The May government is in danger of losing its authority as a second of its MPs resigns because of ‘irreconcilable differences’ and a new opinion poll shows 51% now wanting to remain in the EU. There is now a three way constitutional crisis with the Courts, the Government and Parliament at loggerheads, as described in yesterday’s post and covered wall to wall in every type of media. This opens the prospect of mounting uncertainty of whether Brexit is actually a feasible option and whether it will happen. That thought alarms ardent Brexiteers whose shrill cries about betrayal begin to echo in the general melee.
If you look back to May 2015 everything was calm and tranquil. Cameron had just won a majority and whether you were a Tory supporter or not, the future looked predictable, as the political argument developed not about whether there would be prosperity but how it should be shared. Since then we have had the disaster of a very badly conducted referendum with both sides making claims and promises which cannot be delivered, while casting fears and hatred unknown in Britain since Fascist times. This brought down the Cameron government, and although its replacement by one lead by May at first looked better, a string of mistakes now throws that into question.
The complete absence of any coherent plan about how to achieve Brexit, the failure to define what Brexit actually means, the delay of nine months before triggering Article 50, and the notion that an advisory referendum won on a very narrow margin somehow authorises the government to bypass parliament, is not the report of a strong administration, but rather one in utter confusion from which events are spinning out of control.
The first responsibility of government is to provide coherent leadership under the law. The path ahead, as soon as the referendum outcome was known, was clear and straightforward. The referendum was advisory. May should have announced that the government would implement that advice through parliament, which under our constitution (which surely should be written down to make it accessible to everyone) it is through parliament that the people of this country exercise their sovereignty by electing representatives to it. This was why the referendum was advisory not mandatory. Now it was (now being then several months ago) parliament’s job to listen to the government’s proposals about how it wished to trigger Article 50 and to authorise it, making sure in the process that the government did not harbour a plan so unrealistic as to take the country over a cliff.
Those debates will have taken account of the potential damage to the economy, the NI peace process, the Union with Scotland and all the other issues like immigration and sovereignty which were advanced during the campaign. This would all be in public so that it would be clear to all people and all interests what the British government wished to achieve once A50 was triggered. There would follow negotiations with the EU in an informed atmosphere with clear objectives to ease us forward to a deal. By now we would be well on the way to resolving the problems and exposing the opportunities presented by the greatest political peacetime upheaval since the Reformation, when we broke away from Rome.
Compare that analysis with what is happening and it becomes woefully clear that this government has lost its way. It needs to find it again fast or it will fall.