How Johnson’s campaign to become the next leader of the Conservative party and thus prime minister is going depends on who you speak to. Plenty of right of centre pundits are now making a living telling you a lot about how even though he seems to be bumbling a lot and setting himself up for a fall, he’s in fact running a brilliant campaign. The problem is, however you want to spin it, Johnson faces a huge set of challenges the moment he becomes PM. And I do mean, the moment he becomes PM; he has no time to waste whatsoever.
This week, he’s strengthened his pledge to take us out of the EU come what may on October 31st and to do away with any cabinet member who isn’t prepared to see through a no deal Brexit. Ken Clarke can say that Johnson doesn’t actually mean this all he likes – the fact is, now that he’s said it, the pressure mounts up on both sides. The Brexiteers expect him to see it through, but they always were going to – the real problem he’s got is there is a sizeable chunk of his own parliamentary party that is now prepared to take very drastic steps to prevent a no deal happening. Given the timeframe, this will come to a head very, very quickly for Johnson. He is going to have to make decisions straight away that will affect the nation and him personally for the next decade at the very least.
A government of national unity is now looking like not only a real possibility, but the most likely thing to happen given where everything is settling. Think about it: both major parties are pushing ahead with a suicidal deselection regime; both are doing horrifically badly in the polls at the same time. They will both find themselves with leaders that much of the parliamentary parties do not like and furthermore, have plans for Brexit that are a million miles from their own MP’s wishes.
I can imagine the stages already: seeing that he is about to get done over, Corbyn resists the urge to call a vote of no confidence in the government. He’d rather let Johnson do whatever he’s going to do with the Halloween deadline and then react. This causes a large enough chunk of the PLP to break off and replace Labour as the official opposition. Once that’s happened, they call a vote of no confidence with the view to forming a government of national unity. With a huge number of Labour MPs effectively politically homeless, and about 65 MPs in smaller parties who want to stop Brexit, this becomes the default.
Of course, the big problem with this (beyond MPs basically being willing to destroy their parties) is the divide between those who want to stop no deal but think we need to push ahead with a soft Brexit, and those who want to stop Brexit from happening altogether. How these two groups come together is a mystery. But if no deal seems very real, they just might be able to pull it off.
Think all this sounds fanciful? As I say, it begins to look more and more likely every day. Johnson needs to be alive to it’s very real possibility and what it could mean for his premiership.
For if this scenario unfolds it is hard to see Johnson having anything but a retched legacy. For a start, he will have been prime minister for five minutes. Secondly, if politics really does fracture between Leave and Remain, with a Remain government cobbled together while the Leavers cry establishment coup from the opposition side of the House, Johnson won’t last long as the chosen one. Farage will find his way into the Commons and is the much more natural leader of the movement. Johnson will be sidelined quickly.
Which is why I come back again to the very real possibility that Johnson does an about face and comes out for Remain: because it is the only route that doesn’t lead to oblivion for him. Now, just because that is the case does not mean he will go down this path. The only way Theresa May could have saved herself was through a second EU referendum; she chose oblivion instead. But Johnson is a very different beast, and he might see that the only way he gets to be prime minister for ten glorious years is to vanquish the Brexit beast he himself helped to create.
If Boris knows he’s going to face a vote of no confidence as soon as he takes office — which he must — surely that means that his plan is to have an immediate general election and win it?
Once he does that he has what Theresa May needed, but didn’t have: a majority. With that he can push through a Withdrawal Agreement, even one that the most hardline of the ERG and the DUP don’t like such as one which has cosmetic changes to the backstop but is functionally the same as May’s.
I’m not sure there is a leader who can emerge from the backbench factions and carry over 50% of Labour MPs away from Corbyn. But it’s an interesting idea and resolves one of the problems with a ‘government of national unity’ as touted so far — there is no obvious leader for such a thing, and its unprecedented for the Queen to call a backbench, non-Cabinet level MP from an opposition party to form a government in a failed confidence situation. Of course, depending on the scale of a Tory revolt against Boris in your apocalyptic scenario, someone like Rory Stewart couldn’t be ruled out. But that’s a hell of a lot of what-iffery.
carry over 50% of Labour MPs away from Corbyn
Plus the SNP, remember, they’d have to be on board to make it work. Plus at least some Conservatives.
It seems unlikely.
someone like Rory Stewart couldn’t be ruled out
Labour MPs not only splitting from the official Labour Party (when they haven’t done that so far despite all the reasons to) but voting confidence in a PM who is a Conservative? I don’t think so.
Well, there you have it: Labour MPs might split their party but probably won’t serve under a Tory, even a dissident one, and TOry MPs might split their party, but probably won’t serve under a Labour MP, even a dissident one.
The two party system deserves to die, and is going to die all the messier and nastier because people who should know better will continue to be constrained by its idiocy, even after it’s obviously moribund.
Is it possible that proportional representation could be introduced quickly as an emergency measure? Perhaps if enough MPs think they will lose their seats in another first past the post election?
Precedent is that changing the voting system requires a referendum. Wouldn’t that be fun?
Yes, I think precedent would now require a referendum on changing the voting system – unless *all* the major parties were in agreement (which is unlikely to say the least).
I think we can now say with reasonable confidence that the electorate would vote No to PR in such a scenario – particularly if it appeared to be part of a political fix. And the case for PR would be the last thing under consideration in such a referendum campaign.
Obviously, the ideal would be to introduce PR after long discussion and consideration and the holding of a referendum in conditions of calm and stability. However, the present conditions are the opposite of ideal. We have the worst internal political crisis in living memory and as far as I can see the first past the post electoral system is one of the important factors in the background of this crisis. Parliament is deadlocked and an election may come soon.However, another FPTP election would probably solve little and could easily make things worse.
I know there was a referendum a number of years ago, but it was about alternative vote not PR, and I think a lot of people were really voting on the question: “Do you like Nick Clegg?” If a PR system could be quickly introduced by a government of national unity, it would produce a parliament with fair representation of parties large and small, leave and remain, concentrated in limited regions and evenly spread across the whole country.
I understand the problem of trying to reconcile the principle of proportionality with that of local representation. I think it could not solved quickly. However, it would be possible to quickly organize a PR election using the regional list system already applied in European elections, but electing 600 instead of 73 MPs.
I think people would soon get used to PR. There would be a lot of discussion about how to improve the PR system, but not of going back to FPTP.
I know there was a referendum a number of years ago, but it was about alternative vote not PR,
The referendum was, ‘Do you want to change the voting system to AV?’
It was defeated, overwhelmingly, as it happens.
If you want to change the voting system to STV, say, then fine, but precedent says that you have to have a referendum: ‘do you want to change the voting system to STV?’
I’m pretty sure it would be defeated as well, but if you think the best thing to do in the present situation is to introduce a new referendum — a sort of side-referendum — then be my guest.
(The only way to get away without a referendum would be if the people were crying out for PR. But — they aren’t. The only people who want PR are the usual suspects who have always wanted PR because they do badly under FPTP. Demanding massive constitutional change just to benefit yourself is never a good look.)
I’m well aware that the alternative vote (AV) is a majoritarian voting system, not a proportional one but, even, now it is still described by broadsheet journalists – who ought to know better – as ‘PR’, (let alone what the average voter may think).
Indeed, the very fact that a relatively small change to the voting system like AV (keeping single member seats, for example) was defeated in the referendum suggests to me that a more radical change like PR-STV (with multi-member seats) would have little hope of success without all party agreement. And at a rough guess, I would estimate that it would take 12 months to legislative for and implement any new voting system more complicated than AV. Quite enough time for the process to be derailed by its opponents.
(By the way, I can’t be the only one who would vote against any new system that involved the introduction of ‘party lists’ into the election of the House of Commons elections, even though I might otherwise be sympathetic to the principle of electoral reform.)
Under the UK ‘unwritten’ constitution Parliament is supreme. No referendum is required for any bill that passes in the commons and the lords. and that includes dealing with Brexit by the way. So, if a majority can be cobbled together for PR then it would be perfectly in order. The problem, I suspect, is that the form PR was to take would be difficult to agree.
A cobbled – ‘cobbled’ being operative word – parliamentary majority could indeed pass a PR bill if politicians could agree on the precise details, which would be doubtful in that fraught political situation (rather like now, only more so). But a voting system change in that context would be seen as a political fix without popular political legitimacy. As soon as its opponents could muster a parliamentary majority, the new voting system would be liable to repeal. That is exactly what happened in France in 1985/86.
That is why a switch to PR would need very broad cross party support and/ or popular backing in a referendum. But, as we have seen in the UK and elsewhere, the case for changing the voting system would be difficult to make and win in a referendum campaign.
Under the UK ‘unwritten’ constitution Parliament is supreme
Under the unwritten constitution, the only thing more powerful than Parliament is precedent. It’s only precedent that says the Prime Minister has to sit in the Commons (or even that there should be a Prime Minister at all). Nothing technically stops the Prime Minister from sitting in the Lords, provided they have the confidence of a majority of MPs, but it would be unthinkable for that to happen today. Why? Precedent. Similarly it would be unthinkable now to change the voting system without a referendum, having established already that the people doesn’t want it changed.
Nick –
The problem with the ‘government of national unity’ idea (GNU) is that the Labour party is absolutely allergic to working with “bourgeois” parties in the Marxist sense – I think that’s what Labourites really mean when they refer to Red, Yellow, Blue or Tartan “Tories” – except in wartime, of course.
This is a legacy of Ramsay MacDonald’s ‘betrayal’ of the Labour movement in 1931 when he signed up to lead the Conservative-dominated National government, in order to address what was a peacetime economic crisis on a cross party basis. (As it turned out, the National government’s domestic policy record was not that bad, but MacDonald’s reputation in Labour circles never recovered.)
It is pretty clear that any current Labour politician that backed the GNU concept would find themselves out in the cold very quickly as far as the Labour movement was concerned – just like Ramsay MacDonald.
Your speculation is very fanciful. A general election is far more likely: Johnson’s opportunity is very narrow and possibly non-existent, while support for Corbyn ebbs away by the day, residual support for Johnson would decline even more steeply with any exposure as PM..
Moreover a General Election would provide cover for a delay to Brexit. I see no prospect of a national unity government. Labour could poll below the Lib Dems but take more than three times the seats. Tories, with Johnson campaigning for a mandate, though under 30% might still be the largest in terms of seats. At which point Johnson might chance his arm with a new referendum.
Nick
Glad you have come to my line of thinking
Boris is a remainer
As I said before in one of your articles he chose leave as the only way of removing cameron as his election win of 2015 would have retired the charlatan
As he keeps mentioning his great grandfather mr kemal who chose not to move with reality