions. The related underlying issue is that for many Brexiters the vote to ‘take back control’, with all its emotional resonance, was not thought about in concrete legal or institutional terms but as a kind of symbolic, feel-good act.

It’s this – along with its counterpart in rejecting all warnings of the practical consequences as being ‘Project Fear’ – which I think partly explains why business and governmental preparedness for the end of the transition period has been so limited. Many people simply don’t understand or believe how radically things are about to change, even if a trade deal of some sort is done. Only as they belatedly come to do so do they realise what they have let themselves in for, as with MP Bob Stewart’s recent bathetic plea for the continuation of pet passports so that he can still take his dogs to France.

Brexit is having consequences that no one could have known

All of the above (and there are many other examples) is about things which those advocating or supporting Brexit really should and could have checked, revealed, or understood before. It is going to be a hard education in the coming months and years as what Tom Hayes of the Brussels European Employee Relations Group calls “the Brexit of small things” is experienced. And it won’t even be an education unless people come to understand that these were the consequences of what they voted for rather than treating them as EU ‘punishment’.

By contrast, much that is unfolding now as a consequence of, and often in the name of, Brexit are things which were in no way entailed by it. I’m referring, generally, to the completely unrealistic and reckless way that Brexit is being done. But I’m referring more particularly to the way Brexit is being used to undertake what has the makings of a wholesale restructuring of the British State and Constitution.

This has been incipient since the very early days after the Referendum and I touched on it in my first post on this Blog. More recently, in February, I wrote about it at length under the title ‘Brexit is going feral’. I won’t repeat that here (most of it is still valid), but this week we have seen the latest developments in the shape of the defenestration of the Cabinet Secretary, Sir Mark Sedwill, and the accompanying desire of Boris Johnson that he should be replaced by a Brexit supporter (£). The appointment of David Frost, who is pro-Brexit but has little experience of security matters, to one of Sedwill’s erstwhile roles, that of National Security Advisor, is part of the same process, and led to remarkably blunt criticism from Theresa May. This comes on top of the announcement of the departure of the Permanent Secretary at the Foreign Office which is widely understood to be related to his lack of Brexit enthusiasm.

The dangers of these developments for civil service impartiality are profound, as governmental expert Jill Rutter pointed out last October. The loss of impartiality is not merely a violation of ‘traditional principle’ but, as Rutter argues, as does Jonathan Powell writing of the current developments, it entails the danger that civil servants simply give bad or even dishonest advice to satisfy the prejudices of their political bosses.

In this way the particular issue of using Brexit as a pretext for Civil Service ‘reform’ (Reformation might be a more apt term) is indeed an aspect of the general problem – undertaking Brexit in a reckless and unrealistic way – and will make it even worse. As I wrote in October 2018 that is the inevitable consequence of faith-based politics.

A “rolling coup”

But the outrageousness of what is happening does not end there. Powell – the longstanding Chief of Staff to Tony Blair, and not lacking in reformist enthusiasm – described it as part of a “rolling coup” in his article. In a tweet, he went further, raising the prospect of authoritarianism and the need to resist it. Someone of his seniority and sobriety does not say such things lightly, and his having done so should be taken very seriously indeed.

This is not like any of the previous, almost endemic, tussles between politicians and civil servants. For one thing, it is very clearly being driven by Dominic Cummings’ desire to see “a hard rain” fall on the civil service (£). It is the bitterest ironies that having vilified the supposed rule of unaccountable EU technocrats that this unelected fan – and, dare one say, exemplification - of “weirdos and misfits” should wield such power. The braggartly, bullying language of “a hard rain” is, in itself, indicative of the reason why such a person should be kept from all power, let alone that as extensive as that which Boris Johnson has gifted him.

It’s true that Cummings’ long-time ally Michael Gove gives some political cover to this, but his much-touted speech on civil service reform was really no more than has been boilerplate stuff since the 1968 Fulton Report. Gove’s pseudo-polite, pseudo-reasonable, pseudo-intellectual smarminess is only a gateway drug to Cummings’ rip-it-up nihilism; the magic dragon Gove merely puffs is the unmagical one that Cummings chases.

If Cummings role isn’t enough reason to ‘just say no’, the constitutional implications of this week’s developments are profound, as Robert Saunders, Reader in British Political History at Queen Mary, University of London, has pointed out, with particular reference to the fact that David Frost will be neither a civil servant nor (despite being made a member of the House of Lords) a member of the government. If such appointments are at the behest of the Prime Minister, neither Parliament nor the Cabinet are the source of Executive authority. It is a move towards a presidentialisation of British politics, but with none of the accompanying checks and balances of, for example, the US system. (It is worth mentioning that as, again, Jill Rutter pointed out some time ago, Frost’s position as Brexit negotiator was already an anomalous one).

A coup rooted in Brexit

It is important to recognize that all of this is inseparable from Brexit (not because it is a necessary consequence of Brexit, but because Brexit is a condition for it). It proceeds from the same populist logic of a culture war against ‘the elite’ and, more specifically, is conceived of by Gove and Cummings as rooting out “ineffective, pro-EU bureaucrats” (£, my emphasis added).

It is that ‘pro-EU’ part which marks this as quite different to all the previous approaches to civil service reform, for it targets specific (supposed) political beliefs rather than competence or even willingness to change in some general way. It is happening under a government with Brexit as its central purpose and its sole loyalty test, and one in which numerous former Vote Leave campaign team members, including Cummings, hold crucial advisory roles. It is making pro-Brexit opinion the defining qualification not even just for those civil servants delivering Brexit but for posts which have little or nothing to do with that.

Crucially, nowhere, ever, in any way whatsoever was it suggested that the 2016 Referendum was a vote for such a ‘coup’. Nowhere, ever, in any way whatsoever was it suggested that the pledge at the last election to ‘Get Brexit Done’ meant using it as a cover to undertake such far-reaching changes.

In this respect, what is happening is potentially far more serious than the dishonest way in which the vote for an undefined Brexit was repurposed as a vote for hard Brexit or even for no deal Brexit. For, now, it is being used as a mandate for wholesale changes to the British political system which are nothing at all to do with delivering Brexit. That was always a danger - it is part of the Brexit McCarthyism I first wrote about in March 2017 (these and other references to my previous posts are not intended to show that ‘I told you so’, but that what is happening now is rooted in what has developed over these last four years). Yet it is developing in complex and subtle ways, which are all the more insidious for being so.

For, as has recently been suggested, there is actually little popular appetite for a ‘Brexit culture war’ but – unlike the screaming ‘enemies of the people’ headline - it is being prosecuted in a way that few voters will really be aware of or interested in. The way the National Security Advisor is appointed is, for most, uninteresting and arcane. Civil service ‘reform’ scarcely less so. But - as with the institutional arrangements which underpin, say, air travel or international trade – once the scaffolding of the political system is dismantled people may be appalled by, but will have to live with, the consequences.

Nothing is inevitable

I keep being told (on Twitter, the fount of all wisdom of course) that all this was “the plan all along” and is inevitable. It may have been the plan of some, but little or nothing is ‘inevitable’ in human affairs. History is made by what, collectively, people do, not despite anything they may do. Without that, there’s no meaning to politics. How Brexit plays out is no exception.

This is what I was trying to get at in last week’s post. Some read it, mistakenly, as a call to ‘get behind Brexit’ or to ‘make Brexit work’. That wasn’t the point at all. Rather, it was to suggest that we should not acquiesce to the inevitability of what the ERG and Brexit Party hardliners insist that Brexit means. With the referendum mandate now discharged, we are freed forever of the yoke of the 17.4 million and with that freedom can and should challenge anew all that is being done in the name of Brexit, as well as comparing it with what was promised. Manifestly, that includes the specifics of whatever may or may not be negotiated with the EU. But it also includes all of the ways Brexit is being made use of to do things which were never entailed by Brexit itself.

The Brexiters have been successful in getting Britain to leave the EU. That is a disaster in itself. But it does not follow that they now own our country to be played with as they will, or to be re-made in whatever way they want.

The Supreme Court judgment and its aftermath

In my previous post I wrote of the political thunder and lightning that we were about to experience, and this week we have had the beginnings of that storm. There is much more to come.

The Supreme Court judgment

The Supreme Court ruling was a moment of huge significance not least for the calm, rational and – naturally – judicious manner in which it was delivered. That was a symbolic reminder that for all the rhetoric, high emotions, lies, insults and threats we see there is still what could perhaps be called a backstop to protect civilised and ordered society. It was a rare but comforting, and important, moment.

That tone was in keeping with the content of the ruling. For all the furore it has provoked, it was at heart, in one sense, unremarkable. I am not a lawyer of any kind, but it would seem self-evident that if a government is able to suspend parliament whenever it wants and for whatever reason, or for no good reason, then parliamentary democracy would be meaningless.

What we saw, as many have remarked, was the British constitution working as it should do, with the judiciary playing its role in maintaining the separation of powers that underpins democracy. It is a matter of historic importance that the Court should have decided so, historic shame to the government that it should have been necessary to ask the Court, and historic credit to those who brought that case that they had the determination and courage to do so.

The implications go far beyond Brexit and, whatever happens with Brexit, Gina Miller, in particular, should be long-remembered for her heroic actions defence of parliamentary democracy in the face of the most vile intimidation.

If the judgment was ‘unremarkable’ in confirming the basic principles of parliamentary democracy, what was truly remarkable was the forensic dismissal of each and every part of the government’s case, with the unanimous agreement of all the judges. It was a damning and unequivocal demolition of what the government had done, to the extent of confirming that, in fact, it had done nothing – that is, prorogation had not as a matter of legal fact occurred.

Johnson’s reaction

This made the reaction of Johnson all the more ludicrous, but also all the more depressing. Like an insolent, smirking schoolboy, his mealy-mouthed ‘acceptance’ of the judgment – as if, somehow, he was making a concession or could pick and choose – was always immediately followed by the claim that the judges had got it wrong. On what grounds? Simply the repetition of argument totally discredited by the judgement, namely that this had just been a normal prorogation for a Queen’s Speech.

But then the additional line. The inevitable, dangerous line. That this judgment was all about blocking Brexit, inviting others to fill in the unspoken inference of judicial anti-Brexit bias. It, too, is ludicrous. The whole basis of the argument that it was just a prorogation for the Queen’s Speech is that it was not to do with preventing parliament from intervening in Brexit. That has been the line over and over again from Johnson and the Brexiters. Yet, now, with prorogation ruled unlawful he and they claim that this would derail Brexit. So the very critique of the judgement of his case was based on acknowledgement that his case was a lie.

If the calm rationality of the courtroom set out in excoriating detail the utter contempt for democratic principle with which Johnson and his government have acted, his performance in the resumed House of Commons showed the total intellectual and moral bankruptcy of his character, conduct and policy.

As has been widely remarked upon it was a truly disgusting display. Not only did it fail to show any understanding, or genuine acceptance, of the judgment but it also ramped up all the foul and divisive rhetoric that Brexiters have inflicted upon us in recent years. For despite the current outrage, the toxic language of betrayal has long been entrenched.

In terms of substance, he had literally nothing to offer. Nothing. Just endless jibes about the ‘Surrender Act’, sneering dismissals of complaints about his use of this term, airy-fairy talk of imaginary negotiating progress, and the usual meaningless, dishonest ‘will of the people’ calumny. There’s no longer even the pretence of claiming any rationale for doing Brexit other than that it must be done, still less any rationale for the doing it by any particular date.

But, of course, he had a purpose and he fulfilled it. In any normal circumstances, the humiliating judgement of the Supreme Court would have dominated the news, and brought intense pressure for the Prime Minister to resign. Instead, he successfully switched most of the focus of attention on to his language and behaviour. And – crucial to remember for those outside it - that is doing him nothing but good with his base support, who repeat and amplify it.

The bigger distraction

Such distraction techniques are his political stock in trade (the “dead cat strategy”), but there is a bigger and far more important distraction in play here. Tempting as it is to focus on Johnson’s depraved character, what is really on display now is the total void that lies at the heart of Brexit itself.  I’ve commented before on how, ever since the Referendum, it’s been clear that the Ultra Brexiters would have been far happier had they lost. They want something to object to, rather than an alternative. They want to campaign against, rather than create. To complain, rather than to take responsibility.

For they could have had their Brexit by now had they really wanted it. Instead, step by step, lie by lie, they have torched soft Brexit, torched hard Brexit, and indeed rejected any concrete form of Brexit as a betrayal of some imagined ‘true’ Brexit. Hence gradually the onion skins have been peeled away until the fetid heart of it is exposed: not a policy but an undeliverable fantasy composed of lies and articulated in the language of spite, contempt and hate. That was once the preserve of a few fanatics. Their terrible achievement has been to spread the fantasy and the language to a much larger number, though still a minority, of the population.

Their desire, shown in their constant lie to that effect, is to claim it as the view of every single one of the 17.4 million people, most of whom had no such intention, and none of whom were told that it meant smashing the economy and every institution of democratic society, the possible dissolution of the United Kingdom, and the instigation of a permanent culture war.

Their final mendacity is to insist that this is not just the choice of that narrow majority of those who voted, but the settled will of ‘the people’ in their entirety and opposed only by some shadowy elite or establishment. Thus they position most of their fellow-citizens as traitors to whom any insult and punishment may be meted out.

Ideally, they would like to push through to no-deal Brexit on this wholly dishonest basis. With parliament preventing that, they are forced to confront the dishonesty which is why they prefer an election to another referendum. If they truly believed they spoke for ‘the people’ they would happily embrace a referendum as the last, shattering hammer-blow in their quest. For, be sure, that would mark the death knell for remain and much else besides. But they do not truly believe that, and hope instead that an election, in which they might form a government with perhaps a third of the vote, will do the job instead.

A neat irony

But, here, a neat irony intrudes. For whilst it is parliament which hems them in on one side, the longstanding schism amongst Brexiters, in the form of Farage and the Brexit Party, hems them in on the other. In a re-run of the cleavages of the Referendum campaign itself, Johnson and Cummings are again at vicious odds with Farage and Banks. In the absence of an electoral pact, each will be competing for that third or so of the electorate that might be willing to endorse their rancid politics.

Hence Johnson ramps up the rhetoric – but who wants Pepsi when you can have the real thing? Many will stick with Farage. At the same time, the traditional backbone of Tory support – which, even if now a minority of that support, is still a substantial number of voters – the kind of people represented by the likes of Heseltine, Clarke and the twenty-one expelled rebels, will be repelled.

From this point of view, Corbyn’s refusal to allow an immediate election is both right and crucial. It helps to blocks some possible forms of chicanery whereby no deal happens through a back-door avoidance of the ‘Benn Act’. It’s also good tactics to leave Johnson twisting impotently in the wind, for the longer he is left there the more the possibilities of him disgracing himself in some way, the longer the possibility of some new scandal emerging, and the longer he is kept from his preferred, campaigning, mode. The charge of the opposition being “scared” of an election will be forgotten the moment the campaign starts.

Why the failure to prorogue matters for Brexit

From this point of view, too, the failure of prorogation matters. There is a view around that it hasn’t really changed anything. In one way, this is true: it seems likely that the main reason for prorogation was to prevent something like the Benn Act passing. If so, it was a botched job, as it came just too late to do so. Indeed, it very likely is what provoked the Tory rebels to support the Act. It’s increasingly clear that Cummings’ much vaunted Machiavellian skills are much over-stated.

Nevertheless, parliament sitting again gives further opportunities to prevent any device to circumvent the Act. That is important, given Johnson’s constant implication that he will not comply with it, if its terms (i.e. no deal having been reached by 19 October) are triggered. Parliament sitting further squeezes Johnson’s room for manoeuvre.

Beyond that, the way in which Johnson has behaved since parliament resumed has, in itself, made it even less likely that he might garner Labour rebel votes for any deal he might strike with the EU. It is still possible that such a deal is what he is aiming for, though it seems a remote prospect. Since it is all but certain that such a deal would be opposed by at least some of the Ultras in his own party – not least because of the extravagant promises he has made them - it would only get through with such Labour rebel support. Fewer, after Wednesday’s revolting spectacle, are likely to give it. That, in turn, makes it even less likely he will do a deal with the EU anyway, as they will know that it is unlikely to get approved and are now even more alarmed by Johnson’s populism and lack of trustworthiness.

Why the reaction to the failure to prorogue matters

Although the Supreme Court judgment is a cause for optimism about the robustness of the legal and constitutional order, it is clear from the reaction of Johnson and the Brexiters that it will see an intensification rather than a modification – still less an abandonment – of their populist tactics.

This can already be seen in attacks on the judgment and on the judges, and in the fact that it has in no way diminished the desire to circumvent the Benn Act. It is already being mooted that the government might try to use an ‘Order of Council’ to suspend the Act until after 31 October in order to force no-deal Brexit through. If so, that would be likely to be subjected to fresh legal challenge, but who can say that would be successful?

Meanwhile, Dominic Cummings has all but condoned abuse and threats against MPs by saying they are “not surprising” and result from the failure to “respect the result” of the Referendum and from MPs being disconnected from real people outside London. This of course is nonsense at every level given the ambiguity of what respecting the result means (largely due to Cummings’ own tactics in the referendum campaign) and the fact that Brexiter MPs featured prominently in preventing May’s deal going through. It is also as absurd to depict the 8 million who live in London as ‘unreal’ as it is to portray the rest of England, still less the UK, as a seething mass of hard core Brexiters. It is another classic populist tactic. But, much more important than any of this, it gives tacit licence to intimidation.

Similarly, a heroically anonymous Cabinet Minister warns of riots if another referendum were to occur. By failing to make the obvious point that such riots would be totally unjustified, such comments are less speculation about, than implicit threat of, violence. Such statements are revealing of the final, deepest, and most dangerous core of populism. Cummings, like Johnson and others are always very careful to avoid explicitly endorsing threats and violence but, rather like Kwasi Kwarteng’s recent remarks about how “many people” (though not, heaven forbid, he) believe judges are biased against Brexit, the dog whistles are loud enough for the deafest mutt to hear.

The stakes are very high

The stakes are now very high indeed. This week’s events have shown that beyond all doubt. They have also shown what many of us always knew: that this is about Brexit but about much else besides. It is about the rule of law, about civility in political discourse, rationality in decision making and parliamentary democracy itself. It is only in passing about Johnson – as the clapping, gurning MPs behind him on Wednesday night, the screaming headlines in the papers, the vile stuff on social media, and all the rest of the poison show.

It is now clear, as I argued two years ago, that what is underway is a battle for Britain’s political soul. Judges can do so much, campaigners like Gina Miller can do so much, MPs can do so much. But, in the end, the only way of beginning to defuse what we now see being done in the name of the ‘will of the people’ is for the people themselves to show that they will something else - if indeed they do.

But we are still not even at the point of an election. There is still much more drama to come. And then an election campaign that is going to be truly horrible, with Johnson’s current rhetoric just a foretaste of that which he and others will use. And then, perhaps, a referendum campaign which if it comes will be more horrible still, worse than anything we have ever seen in this country in modern times. And even then, whatever the outcome of all that, it won’t be an end to the conflict. It will, at very best, be the beginning of the end.