Tuesday 18 April 2017

May fights for the right

The next British General Election is 7 weeks away. Prime minister May has dropped her constant insistence that there will be no British Election until 2020. The political commentator with the Sun newspaper (a Tory paper but with biggest circulation in England and Wales) has stated that he was surprised, that Teresa May had promised no election, and that he thought it was a bad idea for May to change her mind. But many others, including the Corbyn leadership of the Labour Party (and this blog) thought an early election was likely.

The obvious reason for May's volte face was that Labour are 20 points in the polls behind the Tories. If May can make it a Presidential election against Corbyn then her victory is apparently sealed. But that has been true for some months. May says the election is necessary because although 'the country is coming together (over Brexit), Westminster is not.' In May's announcement she denounced the carping role of the Labour Party, the Liberals, the SNP and the House of Lords. Yet when the decisive push came to the critical shove - and article 50 which initiates Brexit was put to the vote - there was no problem and Westminster MPs gave her a huge majority vote. A cynical, party-based move to build up the Tory majority and smash Labour? A problem getting Brexit through Parliament? Both of these reasons to go for an early election have been around since the EU referendum. And political insiders tell us that less than a month ago May was adamant that there would be no early election.

What has tipped the balance for May and made her eat her words are the first encounter with the EU after article 50 and Scotland.

Over the weekend serious indications of the EU's approach to Brexit emerged where it seemed very unlikely that any discussion about trade deals or anything else would take place before the UK agreed its payment for the 'divorce' (those previously agreed liabilities stemming from 40 years of membership and support already given to future plans.) Additionally key EU ministries would be removed from the UK and redistributed to remaining EU members immediately. Whatever the British negotiators would like, this probably meant that May's government would be going into a 2020 General Election having agreed to pay some enormous sum to the EU and without anything substantial to show for their efforts. Indeed, the country would still be subject to many EU rules.  That would look like a defeat in anyone's terms.

That is why May is now seriously considering an ultra-hard Brexit split with the EU.  This would have the inevitable result of a further run on the currency, the evacuation of big Pharma and large parts of the City of London, coupled with trading within World Trade Organisation rules - the only answer to which would have to be the creation of the World's largest Tax Haven and Europe's most bruising immigration laws. All of this would make a 2020 election nothing short of a car crash!

Both considerations make 2022 a much more pleasant option for a future election.

The Tories and May are also terrified of the prospect of Scottish independence.

SNP leader Sturgeon has already commented on May's decision for an General Election, which she sees as a means to drive the whole country to the right. And that is certainly true for the future - but it has not yet fully flowered in the UK (although the trends, with new huge cuts in spending in Education, Pensions and Health deepening, are emerging fast.) Additionally, both May and Sturgeon believe that Labour has lost its traditional Scottish base. However, there is still no majority for Scottish independence and even the call for another referendum is challenged, a referendum that the Scottish Parliament has already voted for. May believes that the Tories in Scotland now have the opportunity to regroup those who do not want a referendum on independence and / or oppose independence. That can only come about while the Westminster Tories do not appear to have already committed kamikaze in Europe while they drive hard towards a different sort of society in Britain. A big Tory advance in Scotland now, while their UK project is not yet fully unveiled, would at least hold back the momentum for independence.  

And Labour?

They are still pulling themselves out from the European morass that all the main Social Democratic Parties experienced at the turn of the century. As the large majority of hostile Labour MPs have been partly subdued by Corbyn's two party leadership victories, so there are signs that his radical policy proposals are gaining a hearing and some support among the electorate. Nevertheless, the traditional Labour electorate know full well that there are two Labour Parties - and an uneasy truce in the Parliamentary Labour Party going into the June election will persuade very few voters that the truce will hold in the event of a new Labour government.

Nevertheless, there is still a great deal to be done, and won, in resistance to this latest rightward swing of the Tory Party. A radical Labour Programme would be a real platform for an alternative view of what a reformed Britain could be. If Labour then maintain a solid bloc in Parliament, the prospect of a progressive alliance in Westminster opens up, and that is very good territory for the expansion of the Labour Left and the beginnings of a genuine political reform programme, including Fair Votes, the Scottish right to Independence and Irish rights to unity of the Island of Ireland.  It is this argument, the argument about what sort of Britain do its people want, that will set the proper frame for opposition to globalisation - of an EU or of non EU variety - while defending the living standards and the support needed for all of its people and for all of their chosen futures.

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