21.03.2019
Bercow’s coup settles nothing
As the chaos continues, Paul Demarty considers the state of British ‘democracy’
Whatever else we might say about John Bercow - and little enough of it is nice - he is at least merciful to those of us required to write about the contemporary business of British government.
For not the least of the literary difficulties of writing about the slow-motion car crash of Brexit is the repetitiveness. There are only so many things one can say about Theresa May’s withdrawal agreement being voted down by parliament. May is not so sensitive to our feelings, however, and keeps bringing it back for another go. By citing ancient precedent to rule out a further vote on the deal in this parliamentary session, Bercow has restored a little excitement to proceedings. Speculation about his motives is rife, and we will give them a closer look in a moment; but a speaker who genuinely was acting solely out of concern for the ‘dignity’ of parliament and respect for its instructions could hardly have acted differently. What part of ‘no’ does May not understand?
It seems that the government’s plan for this week was to hold the third ‘meaningful vote’ on May’s deal - they are so ‘meaningful’, of course, that May will just keep holding them until she gets the right answer. Though defeat was basically inevitable, she hoped to win over sections of the hard Brexiteers and the Democratic Unionist Party - the first through the threat of Brexit being thwarted altogether, and the second with the sweet fruit of the Magic Money Tree. Even if defeat could not be avoided, movement in the direction of victory, with important forces coming over to her side, might convince the European Union negotiators to offer her a short ‘technical’ extension to article 50, until around June - by which time May would perhaps manage to ram it through. Hence the importance of holding the vote now, before she visits EU leaders at the European Council meeting on March 21.
It always sounded like a long shot, but Bercow’s stunt left this plan in tatters. The government could have upped the ante through the technical device of ending the parliamentary session and starting a new one, getting around Bercow’s insistence that the same bill could not be returned to the floor in the same session; but the chance of holding the vote in time was vanishingly small, and doing so only to lose anyway was an exercise of rather doubtful value - not that that such things have ever put May off. Number 10 announced that a letter would be sent to Europe requesting an extension, though the length of the extension was not revealed immediately; but, whatever it is, things do not look good for May.
A short extension would very possibly be refused by the EU if there is no obvious route to parliamentary approval. A longer extension, meanwhile, would cause enormous controversy, would still have to be approved by parliament, and would necessitate the holding of the May 23 European parliamentary elections in this country - at a cost of some £100 million, every penny of which would be resented by the Brexit hard core. Given the difficulty of this choice, it is unsurprising that some effort was made to sound out presenting both extension approaches to the Europeans, in some order of preference.
Michel Barnier, alas, was having none of it - “I am a simple soul, and something has to be either short or long.” A long delay, he said, would have little purpose, unless there was “something new, some new event, some political process” to change things. Barnier cannot speak for the European Council, of course; but in reality he was not speaking off the cuff: his comments indicate an intention to give May a hard time. Robert Peston summarised it nicely: “Big message of [Barnier] is the EU is ready for no-deal Brexit. Big message of [May] is UK is not ready for no deal. So who has the power in these last-minute talks between UK and EU?”1
So what exactly is Bercow’s game? He is - despite formerly being a rightwing Tory MP - widely despised by his former party, who consider him extremely unreliable. He is, of course, also a known remainer and there are dark mutterings of his conspiring with opposition MPs to spring this on the government. He is, by all accounts, a prickly egotist, with a taste for the dramatic. An ideal candidate for the man on horseback, then: with politics in chaos, it is the job of people like Bercow to act with the fortitude and self-sacrifice proper to his office, rise above petty partisanship and break the deadlock - hurrah! hurrah! - with a heroic action that will very likely push the date of Britain’s withdrawal back for a good while.
He will not be quickly forgiven by the Tories, especially those of a Brexiteer stripe. The Times article reporting his action described “ministers shaking with anger”, and quoted solicitor general Robert Buckland to the effect that “We’re in a major constitutional crisis here … We are talking about hours to March 29”. He concluded, with admirable understatement: “Frankly we could have done without this.”2 The consequences for May, however, might even be graver, for, if she is forced into a longer extension of article 50, she will lose the most reliable defence of her occupancy of Number 10: the ticking-time-bomb of March 29. With the Independent Group split likely to hit Labour’s vote, a well-executed palace coup in the Tory Party might prepare the ground for a fresh general election and a majority, and a finish to the Brexit business, one way or another, in good order. (She has already promised to step down before the next election … )
The trouble is that she is not the only rudderless Tory. The hard Brexiteers have likewise committed themselves to a strategy of running down the clock, but had not apparently reckoned on the possibility that this would result in a delay to Brexit rather than a sufficiently exciting version of it for their tastes. The less hair-raising types - Andrea Leadsom, Liam Fox and the like - are stuck griping about a bad deal without even the slightest possibility of getting a better one. Their commitment is to the Platonic ideal of an advantageous exit arrangement, which - as David Lidington put it a couple of months ago - they seem to expect to spring out of a cupboard in Brussels.
Conservative remainers at least have some sort of coherent mission. They fall back on the centuries-old Tory tradition of hard-headed statecraft, of making sure queen and country do well out of any crisis, and sail gently on to greater things. They know that Brexit must - from such a perspective - be junked, and are not too proud to kick it into the long grass for the time being. The trouble is that, while the parliamentary party remains - for now - home to many of them, the wider Tory membership leans hard towards their enemies. Nick Boles has recently resigned from his local Conservative Association after it became clear that he could be deselected, though he has not had the whip removed. He will not be the only one under pressure.
In a very important sense, what we have witnessed in all this - what we are still witnessing - is the death of statecraft-Toryism, although its rebirth from the flames will come at some point. The ‘natural party of government’ fulfils its role not only by correctly identifying the vulgar interests of the state, but by binding them to the aspirations of parts of the popular classes - as any such party must in any society with a wide franchise. As politics has become ever more bureaucratised, the local organs of the Conservative Party have atrophied, and the central administration has cut itself off ever more radically from those roots. The names most profitably associated with this process are David Cameron and George Osborne, who confused their ability to schmooze with media types with tactical nous, and badly misjudged the offer of an in-out referendum on EU membership every step of the way. They missed, among other things, the selection of a bumper crop of head-banging Brexiteers as candidates in the 2015 election, and the increasing militancy of the far-right section of the Tories, under pressure from the UK Independence Party.
Outside the dismal sphere of mainstream parliamentary politics, then, it is no surprise to find great ructions afoot. Two demonstrations are taking place, on opposite sides of the Brexit divide (in every possible way). The remainers hope to fill central London on Saturday March 23; Nigel Farage, meanwhile, has kicked off a march from Sunderland to the capital, which will be winding through the Brexit heartlands over two weeks. Farage has registered his new Brexit Party with the electoral commission; and, should circumstances impose a European parliament election on the British people, it would be foolish to bet against him keeping his seat - and bringing some new friends with him for a ride on the hated gravy train.
Democracy
Such is the poisonous logic of the unwanted plebiscite result, however. If the people are good enough to vote the ‘right’ way, then plans are in place to make sure they get what they want. If the ‘wrong’ side wins, there is an empty space filled with all the confused and contradictory fantasies projected onto the vote by its partisans, weightlessly untroubled by hard economic reality. The government cannot be trusted to implement such a result, and must be replaced immediately with somebody with a plan; but the same British public which opted for Brexit voted too narrowly in all directions in 2017 to deliver a functioning government at all. The fantasies still swirl in the vacuum. Sooner or later an outcome will be reached; but any particular outcome will be a betrayal.
Socialist Worker offers an editorial highlighting the unflattering view of British democracy we get from this week’s goings-on:
Votes that aren’t ‘meaningful’. Votes on the already defeated policies of a government without a majority. And votes blocked by parliamentary conventions from over 400 years ago. That’s what ‘democracy’ looks like in Britain. The Brexit shambles has underlined how hollow democracy is under capitalism. We aren’t just witnessing a crisis of Theresa May and the Tory government, but of the whole way that official politics is done.3
We learn that “parliamentary democracy isn’t based on ordinary people making decisions for themselves”. Instead, “we don’t just have to sit back as spectators. [The] alternative is fighting back - whether that’s getting out onto the streets, organising strikes or taking direct action.” There follows a list of recent protests - the school strikes, last Saturday’s small anti-racist demonstration, and so on.
I quote all this only because the lesson is surely the exact opposite. The ‘Brexit shambles’ shows it is only political - that is, deliberative, party-based and sufficiently centralised - democracy that can settle these questions. It is the British state’s defects as a democracy - to be expected, thanks to the inherently antidemocratic nature of capitalism - that makes occasional lapses of control like the Brexit vote so potentially disastrous and generative of reaction.
paul.demarty@weeklyworker.co.uk