This is a very, very strange time for British politics. The Article 50 period runs out in a mere 81 days. Having thought it through, I don’t see how we’re not on the verge of a new political era, very different even to the one we’ve inherited since June 24th of 2016. Yet it doesn’t feel that way, on the street, in the media, online. Everyone seems convinced somehow that things will just continue on as they have done.
Let’s briefly run through every believable scenario and examine the political aftermath of each. Although it looks unlikely at the moment, we’ll start with May’s deal getting a majority in parliament. This is the scenario that offers the least scope for radical change – but it will still deliver plenty. For a start, Brexit will happen and we’ll be thrown into the next set of negotiations with the EU. May will hang around and insist that she be the one to guide Britain through that process, still clinging to the myth that this can all be wrapped up in less than two years. This will cause both huge disruption inside the Conservative party, more than we’ve already seen even, and simply kick the next Brexit related crisis down the road. Meanwhile, bad blood over Corbyn’s conduct regarding Brexit, combined with the fact that leaving the EU means there is no point in at least half of the PLP bothering to stick around anymore, means the party system could still crumble.
And again, that is the least likely, most stable outcome ahead of us. What if we leave with no deal? The potential messiness of this is too much to begin to accurately predict. Even if the disruption is moderate – which I severely doubt – the fallout will still be immense. A civil war within the Right will almost certainly erupt, alongside an equally virulent dispute on the Left. If the disruption is bad – I really have no idea what happens then. But I just don’t see how either of the two large national parties remain anything like intact whatever the outcome of no deal, if it should take place.
If there’s a second referendum, that will see massive fireworks and again, major splits in both major parties the likes of which feel like they could be terminal. If Article 50 is simply cancelled on the proviso we’ve run down the clock, we need to stop it and figure out what to do later? Again, I have no idea what happens then. Does the ERG bunch leave en masse to join some Arron Banks funded monstrosity? How does Corbyn react to this dashing of the Brexit dream?
Coming back to my original conceit: taking into account all of the above, it remains the case that most Britons do not feel panicked about the current political state of affairs, nor does it feel like, a few yobs in yellow jackets occasionally disturbing traffic in central London aside, revolution of any description is in the air. One could come to the conclusion that the masses are ignorant of what is coming; polling would support this conclusion, if you of a partisan mindset to jump to it. A lot of people seem to think “no deal” means no change whatsoever, and even those who understand it enough to realise the change, feel like all of the negative prognostications, both from the government and from Remain leaders, is just another phase of Project Fear.
Yet, I don’t think it is down to mass ignorance. Part of me has always felt that what drove the Leave victory was a desire to smash the system on the part of enough people to make the electoral difference in June 2016. And if that hypothesis is correct, then a lot of people are getting – and about to get – a whole lot more of what they voted for. I don’t think a lot of people who voted Leave will shed tears if one of the end results of the Brexit process is the extirpation of both the Labour and Conservative parties. Perhaps that is why everything feels so calm despite the backdrop.
“This is a very, very strange time for British politics.” Er, yes Nick, we had noticed!
And you may be right about this: “I don’t think a lot of people who voted Leave will shed tears if one of the end results of the Brexit process is the extirpation of both the Labour and Conservative parties.”
But the key point is that Brexit *doesn’t* affect the two main parties (or the other parties) equally. Thanks to some recent reputable surveys, we now know for sure that the Labour party’s membership is overwhelming against something called ‘Brexit’ and the Conservative party’s members are equally emphatically in favour of Brexit – however Brexit is defined. I won’t get into the semantics of the pros and cons of Mrs May’s Brexit Deal versus an EFTA-EEA Brexit or a WTO-No Deal Brexit, that’s not my point.
My point is a different one: the Conservative party and its members will be, for the most part, at least in tune with whatever the change Brexit brings. For the Labour party and its members the situation will be quite the reverse. This may be an understatement. (For the Liberal Democrats, even more so).
Though let us be very clear about one thing: Brexit is a major re-orientation in the UK’s political, economic and international relations away from how things have been done since, well, the last one in 1972-73.
Too many people in this country live in poverty and uncertainty about their future, but it is a relatively small proportion of the whole. To actually remember what things were like in the early 70s, when there were genuine shortages and prolonged power cuts, you would now need to be approaching 60, and even that period was not that tough compared to the Second World War and its aftermath which few people now remember. We are a society used to ease, but we may be about to catapulted into a nightmare from which our government cannot protect us. There are those on the right (who of course are well insulated from any consequences of their rabble-rousing) who welcome a sudden injection of, as they see it, icy reality into the lives of ordinary people, cushioned as they have been by the NHS unemployment benefit and welfare payments. These are the people who will be seeking to seize control of the Conservative Party and then using their power to impose unrestrained Chicago School capitalism on a country reeling from the consequences of Brexit.