David Gauke, a former Tory MP and Justice Secretary under Mrs May has an interesting piece in The New Statesman about Simon Clarke’s call for Sunak to step down. Clarke is a devotee of both Johnson and Truss, as Gauke points out, so demanding Sunak’s resignation shouldn’t come as a great surprise. A couple of days ago, the MP for Middlesbrough South and East Cleveland, wrote in The Telegraph: Replace Sunak or face decade of decline under Starmer. Considering we’re in the middle of a cost of living crisis with wages in real terms no better than they were in 2010, he’s got a bit of a nerve talking about a decade of decline.
The BBC’s Chris Mason interviewed Clarke where he admitted the party is “on course for a shattering defeat”:
“No one likes the guy who’s shouting ‘iceberg’”Senior Tory MP Sir Simon Clarke tells @ChrisMasonBBC why he thinks the Conservatives are “on course for a shattering defeat” https://t.co/B2Ehc0gVBZ pic.twitter.com/CgG0M0YHiW— BBC Politics (@BBCPolitics) January 24, 2024
On that point, we are all on the same page I think.
Clarke's issues are the "illegal" immigration of a few thousand foreigners and the absence of a "radical supply-side programme to jolt our economy out of the low-growth rut we and much of the West are clearly trapped in?" I seem to remember this is what Truss and Kwarend tried in 2022.
However, Gauke believes Clarke doesn’t really expect the PM to quit simply because a backbencher demands it. He knows as well as every other Tory MP the party is in for a beating whenever the election is held and nothing is going to save it. The idea that another new leader is going to transform the party’s fortunes is laughable anyway, but that isn’t the point.
What he is doing, Gauke suggests, is preparing the ground to ensure blame is placed not just on Sunak, but Sunak’s supporters, vision, and political ethos, ready for the civil war that is going to break out the day after the election. Sunak will quit and Clarke wants another barmy right-wing candidate to take over with him becoming chancellor or some other senior role.
Clarke doesn’t think Sunak is even a Conservative. He’s not that different from those on the left who thought Michael Foot lost the 1983 election because he wasn’t socialist enough. Fanatics always think they aren’t fanatical, don’t they? The insane belief that voters are going to vote Labour because the Tories aren’t sufficiently right-wing persists and is going to see the Tories out of power for several decades.
If that does happen, one of the issues they might want to think about is Northern Ireland and the new internal trade border which is still an obstacle to getting Stormont back up and running.
The GPSR
The Belfast Telegraph has picked up on the GPSR - general product safety regulations - which I posted about a few days ago. They have an article headlined: New EU safety rules ‘could hit GB to NI sales on Amazon.' This is going to divert even more trade towards the south and deny choice to NI residents. Also, I'm not convinced this is limited to Amazon sellers either.
To placate the DUP over the Windsor Framework, Sunak has apparently offered to "sacrifice Brexit freedoms to re-establish government in Northern Ireland." He is said to have proposed to introduce a requirement that all new UK laws are 'screened' to ensure they don't create extra trade barriers in the Irish Sea. This might help a bit but won't prevent passive divergence when the EU passes new laws as they have done with the GPSR. However, Tory MPs who want nothing less than total divergence from the EU are said to be angry because such a policy "would make it almost impossible for Great Britain to diverge from EU rules."
Sunak and the Tory party are now well and truly stuck like one of those juggernauts down a narrow Devon lane. They are in an impossible position.
Hannan
Over the last few days, several commentators have resurrected the article published in Reaction Life just before the 2016 referendum by the perennial idiot Daniel Hannan: What Britain Looks Like After Brexit.
It was Hannan's idea of what the UK would be like in 2025. This is what he forecast for banking:
"Financial services are booming – not only in London, but in Birmingham, Leeds and Edinburgh too. Eurocrats had never much liked the City, which they regarded as parasitical. Before Brexit, they targeted London with regulations that were not simply harmful but, in some cases, downright malicious: the Alternative Investment Fund Managers Directive, the ban on short selling, the Financial Transactions Tax, and the restrictions on insurance. After Britain left, the EU’s regulations became even more heavy-handed, driving more exiles from Paris, Frankfurt, and Milan. No other European city could hope to compete: their high rates of personal and corporate taxation, restrictive employment practices, and lack of support services left London unchallenged."
Sounds great doesn't it? Unfortunately, for Hannan and The City, exiles weren't driven to London FROM Paris, Frankfurt, and Milan but FROM London TO those cities, as well as to Dublin and Amsterdam.
The unhappy truth is covered by an article in the Financial Times a few days ago which starts:
"Jeremy Hunt has called in Britain’s largest banks to discuss why they remain so poorly valued compared with global peers, as ministers seek feedback on how to help boost the sector and the competitiveness of the City of London."
The writer of the article suggests that "privately, bank executives place much of the blame for the declines on the loss of EU market access after Brexit and policy mis-steps such as Liz Truss’s ill-fated “mini” Budget, which undermined the UK’s reputation for sound economic management in the eyes of investors."
In 2025 Britain will probably be stopped from handling the lucrative £9 Trillion in Euro clearing, making life even harder for the UK's hard-pressed financial services industry.
Brexit, let us not forget, was what Hannan urged voters to choose in 2016.
The sooner the Tories are sent into the political wilderness the better.
