Quite so!
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It is also a wonderful invention in which the PM is regularly required to publicly defend government policies in response to direct questions from the opposition leader, without the shield of a trained spokesweasel/press secretary. That, low constituent/representative ratio, and paper ballots are the three things I envy most from UK politics.
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Sort of related - do you think May’s necklace is made of lead balls?
They seem to be weighing her down:
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As a German, who was quite sad to see the referendum result, I kinda of expected the invocation within weeks, at best. Not the terrible foot dragging that happened afterward.
Because on that day Brexit was brought about, as by the logic and commendable democratic practice that also had an independence referendum in Scotland which the losers accepted.
Any day before calling Article 50 left 24 other nations with an unreliable partner in their midst, someone with enormous sabotage and blackmail potential. Britons sometimes forget that Brexit affects others, too.
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Unlike the Scottish referendum, the Brexit resolution had no official force of law. It was essentially an opinion poll put on the agenda by Cameron in the hope of shutting Farage up and in the certainty (!) that it would not pass.
Only afterwards did anyone take it seriously enough to start thinking about unintended consequences, and those just keep showing up. Just last night I heard a Tory spokesman in a round table discussion express astonishment that the EU won’t just accept without question the Tories’ position on divergence of regulation, which is that the Europeans should simply agree that a UK plan for a process for divergence, without any guarantee that the actual regulations produced by this process will ever include policies (such as worker and environmental protections) important to the EU, suffices for open trade. He was oddly arrogant for someone with essentially no bargaining power, an attitude which has typified the Tory response.
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That, and the Speaker of the House of Commons is required to leave their party and become an independent on election to the position. They also tend to take neutrality seriously, with traditions like Speaker Denison’s Rule.
The principle is to always vote in favour of further debate, or, where it has been earlier carried to have no further debate or in some specific instances, to vote in favour of the status quo. For example of the latter approach the Speaker will vote:
In favour of early readings of bills Against amendments to bills Against the final enactment of a bill Against motions of no confidenceThe thinking behind the rule is that change should only occur if an actual majority vote is in favour of change.
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I think all referendums in the UK have had about the same ‘force of law’ as a consequence of the UK’s tradition of parliamentary sovereignty. There are arguments that the Scottish referendum might have been different — many of which draw on arguments about the role of popular sovereignty in Scotland’s constitutional practice — but there were arguments going the other way too, with UK ministers suggesting that they might not observe the results of the Scottish Ref.
One of the great problems in the UK — along with all the other ones — is that how the state is organised and run is done mostly by reference to a combination of tradition, convention, the minutes of obscure committee meetings, and only the occasional law. ‘If you have to ask, you don’t really belong,’ is a mentality that comes from that. You wouldn’t run a tennis club in such a way, and I believe in England, legally, you can’t.
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Putting aside the fact that adding up all the items on that list amounts to less than half of a hundred and twenty, there are accounts of Corbyn’s actions during the remain campaign which are much more consistent with Corbyn’s behaviour before and after the EURef. Tim Shipman’s is particularly brutal: Corbyn’s team obstructed and isolated Labour In, vetoed attempts to secure assistance, banned shadow cabinet members from campaigning with them, or handing out quotes, refused to turn up to strategy campaign meetings, with John McDonnell refusing to go on Today to advance the argument for remain because he ‘didn’t have much to say’, and refusing to go in the Labour In battle bus because the battle bus was too new Labourish.
Corbyn’s team did suggest that they fly him out to Turkey to go around a refugee camp and talk about the need for open borders. That was, I think, less than a fortnight after Vote Leave started rolling out their ‘Turkey (population 76 million) is joining the EU’ poster’, the one with the footsteps headed toward an open door.
Toynbee makes much of Corbyn saying:
“We must make sure we obtain tariff-free access to the European markets and protection of all the rights and membership of agencies we have achieved through the European Union.”
Toynbee wants to believe, that’s understandable: I’d like to believe too. But it’s nonsense, nonsense that in practical terms leaves Labour’s position identical to May’s: out of the single market, out of the customs union, piecemeal negotiation of some forms of single market access and with a soupçon of Keir Starmer floating by to say that we can somehow be mostly in the single market while ending FOM.
This is neither coherent, nor possible, and presenting Corbyn’s criticism of how the Tories are handling brexit as a sign he’s going to start arguing it should not be done is dangerously naïve. Especially now. Corbyn issued a three line whip to back article 50 after abstaining on amendments that sought to protect single market membership, customs union membership and ECJ membership, and after amendments that would have sought to protect fellow EU citizens — who he has since described as ‘wholesale imports’ that have destroyed conditions for British workers — were shot down. The deadline comes nearer.
British Nationalism is a hell of a drug.
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What he misses (or, given the blog’s measured tone, is too tactful to say) is that for conservatives Brexit was never about ushering in a wonderful future but rather about reviving a mythical past (which is why crypto-fascists and ultra-nationalists were its strongest proponents) and punishing the winners and potential winners in the EU present (i.e. the young, the educated, the cosmopolitan, the wealthy, the immigrants).
I’d argue that the second goal is slightly more important to them than the first. Upon winning the referendum they had trouble letting go of their self-victimisation, mainly due to their lingering anxiety that they would not be “winners” under either outcome. It’s a variation on the American “spite voter” who mainly wants to spread his own misery around to his more fortunate and happy countrymen, an attitude which underlies most of the current right-wing populist movements in the West.
If we’re looking for British Leave-ers who do have a positive vision of a post-Brexit UK, Corbyn stands as a good example. He correctly wants to temper the “free” market fundamentalism underlying the neoliberal globalist consensus that is the root cause of the current malaise. However, his Euroskepticism takes that goal into self-destructive territory in that it shares the same general delusion about a return to a mythical past. In Corbyn’s case, that past is the glory days of the postwar and pre-Thatcher made-in-Britain welfare state, with its powerful labour unions and employment opportunities for the poorly educated. There’s a valid debate to be had on whether those were in fact glory days, but whatever one’s view it’s still a backward-looking vision that doesn’t acknowledge the fundamental changes in the post-industrial economies of the West.
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Very true. Amongst a host of true things in your post. I hate to bring in the age demographic card but it’s simply true, it was a revival of a past that never existed, sharing many parallels to “make america great again”. I see all these EU funded projects, especially in wales, and the result still feels like the biggest cutting the nose off to spite the face imaginable.
This. I include myself in the many who think the EU needs some reform but we’re no longer going to have any chance to do that while we’re outside the tent pissing in. Corbyn’s euroscepticism was always mistakenly taken as outright rejection of the EU.
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From a Boomer perspective, a realistic appraisal of the state of the world carries two implications:
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Our kids and grandkids are totally fucked, and
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This is largely our fault.
That creates a lot of cognitive dissonance. So, there’s a strong motivation to reject that reality and substitute their own.
—
It isn’t a neat “blame the Boomers” thing, though. The responsibility spreads across generational lines, but fades with reducing age and wealth. Wealthy X-ers should have resisted, etc.
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Indeed, both Wales and the South West voted for leave; despite getting funding from the EU that I can’t see Westminster continuing.
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Adding to that is that fact that the Boomers have spent 40 years convincing themselves that they, and not the parental generation they seem to resent, are the true Greatest Generation that saved the world in the 1960s (never mind the fact that most civil rights and anti-war and feminist movement leaders were from the Silent Generation). That level of self-delusion is why you see a lot more “Old Economy Steve” statements coming from them than from Xers.
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The Europeans (and Americans for that matter) have never understood the unpleasant nature of the British ruling classes. Maybe if I was more familiar with the French ruling classes I would want to kick them in the balls too, but Im glad to see the rest of the world scratching their heads in wonderment at the “special logic” of the the golf playing British elites.
Well, it isn’t like I was coming into this as a completely ignorant American; I lived and worked in England for several years while Thatcher was PM. My reaction isn’t to general Tory entitlement in general, but to the particular level of cluelessness of the current administration.
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I agree - could you imagine some other world leaders being questioned thusly once a week on live TV?
Since Brexit PMQ’s as had far more hand grenades lobbed by backbenchers than platitudes-as-a-question.
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Doh!
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Gove, Farage & Johnson, the Dream Ticket; how could anyone resist their charms? 
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I worked at the BoE back when T May was there. There is a reason she was sent to Clearing Services. For what its worth Katy Kay started at the Bank of England too.
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