Exactly twelve months ago today, on 8 June, 2017, Britain
lost a government. It has been without one ever since. The motley shower who
gather around the Cabinet table at the behest of Theresa May don't qualify: they
don't know what they want, and even if they did, they wouldn't know how to get
it.
In a
piece I wrote last November, I said: 'Theresa May's government is finished. It
is no more, it has ceased to be. It has expired and gone to meet its maker ...
Cabinet discipline has broken down, ministers make up policy as they go along,
and Mrs May, described by George Osborne after her election debâcle as
"a dead woman walking", is now barely even walking.'
Was
I right, or was I right? It would be bad enough at the best of times; this,
however, is the worst of times, as the UK faces its biggest challenge since the
end of the Second World War. The Brexit referendum -- imposed by a feckless
prime minister in a fit of absent-mindedness ('Oh all right, then, have your
stupid referendum -- what do I care? Tum-de-dum-de-dum ...') -- has paralysed
the body politic.
We are up the creek with no paddle,
no captain, in a leaking boat, heading for the rapids. If you don't have a
lifebelt handy, I suggest you find one pronto.
As you may have noticed, although I
wouldn't blame you if you try to avert your gaze whenever you glimpse the word
Brexit, all the talk over the past few days has been of a 'backstop', or even
of a 'time-limited' backstop. This has acquired such seminal importance that
the man supposedly in charge of the Brexit negotiations, David Davis, was
reportedly on the brink of handing in his cards.
Whenever I find that my head is
starting to hurt as I try to make sense of the verbiage emanating from the
Westminster village, I reach for the dictionary. 'Backstop -- a thing placed at
the rear of something as a barrier or support.'
Fine. So if we haven't come up with
a miracle way to square the post-Brexit circle of a frictionless border between
Northern Ireland and the Republic of Ireland -- one being outside the EU's
customs union while the other remains inside it -- we'll have a 'barrier or
support' in place to stop the whole trade edifice from crashing down. (The
nature of the backstop, by the way, is that we'll carry on as if nothing has
happened. Brexit? What Brexit?)
But a 'time-limited' backstop? Here's
what the government says: 'The exact period for which [the backstop] would be
in force would depend on the nature of the delay [in agreeing new customs
arrangements], but as a Government we are committed to making sure that the
future arrangements are in place by the end of December 2021 at the very
latest.'
Stop press: UK government decides
it now takes only one to tango. Given that the UK government can't even agree
with itself on what it wants, the chances of it being able to agree anything
sensible with Brussels must be, I would suggest, somewhere far below zero. To
say we are in cloud cuckoo land is to insult both clouds and cuckoos.
Next week, MPs will be voting on a
whole raft of Brexit amendments that have arrived in their laps from the House
of Lords. If they were to vote in accordance with their convictions, many of
those amendments -- most of which are designed, one way or another, to smooth
the path towards a so-called 'soft' Brexit -- would sail through.
But because Theresa May lives in
constant fear of her arch-Brexiteers, and because Jeremy Corbyn cannot shake
off his instinctive and longheld anti-EU views, MPs from both major parties
will be herded into the division lobbies to vote against nearly all the Lords amendments.
Some MPs will rebel against their
own party leaders. Perhaps there will even be enough of them to defeat the
government on some of the votes. Most of them, however, will toe the party line.
Some because they are cowards, others because they believe that they need to
respect the pro-Brexit majority in their own constituencies.
Whatever the reason, they will be
failing the nation. In both the Commons and the Lords, there is a clear
majority in favour of the softest Brexit negotiable. But the narrowly
pro-Brexit referendum result has emasculated them: by imposing the blunt
instrument of a plebiscite on top of a representative parliamentary democracy,
it has poisoned our political system and risks doing immense damage to
Britain's future prospects.
Both May and Corbyn bear a heavy
responsibility for the disaster that threatens us. Next week, however, MPs have
a chance to do what we pay them for: to use their judgement in the best
interests of their constituents and the nation, and to vote accordingly. It
will be to their everlasting shame if they duck the opportunity.
By the way, if you missed the third
programme in my documentary series The Future of English, you can hear or
download it, as well as the two previous programmes, by clicking here. The
final programme will be broadcast next Wednesday.
You are totally correct that our representatives should vote in the best interests of their constituencies and the country. 'Take back control' was the Leavers mantra, which is total hypocrisy as they wish to bypass the very parliament they purportedly sought to empower. They are snake-oil salesmen and shysters. The referendum's shelf-life has passed and people should realise that now we start to see reality of this it is not going to confront and change the situations and predicaments they are in. This government and its predecessor are responsible for that. Our parliament can save us from this debacle if its members truly stand up for what they believe.
ReplyDeleteSurely, the facts that - (1) we are jumping into a scenario that warrants a "backstop", and (2) even the leading Brexiters are only just now considering a "backstop" - should really be flashing big warning lights & sounding sirens that something is not right
ReplyDeleteAs a leading 1st world nation, we shouldn't ever, ever, ever be having to plan for a scenario where a very last resort is needed - surely we're a lot better than that ?
For now, at least !
JW