Understanding Britain’s prorogation row

Slowly Boris Johnson, Britain’s prime minister, is revealing his plan. He has asked the Queen to suspend (“prorogue”) Parliament for an unprecedented four and a half weeks, from early September to mid October. This leaves parliament just three weeks before the Brexit deadline of 31 October (next week before the suspension, and two weeks after it), making it very hard for it to do anything to thwart his plans, given how much other business it must transact.

The Queen has consented to this, which puts Mr Johnson in a very strong position, as there is no easy way to stop him. So now either the EU cracks on the question of the Irish backstop, and the government rushes a revised deal through parliament at the end of October, or we drop out without a deal. One element of Mr Johnson’s plan remains mysterious. When and under what circumstances will he move for an election, which seems more than likely given how precarious the parliamentary position?

Leaving that aside, the most depressing thing about the episode, apart from the dire state of the country’s constitution, is how partisan and ill-informed all the commentary is. What people say about the constitutional propriety depends wholly on their views about Brexit. Leavers say that it is wholly proper, Remainers say it is an abuse of power. There is outrage on one side and insouciance on the other, but little attention to the facts. Let’s try to take a step back.

Firstly the government’s defence is that with a new prime minister it is essential to proceed with a Queen’s Speech setting out a legislative programme. It is customary to precede this with a few days prorogation. This has simply been combined with the normal three week recess for party conferences, and rounded up a bit. The first part of this makes sense. A Queen’s Speech is badly needed to give Mr Johnson’s administration legitimacy, as so far it is completely untested by any kind of democratic process. One of his predecessor’s unhappy constitutional innovations was doing away with the annual Queen’s Speech, and prolonging the parliamentary session indefinitely. A Queen’s Speech is long overdue. It is hard to challenge the timing either: waiting for the party conferences but before Brexit Day. Things surely won’t be any easier after this date after all. The problem with the government’s case is consolidating the conference recess with the customary short prorogation before the Speech. A recess is something decided by parliament itself, and the Autumn conference recess has frequently been suspended to deal with urgent business. That was sure to happen this time. One of the conferences (the first) includes only the 14 Lib Dem MPs after all. A prorogation, however, is imposed by the Sovereign and needs no parliamentary approval. Furthermore some important parliamentary business continues during a recess, such as committee work and the answering of questions. This will all go under a prorogation. This is a clear abuse the government’s prerogative powers and there is no need for critics’ outrage to be manufactured. The “nothing to see here” defence offered by the prime minister and his supporters marks a new low of lying and deceit in British politics.

A further suggestion is that the Queen should not have given consent. That is a much harder case to make. The constitutional principle that she always does as her prime minister advises is the only secure way that the Queen can stay above politics. The political accountability of the prorogation is the prime minister’s alone. This makes the case for an elected president in the manner of most republics. Alas that idea remains deeply unpopular.

So is excluding Parliament from interfering with Brexit for over four weeks a denial of democracy? Brexiteers appeal to the supremacy of the referendum result over parliamentary sovereignty. This is a brand new constitutional principle, without any legal force, but one that has broad popular and political consent. Even most Remainers say that the 2016 referendum can only be undone by another referendum. In the way that Britain’s unwritten constitution evolves, this looks secure. The problem is deciding what the British public actually asked parliament to do. Parliament is surely entitled to decide for itself, especially since it was elected after the referendum and so has a more up to date mandate. Precedent from other European countries that have rejected EU membership (Switzerland, Norway and Iceland) suggests that this may include membership of the Single Market and more. The campaigners for a Leave vote were deliberately open about what the vote actually meant until the vote took place. The suggestion by many Brexiteers that the referendum mandate can only mean a hard Brexit is clear nonsense.

But the Brexiteers do have a point. Parliament has failed to decide what it actually wants, in spite of some quite innovative attempts to get them to give an indication. They rejected the deal offered by the EU three times, and not even narrowly. They have rejected holding a further referendum to help it make up its mind. A narrow majority was found for the government deal minus the backstop, and that is exactly what Mr Johnson is asking for. But, Remainers counter, they have also rejected no-deal. But rejecting no-deal without agreeing on an alternative simply looks like trying to frustrate the referendum. Parliament did vote to serve Article 50 notice on the EU, with a leaving date of 29 March. No-deal is simply what happens if you fail to agree on a deal.

Personally I feel that MPs have three legitimate choices. First is to accept Mr Johnson’s plan of drop the backstop or else. Second is to delay Brexit again so that a further referendum can be held. Third is to back the existing deal with the backstop and leave on 31 October. The Labour leadership’s idea of buying time to renegotiate the deal and then putting it to public is a nonsense. It is way too late for that. They had their chance in the 2017 general election and they lost.

To my mind the whole sorry impasse is mainly Labour’s fault. Theresa May’s Conservative government followed a clear plan and it had democratic legitimacy. But she could not get enough parliamentary support. Her successor is carrying this forward in a way that is surely consistent with what his party said it would do when elected. “No deal is better than a bad deal,” was a favourite saying of Mrs May even if she clearly didn’t mean it. Jeremy Corbyn was right to make the case for a deal with deeper integration to the EU, as that is what Labour argued for in its manifesto. But as time went by it has become clear this his ideas are not fully fleshed out, and that he wasn’t going to get an early general election. At this point he needed to either throw his weight behind Mrs May’s deal, which when all is said and done was not far from Labour’s manifesto, and which could doubtless be modified by a future Labour government, or else he should have thrown his weight behind a new referendum. This was an invidious choice. The former would have enabled Mrs May to complete Brexit, but it would have shocked many of his core supporters. The latter would also have divided the party, and could well have failed to get a parliamentary majority. An invidious choice but surely the sort of honest, straight-talking politics Mr Corbyn said he stood for when he became Labour leader. Instead the party has simply acted to create deadlock.

All of this gives justification enough for the government’s drive for Brexit on 31 October, deal or not. But it offers no excuse for its prorogation stunt. And yet much of the outrage is a displacement activity from the awkward fact that the government’s parliamentary opponents are as far from offering a coherent alternative as ever. What a mess!

The Lib Dems face the fight of their lives

It’s been a good few months to be a Lib Dem. In May success in local elections was followed by triumph in the European Parliament elections, when it beat both Labour and the Conservatives. The party’s support in the polls has surged. Other successes followed, including attracting two high-quality defectors from other parties in parliament and a by election win. And yet this success is fragile. A lot hangs on the next few months.

The party’s current poll share of about 20% is not normally mould-breaking territory. But both Labour and the Conservatives are polling relatively poorly and it is the gap that counts. Two things have created this situation. The first is the rise of Nigel Farage’s new vehicle: The Brexit Party, which has drawn votes from both big parties as well as helping to define the Lib Dems as their polar opposite, with the party’s unequivocal opposition to Brexit. The second is the abandonment of what might be called the “liberal centre” of politics by both parties. Labour were the first to do this under Jeremy Corbyn. The party has attacked “austerity”, meaning cuts to public spending, and promoted anti-capitalist policies, such as extensive nationalisation. Under Boris Johnson the Conservatives have abandoned the liberal centre too. Not only are they going full out for a hard Brexit, dismissing the dangers of No-Deal, but they are spraying spending promises everywhere and tearing up constitutional conventions. They are also banging the populist drum on immigration and crime and punishment. They look more like followers of Donald Trump than sensible conservatives.

So this leaves the Lib Dems with two political gaps that they can fill: being unequivocally anti-Brexit, and taking the liberal centre. Their first task has been to crush rival claims to this ground. This is what they succeeded in doing in May, as the nascent Independent Group collapsed. The Greens remain uncrushed, and are still important rivals in some places, but they are uninterested in the liberal centre. The next thing the party did was to select a new leader, Jo Swinson. She gives the party a fresh face, and looks more like the voters the party needs to attract. But the challenge now facing Jo is daunting. I think there are three main things she needs to do: navigating the Brexit end-game; establishing a post-Brexit profile; and consolidating the liberal centre. If the party fails in these tasks, the two party narrative of British politics will be re-established and the party will be squeezed out.

Firstly, and most immediately, is the Brexit end-game. The party’s clear resistance to Brexit has been its most important defining feature. It owes it to its supporters to fight as hard as it can to fend Brexit off. But this is looking decidedly tricky. Just how tricky was illustrated last week, when Labour launched its plan for a “caretaker” government under Mr Corbyn to postpone Brexit and the fight a general election. This wrong-footed Jo, who called it out as a cynical ploy too quickly, rather than being non-committal and voicing doubts (a position she has tried to adopt since). This allowed Labour followers to suggest that the party’s top priority was political advantage, not stopping Brexit by any means possible. Fortunately the damage not severe, as potential Tory rebels, essential to the exercise, took up the running. Indeed the move has ricocheted back onto Mr Corbyn, who is having to explain why he is a better choice to lead an interim government than a more neutral figure. It has also allowed Jo to garner extra publicity: many may not have noticed the party had a new leader. But this episode is an indication of the treacherous ground ahead.

The enterprise of stopping Brexit, or even the lesser goal of stopping a no-deal, is almost certainly doomed, however. Mr Johnson’s government views it as an existential crisis for their party, and is willing to play fast and loose with the conventions on which the country’s political processes depends. Mr Corbyn, as I discussed in my previous post, wants the same outcome, albeit without any of his fingerprints. So what happens to the Lib Dems after Brexit? Once out most people, in Britain and the EU, will surely want to move on. Getting back into the Union will be a generational project.

But after Brexit Europe will not drop off the political agenda, and especially after a no-deal. Smooth relations with the EU will be essential for many aspects of British life, including the economy, Northern Ireland and freedom to work and travel in EU countries. Such issues will dominate the British political agenda, forcing both sides back to negotiating a deal of some sort. The Lib Dems will have to move quickly from their “Stop Brexit” position to something new, that keeps the party in touch with the key issues, and which keeps the pressure up on the Conservatives and Labour to define their positions more clearly, and so expose their own divisions. Jo will have to do this on the hoof, as there will be no time to use the the party conference to forge it. The obvious choice would be to advocate a Norway plus plus position. This means being part of the Single Market, including freedom of movement, and a customs union. Fisheries would be excluded but some kind of deal will be needed on agriculture. Rural voters are not so important to the Lib Dems these days, but the party needs to keep up pressure on the Conservatives in rural areas. The idea should be to reopen EU markets for British agricultural produce, and to fend off imports from America and elsewhere. And if people say that all this would mean being a rule-taker, the party can simply say that Britain should rejoin as a full member in due course.

This is necessary, but not sufficient. Labour may end up by saying something similar. Many ex-Tory voters will be sceptical. Which is why occupying the liberal centre will be so important. What is it? Liberal for a start. That means embracing diversity, multiculturalism and tolerance. It also means courting younger voters, which in turn means embracing environmentalism, up to and including radical action to stop and even reverse climate change. All that is easy for Lib Dems, but does not particularly help define them against Labour or the Greens, or even more enlightened Tories, of whom there are more than many suppose.

So the “centre” element of the liberal centre is important. And that means a middle of the road economic policy. That in turn means taking fewer risks with public spending and borrowing, and being moderate with tax increases. That means being careful with spending promises for public services. There is a very interesting discussion to be had about whether this is in fact sensible public policy: many argue that this is in fact a good time to take risks with public spending, and that the burden of tax needs to be radically shifted. But that discussion misses the point. British voters have over the generations drawn the conclusion that governments need to be careful with finances, and they have reason to suspect that Labour will not be. Under Boris Johnson they may even be losing trust with the Tories. Somebody needs to make the case for a more cautious approach, and it makes sense for this to be the Lib Dems.

Moderate economics will not sit so easily with many Lib Dem activists, however. They are rightly wary of the party being branded as being centrist and so defined by what the other parties are up to. Many are wounded by Labour’s persistent demonisation of “austerity”, in which the Lib Dems are said to be complicit under the coalition years with the Conservatives. But while the anti-austerity rhetoric evinces passion in many people, I don’t think it is a popular in the country at large as many Labour people suppose. The Lib Dems built up a degree of credibility on economics with moderate Conservative voters during the coalition – and this group will be critical.

What is clear is that Lib Dems cannot rest on their laurels. The accession of Mr Johnson has given a lift to the Conservatives, and this threatens to restore the two-party dynamic that is the natural state of British politics. The Brexit Party is in retreat. The 2017 general election pattern, where the two main parties moved to over 40% each, can happen again. But the public has deep doubts about both parties, and both leaderships are adopting very risky political strategies. This could be the Lib Dem moment. The party has the fight of its life ahead of it.

So just what are Labour up to?

Britain is entering a period of high political drama. All the political parties are geared up for a few months where they could have a decisive influence on events. Except, apparently, one. Labour’s policy on Brexit, the issue of the day, appears confused. They have added to to the general confusion after one of its most senior leaders, John McDonnell suggested they might not get in the way of a referendum on Scottish independence. Meanwhile the party appears riven by internal issues, not least the longstanding row over antisemitism. Just what is going on?

To outsiders the obvious answer is that the party is suffering from weak leadership that is unable to make hard choices. Its leader, Jeremy Corbyn, has had a life in politics playing the gadfly, and has very little background in the heavy-lifting stuff. But he is surrounded by clever advisers, who live and breathe political strategy. Something more purposeful is surely going on.

The first thing to understand about Labour is that the hard left, people that I have also referred to as Leninists, took control when Mr Corbyn took the leadership in 2015. These are patient people with long-term goals. They have been dreaming for a generation and more of taking control of the party, and after that the country: they are not going to loosen their grip if they can help it. They have consolidated control over the party machinery, and Mr Corbyn is one of their own. But their hold is not totally secure, especially with so many MPs not in their camp. If Mr Corbyn was to step down as leader, they have no strong candidate to replace him. Their best bet is Mr McDonnell, who is clearly smarter and more strategic than Mr Corbyn, but is another older white male, without Mr Corbyn’s particular charisma. Somebody else could do to him what Mr Corbyn did to the front-runners in 2015. The other candidate often spoken of is Rebecca Long-Bailey. But she gets very little media space and most people (me included) don’t really understand who she is. I suspect that she is another of those popular insiders who get talked up by their colleagues but haven’t quite got what it takes for the big stage. So Mr Corbyn has to hang on in there, even though he seems well past his sell-by date. Meanwhile the internal runctions are simply part of the price the leadership pays for consolidating its hold. They think much of it is pumped up by enemies of the party in unsympathetic media channels; they aren’t entirely wrong there, though that is normal everyday politics.

The second thing to understand is what the leadership’s general political strategy appears to have been over Brexit. The inner group, in accordance with Leninist ways, is closed and secretive, so it is actually quite hard to know for sure what their game is. But they seem to be deeply scared of taking sides, and alienating either working class Brexit-supporting voters in their northern heartlands, or the Brexit-hating younger middle-class activists who do most of the work. They are mostly Brexit supporters themselves, fearing that EU regulations might limit their options in government. They hope that Brexit happens, and allow the political debate to move on, with the process being messy and the Conservatives getting the blame. They can then attack the tarnished Tories in an election, where they can move the agenda on to “for the many, not the few” (a horrid phrase designed to say less than it seems, appropriated by former leader Tony Blair to replace the much more specific old Clause 4 of the party constitution in the 1990s).

This strategy suffered a major blow when Brexit did not happen as expected on 29 March this year, prolonging the inevitable strain. When it came to the European Parliament elections that resulted, the party had nothing of value to say and performed very badly. These elections gave credibility to two alternative parties, who beat them: The Brexit Party and the Liberal Democrats. The Greens also did well, surely at Labour’s expense. Labour’s voters are getting used to considering alternatives for their vote. This makes things harder.

But the strategy appears to be undead. Brexit looks likely to happen on 31 October. This will probably be chaotic and this could tarnish the Tories, as planned, while taking the wind from the sails of TBP. The Lib Dems will become irrelevant with their main anti-Brexit message pointless, and Green voters can made to realise that their cause is hopeless in the current electoral system. So keep going.

The most important question the party now has to face is what happens if the government loses a vote of no-confidence in September. This will be too late to stop a no-deal Brexit unless an alternative government can be formed with Labour at its core. What would the party do to facilitate this? The most credible strategy would be to form some short-term multi-party “government of national unity” (a misnomer if ever there was one), by ganging up with the SNP, Lib Dems and Tory rebels. This needs a less partisan and more competent prime minister than Mr Corbyn to have its best chance – some elder statesman, not necessarily even Labour. The Labour leadership appear to have ruled this out. They would have two reasons for doing so. Firstly they would be taking sides and alienating their Brexit supporters; the gambit might even stop Brexit from happening. Second it does not help Labour appear as a credible government in waiting if they accept that their leader isn’t up to leading it.

So the idea appears to be to present Labour as an alternative, minority, government, with Mr Corbyn as prime minister, and dare the other parties and Tory rebels to provide enough votes and abstentions to get it started. If it succeeds it would be an excellent platform from which to launch a general election, with the party’s credibility boosted by the trappings of power. The problem, of course, is that the party would have to take ownership of Brexit. That firstly means getting the EU to delay, which should be feasible. The party says that it wants to revive the previous government’s deal with the EU, tweak it to their liking (for example by making the objective of a customs union explicit) and put it to the people in a referendum. This is very fraught. In practice they would be likely to negotiate a delay and launch a general election. The problem with that is they want the election after Brexit, not before.

In fact what I suspect the leadership really wants to do is somehow to allow Brexit to happen with the Conservatives in charge, and then move for the kill. “Somehow” because they must do this while appearing not to facilitate it.

That all looks very fraught, but it is making the best of a difficult hand. The potential reward for the leadership is massive. They could end up in power after an election, with a lot of their troublesome MPs cleared out, and with the political sting largely drawn from Brexit. The chances of this don’t look that high, but for those Leninists who have been willing it all their political lives, it must look like the best shot they will ever get.

To observers who do not equate national with party interest, and especially those who want to put Brexit to another referendum, this is a dismal prospect. The Labour leadership could act decisively to resolve the crisis through such a referendum. That it won’t isn’t because it is weak, it is because it doesn’t want to.

A very British coup

I have returned from a ten day holiday, mainly in Austria and Hungary to find my country with a very different government in charge. There has been no election. The new government has even not been tested by our democratic representatives in parliament, and will not be for at least another month. Such is the British constitution, an odd mixture of the democratic and monarchic.

I struggle to accept that Boris Johnson is now our prime minister. This man has always been something of an outsider to the British political establishment, and somehow not a serious politician. His main claim to fame was an eight year period as Mayor of London, an office that sounds more impressive than it actually is. Apart from that he spent a year as Foreign Secretary, where he has had at best mixed reviews. He comes into his current job after a further year of making mischief from outside government. But he convinced most of his fellow Conservative MPs that he was the man for the moment, and this was emphatically endorsed by the party’s membership, who barely amount about 160,000. This does not even work by the principle that a majority of a majority is a majority – as Conservatives MPs are not a majority in parliament, and still less so in the country as a whole.

Mr Johnson then swiftly completed his coup by replacing government ministers wholesale. There was no attempt here to achieve balance across the parliamentary party. Instead there seemed to be two tests: personal loyalty to Mr Johnson during the leadership contest, and a readiness to accept a no-deal Brexit. More shocking than this is the guiding philosophy of the new government, set not just by ministerial appointments, but those of senior advisers. It has a revolutionary air: one that is eager to crush all opposition to achieve what it has decided is the will of the people. This is quite unlike any government I can remember. There are flashes of Tony Blair and Margaret Thatcher, but even these felt they had to make some attempt to get support from across their parties, even though it was clear that they preferred not to.

For now this gives the new government a freshness and energy, as is often the way when the tiresome ways of negotiation and compromise are suspended. The focus is on achieving Brexit by 31 October without the Irish backstop which was agreed by its predecessor with the European Union.

The political objective of this is in plain sight. Nigel Farage’s The Brexit Party poses a mortal threat to the Conservatives, as was demonstrated by the European Parliament elections. Behind this lies the frustration of much of the country with the failure to implement Brexit. So far Mr Johnson’s strategy is working. TBP is sagging in the polls. And although the Conservatives lost the Brecon and Radnorshire by election largely because of TBP, the trend is clear.

But this all looks more like a campaign that a credible government programme. Mr Johnson has laid out an uncompromising negotiating position for the EU; his ministers are making daily promises to spend money on this or that problem; there are also promises of tax cuts. There is no attempt to reconcile all this with reality. But the new government has to deal with two very big problems, even before it needs to work out how it is to run the government finances.

First is that it has a technical majority of only one after the Brecon by election, while having many disaffected MPs in their own ranks, who have little to lose by creating trouble. It is hard to see that a majority can be found to support a no-deal Brexit, unless a large number Labour MPs from Brexit supporting areas start to panic.

The second major problem is the reality of negotiating lasting international treaties. The government’s supporters claim that such negotiations are similar to those for buying or selling property, or for supermarkets buying produce from food suppliers. The US president has the same sort of idea. But their objective is not a one-off transaction, but a long-term relationship. This requires trust, which is hard if you keep threatening to tear up any deal that you unilaterally decide you don’t like. It is also hard to compromise when part of your act is to whip up your own political base with uncompromising rhetoric. Donald Trump is finding it impossible to complete pretty much any international negotiation so far, with the exception of relations with Mexico and Canada, where the power imbalance is massively in his favour. The government hopes that the threat of no-deal chaos, especially in Ireland, produces just such a power imbalance in Britain’s favour. But the politics look terrible and time is short. Also many Europeans think that no-deal represents a colossal act of self-harm by Britain, and might be tempted by the response of “Go ahead: make my day”. Some think that a chaotic British exit will be a lesson to other countries tempted to threaten their own exit.

So what on earth is the government’s strategy? There is a twin answer to the first problem. First is that by ducking and weaving the government may be able to achieve a no-deal without having to get the approval of parliament. This is tricky, but they have made it clear that they have no scruples about whether such an approach is democratically legitimate (since they are simply enforcing the will of the people, of course), and their best brains are on the case. The second answer is to fight and win a general election. That looks a tall order, but British politics is volatile and they may get their chance.

And the second problem? They appear not to care, or they may even believe their own propaganda, which is either that the EU (and the Irish government in particular) will give way and create some sort of transitional period towards a hard Brexit, or that a no-deal Brexit will only cause problems in the short-term. It would doubtless be chaotic, but politically the key is not to catch the blame, they seem to think. This looks much to sanguine to me, but I don’t live in their world.

Will they get away with it? Mr Johnson has one thing going for him: the abysmal state of the Labour Party. They may be too weak to stop him, but too strong to stop anybody else from doing so. That party’s predicament deserves a blog post of its own. Their leadership looks incapable of exploiting the chaotic situation to its advantage. If the Tories can crush TBP (perhaps neutralising them with an electoral pact, though that looks very hard to pull off), and then reassure Brexit-supporting Labour supporters with its apparent abandonment of austerity, then it is all to play for.