With One Bound Boris Was Free…

Two news film-clips offered a significant contrast in the week leading up to the prorogation of the UK Parliament on September 9: one showed Labour MPs in the House of Commons singing the “Red Flag” and waving various placards, some proclaiming SILENCED; the other had a group of young Hong Kong protesters waving Union Jacks and singing “God Save the Queen”.

Both groups claimed to represent democracy. The Hong Kong protesters were demanding “genuine” free elections at considerable risk of official police violence and their own imprisonment. That’s clear enough. The Labour MPs had a less persuasive case. They had just voted (along with other Opposition parties and twenty-one dissident Tory MPs) to prevent a no-deal Brexit and arguably to delay any kind of Brexit indefinitely, in effect nullifying the largest single democratic vote in British history.

For good measure they also voted not to hold a general election that would resolve the battle over Brexit between a disorganised majority of anti-Brexit parties and a pro-Brexit minority Tory government led by Boris Johnson whom some anti-Brexiteers were calling a dictator—for proroguing Parliament and for expelling senior Tories for voting against the government in a de facto vote of confidence—in the carnival of hysteria of the previous ten days. And they turned the prorogation into a festival of resistance to Brexit with the Speaker resigning and suggesting that the prorogation was illegitimate.

Johnson is not, of course, a dictator. He was using rules and conventions to protect the government’s interests quite lawfully. His action had a number of respectable constitutional precedents, and its sole effect was to reduce the time for parliamentary debate by about five days. As for removing the Whip from MPs who voted against their party on a no-confidence motion, that is more or less automatic. John Major used it to expel rebel Tories who had voted against Maastricht—the Brexit of the 1990s.

Nor are the MPs who voted to smother Brexit and to delay an election dictators either. They were doing what Parliament’s flexible rules allow when a parliamentary majority, however disorganised, has the backing of a partisan Speaker, namely overturning parliamentary conventions and interpreting laws creatively to obstruct ministers and block their policies. It’s not really kosher, but it’s not formally illegitimate either. It’s the kind of political offence on which the electorate is the final judge. Rationally enough, therefore, these MPs were blocking Brexit and trying to push as far away as possible an election they sense they would lose to Boris.

Doubtless many calculate that if they delay long enough, sentiment will change and they will enter a campaign with better prospects of victory. In normal times that’s a sensible calculation. But MPs on the Opposition benches would do well to recall the experience of the Hungarian socialist government after its 2006 election victory when a speech by the Prime Minister was leaked revealing he had told his colleagues—I paraphrase—“we screwed everything up royally and lied through our teeth about it day and night”. That created a massive political scandal, but the government had a solid majority and was able to weather it until the election of 2010. Then the government lost in the first of three landslides for the Opposition Fidesz party and subsequently splintered into several minor parties, none of which has since looked like winning even a share of power.

Does the situation in Britain resemble Hungary’s after 2006? In one essential respect it does: there is widespread public anger, going beyond normal partisan feelings, at what is seen as an attempt by “the Remainer Parliament” to frustrate democracy in general and the referendum vote in particular by blocking Brexit and doing so by questionable and disorderly methods. Neither Speaker John Bercow’s antics nor Labour’s singing of the “Red Flag” discourage this widespread public anger. And the longer MPs manage to postpone an election—using the time at their disposal to obstruct an incoming Parliament’s ability to achieve Brexit—the angrier the electorate is likely to become. When the time comes, many electors will cast their vote in a spirit of revenge.

It’s worth examining briefly the different reasons and impulses driving voters to join the coalition behind Brexit and Boris. It includes, first, those who voted Leave and feel angry that despite the promises of all parties to “respect the result”, Brexit still hasn’t been implemented. Second, there are those Remainers who respect the democratic principle of Loser’s Consent and agree that Brexit should be implemented before any second thoughts like another referendum. These voters form the core of a wider group of pro-democracy voters whose consciousness has been raised by Nigel Farage’s Brexit Party that made the revival of democracy an issue in the European election as salient as Brexit itself. The “Remainer Parliament” has entrenched that lesson and added passion to it. And, finally, class antagonism has returned to British politics in an unusual form since the referendum. Remain activists can’t stop themselves boasting that since they are much cleverer than the poor, backward and uneducated Leavers, their votes should count for more. Though (or because) it’s offensive nonsense, the boasting has acted as a catalyst speeding up the movement of blue-collar voters into the broad conservative camp already visible across the advanced world. Like the referendum itself, the next election is likely to further accelerate the realignment of British politics along new partisan lines.

Of course, there is an anti-Brexit coalition too, consisting of Labour, the Liberal Democrats, Remain Tory dissidents, and in general the political representatives of what social critic David Goodhart calls “the Anywheres” or globally-mobile, highly-educated, upper-income England (and some Remainers suffering from false consciousness about their status). My reading of the polls is that the Brexit–Boris coalition will have a slight overall advantage over its opposition in the election but that this is magnified because the Brexit coalition is more evenly united than the anti-Brexit coalition marred as it is by divisions both within an fractious Labour Party led by elderly student Marxist, Jeremy Corbyn, and between Labour and all other groups. And the more divided the coalition, the more difficult it is to win a majority in first-past-the-post elections.

How will the Prime Minister get to both Brexit and an election victory through this minefield?

It’s futile at this point to speculate about the possible constitutional devices Boris might use to fulfil his pledge of get Britain out of the EU by October 31. We don’t know what they are, and we can only guess if they would succeed legally. But we can reasonably speculate that if Britain leaves the EU by that date either by a no-deal Brexit or through a deal with the EU of which Nigel Farage approves, Boris would unite all the pro-Brexit forces and win a subsequent election handily. On the other hand if Boris gets the EU and Parliament to agree on a weak entangling Brexit opposed by Farage and the Brexit Party as a betrayal, he would have a real fight on his hands.

What, however, if Boris has to enter the next election campaign without an agreed deal? He would then have to decide in his manifesto between two quite different strategies leading to two quite different outcomes. The first strategy would be to stress that he wants an EU deal above all—one around which he can reunite the Tory party and moderate Remainers in other parties. That would win the insincere approval of the wider establishment but it would guarantee Farage’s opposition, thus a major fight for Boris, and an uncertain election result. The second strategy would be to talk vaguely about an EU deal but go in reality for a hard Brexit (that would free the UK from EU control altogether), an electoral pact with Farage, and a possible landslide.

For the moment, Boris is keeping both strategies in mind. He may not know himself which he will finally adopt. And the guessing-game by pundits will always favour the first strategy—their latest forecast is that he will ditch the Hard Brexiteers and his Democratic Unionist allies to get a soft Brexit through—because their working assumption is that Brexit is an impossibility and can only work in a very diluted form.

In the various scenarios above, however, the strategies that alienate Farage lead to either uncertainty or defeat whereas those that lead to the Boris-and-Nigel show offer victory and possibly a landslide. Boris needs a decisive victory if he is to be able to pursue the effective implementation of Brexit in the post-Brexit years against the grain of the establishment. A narrow win won’t be enough.

Each strategy also points to a different kind of Tory party: the Tory unity approach would extend the current Tory party, possibly re-admitting the dissident Remainers in time. But that Tory party, losing both the better-educated “Anywheres” and racial minorities, without replacing them with an infusion of blue-collar ex-Labour Leavers, is doomed to be a shrinking political force. On the other hand a strategy of uniting all the Brexit vote in a Tory–Brexit alliance has the potential to morph over time into a new Tory party with a much broader social base.

Nigel has indicated that, like Barkis, he is willing. His price at present is that the Tories give the Brexit Party a free run in eighty to ninety Labour seats with large Leave majorities. He calculates this would produce thirty to forty Brexit MPs who would be available to help Boris win a landslide and finally get Brexit into law. It doesn’t seem an excessive price.

It would be understandable if Boris, now besieged by Scottish judges tempted by political power, opted for the safer course and chose Remainer Tory grandees over the Brexit irregulars. In making up his mind, however, he might ask himself: Which side would the young Hong Kong democrats take? That singing the “Red Flag” or that waving the Union Jack?