Politics

Westminster’s blooming fiasco: a guide to the summer of Brexit discontent from a May exit to the EU election



The sun is out, London’s parks are packed and the Chelsea Flower Show is already sold out. It’s a time for growth, brightness and joy — except in politics, which is locked in the dark. It’s in the dark metaphorically — no one has a clue what is going to happen — but practically, too. As the Brexit war enters its third summer the players have shrivelled from the light, like plants deprived of nutrients and water. 

What’s going on? Where’s the drama, the big choices, the crunch votes? We don’t see much of the Prime Minister these days. Even the once-rampant Boris Johnson seems to have wilted from public view. Conservatives are tangled in the brambles talking to themselves about the leadership on WhatsApp groups, not to Britain ahead of European elections next week. The Tories haven’t even bothered to publish a manifesto. 

The House of Commons packed up work after less than four hours yesterday when it ran out of things to do and for the rest of the week it will tread water in pointless debates. Today is the 300th day of the longest parliamentary session since the English Civil War and it feels like it. Meanwhile, cross-party talks on Brexit with Labour are full of gloom. 

No wonder Nigel Farage, the Japanese knotweed of politics, is ripping through this untended space. 

Brexit Party leader Nigel Farage has been campaigning ahead of the European elections (Getty Images)

And what of Labour? Rival party groups led by Jeremy Corbyn and his deputy Tom Watson are growing far apart on Brexit and a referendum, but the debate is inside the party, not with people beyond it. The shadow Brexit secretary, Keir Starmer, is targeting his leader when he threatens that perhaps 150 Labour MPs would demand a referendum on any Brexit deal. But that doesn’t mean it will happen. 

Already the shine has gone off Change UK. True, the Liberal Democrats are back in the sun after a strong run in council elections the other day, but no one knows how long that will last or who will lead them if Vince Cable steps down, as he said he would, at the end of the month. The Green Party is polling well too but voters can’t share support for Remain parties when they choose MEPs next week.   

Watching politics at the moment is like hearing the banging and clunking behind the curtain while a stage set is changed between acts. We can all hope that something is about to be revealed which might resolve things. But what? 

Three things are going to count. The first is what happens inside the Government. Today, for instance, there’s a Cabinet meeting, which will see Larry the cat disturbed in his regular snooze. The meeting might leak a bit less than normal, after the spectacular sacking of defence secretary, Gavin Williamson, but it is likely that ministers who are boasting of a showdown with the Prime Minister will hold off. She will set out the most optimistic view of the talks with Labour: that a deal might be done on a temporary customs union. But it doesn’t feel real — and she hasn’t budged much. 

That unreality will be true of another regular slot this week, too: Prime Minister’s Questions tomorrow, which now goes on for so long and is so uninteresting that it’s a mystery why anyone once paid attention to it. 

Something else could make a difference. On Thursday leaders of the 1922 Committee of backbench Tory MPs want the PM to set out how and when she will leave Downing Street. She doesn’t, of course, want to say. Will they force her hand? We’ve heard talk like this before. But the end is coming. 

Prime Minister Theresa May (REUTERS)

It is a sign of how dispiriting politics has become that the impending eviction of a Prime Minister doesn’t feel special. At Westminster her removal isn’t even the first thing that’s discussed any more. It’s taken for granted as plotters move on to more significant issues — such as whether Amber Rudd or Michael Gove will run, or which job Jeremy Hunt has promised to whom, or whether the MPs running Johnson’s campaign are up to the job. 

Despair around the PM is nothing new of course. But it has been given new bite by the Conservatives’ imploding poll ratings and the prospect of coming in below the Greens and Lib-Dems in the European elections. So that’s the second thing that will count.

On Thursday next week some people at least will turn up to vote in a contest the Government is still pretending isn’t really happening. Its campaign is the political equivalent of anti-matter: it hopes we won’t notice it exists. 

The results will come on Sunday night, after other EU member states vote at the weekend. The Conservatives will do badly. The Brexit Party will do well — but remember that in the 2014 contest its predecessor Ukip also came first. The real winners will not necessarily be the party with the most MEPs but the side that manages to interpret the result in its favour: claiming Britain voted for its kind of Brexit — or no Brexit at all.

Maybe the outcome will be so shocking it will trigger a Cabinet move against the Prime Minister. But it’s hard to think what could shock Tory MPs these days — and anyway, only Johnson stands to gain from an immediate contest. Other candidates still want to drag things out to get a chance to pull ahead. 

Then there’s another vote. A week after the European ballot comes the Peterborough by-election caused by a recall vote after its former Labour MP Fiona Onasanya was convicted of perverting the course of justice for lying about a speeding offence. It’s a chance for mainstream politics to crash and burn again. A few days later, on June 15, Tory activists are likely to hold a formal vote of no confidence in their leader. If Theresa May, the ultimate activist, loses, that will be another reason for people to say she must go. 

Eyes on the prize: Keir Starmer, Jeremy Corbyn and Rebecca Long-Bailey prepare for cross-party talks (PA)

All this explains why it is hard to find anyone confident she will still be in office much beyond autumn. She has always refused to set a date for her departure — promising only that she will leave when the Brexit deal is agreed by Parliament. But if she doesn’t change that line soon then the rules could be altered to allow Conservative MPs to vote for a second time in a year to remove her. Basically, it’s almost over.

So what will follow? We shouldn’t forget the real reason she’s in trouble: Brexit. The third thing which really counts in shaping our future is the next deadline on October 31 — by which time the UK is supposed to have agreed an exit deal or crash out. There’s no guarantee the EU will extend this even if we had a Government in place with a new plan. At the moment we’re drifting towards that date, with politicians hiding from any sort of solution. 

You can still find at least one influential optimist at Westminster who says there is a 50-50 chance that MPs will back something before Parliament goes off on its summer break. We don’t hear about progress, he argues, because things are being arranged by “people who are not talking but doing”. But how this will happen is a mystery. 

Countdown to Brexit: 170 days until Britain leaves the EU

Maybe an answer will emerge from new Commons votes on options such as a customs union — although that didn’t work last time and positions now are even more entrenched. Rebranding what were “indicative” votes as “definitive” ones doesn’t make any difference if none of them pass. 

That’s why many other wise people are giving up hope. They think that the days when this Parliament might have been able to pass a deal have gone. Talks with Labour could collapse at any moment and — despite negotiator Olly Robbins’s trip to Brussels today — only seem to be going on because calling them off would force party leaders to say what they want to do instead. Any possible agreed outcome would break the two biggest Commons parties apart. And a general election to choose a new Parliament would see the main parties roasted at the polls.

That’s why the two most obvious ways forward are now a second referendum or no deal. But neither of these brings people together. MPs don’t want no deal. Would they tolerate a referendum? Short of any other answers, things are edging that way. 

But the Prime Minister hates the idea and no Tory leadership candidate could win while backing one. Candidates are spooked by polling which suggests many of the 100,000 or so Tory members who will pick the next Prime Minister want the hardest line of all.

So everything’s stuck. Maybe not much will happen until another pre-deadline panic in September forces an answer. That’s why some of the usual big dates in the political season — like a Queen’s Speech at the start of a new session of Parliament and the party conferences, aren’t even being much discussed. Too much before then is madness. The bigger the crisis gets the more everyone locks themselves in the dark and pretends it isn’t happening.



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