UK General Discussion: 2017 and onwards, Mayhem

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A "no-deal", if as bad as people think it might be, would probably very swiftly lead to a deal. It's not exactly something the French would want as it would be massively disruptive for the Pas de Calais region at least.

True, but if/since 'no deal' *would* be as bad as people think it might be, it follows that the UK/EU would have done everything in their power to avoid it in the first place. If they nevertheless fail, there's no obvious reason to believe they would be able to conclude something suddenly, especially considering the spiraling economic and political crises that could accompany it.*

Also, I think it rises to the level of a category error to compare the effects of a 'no deal' exit on the UK with its effects on the EU, even if limited to northern France. The EU would have all 27 of its remaining member states to draw upon to alleviate the crisis - financially, diplomatically, etc. - while the UK would be alone. Added to that, the UK would feel added pressure from shortages on simple supplies (fresh produce, medicines, radiological therapy isotopes) that the EU would not suffer to anywhere near the same extent. 'No deal' is a blow for the EU, but it's a mortal threat for the UK.


*Worth noting: if there's no deal then that means the UK would have reneged on its promises from December 2017 (Irish border backstop, paying £40 billion for existing commitments). That will be highly corrosive to any effort to negotiate another deal.

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I would imagine that's a comforting narrative to a Tory broadcaster, but May's job is 'impossible' because of her own decisions and botching an easy snap election, while I don't think it's fair to call Corbyn's job easy when he's under constant attack from parts of his parliamentary party, the majority of which opposed his election to the leadership.

Corbyn appears to be doing badly because he has poor media management.
May is doing badly because the actual policies she is implementing are either fundamentally unworkable or disastrous.

Agreed. It's worth pointing out that 'media management' for Corbyn is an order of magnitude more difficult than it is for most other politicians. Even Ed Milliband could get a few weeks of peace here and there. 

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It is nice. Jonathan Meades did a great documentary about it a few years back.

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... moving on from the trivialities, this could be the beginning of the end of May, this government, and possibly Brexit.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-45586010

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Corbyn absolutely wants an election. He probably anticipates (rightly) that an election pre-March 2019 will expose fatal fractures in the Tory party; Labour would win by default. He likely sees this as a chance to impose a far more leftward set of policies than has been politically tolerable for decades.

Silent Hunter's correct about the parliamentary mechanics of calling an early vote, but at this stage they are little more than ceremony. If a true political crisis materializes - one where the May government (or a rapidly installed Tory replacement) has excluded all options save a no-Deal crash out - then the financial, constitutional, and social tumult that would accompany such a situation would compel a drastic reassessment. An election wouldn't be guaranteed, but the obstacle to it would not be parliamentary arithmetic.

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The idea that May is going to call a general election after what happened last time is pretty fanciful.

It's not about what May wants. If no Brexit deal can get through parliament then there's no alternative.

Ok, so my desire to get the Tories out of office and Corbyn in agree with you, as does the 'common sense' part of my brain that figures, like you, that they must have an election if they can't pass a Brexit deal because all other options will have been exhausted ...

... but I honestly cannot imagine the Tories in that situation willingly abdicating their power and submitting to an election they would not only likely lose, but lose in such a way that their party and its ideology (or at least its Eurosceptic aspects) would fall into eclipse for a generation. I have no idea what they could or would do instead, but as the saying goes: turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

At the very least, I see the sequence of events leading to an election before March 2019 to be far less likely than the sequence of events that would see the ERG and/or DUP capitulate and accept the Irish backstop, with an agreement barely squeaking through in parliament. I hope I'm wrong on that, though.

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The idea that May is going to call a general election after what happened last time is pretty fanciful.

It's not about what May wants. If no Brexit deal can get through parliament then there's no alternative.

Ok, so my desire to get the Tories out of office and Corbyn in agree with you, as does the 'common sense' part of my brain that figures, like you, that they must have an election if they can't pass a Brexit deal because all other options will have been exhausted ...

... but I honestly cannot imagine the Tories in that situation willingly abdicating their power and submitting to an election they would not only likely lose, but lose in such a way that their party and its ideology (or at least its Eurosceptic aspects) would fall into eclipse for a generation. I have no idea what they could or would do instead, but as the saying goes: turkeys don't vote for Christmas.

At the very least, I see the sequence of events leading to an election before March 2019 to be far less likely than the sequence of events that would see the ERG and/or DUP capitulate and accept the Irish backstop, with an agreement barely squeaking through in parliament. I hope I'm wrong on that, though.

Who are they?

ERG in this context stands for the European Research Group, an informal collection of Europhobic Tory MP zealots. It was formed back in the 90s, but for the past 5 years they have been the unofficial policy mouthpiece on Brexit within the Tory Party, with (regrettably) ever greater influence and power.

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And at the risk of being pedantic, May does not command a majority in the house. She leads a minority government that has a confidence and supply arrangement with the DUP that supplies a slim and quite obviously conditional majority of the House for the time being.

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Well you gotta admire the British right-wingers' apparent willingness to blow the whole country up just to show Jonny Foreigner eh?

and to have the chutzpah to say it's happening because the EU is being mean.

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Audrey could you not post so many pictures and newspaper headlines- it's clogging up the thread to the extent that my ipad seems to die everytime I try and reply.

I wasn't going to say anything because I figured it was just me, but yeah. Please bring down the imagery volume, Audrey

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Well, the Canada model (ie a standard trade deal) would work. Except for Northern Ireland of course. I wonder, would a hard border there be that disturbing?

What was the situation pre-Good Friday Agreement? Or pre-1973? Has the border really been open all the time since Ireland became independent?

Pre-GFA the border was still policed by armed guards and little else (not quite the same, but think Canada/USA today). Pre-1993 there were customs checks in addition to armed guards (think Finland/Russia today). The latter was dismantled after the ROI and UK joined the Single Market, but the former did not disappear until 2005, per the GFA.

If it came to it, both sides would try to keep a 'hard border' as light as possible, but it would still be unacceptably disturbing no matter what. The GFA was based on a very carefully constructed legal and political ambiguity. Citizens of the UK in NI could claim Irish or UK citizenship freely with no objection from either country and no ability of either country to refuse to recognize that choice. Put in practice, that means that everyone in NI, regardless of citizenship, has the right to treat the UK and ROI as if either was their 'home' country, i.e. to be able to work, move, travel, and do business in all parts of that country without any restriction.

The reason this was so important was that the conflict in NI (vastly oversimplified) was between absolutists on either side who wanted NI to be entirely Irish or entirely British. By granting the political and legal space for both Irish nationalists and British unionists to claim that they were, in practice, getting what they wanted (i.e. treatment of NI and its citizens as being part of one country or the other), the GFA gave both sides enough face to agree to stop killing each other.

The clincher, and the reason this has become the flashpoint of the Brexit debate, is that this level of legal ambiguity between two sovereign countries is only possible if you have a mechanism for sharing sovereignty in a very broad and systematic way. The Single Market and Customs Union do this; there is no other model for it anywhere else in the world.

The GFA was a masterful piece of international diplomacy that ended decades, arguably centuries, of sectarian violence that cost tens of thousands of lives ... and the Brexiters want to throw it all away so they can stick it to the EU.

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1) An early General Election is held, unless the House of Commons subsequently resolves "That this House has confidence in Her Majesty's Government".
The House would have to pass the second resolution within fourteen days of the first.

2) So Chequers (or whatever the final deal looks like) is killed off by Parliament.
A handful of Tory MPs (or DUP) would have to join Lab, LD, SNP, PC and Indies and vote that they have *NO CONFIDENCE* in the Tory Govt.  
I don’t see that happening because Tories like power.

3) And triggering an early General Election risks the Tories falling out of power - voluntarily - 4 years before they have too.
And so long as Tory MPs prefer having a Tory PM and the DUP still support them...they stay in power.

4) More likely is that voting down a deal would lead to the PMs resignation but so long as any new Tory leader can command the confidence of the House of Commons, they are under no obligation - nor is their a method of compulsion - to hold a General Election.

5) Finally - the House could vote to dissolve itself on a tabled motion ‘That there shall be an early parliamentary general election.’

This would require 430 MPs to vote for it and I can’t see 110 Tories breaking rank to do that if their whip is to vote against.

Sorry for the double post but you've brought up some excellent points, Audrey.

I agree it would be unlikely to see 110 Tories break ranks and vote as part of a 2/3 majority for an early dissolution of the House; it is just as unlikely that 12-ish Tories would vote against their own government in a confidence motion.

However, that still leaves a third option: the Tories vote themselves for an early election, as they did in April 2017. It sounds outlandish, but in a situation where the Withdrawal Agreement from the EU has been voted down by the House, the EU has called the UK's bluff on 'No Deal', and the Tory hardliners refuse or are unable to replace May, a general election is sort of the only option left.

https://twitter.com/gareth_snell/status/1040687522655948801

1) Scenario 1) Labour campaign against the deal in the referendum. Deal falls and we leave the EU with NO DEAL as leaving date is enshrined into UK law as 29th March 2019.

2) Scenario 2) People’s vote is a choice of accept deal or stay in EU. Labour campaigns to stay in the EU, proving the Tory charge all along that Labour doesn’t accept the outcome of the referendum AND reneging on our manifesto commitment to accept the referendum result.

3) Either way, the relationship with our heartland LEAVE voting areas is at rock bottom and we will have achieved nothing in the last two years that will have addressed the reasons why our communities voted LEAVE in the first place.

4) And then - having allowed ourselves to be boxed off by the Tories as ‘Brexit betrayers’, we will go back to marginal seats in the Midlands and say ‘trust us’ to a group of voters who will have likely voted to LEAVE for a second time...

5) Labour should have spent the last two years offering genuinely radical solutions to the social and domestic issues which drove Brexit - but we fell into the trap of arguing over process and parliamentary procedure with the Tories - and on their timetable.

^^ from Labour MP for stoke-on-trent central, with a No Deal Brexit becoming ever more likely a second referendum looks increasing likely, however it won't be so easy to pass a legislation for a second referendum in the house of commons, there will be huge pressure on Tories representing Remain areas and Labour MPs representing Leave areas,

I think this is exactly why Corbyn has been so cagey about calls for a 2nd referendum. He doesn't want to commit himself to a vote that would expose Labour divisions as badly as Tory ones. A general election wouldn't do that, if only because it would allow Corbyn to change the subject every once in a while. Also, with Labour not currently in power there is less onus on them to articulate specific detailed plans for how to 'do Brexit', meanwhile the Tories tear themselves apart as they try to accomplish the impossible. It's kind of a win-win for Labour in that sense.

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@TomMcTague

1) Corbyn is desperate to stop banging on about Europe. Why? All out Brexit opposition, his inner circle’s concluded, only leads to a culture war they can’t win, undermining Lab’s core electoral strategy: populist economics based on class interest.

2) Lab wants to fight an election on populist economics which appeals to a clear majority: tax the rich few to give to the ordinary many. (See second home tax, private school tax etc). Brexit blows this up, offering ordinary leavers a cultural reason to vote Tory, Corbyn’s team say

Why Corbyn is (still) half-hearted about Europe

https://www.politico.eu/article/why-jeremy-corbyn-is-still-half-hearted-about-europe/

Corbyn is right. Going all-in on Remain would be Labour's death. He needs to be all about class issues.

Agreed. Besides Corbyn's own apathy, there are sound strategic and political reasons for not committing to any one plan, especially when you're in opposition.

FWIW I suspect Labour will keep as much ambiguity as they can while inching closer to remain as the crisis of the next few weeks/months plays out.