The Press is predicting a cabinet coup. Blow my own trumpet time. I was on the case last year. I didn't predict everything, especially the timing, but the internal logic has unfolded.
Sunday, 2 September 2018: New Political Season: A White Knuckle Ride
But, in the meantime, there is enough co-operation for someone like Chuka Umunna to be the man of the moment to rise up beyond his front bench and do some informal leadership...
So I am predicting that there will be a new informal leadership in the House of Commons bypassing both front benches. Chuka is the leader, and the group covers many Labour MPs, all the Liberal Democrats, the Scottish Nationalists for the purposes of the EU legislation, and the Tory pro-Europeans. Each Party will have its own sub-leaders too. This is important for co-ordination. In such a situation, Theresa May will fall, the House of Commons will organise itself, Corbyn will also be sidelined.
Wednesday, 14 November 2018: Brexit Crunch Pincer Movement
For a while now Downing Street has had a bunker mentality, believing it can fix this and fix that. One should never underestimate the ability of government to get its way. The government controls the parliamentary agenda, and has since the Blair government. It now timetables procedures, and long gone are attempts the extend and ruin the timetable. Secondly, an agreement is' boots on the ground', rather as people have learnt that the EU is 'boots on the ground'...
In that the Government holds the cards, the Government will try to make it a binary deal or no deal scenario, and thus the 20 plus Labour MPs may well grow in number. The number of remainer opposers on the Tory benches may well shrink. Nevertheless, the betting has to be that the draft agreement cannot get through Parliament.
What then? May would have to go, although she is likely to try and hang on. A Brexit Tory Prime Minister simply will not carry the Tory Party: it will be 1846 all over again...
Somehow, Parliament has to become itself the executive because this is where the hole is going to appear. There would have to be a huge political realignment at a time of national crisis, perhaps to organise a second referendum, or, better still (or both), ram on the brakes.
Wednesday, 14 November 2018: Surely This Could Not Be a Treaty
I have tried to imagine what this agreement would look like as a treaty. It won't get there, of course, but what if it did? It means we have no political representation in the EU, an extendable transition period, a backstop that means a sort of customs union and Northern Ireland in the Single Market and Customs Union in effect.
What would future governments do with this? The trade agreement to be UK-wide must match Northern Ireland. Would they keep extending the transition period? Would the backstop be the model for the trade agreement?
This is like some or most of the advantages of being in the EU, without the political representation? What is the point of this?
Sunday, 25 November 2018: Come the Hour, Come the Woman?
A problem is that with a 'Brexit failure' the Tories will not vote for a General Election and it won't get the two thirds majority as required by the Fixed Term Parliament Act, which also removed calling an election by the Prime Minister, a one time monarchical power held by the Prime Minister. There is not a majority for a second referendum, and no one would know the questions to ask or have the rapid mechanism available to decide these. A Tory Party leadership election takes time and would be riven by division.
Oh dear oh dear? What will happen. There is a road forward, and no one has set this out. it is based on the fact that there is no requirement for a party leader to be the Prime Minister, and who is Prime Minister remains a monarchical power, this is to say the Prime Minister can be anyone who will present to the House of Commons and carry the vote in the house.
So we have the formal statement. The government may pledge to find a way to present the agreement back. Suddenly those 48 letters appear, to have a vote against Theresa May, but she would still win because Tories cannot agree on anyone else.
However, what matters is that the Cabinet itself implodes. In effect, the Amber Rudd and Philip Hammond faction of the cabinet, along with Jeremy Hunt and more, realise there is a crisis of an unprecedented kind, and effectively the five exiters (plus) resign - to begin with. The exiters cannot themselves force a cabinet coup. They can be replaced.
Sunday, 9 December 2018: The Movement Towards the Logic of Remaining
Saturday 8th December and Amber Rudd speaks out in a way that suggests she might emerge in the manner of my last blog entry to take the reins of government for the purpose of sorting out the exiting the European Union mess.
I need to adjust my crystal ball gazing, however, and in a manner away from what Amber Rudd was suggesting. The thought the Norway plus solution has potential in the House of Commons and Parliament as a whole. I rather agree with Anna Soubrey, however, that it seems to be receding.
Blame David Cameron and his gamble. He 'won' the Scottish Independence Referendum and thought he could do the double. Blame the Liberal Democrats for propping up the Tories: done in a previous crisis, but went on for too long and at too high a cost. Let's hope that the Conservative Party as it is reaps the destruction to them and benefit to us...
Sunday, 16 December 2018: The Strategy of a Cabinet Coup
But all this just goes back to what I have been suggesting here, and still no one seems to be saying this in the broader media. It is that the Cabinet has to remove her, via people who have not descended to May's brittle bunker mentality. It will be bloody, in the sense that someone must take over, many must walk out, and people from other parties come in, and start acting to produce legislation. The principal act has to be to pull out of Article 50, either to buy time or stop the thing altogether.
Saturday, 5 January 2019: Decisive New Year?
What I wrote in the previous blog entry stands. It will go to the wire. May's agreement with the European Union will fail to get through, and a crisis will lead to a cabinet coup, in effect, and a necessary rescinding of Article 50, ostensibly to buy time. The Prime Minister will have changed, and the Cabinet will propose such emergency legislation not based on party but on informal networks of MPs, some into the Cabinet. So I predict. And it will be a very rough time of reactions and betrayals.
Wednesday, 16 January 2019: Massive Defeat - What Next?
A second referendum is a dangerous strategy. It will be divisive, the proposers will again lose control of it like they did in 2016 (it became an expression of anti-austerity and looked to kick the government), and of course it could still result in a no deal exit. Such a referendum may happen, but only if Labour back it, and many MPs will not.
No referendum creates two tough choices. One is to leave with no deal on the 29th March later this year. The House of Commons can always produce a majority to stop this, and the Cabinet can also stop this, given the balance of opinion. But the only way to stop this is to revoke Article 50...
Even if there is a referendum, it does not follow that the EU 27 will approve unanimously an extension to Article 50. So it may still need to be revoked, which the UK government can do: the Cabinet can do it as an executive act of governing. However, done as the only viable means to prevent a no-deal, it should get a majority in the House of Commons - if it goes to a vote.
Expect Cabinet resignations, but also possibly expect across the House of Commons appointments into it. This will destroy the political parties as they are, but the predicament demands that incredibly difficult yet necessary decision. They will sell it to give the UK time to think. The Attorney General says we can only revoke if it is to stop it altogether, but (as Kenneth Clarke asked) does this mean for all time? Of course not. To invoke it again is surely allowed once. This is how they will sell it.
Monday, 18 February 2019: Labour Split: a Surprise and Due to Internal Incompetence
While the various 'remainer' MPs from different parties have worked together, it would be a big move to find several Tory MPs now joining Chuka Umunna and company at this stage. There may be other Labour MPs joining first, especially if Corbyn carries on in his usual moribund way of ignoring everyone except a small clique of people like him, plus the struggling Keir Starmer.
I am still expecting we get to a point where political forces, in the form of a Cabinet coup, revoke Article 50. Everything is pointing in this direction, a very binary crash out versus the revoke option.
The government is chaotic, trying to force people into its cul-de-sac and then try to force them to help it out by passing the dog's breakfast of a partial subservient attachment to the EU. It isn't going to happen, because the far right of the Tory Party have this blue-eyed mist that wants to send the country over the cliff edge. Cameron's gamble to hold his party together at the risk of the country has resulted in neither winning the bet. The country is going into a period of self-harm and the Tory Party will split.
One suspects Corbyn and company rather like leaving the EU because it will give them the opportunity to launch a socialist wonderworld - well, the MPs won't buy it. The result of the seven leaving is to constrain the next manifesto. Labour is likely to be conflicted for a long time.
Saturday, 23 February 2019: The Coup is On
My long predicted coup is on. After a week in which eight Labour MPs formed and joined the Independent Group, and three Conservatives then joined it, three Cabinet Ministers have written in a newspaper to signal that they will vote to give Parliament control and thus extend Article 50 if the Prime Minister has no deal to present to Parliament. There is also the possibility that the Prime Minister will receive a positive vote if she accepts putting it to a second referendum.
However, it is not clear that there will be anything to vote on in terms of a revised deal.The so-called Malthouse Compromise is dead in the water, and the issue remains the withdrawal agreement backstop - which the Brady Amendment a fortnight ago said should be replaced and now is only subject to legal reinterpretation, if that.
The Prime Minister with nothing (much) to report may well try to delay again, but really time is up for this...
Sunday, 10 March 2019: This Week Coming: Hold on to Your Seats
The late Robin Day used to say: "So here we are and here we go." This is the week of the crucial votes regarding leaving the European Union, or we think so. One has to give a little qualification to this, because they have been promised and pulled before, and frankly Geoffrey Cox, the Attorney General, as has achieved nothing at all...
Tuesday, 12 March 2019: The Dead Rabbit from Strasbourg
it would be a miracle if the whole agreement passes the meaningful vote. Plus the fact that many in Parliament tomorrow will have had little sleep. They will feel like they have been treated with contempt. It is not the way to get people on-side. Out of the hat came a dead rabbit.
Wednesday, 13 March 2019: Turmoil: and the Tory Split Coming Fast
Wow. Tonight in parliament turned out to be even more riveting than yesterday, with the government suddenly whipping against its own (amended) motion. It lost by 43, so the whipping was rather pointless. Seventeen ministers including four Cabinet ministers, including Rudd and Clark, abstained against its own policy, with one resigning by voting against...
Is the Cabinet going to allow the Prime Minister to keep dealing her low value cards? As I have put earlier, the Cabinet coup is operative, as seen tonight, but it is incomplete...
The Tory Party is so angry across itself tonight that it will surely split.
Also Wednesday, 13 March 2019: Chaos
Attorney General Geoffrey Cox marked his own homework and must have put Failed at the bottom. The unfolding disaster on Tuesday saw the Democratic Unionists say 'no' and obviously the 'headbangers' said no - and across the opposition. Even then some 40 or so votes switched. Only three Labour MPs voted with the government.
Theresa May may have symbolically lost her voice but I nearly lost mine when, after the 149 votes defeat, Nicky Morgan MP, in an interview soon after, considered a third vote on the Prime Minister's proposed deal. How dead does this have to be before it is buried? ...
The only good speech of leaders was that of the Scottish National Party Ian Blackford, who made the case for the European Union: the case that should have been made by the Yes campaign in 2016...
The disaster may be ended by revoking Article 50, with consequent negative effects for democracy. If people want to leave the EU, they should produce a majority in Parliament to do it. Parliament takes decisions and referenda confirm or reject decisions, rather than make a decision for Parliament. For this reason I remain opposed to a second referendum...
In effect, Labour's Shadow Shadow Cabinet (its influential driving backbenchers), Tom Watson's party within a party, a few Labour front-benchers, the SNP, the Liberal Democrats, Green, The Independent Group, a few backbench Tories and connected ministers, have to cohere and grow the will to put an end to this. Some of these people may well be consulted by a rump Cabinet in pursuit of tackling the crisis, revoking Article 50 and then going to the country.
Wednesday, 20 March 2019: The Prime Minister Must be Forced to Resign.
It is now time to for government members and Parliament to remove the Prime Minister. It should be done fast and with a caretaker leader, one that will allow facilitation of votes to find what is consensual in the House of Commons. I say this as a convinced and unapologetic remainer...
Why has this come about? Because, in her zig-zagging, last week a long extension was on offer that would allow 'The House' to find its consensus and act on it. What changed was half her cabinet revolted, to threaten resignations if she did go ahead with a long extension. And we had the free vote last week where the government sought approval for an extension beyond March 29th, and where eight cabinet ministers voted against, including the Exiting the EU Secretary who's just spoke in favour
Friday, 22 March 2019: Theresa May Zig-Zagging: Don't be Fooled
Don't be fooled by Theresa May's sudden change of tone: how wonderful MPs are doing their jobs and a reference even to alternatives to her deal. She zig zags and we have seen it too often: she will revert to type regarding this deal. The bunker mentality is still there.
She has to go. David Lidington could become a caretaker Prime Minister but he would be like the Fuhrer after Hitler: in the sense of chaos in defeat after political suicide and an inability to hold a divided Cabinet together. So half the Cabinet could walk out, presumably the harder exit half, and thus instead mean a Hammond or Rudd leadership and reference to other party personnel - to facilitate navigating the process through of indicative votes. This would complete the Cabinet coup I expected long back.
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