Category: Brexit Party

The Brexit Party

The Brexit Party will deliver Brexit

Brexit Party, Nigel Farage
2 Comments

Some sort of clean break Brexit is looking far more likely than it was when Theresa May was Prime Minister. What happened?

Today Nigel Farage made a speech to the Brexit Party (the event is ongoing and his speech starts about 17 minutes into that live stream).

Back in March of this year all seemed lost. We had a Labour and Conservative party, both of whom were happy not to take us out of the European Union. […] The talk was that not only were we not leaving the European Union but we were to face a second referendum. […] That is why I founded the Brexit Party. […] We managed to turn all of that anger that was out there in this country into optimism and hope. We made people begin to realise that actually Brexit was going to happen. […] It was our rise and success that got rid of the worst and most duplicitous prime minister in British history. I think we pretty much guaranteed that her successor would be a leading brexiteer. Indeed if we hadn’t fought those elections I suspect Mrs May would still be there.

Farage claims that at this point Boris is mostly aping Brexit Party lines. But he does not mind. He is pleased that Boris has brought some energy and optimism to the job, and that he is saying we will leave on the 31st October, “do or die.” But Nigel is skeptical, since we heard similar things from Theresa May early on, and Boris looks like he might be satisfied with the withdrawal agreement minus the backstop. Boris and the Conservative party can not be trusted, Nigel says.

It is clear that Nigel Farage and the Brexit Party are the ones keeping Boris honest. Will it be enough, or will they also be the ones bringing about the downfall of the Conservative Party should he fail? Says Nigel:

The withdrawal agreement is not Brexit. The withdrawal agreement is a betrayal of what 17.4m people voted for, and if you go with the withdrawal agreement we will fight you in every single seat up and down the length and breadth of the United Kingdom.

He talks about another possibility: that Boris proceeds with leaving with no deal. Nigel thinks no deal is the best deal. He calls it a clean break Brexit, leaving the UK independent and sovereign.

If Boris Johnson was to summon up the courage to lead this country into a clean break Brexit on 31st October, and if the only means of achieving that was calling a general election … then we would put country before party … we would be prepared to help him, perhaps in the form of a non-aggression pact at the election.

He goes on to suggest that the only way the Conservative party could win a general election is with the help and support of the Brexit Party. “We will not get a genuine Brexit without the Brexit Party being involved.”

Why Labour might want No Deal… and why such thoughts are dangerous

Brexit, Brexit Party, Conservative Party, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats
4 Comments

No Deal would suit Labour for the same reason as it would suit the Conservatives: with Brexit done each of the two major parties’ main rival would lose its main selling point. If No Deal turned out badly, that would suit Labour even better. They could blame the Tories for it while still scooping up its benefits. Discuss.

I could have stopped there. But in politics, where duplicitousness is common, there is an ever-present temptation to think that it is universal and that one’s opponents are only pretending to oppose. “Relax!” says a soothing voice. “We don’t need to do anything. They secretly want us to win and will open the gates before battle begins.” Everywhere I see Remain supporters claiming that Boris Johnson, Bluffer Boris, knows full well that leaving without a deal would be a disaster and will arrange at the last moment for it to be avoided. They add that he never even expected or wanted to win the referendum in the first place; did you not see his shocked face the morning after? He just wants someone else to step in and stop it so that he can blame them for betraying Brexit while still scooping up the benefits of remaining in the EU.

Long may they believe this. By “long” I mean until 31st October 2019. But I fear that my half-belief that Jeremy Corbyn secretly wants Brexit is merely another manifestation of the same comforting delusion.

Four ways Boris could fail, and in most of them Brexit fails with him

Brexit, Brexit Party, Conservative Party, Elections, Labour Party, Liberal Democrats, Party politics, Westminster Parliament
2 Comments

Professor Matthew Goodwin is the author of National Populism: The Revolt Against Liberal Democracy, which I have read and found good. As an academic he maintains an attitude of detachment but it is clear to me that he wants Brexit, partly from fear that if the referendum result is thwarted the result will be a resurgence of the nativist Right, who will have been shown to be correct in their claim that democracy is a sham.

Goodwin believes the most likely thing to happen in the next few months is that Boris Johnson will succeed in delivering Brexit and will win an election on the strength of having done that. In this article, “Boris Wins Big … Right?”, he details four scenarios that end very differently. I approve of that type of thinking.

One lesson of the past decade, as I usually point out in my talks, is that we should always challenge Groupthink. It’s not that I find the above implausible, because I don’t. If things do not change then Boris has a pretty good chance of winning a majority, albeit one that in my view will be much less spectacular than Twitter would have you believe. But it could also go very wrong and we should recognise that conventional wisdom has a dismal record. Long-time subscribers of this bulletin know that it is only by challenging Groupthink that we saw 2016 Leave victory coming. So where could it go wrong for Boris? Here are four things his team need to think about.

Of the four factors he cites, only the first two strike me as big risks. They are:

– 1. He fails to unify Leavers
– 2. Corbynomics remains popular

In all the hullabaloo about Brexit it is easy to forget that a generation has grown up who only know of Margaret Thatcher as a kind of Bogeywoman and who know nothing of the failures of socialism that caused her to be voted in. Corbynomics is indeed popular, more popular than Corbyn himself. Never forget that the hard Left was a vital part of the coalition that won the 2016 EU referendum.

Added later: I said I admired Goodwin’s willingness to think about how he could be wrong in his predictions and how things could go contrary to his desires. In contrast Polly Toynbee seems constitutionally unable to think for very long about uncongenial matters. She writes, “Only a government of national unity can deliver us from no deal”, without once mentioning the Liberal Democrats. The Lib Dems are as vital to the Remain coalition as the Hard Left are to the Leave coalition; to put forward the idea of a government of national unity (headed by Margaret Beckett of all people) that does not include them is to add an intra-Remain absurdity on top of the wider absurdity of proposing a government of “national unity” to force through something bitterly opposed by half the electorate, as a commenter called “Katherine1984” pointed out.

Lest I be revealed as unable to think of uncongenial things myself, let me say that unfortunately the Remain side includes many brains more flexible than Polly’s. Dominic Grieve, for one.

Can Boris & the Tories be trusted? Yes, I know, stop laughing!

Boris Johnson, Brexit, Brexit Party, Conservative Party
5 Comments

It appears that Tory leader Boris Johnson is now moving towards a reheated version of Theresa May’s terrible Withdrawal Agreement – the worst deal in history, a treaty that was accurately described by Boris as reducing the UK to a state of ‘vassalage’.

After a few short days making positive noises, the new Prime Minister is already talking about an extended period of Transition. A period when we would effectively still be in the Single Market and Customs Union, we would not be able to implement new trade deals, would still be subject to the jurisdiction of the European Court of Justice and would not have control of our fishing waters. Under the terms of Mrs May’s agreement, we would also unnecessarily be paying £39 billion without the EU agreeing to any new trade deal.

– Richard Tice, Chairman, The Brexit Party

Two polls out tonight. One clear message.

Brexit, Brexit Party, Conservative Party
11 Comments

One by OpiniumResearch, fieldwork 24-26 July changes with respect to 5th July:

CON: 30% (+7)

LAB: 28% (+3)

LDEM: 16% (+1)

BREX: 15% (-7)

GRN: 5% (-3)

And one by DeltaPoll for the Mail on Sunday:

CON: 30 (+10)

LAB: 25 (-1)

LIB: 18 (+2)

BRX: 14 (-10)

CUK: 2 (-2)

The fearful symmetry of that +7, -7 and +10, -10 is burning bright in the tangled forests of polling data. I rejoice.

I do not rejoice for the Conservatives, or mourn for the Brexit party. When the Tories’ voters deserted them en masse for the Brexit Party just before the European Parliament elections I was happy for the same reason that I am happy now: those splendidly disloyal voters were sending the message “We voted to leave the European Union. Forget building high speed railways or cancelling them, or whatever other scheme you think matters, we want Brexit. And we will vote for whichever party has the best chance of getting it done.”

Edit: Good grief, there have now been four polls published tonight. They’re like No. 9 buses, you wait ages then four turn up at once. The two later polls did not give such dramatic rises for the Tories, but one of them, by ComRes, yet again followed the pattern of a rise for the Conservatives precisely mirrored by a fall for the Brexit Party. Only YouGov did not follow this pattern. It showed a rise for the Conservatives and a fall for the Brexit Party, all right, but they were not quite equal. I repeat: it is not the rise or fall of either party that interests me. What interests me is that this demonstrates there is a most un-blocky bloc of voters for whom Brexit is the key issue.

In recent weeks there has been a slew of comments from the Remain side that asked, with a pitying shake of the head, what would the poor shambling Leave voters actually do if Article 50 were revoked? Get out on the streets with their Zimmer frames and riot? (The search term riot Zimmer frame Brexit gets 51,600 results. Recycling is all very well, but someone needs to donate them a second joke.) Well, besides the route taken by one Brexit-supporting old girl who won’t see seventy again – become an MEP and make Greens cry – there is always the option of swing voting.

General election pacts

Brexit Party, Elections, Nigel Farage
3 Comments

The outraged #NotMyPM twitterati think that new prime minister Boris Johnson should call a general election, since he was only put in place by a handful of silly old Tory party members and has no mandate. One problem with a general election is that the Brexit vote could be split between the Brexit Party and the Conservatives. So Nigel Farage has suggested there is the possibility of an electoral pact, whereby the Brexit Party does not contest all seats.

It would be fascinating if, for example, previously safe Labour seats went to TBP due Corbyn’s promise that the Labour party would back Remain. Or if votes were split between Labour and Lib Dems, since Jo Swinson has ruled out a pact.

Boris’s next moves will greatly impact the shape of the Great Realignment. Via the medium of electoral arithmetic, Nigel Farage will have a great deal of influence, I suspect.

What would Boris lose by calling an election timed to take place just AFTER 31 October?

Brexit, Brexit Party, Conservative Party, Elections, European Union, Party politics, Shenanigans, Westminster Parliament
11 Comments

There has been speculation everywhere that Boris Johnson will call an election in order to get a parliamentary majority to secure Brexit. Some have said he would need to make an agreement with the Brexit Party before the election, others that the pact would need to come afterwards – but most of what I have read seems to assume that the order of events in the plan is: Call election > Win election (possibly with help) > Leave EU.

Have I missed something? Because it seems to me that Mr Johnson would get a better shot at all his goals by calling an election timed to occur just after Brexit.

The entry for Dissolution of Parliament on Parliament’s own website says,

What happens to Parliament at dissolution?
Parliament is dissolved 25 working days before a general election at a minute past midnight.

The formal end to the parliamentary session is called ‘prorogation’. This may take place a few days before dissolution.

So Mr Grieve’s ingenious scheme to make it harder for Parliament to be prorogued is rendered void. While MPs are locked out of the building, the gears turn unimpeded and eventually the great or terrible hour strikes.

House of Commons
When Parliament is dissolved, every seat in the House of Commons becomes vacant. All business in the House comes to an end. MPs stop representing their constituencies. There will be no MPs until after the general election.

And until after Brexit.

MPs can come into Parliament for a few days after dissolution to clear their offices.

Those who wish to be MPs again must stand again as candidates for election.

They will be standing and campaigning for a seat in the post-Brexit House. The whole political environment will be different, and much more favourable to the Conservatives. If Brexit seems inevitable, much of the justification for the Brexit Party’s existence melts away, and so does the incentive for pro-Remain parties to unite in an electoral pact to stop Brexit. To an exhausted electorate “Rejoin” is a much less appealing message than “Don’t leave”, and the attitude of the major opposition parties to it is more split. The Liberal Democrats would want it, but Labour, especially if Mr Corbyn is still at the helm, would probably be happy to kick it into the long grass as a vaguely worded aspiration.

Role of the Commons Speaker at dissolution

The Speaker is no longer an MP once Parliament is dissolved.

Like every other MP, the Speaker must stand for re-election. The Speaker will stand as ‘Speaker seeking re-election’.

However, the Speaker retains responsibility for the management of the House of Commons as they remain the chair of the House of Commons Commission until a new Speaker is elected.

In the circumstances I have described Mr Bercow’s long-delayed departure would be seen by the Tories as the icing on the cake.

It might be that Mr Johnson could be stopped from holding a general election by the opposition voting to deny the government the two thirds majority that the Fixed Term Parliament Act requires it to have to call an election. But when I try to imagine Jeremy Corbyn or John McDonnell going through the division lobbies to deny themselves the chance of power, or stranger yet to protest that they do indeed have confidence in a Johnson government, I cannot make the vision form.

I probably have missed something quite obvious. Tell me what it is and I will get on with my day.

Brexit radicalisation and the prime reason thereof

Brexit, Brexit Party, Westminster Parliament
2 Comments

Most Leavers wanted a Good Deal, rather than No Deal, but then realised all the deals that were actually acceptable to the UK establishment were entirely about ensuring Brexit-in-name-only. The gulf between rhetoric and action became so wide that distrust in Westminster and its institution became near total. It is this collapse in trust that has driven support for a No Deal/WTO Brexit, not a fundamental desire on the behalf of most Brexiteers to leave the EU with No Deal. The birth and meteoric growth of the Brexit Party is a direct product of this collapse.

I am strongly of the view that if a deal with the EU could be reached that left the UK free to make whatever trade deals it wished with agreeable third parties, very few Leave voters would oppose it.

The key element needed is it has to be a deal that does not permit EU institutions and EU regulations any authority whatsoever over the UK except when it is trading with the EU (either directly or via automatic harmonisation of UK regulations with EU regulations, which would the very definition of a ‘Brexit’ that was Brexit-in-name-only).