Jonathan Clark is apparently a professor, one of those clever people that you have almost certainly never heard of who don't actually know or understand anything. In fact if I was advising him I would suggest he relinquish his professorship and start again in primary school. He has written a piece for Conservative Home HERE about Brexit and Mrs May, whom he compares unfavourably with Neville Chamberlain, and believes leaving in March on WTO terms is the 'best outcome of all'.
CH says Mr Clark was a Fellow of Peterhouse; at Oxford, was a Fellow of All Souls College; has been Visiting Professor at the Committee on Social Thought at Chicago, and Hall Distinguished Professor of British History at the University of Kansas. He seems like a has-been and reading his article one can understand why.
First he accuses the PM of backsliding:
"As foreshadowed in her Lancaster House speech, Theresa May’s ‘Letter to the Nation’ promises that her 585-page deal would ensure that the UK takes back control of its borders, its money, and its laws. But that is not what the text sets out, as enough analysts have carefully demonstrated. She has therefore placed herself, or has been placed by her advisers, in the position of arguing that night is day, or that a square is a circle. She was already famous for the phrase “nothing has changed”, but her U-turn over financing the care of the elderly was minor compared to this".
The PM has changed course, there is no doubt about that. But given all that she has heard from commerce, industry and all the leading economists it is not really a surprise is it? I am not a professor but even to a simple man like me it was blindingly obvious that we would have to give way sooner or later. We are so intertwined with incredibly tightly integrated supply chains that leaving without a deal was never an option. I have never wavered in that belief.
Unlike Mr Clark, I have spent a lot of my life traveling and working in European industry and I know how disruptive a no deal outcome would be, so the deal and the transition period is probably the least worst outcome. But rather than congratulating the PM for her pragmatism he takes her to task and accuses her of negotiating BRINO.
"It seems more likely that the label BRINO, Brexit In Name Only, will be hung round her neck, just as securely as ‘appeasement’ was hung round the neck of Neville Chamberlain".
"Appeasement did not break up the Union, although the Irish Republic stood neutral in 1939; in 2018, BRINO would have major implications for Northern Ireland and Scotland. The chorus of mutual blame in the UK could only escalate, and these flames could only be fanned as the 2022 general election approaches".
"If this results in a Corbyn victory, the Conservative Party would see a decade or two of introspective recrimination. In the 1997 general election, the Conservatives lost 11.2 per cent of the votes and 178 seats, ending with just 165; a loss on this scale in 2022 is perfectly plausible. One hopes that Tory MPs have their new jobs lined up".
He obviously thinks that BRINO would lead to electoral oblivion for the Tories but hopes that somehow the deadlock in parliament could lead to what he calls 'the best outcome of all' - crashing out on WTO terms on March 29th. He asks:
"Is there, even now, a way out? The least bad tactical scenario may prove to be that there is no parliamentary majority for any option. Perhaps a change of Prime Minister will slow things yet further. Time would run out. If so, the UK’s political elite – by its mediocrity, its clumsiness, its self-deception and its careerism – would blunder unintentionally into the best outcome of all, a Brexit on WTO terms. The law of unintended consequences may yet take precedence over human inadequacy".
You can see what a mess the Tory party is in when professor Clark thinks the party, unless it delivers a Brexit made out of tempered steel, will face a 1997 type landslide defeat while Jo Johnson, reported in The Independent HERE, also thinks the party faces disaster - not if they DON'T deliver Brexit but if they DO! This is the depth of the division in the party.
Johnson wants a people's vote but I'm not sure even that can save them. Voters do not like divided parties and it's obvious the Tory tribe is effectively two separate parties. If remain won a second referendum, UKIP would be resurrected, splitting the right wing vote and putting the Tories firmly in opposition once again. But if leave won and Brexit turns out to be the disaster we think it will be, they will be carrying the albatross around for years - and be firmly in opposition. It is lose-lose for them.
Divisions over Europe have bedeviled the Conservatives for decades but now these absolutely fundamentally opposite points of view are out in the open and ripping the party in two.
They have won a parliamentary majority just once and only narrowly (2015) since 1992. Brexit will see them finished for a generation - and I see no way out.
