EU Referendum


Brexit: a loss of respect


17/08/2019




I do so hate it when Guardian columnists seem to be making the most sense out of the increasingly surreal Brexit soap opera, but after Rafael Behr yesterday, we have Marina Hyde today with much the same message.

For Hyde's piece, the headline says nearly all: "'National Unity': the fantasy flick that will never make it out of development", with a sub-heading putting the verbal boot in: "Everyone has a pitch – but whether it's Caroline Lucas’s all-female reboot or Jo Swinson's Ken Clarke vehicle, they're duds".

With that, I can't even bring myself to write about or analyse the comings and goings of our increasingly irrelevant bunch of MPs. We're headed pell-mell for a no-deal Brexit and none of these Muppets seem to be able to put together a package which will both protect the nation from unnecessary damage and respect the result of the referendum.

Of course it's actually too late. Mrs May blew it up-front by not committing to stay in the Single Market (which should have meant Efta/EEA) and then, after she had salvaged what little she could from the wreckage of her own policy, parliament screwed the pooch by not ratifying the Withdrawal Agreement.

Dire though the Agreement was, it was the best of a bad job, brought to us by an incompetent prime minister, surrounded by incompetent (and largely gutless) Cabinet colleagues. But then, I suppose, to have expected competence from parliament, when it functions as the ministerial gene pool, is asking too much. Paddling in those shallow waters would scarcely wet the soles of a journeyman's boots.

Not any of them who voted against the Agreement seems to have understood that voting against the deal doesn't stop Brexit. It gets you Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and a one-way ticket to a no-deal on 31 October. Funny that, but there you go. Voting against the deal gets you no-deal. And they still haven't really worked that one out.

Another thing the MPs don't seem to have worked out is that they are no longer a sovereign legislature. Parliament gave that up when it allowed us in 1972 to join the EEC and has lost more of its power with every passing treaty, right up to the Lisbon Treaty which came into force in 2009.

Although some of them occasionally mouth the words, they haven't really sussed the fact that, if EU law is supreme, their laws ain't any more. And when they ratified the Lisbon Treaty, they allowed into force Article 50 which set the default criteria for a departing nation to leave the EU.

Thus, while they continue to prattle about taking a no-deal "off the table", or otherwise blocking it, they clearly haven't come to terms with the fact that they blew their best chance when they blocked the ratification of the deal. Now, apart from deposing the man occupying the post of prime minister – which they're not going to do – they've run out of options.

Short of a witch riding into the House of Commons on a broomstick and waving her magic wand, Johnson is going to let the clock run down and we'll be out on 31 October with no-deal. And since Harriet Harman didn't complete her witch-school diploma (perhaps Kings Cross was closed again), the MPs are fresh out of luck.

Yet another thing they're not getting is that Johnson wants and needs a vote of no confidence. That's his best and surest route to a general election, and puts him in the driving seat to recommend a post-Brexit contest, which he is sure to win if he gets the timing right.

The very last thing he wants to do is to be stuck with a minuscule majority, having to ride out the storm when his no-deal Brexit finally goes belly-up. That will leave him to face a general election that he cannot possibly win. If Corbyn – or the people around him - had any tactical acumen, he would make sure he loses any vote of no confidence (without making it too obvious), leaving Johnson to hold the baby.

Matthew Parris writes that this week's "half-hearted intervention" by Corbyn suggests "he's happy to watch Britain crash out of the EU", but perhaps the opposition leader has at last understood that his best bet for long-term office as prime minister rests on keeping Johnson in-place for as long as possible.

Looking at the broader picture though, one is minded of a number of recent news stories asserting that criminals are no longer afraid of the police. But, when scruffy, loutish constables hit the streets – where the dustbin men are better-dressed – it is not so much fear that is the issue, but lack of respect.

And when ordinary, law-abiding citizens find that the main outcome of any contact with the police is either a shed-load of grief or a severely depleted wallet (arising, for instance, from predatory speed camera fines), and when they are needed, they are as much use as the proverbial chocolate fireguard, they are in danger of losing public support just when they need it most.

The point of making this point is that public bodies, including (or especially) parliament, rely on the respect of the people they supposedly serve in order to function in an effective manner. Yet, in the Marina Hyde piece, we see her referring to politicians indulging in "weapons-grade wankery".

This may only be a straw in the wind, but such disrespect – amusing though it is – also illustrates that parliament perhaps has a bigger problem than it cares to acknowledge. And when MPs complain of thousands of abusive e-mails, tweets and other communications, this seems to be an institution which is suffering exactly the same problem that the police are confronting.

There are those who will make a direct link between the increase in violent offences against the police and the erosion of respect, in which case MPs need to be asking themselves whether their rougher handling is a symptom of the same thing. And, given that, how long will it be before MPs are needing police protection in order to go out canvassing during election campaigns?

Never in my long career, which has kept me close to Westminster politicians for many decades, have I known such a mood abroad. And three years ago, Pete would not have dreamt of writing this piece which asserts that the [political] "system has failed", with him concluding that:
If MPs had been sincere about wanting to avoid a no deal Brexit they'd have voted for the withdrawal agreement, but every time I catch an MP wailing about no deal, it's usually the ones who voted it down all three times. They've had every opportunity to organise and shape the process but since 2016 their whole runtime has been devoted to nullifying my vote. That situation is far more serious than a no deal Brexit. This is now a constitutional matter and we have to put these people back in their place - whatever the cost.
Interestingly, yesterday saw the 200th anniversary of the Peterloo massacre, where British soldiers slaughtered and maimed peaceful protesters gathered to demand political reform. The efforts of those protesters paved the way for the Chartists who were responsible, directly and indirectly, for the universal suffrage – and in whose footsteps The Harrogate Agenda follows.

But even with that, democracy in this country has always been work in progress, and while the direction of travel for the last two centuries has been encouraging, of late we seem to be regressing. Not only do we have an unelected prime minister, we have a cabal in parliament plotting to replace him, again without an election, to frustrate the democratic outcome of the 2016 referendum. And neither the prime minister in office nor his putative replacement(s) have any popular mandate for what they propose to do. Says Pete on this:
This we cannot afford any longer. We need the decision making back where we can see it and we need to re-engage the public. We need the public in charge because our politics is incapable of delivering. Of course there will be those who fight tooth and nail to avoid having to take up this responsibility, who don't want their self-indulgence and privilege disturbed - usually the liberal middle classes, but they're the ones who did this to us in the first place so we don't owe them anything.
The one thing we certainly don't owe this motley lot is respect. Over the last three years, our ruling elites – in government and in parliament – have forfeited both the respect and the trust of the population at large.

To be honest, I don't see them getting it back. Without realising it, they've crossed the Rubicon, headed for a destination from which there is no return. Some commentators would even suggest that this opens the way for a repeat of Peterloo, but the élites need to ponder over whether, this time, they might be the target.

Once respect is lost, what follows is not easy to control, if indeed control is possible.