by John Crace
‘I would like to thank Owen Smith,’ Corbyn had said in his acceptance speech. ‘We’ve had some interesting and good-natured debates.’ This wasn’t exactly the way anyone else remembered the debates, in which both men had repeatedly traded threats and insults, calling one another 50 shades of useless – but the victor always gets to rewrite history.
As Corbyn moved off the internal divisions of the party and on to fighting the Tories, the atmosphere relaxed a little. Sensing he now had the crowd behind him, Corbyn went on to give one of his most convincing speeches, talking about the need to fight against grammar schools, tackle child poverty and hold the government to account over its Brexit negotiations. If he had sounded quite so passionate at key moments earlier in the year, he might have avoided going through a second leadership election.
‘We can win the next general election,’ he concluded, unintentionally splitting the party he had just spent the last 10 minutes trying to unite. His supporters cheered. They believed they could and would win, if only the British people let slip their collective false consciousness. The moderates believed the opinion polls and reckoned they were doomed to defeat while Corbyn remained their leader.
The Tories also believed they were bomb-proof so long as Corbyn was Labour leader, and his re-election took the edge off what could have been a tricky Conservative party conference for Theresa May. Beneath the surface, the old tensions over Europe remained. Some wanted a total split, others wanted to remain in the single market and the customs union. Though few Tory politicians were prepared to say that Brexit was a bad idea in public, there was intense disagreement in private about the terms on which Britain should leave the EU.
In her end-of-conference speech, the prime minister tried to unite both sides. Not entirely successfully. As ‘Start Me Up’ pumped through the sound system, Theresa May danced out of the shadows hellbent on making some grown men cry. This was her Year Zero. Everything that had happened in the past six years had been nothing to do with her. She had hated every last minute. She had been home secretary only in name. She had been a prisoner in her own department. Any pro-EU sentiments she might once have voiced had been implanted in her head by metropolitan liberal elite aliens. And now a change was gonna come. Sam Cooke would have felt far queasier about having his song lyrics hijacked than the Rolling Stones.
‘I’d like to pay thanks to the man who made the party change,’ she said. It sounded very much as if she was going to give a shout out to Nigel Farage, but the man she had in mind was David Cameron. The former prime minister had changed things a lot in the past six years. For the worse. So it was up to her, Theresa, to change everything all over again. Dave was a stain on the country and his legacy needed to be erased. Theresa had just made her first grown man cry.
A change was gonna come. The country had spoken and she was listening. She had made no great efforts to pay attention to the feelings of those who had been left behind during the referendum campaign, but she was now. Brexit must mean Brexit, and she could guarantee she would get the best deal for Britain. She didn’t say how because she wasn’t going to give a running commentary, but the rest of the world would inevitably bow to the might of British sovereignty. The Labour party might be heading back to the 1970s, but this was an unashamed retreat to the 1870s.
A change was gonna come. It was just as well no one had bothered to enquire if the change would be for the worse.
* * *
The PM’s Brexit confusion is contagious
12 OCTOBER 2016
Theresa May was confused. She didn’t appear to have heard her home secretary telling the Conservative party conference that foreign workers would be named and shamed. ‘That never happened,’ she insisted at prime minister’s questions, ‘which is why I went out of my way earlier in the week to say that when Amber Rudd had said this she actually meant the complete opposite.’ Doublethink used to be a prerogative of the left.
The prime minister was also confused about whether parliament should be allowed to debate the terms on which Britain would negotiate its exit from the EU. ‘When I said the government wasn’t prepared to debate Brexit,’ she again insisted, ‘what I really meant was that it hadn’t occurred to me parliament would be interested in why the value of the pound was falling further and further by the day.’
Most of all, though, Theresa was confused by the Labour party. For months now she had been used to it being a bit of a rabble and squabbling among itself. Now it was showing signs of getting its act together. Jeremy Corbyn was asking trickier and more focused questions and the backbenchers were more interested in getting under Tory skins than their leader’s. No one had ever warned her that the opposition might actually oppose and she couldn’t handle it. She felt brittle and unsure; even she wasn’t convinced by her answers.
Grumpy David Davis was also confused. And even grumpier than usual. He’d been told the government wouldn’t be giving a running commentary on its Brexit negotiations and here he was being dragged back to the Commons for the second time in three days to explain why he didn’t really have a clue about what he was supposed to be doing and was making it up as he went along. He hadn’t voted for Britain to leave the EU only for parliament to hold him to account. That’s not what he called ‘taking back control’.
Labour’s shadow Brexit minister, Keir Starmer, tried to make things easy for Grumpy. Scrutinising the government’s Brexit negotiations was not about trying to renege on the result of the referendum; it was about trying to negotiate the best possible outcome for leaving the EU. Hadn’t Grumpy tabled a 10 minute rule bill back in 1999 which questioned the right of the executive to ratify treaty changes without a vote in parliament?
‘La la la,’ grumped Grumpy. ‘I’m not listening.’
‘Allow me to put it this way, then,’ Starmer continued, helpfully. If Grumpy was going to act like an idiot, he would treat him like one. ‘The referendum was a mandate to leave the EU. It wasn’t a mandate on the terms on which we would leave. You can’t build a consensus around a position that you’ve refused to disclose.’
‘Another day, another outing,’ said Grumpy when he finally got to have his say. ‘My mandate is my mandate. It is the biggest mandate ever. Take back control. I am not a robot. Clunk. Clunk. Whirr.’ Grumpy didn’t bother to check his notes. He was still on auto-pilot from last Monday. ‘There’s no need for the government to do anything it doesn’t want to. We’ve done quite enough voting. My mandate is my mandate. Control back take. Clunk. Whirr. Plop.’
‘Actually,’ Labour’s Jack Dromey interrupted. ‘A junior minister, George Eustice, has just gone on the radio to say that the government will be putting forward a green paper for parliament to debate. So that rather suggests we will get a vote.’
‘Mandate. Back control take. There will be no vote. Ever. Over my rapidly dying body. Clunk. Clunk. Whirr.’ Grumpy’s system was suffering severe overload from a government making up policy on the hoof behind his back. Grumpy made his excuses and made a quick dash for the exit.
The reason for Grumpy’s systems failure soon became even clearer. It wasn’t just the opposition that was learning how to oppose. It was also the Tory backbenchers who were beginning to find their voice. ‘My duty to represent my constituents transcends that of my duty to the party,’ said Dominic Grieve. The sentiment was echoed by Anna Soubry, Nicky Morgan, Claire Perry, Chris Philp, Ken Clarke, Maria Miller and Alastair Burt.
Back at No. 10, Theresa May could see her majority slipping away in front of her eyes. There must be no vote prior to Article 50 being triggered after all. She picked up the phone and told Eustice that when he had talked about putting a Brexit green paper before parliament he’d really been talking about a completely different green paper. Eustice scratched his head. The prime minister’s confusion was contagious.
* * *
At the European Council summit in October, Theresa May was increasingly marginalised by other EU leaders who were more interested in discussing Russian aggressi
on in Syria and ongoing trade negotiations with Canada than listening to what Britain had to say about leaving the EU. Brexit was a British problem and until Britain actually set out clear plans for what it wanted to achieve – the only plan on offer at this point was to have no plan – and triggered Article 50, the 27 other EU member states weren’t that bothered in having a conversation. To make their feelings plain, the EU made Theresa May wait until the small hours before allowing her just five minutes to talk about Brexit.
* * *
Talk to the hand, Theresa, because the EU aren’t listening
21 OCTOBER 2016
It had been a long, long, Thursday evening at the European Council summit for Theresa May. First she had had to listen to loads of boring speeches about things she wasn’t very interested in and then she had got stuck next to a French bloke who’d insisted on talking to her in French. What was wrong with the EU these days? Back in David Cameron’s time, everyone used to speak in English.
Eventually her frustration had got the better of her and she had turned to the Frenchman to ask why her speech was only number 15 on the agenda.
‘Parce qu’il n’y a pas 16 items sur the agenda,’ the Frenchman had said, while swigging another tumbler of merlot.
The time passed slowly. Ten o’clock came and went. Eleven o’clock came and went. Midnight came and went. Just after 1 a.m., a steward tapped her on the shoulder to let her know there was a spare five minutes if she had anything she wanted to get off her chest while the few remaining people still awake finished their coffee.
‘I’d like to talk to you all about Brexit,’ Theresa had begun.
‘Parlez à la main,’ shouted a lone Belgian, before falling off his chair.
Theresa continued, determined not to be distracted. ‘I’m here to tell you that Brexit means Brexit and that the UK remains committed to getting whatever deal with the EU we can manage to negotiate once we’ve got some sort of a clue what it is we really want. Merci, danke.’
Silence. Two people staggered off to bed without saying a word; the rest remained asleep in their chairs. The épaule had never seemed so froide.
‘I think that went quite well on the whole,’ Theresa said later to one of her advisers.
‘Er, yes …’ the adviser replied, guardedly. ‘I suppose you were at least invited to this summit. We only got to hear about the last one in Bratislava after it had finished.’
Things didn’t really pick up that much the following morning. On her way into the meeting, she had heard the European Commission president, Jean-Claude Juncker, whisper he wasn’t interested in doing Britain any favours and the frosty reception she had got in the room suggested that was a sentiment shared by other EU leaders.
‘Can we talk about Brexit?’ she begged.
‘Non.’
‘But I need to be able to tell people back home something. Can I just say we’ve agreed to start preliminary trade deals?’
‘Nous will say rien until you invoke Article 50.’
‘But I won’t know what I want unless we have some discussions before I trigger Article 50.’
‘Parlez en français,’ sniggered Michel Barnier, the EU’s chief Brexit negotiator.
‘Mon français n’est pas très bon.’
‘C’est meilleur que votre position de négociation!’
‘He is right,’ said Juncker. ‘Besides, nous want to talk about Russia, not vous.’
The meeting ended with Theresa sulking and saying nothing as the Lithuanian president sent her email links to YouTube footage of Russian warships sailing up the English channel.
‘It’s time for your press conference,’ her adviser reminded her, shortly after 1.30 a.m. ‘Don’t forget to sound really upbeat and tell everyone this summit has been a huge personal success.’
‘This summit has been a huge personal success, and Britain remains a confident, outward-looking and enthusiastic member of Europe,’ said a hollow-eyed, flatlining Theresa, sounding diffident and introverted. ‘We talked a bit about Russia and immigration and I am sure we can make a success of Brexit so long as people stop making it difficult for me. Now, does anyone have any questions?’
Theresa looked up, hoping that just this once no one did. No such luck. Did she really expect 27 countries to listen to us when we’re leaving? Wasn’t the EU out to embarrass us and make things difficult for us?
‘Um … er … people really are listening to us,’ she said. ‘They’ve just a funny way of showing it. Now is there anyone from the overseas media here?’
A hand shot up. Theresa fell on it gratefully, relieved to be able to show the whole world that at least one other country was listening to her. The hand turned out to belong to another UK journalist who was usually ignored and was trying to blag a question. There really was no one else out there listening to her after all. Theresa had never felt quite so alone.
* * *
On November 3rd, in an action brought by Remain campaigner Gina Miller, the High Court ruled the government was not able to invoke Article 50 by royal prerogative and that parliament must be allowed a substantive vote on the matter. The decision was not well received in government.
‘We want to bring back control of our laws to the UK,’ David Davis, the Brexit secretary had growled in parliament. Except for those ones which we didn’t trust British judges to adjudicate on in the way we would have liked them to. Sovereignty had its limits apparently. ‘The government came to the conclusion that it was perfectly OK to invoke Article 50 using prerogative powers,’ he continued. Kindness prevented him from commenting on whether Theresa May had made a misjudgement of her own in appointing Jeremy Wright – a man described by former Tory MP Stephen Phillips as ‘a third-rate conveyancing lawyer’ – as attorney general. ‘The court came to a different view and we are disappointed by that.’
Disappointment was the least of it. Fury, outrage and humiliation were more like it. But the increasingly grumpy Davis was in no mood to back down. Having repeatedly told MPs that the result of the referendum must stand and there should be no going back, Davis sounded awfully like someone who was having a major sulk about not getting his way and was going to carry on fighting until he did. ‘We’re going to the supreme court, who we believe will tell us we are being proper and lawful,’ he insisted. And if the Supreme Court let him down, he’d go to the Supreme Supreme Court. And if that failed he’d just appoint some judges of his own. Job done.
The government weren’t the only ones to be incandescent about the high court ruling. Many of the right-wing, pro-Brexit newspapers had branded the judiciary as a disgrace. The Daily Mail had branded the judges ‘Enemies of the People’. Anyone who tried to stop the government from doing exactly what it wanted was trying to thwart the will of the people and was therefore an enemy of the state.
As far as both the government and the press were concerned there could be no question of the government revealing its negotiating strategy to parliament – not least because it doesn’t have one – as it would undermine its already ropey position. The idea that the government had already given away a key bargaining position by declaring it would invoke Article 50 before the end of March didn’t seem to have occurred to Grumpy.
MPs from both sides of the house invited the government to put forward a resolution to invoke Article 50, in order to allow the house to prove its concerns on this issue were over parliamentary sovereignty and not to delay Britain’s exit from the EU. ‘No,’ snapped Davis. ‘We’re going to go to the supreme court and that’s that.’ Giving parliament any say in Brexit would be the thin end of the wedge. Give MPs an inch and they would take a mile.
Theresa May managed to avoid most of the fallout from the government’s High Court defeat by being out of the country on a trade mission to India in a bid to prove that Britain had a global future outside the EU. It was while on this trip that her Maybot tendencies first came to the fore …
* * *
Theresa struggles to take back control – from her ow
n Maybot
8 NOVEMBER 2016
About halfway through a rather soporific appearance before the public administration and constitutional affairs select committee, the former head of the civil service, Gus O’Donnell, thought it worth reminding everyone that civil servants were more like humans than robots. Which could be just as well, as the prime minister is increasingly acting like someone who is more robot than human. Sometime between July, when she looked like the safest pair of hands amid a sea of idiots, and now, Theresa May’s brain appears to have been hacked. Ask her a sensible question and you’re now guaranteed a senseless answer.
‘Have you made any plans for a Brexit transitional deal?’ inquired a Sky News reporter, at the end of the prime minister’s near pointless jolly to India.
Whirr. Clunk. Clang. The Maybot’s eyes rotated into life. ‘I’m focusing on delivering Article 50,’ she replied, unable to prevent herself from answering an entirely different question.
‘Will you be able to deliver on the £350 million that was promised to the NHS?’ the reporter persevered.
‘When the people. Whirr. Voted in the referendum. Clunk. They wanted. Clang. A number of different things,’ said the Maybot, struggling with her circuit board.
‘Was the referendum dishonest?’
Inside the Maybot, the last shards of the real Theresa were fighting to get out. She was not a number. Especially not 350 million. She was a person in her own right. She did still have a mind of her own. Then the malware took over again.
‘Whirr. The referendum took. Clunk. Place. I’m focusing …’ She wasn’t. She really wasn’t.
‘You weren’t part of the Vote Leave campaign, you weren’t prime minister at the time of the referendum and you have no mandate,’ observed the reporter sharply.