Strategy Latest for Staying In the EU

This blog is written from the standpoint of someone who wants to stay in the European Union .

I don't know if David Lammy MP has changed his view; perhaps like Kenneth Clarke MP he expects removal from the EU and so has adjusted to a near EU position. Perhaps he will change his mind: perhaps he's a dreamer and is not the only one. David Lammy enjoys the biggest proportion of an MPs vote: 80% of voters in his constituency voted for him.

However, I'm a stay in the EU without variation, and it is always a question of ongoing strategy.

Whilst I think there is social and safety legislation which calls for the House of Commons and House of Lords to co-operate, leaving the European Union is not one of them. Assuming the majority is for the single market an customs union or as close as can be, there are clearly going to be votes to stop the government doing worse.

My view is this. We should let the government 'own' whatever it is they are doing in Brussels. The government is divided, and David Davis cannot have it all his own way. Also people should leave Theresa May where she is, probably for two years. Both factions of her party box her in.

The expectation is that the government will make a mess of it through its own indecision-making and lack of resources. The clock ticks and the offer from the fed-up 27 is not extended negotiations for Britain's benefit but the EEA or stay in the EU. No one will let the cliff edge happen, and both houses will go ballistic over this.

However, there is a big problem coming along if the Scottish Parliament needs to pass a legislative consent. It may well not on any basis other than full single market and customs union (i.e. EEA) basis as its compromise, given the good majority in Scotland to stay in. Even ther Scottish Tories are 'soft' on leaving the EU.

This could scupper the government, and given its performance regarding the Democratic Unionist Party negotiations, it could leave the government up the creek without a paddle. It could itself short-circuit everyone to a quick General Election.

Let's just look at the DUP situation. It shows how inept this government is regarding negotiation, and indeed the television BBC Newsnight biography on Theresa May on the night before the voting stated that she is not transactional and cannot negotiate.

It is inept because Cameron as Prime Minister (and indeed even Gordon Brown under Labour) spoke to the DUP. Because the DUP warm to the Tories, Cameron never had to make his DUP talking public. He did not because of its effect on the Good Friday Agreement and because they have a different social ethos.

Had Theresa May possessed political skills at a level of her office, she would have known this. Someone advised her, or she thought it necessary, to purchase a House of Commons majority by making a potential deal public. Immediately the warnings about Ireland were mentioned, plus that these people are "dinosaurs" (and, by the way Mr Speaker, dinosaurs did not just last millions of years, but our birds are pretty much evolved dinosaurs...). Now it may be that there is no deal, that it cannot be purchased, and it makes May look even more foolish.

So there is a bit of a dilemma in the strategy for a pro-European. One is not to co-operate with legislation - letting them stew in their own juice and own it - whilst the other is to leave he in power.

But if factions arise and repeal bills (reversing 1972) do not get passed, the government is in a mess. There may well be a fall in the government. It would as likely end in another Tory taking the leadership, say David Davis himself. No one else wants it. No leader wants to prepare for an election that might put them into opposition.

If that happens, see what he says and see them still in the juice. Labour will be as unlikely to manage the House of Commons as any other party, with such low voting numbers and now the DUP definitely against. It would have to fail to get through its radical social and economic programme. It would have to plan to fail and want an election, and only a vote of no confidence would get to an election (because of the Fixed Term Parliament Act - no plans now to repeal it).

Meanwhile Farage will be exercising his efforts through Tory MPs in the hard faction. Their options are now considerably reduced. At the moment they get the same sympathetic rhetoric from government.

Just a note on this as well. I have never believed that Theresa May would go ahead with a 'hard Brexit' and the fact that she 'lost' on this basis is another of her errors. She was a remainer and went 'hard' to get UKIP votes. They have destroyed UKIP, like they almost destroyed the Liberal Democrats in 2015, but the ex-Labour voters who went UKIP returned only two thirds of this UKIP vote to the Tories, and with the rise in the youth vote the Tory 'success' with this strategy failed. The First Past the Post tipping points actually went in Labour's favour.

So she is rubbish on that basis as well. Note that on Day 1 David Davis capitulated to the EU timetable after all the bluster on how the government would negotiate. The outcome, if we leave, is likely to be soft anyway, and Theresa May is as likely to accept that as any other, simply because she believed in staying in.

Her political skills was to believe in staying in, saying nothing, and expect Cameron to be so bruised by the referendum that he soon would fall to a less convinced remainer like her and all continue on. However, she sat back and watched the other leadership candidates knife each other in the front and back and took the reins as handed to her. Then she became as insincere in government leadership by rhetoric.

Anyway, everyone has seen through her but may as well leave her where she is. She won't last more than two years, but it's best if she does. She may not, because the legislation can get snarled up and even stopped. Labour. the SNP and the Liberal Democrats should let the government get into its own stew and let legislation stall. (And surely the Liberal Democrats will not be as stupid to bale the Tories out again?) - I mean it is one thing to be punished by the electorate, another to be destroyed.

The object of the exercise, for the Liberal Democrats and others, is to stay in the European Union. The Article 50 clock is ticking. Let it. The mess the government gets into regarding leaving the EU is entirely of its own making, and must be. The Liberal Democrats especially must now start making the argument for sharing sovereignty and saying that a General Election always trumps a referendum. All the EEA option amounts to is being virtually the same as the EU but without political input to decision making. And this is what we should retain.