There was plenty of heat in British politics yesterday and not much light. What is clear is that the prime minister has wrongfooted the ill-assorted opponents of a no-deal Brexit by seizing control of the calendar. Boris Johnson is accelerating the pace eight weeks before Britain is formally due to depart the European Union and in so doing has refined his negotiating position with Brussels and set himself up for an autumn election.
Prorogation, or suspending parliament, is a bold move designed to give the prime minister the maximum room for manoeuvre in the tight political space available to him. Despite the immediate and hyperbolic criticism, his action is not unconstitutional but a rational use of the powers accorded to the executive. Suspending parliament is a prerogative power of the Crown acting on the advice of the privy council.
No one is any doubt that it is for the government to determine the timing of the Queen’s Speech, to supply the text setting out its future policies and to arrange parliamentary business before that moment. The government took advice from Geoffrey Cox, the attorney-general, and although Labour and Liberal Democrat politicians have raised the prospect of a court challenge, there seems little realistic chance of it succeeding.
The speech has now been set for October 14 and, taking into account the time usually set aside for party conferences, parliament will be suspended from the second week of September. Some of the ideas that will be unfurled in the speech have already been signalled. They include more spending on health, education and policing; all matters of concern for voters who have grown frustrated by how the long Brexit debate has sucked oxygen away from everyday concerns. Mr Johnson told ministers that the government had to return to the domestic legislative agenda “on tackling crime, on building the infrastructure that we need on technology, on levelling up our education and reducing the cost of living”.
It is difficult to disagree with this urge to get on with the business of government. Yet the prime minister’s parliamentary critics were in full dudgeon. They presented it as a direct challenge to representative democracy.
Jeremy Corbyn, the Labour leader, urged the Queen to overrule the prime minister’s decision. Philip Hammond, the former chancellor, called prorogation “profoundly undemocratic”. John Bercow, the Speaker, said that it was a “constitutional outrage”. Justine Greening, a former Conservative cabinet minister (there are a lot of them), described it as “a grubby attempt to force no-deal”. Nicola Sturgeon, first minister of Scotland, warned of a looming dictatorship. The European parliamentarian Guy Verhofstadt, who seems to regard himself as part of the British resistance to no-deal, declared that “taking back control had never looked so sinister”. More worrying, Ruth Davidson, popular leader of the Scottish Conservatives, was said to be on the point of quitting.
All these voices resent the fact that the prime minister has squeezed debating time and their chance to impose a different outcome on the government. It is difficult to escape the impression that their true gripe is that Britain is leaving the European Union at all. Those who complain that Mr Johnson is riding roughshod over parliament should reflect on how little parliament has achieved in implementing the result of the 2016 referendum. It rejected the draft withdrawal agreement between Theresa May and the EU no fewer than three times. Whatever its flaws, it would have secured a relatively smooth departure.
Parliament has had three years to come up with solutions, and it has failed. As the cross-party alliance of Labour, Scottish nationalists, Greens and Liberal Democrats demonstrated this week, they still cannot agree on the most basic approach to the problems inherent in our relationship with the EU. The initial idea of Mr Corbyn driving a vote of confidence against Mr Johnson and then heading a caretaker government was set aside for the understandable reason that Mr Corbyn does not command anyone’s confidence. President Trump bizarrely weighed in to make precisely this point.
Instead, anti-Brexiteers could only rally around a vague legislative attempt to stop no-deal, presumably with the assistance of the Speaker. These would-be insurgents have no leader, no strategy and they are running out of time. They may still believe, however, that they can mount a vote of confidence. They should think again before attempting this, and not just because of the evident folly of putting Mr Corbyn in charge of the country. Britain’s reasonable strategic goal, one that honours the 2016 referendum, is that it leaves the EU in a managed way that minimises harm to business and maximises opportunities outside the single market.
If Mr Johnson were to lose a confidence vote his advisers would urge him to hold a general election in early November after Britain has left the EU, almost certainly without a deal. The result could be a working Conservative majority, a stronger Mr Johnson and a no-deal exit. It is difficult to see how this could be construed as a victory by the Remainer alliance, even if it were able to coalesce around a single course of action. One way or another, Mr Johnson must prepare to fight an election and win a thumping majority.
The prime minister’s reasonable premise has been that only a credible commitment to no-deal preparation will persuade EU leaders to make concessions. And indeed there are tentative signs that they might be ready to give some ground; they will not shift, however, if they believe that parliament can derail Brexit or that Mr Johnson will be removed from office. The prime minister’s move was intended to end any doubt about the determination of the government and to dispel any idea that Brussels could play one side of the British political establishment against another.
Nonetheless Mr Johnson should temper his boldness with caution. There is still a long way to go. His chess move may yet create problems further down the road: it can in this increasingly angry tribal political landscape be dangerous to unite your opponents in righteous indignation. There is only one way forward for a prime minister intent on governing post-Brexit Britain: deal or no-deal, he will have to make the case in a general election that the country can prosper and unite.
https://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/the-times-view-on-boris-johnson-proroguing-parliament-suspension-bridge-5z7dln5p0
No comments:
Post a Comment