Monday 12 June 2017

A fine mess



Certainty for the road ahead





At the launch of the Conservative party programme for the election #MrsMe promised "a manifesto to see us through Brexit and beyond".  By the fourth day after polling day large parts of it were being junked as we watched.  Having changed policy on social care at the first sign of opposition, May was widely reported to be in such a weak position that the manifesto the Tories were elected on is no longer tenable.  That's just so #StrongAndStable™

Labour's manifesto said little about Brexit, so their "varied" approaches are not very obvious (though Barry Gardiner and John McDonnell will be pursued for whatever reporters think they hear, out of habit).  The Tories on the other hand are falling apart on the subject, but it hardly shows among the rest of the shambles.


A few horses and a goat





MPs start swearing their oaths to the queen on Tuesday (with all the usual crossed fingers, muttered "nots" and non-standard Welsh wording from the republicans ond other objectors) then the parliamentary session is supposed to get properly started with the Queen's Speech, that event of much pomp and little content, on Monday 19 June.

Except that it's all up in the air.  With #MrsMe's small working majority dependent on agreement with the DUP, and policies to be dropped and added according to inter- and intra-party "discussions", nobody knows what it will say or when the text can be agreed.  We were told it couldn't happen on Monday, then that it might, then that they would let us know.

The timetable, we were also told, really matters.  The queen has already had to cancel a traditional Order of the Garter service to make way for opening Parliament next Monday, and declared that it would be a "dressed down" state opening because it clashes with Trooping the Colour.  The queen might not show her displeasure, but I bet her staff are tearing their hair out.

If it can't be Monday, when can it be?  The Royal Ascot race meeting begins the day after and that's "really important" to Her Madge.  And after that comes a full calendar of garden parties.  All this messing about "does not send a good signal to the rest of the world,"  observed the royal historian Kate Williams.  (Please don't think I'm an ardent  royalist or a fan of all this flummery, but it is how we run this country.)

Along the way the media picked up the kind of thing that makes it worth their while getting out of bed in the morning.  Somebody was quoted as saying that, since the document itself is written on vellum and the ink takes days to dry, the timetable is actually very tight.  There's been a year-long battle between the Lords (which wanted to stop using vellum for printing laws) and Commons (whose traditionalists thought this suggestion an abomination - yes, it really is that way round), and I thought, here's another chapter.

We then went into great investigations of how vellum is made, and uproar in defence of the goat or goats to be sacrificed for the few sheets which would be carried in the Lord Chancellor's little bag.

Michael Gove as Lord Chancellor, with his little bag, 2016

The aforementioned royal historian assured us that no goats are involved in the process, let alone harmed, since the speech is actually printed on vegan goatskin parchment (no goats) rather than goatskin vellum (goats).  Then even that was cast in doubt as somebody who should know stepped in.




Which left us with the mundane explanation for the uncertain date, which had seemed right all along - Monday can't be guaranteed until the negotiations with the DUP on what they will and will not support as not-coalition partners are complete.  Worries that arguments over traditions and social policy in Northern Ireland would intrude were reinforced by suggestions that contentious Orange marches should be unbanned.  That will cause some trouble, with Sinn Féin and Labour's sister party in the province the SDLP both warning that #MrsMe is endangering the "rigorous impartiality" required of the government by the Good Friday Agreement.

You wait for one important date...

Something else is scheduled for Monday 19 June - the beginning (at long last, say the EU27) of the UK's negotiations on withdrawal from the EU.  Correspondents from around Europe were asked how this election and its outcome are viewed.  The BBC's man in Paris, Hugh Schofield, talked of "cacophony, confusion and speculation".  Ex-prime minister of Sweden Carl Bildt tweeted "The new European pattern now is stability and confidence in the EU and mounting uncertainty in the UK."

Katya Adler, BBC Europe editor, told us "the UK is abuzz with cross-party debate about the most basic of basics - what kind of a Brexit this should be" and that David Davis's position as chief negotiator might not last long.  "Brussels is sharply aware of that."  She has heard "backrooom talk" already of possibly having to extend the negotiations and "Europe's secret wish" that the Article 50 notification might be withdrawn.

While the UK works out (again) what it supposedly wants from Brexit... "One source commented that he's never seen Brussels so sanguine over a contentious issue.  For once, EU member states really are aligned and calm, he told me, We have done our homework and we are ready for Brexit. It's the Brits who have to sort themselves out. In the meantime, the EU is concentrating on other pressing matters: security and defence, Russia, eurozone problems in Greece and the rule of law in Hungary and Poland."

Talk of rats and plots is in the air, with #MrsMe's chair of policy development George Freeman MP tweeting "Yep. This is a moment for Cabinet to drop HardBrexit message & return to that messiahnic message of hope on the steps of No10 last summer" and Mark Pritchard MP calling for a "pragmatic Brexit, not ideologically driven".  Tim Montgomerie, of the forthcoming new media website @UnHerd can sniff a conspiracy almost anywhere (though these things are being discussed fairly openly):





Saboteurs department

A lot of saboteurs have popped up in the Conservative party, as noted above.  Gavin Barwell, after losing his Croydon seat, told BBC Panorama that austerity & angry Remainers were behind lost Tory votes in his constituency, remembering a teacher who had understood pay restraint immediately after the 2008 crash but would not accept it for ten or eleven years.  (A few hours later Barwell was offered the job of #MrsMe's Chief of Staff.)

Ruth Davidson is talking in the same language as Yvette Cooper - reaching out, cross-party discussion of Brexit.  And #MrsMe herself deserves another mention, after her pledge to the 1922 committee:





The real problem, however, is the voters, who (almost) everybody seems to have got wrong.





at

UK (mostly) Bluesky starter packs

The person who assembled the list - the internal Bluesky name of the starter pack - the link andywestwood.bsky.social - go.bsky.app/6jFi56t ...