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Dr Katherine O’Keefe is an author, and the director of training and a management consultant with Castlebridge, a data privacy and information governance consultancy. Our discussion referred to a twitter thread by Katherine and another by solicitor Simon McGarr.
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It’s probably just dumb luck, but I made two pretty accurate predictions about the byzantine machinations over the Brexit deal – or non-deal – in British politics. Firstly back on 9 May, before the first of the three House of Commons votes on Theresa May’s failed deal to leave the EU, I pointed out that that single vote meant that she was finished. The defeat was – as turned out to be the case – too big for her to overturn, and no prime minister could long outlive such a defeat, and that this outcome led inextricably to a takeover by a hardline Brexiteer, David Davis, Dominic Raab, Sajid Javid, or most likely Boris Johnson, and thereby a very hard Brexit.
Then on 21 May, as the polls were showing that the Brexit party would perform strongly in the European elections, at the expense of the Conservatives, I predicted that would influence the election of the new Conservative leader, and make it certain that whoever took the hardest Brexiteer line would win.
Two weeks later, May announced her only slightly voluntary intention to resign, and six weeks after that Johnson was elected, on a platform of saying that he would prefer to be dead in a ditch rather than delay Brexit past Halloween; and his half-hearted efforts to play the role of someone involved in serious negotiations haven’t fooled anyone.
Now we have the UK Supreme Court ruling that his effort to close down parliament, and prevent those pesky MPs from interfering with his cunning plans are illegal. So what’s going to happen next Mystic Meg? Is there going to be a deal, a no-deal Brexit or no Brexit at all.
Well, my crystal ball is a bit cloudy, but it’s worth noting the entry of the supposed political mastermind Dominic Cummings into Downing Street along with Johnson – the guy portrayed by Benedict Cumberbatch in the Brexit film for Channel 4. He, as with Johnson and the haunted pencil himself, Jacob Rees Mogg, have reputations for being terribly clever, daddy having paid for Eton and Oxford and all that.
But here’s the thing. They all come from inherited wealth, they all have fantastically educated views about the world, but unlike most other politicians, they haven’t had to fight for their power terribly hard. Dominic Cummings has never even joined a political party; Mogg was gifted a seat in the West of England, although I think he commutes into Westminster from the 18th Century, and Johnson made his reputation in the media, before becoming a celebrity mayor of London.
None of them worked their way up the greasy political pole as local councillors or fighting for a nomination in a winnable seat. They might see that as beneath them, but that type of apprenticeship into politics is not without value. At the very least it teaches you the first rule of politics – learn how to count.
Johnson has shown himself sorely lacking in that department; spectacularly he has lost every single one of the six votes he had in parliament since he became prime minister. To put that in context, with a very thin majority, John Major only lost six votes in the whole seven years that he was in office. Blair and Thatcher only lost four each. It didn’t help that Johnson expelled 21 members of his party for voting against their own government, something that he did himself regularly before he became PM.
For all his bad moves, that last one might not be as stupid as it seems. He is clearly eyeing the position after an election; the best-case scenario might be that he would win a narrow majority, and if that happens, he wants a party of loyalists, so getting rid of the troublemakers before the election and replacing them with yes-men is a sharp move.
But he has to get to an election first, and everything rides on whether that comes before or after 31st October, and whether and how Brexit happens on that date. Johnson’s one bit of luck is that his opponents are hopelessly divided, and the main opposition, the UK Labour Party is hopelessly amongst itself.
So here’s my prediction. If the newly-reconvened parliament can prevent a Halloween Brexit, then Johnson’s fox is shot, his unique selling point is a dud, and there is likely to be an election very soon after in which he is wiped out.
If he manages to implement a Halloween Brexit, he is on a very short fuse. He needs to have an election almost immediately. For him the ideal date would be Brexit day itself, 31 October, that’s conveniently a Thursday, the traditional day for UK elections, but that’s almost impossibly tight timing now, the law requires a minimum of five weeks notice for the election.
If the election was in the weeks after a no-deal Brexit, the situation is very unstable, but not good for Johnson. A November election is likely to be competing for news headlines with all the disruption of a no-deal Brexit, again a toxic option for the Conservatives.
That means that getting a deal is in Johnson’s interests, particularly one with a long transition period, not unlike the deal that May got, which he voted against twice, but the chances of getting anything that both the EU and the ultra-Brexit MPs can agree to is so remote that that it’s hardly worth considering.
So what’s going to happen? Two things – delay and unending chaos.
