Sunday 11 June 2017

In search of certainty

"I want to return to the crucial question of leadership," #MrsMe told us on Monday, three days before the election, "because that's what this election is about."  That turned out well.

"Give me a mandate to lead Britain, give me a mandate to speak for Britain, give me a mandate to fight for Britain and give me a mandate to deliver for Britain,” has been part of that speech, delivered two or three times a day over the weeks in a standardised setting of Me And My Team backdrop and dragooned, vetted workers and/or local party members.  Total control.





And now?  I don't like talking about people's looks and choice of clothes - it's petty - but it's hard not to sometimes.  #MrsMe's wardrobe during the campaign has been on the tweedy side of fashionable, and you have to wonder whether it was her own choice or "recommended" by Lynton Crosby.  At her count in the wee small hours of Friday all I could see was the red Red RED battle lipstick.


And to pledge "certainty" in the middle of Downing St (with Mr May at her shoulder rather than a dozen paces away out of any likely camera shot) it was a severe and very Tory blue suit.


Men - political men in particular - have a much more boring palette of symbols to choose from - the boring suit and possibly a "daring" tie.  Pete Wishart (SNP, Perth and North Perthshire, 2017 majority 21) can carry off a dark lilac two-piece, but Robert Halfon (Conservative, Harlow, 2017 majority 7,031) once chose yellow and drew a lot of catcalls.  Nadhim Zahawi's musical tie and Peter Bone's silly hat drew reprimands from the Commons Speaker.

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Anyway, to certainty, and leadership.  #MrsMe's "strong and stable" mantra took hold with a lot of people if a thousand vox pops are to be believed, but I think I was starting to detect a bit of ridicule along with the repetition, and among real people, not just politics nerds.  And despite all the spending on Facebook attack ads the Tories had got the young wrong, or was it the kippers, or maybe the militant non-voters?

Whatever it was, #MrsMe had succeeded in frittering away her slim majority to achieve a slim minority.  Yet she emerged from the big black door on Friday to promise certainty.  Her words were meant to convey a stiff backbone and "getting to work" but the manner was very tense.  She disappeared inside having thanked nobody and said nothing to the Tories who had lost their seats.  Only later did somebody force a human pill on her, but even then she was sorry for her fallen colleagues, not to anybody.

She claimed "What the country needs more than ever is certainty, and having secured the largest number of votes and the greatest number of seats in the general election it is clear that only the Conservative and Unionist party has the legitimacy and ability to provide that certainty by commanding a majority in the House of Commons... As we do, we will continue to work with our friends and allies in the Democratic Unionist party in particular".

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Over the course of Saturday #MrsMe was threatened with a leadership challenge unless she got rid of her advisers/chiefs of staff Nick Timothy and Fiona Hill.  Tories just aren't supposed to do that kind of thing unless they've been out of power for a few years with a Blair to beat and no direction.  Since they still had several fingertips on the prize it was a bit of a surprise.  Nonetheless, by the end of the day she had no special special advisers.

And by the end of the day she had also appointed Gavin Barwell, ex-MP for Croydon Central, ex-housing minister, out of work for perhaps 36 hours since his defeat by the London Labour surge, as chief of staff.  Party sympathisers hailed it as a good appointment, and the man has held several junior minister roles so he must have something about him.  Others criticised her for falling back on an insider who had just been rejected by the popular vote.

Chief of staff is not an elected position, but it has become a very visible one since #MrsMe's selection as leader and prime minister (the question of whether she could legitimately claim that position has emerged again, with observations that she had never been voted in by the party membership as the Tory constitution demands).  Barwell shouldn't be assumed to be such a superhuman that he can do the work of two, so we should expect further appointments.

This brought to mind a conversation with my mother in 1992, when Lynda Chalker was voted out in the Wallasey constituency (replaced by Angela Eagle, sometime would-be Labour leadership hopeful).  That day I was stung by the realisation that I was already more cynical than was good for me, because I expected nothing better, while my mother protested at Thatcher's rejection of the democratic decision and immediate "elevation" to the Lords so that Chalker could could carry on as Minister for Overseas Development with little break.

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The thing on #MrsMe's mind between that strained Maidenhead count and the visit to the palace was obviously survival.  Her brief statement made it clear that she had been on the phone to Belfast and achieved an agreement in principle with her "friends and allies in the Democratic Unionist party".  Three strands of objection opened up immediately.  The first was the party's illiberal reputation, and it wasn't just the right-on brigade who protested.



It didn't help that one man chosen to represent the largest unionist grouping in Northern Irish politics was Nelson McCausland.  He appeared on Radio 4's Money Box (Paul Lewis has been incisive and scrupulously fair in his reporting of money issues during the election) to tell us that not all of the DUP's supporters deserve the labels being bandied about - homophobe, Christian fundamentalist etc.  What he didn't quite say was that the accusations are unjustified in the first place.  (And what many commentators neglected to mention was that other Ulster parties have similar views - the Social Democratic and Labour Party for example, on abortion.)

McCausland and (some) others in his party believe the Ulster Protestants are a lost tribe of Israel. He has claimed that a third of Northern Ireland's population believe in intelligent design or the young-earth creationist view that the universe was created about 6,000 years ago.  As culture minister in the Northern Ireland assembly he demanded that the Ulster Museum should display exhibits based on anti-Darwinian theories as a matter of human rights, to represent that strand of local thought (as opposed to the usual job of a museum to seek after scientific truth).

Then there's the little matter of the DUP's choice of friends.




Many people wondered what the DUP might want in return.  When ex-Northern Ireland secretary Owen Paterson suggested that "scientific progress" might make it possible to restrict abortion in ways that might cheer them, alarm bells rang.  They would certainly want the UK government to act to reduce pressure on the province to join the rest of us in the 21st century.

What about Brexit?  The DUP was a strong voice (but lonely, in Northern Ireland) for leaving the EU, but they want the fabled "frictionless" border with the south, which might be hard to reconcile with #MrsMe's "no single market, no customs union, no ECJ" stance.  And they will definitely demand a deal.  No Deal would leave them dangling.

The Financial Times offered a considered view and several writers picked up on demands prepared for the eventuality of a hung parliament in 2015 and the party's normal interest - more money and consideration for their patch, no reduction in any kind of benefits.

May seemed likely to grasp the Ulster influence as a way to soften her perceived attack on the elderly (the deficit and the cost of social care perhaps finding themselves in even longer grass) and Brexiters, as they are wont to do, smelled betrayal.  The wrong sort of soft border might leave us closer to the evil EU than "the people" voted for last June.

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The final problem is the Good Friday Agreement.  Under that national and international agreement a responsibility is placed on the UK government to be neutral in its dealings with the various political parties of the province.  A legal deadline of 29 June this year has been placed on establishing an executive for the devolved Stormont government, and the secretary of state (the uninspiring but ultra-reliable James Brokenshire again, it would appear) should be an honest broker in those talks.  I chose the word referee, and have other tweeters to thank for the news that the new Commons intake includes an experienced whistle-blower.




This is important in national politics - too much favour shown to one side in Stormont could provide a pretext for blocking demands by the other.  But it is also important to the Brexit negotiations.  #MrsMe's letter triggering the beginning of the Article 50 process said "In particular we must pay attention to the UK's unique relationship with the Republic of Ireland and the importance of the peace process [and] continue to uphold the Belfast Agreement".   The EU27's negotiating directives stress "Nothing in the Agreement should undermine the objectives and commitments set out in the Good Friday Agreement".

All sides of Northern Ireland politics might eventually tolerate a single soft-border proposal, but any hint of partisanship by the UK government (and what could be more partisan than a coalition with one of the parties?) might prejudice its agreement.  Sinn Féin representatives in the EU parliament, and all the MEPs from the island will take a particular interest.  I don't think this is going to be easy.



And then the Sunday Times reports "sources" suggesting that the DUP is pressing for Nigel Farage to be included in the Brexit negotiations.  This was something I was wondering about, what with UKIP-DUP connections and that rather odd purchase of pro-Leave advertising in newspapers which aren't available in Northern Ireland.





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On Sunday morning neither the Tories nor the DUP could supply a spokesperson for the ordinary news.  When you're really busy...

George Osborne, reviewing the Sunday papers, dubbed #MrsMe a "dead woman walking". while Toby Young told him he was considered by Conservatives the "honourable member for Schadenfreude Central".  Osborne told us the prime minister had told him he "needed to get to know [his] party better" when she sacked him, which could have been pursued rather further after Thursday's result and Friday's coldness from No 10.

Ruth Davidson is today's star of the Conservative party, and a worrying one for some people, since her dozen Scottish Tory MPs might be a force for a softer Brexit (I wonder how David Mundell, #MrsMe's only representative north of the border until this week, and her Scottish secretary, will handle it).

Michael Heseltine came out to raise the possibility of a new EU27 proposal on immigration which would make it possible to stay in the EU but at present it looks rather like wishful thinking, though none of the Tories have ever explained in detail why they didn't use the options open to them under the freedom of movement rules.





Michael Fallon, still defence secretary as far as we know, faced a series of horror stories about DUP attitudes with his normal stony face, not so much fending them off as ignoring them completely.  We're not in coalition with them, he argued (though that might have changed again by tomorrow morning), so we don't have to agree with them.  He also dodged the Stormont neutrality question, though at least Marr asked it. 

Jeremy Corbyn was last on Marr, the momentum if not the result giving him pride of place, and he was in full Monsieur Zen mode, ready to open up to anybody in his party who wanted to help.  We'll see how long that lasts.






Saboteurs department

Today's chief saboteur is #MrsMe herself.  Hostages to fortune were plentifiul during the campaign, and it's worth dipping into something issued under her own name.  It starts with "If I lose just six seats I will lose this election, and Jeremy Corbyn will be sitting down to negotiate with the presidents, prime ministers and chancellors of Europe".

And when Boris Johnson tries to help, issuing a call for loyalty which attracts support from Michael Gove and Conor Burns (who?)...





and (as is his habit) gets it all wrong, he really doesn't help..





And in response to Julia Hartley-Brewer and the many other pundits telling us that 80% or more of the votes went to parties with "pro-Brexit" manifestos, the manifestos are far from detailed and specific and, most important, parties can be held to a manifesto to some extent. Voters can't.
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