Blog 2023 Malcolm Blair-Robinson

Politically nobody knows how today will end. Unlike the dawn of a great battle, where there are two sides and for one of which the day will end well, or at least better than the other, there are in the UK such splits and factions that however it ends, few, if any will be winners.

It is worth reflecting that had Labour been in power, or had the coalition between the Tories and Lib dems continued, the present crisis would just not be there. Neither would the Union of the UK be under threat. This is a crisis brought on by the schism in the Tory party which is part of its DNA.

One part is internationalist, outward looking and understands and admires the huge political and economic success which has brought the greatest unity, peace and prosperity to the European continent since the fall of Rome, with the greatest individual sovereignty of citizens ever known.

The other hates Europe and harks back to something which is gone, a nostalgia to do with Englishness mainly, which is green and pleasant and anti-foreign. An empire upon which the sun never set and when doors across the world opened as an Englishman approached. They feel threatened by an interdependent world and want to return to the cosy nation on our own, together. Under everlasting Tory paternal nationalism.

In the end this minority, as that is what it represents, will be finally defeated because the rising generation all across the nations of the UK shun it. And the old are growing older and eventually will fade, like the memories of their past and their dreams of a future which is not and never was there.

What today might tell us is the price the country must pay in this terrible ongoing agony of a broken government founded on an unsustainable political fault line.

This Blog has no real experience of Labour’s antisemitism problem other than the fact that it is a constant running sore. Clearly there can be no anti semitism in Labour or any other political party. At the same time the party must be given time for its new systems and processes to bed in. Moreover at no stage must anti semitism be used as a proxy for anti Corbynism.

New Labour lost votes at every election it fought after 1997 until 2015, when Ed Miliband moved slightly left and recovered  a few hundred thousand  votes from the 5 million lost by Blair and Brown. But Corbyn took the party back to its founding purpose further left and in 2017 gained millions more votes and and hundreds of thousands  more members. Labour is not the party of the centre and with an economy so badly tipped to favour the few over the many, it must remain true to the left wing tradition. It must also stop fighting itself. This is not just about Labour. It is about hope, opportunity and ambition for our country. About everyone.

Like Trump in the US who carries on undamaged by scandal, mishap, revelation and resignation, so May survives as head of a government of undreamed of incompetence at almost every level. The Brexit negotiations have been mismanaged, miscalculations abound, wishful thinking has become the preferred modus, yet she carries on. There is an explanation, although it is not one which any sane person should wish to hear. Chaos. Political chaos. On such a scale that even the process of fixing a new leader or dissolving this chaotic parliament is no longer straightforward or capable of reliable delivery.

But, and there is now a but, at last she has been forced, albeit after a tumultuous cabinet meeting, to confront the ERG. Although twenty of them voted against the Cooper Amendment and many more abstained in an Alamo style last stand, they were beaten foursquare on Wednesday, both by the passage of the amendment itself and by May’s mega U-Turn announcements before it. There is now a chance that Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, can come back from the EU with a fig leaf cover-up of the infamous backstop, to get her Withdrawal Agreement through the meaningful vote when it happens, rumours suggesting sooner rather than later.

It will not be straight or clean. Some ERGs will defect from their nationalist friends and vote with May in fear of losing Brexit altogether. Some Labour members will vote with the government because they also think  that Brexit will be lost in a storm of delaying Article 50 and a People’s Vote. Most of these hate Corbyn. With the rest of the Tory Party voting en masse with May, she might just pull it off. In a free vote she would without any trouble, but if Labour whips against, it is less certain. There is also the question of the DUP. This is a party founded on the principal of being opposed to everything. So far there are no hints of anything going on in Brussels which will satisfy them. If they vote against and are beaten, they will withdraw from backing May in power. So May could secure an orderly Brexit, but lose the power to govern.

That will give Corbyn his election. It must be hoped that there are enough in Labour who want him to win it.