Monday 23 January 2023

The Tories coming split

Brexit is an unholy mess to which the Tory party will sooner or later be forced to admit.  Andrew Rawnsley sums it all up nicely in The Observer this weekend (Three years after Brexit where is the new golden age that they promised us?. It will eventually destroy the party as we have known it for 30 years. You can see the first signs of the coming split between those who prioritise sovereignty above all else, regardless of the economic damage, and the pragmatists who believe in whatever works. Lord Frost is in the former group although as CEO of The Scotch Whisky Association during the 2016 referendum, he was a pragmatist, highlighting the economic case for staying in. We still don’t know what prompted the Damascene conversion, apart from vaulting personal ambition that is.

In response to a report in The Guardian where Kier Starmer offered ‘political cover’ to Sunak if he was prepared “to take on the once highly influential European Research Group (ERG) of backbench Tory MPs to find a fix for issues arising from Northern Ireland’s post-Brexit trading arrangements,” Frost tweeted:

It’s virtually an admission from our chief negotiator that he knew the NIP would become a running sore but was prepared to risk destabilising the entire province in order to achieve Brexit. Nothing could be allowed to stand in its way.   He lays the blame at Kier Starmer's door rather than his or Johnson's.

In turn, the tweet got pushback including from Alistair Burt Tory MP for North East Bedfordshire from 2001 until 2019 and before that MP for Bury North in Greater Manchester from 1983 until 1997. He said it wasn't Starmer who blocked it, it was him and Hilary Benn - and they were right to do it. 

Don’t forget Frost and Burt are both Conservative politicians, but their view of Brexit is worlds apart.

Frost recently launched a similar attack on Danny (Lord) Finkelstein after his colleague in the Lords suggested that Brexit was a “monumentally stupid idea” and that the “abstract advantages” would never be worth the concrete economic losses.

On that one he said:

It’s not difficult to hear in these exchanges the sharpening of knives, ready for a prolonged period of bloodletting following the inevitable landslide defeat which is coming soon. Once out of power, the simmering truce that exists now will come to an end and the civil war can begin. Each side will blame the other.

Those in the party (like Frost) who are quite happy to see sixty million people made poorer provided Britain is 'sovereign' will face off against the more moderate faction who think that Brexit was always destined to be a financial disaster.

Surveying Britain at the moment, it’s difficult to escape the conclusion that you are looking at a country increasingly on its uppers. There is no optimism to be seen anywhere. It's no use turning on the spending tap because it's dry. Britain is beginning to look like a country that has lost £40 billion in government spending power. Half the public sector seems either to be on strike or threatening to do so. I read of Ukrainians living here returning home to seek timely medical treatment. An ambulance from Kyiv could probably reach you quicker than one from your local A&E.

The sorry saga of the British Volt plant falling into administration fits neatly into the present narrative. We are declining faster now than at any point in my life. Even the 70s didn’t seem as bad.

In the midst of all this, Tory ministers are prepared to invest millions of civil service manhours into reviewing 4,000 EU laws, as if they’re all individual hand grenades with the pins removed. It is insanity.

They’re quite relaxed seeing people freezing and hungry, scratching a living between a food bank and a zero-hours contract, provided they can restore 'sovereignty' - an abstract advantage if ever there was one.

On that score, I had a look at some comments about sovereignty which I think are helpful:

This is one from Edward Heath in Hansard on 28 October 1971 where he says:

 “It is right that there should have been so much discussion of sovereignty. I would put it very simply. If sovereignty exists to be used and to be of value, it must be effective. We have to make a judgment whether this is the most advantageous way of using our country's sovereignty. Sovereignty belongs to all of us, and to make that judgment we must look at the way in which the Community has actually worked during these last 12 years. In joining we are making a commitment that involves our sovereignty, but we are also gaining an opportunity. We are making a commitment to the Community as it exists tonight, if the House so decides. We are gaining an opportunity to influence its decisions in the future.”

Another comment comes from Heath on 9 April 1975:

 “I come now to the question of sovereignty. Of course, this is a matter which must be treated with the deepest respect, but, whether one is discussing national sovereignty or parliamentary sovereignty, what matters is the purpose of sovereignty. To me, sovereignty is not something to be hoarded, sterile and barren, carefully protected by the right hon. Member for Down, South (Mr. Powell) in a greatcoat with its collar turned up. Nor is sovereignty something which has to be kept in the crypt to be inspected by my hon. Friend the Member for Banbury on the eve of the opening of Parliament.”

Sovereignty is in other words not unlike money. Useful only when you spend it. 

Brexiteers are perfectly happy to spend a lot of sovereignty and money on NATO but not on the EU although they both contribute to Britain in different ways. We need to spend the abstract to realise any practical benefits.

Before Brexit finally disappears we are going to see a lot of blame being deflected. Rees-Mogg thinks it's remainers who he accuses of deliberate "objection and obstruction" to make it "more difficult" for Britain to exploit the benefits of Brexit.

He said: "There is obstructionism. Remainers hate it because it is the key divergence [scrapping EU laws] from Europe that it would make it very much harder for a government with a different policy to shadow Europe quietly once we've got rid of retained EU law.

"And that's why there's so much objection and obstruction from the ‘blob’ and from the House of Lords which has an overwhelming majority of Remainer peers."

For the Bruges Group, it's all down to the EU:
Brussels is "openly hostile" to us!  It's never their fault, always someone else.

I really do not see how the two sides will be able to keep the Conservative party together.
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