Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Hardly more than days ago May was near the bottom of a slippery slope down which she had been sliding since her calamitous election debacle. A divided cabinet with leadership contenders following their own agenda in defiance of hers. On issues of policy her hands were tied by Brexiteer zealots and, via the DUP, Protestant ideologues. Finally there was the agreement which collapsed just as everyone was ready to sign. Oh Dear.

But then the plane dash in the small hours to a dawn breakfast and triumph nobody believed possible. Wow what a cliffhanger, if not over the cliff. But the drama was not over. Next came a government defeat. But was it?  Now that the Commons has to approve the terms, hard Brexit is belly up, because there is nothing like a majority in favour of such a barmy course. So a jaunty May returned to Brussels and appeared at dinner to warm applause. They had seen for months a loser. Now she came back a fighter. One who could lead and might win. So Europe backs her.

Now for the question I started with. Can she do a Corbyn? Yes, but only if she is willing to take on the wreckers in her party, the hard Brexiteers, and crush them out of sight. Then the country could indeed rise up and sing ‘Oh Theresa May’.

But until those misguided hard Brexit Tories, a noisy minority with less power than they think, who believe the chaos they are creating is better than a sane future as part of the European family, are faced down and sidelined, May will be at risk.

Coming on top of her perceived success the week before, the misjudgments by Tory Party managers which led to last night’s game changer, are par for the course of this ill starred administration. It will take some of the shine off May as she appears in Brussels today, as will the ill judged comments of the Brexit Secretary earlier, that the agreement she signed held no legal force and could, and might, be abandoned.

This is all symptomatic of the truth now dawning that Brexit, in the terms in which it was offered and for which a mandate is claimed, was never available and cannot be delivered. It underscores the fact that any form of hard Brexit would never get through Parliament and that in a true democracy voters should be given a second chance and have the right to change their minds. In truth it would save endless argument, time and worry, which is already blighting people’s lives and damaging the economy, to ask for the Article 50 letter to be returned, so that we can get on with a future which is real, available and good for everyone.

I do not agree with those commentators who assert that the defeat of Roy Moore is a setback for Trump. Had that man been elected it would have been a disaster for the Republican party and the Presidency. At the same time had Trump not endorsed Moore, activists in Alabama would have blamed their defeat on the President. As it is the blow is down to them and their ridiculous candidate and that is the end of it.

However the loss of the Senate seat itself may prove a bigger setback than at first it appears.  Coming on top of the losses in New Jersey and Virginia and the poll ratings which consistently show most Americans against Trump, even if his base remains steady, the perception can grow that Trump is a loser. That would be difficult for Trump to handle. He does not do losing. And it will embolden the Democrats in the 2018 races for the House and Senate, both of which are within their reach on a high turnout in urban and suburban America. Much depends on the tax reforms producing more good jobs. If that fails Trump is done for.

Before the well trailed announcement based on his campaign promise to recognise Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, there were hints and briefings from his administration that although there would be some noise there would also be support. People might now ask where?

The US is isolated to a minority of one on the Security Council, not even ever faithful GB is in line with it, and all governments across the Arab world, including the most faithful American allies, have lined up to condemn. It is of course a breach of international law and in violation of various UN resolutions. America is powerful enough militarily to cope with all this, but not powerful enough geo-politically to do so in the long term.

Therefore we await the masterstroke. Having shaken up the box, so to speak, comes the announcement of a really striking peace plan that stops the noise and gets people talking with real hopes of a Camp David style outcome. At least we assume this must surely be so.

Is it?

Well, that depends how you look at it. It was an achievement  with few equals if you consider that she not only had to satisfy a Brussels machine unwilling or indeed unable to give much away, her own Cabinet which is split in every direction and her own party which is split on the fundamentals of Brexit, but also her weird BFFs, the Ulster Unionists, who have always carried principles shared by few others and an ideology entirely their own, to extraordinary lengths. So to get all of those discordant voices to sing the same note, on the same day at the same hour (a rather early one) was certainly a triumph.

But if, as will become clear when the text of the document is studied at leisure, you notice that the terms she signed up to were the same, almost, as the ones she was offered on the first day  of Stage One and, moreover, if you also grasp that the Ireland deal commits the whole UK to the same rules and regulations as the EU single market and customs union whatever nomme de plume of Brexit is finally signed up to, you will see it as a humiliation for the beleaguered May and a whopping custard pie moment for the hard Brexiteers.

And if, like this Blog, you oppose the Brexit folly in all its forms hook, line and sinker, you will pour yourself a drink and enjoy a purr of satisfaction. For this deal is the softest kind of Brexit, which is an absorbing word play for politicians, but for everybody else the same as no Brexit at all.

And when the moment comes and patience runs out, it will all be reversed at the stroke of rational pen.We will be back where we belong at the centre of the European family, of which we are and always have been, an integral and worthy part.

It might be. What is certain is that it is not governing. It is in two fights; for its own survival and for the survival of Brexit. Let us look at each, starting with Brexit.

Outside the government there is now a general consensus in the UK as a whole, in parliament and in the EU as a whole, that the only way to avoid serious economic damage to both the UK and the EU from Brexit, is that membership of the customs union and the single market continue. This includes the continuing integrity of the United Kingdom. Because any attempt to offer a separate status to NI which did not cover the rest of the UK would, as we saw through the deadlock of negotiations on Monday last, be unacceptable to the DUP, which props up the government. It would also provoke a demand for the same from Scotland, Wales and London.

Conversely any attempt by May to offer exactly that equivalence, or whatever word you want to use, of regulation between all parts of the UK and the EU, would provoke outright hostility from hard Brexiteers and Cabinet resignations. In other words May is cornered. There are three immediate prospects. The first is a fudge sufficient to enable negotiations about trade to begin and hold the May government together, but, like all fudges, this will simply defer the day of reckoning. The second is the collapse of the negotiations, leading to a policy of a hard Brexit. Both of those will eventually lead to the collapse of the May government anyway and with that, of Brexit itself.

Nobody bothered to think through or investigate the feasibility of Britain’s exit from the unification of every strand of national life within the EU. Of course it could be done but the costs and complexities are way beyond anything anybody is willing to pay or undertake. Brexit, in the terms upon which people were offered it in the referendum and by a narrow majority backed, was never in reality there.  Had the real thing been offered it would have been overwhelmingly rejected. So the trumpeted mandate for Brexit was, in truth, a con. Eventually cons are caught out. Truth, one way or another, has an enduring capacity to win through.

The news that Trump is about to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel should surprise no one. He promised this in his campaign and thus bought himself support from the Jewish lobby, which had fallen out badly with Obama. If it was promised it must be delivered whether you like the policy or not. Because what undermines democracy, much more than foreign hackers, fake news and leaks of every sort and kind, is the now widespread practice of campaign promises which are not delivered because they were not meant to be, cannot be, or were undeliverable from the very beginning. It is this form of political corruption and it is the untrustworthy politician who undermines democracy. Nothing else can, because democracy is too strong.

There will be a lot of protests and perhaps some violence, but actually little will change because Jerusalem has been operating as the Israeli capital for years. It is only the dance of veils, which is the best way to describe so much diplomacy today, that pretends the capital is still Tel Aviv. And this pretense has failed to advance the peace process in this number one hotspot one iota. So it can hardly matter to abandon it.

At one level Trump looks to be on a bit of a roll with things falling into place. He has at last advanced the tax cut legislation to the point when soon he will have something to sign, he has won his travel ban judgement in the Supreme Court and he looks like winning the Senate seat in Alabama, even by a candidate with social and religious attitudes of medieval vintage and morals alleged to involve paedophilia. The evident tension between the White House and the State Department is rumoured to be near resolution with the upcoming departure, on friendly terms, of Rex Tillerson and his replacement with Mike Pompeo. That would help to get more of the ducks of this somewhat wayward administration, in a row. All of this is set down as a political assessment. It is not about whether you approve or oppose any of it.

But there is of course that elephant in the room. The Russia investigation. This is not quite what it seems and much deeper than it looks. It is politically motivated and legally driven. So far  only the outriders have been picked off. But the circle is closing. Sooner or later Trump will have to stand and fight. Then it will be seen that the collusion investigation is a kind of smokescreen. What really matters is the secrets in Deutsche Bank and their links to the Kremlin. It is upon the outcome of that box being opened that Trump’s survival depends.

For the Tories to join with the DUP to prop up their government was to sup with the devil. Now comes the food poisoning of that tainted meal. It is now becoming clear that for nearly half a century the nations of Europe have harmonised huge swathes of domestic, business, educational, environmental, security, human rights, health and safety and employment laws and regulations so that the whole Union works as one seamless country.

What the Ireland crisis, a crisis within the Brexit crisis, reveals is a microcosm of the larger picture. If you try to impose barriers the economic and social cost is potentially catastrophic. If you agree not to, the ideologues rise up, preferring to wreck their country rather than agree to a sensible compromise. And if they had agreed then London, Scotland and Wales would have demanded the same treatment.

Ireland is like the UK. Almost everything we do depends on frictionless borders with Europe, especially food for the table and supply chains for industry. So, just as we can see that to keep Ireland, North and the Republic, at peace and in prosperity, they both have to be in the Customs Union and the Single Market, so it is the case for the UK as a whole. And the price for that will demand a status, for all practical purposes, the same as we have now. Except in future we will have no say on how the whole thing is run and under what rules. So why not stay as we are?

The alternative is to plunge off the cliff with no deal. Only crackpots think that a good idea. There is no majority in Parliament or in any of the nations of the UK for it. So the plain fact is that sooner or later Brexit will be over. How and when that will happen is not yet clear, but happen it will. In the end the British people may be many things but we are not stupid.

It is hardly surprising that a spat has broken out between the members of the Social Mobility Commission and the government. It is indeed the case that there is a gap between May’s rhetoric, often lofty and inspirational, and the delivery of her aspirations. On everything. So social mobility will have have to take its place in a lengthening queue in which Brexit, as Alan Milburn points out, has elbowed everything else aside.

This blog has for long railed against the Whitehall mania for solving problems by appointing quangos to find answers. This does not work, costs untold billions and achieves next to nothing. What it does do is let the civil service and its political masters off the hook for issues which are their responsibility and theirs alone. So this Social Mobility Commission drama is of little interest here.

What is of interest is the issue. Social mobility has become the outcome of celebrity rather than effort, because too few are able to access the opportunities their parents and grandparents enjoyed in the post war era, when real improvement came about at all levels with opportunities for life enhancing progress, whichever party was in power. That was down to one thing. The money was made available for the job. Of course it was a lot less money in cash terms than today but health, education, training and career options were right there for the asking and properly funded. So was affordable housing.

However many commissions are appointed, brimming with however many brilliant minds and worthy ambitions, nothing can happen until somebody sorts out the economy, stricken by chronic austerity and mounting Brexit chaos.